‘Well,’ Severance swallowed, ‘you touched me just now.’ He felt as if they were suddenly locked in a death-grip of amity. Neither man was smiling. ‘The going-on bit. Groundwork. Hacking entry-points to the sensitivity Group.’
‘Quite so. It’s real. Plink. On the other hand, I am a raging egoist. Tell you a story about Bertrand Russell. Back home in his castle or whatever, year or so before the end, some strangers were shown in when he was looking at an article about him in some shitass American newspaper. “You will simply have to wait,” Bertie said to them. “I am reading about myself.” Marvellous. That’s me, pal.’
The scientist was overwhelmed with admiration and envy. ‘I really wish and wish and wish and wish and wish I could make it. I’m probably even vainer than you are, but I’m impeded.’ He had never confessed this before. ‘My vision jumps when I find myself reading a complimentary sentence. I can go back, I can read doggedly through. Then memory takes over: five minutes later I’ve forgotten who wrote the article, I can’t even remember, except vaguely, whether it was favourable or not. A phrase may stick; that’s all. Same for speeches. I don’t hear remarks as soon as I smell genuine praise underweigh. My ears skip. Not that I wouldn’t love to hear: I just don’t. And go back and ask? say “Would you mind repeating that extravagance, so that I may not only savour it to the full and recall it forever but repeat it to my wife the next time she shoots me to pieces or treats me like somebody met at the corner of 4th and Broad?” Not bloody likely.’
They were laughing together and the spell was broken. But Severance felt that he had made a deep ally in a most unexpected quarter and it was with sorrow as well as pleasure that he reflected Jasper was taking his Fifth tomorrow and would probably go home by the weekend, wherever home might be for that bird of passage. He pressed the younger man’s shoulder hard, warm, as he left to get back to it.
Severance sat in his grey Japanese kimono with his knees wide and his big scratchpad on his left thigh and his cigarette burning in his left hand and wrote: ‘Tu. nt.
‘First Step (5th version?)
‘I see absolutely no hope unless I can learn to accept the First Step (and then keep in daily contact, both meditative and behavioural, with it and Steps 2 and 3, and 12). But with my infinite self-cons and mental distortions, many recognized in the last ten days but how many recognized and going strong? how can I know whether I do or not? All I can say is that I finally seem to believe as solid facts that I am powerless over alcohol and that my life is unmanageable, out of all control, insane, has been for many years. For Christ’s sake tell me whether this belief of mine is real, and whether I can depend on at least it. I am a dependent man, I need something besides God.’
Here he broke off and leaned back. Suddenly he hacked. He read it over. No Style: good. Still, it didn’t sound too good, exactly. But it was only a beginning. Deciding that he wasn’t up to the thing itself tonight, he left the rest of the page blank, turned up the next, wrote ‘3’ up in the corner (hoping that would do—it meant to keep this last one short, so that nothing could go wrong) and then:
‘Now, I am satisfied with what I have said. Where you are not, shoot me to pieces. I am deluded. It is not wrong to be deluded. What is tragic (and unnecessary, given divine and human help) is to be a drinking alcoholic. Wherever, in whatever points you can discover, my delusions right now may lead me back to drinking, I desire to be rid of them. If my many character defects can also be crippled, good; but that seems to me to be secondary.’
He read the two sheets over, and over again, very slowly, and then very slowly detached them and ripped them across and across and dropped them in the wastebasket beside his right arm.
From Severance’s journal
Levelling is so hard because it opens you to confrontation: it gives your address and telephone number.
Maybe if you report puzzlement when confronted, and you reply ‘sincerely’ and are shot down, without feeling anger: you’re levelling! You’re open! You don’t know (yet) where you stand—perhaps you are outside the window hanging on by your toenails facing toward Jerusalem; but at least somebody does, in fact they do, and can tell you, reaching you, and you can then (POSSIBLY) accept it, and you’re in business—advancing, recovering—one delusion dead (although, I note depressed, it may always regroup and take over, as last week—just trap again and again), pray, hope.
