Some Came Running (109 page)

“No,” Dave said. “No, it doesn’t. No, here’s what I wanted to ask you about. See, I’ve been toying with the idea of introducing a love affair in my novel between one of the GIs and a French girl—and—”

“Do you think that wise?” Bob interposed, shaking his head gently. “At this stage? You’re almost half finished, aren’t you?”

“Just about half.”

“A love affair?” Again Bob shook his head. “A love affair
—
a
real
love affair—would require an entire novel to do it justice, to even come close to doing it justice. A real love affair is probably the most inclusive, most all-enveloping subject there is.”

“Well, I may not even do it,” Dave said. “I’ve only been toying with it.” He could not be sure just how far below the surface Bob could see. “But I got thinking about it, you see, and the more I thought about it the more I thought I couldn’t do it.
Because,
you see, I couldn’t for the life of me make it believable to myself. I couldn’t see any reason why this particular GI and this particular French girl should fall in love with each other. Or, for that matter, any other particular male and female. And that led me to the general. I can’t see any honest-to-God reason why any two people might fall in love. And yet they do. But why? Just what is love anyway? My God, no wonder the movies depend on the tried and true old mishmash they use. It would be impossible to show a
real
love affair in a two hour movie. I tell you,” he said, with a heavy earnestness, “it’s beginning to bother me so much I’m afraid it’ll throw me off my work.”

“Ah!” Bob said, “you really do have a problem there.” He peered at Dave, smiling sadly, and once again Dave wondered just how far below the surface he could see. After a moment, Bob said, “Well, suppose we attack it at the highest level, and ask Socrates’ question
‘Why?’ Why
does one fall in love?”

Dave shrugged. “Because one
needs
to, I suppose.”

“Quite so. But why does one
need
to fall in love?”

Again Dave was forced to shrug. “Nature? Instinct? The animal in us?”

“Yes, of course, there’s that. The animal man. But you’re not taking into account the other levels in man. I think we may assume that there are three levels of man, don’t you? The animal man, the mental man, and the spiritual man. Agreed?”

Dave made a helpless gesture. “Yes.” He had always intensely disliked the word spiritual because it made him think of his mother’s primitive religion, and indeed the primitiveness of all religion, but with Bob he more or less had to allow it.

“Well then,” Bob smiled. “When you say Nature, and Instinct, you are only taking into account the one level, the animal man. I’m sure this is at least a partial factor; but if that were all, then a man ‘in love’ would be thoroughly satisfied with any female he might mount. Would you say that such a state approximates love in man, and the situation of being in love?

“Certainly not,” Dave said.

Bob smiled, and shrugged apologetically. “Then we must go on to another level. On the mental level—which we humans assume man alone possesses—man has the added facet of self-conscious awareness, and the ability to anticipate and to take forethought. Because of this, he is able to anticipate, to imagine, an ideal female that suits his particular desires. Agreed?”

“Yes?”

“Consequently, by this self-conscious anticipation, he eventually settles his desires upon one particular female—generally, we must add, I think, because of physical proximity—which seems to fit closest to his ideal female. (This, of course, applies to all individuals—male or female—you understand.) He—or she—then transfers, by his ability to anticipate, upon this other individual all of those qualities which he has always imagined his particular, personal ideal to have. This, of course, varies with the individual man or woman. He may then be said to be ‘in love,’ may he not?”

“Yes,” Dave said. “But you make it sound awful mechanical.”

Bob moved his head slightly and smiled, as if to say “Ah!” but instead he said: “Let’s leave that for now. Now; we have our individual ‘in love,’ by virtue of his having idealized another given individual. Now, what would you say our individual desires of this other individual?”

“Why, to be loved in return,” Dave said.

“Quite so. And why does he, or she, desire to be loved in return?”

“Well—” Dave said. “Because—” He did not finish.

“Would you not say it was because he wanted to be appreciated?”

Dave struggled mightily. He felt he was being trapped in some vague net. “Yes,” he said finally. “I suppose.”

“And why does he wish to be appreciated?”

“Well, hell. That’s easy enough,” Dave said. “Obviously, it’s because he feels he is worthy of appreciation.”

