Divergence

before them. One of them was beating at his cymbal before Mr. Meyer had even begun to strum on his guitar, beating it harder and harder…

Twelve minutes! Come on, Eva…

I’m getting there.

What do they look like, those people on the stage? I can’t see them properly, just their outlines. I can hear the awful noise they are making, the way they’re never on the beat. There is one there who is getting so excited it’s embarrassing; he’s beating at that drum harder and harder like he is going to come, and everybody in the audience knows it but no one wants to admit it. I can see their fixed smiles, all of them sitting around us. I can hear them whispering to each other, “Isn’t it nice that they are involved, isn’t it nice what Mr. Meyer has done with them? Look how happy they are!” Only I can’t see how happy they are because you never looked properly, did you, Eva?

Don’t lie to me. I was Social Care. I know what you felt: you were too embarrassed to really look at them and see the slack-eyed stupidity and hear the guttural cries and moans and gasps, and hear that mad beating in the background…

“Why do they put them up there onstage?” Eva asked Ivan.

“So they can be involved. So they can be part of it.” Ivan frowned. “This does not sound like you, Eva…”

“But they’re not part of it,” Eva said. “We just put them up there to watch them. We’re just observing them, dressing them up and teaching them a few simple tricks so that we can patronize them…”

“Patronize them? Eva, this is not my Narkomfin. You are the one who told me this: here you are doing the best you can to help the handicapped live a normal life…”

Ivan was utterly bewildered by her apparent sudden change of heart. Across the hall, Katya was guiding her chair towards a group of other teenagers who eyed the room with mock sophistication. Paul walked beside her, holding her hand.

The drumming finished. Everybody clapped much too loudly.

Eva stared down at the program; she didn’t want to see the handicapped as they shuffled and stumbled from the stage, grinning with pride.

“Why are you so uncomfortable?” asked Ivan. “Why stay here if you don’t believe in what they are doing?”

“I thought I did,” she admitted.

Fourteen minutes. It will take me a couple of minutes to get out of here and down to the shuttle. Come on, I haven’t got much more time. What is it you want to show me, Eva. I have dreamed about you all this time. At night I dream of a hand over my face…is that you, too?

“Do you know what I think?” said Eva. “I think that music is like a computer program.”

“You are just trying to change the subject.”

“Yes, I am, so let me, Ivan. I don’t want to spoil our last night.”

Ivan reached out one big hand and touched her cheek. “Okay, why is it like a computer program?”

“Because it changes our moods. It is fed directly into the soul and makes us happy or sad or excited.”

“I like that,” Ivan said thoughtfully. “It programs the soul. Yes. We work on many different levels, through instinct and intellect and feeling. There are different levels of programming languages, so why not one specifically for the soul? Eva, why are we not drinking? Come on.”

He took her by the hand and led her across the floor to the bar.

“Vodka,” he said. “No, not vodka—whisky. Vanilla or plain?”

“Vanilla,” Eva said.

“Filth! I will have scotch. Come on. And then we dance!”

At that he lifted her arm and led her in a turn.

“Slow down,” she said, laughing. “I’m too old for this sort of thing!”