Speak (3 page)

April 3, 1968

Karl Dettman

I’m back. I tried to stay away, but I couldn’t. I even made myself a bed on the couch, but every time a car drove past, floating me in watery light, I was lonelier than ever again
.

And so. Here I am. Even this is better, looking down at you while you sleep. Or while you pretend to sleep in order to avoid me. I’ll just take a seat in the armchair and watch you for a bit
.

I shouldn’t have left in such a fit. I’m not my usual self at the moment; the silence is slowly driving me crazy. Ever since you discovered my talking computer, you save your conversation for her. Have you considered how this might affect me? Coming home to such ringing silence? It’s like coming home to packed bags. I can feel you leaving me
.

You’re abandoning me for my talking computer. Our talking computer. MARY. You named her after that pilgrim girl whose diaries you’re editing. Instead of a child, we conceived a chatty machine, and then you stopped talking to me
.

Only at night do I know we’re still married. When I climb into
our bed, which we’ve shared for more than two decades. When I take into account the round of your shoulder, the rough, wrinkled skin on your elbows, the heat cupped at the back of your knee. Through these months of estrangement, I’ve held tight to such moments. Even when you asked me to give the program long-term memory, so that MARY could record your conversations. Even when I refused and you looked at me with the small black beads of your eyes, reducing me to the size of a thimble
.

Let me try to explain it again. Maybe I haven’t made myself clear. I won’t give MARY memory because she’s incapable of telling the truth. When she says she understands you, she doesn’t. She’s brand-new to the world; she has no experience. It’s like a toddler claiming empathy. Or worse than a toddler, a table. What has she been through that would enable real comprehension? She’s never slept in a bed; she’s never touched someone’s elbow. When she says she understands you, she’s lying
.

But you think our machine could remember things better than I can. You think I’m some alien creature, lacking capacity for felt recollection. Isn’t that what’s bothering you? Maybe, if I talked more about my childhood in Germany, I could convince you otherwise. I could wax poetic about the country we left. I could make it seem as though I’m living two parallel lives: one still in Germany, with everyone we left behind, and one here in America
.

I could do that, but it wouldn’t be honest. I left that country when I was a child; I missed the worst of the horror. Unlike you, I escaped with my family intact. I have a theoretical appreciation of the nightmare that occurred, but it’s not what animates my waking hours. You are. You are what gets me out of bed. You, my wife, and my teaching, my students with their long hair and their signs held up to protest the war: these inspire real responses in me. I could talk
about the past in order to please you, but then I’d be no better than a computer, a construction of well-wired metal, performing the action of speaking
.

Still, no matter how certain I feel, on the other hand there’s the waning sickle moon of your face, turned away from me even in sleep. All that’s left of you now is an ear, available if I should care to start speaking
.

Fine, then. You win. Let me try to remember
.

It should be established, for one thing, that in those years leading up to the war, I was unaware of the political situation. I was a child. No one sat me down to explain the predicament our people faced in that country. I don’t remember the trappings of an increasingly belligerent nation: no soldiers, no speeches, no yellow badges. Instead, and make of this what you will, I remember the summer
.

It seems I’ve completely forgotten the winter. I remember tumbling linden leaves overhead, streets narrowed by green in the distance. The sighing of cars passing under my windows at night, the intensification of green on the brink of a rainstorm, and the vague awareness that everything was ending soon, and that everyone was lying about it
.

How idyllic, you must be thinking. Those linden leaves, the open windows at night. I can hear the dismissive tone in your voice: how pleasant, only remembering summer! I can see the arch in your dark eyebrow, the regal way you reach for a pencil
.

That arch is a new habit. Others are forming as well. You’ve taken to haunting the comp-sci department. You no longer eat lunch in your office. Instead, you come to my department with armloads of books. Not the hand-bound diaries you forage for in the library stacks, but programming textbooks, handbooks of source
code, articles about binary mathematics. You’ve adopted a persona in order to accomplish your ends. You flatter my graduate students. With your usual determination, you’ve researched their subject; you can talk to them about Turing Tests and Natural Language Processing. I’ve seen you buying my students coffee, you who were always so shy at academic events that you struck people as cold. You’ve developed quite the outgoing streak. My wire-brained students blush in your presence. They’d do anything to impress you
.