“Quite so,” Bob smiled.

“Damn it, you’re pulling a Socratic dialogue on me,” Dave said irritably. “You’re making a sort of Alcibiades out of me.”

“Not at all,” Bob said smiling. “I’m only helping you to figure it out for yourself. Otherwise, when you find the answer you might disagree with me.”

“Well, that’s Socratic, ain’t it?” Dave said, unable not to grin.

Bob merely smiled. “And why does he feel he is worthy of appreciation?”

“Because he thinks he is a nice person, of course.”

“Would you not say he loved himself?”

“No! I wouldn’t say that,” Dave said. “Maybe he hates himself.”

“If he thinks he is a nice person?”

“Maybe he both loves
and
hates himself. Maybe he hates himself because he does love himself.”

“Very good,” Bob smiled, his eyes twinkling with pleasure. “And quite true. Nevertheless, he
does
love himself? Even if he hates himself for it?”

“All right. Yes,” Dave said.

“You have no other choice,” Bob smiled. “Now: Why does a person fall in love?”

Dave shrugged. “Because he wants someone else to love him as much as he loves himself.” He had, in fact, known it all his life. But it was a different thing to admit it to an innocent bystander.

“And why does he want someone to love him as much as he loves himself?”

“Reassurance?” Dave said. “Vanity? Anyway, because he needs for somebody else to believe it, too.”

“Of course. And why does he need for someone else to believe it?”

Dave shrugged again. “Obviously, because he wants to prove to himself his love for himself is valid.”

Bob nodded, smiling. “So that, as you said, he will not have to hate himself any more for loving himself.”

“Maybe so,” Dave said irritably, “maybe so.”

“Yes?” Bob smiled. “Or no?”

“Yes.”

“Well? You have your answer, don’t you? Why does man fall in love?”

“Because he loves himself,” Dave said defeatedly.

“And because he hopes to make someone else love him as much as he loves himself.”

“I’d hate to believe that,” Dave said vehemently.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Bob smiled paternally. “You just proved it yourself, didn’t you? Why not believe it?”

“Because I don’t like to think people are that bad.”

“Bad? Who said anything about bad?” Bob smiled.

“I want to believe people are
good!”
Dave cried. “I
do
believe people are good!”

“It is you who are making the distinction between good and bad, not I, dear Dave,” Bob smiled. “You, of all people, who in your own book are exposing the hearts of people as it is only rarely done, you who are exposing the human condition of war and combat for what it really is—you dare to make a distinction between good and bad?”

“But what about all the people who died? What about the spiritual level? What about all those other people: the Resistance leaders, and the simple unpolitical people who wouldn’t knuckle under, what about the innocent Jews and Germans who died under torture by the Nazis? What about them?”

“You put this on the
spiritual
level?” Bob said. “I think it belongs on the
mental
level, don’t you?”

“How so? No, sir! You’re caught there. You’ve defeated your own argument there.”

Bob smiled again. “Very well. You ask me about all those who died under torture at the hands of the Nazis? Then I must ask you about all the Nazis who died under torture at the hands of the Russians; what of them?”

“But they were wrong!”

“Are the Russians not wrong?”

“Yes,” Dave said, collapsing inwardly. “Yes; they are wrong.”

“And I must ask you also about all the Americans who died under torture at the hands of other Americans—at our own Redeployment Centers? Are they not also wrong?”

“Yes,” Dave said quietly.

“But have we punished them? We have not.” He paused a moment and shook his head gently. “I fear you are not thinking straight, dear Dave. I fear you are letting your emotions get the better of your judgment.”

“Yes,” Dave said. “Yes, of course, you’re quite right.”

“And as for all these people who have died under torture, are they
good
simply because they believed as they did? Of course not. Or are they
good
simply because they were tortured? If so, then all any of us need to do in order to be
good
is to be tortured by someone else. No, I think you must put all this back down on the mental level; and if so, we come back to our original proposition:
Why
? Why did these people do as they did? Why were they heroic?

“Let me ask you? the men you fought with, why did they fight as heroically as they did? Can you answer?”

