“You’ll have to think about it,” he said. Carlisle’s hand was holding the black ball of the gearshift, and Einar felt there was something Carlisle wanted to say. With the wind, and the coughing exhaust of auto-buses, it was difficult to talk. The city traffic was heavy, and Einar looked to Carlisle, as if to urge him to say what he wanted. Tell me what you’re thinking, Einar wanted to say, but didn’t. Something was hanging between them, and then they were in the Marais, in front of the apartment, and the something passed, gone as the Spider’s motor went idle. Carlisle said, “Don’t tell her where we’ve been.”
Tired, Einar went to bed after supper, and Greta joined him even before he nodded off.
“So early for you,” he said.
“I’m tired tonight. I’ve worked through the past few nights. Delivered half a dozen sketches this week. To say nothing of Lili’s portrait on the mudflat.” And then, “You did a lovely job with the background. I couldn’t be happier with it. Hans said the same. I’ve been meaning to tell you that.”
He felt her at his side, her long body warm beneath the summer sheet. Her knee was touching his leg, her hand curled at his chest. It was as much as they touched each other now, but somehow it seemed even more intimate than those nights early in their marriage when she would tug off his tie and loosen his belt: the curled hand like a little animal nuzzling his chest; the knee pressing reassuredly; the damp heat of her breath; her hair like a vine growing across his throat. “Do you think I’m going insane?” he said.
She sat up. “Insane? Who told you that?”
“No one. But do you?”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Who’s been telling you that? Did Carlisle say something to you?”
“No. It’s just that I sometimes don’t know what’s going on with me.”
“But that’s not true,” she said. “We know exactly what’s going on with you. Inside of you lives Lili. In your soul is a pretty young lady named Lili. It’s as simple as that. It has nothing to do with being crazy.”
“I was just wondering what you thought of me.”
“I think you’re the bravest man I know,” she said. “Now go to sleep.” And her fist curled tighter, and the strand of hair crept across his throat, and her knee pulled away.
A week went by. He spent a day cleaning out his studio, rolling up his old canvases and storing them in the corner, glad to get them out of the way. He enjoyed painting Greta’s backgrounds, but he didn’t miss creating something on his own. Sometimes, when he thought about his abandoned career, he felt as if he were at last finished with a tedious chore. And when he thought of his many paintings-so many dark bogs, so many stormy heaths-he felt nothing. The thought of coming up with a new idea exhausted him, the thought of conjuring and then sketching a new scene. It was someone else who had done all those little landscapes, he told himself. What was it he used to tell his students at the Royal Academy? If you can live without painting, then go right ahead. It’s a much simpler life.
Einar was sleeping late and rising tired. Each morning he’d promise himself that he would live the day as Einar, but when he went to the wardrobe to dress, it was like coming across the belongings of an ancestor in the attic.
More often than not, Lili would emerge from the bedroom and sit on the stool in Greta’s studio. Her shoulders would hunch and she would play with her shawl in her lap; or she’d turn her back on Greta, who was painting another portrait, and look out the window, down the street, for Hans or Carlisle.
Carlisle next suggested Dr. Buson, a junior member of a psychiatric clinic in Auteuil. “How did you hear of him?” Einar asked Carlisle, who in six weeks had settled into Paris faster than Einar had in three years. Already he was into his second box of calling cards, and held weekend invitations to Versailles and St-Malo. There was a tailor on the rue de la Paix who knew from memory Carlisle’s shirt size.
He was driving Einar to Dr. Buson’s clinic, and Einar could feel the heat of the engine through the metal floor.
“Hans gave me his name,” Carlisle said.
“Hans?”
“Yes. I called him up. Told him a friend of mine needed to see a doctor. I didn’t say who.”
“But what if he-”
“He won’t,” Carlisle said. And then, “So what if he does? He’s your oldest friend, isn’t he?” Now, with his blond hair blowing around his face, Carlisle could have been no one in the world but Greta’s twin; he pushed his hair over his ears.
“Hans asked about you,” Carlisle continued. “He said he knows something’s wrong. He said he saw you one day walking along the quai du Louvre, heading down to the Seine, and he almost didn’t recognize you.”
Carlisle’s hand was fiddling with the wiper gauge, and Einar kept expecting it to fall from the little knob to his knee again. “He told me you walked right by him,” Carlisle said. “Said he called your name but you just walked by.”
It sounded impossible. “By Hans?” Einar said, and in the reflection of the car’s window Einar could see the vaguest outline of himself, as if he were just barely there. He heard Carlisle suggest, “Maybe you should tell him. He’d understand.”
Dr. Buson, who was about Einar’s age, was of Genevois origin. He had black hair that stood up at the crown, and his face was thin in the cheeks, his nose long. He had a way of turning his head to the left when he spoke, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not he would make his next statement a question. Buson met Einar and Carlisle in a little white room with a reclining chair over which hung the silver bowl of an examination lamp. There was a cart on casters, its top covered with a green cloth. Lying on the cloth in a fan shape were a dozen scissors, each a different size. On the wall was a pull-down chart of the human brain.
This time Carlisle joined Einar in the interview. For some reason, Carlisle made Einar feel small, as if Carlisle were Einar’s father and would both answer and ask the questions. Next to him, Einar hardly felt capable of speaking. The window looked into a courtyard, which was dark with rain, and Einar watched a couple of nurses trot across the paving stones.
Dr. Buson was explaining how he treated people with confused states of identity. “Usually they want some sense of peace in their lives,” he was saying. “And that means choosing.”
Carlisle was taking notes, and Einar suddenly found it remarkable that he could travel from California and take Einar on as if he were his most important project. He didn’t have to do it, Einar knew. Carlisle didn’t have to try to understand. Outside in the courtyard, a nurse slipped on the wet stones, and when her colleague pulled her up, the nurse turned over her hand to reveal a bloody palm.
“In some ways I think people who come to see me are rather lucky,” Dr. Buson was saying. He was sitting on a steel stool that could be raised and lowered with a spin. He was wearing black trousers beneath his laboratory coat, and black silk socks. “They’re lucky because I say to them, ‘Who do you want to be?’ And they get to choose. It isn’t easy. But wouldn’t we all want to have someone ask us who’d we like to be? Maybe just a little?”
“Of course,” Carlisle said, nodding, jotting something in his notepad. Einar felt lucky to have Carlisle there, driving him to all the doctors, putting his hands on the steering wheel after each miserable appointment and saying, “Don’t worry. There’s a doctor for you.” Something in Einar settled, and he felt his breath slow. He wished that Greta were the one trying to help.
“And that leads me to my procedure,” Dr. Buson was saying. “It’s a rather new operation, one that I’m quite excited about because it’s so full of promise.”
“What is it?” Einar said.
“Now I don’t want you to get too excited when I tell you, because it sounds more complicated than it is. It sounds drastic but it really isn’t. It’s a rather simple surgery that is working on people with behavior problems. The results so far are better than any other treatment I’ve ever seen.”
“Do you think it would work on someone like me?”
“I’m sure of it,” Dr. Buson said. “It’s called a lobotomy.”
“What is that?” Einar asked.
“It’s a simple surgical procedure for cutting nerve pathways in the front part of the brain.”
“Brain surgery?”
“Yes, but it isn’t complicated. I don’t have to cut open the cranium. No, that’s the beauty of it. All I have to do is drill a few holes in your forehead, right about here… and here.” Dr. Buson touched Einar’s head, at his temples, and then at a spot just above his nose. “Once I’ve put the holes in your head then I can go in and sever some of the
