Snake Eyes

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Michael was also forced to consider what he’d only vaguely realized in the past—that Christianity, in fact the Judaeo-Christian tradition as it was called, was but one tradition among many, and by no means the most enduring. The world was layered with religions extinct, near-extinct, living, flourishing, freshly seeded, like the very Earth itself, layered geologically in time. Each religion was divinely chartered, and each religion had its savior, though more usually saviors; there were holy books, and holy men; miracles, mysteries, authorities; rites and rituals; sacrifices; sacraments; demons; heavens and hells and points in between; every variety of punishment, every variety of childish wish given form. As in a budget-conscious stage production in which a few actors played many roles, the gods of one sect were the devils of another. If love for one’s neighbor was preached, hatred for one’s enemies was practiced. The most pacific-minded people could be galvanized into becoming the most bloody warriors, once their god bade them act, and their priests blessed their swords.

  None of these revelations was new. But all were new to Michael O’Meara.

  Dazed and demoralized but unwilling to give up, for, after all, there was the example of the activist-clergyman who had been a very intelligent and reasonable man, but had nonetheless believed in Jesus Christ, as there were similar, numberless examples, through history, of men who had managed somehow to accommodate both intelligence and faith, Michael had saturated himself in a purely intellectual study of philosophy and theology. Some of it was coursework, some of it his own meandering research, amid the millions of volumes (most, unfortunately—or was it fortunately?—in languages Michael did not know) in the seminary library. Xenophanes, Descartes, Voltaire, Plato, Pascal, St. Augustine, Martin Luther, Nietzsche, St. Thomas Aquinas and many others, in a jumbled chronology; Tillich on God-symbolism, Eliade on myth, Kierkegaard on fear and trembling, Tolstoy on Christ’s teachings, Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor; the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls; Barth, Buber, Maritain, Schweitzer, Weil; papal encyclicals—Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius XII, John XXIII. There was the flashing, glamorous weapon of structuralism, there was the laser-ray of semiotics, there was the audacity of Freudian psychoanalysis, there was the ray of hope of Jungian “individuation.” There was of course anthropology, pitiless as a surgeon’s scalpel, laying bare brains, blood vessels, nerves. There was even an interlude of Ingmar Bergman films, austere, chill, beautiful, which Michael and some of his new friends at the seminary saw frequently, obsessively. Near the end of his third viewing of Through a Glass Darkly Michael O’Meara broke down and began to cry and stumbled out of the movie theater into the sulphurous haze of early evening on Bleecker Street. For some frightening seconds he truly didn’t know where he was, still less why.

  Where had it gone, he wondered, that quicksilver leap of certitude he’d had only a year or so before, that almost rowdy happiness pulsing in his veins, that conviction in his heart that drove out all absurd shadows of guilt, that there was a living God, a communal spirit to be experienced, if not understood?

  “Too late have I loved thee, thou beauty of ancient days”—these words of St. Augustine’s, disembodied as the lyrics of a popular song, ran through his head.

  Was it too late?

  Unshaven, underweight, hoarse with a bad cold, in a visibly desperate state, Michael made an appointment to confer with his adviser at the seminary, a man who had studied with Tillich in the 1940s and who was highly respected in his own right as a New Testament scholar. Michael asked bluntly, “I just want to know—is there a God? And if so, what are we supposed to do?”

  It was determined, during the course of the conference, that Michael O’Meara was perhaps not suited for seminary studies; nor for scholarly pursuits in general.

  Following that disaster, Michael became a student again, in order to prepare for medical school. He was all afire with the idea that, to do good, whether God exists or not, is after all the aim of men (and women) of good will: but, in order to do good, one must be trained to do a specific good. He reasoned, and in this he was very like many of the pre-med students he befriended, that there was no other more direct opportunity for helping others than being a doctor.

  Michael was admitted to a less-than-prestigious medical school in upstate New York, at the mature age, as he thought of it, of twenty-four. Here he was to last an even shorter period of time than at the seminary, where he had been able to finish out the year.