This damned Inventory is valuable though. I find I’m not doing (acting) as well as I thought (an instruction in Humility—that thing so uncomfortably far beyond me) but better than I feared (encouragement).
Z∈ηó δα ηoς Kριστoς.
With Potts and his tape-recorder I was far more open —about my drinking and my ambition—than I’ve ever been before in public. I call that a gain. I wonder if it is. Did I avoid pomposity? I hope I can see it if it’s in the transcript he promised before he sends the interview abroad. Nice boy. A bad moment: though so concentrated on his sometimes rough questions and the mike, I noticed Ruth come in at one point, waved hello, and when I finally said, ‘That’s enough for today,’ I looked and she wasn’t there—went off angry, he said, at the ‘two male egos ignoring’ her. Professional business, curse her. I might as well have been in a television studio.
11
‘DON’T READ IT,’ Linc said, ‘just tell it.’
Severance saw his point but was not having any. ‘I think I’ll read it,’ he said calmly, ‘if you don’t mind.’
‘Go ahead.’ Linc was sprawled out, with, as usual, another pair of fancy high shoes on. Perhaps he had ten? Keg and one nurse were sitting in.
Severance unrolled the sheets in his right hand, leaned forward, and read in his clear, powerful voice, keeping the volume down but not neglecting the drama of his spectacular dream, which enshrined, in his opinion (he had deliberately not tried to analyze any of it), at least three concerns—his First Step secret, his fear of Dr Rome, and his ungovernable sexuality—even if it didn’t bear, obviously anyway, on his Contract.
‘“I was out on a pass—at one point I went back and a man was signing in, I saw his name but forget it (W——?) and realized I could think of no excuse to get out again at 10 p.m. Throughout the very long dream it was just past 10 p.m.
‘“Dream begins: I cannot accept the 1st half of Step 1. (Fact, just realized, with shock and horror, this evening) —went to talk to Mary-Jane, others with her, drunka-logues, left to return later. Out on pass I tell Ruth (after perhaps telling others in the same building—she is not as dismayed as I am, doesn’t say come home, ‘go tell Dr Rome’s Encounter-Group’—I say give me some money, I’ve only pennies (but in fact I had maybe 50¢, enough for bus home but not for drinks at the Masters—she gives me a one and a five?)—walking toward corner building on campus where Group is meeting up on 3rd? floor—walk in, very few there, all men—I go into room behind—forget
‘“Then I am walking campusward again past a very large building not right—find corner building—have to go to my office, 3rd floor, to get my 2nd half of 1st Step to show Dr Rome and ask them for help (which I don’t expect to get-will go to Masters and drink—hours till closing)—stop at door of banked theatre down left inside building upstairs (where I am supposed to be, to find empty but people are there, even at that time of night and on campus a film is to be shown—ask some girl on left what—girl coming up aisle says German film—now I have SEEN this girl before, know her well—middle height, straight hair, pretty—we talk, she stands against doorway, people passing—I am excited, I stand close to her, find her excited—we half embrace, her one eye is blind—she says excitedly, ‘Do you recognize me? Do I exist?’ We go hurriedly down dark corridor, turn right, then into my office, she is on bed—I say, ‘But you knew me too—we must have met—I meet so damned many people.’ To my amazement, in the other bed in my office a TINY boy is awake, in middle of counterpane, under it, just showing through hole, I say, ‘little boy, it’s time for you to go home’ (I’m mad to be alone with her)—
he says, ‘No,’ and I realize that his father, a colleague of mine possibly, has told him to spend the night here—so no sex, reluctantly resigned to this, but she’s under counterpane and says, ‘Come under’—I do, she has stripped, she feels for me, I worry about my clothes, begin to touch her breast Wake up.” ’
Severance looked up flushed and expectant, rolled the sheets, sat back in his chair. His cards were on the table, whatever they were. He felt ready for the Antarctic.
‘A nice dream,’ the analyst said lazily. ‘Lots of emotion. Do you remember anything more about the theatre?’
‘Surprisingly large. Sort of amphitheatre. Not many people in it. A few onstage, but not getting ready for anything. Maybe twenty scattered through the front rows, with nothing to look at.’
