I regarded most of the professors as mediocrities clinging to a fancy job. The students who played at being Marxists and revolutionaries on their rich parents’ money never tired of reading doorstops like Das Kapital, while those who thought of themselves as conservatives behaved as if they were the direct descendants of that Pilgrim on the Mayflower who, perched on top of the mast and shading his eyes against the sun, had shouted, Land! To the former, I was a petit bourgeois whose class was to be despised and whose values were to be trampled underfoot; to the latter, I was just a white-trash kid from Brooklyn who’d somehow managed to infiltrate their wonderful campus with some dubious and undoubtedly damnable aims. To me, Princeton seemed like it was overrun with hoity-toity robots speaking with Boston accents.
But it’s possible that all these things existed only in my mind. After I’d decided to become a writer, toward the end of high school, I gradually built for myself a gloomy and skeptical vision of the world, with the inestimable assistance of Messrs. Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, and Don DeLillo. I was convinced that a real writer had to be sad and lonely, while receiving fat royalty checks and spending holidays in expensive European resorts. I told myself that if the devil hadn’t reduced him to sitting broken and weary on the dung heap, Job would never have made a name for himself, and mankind would have been deprived of a literary masterpiece.
I tried to avoid spending any longer than necessary on campus, so on weekends I usually went back to New York. I’d roam the secondhand bookshops of the Upper East Side, watch plays at obscure theaters in Chelsea, and go to concerts by Bill Frisell, Cecil Taylor, and Sonic Youth at the Knitting Factory, which had just opened on Houston Street. I used to go to the cafés on Myrtle Avenue, or cross the bridge to the Lower East Side and have dinner with my parents and younger brother, Eddie, who was still in high school, in one of those family-run restaurants where everybody knows one another’s name.
I passed my exams without effort, nestling in the comfort zone of B grades, so that I wouldn’t come up against any hassles and would have time to write. I wrote dozens of short stories and started a novel, which didn’t make it past a few chapters. I used an old Remington typewriter, which Dad had found in the attic of a house, repaired, and given to me as a present when I left for college. After rereading my texts and correcting them time and time again, I’d generally toss them in the trash can. Every time I discovered a new author, I’d imitate him without realizing it, like a chimp overwhelmed with admiration at the sight of a woman in red.
For one reason or another, I didn’t enjoy doing drugs. I’d smoked weed for the first time at fourteen, during a class trip to the Botanic Garden. A boy named Martin had brought two joints, which five or six of us passed around in a hidden spot, with the feeling that the murky waters of criminality were dragging us into their depths for good. In high school I’d smoked again a few times, and also got drunk on cheap beer at a couple of parties in shady apartments on Driggs Avenue. But I hadn’t found any pleasure in getting high or drunk, to my folks’ relief. In those days, if you were inclined to stray from the straight and narrow, you were more likely to end up stabbed to death or killed by an overdose than to find a decent job. I studied hard at school, got top marks, and received offers from both Cornell and Princeton, accepting the second, considered more progressive at the time.
Television had not yet become an endless parade of shows in which various losers are forced to sing, to be insulted by vulgar hosts, or to climb into swimming pools full of snakes. American TV shows hadn’t transformed into tales told by an idiot, full of sound and laughter, signifying nothing. But nor did I find anything of interest in the hypocritical political debates of those days, or in the off-color jokes and B films about plastic-looking teenagers. The few decent producers and journalists from the 1960s and ’70s who were still in charge at the TV studios seemed awkward and as uneasy as dinosaurs spotting the meteorite that heralded the end of their age.
But as I was to discover, Laura liked to get a nightly fix of junk television, claiming that it was the only way her brain could achieve a kind of stasis, allowing it to classify, systematize, and store all the stuff it had accumulated during the day. So, the fall of the year of our Lord 1987 was the period when I watched more TV than ever before, finding a kind of masochistic pleasure in sitting slumped on the couch beside her, commenting on every talk show, news story, and weekly drama, like the two caviling old-timers on the balcony in The Muppet Show.