“I—” Dave said, and then paused. “Yes, I guess I can.”

“Truthfully? Out of your own experience only? Why, then?”

Dave shook his head. “As you said: self-love. They wanted to be admired, and respected—”

“Even loved?”

“Even loved, by the other humans they lived with.”

Bob shook his head gently. “Then, there is your answer to the others—the Resistance leaders, the Russians, the Nazis, the Americans. They all did what they did for the very same reason. Self-love, the separate, self-conscious, self-awareness of self-love that man exists in on the mental plane.”

“All right,” Dave said; “I agree. But what is the spiritual level? Where does it come in?”

But before Bob could answer, he interrupted himself. “You know, if I were a logician,” he grinned, “I could tear your argument to shreds.”

“Of course,” Bob smiled; “but you and I are not logicians. We are intuitionists. We are creative men. A poet and a novelist. Where would we be if we tried to work by pure logic.”

“All right,” Dave said feeling unaccountably depressed. “All right. What about the spiritual level? Where does it fit into this?
Why
does man fall in love on the spiritual level? Or rather:
Why
on the spiritual level does man fall in love?”

Bob smiled and shook his head. “I can give you a simple answer. But you already know that yourself. And to attempt to do any more than that would be to enter upon such an incredible complexity that we would literally be talking for weeks. You’re asking me about a wholly different field, a subject I’ve spent years reading and musing about—and still know practically next to nothing of. We would have to leave our so-called philosophy and enter into metaphysics, a subject where two minds who do not already agree could argue and speculate forever. I have no way of telling you how incredibly complex the subject is. Suffice it to say,” Bob smiled in his gentle way, “that there appears to be—from what small bit I have been able to assimilate, at any rate—a whole entire world of bodyless souls, spirits, complete with its own hierarchy of Leaders and Lords and Masters—minor Gods; Demi-Gods, if you will—surrounding the material world we inhabit; in—in another dimension, so to speak; and which is infinitely more complex than the world we ourselves live in. And you know how complex that is! It would be foolish to attempt to explain any more. Except to add, that this is only a very small part of the inhabited Universe, and that these people are apparently in constant contact with some parts of our minds, without our knowledge of course, guiding us; beneficently, not malignantly.”

“That’s pretty hard to believe,” Dave said, a little breathlessly.

“Naturally,” Bob smiled. “I’m not at all sure I believe it at all. I’m only telling you what I’ve garnered out of a number of years of reading on the subject.”

“Have you ever had any contacts with this—other world?” Dave said.

“None at all. Never once in my life have I even had what might even remotely be called an ‘occult’ experience. Though I have often wished,” he smiled sadly, “that I might have had; at least it would be a proof to me. But you must understand that so-called ‘occult’ experiences are a very,
very
low level manifestation of these spiritual phenomena. That’s what almost all of your so-called ‘mediumistic’ accounts and the common reincarnation experiences consist of. It is a mistake to believe that just because a person dies and enters the astral world, he has a greater intelligence or a deeper soul than he had when alive. Actually, he is very little different from what he was when alive—and probably won’t be, for a number of other lives.”

“And you really believe in all this?” Dave said.

Bob stared at him a moment, smiling, then after a second gave his almost imperceptible shrug. “That is what all of these books teach. Most of the books disagree between themselves in the minor details—which,” he added, “is certainly understandable considering the incredible complexity of it all. All I do know is that I believe in metempsychosis—in reincarnation, rather—as the evolution of individual souls. But I cannot even prove that to you.”

“Well—” Dave said. “Well—” This was getting a long way away from the subject of “falling in love.” “Well, what about that simple answer you said I already knew? Maybe I don’t know it after all?”

Bob he raised one corded-veined hand and ran it back and forth over his close-cropped head, and then brought it down and smoothed back his big mustache, and stared at Dave for a moment, smiling gently, out of his wise, old face.

“About your simple answer—which I am quite sure you already know: If one can assume that man is evolving—which I think we may more or less safely assume, for our purpose at least—that man is evolving; is growing; then let us ask
how
he grows.”