  It was not to be the numbing rote memorization that defeated him—Michael had always been the kind of eager student, unburdened with an excessive imagination, cooperative rather than rebellious, to whom the memorization of even dull unrelated facts came easily. Nor would it be the protracted hours of sleep deprivation, for which medical school was notorious—Michael was the bearer of that sort of metabolism, common in muscular endomorphs, that allowed him to remain awake for long hours but granted him too, virtually at will, the ability to take quick, wonderfully refreshing catnaps, sometimes as short as a single minute, anywhere he found himself. What defeated him was gross anatomy: his first cadaver.

  Michael O’Meara, even as he’d made out application forms for medical school, had known, but had not wanted to think about it, that he would be required to dissect a cadaver at some point in medical school. He had known, but had not wanted to think about it, that this task might give him trouble. (In her carelessly entertaining anecdotes of her model older brother, Janet O’Meara often spoke of Michael’s excessive sensitivity and empathy—“He’s the kind of person who wouldn’t hurt a flea, and I mean an actual flea.”) He had not quite understood that he would be confronted with a cadaver on the very first day of classes, however. “Are they serious?” he asked a second-year student, and was told, “Are you serious?”

  Upperclassmen at the school were amused by first-year students and condescending in their advice, which was, regarding the inevitable cadaver, not to get stuck with one that had been dead too many years.

  The dreaded dissection lab was preceded, early Monday morning, by an introductory lecture; after approximately half an hour a cadaver was wheeled into the amphitheater, with no ceremony, no theatrical flair, as the professor of anatomy continued his lecture, and everyone continued, or tried to continue, taking rapid notes. Michael, seated in the fourth row of the steeply rising seats, close to one side, fumbled with his pen, dropped it and snatched it up again, his eyes blurred with tears and his nostrils assailed by a sudden acrid odor. The body on the gurney was discreetly draped in white; a human body in outline only; when the professor’s assistant pulled aside the white cloth, at the professor’s bidding, there was childlike relief in the amphitheater—the cadaver was covered with an opaque plastic sheet. And beneath this sheet, as it turned out, was another protective layer, this one in gauze; beneath the gauze, yet more gauze that protected the hands and the head. By this time, Michael had relaxed slightly, like most of the others around him. The cadaver’s face—his identity—would not be revealed. Not in the lecture.

  Still, Michael stared entranced at the mummylike form, so utterly motionless. The anatomy professor was an energetic gray-haired little man, speaking in measured cadences, pausing to allow the taking of notes, his eyes moving quickly yet mechanically about the large room: how alive he was, as unlike the dead body on the gurney as he was, in his aliveness, unlike the gurney itself. Michael was thinking how uncanny a thing, to be in the presence of a … corpse; a being like ourselves, once possessed of a personality, an identity, a soul; but no longer. A guilty sensation washed over him, a taste as of bile at the back of his mouth. How evil you are, Michael O’Meara. How evil, and never to escape it.

  He swallowed, he roused himself to full wakefulness. The anatomy lecture was concluding; the cadaver, now harmless, a mere object, was being covered up again, wheeled out of the amphitheater. Michael thought, This is nonsense. I’m strong. I’m motivated. I know what I’m doing, and why.

  Since his disillusion with formal religion, and with the galaxy of ludicro
us competing gods, he wasn’t even certain he believed in “evil.”

  Immediately following the lecture was the anatomy lab, a two-hour ordeal, into which a powerful surge of adrenaline carried Michael, determined not only to get through the first dissection experience but to excel in it. He was smiling vacuously, and noticed that some others were smiling too, though their eyes were somber, scared. Michael O’Meara’s characteristic response to situations of crisis—a response he was to retain all his life—was that of a quarterback of limited ability but visionary dreams: there was a heavy-footed grace about his stocky, affable body, an air of control, and enthusiasm in control. Since the age of thirteen, since summer camp in the Adirondacks, he’d discovered himself looked to by others as a natural leader; the kind who does not seek leadership, may in fact be embarrassed by it, but accepts it, at least some of the time, because others so wish. So, in the dissection lab on that Monday morning in September 1975, in that nightmare of a room, stinking of phenol, in which, on twenty-five tables were twenty-five cadavers, each covered with an opaque plastic sheet, Michael assumed an air of equanimity and smiled and nodded as one of the graduate instructors spoke, and, as the class divided into groups, each assigned to a table and to a cadaver, he smiled too, encouragingly, at his teammates—three very sallow-skinned young men who were clearly waiting for Michael to position himself at the head of the table, and to be the one to uncover the cadaver.

