—Oh can we go to Kate!
—She promised to hypnotize us.
—Oh please!
—I told you we’re going Sunday. We’re just discussing it.
“Think it over,” Kate says, “he is well-preserved for fifty-two and—”
“No Kate, not a shrink and hung-up on Jung—please!”
“O.K. O.K. No shrinks; no Hindu gurus, no Jewish intellectuals or media men, over thirty-five and available...Lady, forget it!...What a pity,” she sighs. “You really do like men don’t you...But when you think of all the ways of creative self fulfillment, the many many worlds without and within—is twoness all that important?”
“The presence is important.”
“You can get one in Japan.”
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you know they made them in Japan absolutely life-like, body temperature at 96.8 with secretions and everything—weight, skin and hair texture—a beautiful quiet presence; and doesn’t talk...”
“But I want him sometimes to talk.”
“He could easily be programmed to say something every ten minutes.”
“I don’t believe it. You know people who actually own one?”
“Sure, rich people in Hollywood. They cost from a thousand dollars up. A Marilyn Monroe dummy might cost...”
“How ghastly...”
“But it works. Men swear they can’t tell the difference. Now I don’t know any woman who has one but there’s no question they’ll have the perfect computerized dummy in another twenty-five years—maybe ten.”
“Too bad. Right now I could really use a rent-a-vacation mate...”
“It’s no joke. They’re working on it. He’d be programmed to speak in several languages, of course, drive a car, take you boating, play tennis...”
“I think I still want the mystery of the other...”
“Oh, they’ll program the mystery of the other too...And of course they’ll have to build in some kind of anti-suicide device; you can see how in a situation like this a person would get suicidal...Isn’t it depressing?”
“The most depressing thing I’ve heard since Hiroshima.”
“But it’s inevitable. Isn’t it awful! I really think romantic love is the great cul-de-sac of creative evolution. God’s big booboo. O.K. You better get back to your children. See you Sunday for dinner.”
—Grandpa’s on the phone—
“You’re not going to Europe again this summer!” his voice crackles on the New York–Garfield line...
“But Father, one has to get out of America at least once every two years to keep one’s sanity.” How some lines get repeated...
“I don’t.” Delivered ponderously from the somber living room at the other end...“But you’ve always had this obsession. And suppose war breaks out? Remember wherever you go you must immediately register at the nearest American embassy and if you don’t, well—you’ll just have to suffer the consequences because you’re on your own, I’ll be eighty next fall; I just had a complete check-up, they looked into every hole and took a hundred fifty dollars’ worth of X-rays and do you know what they found? Ear wax...Well, now you’ll be scattered to the four winds...But it’s how you wanted it and I give you my blessings...”
• •
In the sensory deprivation chamber. Visions, hell. Enjoy the peace and quiet. Supposed to be pitch dark but actually looks milky. They say pitch dark when you can’t see your own hand in front of your face. Raise hand: true. Can’t see but phantom hand promptly appears—one, two, six phosphorescent skeleton hands. Halloween game. Stare in the void. Milky and webbed. A bog. Rain drops in puddle. Mud. Straw. Inside some kind of stable. A long dark slit just above my face, the lips widening: a sow giving birth. Scary when you see same image, eyes open or shut. Perceive tiny eyes and whiskers, some chicken feathers in the hay, again the rat and rain down the mud walls, on the mud floor; the slit widening huge now and tumescent, something trying to press through. Shift image from above my head to the front; labor continues...
Back in the living room, watch the children sit, eyes shut, writing in the air: Joshua trance. Toby trance. Jonathan trance. —Down—down—down, Kate’s voice drones on—floating down a river, your arm is getting so light it rises without effort—up—up—rising, rising...They sit with sleeping faces, one arm raised high.
...Up, up, you’re soaring high above the earth, higher—now you’re sitting on a cloud so high you can see the whole world stretching below you...Now look down and tell me what you see, Jonathan.
—My shadow, he says.
...you are before a heavy oak door. Behind this door lies your personal paradise. You press down on the brass handle gently, the door opens. You have to step over a high threshold. Have you stepped over, Joshua? He nods. You’re inside? And what do you see?
—A maze.
—A maze! I ask you to imagine your personal paradise and you see a maze...
—Yes. A maze, he murmurs solemnly. It goes on and on; there is always more to see...different styles and epochs...
—Amazing! Kate says. Your children are amazing. Toby tell your mother...
—Mom, how was it in the sensory deprivation chamber?
—Interesting.
—Sophie did you have a rebirth experience? Kate asks.
—I suppose you could call it that. I’ll write it up for your files and let the computer decide.
—Mummy, you should have let Kate put you in a trance...
—We had a cool time. Kate, don’t you really want to have children?
—Me have children! Oh no. One of me is enough...So kiddies, you’re off to your papa tomorrow...And what about you, Sophie, have you decided where you’re going this summer?
• • •
A small train station in Europe. People hurrying past.
Waiting outside on the platform, colorless, sad, impersonal, of some foreign town; the station house, some trees, sky; struck by their quiet fixity; the calm, spacious world of people not waiting at train station. Startled when I see that the conductor stands before me. He is asking me where I want to go—but suddenly I can’t remember. Stare at the rolls of tickets in his bag, all different colors. “Where do you want to go?” he repeats impatiently. Everybody is in such a hurry, I can’t remember at all—the place—the name of the place—anything; but I have already disappeared.
Wake up in my room as the platform sinks—the backdrop removed some time ago, never distinct—a building, trees,
