by James Morrow
“My wife is having a nervous breakdown,” I said.
“She has a conscience, then?”
“You shit.”
“The amoeboid conscience of Natalie Novak.”
Deep within some subbasement of my brain, a hideous id-thing cracked out of its egg. My gorge rose like lava fountaining from a volcano, and I lunged at Pielmeister, closing my hands around his throat.
He broke my grip. I slapped his cheek. He stomped on my foot. I grabbed his beard and spit in his face. Is there anything quite so ludicrous as two intellectuals grappling in a philosophy-department parking lot? Each of us wanted to pummel the other to a pulp, but neither knew how to go about it. We couldn’t even name the blows, much less inflict them deliberately. Quite possibly we were landing uppercuts, roundhouses, sidewinders, haymakers, and bolo punches. There was no way to tell. Eyes turned black, knuckles acquired the look and texture of uncooked bacon, and lips burst open like blood packets on a Sam Peckinpah set. Somehow Pielmeister scrambled behind the wheel of his SUV, started the engine, and pulled away, enveloping me in a stinking aura of greenhouse gases.
I yanked the phone from my jacket and called Natalie.
“I beat him up,” I told her.
“Beat who up?”
“Pielmeister. He did the same to me. We drew blood.”
“Can you get home by yourself?”
“With more blood to come. Spurt city. The world is changing, Natalie. Corporate Christi has arrived, and soon we’ll all be crushed, you and me and the Sisters Sabacthani. Well, maybe not Londa. No, never Londa. I made her out of steel. When this nightmare is finally over, my vatling will still be standing.”
Chapter 10
THE MARCH OF THE IMMACULOIDS began early in October, suffusing the normally genial ghoulishness of the Halloween season—the grinning rictus of the jack-o’-lantern, the clownish gyrations of the rubber skeleton, the cartoon malevolence of the cardboard witch—with authentic horror and genuine dread. No group was exempt from the plague. The walking unborn descended upon rich and poor alike, black and white, Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant, atheist and evangelical. Hundreds of semifathers endured humiliation at the hands of their fetuses, but it was the semimothers who suffered the most, particularly those who’d kept their pregnancies and subsequent abortions a secret: teenagers who’d never told their parents, wives who’d been thinking of leaving their husbands, mistresses who’d decided things were already complicated enough.
While the immaculoids’ coming was theoretically the sort of graphic and sensational event on which the television medium thrives, the networks simply couldn’t get an angle on it. Convinced that the phenomenon was essentially an epic human-interest drama, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and the rest initially broadcast a panoply of feature stories, all cleaving to the same maudlin plot. Act one, the mackie appears on his quasiparents’ doorstep and is rebuffed. Act two, the quasiparents see the light. Act three, the fetus is welcomed into the family. The problem was that the story typically included a fourth act, and the network was now obliged to present a follow-up report that nobody wanted to see. How John Snow 0714 set his quasiparents’ house on fire. How Jane Snow 2039 got her semifather arrested on a false charge of sexual abuse. How John Snow 1190 switched his semimother’s birth control pills for placebos, with predictable consequences. How Jane Snow 1347 bankrupted her quasiparents by transferring all their savings to the South Dakota Pro-Life Coalition.
In some cases the TV journalists were forced to file dispatches from a realm they normally avoided at all costs, the low-ratings domain of acid irony and mirthless absurdity. One immediately thinks of John Snow 2047, crucifying himself on the lawn of the family’s ranch house, a martyrdom made possible by the carpentry skills of his twin brother, John Snow 2048. Then there was Jane Snow 1264, summarily executing her quasiparents with a Colt .45, a case that the antiabortion judge dismissed on grounds of retroactive self-defense. And John Snow 0339, brutally impregnating his sixteen-year-old semisister, who shortly thereafter announced that, having discussed the matter at length with Enoch Anthem, she would bring the baby to term.
Of course, the average immaculoid narrative was neither heart-warming nor horrifying but merely sad. The fetus came knocking, and the beleaguered semimother would subsequently find herself divorced or disowned or both, end of story. “We’ve never seen such a potent and dramatic pro-life demonstration, and we salute the anonymous activists who organized it,” enthused George Collander of BUBBA, Baptists United against Butchery, Bestiality, and Abomination. The therapeutic community was equally keen on the mackies, who’d triggered among the semimothers a bizarre variation on postpartum depression, “reversed-abortion angst,” as one psychiatrist termed it. Faced with the unprecedented epidemic, scores of previously underpatronized counselors and analysts were blessed with more cases than they could handle.
Given the degree of public indignation over the immaculoids’ excesses, Attorney General Monica Giroux made a perfunctory stab at locating their creators and enjoining these bioengineered activists against further mischief. When the federal grand jury asked for my deposition, I revealed what Vincent Charnock had told me—that two of America’s leading postrationalists, Enoch Anthem and Felix Pielmeister, were planning to unleash legions of aborted fetuses on their unsuspecting quasiparents. Naturally the jury sought to subpoena Charnock so he could corroborate my accusations, but he and his houseboat had vanished without a trace. For reasons best known to himself, the father of the RXL-313 was presumably hiding in an obscure cove along the Intercoastal Waterway.
In defending his client, Anthem’s lawyer cleverly cast my testimony as the fantasies of a man “whose previous attempt to win an audience for his atheism took the form of a ludicrous Darwinist tract called Ethics from the Earth.” He went on to explain how in my former capacity as Londa’s tutor, I had “gleefully filled her head with the materialist philosophy that underlies Themisopolis.” Pielmeister’s lawyer had an even easier time impugning my motives. Bitter over the professor’s disinclination to support my Ph.D. candidacy, I now sought revenge by “forging a spurious link between this controversial pro-life demonstration and one of America’s most respected theologians.” After twenty minutes of deliberation, the grand jury declined to indict either man.
Today it’s generally acknowledged that if Alexander Hornbeam, that most pious of FBI directors, had instructed his agents to monitor our nation’s abortion clinics, sooner or later they would have caught an Anthem acolyte in the act of pilfering some D and C residue. By subpoenaing the hard drives and filing cabinets of the Center for Stable Families, this same Hornbeam could have uncovered a trail leading to the penumbral organization called CHALICE. Given the man’s attitude toward all things fetal, however, this simply wasn’t going to happen. As he told one CNN reporter, “Naturally I’m concerned that so many women are being bothered, annoyed, inconvenienced, and driven to suicide, but isn’t it high time that a day of reckoning befell America’s pro-death feminists?”
At first Natalie and I didn’t understand why we enjoyed a better relationship with John Snow 0001 than most quasiparents had with their fetuses. Eventually we figured out that CHALICE was programming its pawns with ever-increasing levels of vindictiveness. As the primal immaculoid, ours was also the least hostile, endowed with sufficient free will to make Natalie and me not merely the focus of his scorn but also the objects of his curiosity.
That year, we decided to attempt a quiet Christmas at home. Natalie’s parents had recently moved to São Paulo so that her father, a retired political-science professor, could research his book about globalization. My own progenitors, meanwhile, were inhabiting their respective vales of self-delusion, Mom living with a Dallas real-estate agent who’d promised to make her rich, Dad writing a spec screenplay while holed up in a Los Angeles efficiency apartment down the street from my sister Delia, who was presently enjoying syndicated celebrity status as Scarlet O’Horror, hostess of Frisson Theater. Natali
e and I agreed, however, that if the opportunity presented itself, we would ask John Snow 0001 to spend Christmas Eve with us—and the opportunity indeed arose, one blustery December afternoon when we all coincidentally converged on the Pieces of Mind coffee bar. It was Natalie who made the pitch, interlacing her sentences with so much hemming, hawing, and verbal filigree that at first John Snow 0001 didn’t realize what she was getting at. When he finally grasped the nature of her invitation, our netherson insisted he had other plans for that particular night. We were simultaneously saddened and relieved—saddened because he was, after all, our fetus, relieved because we had no desire to spend any night, and most especially Christmas Eve, answering accusations of homicide.
On the morning of December 25, shortly after dawn, our barbaric door buzzer, that chain saw in the brain, shattered our sleep and catapulted us from bed. Even before reaching the window, I’d guessed who the intruder must be. I glanced toward the street, and there he was, standing on the front stoop, gripping a large canvas tote bag and stomping the snow off his boots.
“If he tries to intimidate me,” Natalie said, “I’ll spit in his eye.”
“Scramble some eggs,” I told her.
“I think not.”
Reeling with approach-avoidance syndrome, I descended to the ground floor and greeted our fetus with a tepid “Merry Christmas, Mr. Snow.”
“Merry Christmas, Father,” he replied in a splintery whisper, stepping into the foyer. He wore a down-filled orange parka and a ragged woolen scarf. “Christmas is the birthday of Jesus Christ, a fact you doubtless knew.”
“And of Isaac Newton.”
“Jesus Christ is the Savior of mankind,” John Snow 0001 said. “Have no fear—this visit won’t last more than twenty minutes.” He set down the tote bag and rubbed his chest with his functional hand. “I don’t really mind the cold. An unpleasant feeling is better than none.”
As we mounted the stairs, the immaculoid explained that his nervous system had finally started delivering sensations. Stimuli were getting through. Qualia no longer eluded him. Biting wind, burning matches, stirring marches, soothing lullabies, anchovies, chocolate bars, creosote, thorns.
“Last night I had a bad headache,” he said, “which means I had a good headache—do you follow my reasoning, Father?”
“I believe I do.”
Natalie was waiting for us in her threadbare red terry-cloth bathrobe. Briefly I took satisfaction in my knowledge that a blue velour caftan would soon supplant this pathetic rag. She extended her hand. Our fetus grasped it firmly, then leaned forward and kissed her cheek. She clenched her teeth, the skin along her jaw growing tight as a drumhead.
“I’m not a monster, Mother,” he told her.
“Neither am I,” she replied.
“Let me take your coat,” I offered.
John Snow 0001 popped the line of brass buttons on his parka, but instead of shedding it he shuffled toward our gaudily decorated Christmas tree, a portly Scotch pine rising from an atoll of presents wrapped in recycled Sunday funnies. “I’ve brought gifts,” he announced proudly, lifting his tote bag high.
“How thoughtful,” Natalie said evenly. Now a softness entered her voice, plaintive to a degree that probably surprised her. “We didn’t get you anything. I’m sorry, Mr. Snow.”
With supreme logic our netherson replied, “You didn’t know I was coming.”
He proceeded to distribute our gifts. Natalie received a pendant he’d made by braiding bits of aluminum foil into a long, crinkled snake, then bending it into a heart shape. She slipped the twine loop around her neck, aligning the pendant between the lapels of her robe. The red terry cloth showed the silver foil to good advantage. I received a necktie made of nylon swatches cut from a discarded umbrella. The third gift was for both of us, a goldfish bowl containing two grasshoppers that John Snow 0001 had caught the previous summer and, against the odds, kept alive for six months. He’d outfitted their habitat with grass and twigs. Amory and Claudius were orphans, he explained. They wanted Natalie and me to adopt them.
I set the bowl on our favorite piece of furniture, a sleek, glassdoored bookcase from IKEA. The top shelf held six copies of Ethics from the Earth flanked by The Phenomenology of Spirit and Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus. In the outside world, Hegel and Wittgenstein kept company only with other geniuses, but here they had to associate with me.
“Would you like to stay for breakfast?” I asked the immaculoid, then immediately thought better of the idea. I turned to Natalie, soliciting forgiveness. Her eyes released daggers and other pointed objects.
“This has been a good visit,” John Snow 0001 replied, “but I should get home before my rage boils up again.”
“Where is home?” I asked.
Strangely enough, his answer was straightforward. “They’ve put us up in all sorts of places. Flophouses, church basements, college dorms, abandoned buildings, the YMCA. At the moment I’m living in a tower.”
“What tower?” Natalie asked.
With his working hand John Snow 0001 caressed the star atop our Christmas tree. “It’s a good place. Plenty of room. I did nothing to deserve that trip to the abortionist.”
“The Prudential Tower?” I asked. “The Hancock Building? A clock tower? A bell tower?”
Bending low, our netherson pressed his face into the pine branches. The needles brushed his newly sensate cheeks. He inhaled deeply and declared, “This is surely how a pleasant fragrance smells.” He took a step backward. “And the visual appearance—for a person who came from a womb, such a sight would be entirely lovely. I, too, find it agreeable.”
“Do you need anything in your tower?” Natalie asked. “A blanket? An air mattress?”
A barking laugh spilled from the immaculoid’s lips. He aligned the flaps of his parka, snapping each brass button into its shell, then yanked open the door. “You shouldn’t have scraped me away.”
Rummaging around in her shoulder bag, Natalie retrieved her madras wallet. She removed her ATM card and pressed it into our netherson’s functional hand. “Withdraw as much cash as you want. The PIN is one-eight-one-eight, Emily Brontë’s birth year.”
“Eighteen eighteen,” he echoed tonelessly. “Thank you. I believe I’ll purchase a heating device. I’m told the weather will get colder before it gets warmer.” He turned abruptly and bolted down the stairs. “It was not necessary to exterminate me.”
“God bless you, Mr. Snow,” my wife called from the doorway.
“I’ve started reading Heidegger,” he said, his voice fading like vapor from a fogged mirror. “You robbed me of my Dasein, Mother. The hottest places in hell are reserved for women like you.”
NATALIE AND I DIDN’T KNOW what to make of our Christmas presents from John Snow 0001. Should I start wearing my umbrella necktie, Natalie her foil pendant, as tributes to the loving son we’d almost brought into the world? Or should we toss these trinkets in the trash as the reproachful tokens he’d almost certainly intended them to be? On Boxing Day, before setting out for lunch at the Tasty Triffid, Natalie dutifully adorned herself with the pendant, while I put on the necktie. The instant our food arrived, we removed our accessories without exchanging a word and stashed them in Natalie’s shoulder bag.
The New Year was not long under way when Amory and Claudius died. I glanced at the bookcase and there they lay, two dry and delicate corpses, recumbent in the bottom of the fishbowl. Their passing perplexed me. Hadn’t I given them plenty of water to drink? A surfeit of leaves to nibble? Evidently their little orthopterous clocks had simply stopped. I wrapped the grasshoppers in a white handkerchief, bore them to our rooftop garden, and buried them beneath the philodendron.
Shortly after 5:00 P.M., we heard from our fetus again. He’d left a message on Natalie’s voice mail, explaining that he’d used the ATM card for several notable purchases, including a cell phone and a kerosene heater. He wanted us to visit him. His home was an abandoned switch tower in the freight yard adjacent to South S
tation.
“Please come,” he said. “It’s quite important.” A long pause. “I believe I’m very sick.”
Possessed by some raw Darwinian instinct, as primal as Danaus plexippus’s need to pollinate, we sprinted to the parking garage, scrambled into the Subaru, and set out in quest of our fetus. Reaching South Station at the height of rush hour, we exploited the hurly-burly and the gathering gloom to climb unseen off the platform and make our way across six parallel sets of tracks. My heart pounded frantically, though I couldn’t say how much of this internal percussion owed to my fear of our being arrested, how much to my anxiety over our fetus’s health. At some undefined point, we crossed from Amtrak’s realm into the freight yard. Tank cars, hopper cars, boxcars, reefers, and gondolas loomed out of the darkness like prehistoric beasts straining to escape a tar pit.
Thanks to our heavy-duty flashlight supplemented by a full moon, we had no trouble spotting the deserted switch tower, a warped and weathered structure reminiscent of Charnock’s houseboat. I knocked on the door, half expecting to be greeted by a shrouded skeleton in the ectoplasmic employ of the long-defunct Boston & Maine Railroad, but no one answered. A rickety exterior staircase led to the upper level, where a faint light seeped through the sooty windows. Natalie and I exchanged pained glances and ascended to the observation platform, one wobbly step at a time. I merely had to nudge the door and it swung open, its hinges creaking like an Inner Sanctum sound effect.
Strewn with scraps of wood, chunks of plaster, and bits of broken glass, the room was dimly illuminated by an electric lantern whose battery was almost dead. The back wall displayed a faded but elaborate chart depicting the freight yard, each switch circled and numbered, below which our netherson lay shivering on a stained, unsheeted mattress. A down comforter enswathed his body. His newly purchased kerosene heater, an upright thrumming cylinder suggesting an incandescent barber pole, released ineffectual gasps of humidity. Discarded wrappers and packages littered the floor. In recent weeks our fetus had treated himself to Ring Dings, Twinkies, Tootsie Rolls, Triscuits, Slim Jims, Wise potato chips, and Keebler Toll House cookies.