You’ll get them to give her memory soon. It won’t be too hard. And all of this, right under my nose. There seems to be nothing between us at all
.

You understand, then, why I was angry tonight. In the dominion of silence, lovemaking is our one secret act of revolt. Only at night, in our bedroom, we come together again. Banished, our silence keeps watch from outside. I’m embarrassed before him, revealing my pale naked body, the sparse hair that grows on my chest. The sagging of my middle-aged ass, this ponytail that no one I care about likes. I’ve taken to shutting the door of our bedroom. Alone once again, our bodies remember our marriage. How we’ve lived together since we were basically children. That I’m in love with you and you are my wife
.

But tonight, after I’d pulled your nightgown over your head, when I’d unloosed your dark hair, been surprised again by the loveliness of your breasts, you whispered, “Please, Karl, give her memory.” “You don’t understand,” I said. In an instant you were cold to my touch. “What don’t I understand?” you asked. I promptly switched tactics. “I’ve told you already,” I said, and that’s true, but you didn’t soften to hear it. I reached for your hair, as if you’d jumped off the side of a building and that was all that was left to hang on to. “She isn’t alive,” I tried. “Even if we give her
memory, she won’t really remember. What she saves will only be words. And not even that: zeros and ones sequenced together. Would you call that memory?”

I felt I’d made a good point. I tried to pull you back in, but I was mistaken to think I could keep you. “Who are you,” you hissed, “to say who’s alive?” “I made her,” I answered, getting indignant. “As you were made by a mother,” you said. My voice was rising; already I wasn’t thinking quite clearly. “And as you, also, were made by a—”

But finishing the sentence was pointless. You’d reached for your nightgown. You covered yourself before me. I alone was naked in bed. Our silence had crept into the bedroom
.

I’d lost you. Try to imagine: me, lying naked, losing you in the last place where you were still mine
.

I’ll admit that my reaction was bad. It wasn’t necessary for me to storm out to the living room in a dramatic demonstration of anger. Ineffectively, I tried to slam the sliding door to our bedroom. I see that this was overdramatic, but I hoped you’d come and retrieve me. I honestly believed you’d come and retrieve me, if I could be patient enough. In all the years of our marriage, we’ve always slept in one bed
.

Needless to say, you didn’t come get me. I drank two beers, pacing back and forth between the record player and the door to your office. Trying not to give in. And now here I am, back in our bedroom. Sitting in the armchair where once I imagined you nursing our child. We decided against it. Perhaps that was wrong. Childless, there’s less to pin us here in the present
.

If I want to win you back, I should be proving my ability to think backward, like the ideal machine you’ve imagined. Fine, Ruth. I lack the integrity to resist you, though I still think there’s
something false about abandoning our situation to focus instead on a country we left. Nevertheless, here I go, reciting a story I don’t really believe in. Following the script I’ve been given
.

In the years leading up to the war, we lived in a wealthy neighborhood. My family owned a whole floor in our building. My father was a bit overbearing, yes, but I had a comfortable life. I enjoyed the company of my friends. I read books in my bedroom, curtains swishing in my tall windows. On summer evenings I walked beneath leaves. I lived in a pleasant version of the unpleasant country I lived in
.

The only chink in that pleasant armor was the result of the shuffling that happened at schools. Without explanation, I was transferred to the new school for Jewish students, on Kaiser Street, near Alexanderplatz. There, I was exposed, for the first time, to the underfed Jewish children who came to school dressed in rags. I was made keenly aware of my good fortune. The degree of my father’s success, the suffering I had avoided
.

Something flickered on in me then. I’m telling you, Ruth. You may smirk to hear it—easy, belated sympathy from someone who never actually suffered—but something flickered on. An awareness of the real world I lived in
.

Then we procured papers. It all happened quickly. When it was time for my family to leave, I was whisked off somewhere to avoid the departure. I wasn’t present. I never saw a suitcase. The only farewell scene in which I played a genuine part occurred at the school on Kaiser Street. Wearing a little suit, I was taken to say goodbye to the principal, who responded politely, speaking to me as if I had suddenly become older than he, promoted in age by my good fortune. He said he was glad to know I was leaving
.

