Wonderland

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “Hey, I thought that was you! What the hell!” Fritz said.

  He was wearing a Navy uniform.

  “Hey, Jesse, look at me—you didn’t know I was going in so soon, did you? I’ve just finished basic. How do you like that?”

  Jesse was very agitated, seeing Fritz like this. For a moment he could not speak. His mind had gone blank. Then he said, stammering, “How do your—your mother and father feel about it? Is it all right with them?”

  “Oh, hell, you know my mother—hell—It’s okay with them, I guess. They worry a lot. They think we’re going to get in the war and everything and I’ll be on some boat that will sink, Jesus, you know how they are, Ma especially—she’s been bawling a lot since I signed up—Bob Door and Walter Cleary and I all signed up together. The base I’ll be stationed at is in Florida, how do you like that? Nice summer weather, it’s supposed to be! The hell with how cold it gets up here!… Well, I thought that was you there. You’re looking good, Jesse, Jesus, you’re a lot bigger than you were—Is everything okay?”

  Fritz shaded his eyes and grinned at Jesse. When Jesse nodded he went on, his shoulders moving restlessly beneath the dark material of his uniform, “We heard you got placed with a family in Lockport. Heard all about it. Is it okay there? Is everything okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus, I felt bad about what they did. Pa felt bad too. But—”

  “It’s all right,” Jesse said.

  “Well, no, Jesus.… How come you don’t come back to visit sometimes? Is that against the rules or something? You like living in town, huh?”

  “Yes, I like it a lot.”

  “Well, you seem sort of different. Bigger.”

  “I feel better than I did before.…”

  Fritz smiled in embarrassment. His hair had been trimmed very close to his skull. He looked as thin as Jesse had been, his shoulder bones restless and awkward. Jesse could see a blotch of red moving up his neck.

  “Well, that’s good. Well.…”

  “How is everything at home?”

  “Real good. It’s the same. You know how it is.… You know, it was hard for them to do what they did. Turn you over to the Home and all that. I don’t know. It was strange … it was hard for them … I heard them talking about it a lot and Ma would cry.… You sure it’s okay where you are? What are they like, the family you’re with?”

  “They’re very nice people,” Jesse said.

  “And you live with them full-time? I mean—just like a regular family? Are you adopted or what?”

  “Yes, adopted.”

  “Is your name different?”

  “It’s Jesse Pedersen now.”

  Fritz stared at him. “No kidding? Hell. That’s something to think about.… What is it?”

  “Pedersen.”

  “Pedersen.…”

  Fritz nodded and could not think of anything else to say. They were separated by a yard or so of sidewalk. Fritz was still shading his eyes from the sun and his grin had become strained.

  After a few minutes they parted. Jesse felt confused with an emotion he could not understand—shame, fear? His heart pounded hotly and he seemed to hear Dr. Pedersen’s voice in his head. Let him go, abandon your cousin, don’t allow him to recognize you on the street after this. If he dies in the Navy … If he dies in the Navy …

  But Jesse could not hear the rest of this.

  “If he dies in the Navy there will be one less person to know me the way I used to be,” Jesse thought.

  Each day he was away from home, consciously “away” from his home, and yearning to return. He felt himself gravitating toward that house, drawn to it as if by an actual, tangible force. As he climbed the hill, he experienced a slight confusion of times, as if he were the old, skinny Jesse coming up here to stare at the Pedersen house, and to watch in silence as Hilda Pedersen passed by him, not recognizing him. Then he remembered that he lived there, that he was “Jesse Pedersen” and would take his place at the dinner table, recognized by everyone.… He prepared himself all day long, reading and memorizing pages in his schoolbooks, his mind working, analyzing, discarding, retrieving, getting ready for that moment in the evening sometime during dinner, when Dr. Pedersen would ask him what he had learned that day.

