I understand, said Stymer calmly, I've given thought to that too.
So?
I could get you a divorce easily enough and see to it that you don't have to pay alimony. What do you say to that?
Not interested, I replied. Not even if you could provide another woman for me. I have my own plans.
You don't think I'm a queer, do you?
No, not at all. You're queer, all right, but not in that way. To be honest with you, you're not the sort of person I'd want to be around for long. Besides, it's all too damned vague. It's more like a bad dream.
He took this with his habitual unruffled calm. Whereupon, impelled to say something more, I demanded to know what it was that he expected of me, what did he hope to obtain from such a relationship?
I hadn't the slightest fear of being tempted into such a crazy adventure, naturally, but I thought it only decent to pretend to draw him out. Besides, I was curious as to what he thought my role might be.
It's hard to know where to begin, he drawled. Supposing ... just suppose, I say ... that we found a good place to hide away. A place like Costa Rica, for example, or Nicaragua, where life is easy and the climate agreeable. And suppose you found a girl you liked ... that isn't too hard to imagine, is it? Well then ... You've told me that you like ... that you intend ... to write one day. I know that I can't. But I've got ideas, plenty of them, I can tell you. I've not been a criminal lawyer for nothing. As for you, you haven't read Dostoievsky and all those other mad Russians for nothing either. Do you begin to get the drift? Look, Dostoievsky is dead, finished with. And that's where we start. From Dostoievsky. He dealt with the soul; we'll deal with the mind.
He was about to pause again. Go on, I said, it sounds interesting.
Well, he resumed, whether you know it or not, there is no longer anything left in the world that might be called soul. Which partly explains why you find it so hard to get started, as a writer. How can one write about people who have no souls? I can, however. I've been living with just such people, working for them, studying them, analyzing them. I don't mean my clients alone. It's easy enough to look upon criminals as soulless. But what if I tell you that there are nothing but criminals everywhere, no matter where you look? One doesn't have to be guilty of a crime to be a criminal. But anyway, here's what I had in mind ... I know you can write. Furthermore, I don't mind in the least if some one else writes my books. For you to come by the material that I've accumulated would take several lifetimes. Why waste more time? Oh yes, there's something I forgot to mention ... it may frighten you off. It's this ... whether the books are ever published or not is all one to me. I want to get them out of my system, nothing more. Ideas are universal: I don't consider them my property...
He took a drink of ice water from the jug beside the bed.
All this probably strikes you as fantastic. Don't try to come to a decision immediately. Think it over I Look at it from every angle. I wouldn't want you to accept and then get cold feet in a month or two. But let me call your attention to something. If you continue in the same groove much longer you'll never have the courage to make the break. You have no excuse for prolonging your present way of life. You're obeying the law of inertia, nothing more.
He cleared his throat, as if embarrassed by his own remarks. Then clearly and swiftly he proceeded.
I'm not the ideal companion for you, agreed. I have every fault imaginable and I'm thoroughly self-centered, as I've said many times. But I'm not envious or jealous, or even ambitious, in the usual sense. Aside from working hours—and I don't intend to run myself into the ground—you'd be alone most of the time, free to do as you please. With me you'd be alone, even if we shared the same room. I don't care where we live, so long as it's in a foreign land. From now on it's the moon for me. I'm divorcing myself from my fellow-man. Nothing could possibly tempt me to participate in the game. Nothing of value, in my eyes at least, can possibly be accomplished at present. I may not accomplish anything either, to be truthful. But at least I'll have the satisfaction of doing what I believe in ... Look, maybe I haven't expressed too clearly what I mean by this Dostoievsky business. It's worth going into a little further, if you can bear with me. As I see it, with Dostoievsky's death the world entered upon a complete new phase of existence. Dostoievsky summed up the modern age much as Dante did the Middle Ages. The modern age—a misnomer, by the way—was just a transition period, a breathing spell, in which man could adjust himself to the death of the soul. Already we're leading a sort of grotesque lunar life. The beliefs, hopes, principles, convictions that sustained our civilization are gone. And they won't be resuscitated. Take that on faith for the time being. No, henceforth and for a long time to come we're going to live in the mind. That means destruction ... self- destruction. If you ask why I can only say—because man was not made to live by mind alone. Man was meant to live with his whole being. But the nature of this being is lost, forgotten, buried. The purpose of life on earth is to discover one's true being—and to live up to it! But we won't go into that. That's for the distant future. The problem is—meanwhile. And that's where I come in. Let me put it to you as briefly as possible ... All that we have stifled, you, me, all of us, ever since civilization began, has got to be lived out. We've got to recognize ourselves for what we are. And what are we but the end product of a tree that is no longer capable of bearing fruit. We've got to go underground, therefore, like seed, so that something new, something different, may come forth. It isn't time that's required, it's a new way of looking at things. A new appetite for life, in other words. As it is, we have but a semblance of life. We're alive only in dream. It's the mind in us that refuses to be killed off. The mind is tough— and far more mysterious than the wildest dreams of theologians. It may well be that there is nothing but mind ... not the little mind we know, to be sure, but the great Mind in which we swim, the Mind which permeates the whole universe. Dostoievsky, let me remind you, had amazing insight not only into the soul of man but into the mind and spirit of the universe. That's why it's impossible to shake him off, even though, as I said, what he represents is done for.
Here I had to interrupt. Excuse me, I said, but what did Dostoievsky represent, in your opinion?
I can't answer that in a few words. Nobody can. He gave us a revelation, and it's up to each one of us to make what he can of it. Some lose themselves in Christ. One can lose himself in Dostoievsky too. He takes you to the end of the road ... Does that mean anything to you?
Yes and no.
To me, said Stymer, it means that there are no possibilities to-day such as men imagine. It means that we are thoroughly deluded—about everything. Dostoievsky explored the field in advance, and he found the road blocked at every turn. He was a frontier man, in the profound sense of the word. He took up one position after another, at every dangerous, promising point, and he found that there was no issue for us, such as we are. He took refuge finally in the Supreme Being.
That doesn't sound exactly like the Dostoievsky I know, said I. It has a hopeless ring to it.
No, it's not hopeless at all. It's realistic—in a superhuman sense. The last thing Dostoievsky could possibly have believed in is a hereafter such as the clergy give us.
