Flowers for Algernon

'See Jack. See Jack run. See Jack see.' 'No! Not See Jack see! It's Run Jack run!' Pointing with her rough-scrubbed finger.

'See Jack. See Jack run. Run Jack see.' 'No! You're not trying. Do it again!'

Do it again …do it again …do it again… 'Leave the boy alone. You've got him terrified.' 'He's got to learn. He's too lazy to concentrate.' Run Jack run… run Jack run... run Jack run… run Jack run…

'He's slower than the other children. Give him time.' 'He's normal. There's nothing wrong with him. Just lazy. I'll beat it into him until he learns.'

Run Jack run… run Jack run. .. run Jack run… run Jack run…

And then looking up from the table, it seems to me I saw myself, through Charlie's eyes, holding Paradise Lost, and I realized I was breaking the binding with the pressure of both hands as if I wanted to tear the book in half. I broke the back of it, ripped out a handful of pages, and flung them and the book across the room to the corner where the broken records were. I let it lay there and its torn white tongues were laughing because I couldn't understand what they were saying.

I've got to try to hold onto some of the things I've learned. Please, God, don't take it all away.

October 10

Usually at night I go out for walks, wander around the city. I don't know why. To see faces, I guess. Last night I couldn't remember where I lived. A policeman took me home. I have the strange feeling that this has all happened to me before—a long time ago. I don't want to write it down, but I keep reminding myself that I'm the only one in the world who can describe what happens when it goes this way.

Instead of walking I was floating through space, not clear and sharp, but with a gray film over everything. I know what's happening to me, but there is nothing I can do about it. I walk, or just stand on the sidewalk and watch people go by. Some of them look at me, and some of them don't but nobody says anything to me—except one night a man came up and asked if I wanted a girl. He took me to a place. He wanted ten dollars first and I gave it to him, but he never came back

And then I remembered what a fool I was.

October 11

When I came into my apartment this morn­ing, I found Alice there, asleep on the couch. Everything was cleaned up, and at first I thought I was in the wrong apartment, but then I saw she hadn't touched the smashed records or the torn books or the sheet music in the corner of the room. The floor creaked and she woke up and looked at me.

'Hi,' she laughed. 'Some night owl.'

'Not an owl. More of a dodo. A dumb dodo. How'd you get in here?'

'Through the fire escape. Fay's place. I called her to find out about you and she said she was worried. She says you've been acting strangely—causing disturbances. So, I decided it was time for me to put in an appearance. I straightened up a bit. I didn't think you'd mind.'

'I do mind… very much. I don't want anybody com­ing around feeling sorry for me.'

She went to the mirror to comb her hair. 'I'm not here because I feel sorry for you. It's because I feel sorry for me.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'It doesn't mean,' she shrugged. 'It just is—like a poem. I wanted to see you.'

'What's wrong with the zoo?'

'Oh, come off it, Charlie. Don't fence with me. I waited long enough for you to come and get me. I decided to come to you.'

'Why?'

'Because there's still time. And I want to spend it with you.'

'Is that a song?'

'Charlie, don't laugh at me.'

'I'm not laughing. But I can't afford to spend my time with anyone—there's only enough left for myself.'

'I can't believe you want to be completely alone.'

'I do.'

'We had a little time together before we got out of touch. We had things to talk about, and things to do to­ gether. It didn't last very long but it was something. Look, we've known this might happen. It was no secret. I didn't go away, Charlie, I've just been waiting. You're about at my level again, aren't you?'

I stormed around the apartment. 'But that's crazy. There's nothing to look forward to. I don't dare let myself think ahead—only back. In a few months, weeks, days— who the hell knows?—I'll go back to Warren. You can't follow me there.'

'No,' she admitted, 'and I probably won't even visit you there. Once you're in Warren I'll do my best to forget you. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But until you go, there's no reason for either of us to be alone.'

Before I could say anything, she kissed me. I waited, as she sat beside me on the couch, resting her head against my chest, but the panic didn't come. Alice was a woman, but perhaps now Charlie would understand that she wasn't his mother or his sister.

With the relief of knowing I had passed through a cri­sis, I sighed because there was nothing to hold me back It was no time for fear or pretense, because it could never be this way with anyone else. All the barriers were gone. I had unwound the string she had given me, and found my way out of the labyrinth to where she was waiting. I loved her with more than my body.

I don't pretend to understand the mystery of love, but this time it was more than sex, more than using a woman's body. It was being lifted off the earth, outside fear and tor­ment, being part of something greater than myself. I was lifted out of the dark cell of my own mind, to become part of someone else—just as I had experienced it that day on the couch in therapy. It was the first step outward to the universe—beyond the universe—because in it and with it we merged to recreate and perpetuate the human spirit. Expanding and bursting outward, and contracting and forming inward, it was the rhythm of being—of breath­ing, of heartbeat, of day and night—and the rhythm of our bodies set off an echo in my mind. It was the way it had been back there in that strange vision. The gray murk lifted from my mind, and through it the light pierced into my brain (how strange that light should blind!), and my body was absorbed back into a great sea of space, washed under in a strange baptism. My body shuddered with giv­ing, and her body shuddered its acceptance.

This was the way we loved, until the night became a silent day. And as I lay there with her I could see how im­portant physical love was, how necessary it was for us to be in each other's arms, giving and taking. The universe was exploding, each particle away from the next, hurtling us into dark and lonely space, eternally tearing us away from each other—child out of the womb, friend away from friend, moving from each other, each through his own pathway toward the goal-box of solitary death.

But this was the counterweight, the act of binding and holding. As when men to keep from being swept over­board in the storm clutch at each other's hands to resist being torn apart, so our bodies fused a link in the human chain that kept us from being swept into nothing.

And in the moment before I fell off into sleep, I re­membered the way it had been between Fay and myself, and I smiled. No wonder that had been easy. It had been only physical. This with Alice was a mystery.

I leaned over and kissed her eyes.

Alice knows everything about me now, and accepts the fact that we can be together for only a short while. She has agreed to go away when I tell her to go. It's painful to think about that, but what we have, I suspect, is more than most people find in a lifetime.

October 14

I wake up in the morning and don't know where I am or what I'm doing here, and then I see her be­side me and I remember. She senses when something is happening to me, and she moves quietly around the apart­ment, making breakfast, cleaning up the place, or going out and leaving me to myself, without any questions.

We went to a concert this evening, but I got bored and we left in the middle. Can't seem to pay much attention any more. I went because I know I used to like Stravinsky but somehow I no longer have the patience for it.