  He would recite what he had learned. In his quick, respectful voice, making no mistakes, he would recite as much of it as Dr. Pedersen required. Now both Frederich and Hilda listened to him as well, though Frederich would not look at him. Hilda ran her finger round and round the edge of her messy plate. Dr. Pedersen nodded his head sharply as if checking Jesse’s words against his own memory. Once he interrupted Jesse to ask, “Explain the term homeostasis, don’t define it. Explain it to us, please.” And Jesse said, “Hippocrates believed that disease could be cured by natural powers within the living organism. He believed that there is an active opposition to abnormality as soon as the condition begins. In 1877, the German physiologist, Pfluger, said that the cause of every need of a living being is also the cause of the satisfaction of the need. The Belgian physiologist, Fredericq, said in 1885 that the living being is an agency of such sort that each disturbing influence induces by itself the calling forth of compensatory activity to neutralize or repair the disturbance. The higher in the scale of living beings, the more perfect and the more complicated the regulatory agencies become. They tend to free the organism completely from the unfavorable influences and changes occurring in the environment. In The Wisdom of the Body, the American physiologist Walter Cannon quotes the French physiologist Charles Richet: The living being is stable. It must be so in order not to be destroyed, dissolved, or disintegrated by the colossal forces, often adverse, which surround it. By an apparent contradiction it maintains its stability only if it is excitable and capable of modifying itself according to external stimuli and adjusting its response to the stimulation. It is stable because it is modifiable—the slight instability is the necessary condition for the true stability of the organism.”

  Silence.

  Jesse had a dizzying vision of Dr. Pedersen’s stern face. He waited. At the other end of the table Mrs. Pedersen made a sudden gesture, as if straightening her plate, adjusting her plate on the tablecloth.

  “Yes, fine,” Dr. Pedersen said slowly. “Fine. But you must read Claude Bernard. He has the idea of ‘homeostasis’ even if he doesn’t use the term itself.… You must read the Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, it’s a marvelous, exhilarating, inspiring work.… Bernard is one of the giants of medicine, working at a time when science was young, fresh, mysterious, open, anything was possible then … anything.…” He broke off, staring at Jesse. His face brightened slowly. “Well, Jesse,” he said, “it seems you are becoming yourself.”

  And Jesse understood then that he had done well.

  He began taking Jesse to the Clinic on Sunday afternoons. They drove out in Dr. Pedersen’s black Rolls-Royce, a stately, archaic vehicle that caught the eyes of other motorists. Jesse felt as if he were in an unearthly vessel with Dr. Pedersen, propelled silently and rather swiftly along the ordinary Lockport streets, while Dr. Pedersen talked energetically to him about his patients and his inventions and his plans for the future. The Pedersen Clinic was not very large, but it was a handsome, modern building just on the outskirts of the city. “For a while Hilda would come out with me on these special little visits to my Clinic, but then she lost interest,” Dr. Pedersen said. He and Jesse would be the only ones in the building and his voice would echo importantly. “Frederich, of course, does not like to leave the house. His asthma bothers him, he has shortness of breath … and of course he is totally devoted to his music.… But here, Jesse, look here,” he would say, pulling out a giant blueprint, “here are plans for my addition; you can see the operating theaters here, these large areas, and along this side private rooms for special patients.… It is a marvelous adventure, the future. You and I believe in it, don’t we?” He put on his glasses to peer down at the intricate blueprint, as if lookin
g directly into the future and finding it good. “Jesse, there will be people in your life who claim that the future of the world is bleak. Listen to these people, be respectful to them, but never believe them. They are already dead. It is death speaking in those words. At this moment Europe is at war, it is even claimed to be a threat to us—but don’t take it too seriously. A very wise man said that war is not adventure; it is a substitute for adventure. And that is very true, because adventure is here, here,” he said, tapping the unwieldy, smudged blueprint, “it is what we create, not what we are thrust into. You and I are not at war. We are not being shot at. Our world is thriving, Jesse. It is expanding every day, every minute. I own a great deal and it is expanding minute by minute, and because you are my son you share in it too, this extraordinary growth.… You must understand, Jesse. All life is a movement into the infinite … or it is a shrinking back. Make up your mind. They come to take their turns, step by step, the people of the earth—well, make up your mind, I say to them!—will you thrust yourself into the infinite, or will you shrink back? If you shrink back I have no time for you. If you make claims about history and death and sickness and chaos I have no time for you. What can history tell us? It is all a joke! Manure! We are not to be dragged down by the stupidities of the past. Hegel says, quite correctly: ‘People and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.’ And so, what have we left …? We have the health of the living organism, the living body, which maps itself outward and defines limitations for itself, for itself—it does not allow others to do this for it! Never! It is the living organism that strives to become God. I am striving, straining—” And here he would press both hands against his chest, as if he had to keep back the straining of his big heart. “I am straining to be God, to move into that place which is God’s place, to take from Him all that He will allow me to take. I am a perfect protoplasm. That is because every cell in me is growing, straining outward into infinity, and because I am able to make a map of the life that will be mine, while other people bump into one another in stupid crowds and herds, like animals. When this war is over, Jesse, there will be a marvelous growth. Everything will grow, expand, come alive again. And after that there will be another war, because the economy demands it; there will always be a war, and we will watch it from these shores, and some of us will direct it, because it is a fact of life that certain people must direct wars and other people must die in them. It is Fate. Do you understand? What is war, Jesse? What is war? Is it death? Never! It is the very heartbeat of life—the last resources of life’s energies! Do you understand?”