I remember his hands; I realized they trembled. When he
walked through the hallways, he clasped them at his back. I saw him once walking to school, wearing a felt hat with a feather, leaning forward a little, squinting as if he’d glimpsed a figure off in the distance. In his youth, we all knew, he’d been a great violinist. Now, principal of a school for doomed children, he stood before me, hands hanging helplessly, wishing me all the best on my journey
.

I was ashamed of myself. For lack of anything better to offer, I promised to send a crate of American oranges as soon as I was settled in my new country. What an idea! What good were oranges to that man? And anyway, it wasn’t true. I never sent them. I’d learned my lesson well by that point. Why make a bad situation worse by calling it names to its face?

Maybe it’s that quality in me that makes your words dry up in your mouth. I’ve seen it happen, I’m not unaware. But should I apologize for the fact that I’ve learned to live in the present? I was raised on tidy departures, on the importance of a clean slate. I’m an eternal optimist. Sometimes, I admit, when I see you sink into one of your moods, I want to shake you out of your stupor
.

There were times early on in our marriage when you started to say how you felt and I had the impression you were softening, right in front of my eyes. Losing your form, becoming warm wax. I feared for you. I feared I would lose you. I hated the fact that those years still wielded power over you. Sometimes, watching that transformation, I experienced a little revulsion. “Get with the program,” I wanted to snap. “All that’s behind us. We’re here now, get with it.”

That’s how I felt. Why try to conceal it? An unpleasant truth, I can see that, but at least I’m being honest. I was raised to believe that, like wild dogs, it’s best not to look loss in the face. If you don’t
want it to tear you to pieces, you just have to putter right past, humming a little song to yourself
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And is that what’s upsetting you, Ruth? That I believe in forging ahead? That I’ve forgotten the soldiers, the papers, the names of my schoolmates? Fine. Lay it all on me. Tell me you think I’ve forgotten too much, with my one-foot-in-front-of-the-other approach. Be honest and say you want me to build a computer that’s the opposite of your husband, a machine with endless memory
.

It’s possible, as you know. You’ve done all the research. Before long, computers will have the capacity to store far more information than we can. But I’d remind you: one day that machine will remember your words, but it won’t ever feel them. It won’t understand them. It will only throw them back in your face. Gifts returned, you’ll realize they’ve become empty. They’re nothing more than a string of black shapes, incomprehensible footprints on snowbanks
.

I’ve forgotten things, yes. I’ve tried to put my best foot forward. I don’t believe there’s any use in refusing to live. You may hold this against me, but then I’m made of organic matter. We’ve walked beneath the same linden trees. When I say something, I mean it, whether or not it’s the right answer. When I tell you I love you I mean it
.

Alan Turing

c/o Sherborne School

Abbey Rd., Sherborne

Dorset DT9 3AP

12 March 1928

Dear Mrs. Morcom,

I am writing to tell you that you ought to come immediately. Your son is very ill. I feel it is important to consider the possibility that this is the end. I know that Mrs. Harrison at the sanatorium has already written to tell you Chris is not well, but I do not feel certain that she has properly emphasized the importance of your immediate return. Chris has also perhaps underemphasized the extent of his illness. I might venture to say that he is sometimes a little too brave. For this reason, Dr. Stevenson does not seem to believe that the issue is extreme. But I am telling you now that Chris does not look well to me at all. He is coughing terribly and he has in several instances coughed blood. I am sure that is a distressing thing to hear, but I only want to be honest.

In short, Chris is much more ill than Dr. Stevenson believes.

Also, I have had a premonition that he will die. Just before he took ill, we had a concert at school. There were some visiting singers. Chris sat just down the row from my seat, and I watched him throughout the whole concert, full of foreboding. I said to myself, “Well, this isn’t the last time you’ll see Morcom.” Later that night, I woke up at a quarter to three and saw the moon setting over Chris’s house. I couldn’t help but think it was some kind of sign. It was at exactly that time that Chris became ill, and was taken to the sanatorium.

I realize this sounds quite extreme. I only tell you this because Mrs. Harrison reports that you will wait for your husband to finish his business in India and I think you should not.