She didn’t tell me about Professor Joseph Wieder straightaway. It wasn’t until Halloween that she mentioned that she knew him. He was one of the most important figures teaching at Princeton in those years, regarded as a kind of Prometheus who’d descended among mere mortals to share the secret of fire. We were watching Larry King Live, and Wieder had been invited on to talk about drug addiction—three young men had died of overdoses the day before, in a cabin near Eugene, Oregon. Apparently Laura and the professor were “good friends,” she told me. I must already have been in love with her by then, even if I didn’t know it at the time.
TWO
The weeks that followed were probably the happiest of my entire life.
The majority of the psychology courses were held in Green Hall, which was just a few minutes’ walk from McCosh and Dickinson, where I attended English classes, so we were almost always together. We’d go to the Firestone Library, walk past Princeton University Stadium on our way home, stop off at the art museum or one of the cafés around it, or take the train to New York City, where we watched movies like Dirty Dancing, Spaceballs, and The Untouchables.
Laura had lots of friends, most of them fellow psychology students. She introduced me to some of them, but she preferred to spend her time with me. As far as music went, we didn’t have the same tastes. She liked the latest sounds, which in those days meant Lionel Richie, George Michael, and Fleetwood Mac, but she stalwartly listened along when I played my alternative rock and jazz cassettes and CDs.
Sometimes we’d sit up talking until early in the morning, doped up on nicotine and caffeine, and then groggily go to lectures after just two or three hours’ sleep. Although she had a car, she rarely used it, and we both preferred to walk or cycle. On those evenings when she didn’t feel like watching TV, Laura would conjure up the spirit that lurked in an NES console, and we’d shoot ducks or play being Bubbles the fish in Clu Clu Land.
One day, after we’d been playing games like that for a couple of hours, she said, “Richard”—she never shortened my name to Richie or Dick—“did you know that we, by which I mean our brains, can’t tell the difference between fiction and reality most of the time? That’s why we’re able to cry at one movie and laugh at another, even though we know that what we’re seeing is just acting and that the story was dreamed up by a writer. Without this ‘defect’ of ours, we’d be nothing more than ROBs.”
ROB meant Robotic Operating Buddy, a gadget invented for lonely teens by the Japanese. Laura dreamed of buying such a device, calling it Armand, and teaching it to bring her coffee in bed and to buy her flowers when she was feeling blue. What she didn’t realize was that I’d have happily done both of these things and many others for her without any training.
You don’t know what pain is until you get a cut deep enough to make you realize that the previous wounds had been just scratches. In early spring, my problems with adapting to life at Princeton had been compounded by a tragic event—I’d lost Dad.
A heart attack had killed him almost instantly, while he was at work. Not even the swift intervention of his colleagues could save him, and he was declared dead less than an hour after he’d collapsed in the corridor of the surgery section on the third floor of the hospital. My brother gave me the news over the phone, while Mom took care of the formalities.
I jumped on the first train and went to the apartment. When I arrived, our home was already full of relatives and neighbors and family friends. Dad was buried at Evergreens, and before long, at the beginning of summer, Mom de
cided to move to Philadelphia, taking Eddie with her. She had a younger sister there, named Cornelia. It came as a terrible shock to realize, in the following weeks, that everything that had linked me to my childhood was going to vanish, and that I’d never again enter the two-bedroom apartment where I’d spent my entire life up to then.
I’d always suspected that Mom hated Brooklyn, and that the only reason she’d stayed there was that Dad loved it. She was a bookish and melancholic person, thanks to her upbringing, her father being a Lutheran pastor of German origin by the name of Reinhardt Knopf. I had vague memories of visiting him just once a year, on his birthday. He was a tall and stern man who lived in Queens, in a spotlessly clean house with a small backyard. Even the little patch of lawn there gave you the impression that each blade of grass had been carefully combed. His wife had died during childbirth, when my aunt was born, and he’d never remarried, raising his daughters singlehandedly.