Linc thought for a while. ‘Do you think you could be the amphitheatre?’ he asked suddenly.
Severance, not a man easily taken aback, was taken aback. ‘What?’
Linc did not say anything.
‘Be the amphitheatre,’ Severance said baffled. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Would you like to try?’ Linc’s voice was not casual at all. It had assumed the tone of intimate command Severance was very familiar with, used to others. He felt pressure.
‘All right,’ he said doubtfully.
‘Go ahead.’
He closed his eyes, and in five or six seconds, to his speechless surprise and unsurprise, he felt exactly like an amphitheatre. To show the group just where he stood, he raised his arms to shoulder level, stretching them out ahead of him, wrists and hands curved inward, and became immobile.
He heard Linc’s voice say, ‘Are you the amphitheatre?’
‘Yes,’ he said with decision.
‘How do you feel, Amphitheatre?’
He reflected. ‘Fine!’
‘Good. Can you see Alan?’
He looked, without opening his eyes (he really had no eyes, though he could see all right). ‘Sure.’
‘Where is Alan?’
‘Right here.’ He jerked his head an inch to the right and moved his right thumb. ‘Just behind my shoulder.’
‘Can you see him clearly?’
‘Yes.’
‘How does he look?’
‘Not so good.’ Severance considered. ‘He’s tall, very thin. He’s badly dressed, I can’t see why he came. Inappropriate. He looks like hell.’
‘How does that make you feel, Amphitheatre?’
‘I don’t give a damn about it,’ he exploded.
Other questions, many questions, followed, and he responded without hesitation, clearly and fully, but afterward he could never say what any of them had been. His concentration was complete but his consciousness was double, he both was and was not in the Mini-group room, aware and not aware of the people seated around it. Linc himself was only a voice. He explained his position on the topics proposed to him. He felt quite happy—remote, austere, interested but uncommitted, semi-circular, almost empty, expectationless, patient. He felt that he was being understood, at last.
But at last the discomfort of his extended arms mounted toward actual pain. ‘I’ve got to put my arms down,’ he said irritably.
‘Okay! You’re back in the room now, you’re Alan Severance, and you remember everything that has happened.’
He opened his eyes and saw Linc, dropped his arms in his lap, and sighed. ‘The next time you have me be something, I hope it doesn’t involve that muscle-strain.’
‘I didn’t ask you to raise your arms,’ Linc smiled at him, and the group roared with laughter.
Severance grinned sheepishly. My god, the witch-doctor.
‘How do you feel now? Do you feel okay?’
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’
‘Our desire here is to find out whether you are an okay person or not an okay person. As for what kind of okay person, that doesn’t matter—okay sad, okay mad, okay vain, anything is okay so long as you’re comfortable with it. All clear?’
‘Maybe,’ said Severance. ‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Don’t think about it. Does anybody else want to say anything?’
Keg put a question: ‘Why do you suppose one-eyed women are seeking their identity from you?’
‘Faintest idea,’ Severance said shortly. ‘Never knew one.’
Apparently the young man didn’t know a castration symbol on sight. Not my job to pass that back here.
Nobody else spoke.
‘I do want to extend our Contract, though.’ Linc was looking sharp at him. ‘Over the weekend, will you make up your mind about two things. One, why you were surprised at your comfort in being an amphitheatre. Two: supposing you had entire control over it to re-invent it, is there anything about the dream that you would like to change? Okay?’
‘—’
While Linc swivelled toward Rhea and her doomed competition with her Mother-of the-Year mother, Severance adjusted his thoughts. Compare my surprise, even incredulity still, about the Irish Times people waiting for me on the tender at Cobh: I have not come to easy terms with my fame etc—I am not an okay person. For no reason, this notion, with which he had begun the Contract, struck him with fresh and depressing force. He laid it aside to consider the second part. I feel that I ought to make the theatre feel guilty about neglecting poor Alan; but in fact I won’t: screw him. I give shows, all day and even late in the evening (no?), of all kinds. Let him solve his own problems—I’ll schedule him if I’m free. I’m sometimes free, he only has to ask the authorities that govern me—but I won’t feel sorry for him. I am a busy amphitheatre, glad to be one, useful to many.