  The table to which Michael’s group had been assigned was near a tall window, thank God, and the cadaver to which they’d been assigned did not somehow look full size. (Several of the cadavers in the lab looked enormous.) Was this good, or was this bad? Even as he was smiling at the others, as if he’d done this sort of thing many times before, Michael was gripped with a sudden sensation of horror: what if their cadaver was not an adult, but a young person?—a child?

  The instructor was still lecturing, and, as they were bid, the students opened their dissection kits, examined scalpels, scissors, a hacksaw. (A hacksaw?—for sawing through the skull?) Dissection was a technique one learned as one learned any technique. The human body was a body, a model of anatomy. Michael nodded, as if in absolute agreement. The instructor had already noticed him, seemed to be speaking to him, as teachers frequently did. Michael O’Meara the intelligent, capable-looking young man with the strong face, the alert unwavering eyes, the fair red-burnished hair that, on his head and thinly and fuzzily covering his bared arms, gave him a faintly singed look, as if he’d been forged of some material sturdier and more reliable than that of the others who surrounded him.

  At last the lecture ended, and it was time for the cadavers to be undraped.

  Michael stared down at the form directly before him. His three teammates did not look at the form at all, but were watching Michael, intently. Beneath the plastic sheet there would be gauze—wouldn’t there? Head and hands, at least, wrapped mummylike in protective layers of gauze?

  The instructor repeated his command, since no one in the room had moved. Michael, his senses blurred, was but dimly aware of the nightmare of tables, draped forms, students uncomfortably crowded together, breathing in the vile-smelling preservative that would become, from this day onward, a routine fact of their lives. The surge of adrenaline had ebbed; he felt now without strength, defenseless. Yet he must move, he must take command, others were looking at him expectantly, he had no choice. How evil you are, to have done this. And never to escape.

  Elsewhere in the room sheets were being lifted, timidly. Michael O’Meara lifted the plastic sheet covering the cadaver before him—in a daze pulled it aside—one of his teammates murmured, “Oh!” and another clenched his fists—and Michael blinked and stared seeing, before him, a naked corpse. Only the hands and feet were wrapped in gauze, the rest was exposed, naked.

  Somewhere distant the instructor’s voice rang out assuringly. They were being told to pick up a scalpel, to begin, to begin with a leg, two people on each side of the body, yes, now it’s time to begin, to begin, no going back you must make the first cut, you must utilize each second of lab time, it’s precious time, you’ll learn how precious since you must keep on schedule through the semester you must be finished with your dissection in twelve weeks. Elsewhere in the lab tentative movements were being made, scalpels lifted. Michael too had a scalpel in his badly trembling hand but he had little awareness of it, little awareness of anything save the corpse stretched out before him, a young male, Caucasian, very pale in death, skin the sickly hue of bleached mustard, bruised eyes shut but seemingly about to open showing a thin crescent of bluish-white beneath the lids, nose somewhat bumpy at the bridge as if it had been broken, fair red-brown hair, thick on the head and sprouting like wires on the well-developed chest, belly, pubic area, arms and legs. Michael O’Meara was staring in horror seeing a cousin, a brother, a twin battered and disfigured and even discolored in death, no mistaking it, the dissection lab had been so arranged as to bring him to this, this unspeakable horror, everyone was watching covertly as he, Michael, stood trembling above his victim, who was Michael too, the one still living, with a deadly weapon in his hand, his eyes rapidly blinking, a mottled flush in his face and his skin covered in icy sweat, unmistakable symptoms of guilt, here’s the guilty man, here’s the guilty boy, this time we see you, this time you can’t escape, and now the cadaver’s lips drew back tightly from his stained teeth in a supercilious sneering accusing expression as he peeked beneath his eyelids at Michael, How evil, how evil, you, you’re the one, did you think you could escape it?

  Someone spoke. Someone, the lab instructor perhaps, called out. Michael had stepped backward, or had he slipped, or been pushed, and the floor had opened up behind him, a pit, a sheer drop into utter blackness, into which, no longer conscious, and not at all resisting, he fell.

  Following this disaster, after a six-month recovery period, Michael O’Meara went to law school, in Philadelphia, and did exceptionally well. His mother was vastly relieved and many times told him so. Law school, with a specialization in corporate law, was exactly what his father had wanted for him, after all.