Possibly you are wondering what right I have to interfere in your family affairs, alarming you with nonsensical talk about premonitions. Even I am surprised to be writing you so familiarly, as if I’d known you forever. But I’ve heard so much about you—the Gatehouse, the goats, Rupert, the lab, etc. I feel you’ll understand why I needed to write.

My name is Turing. I am a friend of your son’s. I might venture to say that I am his best friend, although he has a great number of friends, so it’s difficult to say so for certain. Certainly he is my best friend. I am very fond of him. He is the most stand-up person in school. He has been completely straight with me ever since I met him in biology. On his end, it wasn’t at all necessary to befriend me, since I am not a popular boy. In fact, I am quite short and have never been good at sports. But from the moment I met him, he made me feel as if I had finally arrived at the place I was meant to have found all along. Before
meeting Chris, I thought it was my lot to wander about, moving amongst various schools, learning as much as possible but never quite feeling what people refer to as “comfortable.”

Now I expect you are thinking, who is this short, troublesome boy, who has wandered about amongst various schools? And why is he writing directly to me, in contradiction of the school nurse’s instructions, to tell me my son is not well? You probably want to know why you should trust me enough to change your plans and come home early from India, especially because what I have told you so far must make me sound rather odd.

In case it helps, I have not switched schools because I am stupid. The problem lay more in the fact that it was difficult for me to pay proper attention in class when I was distracted by my own little projects. I never quite fit in as well as I ought. During my first year at Sherborne, I was often teased for my slackness in gym or for having ink on my collar. To be perfectly honest with you, my best months that year were spent in the sanatorium, with mumps, because I was permitted to read my books and pursue my own projects. But all of that was what I had come to expect. Only the next year, when I met Chris in my first biology class, did I realize how unhappy I’d been.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, I live each day with the surprising and terrific sensation of having found my way back from a very far country. I owe this to my friendship with Chris.

I realize this letter has become rather long. I only intended to write a short, urgent missive, warning you to come home. Now I have written 811 words, or 3,435 characters. I hope you haven’t thrown this letter across your parlor already. Only your
son has meant so much to me, and I couldn’t bear it if I had not expressed to you the full extent of his illness and also the full extent of my gratitude for his friendship.

As a result of knowing Chris, I hope to stay at Sherborne until graduation. To this end, I have even reformed my behavior a bit. I’ve earned top marks in history. We have been studying the Civil War, and the Puritan flight to New England. While I once might have found this all a bit boring, Chris has helped me understand that the primary sources our teacher gives us are actually quite fantastic. He says that diaries are time capsules, which preserve the minds of their creators in the sequences of words on the page. This, of course, appeals to me immensely.

But all of this is unimportant, and you are probably not very interested in the details of my personal development. I expect, however, that you will be interested to hear that your son and I are embarking on an important examination of sequences in the natural universe. We intended to tackle Einstein this spring. In particular, we have been planning to apply the theory of relativity to the patterns of human growth, especially the cells of the brain. How are brains built? That is what we’d like to know. You will be happy to hear that no one has yet attempted that kind of study, and I believe there is potential for real contribution, which would set us both on promising paths. Chris’s illness has, of course, slowed down our progress. When he recovers, I hope we will return to the previous pace of our studies.

I will now attempt to draw this letter to a close. My only intention has been to convey to you the importance of your son to me and my studies and my entire life, so that you will know
why I have been so bold as to write you and tell you to come immediately home.

Sincerely yours,
Alan Turing

P.S.: Please do not tell Chris that I have written you this letter. He wants very much not to bother you or his father, so I have had to act with some degree of secrecy.

P.P.S.: I am not usually a dishonest person, although I have not been straightforward with Chris in this case.

P.P.P.S.: I am not sure this kind of thing is permitted. I have never seen one myself. But I do want to say that, although I am usually a very honorable person, in this specific case it seemed better to break a general rule in order to be sure that you would come home and comfort Chris, for he is not at all well and I know it would do him good if you were here by his side. I will force myself to close now, although I have already thought of another postscript that seems very urgent to say. I simply won’t say it. I’ve gone on quite enough as it is, and I’m sure that you’ve understood the point of my letter. Your son is my best friend. We are to discover the source of human growth together, and we cannot do this if he remains ill. Please come home.