by Ruby Namdar
6
April 8, 2001
The 15th of Nisan, 5761
It felt strange to be so sick in springtime. Andrew woke late. Although the apartment was warm and flooded with light like a greenhouse, his chills and sore throat were like a reversion to winter. It was all he could do to get out of bed, blinking in the bright light, his rumpled, sweaty pajamas hanging loosely on his limp frame. The lump in his throat hurt annoyingly. He felt stuffy and light-headed. He dismissed the thought of coffee in favor of herbal tea with honey. Was there any lemon in the refrigerator? Sickness triggered old reflexes, a childish, semi-instinctive desire for somebody—a woman, to be precise—to take care of him.
But his neediness was short-lived and soon yielded to its opposite. It was better in his state to be alone, to have the apartment to himself, to go about unwashed and unshaven, wrapped in old clothes, gagging on the cloying perfume of his own sweat, his scalp crawling with the not entirely unpleasant sensation of gritty unwashed hair, his mouth sour with the taste—enjoyable, too, in its way—of unbrushed teeth. There was something cozy and intimate in this unexpected bout of flu, something liberating. Even its chills, which made him feel half out of his body, were irresistible. It was good Ann Lee was out of town. He liked to look and be at his best with her. She wasn’t the nurturing type.
But what was he going to do with himself? He could hardly go on sleeping all day long. He turned on his computer, went to its mailbox, and exited immediately. Too weak and groggy to answer his e-mails, he absentmindedly surfed the Web without remaining anywhere long. He even visited the repulsively titillating Back to the Foreskin blog that Rachel had introduced him to a few months ago, curious to see how the circumcised author’s pursuit of his anatomical holy grail was proceeding. But the close-ups of male organs made him cringe and he swiftly switched off the computer, padded to the couch in the living room, stretched out on it listlessly, and tried driving away the revolting visions of foreskins that, no matter how hard he shut his eyes, kept lurking under their lids in intense color and detail.
ONE THIRTY P.M. The delivery guy arrived with lunch. Andrew, coming to the door in his bathrobe, tipped him handsomely, as if in compensation for not belonging to a privileged class that could be sick at its leisure and sleep till noon. Not up to eating in the kitchen or transferring the food to bowls and dishes, he took the bag to the living room, emptied it onto the coffee table, and picked at the greasy plastic containers, sampling soup, meat, rice, and vegetables in no particular order. His eye fell on the remote control, and he switched on the TV. An animated film flashed hectically on the screen, its grotesque, pointy-headed creatures from outer space frantically chasing each other with laser guns. The antitheses of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Pluto, they were anything but cute or lovable. Who had left the TV on this channel? Rachel? Ann Lee? Now, its humor even more sinister, a new cartoon was starting in which a legless monster swooped down on its hapless victims and turned whoever looked at it into a pile of bones. Did children really like this stuff? It was another generation, a new world. Damn! Soy sauce was dripping on the rug. When was the last time he had eaten like this, in his pajamas, in front of the TV? Perhaps not for years.
His lunch made him sleepy and he stretched out on the couch, knees curled semi-fetally beneath him while the TV blared high-pitched, rapid-fire dialogue. Though he yearned for some quiet, he felt too weak to get up and turn it off. The last day and night’s vivid daydreams and visions continued to haunt him, but he couldn’t think clearly about them. Never mind. Perhaps tomorrow. He shut his eyes and let himself surrender to his exhaustion, trying to picture the thick fluids that were flooding his forehead and draining into his sinuses and skull cavity. They made him think of the ornamental Lava Lamps, popular in the seventies, in which fat colorful bubbles reproduced the same random forms in an oily, phosphorescent, unnaturally slow-circulating liquid. His temperature must be going up. He should take a Tylenol.