  He spoke excitedly. He took off his glasses so that Jesse could stare into the perfect gray-green irises of his eyes, the peaceful, wheel-like circles of his eyes, and see Fate itself.

  Jesse answered as if hypnotized. “Yes, I understand.”

  “It is easy to die, Jesse. I see it every day—the bodies that surrender, die. The most expensive bodies surrender and die. They claim that they want to live, but really they want to die, because the mystery of their bodies is too exhausting for them. They die, they surrender. It is easy to die. But not to live: that is not easy, that is the challenge, the strain. To displace God is not easy. To be higher, a higher man, that is not an easy fate. And I believe you will share this fate with me, Jesse. I am certain of it. Once you become the man you are, Jesse, you cannot ever rest, but must prove yourself continually. Again and again. It is the fate of the higher man.”

  Ruddy with the joy of such good news, he rolled up the blueprint and put a rubber band around it.

  He took Jesse into his inner office, his private office. “My special office where I commune with myself,” he said. Every time he showed Jesse this small, dark room it was a surprise: a single black leather chair, built especially for Dr. Pedersen’s large, heavy frame; a single lamp; no books; not even a carpet on the floor; windows with dark green shades that were partway drawn; a sacred silence.

  “Like this,” he said. He went to sit in the chair, easing his bulk down slowly, with a peculiar grace for so heavy a man. “I sit alone. I am alone.” He closed his eyes. “No one is near me. Here is where I solve mysteries that are not understood, even by me. They go against laboratory tests. All right, yes, laboratory tests are not always accurate. The organism changes, suffers, grows, shivers, its secretions change, its heartbeat goes wild, its lungs fill up—all right—but still it is a mystery to me, how I can outguess these tests, and I am humble in the face of my own gift. I am passive, sitting here. At such times I am close to God, very close. My thoughts arrange themselves—the symptoms, the clues that bodies of sick strangers are giving to me, the data other physicians cannot interpret, and the whispering souls of the sick themselves—yes, sometimes I feel their souls in this room with me, brushing against me like bats in the dark! And then, as if God had sent an angel to whisper in my ear, somehow the truth comes to me. It comes into my waking mind and I understand. Yesterday I knew, I understood, that a woman was dying of a simple deficiency disease, though no one could figure out what was wrong with her; I knew, I saved her.… But I take no claim for my gift. I am only to sink into my deepest self until the truth comes to me; it is Fate operating in me and not myself.”

  On Monday mornings Jesse was sometimes allowed to miss school and to attend Dr. Pedersen’s rounds at the local hospital. Dr. Pedersen was merry and sociable in his hospital whites, an enormous billowing outfit that made him look larger than ever, and very chaste and earnest. Jesse was proud of accompanying him; his father (though he could never quite bring himself to think of him as “father”) was extremely popular, known by everyone on the staff, by the nurses, by stray patients in the corridors and those sitting up in bed, waiting for him. “Dr. Pedersen!” they would cry, waving, and he would go to shake hands, knowing everyone by name. Jesse stood proudly at his elbow.

  “And this is my son Jesse, who is very interested in medicine.”