  He fell in love at the age of twenty-seven, idyllically in love, passionately in love, and his old feelings of guilt began to surface again, like bubbles in heated tar, for he wasn’t worthy of such a pure, beautiful young woman as Gina, was he?—how could he be?—he? Yet Gina seemed to love him; her parents, her entire family, seemed very fond of him; it was by way of his prospective father-in-law, a Philadelphia banker, that he was hired by Pearce Pharmaceuticals, Inc., of Newark, New Jersey, the largest manufacturer of anti-psychotic drugs in the United States.

  Michael’s position at Pearce was a very junior position, amid a legal staff of thirty-five men; but it was very highly paid, with the promise of raises, promotions, for good work.

  On the eve of his wedding to Gina, lovely Gina, Gina whom he loved far more than his own life and would love forever, Michael, always the stronger, the more reasonable, the less emotional and impulsive of the two, astonished the young woman by confessing there was something about him she didn’t know but should know: but, when Gina asked what it was, Michael laughed strangely and ran both hands through his hair and said, “Well—I don’t know. I feel it, Gina, but I don’t know.”

  “But, Michael dear, if you don’t know, what is it you feel?”

  He had not yet told Gina in much detail of his failure in the seminary and his failure in medical school—though not out of subterfuge exactly: Gina became visibly nervous, and changed the subject, when anything mildly disagreeable arose between them—and he knew that now, with the wedding close at hand, was not the time. So he told her about the guilt, simply—the obscure, nagging, sickening sense of guilt he sometimes felt; not often, certainly not constantly, but sometimes; as if he’d committed an evil, wicked act and had never been punished or even discovered. Gina listened wide-eyed, tremulous. Did she fear some hideous, irremediable confession?—did she fear, all evidence to the contrary, that her lover, her f
iancé, was not a heterosexual but—how Gina disliked the very word!—“gay”? So it was, as Michael continued, haltingly, miserably, saying that it was a mystery to him but it was part of him, he’d hoped to outgrow it but had not thus far, saying that, for all his outward accomplishments, and manner, he felt inwardly inadequate, unworthy, a fraud, Gina grew increasingly relieved, and the light came back into her eyes, and a smile played about her lips. She was a girl who loved to tease, and who was at her best, teasing; her most characteristic response was a high, delighted laugh, a girlish giggle as of icicles breaking. When Michael somberly recounted an incident from his undergraduate days—he’d been elected senior class president at Williams, and he’d wanted to confess in his acceptance speech that he’d deceived them, somehow—if they had known who Michael O’Meara really was, they would not have voted for him—Gina bit her lip to keep from laughing and quite astonished her lover by slipping her fragrant arms around his neck and murmuring moistly in his ear, “Oh darling Michael!—I feel the same way exactly! Everybody does!”

  Once they were married, and very happily married, living in the suburban village of Mount Orion, New Jersey, Michael O’Meara ceased to acknowledge his moral weakness, as he’d come to think of it; he rarely shared his moods with Gina, who, in turn, rarely inquired after his interior life, as if—and this was, oddly, flattering to Michael, as a man—he had no interior life.

  The life he’d come to believe in, and to put his trust in, was almost wholly exterior—a world of other people, whom, like Gina, he loved, or, like his superiors at Pearce Pharmaceuticals, he worked for, or, like men and women generally, his Mount Orion friends, his associates in the various organizations to which he belonged, he served. His legal work, for instance, at Pearce (Pearce Pharmaceuticals, Inc., was forever being sued!) took up much of his time—a minimum of sixty hours a week. Then there was Michael’s community activity, his citizenship as he called it—for Michael as an adult took both pride and satisfaction in his identity as an American citizen: soon after moving to Mount Orion he became involved in the campaign to save the old Mount Orion library, housed in a historic eighteenth-century building; he found himself on the board of the local YM-YWCA; a recruiter for the Northern New Jersey Citizens for a Clean Environment; a member of the Democratic party, and an active participant in Mount Orion township meetings; he volunteered his services as legal counsel for the reform-minded Coalition (a large, heterogeneous, frequently divided citizens’ group concerned with such issues as civil rights infringements and the death penalty).