The high-pitched voices were still arguing. What a racket! Early morning. Half-empty bowls stand on the table beside cartons of milk and boxes of breakfast cereal. An orange light shines through the kitchen window, glancing dazzlingly off the television screen. Although it is hard to make out what is happening on it, he recognizes the voices: Ernie and Bert. Big Bird. The Transylvanian Count counting to ten in his funny Romanian accent. Alison’s fruity laughter. Linda is packing sandwiches in their lunch boxes. Let’s go, Rachel, it’s late. Time for school.
The sound was getting to be unbearable. Andrew forced himself to sit up and turn off the TV. What now? Hefty and inviting, the Sunday Times had been waiting since morning. He placed it in front of him and took it apart, discarding the Business, Sports, and Classified pages while reserving the Book Review, Arts and Leisure, and Metro sections under a pillow. Glancing at the news, he decided to start with it. Its broadsheet format in his raised hands, he lay on his back and laboriously began to read. Yet he couldn’t focus on the wavering lines or combine their letters into words and sentences. No problem. He would shut his eyes for a few minutes. Hey, Bert, are you sleeping? Yes, Ernie, I’m asleep. But I can’t fall asleep, Bert. Then count sheep, Ernie.
7
Andrew awoke bathed in sweat and assailed by the light. The sun was in the west, turning the windows of the living room into four giant spotlights. Something was bothering him—something urgent, something disturbing. He had forgotten something important. He had to remember, now. Oh, God, yes! Alison’s performance! At her ballet school. Linda had phoned to remind him of it. When was it? What day was today? More pungent sweat poured off him as his anxiety released a surge of adrenaline. How could he have forgotten that? Quick, the phone! He had to listen to Linda’s message.
But his body, as though chained to the couch by thousands of cobwebs, refused to get up. His hands and feet felt immobilized, as if shackled in irons. The wave of anxiety washed over him and receded. The light assaulting his eyes, lining their lids a fiery red. What time was it? He couldn’t find his watch. When was the performance? It was the Nutcracker, Alison was a snowflake, with a shiny white leotard and silver spangles in her hair. Why the Nutcracker now? It was April, not midwinter. But Linda had left a message. He couldn’t have made it up, he simply could not have! Linda had called him, he could swear to it. What time was it? There was a tiny digital clock on the cable box beneath the TV that he could see if he turned to the left. Could he be dreaming, is that possible? Yes, it was a dream. There was no message from Linda, there was no performance, Alison hasn’t done ballet in years. How could he have dreamt it all?
He felt pressure in his bladder. Sweat dripped onto the collar of his pajama top. He had to get up. Craning his neck, he made out the digits on the cable box: 4:20. It was a dream: what a relief! Although the sticky webs of sleep had dissolved, he still felt too exhausted to rise from the couch. He looked around him. What an unholy mess! The news section of the Times was spread out on his chest like a dead albatross, its severed limbs scattered over the rest of the couch. The coffee table was splotched with greasy food. Plastic and paper bags lay on the rug. His throat was sore and his eyelids felt inflamed and swollen. Forcing himself to sit, he surveyed the disorder with disgust. What luck it had been a dream! He could have sworn there was a message. Just look at all that soy sauce, what a waste! Why did they always send twice the amount anyone could eat?
The tea soothed his throat without calming him. Something was still bothering him, a void he couldn’t explain. He needed to talk to someone. Linda! But that was ridiculous. How could he call her just like that? His fingers knew her Brooklyn number by heart. There was a recorded announcement on her voice mail. “Hi, you’ve reached Linda and George.” Alison’s muffled laughter could be heard in the background. “We aren’t home now.” Alison gaily completed the announcement: “Please leave a message and we’ll get back to you at the first opportunity.” Feeling weak, he gripped the receiver. A long beep was followed by the heavy silence of the listening device. A
ndrew hesitated with the receiver to his ear before hanging up carefully, as though afraid to wake someone. Suppose, he thought with alarm, they had a caller identification service. At once, he realized how childish the fear was. His head is not working right, he should take two more Tylenols and get back into bed.