Then he put the matter out of his head, attended to the confrontations of Hutch (very depressed: ‘I’m afraid—after four weeks it will be just the same thing over again.’ Severance, who happened to know that he had started driving immediately: ‘You’ll be a different Hutch—otherwise, no hope’) and Letty, wide-eyed innocent grandmotherly minimizing, bolted lunch, let the lecture flow unregarded around him, and was so busy with the First Step that he just said, ‘No thanks today,’ when somebody looked in for the walk at four o’clock. ‘I present this’ (he had begun, for the nth time) ‘without much confidence, but also with great confidence, as merely the present stage of my feelings on the subject after nearly two weeks of my third treatment period in one year. Obviously my other two 1st Steps were worthless, though “sincere” enough to deceive a good judge at Howarden and Gus One here. I think I now know why. If this is an improvement on them—you will judge, and help me where deluded —it is because I have decided or learned to stick here to bone-sure emotional facts; so I may not get far but (I think) I can hardly go wrong.’
Feeling that he had not made any mistakes yet, he began a new paragraph. ‘I take the second half first; I used to think this the harder half, but have changed my mind. The unmanageability ought to prove the powerlessness; but it is horribly possible to “admit” the first without accepting the second, and in fact that was my situation until night before last, though I only realized it that afternoon.’
He had a good deal more to say before he really got going, but he felt unaccountably tired and went down the hall for coffee. Hotcha in the Snack Room half an hour, joking with Gene S, the new beanpole of Ward W. A minute after he’d returned to his room, Harry knocked and came in for a dyad. Severance was touched by such consideration from a man about to be discharged, but during the desultory talk—Harry was a tall lean heavy-lidded man more thoughtful than articulate—he experienced some twinges of worry about Harry’s unruffledness, facing The Outside so (attractive but) menacing to most patients including Severance. Harry seemed not to have a care in the world. Severance thought of confronting him, but decided: If their judgment is he’s ready, what’s mine worth. He left, and the weary scientist took up his pad to read over what he had written before PUSHING ON.
With sick dismay he saw that he had not said anything. He slashed a savage diagonal with his ballpoint down through his laborious and deluded paragrap
hs. He was sweating lightly. He looked at nothing, like a wall, without interest.
After the evening lecture, he had recovered sufficiently to start exploring his feelings again, to see if he had any, and he found himself writing something very different. ‘It is true that I am only an amphitheatre,’ he began. ‘But I have a certain power of criticism over the shows that are put on in me. I don’t allow shows that are merely entertaining; in fact I insist on shows that are so interesting or difficult that they are put on again and again. Only certain spectators are willing to come so often, but that is quite all right; I am a very ambitious and demanding but not a greedy amphitheatre. How about the seats? Not too comfortable, lest somebody drowse. Adjustable? Yes, decidedly; so long as’ Here he broke off bored.
The following afternoon, Saturday, hard on a dramatic evening and a harrowing morning, he scratched quickly, ‘Yest’y, fine as amphitheatre. Today, not so good—in fact, unhappy, since Casey’s wife saw the amph. as just a container for (my) “tumultuous” emotions. Now I’m struck by: Amphitheatre never sleeps. An amph., it’s true, doesn’t need sleep, but I am not an amphitheatre
‘I am a human being—Alan, in rags, “thin, woebegone” —arriving where he was “supposed” to be—Alas! (self-pity)
‘This dream was supposed to be a picture of my true life; but all it is is a picture of my illness and delusions (grandeur etc).’
As on wore the long day, dreary, and a pitiless dinner, and a three-drunkalogue ‘lecture,’ the worse he felt. Shortly after ten he took the pad on his thigh and set briskly down:
‘Revision of Dream
‘Practically everything in the dream is wrong.
1. I would put together the borrowing of money to go drink, and the not telling Dr Rome’s group (which I minimize and bypass); interpret them with Gene’s idea that my “honest” last-minute doubts about the first part of Step One was a defence to get out of treatment.
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