  As Dr. Pedersen went on his rounds he was joined by one person after another—a young physician on the staff, a nurse who was an old friend, even the Chief of Surgery himself, a Dr. Gallimard who was very courteous and very friendly, though Jesse thought him a little odd. He was so curious about Dr. Pedersen and his patients! Dr. Pedersen would chat with patient after patient, never hurrying, hardly needing to glance at the patient’s chart, knowing present ailments and past ailments and the names of the patient’s family, the patient’s work, where he lived, where he was from, everything. He smiled heartily, told jokes. Occasionally his face shifted and Jesse saw in it that expression of sternness, as if he were remembering precise material, scanning paragraphs in his head. He never forgot anything. His sickest patients grew ruddy in his presence, as if rich fluids were pumped into their veins.

  One day a nurse was having difficulty with an old woman, not one of Dr. Pedersen’s patients, and she asked him for help. The woman was wiry and gray, her face sexless, tense with maniacal energy; she had thrown herself around in bed and dislodged a tube that was feeding blood into her arm. When Dr. Pedersen came into her room she was yelling. Jesse, out in the hall, could make no sense of her screams; he felt shaky himself, almost nauseated. Dr. Pedersen went right to the woman, bent over her, began speaking in a slow, gentle, courteous voice. “Mrs. Lowe, may I introduce myself, I am Dr. Pedersen.…” The woman screamed and threw herself from side to side. “I am Dr. Pedersen and I must find a way of helping you, my dear, you are going to do yourself some injury … you should lie still, my dear, lie still.…” He took a needle and seemed to be showing it to her. She stared at him. Jesse thought he could see, in her widened eyes, a look of absolute terror. But she lay still, she seemed to be listening to Dr. Pedersen. “Let me examine this arm,” Dr. Pedersen said, and he scanned the woman’s thin arm, looking for a vein. “This will only take a minute and it must be done, my dear, you know that.… You must allow us to help you. It will hurt a little, yes, but the needle is very small … it’s very clean.… We must
feed you, my dear, nourish you.…” He examined the other arm, testing her veins with his thumb; he tried an experimental prick with the needle and the woman drew back only slightly. He gave up on her arms and began on her legs. Something drew Jesse to the doorway; he must look; his instincts were to turn away from the sight of the old woman’s white, blue-veined, splotched legs, her agitated face, her odor of sickness, and yet something else drew him, forced him forward, inward, to watch Dr. Pedersen, as if this were a scene he must memorize.

  In went the needle. Testing, probing. “You are very patient with me,” Dr. Pedersen said. His large white back was to Jesse. It was enormous, broad with the strain of concentration. If there were other people around—nurses, a young doctor—Jesse did not really notice them. He watched Dr. Pedersen. He listened to that voice. “The next one should do it, I am suddenly certain,” Dr. Pedersen said lightly, and indeed he did find a vein, in the woman’s cadaverous ankle. “Ah, here. Thank you, my dear. Thank you for your enormous patience. Now we are all set, now we will take care of you as we should.… I hope that didn’t hurt …?”

  The woman lay back on her pillow, her eyes heavy, lined, exhausted. She shook her head slowly. Dr. Pedersen remained to chat with her and she managed to speak to him, to say something that sounded like a name, her own name. Jesse felt a little faint. He went to get a drink of water at a fountain in the hall. He felt faint, yet very excited. Yes, yes! He had witnessed something wonderful!

  Dr. Pedersen always ended up in the staff lounge, sipping coffee, with a small crowd of people around him. He talked about strange new cases: “The patient was originally admitted to a hospital in Potsdam with a headache, a fever of a hundred and four, complaints of pains in the neck, pain in cheeks, cheekbones, eyes, ears. She could hardly move her head by the time I saw her. She was twenty-nine years old, no previous illnesses except measles and mumps, no previous hospitalizations. The LP was clear, absolutely clear!—and yet it looked as if she was going downhill fast; she was tense, nervous, half out of her mind—her lungs began filling up with fluid, she was in heart failure, and spasms began up and down her body—tiny pinpoint hemorrhages on her arms and legs and in her eyes—she was dying right in front of everyone—and—”