He picked up the receiver again and automatically dialed Rachel’s number in Princeton. Even though it was new, he knew her number by heart, too. The phone rang. No one answered. He suddenly missed her as badly as if he hadn’t seen her in years—missed her as one misses a mother more than a daughter. If only he could hold her cool hand in his own, everything would be all right. He let the telephone keep ringing, lulled by its hypnotic trills.
“Hi, Dad, is that you?” Rachel sounded as close as if she were sitting next to him.
He had almost forgotten that the phone was still ringing and sat up with a start, trying to sound normal. “Hi, sweetie, how are you?” For a moment, bemused by his casual tone and his need to pretend that nothing was wrong, he thought he was about to deny he was sick. Rachel, though clearly glad to hear his voice, sounded puzzled. Andrew wasn’t the type for small talk and never called her just to chat. “What’s up, Dad?” she asked. “Is everything okay?”
In the same ironic, nonchalant tone, which he clung to without knowing why, he told her he was running a high fever and hadn’t been out all day. “Poor little Dad!” she teased back. “If I were in the city, I’d make you chicken soup.” Andrew smiled. Chicken soup was their private joke, a sardonic code word for their family situation. Not only was there no longer anyone to make it, there never had been one. Linda hadn’t inherited her mother’s cooking skills. She never liked being in the kitchen and spent less and less time there as her career progressed. And when she did make something for a weekend meal or special occasion, it was usually some closely followed Thai or Italian recipe, taken from a best-selling cookbook. It was the very opposite of Andrew’s adventurous, creative approach to food. Rachel, in her typical perfectionist style, made it her business to master the recipe of Cora’s famous chicken soup, experiment with ways of improving it, proudly bring it to perfection, and then proceed to abandon it and never cook it again. “It’s an empty gesture, a smile without a cat,” she once told Andrew. “We never had it when I needed it and now it’s too late. And anyway, what’s so special about chicken soup? It’s just another nostalgic myth. For a comfort food, give me an organic vegetable curry with noodles.”
“Okay, sweetheart, see you soon.” Andrew hung up, an uncharacteristically hesitant hand still on the receiver. The conversation had left him with a bitter, medicinal taste. Something he couldn’t put a finger on had been left unsaid. If it weren’t ridiculous, he would call Rachel back. But what did he expect of her? To drop everything and come running? To actually make him chicken soup and serve him fresh squeezed orange juice? That wasn’t how things worked, it just wasn’t. She was a grown, busy woman. She had her life and so did he.
He should take those damn Tylenols. He let go of the receiver, strode resolutely to the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet, took out a plastic bottle, shook two pills from it, swallowed them without water, replaced the bottle in the cabinet, and shut it. Finding a heavy old winter bathrobe in the closet, he put it on and returned to the couch. He switched the television back on, switched it off again, dropped the remote control on the rug, and stretched out with his feet tucked under a blanket and his head propped on the large pillow.
He shut his eyes. The liquid in the glass container of the Lava Lamp swished slowly behind his forehead, bearing down on his eyeballs. The doors of the train shut on the platform to his right and its locomotive started to move, picking up speed as its lit windows flashed by him. Now the train on the platform to his left shut its doors, too, and shot off in the opposite direction. Mom, Mom, where are you? The doors are closing!
8
April 9, 2001
The 16th of Nisan, 5761
Ten a.m. The espresso machine hummed. The front page of the newspaper was spread out on the kitchen counter beside a jar of jam, a butter dish, and the remains of a croissant. Andrew sat at his desk, listening to the messages that had accumulated the day before. Fourteen hours of deep, dream-fraught, nonstop sleep had cured him of whatever ailed him, leaving only a slight weakness, the only sign of yesterday’s collapse. It had been just a cold, a twenty-four-hour spring virus.
He glanced at his watch. He had a free morning. He had already checked his e-mail, answering some and deleting others. Ann Lee was due back that afternoon and there were some things he might as well take care of before that. Making room for them on his desk, he started with the easier ones: signing off on several revised student grades, approving the disqualification of a term paper reasonably suspected of plagiarism, and drawing up a list of guest lecturers for next year’s departmental seminar. The more the desk was cleared, the more clearheaded he felt.
