Two days passed and I was visited by no one. One of the better reasons for making friends is to insure that certain people will feel obliged to visit you in the hospital. My only solace was that I had a private room and didn’t have to endure the endless stream of concerned pals, children, lovers, fans, and apostles of some roommate with a bone spur. I was in a funk. All of my tests were negative and after they were run I received little attention from the staff. No one took my temperature or gave me sponge baths. I made a pest of myself. I spilled my lunch and demanded that another tray be brought to me. I said scandalous things in the hope that I might incite someone to stay and rebut me. I felt like the most insignificant person on earth. Finally, I called Lydia at her mother’s apartment in Forest Hills. Lydia’s mother’s apartment in Forest Hills is called the Grover Cleveland, something that has always amused me. I told her I was in the hospital and she told me she’d been informed. When I learned she already knew I was there, I couldn’t bring myself to ask her to come and visit me. I asked her a series of questions pertaining to her well-being—she gave me curt, one-word answers to each—and then I asked to speak to Andrew. He was at the aquarium with Lydia’s mother. Good-bye, Lydia. Bye, Paul. Byyyyyeeee.
Late that night, two men crept into my room, taped my mouth closed, bound my hands, put me on a stretcher, and wheeled me away. I had been given a ferocious sleeping pill that evening and my senses were watery and limp. I made an attempt to ask the two men what they were doing but even the most casual physical act seemed unbearably difficult. I wondered casually if I were to be operated on. I couldn’t quite remember why I was in the hospital in the first place. I closed my eyes. I was aware of being rolled down a ramp. I heard a door open, felt a rush of sweet cold air, and heard a garbled voice say, “He’s waking up.” The voice was answered by another as cold, hard, and efficient as an industrial diamond: “So what?” Hearing that, I decided to get up. I made an attempt to throw off the covers and prop myself up on my liquid elbows. I don’t know how far I got, because as soon as I stirred something blunt and nasty struck me on the head and I tumbled into darkness like a picture postcard dropped from the thirty-fifth floor down one of those glassed-in mail shutes they build near the elevators in some buildings—
These interruptions are unavoidable. This journal is not the leisurely recollections of a man spending his twilight years in a stone cottage near a pond with nothing to distract him from concentrating on the subtleties of his autobiography save the humorous complaints of his long-serving cottage cleaner. Books and memoirs, I have always thought, are best composed in such stone cottages, or at the Plaza Hotel in New York, or in a small room in Paris with a skylight, or on Cape Cod. This is no place to write. The possibility that this journal might be discovered terrifies me and even when I am writing in it, sometimes, I am barely paying attention. My hand moves across the page while my eyes scan the room—I would not be surprised, I should say, if one of the walls were to slide open and release a claque of frothing Force Recruiters who would bind me in baling wire and drag me through the halls.
But back to my story. I awakened the morning after I’d been spirited from my hospital room and found myself in a rather spacious motel room, which, I was later to learn, was in a Holiday Inn. I felt perfectly fine, except for where I’d been struck. Morning light drifted through the half-opened Venetian blinds in perfect buttery slats. I sat up in bed and faced a stranger. He was about forty-five years old. His features were small and smooth and he couldn’t have weighed more than 130 pounds. He had a placid, round face and his feet were no bigger than paperback books. He lit a cigarette—the first of many—inhaled deeply, stared at the tip of the cigarette for a moment, and then smiled at me. “I am so terribly sorry,” he said. His voice was soft and textured.
“Where am I?” I asked, not very originally.
“Both Factor and Pernod are newish with us, I’m afraid,” he continued, “and they performed their duties with extreme sloppiness.”
“Factor? Pernod?” I’m not really sure what I said here, but it was something slight and confused. “But?” for instance.
“I would like to fire them,” the small gentleman said, “but in terms of the work they do for us they are, really, rather less wicked than most of our new recruits. Perhaps the fault wasn’t solely theirs. Poor supervision. I hold myself responsible, if you must know. I wasn’t giving the matter its proper attention. I was dividing my time between you and a man in New Haven, who turned out to be, by the way, absolutely unsuitable for us anyhow.”
I started to climb out of bed. Surprisingly, I was naked, which slowed me a little. I hadn’t any real idea where or with whom I was. My only thought was to remain calm and escape.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Umm—I—thought I’d take a look outside … ”
“Please. Sit down,” he said in a way that offered no choice. “My name is Ira Robinson,” he said, as soon as I was seated. I pulled a pillow over to cover my nakedness. “At least, that is the name you shall know me by.” His small, ivory hand darted into his jacket—I expected him to produce a revolver—and he pulled out an envelope. He handed it to me.
It was my application to NESTER, received some two weeks before. “Dear Sirs,” it read, “I am writing in response to your advertisement … ”
For some reason, it all made perfect sense from there. And instead of filling me with anger or fear (common stimuli response for me), the letter filled me with a hush of true admiration. I knew I was dealing with big leaguers. That they, on the basis of a letter, had engineered something as elaborate as my hospitalization and abduction thrilled me beyond words.
“We have considered your application,” Ira Robinson said.
“You have?”
He stared at me and the room became silent, quickly reaching the point at which one hears the beating of one’s blood. “Yes,” he said finally. “And it seems we are going to take you on.”
“Now wait just a minute,” I said. “Who’s going to take me on?”
“New England Sensory Testing, Engineering, and Research is prepared to make you an attractive offer to function as an experimental psychologist. You will be paid handsomely and you start—immediately.”
“That’s wonderful,” I whispered.
“We think so. NESTER—”
“NESTER?”
“Yes, New England Sensory—”
“Oh, yes … ”
“NESTER chooses its members carefully. And once we decide, we are never wrong. You are perfect for us.”
“I am?”
“Absolutely.”
I gestured about the room. I touched my bruised head. “Why all of the secrecy? It’s so strange.”
“Oh, it’s not really all that peculiar. We are an unusual operation and we must take precautions. You will understand. Later.”
“I will?”
“I would hope so.” He laughed. I joined him in his laughter. My heart was skipping and my head was light.
“Well,” I said, “I suppose you want to know more about me.” I then proceeded to describe my academic and scientific career. I explained the nature and quality of my experiments and made reference to some articles I’d published. He took all of this in with a look of utter boredom. In fact, he stared at his fingernails as I spoke.
“Yes, that’s all quite fine,” he said finally. “We are aware of this. But there are more important considerations. Personal considerations. We are a highly controversial organization. We require more than talent. We are interested in people with a special attitude as well. Let me ask you: Why did you answer our advertisement?”
I hemmed and hawed and tried to eke out an answer. I told him about the book clubs, about the defecating rats, about the numbing sense of insignificance I suffered from, about my desire to do something unusual and vast. There was something about his impassive eyes—they were gray and perfectly round—that goaded me. I wanted him to react to what I was saying. I told him I
suffered from a thwarted sense of destiny. I said things I’d never said before. Perhaps I sounded like a maniac. I told him I wanted to shape the world. I told him I was intoxicated by the thought of being part of something current. I wanted, someday, to have my name in Newsweek. Not on the cover. “Newsmakers” or “Transition” would be just fine. Or in Vogue’s “People Are Talking About.” “I have the feeling,” I said, “that I’ll be receiving my divorce papers in the mail any day now. It would be a lot less depressing if it were newsworthy.” I gave an exceedingly small laugh. “I would like to have enemies in high places,” I continued. “As well as friends, of course. I would like for women who did not love me to sleep with me, if you know what I mean. Do you know what I mean?” I laughed again, more boldly this time. “I wouldn’t mind being decadent,” I said. “I would like for once to be in a position to renounce it all.”
Robinson raised one slender finger. “Yes, yes, of course. But what is the one reason you wrote to us? Be singular, please.”
I thought for an instant. “Power,” I blurted. “I would like a little more power.”
“And money?”
“Sure. Fine.”
“And danger?” He leaned toward me, his eyes opening wider.
I paused. I hadn’t considered it. Then it struck me that my life since I’d written to NESTER had been riddled with danger. “Why yes,” I said. “Danger. Why not? Yes, that too.”
“Good. And fame?”
“Yes, but only within a small circle. Not the matinee idol sort, nothing that would ever be put up in lights. An obscure kind of fame. Understanding my importance would be a mark of distinction.”
“Naturally. Now another question—your answers are superb—what would you be willing to relinquish for all of this?”
“Relinquish?”
“Yes, of course. Do you think these things come cheaply?”
“No. Probably not. Relinquish. I don’t know. I honestly can’t say. I’ve never relinquished anything in all my life. I’ve lost things, things have been taken away from me. But I’ve never done any relinquishing … ”
“Yes, of course. But the question, please, answer the question.”
“Well, I suppose there would be very little I wouldn’t give up if only a few of my dreams came true.”
“Let me give you an example. If you could have these things, would you agree to never vote in another election?”
“Vote?” I laughed. “Of course I would.” I continued to laugh.
Ira nodded slowly. “And would you be able to never see your current friends? To be totally cut off from them?”
“Definitely,” I said, sitting up a little straighter.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Thirty-four.”
“Odd. I seem to remember in the letter you sent to us that you put your age at thirty-one.”
“I wish that were my age.”
“Your ambitions are modest, after all.”
“It is one of my ambitions to have less modest ambitions.”
“Yes.”
“To be greater.”
“Of course.”
“To have more power.”
“All right. Fine. And you say you are in the process of being divorced? Is that right?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Any complications?”
“The usual.”
“Of course. Children?”
“One. A boy. Andrew. He’s eight. An adopted child.”
“Admirable. You realize you may not be able to see him quite as often as you’d like to.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Really. And your former wife? That doesn’t matter either?”
“No, not really.”
“You don’t like them?”
“It’s not that. It’s just that we’re not connected anymore. None of us really feel comfortable with each other. It becomes embarrassing.”
“And your students? You won’t miss them?”
“No, it’s the same thing. We are too quick to sense each other’s boredom. It’s not real anymore.”
He was lighting one cigarette with another, throwing the butts onto the floor and squashing them into the carpet with his tiny black shoes. He looked at a freshly lit cigarette, put it in his mouth, sucked in deeply, and smiled at me. Then he leaned over and offered me a smoke. I accepted the cigarette. A rare gesture on my part. And felt like a blind man signing a contract. Not an unpleasant sensation.
We left for the NESTER compound the next day. Ira Robinson, Factor, and Pernod had done me the favor of packing a few things from my house and there was no need to return. Everything, Ira assured me, was to be taken care of. The school administration was to be informed of my resignation. I asked Ira if the police and hospital authorities were alarmed over my disappearance, but he pretended not to hear my question. It is something I still wonder about …
Ira and I drove several hours in his navy blue Fiat before arriving at NESTER. He drove his little car at top speed over the frosty highway and the energetic heater steamed the windows, so I was kept busy all the time wiping them. Ira took off his handsome herringbone-tweed jacket about a hundred miles into our journey and asked me to keep it on my lap so it wouldn’t wrinkle. My legs became stiff and overly warm. I tried repeatedly to engage him in conversation. I wanted to hedge my bet a little. When the idea of working for the mysterious, secret organization was first put to me I had leaped at it, but now that I had perfunctorily canceled out most of my past life I wanted to make it clear that I was merely going to check the place out, to go there on a trial basis. But Ira seemed engrossed in the radio, which he kept up at an earsplitting volume. It was rather amusing to see how familiar with popular music Ira was. Often he sang along.
Finally, we arrived. Even now, it is difficult to comprehend the nondescriptiveness of NESTER, let alone evoke it. Off the highway by only two hundred yards, the NESTER compound consists of four cream white parallelograms, each five stories high, arranged in a diamond shape. The place could have been anything: a water purification plant, the billing offices for Master Charge, an insane asylum. I wondered (and wonder still) what passing motorists must think when going by.
We entered one of the buildings through a lime green door. The interior was eerily ordinary. It looked like a fairly new high school in a lower-middle-class suburb: long, green corridors, smooth expressionless walls, an occasional porcelain drinking fountain, fire extinguishers. I stared momentarily at the rows of doors, each with a frosted glass window, each alike, each closed. Two middle-aged men, wearing lime green smocks, suddenly appeared and turned a corner. They talked to each other in low, resonant tones and then broke into gasps of repressed laughter, spluttering and choking and clapping their hands over their mouths.
I’d rather expected that Ira, or an aide, would give me a little tour of the place. You know, show me the mail room, the toilets, the cafeteria, the boss’s office. But Ira, still uncommunicative, took me immediately to my office—the first hint that this was to be no cushy job. It was only a short walk to my office from the outside door, which had been triple-bolted behind us by a huge, vaguely Oriental man. I turned with a start (my first of many) when I heard the doors being locked, and the hard, yellow man smiled unpleasantly at me.
As Ira escorted me to my office, he gave me a bit of good news. “Perhaps you are feeling that you are an ordinary employee here. I am anxious for you to know that that is untrue. There are no ordinary employees here. And you are luckier than most. We have recruits who work and live in the same room. Our quarters need expansion. You, however, will be one of the more fortunate ones. This is your office. You will work here during normal working hours. You will also be given living quarters, which I am certain you will find comfortable.” He made a wave around the small, ordinary office. My eyes passed over the kidney-shaped desk, the black leather (I hoped it was leather) swivel chair, the blue two-seater couch, the goose-necked lamp, the small rectangular window with the s
ee- through green curtains and the Venetian blinds, the beige linoleum on the floor.
Abruptly Ira left and I was alone. My life had become uncharacteristically streamlined. It seemed that just a heartbeat ago I was berating a classful of chowderheads and now I was sitting on a curious blue couch in a strange building. I tried to piece together what had passed so quickly.
Not much had happened, actually. Ira had told me very little about what I would be doing—this is not mentioned by me in defense but is simply fact and something you should know—and he had said almost nothing at all about what kind of organization NESTER was. My salary was discussed and it was to be handsome. Yes, a handsome salary. My scientific freedom was discussed and it was to be considerable. And it was made clear to me that, rather than with rats and frogs and pussy cats, I was to be experimenting with human beings.
I had fallen into a kind of reverie, trying to remember every small thing that had passed between Ira Robinson and me, and my head jerked up painfully when I heard what I thought was sobbing. A man’s sobbing. I stood up and tried to discern where it was coming from. Above me? Below me? To the right? To the left? After fifteen seconds or so it stopped and there was complete and utter silence. Then I heard footsteps, hurried footsteps go past my office. And then I heard something metal drop to a floor, somewhere. And the last sound I heard before attempting to leave my office was what seemed to be a huge Chinese gong that sent reverberating bronze shivers through my body.
I wondered what was going on, even wondered, vaguely, where I was. All these sounds made me impatient with being left alone in my office and I opened the door (for a second I was afraid it would be locked) with the thought that I would take a walk, have a look around. As soon as I opened the door, however, I was met by Julius Arnold, a frog of a man, short, squat, and wearing a green blazer that fit him as tightly as a diving suit. Julius, as he was quick to tell me, was in the public relations department. He spoke quickly, jiggling his left leg as he spoke, his dark eyes almost popping out of his head. He only had a minute, he said, perhaps as reassurance, but he wanted to welcome me to NESTER. Then he gave me some pamphlets that told about the history of the organization, its aims, its achievements, and told me that there was a NESTER- wide meeting in the assembly hall in an hour. It was the first one in over six months. I must be sure to attend.
Last Night at the Brain Thieves Ball Page 2