He died of lung cancer when I was ten, but, from time to time, while Grandpa was still alive, Mom would demand that we move to Queens—a clean, decent place, as she called it—saying that she wanted to be closer to her father. In the end, however, she gave up, realizing that it was a lost cause: Michael Flynn, my dad, was a stubborn Irishman, born and raised in Brooklyn, and he had no intention of moving anywhere else.
So my departure to Princeton for the start of my new year at college coincided with Mom and my brother moving to Philly. When I first met Laura, it was only just beginning to dawn on me that I’d never be able to go back to Brooklyn except as a guest. I felt as if I’d been plundered of all that I’d had. The belongings I didn’t take with me to Princeton had ended up in a two-room apartment on Jefferson Avenue in Philly, near Central Station. I visited my mom and brother soon after they’d moved, realizing straightaway that the place would never be home for me. What was more, the family income had shrunk. My grades weren’t good enough to earn me a scholarship, so I had to look for a part-time job to pay my way until graduation.
Dad had passed away suddenly, so it was hard to get used to the fact that he was gone, and a lot of the time I thought of him as if he were still with us. Sometimes the departed are stronger than they were when they were here. Their memory—or what we think we remember about them—forces us to try to please them in a way that they’d have never persuaded us to do when they were alive. Dad’s death made me feel more responsible and less inclined to float above things. The living are constantly making mistakes, but the dead are quickly wrapped in an aura of infallibility by those they’ve left behind.
So my new friendship with Laura was blossoming at a time in my life when I was feeling lonelier than ever before, and that’s why her presence became even more important to me.
It was two weeks before Thanksgiving, and the weather was starting to turn gloomy, when Laura suggested that she introduce me to Professor Joseph Wieder. She was working under his supervision on a research project that she was going to write up for her graduate thesis.
Laura specialized in cognitive psychology, which was something of a pioneering field in those days; the term artificial intelligence had come to be on everyone’s lips after computers had made their triumphal entry into our homes and lives. Many people were convinced that within a decade we’d be having conversations with our toasters and asking a washing machine for advice concerning our careers.
She often told me about her work, but I didn’t understand much about it, and with the egotism characteristic of all young males, I didn’t make an effort to figure it out. What I retained was that Professor Wieder—who’d also studied in Europe and had a PhD in psychiatry from Cambridge—was approaching the end of a monumental research project, which Laura said would be a real game changer when it came to understanding the way the human mind worked and the connection between mental stimulus and reaction. From what she said, I understood that it had something to do with memory and the way recollections are formed. Laura claimed that her knowledge of math had been a real gold mine for Wieder, because the exact sciences had always been his Achilles’ heel, and his research involved the use of mathematical formulas to quantify variables.
The evening when I met Wieder for the first time was to be memorable for me, but for a different reason from the one I might have expected.
One Saturday afternoon in mid-November, we let our pockets bleed and bought a bottle of Côtes du Rhône rouge, which the clerk at the delicatessen had recommended to us, and we set off for the professor’s house. He lived in West Windsor, so Laura decided that we should travel by car.
About twenty minutes later, we parked in front of a Queen Anne–style house, near a small lake that gleamed mysteriously in the light of dusk; the property was surrounded by a low stone wall. The gate was open, and we set off down a gravel path, which cut across a well-tended lawn, bordered by rose and blackberry bushes. On the left there was a huge oak, and its leafless crown spread above the tiled roof of the building.
Laura rang the bell, and a tall, well-built man opened the door. He was almost completely bald and had a gray beard that reached down to his chest. He was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a green Timberland T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He looked like a football coach, rather than a famous college professor who was about to throw the scientific world into turmoil with an earth-shattering revelation, and he had the self-confident air that people have when everything’s going their way.
He gave me a firm handshake and then kissed Laura on both cheeks.