His main chore was giving final grades in the introductory survey course and faxing them to the secretaries in the office. Generally, the term papers were read by his teaching assistants, who passed him their evaluations along with some samples to help set a grading curve and any papers that they didn’t trust themselves to judge. Andrew sifted through these. Most consisted of page after page of shopworn banalities and tautologies. What was it about the younger generation that made it so tentative and unsure of itself? He made his decisions quickly, scrawling a grade at the bottom of the last page with his famous fountain pen. The pile of papers shrank. He glanced again at this watch: it had taken him an hour and a quarter. Not bad. Two or three more papers and he would have put in a good morning’s work.
The most unusual of the submissions awaited him at the bottom of the pile, as if having lain there in ambush all morning. He sized it up immediately. There was one like it nearly every semester: an original work, sometimes brilliant and sometimes absurd, that stood out amid the repetitive, astonishingly predictable monotony of rehashed clichés from Wolf, Said, Derrida, and Foucault. He could also generally count on at least one Communist, an unshaven young man with a head of black curls who smoked unfiltered cigarettes and discussed, as if living in a Marxist nature reserve, mass production, surplus value, and commodity fetishism. The same arguments, the same grievances, over and over in an endless feedback loop . . . Yet what right had anyone to complain? This was how he and his contemporaries had taught their students to think. They had brought the politicization of the social sciences, the liberal arts, and the entire academy down on themselves.
The odd essay out this time was written on thin stationery with a ballpoint pen, in large, round, elementary-school cursive letters that seemed engraved in the onionskin paper. No name appeared on it, though he searched for one everywhere. Who the hell can he be? Andrew wondered, sure for some reason that the writer was male. Taken aback by the unease that accompanied his curiosity, he held the strange-looking work up to the light as if hoping to discover a cryptogram that might solve the mystery. Was it the work of some religious fanatic? A recent immigrant? A psychopath? Its pompous title had a seventeenth-century ring: A Treatise on the Constructions of Consciousness and the Reality Constructed.
Andrew smiled. So that was it! He was a first-year philosophy major who had read Spinoza and decided to write his own Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Again he looked in vain for the author’s name. An anonymous term paper, how bizarre! Picking up its first page, he began to read, his lips curling in a smile of sympathy.
The idea that consciousness constructs reality has become a commonplace of contemporary discourse, a lifeless metaphor, a banality that has lost its power to clear new ground or serve as an intellectual trigger. It behooves us, therefore, to reopen the discussion of this highly charged concept and investigate the infinite possibilities contained in it. Its everyday (let alone vulgar) interpretation leaves it in the psychologically subjective realm: by constructing our psychological reality, our consciousness affects not only our behavior but the ways
in which we perceive the real world and make narratives of it for ourselves and others. The processes of socialization and the social construction of reality that we engage in from infancy determine how we shape our personal and collective histories. Against this, the first part of the thesis, it would be pointless to argue or look for refutations; it has exhausted itself intellectually and become a cliché that no longer contributes to the conversation. The discussion only becomes interesting when we proceed further and venture to explore the possibility that consciousness constructs not only human but trans-human, so-called objective (a term that is taboo in the current intellectual climate), reality as well. Can it be (it being our right, and thus our duty, to pose the question) that our consciousness and its underlying cultural assumptions determine not only our perceptions of the world and the categories to which our brains assign our sense impressions, but things in themselves—that is, the referents that cast their semiotic shadows on our consciousness?
Semiotic shadows? Andrew’s head spun. Things in themselves? For a moment he feared the distress in his frontal lobes was a sign he was getting sick again. His eyes were smarting, as if he had been reading too long. Shutting them to let them rest, he gently massaged his eyelids. Although the essay was tedious, puerile, awkwardly phrased, and overly dense, there was something interesting, even intriguing, about it. He opened his eyes and read more: