The Brooke-Rose Omnibus (38 page)

–Oh, experience.

–You speak like a true sceptic, my dear Larry, not I rejoice to see, like an empiricist. As if every proof had its alternative. And so it has, and so it has, in your line of country I expect, and certainly in mine. Which brings us back, I fear, to the business in hand. Yes, yes indeed.

He emanates the same sense of irrelevance that fills the room as to the business in hand of his strange profession built on the failures of men to live together in love and amity, despite the labyrinthine knowledge and interest still clinging to the gold-rimmed books and pushed back against the walls. He has a small free electron of fear that can suddenly accelerate in the field of the calm proton in parabolic orbit that emits thermally on a short wave-length filling half the room, no more, bursting no walls no city boundaries no frontiers no galactic fields but held in tremulous space by a certain mellow strength somewhere in that well-living softness and that kindly flesh the presence of which comforts, reassures as to the existence of neural cells, muscle spindles, blood vessels and such, behaving not, if I may say so, like a gentleman, she wants the alimony and full costs despite your possible agreement to give her cause –

–It doesn’t matter.

–Hence, you see, my first question about your future plans. Your letter alarmed me somewhat.

–My letter?

–Yes, your letter. Don’t look as if you had forgotten writing it, or wrote it in a trance or something. Though it wouldn’t surprise me. I can catch a glimpse of what your wife means when she says – but never mind, where did I put that letter, ah, here.

–No, no. I remember it. I wrote it. I meant it.

The small and nervous handwriting fills the page at wide impersonal intervals like an equation worked down to the very end and frozen there in resolution as if x could really equal the square root of minus one in the unfamiliar context of the lawyer’s file. All this about retiring, all right,
withdrawing
, to the simple life, close to the soil, the sun, the stars, why, my dear Larry, I know the state of your affairs, besides, what will your patients do, go mad or something?

–I lost most of them when I died. They can’t do without someone for so long, they went elsewhere.

–But they’ll come back.

–No. I’d. lost them before. I couldn’t help them.

–Others will come. You’ll build up a new practice, you’ve fully recovered now.

–For a long time I’ve had no future as a spy. The great failure of our century. We give names to sicknesses, but we don’t heal, merely create new dependencies.

–All right, do something else. Research or something. What happens to the unconscious when the body lies in a low state of life, for instance. Do they know? Doesn’t that require looking into, with qualifications like yours?

–No.

–But you can’t retire at your age, what, pushing fifty, I guess, like me, forty-eight? Besides, what will you live on, in Bermuda of all places, all right, inland, in the mountain wilderness, but even so, have you any idea of the prices, Mexico, you say now? Why even the poorest village wouldn’t do it, with your commitments.

The sense of irrelevance grows into the outlines of his radiation, pushing them back towards the gold-rimmed books that line the wall behind the criss-cross metal over the shelves, penetrating the labyrinthine knowledge of alternate proofs and truths within his strange profession built on the failures of men. It makes a noise in a non-natural impulse like a distracted sea, lapping, withdrawing and advancing at a jerky rhythm governed by some mad moon or other somewhere in parabolic orbit around the business in hand, bouncing its signals of distress on a short
wave-length
back to it, pulsating, gasping so that you must decide one way or another what you will do. I mean to say, you know very well she hasn’t a legal leg to stand on. If you really want to fight her on her own ground just say the word and I can settle it quite differently.

–My dear Edwin.

The pain behind the eyes resolves the unrhythmic signal in the dark as with a change of lenses, and the well-living swarthy face looks back with gentle eyes behind the
horn-rimmed
glasses, but as I have said before, it doesn’t matter.

–Well, nothing matters, if it comes to that, I quite agree. But we must run some sort of show to keep going at all, mustn’t we. I gather she may ask for the discretion of the court in respect of. Does she intend to marry this chap, er – Stanley –

–Of course not.

–Surely you see that I can’t act for you if you don’t instruct me. And, in this case, give cause.

–I only want to find some simple place where I can live out my second life in complete solitude.

–Desertion. Well, all right. It takes three years.

–I can’t stand seeing, hearing, inside myself, seeing the whole of – oh, something, I don’t know what, but it frightens me, I feel as if I lived backwards in time, consisting of anti-atoms, or had lost something vital and positive which I must go away and find. Silence perhaps, merely.

–You have seen what you have seen.

–I didn’t say that.

–No, I did.

–Edwin –

–You don’t need to explain. Have it your way. Physician heal thyself. I never go anywhere, I just sit here and work people out of trouble in their best interests if any.

–Please do what you think best, Edwin. But don’t take it out on … anyone, least of all –

–The children. I know. They all say that.

–Sometimes I feel I have none. Never had.

–Well, you haven’t that many. Still, schooling and –

–Five, four.

–Larry! Come back. Come back.

–Two.

–Good boy.

Inside the mirror on the landing the shape stares back its map-like contours of some unknown region, continent, galaxy perhaps, with two starless coalsacks radiating nothing. And yet something creates the wavering undulations and if not the eyes then some nebulous memory, surely, behind the eyes, some electron of love or fear spiralling at high velocity in some magnetic field, so that the forces of acceleration in its orbits cause it to emanate on a long
wave-length
in a metre band. The pain behind the eyes that close to avoid the issue of their death resolves the optical image in the dark like a change of lenses, and the thin man stares back, as before death, before recovery, as when life took its normal course through blood vessels, nerve fibres, muscle spindles, bones, flesh and such that comfort. Their returned presence mocks the wavering outlines that grow suddenly monstrous before vanishing as if they had not wavered there at all, pulsating, breathing in and out in long undulations doubling, trebling each other’s trebles on a map of ocean depths, filling the entire mirror or, with some others, the whole room, bursting its walls, the house, the street, the square, and the whole sky.

A secretary has typed the letter, behind a door perhaps with a round window in it many light-years or months ago, and no handwriting bleeps across the dial in peaks and plains except the name, but then why should it in busy days thus approached by a region that has receded at half the speed of life its light only now reaching us? Tell-Star persists in his verbal pedantry, and worms in the head squirm as he sharpens his beak in non-natural impulses that draw the line as a rule between one solar system and another though looking forward to a reply. The higher the
temperature,
however, the faster the vibrations, and consequently the higher the frequency of the radiation emitted, so that devices like the brain become unsuitable on account of the inertia associated with matter of relatively large mass.

–But father, no one could call you large, or even massive. Tall, yes, but not large. And certainly not old.

–How did you get in?

–I rang the bell, the landlady let me in.

–Oh. The fat woman, you mean?

–I suppose so. I wouldn’t call her fat either.

–What do you want, Martin?

–Just to see you, father. How goes it?

–She shouldn’t have sent you.

–Who shouldn’t?

–Your mother. She should know better than that.

–She didn’t send me. I just came. I mean, Mr Mellek wrote to me at school, at the end of the term, and told me of your, well, how things stood. He gave me your address, in case.

–In case of what?

–In case … I should want to see you. I’ve just come off the train. Just passing through, you know.

He sits surrounded by his languid charm, radiating diffuse gas unintensively with the beginning of a
concentration
that may ultimately form something, entering the main sequence perhaps fairly low down in the spectral levels, unless already degenerate matter, just passing through, you know, can I think with you, dad? No, I don’t want you. But you’ve got me, dad, though sometimes, of course, I’ve got you. I don’t care who’s got whom, go away. So I just thought I’d come and talk to you.

–Talk to me? What about?

–Well, my future, for one. Mr Mellek says I may have to take matters into my own hands, whatever he means by that. I know what I mean by it.

–Oh?

–Well, he says you can’t pay my school fees any more, want to retire or something. That suits me, father. I want to retire too.

–The alarm may go off at any minute.

–What alarm?

–Sorry, I thought I heard a noise. You’ve grown, Martin.

–Yes, father. Don’t you recognise me, then?

–Of course I recognise you. But – well, I didn’t realise – it sort of pushes one into the grave.

–You had a narrow escape, didn’t you, father? How did it feel exactly, to come back? I mean, do you remember anything, dream anything?

–No. I never dream.

–Like me. I never dream either.

–Do you like noise, Martin?

–Noise? What sort of noise?

–Well, young people seem to love noise these days. A sort of roar of adolescence. I wonder whether I –

–Oh you mean motorbikes and sports-cars. No. But how clever of you all the same. Mother warned me I’d find it difficult to get through to you, but you’ve hit the nail bang on the head.

The needles oscillate violently, swing round with a loud creak, the alarm shrieks then goes suddenly silent, except for the loud ticking of something or other in non-natural impulses to the furthest region that may send a reply such as what do you mean, you want to retire?

–From school, father. I hate school.

–But you know nothing, Martin. Your reports –

–Precisely. I hate work, you see, that kind of work, history, Latin, Shakespeare, biology and all that.

–Because you don’t try to understand it. But it all counts later. Someone used to say to me, I forget who, when you don’t understand something, go on as if you do, it will all become clear later, and useful, too.

–Useful in what?

–Mathematics works that way.

–But father, I don’t want to do mathematics, or science, and become one of those lunatics we live among, like Dr Dekko, and Professor Head, and –

–Oh, yes, Head.

–He died, didn’t he?

–I believe so.

–Oh come, father, don’t you know?

–Yes, yes. It all seems such a long time. Infinite space exhausts me.

–Or medicine for that matter. You didn’t, want me to follow in your footsteps, did you, father?

–No. Oh no, don’t do that.

–Well then. Good. We agree. After all if you can’t afford it, and I have no capacity for it –

–What have you capacity for, Martin?

–A good question, father. Quite frankly, nothing. If I could do exactly as I liked, I’d do nothing at all. I’d get around on pure charm. You see, I’ve discovered how to do it. Just listen to people and smile, pretending a deep interest, well, not even pretending, after all, one learns a lot that way. But it flatters people and they start giving out, giving out diffuse gas unintensively, faintly, like the beginning of a concentration that may ultimately form a star, and enter the main sequence somewhere low down in the spectral levels, unless, perhaps already degenerate matter of high density, its luminosity decreasing with its mass like a White Dwarf in the final stage of its long life, or with some others, expanding, cooling, increasing in luminosity and moving out of the main sequence as Red Giants high in the spectral level, in elliptical orbits at the nucleus of a galaxy, or towards the spiral arms, bright cepheids, Blue Giants, colliding with another galaxy and filling the whole room, bursting its walls, the street, the sky. But then, you see, I realise one can’t quite rely on that. Most people have nothing to give, unfortunately.