“Delighted to meet you, Richard,” he said in an unexpectedly youthful voice. “Laura has told me a lot about you. Usually”—we entered a high-ceilinged hall, its walls adorned with paintings, and hung our coats on the rack—“she’s sarcastic and catty about everyone who crosses her path. But she’s had nothing but good things to say about you. I was very curious to make your acquaintance. Please follow me, guys.”
We entered a huge split-level living room. In one corner there was a cooking area with a massive island in the middle and all kinds of brass pots and pans hanging above it. An old desk with bronze hinges, with a leather-upholstered chair, stood against the west wall, its top scattered with sheets of paper, books, and pencils.
A pleasant scent of food drifted in the air, mingling with the smell of tobacco. We sat down on a couch covered in canvas adorned with Oriental motifs, and he fixed us each a gin and tonic, declaring that he’d save the wine we’d brought for dinner.
The interior of the house intimidated me slightly. It was stuffed with artwork—bronzes, paintings, and antiques—like a museum. Over the polished floors, handwoven rugs were spread here and there. It was the first time I’d ever entered a home like that.
He made himself a scotch and soda and sat down on the armchair in front of us, lighting a cigarette.
“Richard, I bought this house four years ago, and I worked on it for two years to get it to look the way it does now. The lake was nothing but a stinking, mosquito-ridden swamp. But I think it was worth it, even if it’s a bit isolated. From what I’ve been told by a guy who knows about such things, its value has almost doubled in the meantime.”
“It’s really great,” I assured him.
“Later, I’ll show you the library upstairs. That’s my pride and joy—all the rest are just trifles. I hope you’ll come again. I sometimes hold parties on Saturdays. Nothing sophisticated, just a few friends and colleagues. And on the last Friday evening of the month, I play poker with some pals. We play just for change—don’t worry.”
The conversation unfolded smoothly, and half an hour later, when we sat down at the table to eat (he’d made spaghetti Bolognese from a recipe he got from a colleague in Italy), it felt like we’d already known each other for quite some time, and my initial feelings of embarrassment had completely vanished.
Laura was almost absent from the conversation, as she acted as hostess. She served the food, and at the end of the meal she cleared away the plates and cutlery, putting them in the dishwasher. She didn’t call W
ieder “professor” or “sir” or “Mr. Wieder,” but simply “Joe.” She seemed at home, and it was obvious that she’d played this role before, while the professor perorated on various topics, chain-smoking and accompanying his words with sweeping gestures of his hands.
At one point, I wondered how close they really were, but then I told myself that it wasn’t any of my business, as at the time I didn’t suspect that they could be more than just good friends.
Wieder praised the wine we’d brought and went into a long divagation about French vineyards, explaining the different rules for serving wine according to the grape variety. Somehow, he managed to do so without making himself look like a snob. Then he told me that he’d lived in Paris for a couple of years when he was young. He’d earned a master’s degree in psychiatry at the Sorbonne, and then gone to England, where he took his PhD and published his first book.
After a while he got up and, from somewhere in the depths of the house, grabbed another bottle of French wine, which we drank. Laura was still on her first glass—she’d explained to the professor that she had to drive back home. She seemed delighted that we were getting along so well, watching us like a babysitter happy that the kids she’s looking after aren’t breaking their toys and fighting with each other.
As I remember, the conversation with him was rather chaotic. He talked a lot, jumping from one subject to another with the ease of a conjurer. He had an opinion about everything, from the Giants’ last season to nineteenth-century Russian literature. True, I was astonished by his knowledge, and it was obvious that he’d read a lot and that age had dulled nothing of his intellectual curiosity (for someone barely out of his teens, a grown-up in his late fifties was already old). But at the same time, he gave the impression of being a conscientious missionary who saw it as his task to patiently educate the savages, on whose mental capacities he didn’t set much store. He’d engage in Socratic questioning and then give the answers himself, before I could open my mouth to say anything, and then he’d provide counterarguments, only to demolish these, too, a few minutes later.
The Book of Mirrors Page 2
