‘Ruth did, my Ruth did.’
‘Yes, she would, I see she would. Maybe I should have told you then, before, but the reason my Ruth isn’t here is that she’s with another guy. Been with him just two years now. You don’t want to hear whose fault it was, even if I knew, it was like this other guy came along and sailed in and collected her. She liked me, but she liked him better. I didn’t enjoy the next year at all, but I got through it without falling by the wayside and I’m over it now.’
Nevertheless Daniel said, ‘I’m sorry, Leo.’
‘Sure you are. I wouldn’t have brought it up, but I felt you should know it. I didn’t want you wondering, and when I thought about it, well, you needed to hear about something where we aren’t the same, and right there is one sizeable thing. And don’t forget the guy came along and he collected her, I’ll swear she wasn’t on the lookout for him or anybody, she wasn’t driven out by her depression or anything else, so if you wanted to think my Ruth’s departure says something about the likelihood of your Ruth departing you’d have to believe in Santa Claus. Or telepathy. Okay, the name’s the same. Coincidence, my friend. Unless you have somebody called Janet in your life? No, I thought not. No more of this, then. I hope I didn’t waste your time, Daniel.’
Now Daniel embraced his twin without hesitation and held on. He wondered that he had ever found it more than unfamiliar to be looking at and talking to a man so like himself in appearance. Leo had indeed followed or read his thoughts with remarkable accuracy, perhaps less remarkable in one so like himself on the inside as well. Of course. At this point Daniel pulled himself up as he remembered that Leo had just been talking of an irreparable loss. ‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked without further thought.
‘Thank you, Daniel. If you mean a drink like coffee or lemonade, then not just now; if you mean like gin all the way through beer with any alcohol in it, then still no. But you have some of that kind of drink right here, do you?’
‘No, there’s nothing. I spoke without thinking. Neither Ruth nor I ever go near real drink.’
‘Oh,’ said Leo. He looked round the kitchen, seeming to notice the dresser with its rows of plates, the TV set and small low-built radio, the white-painted staircase leading up to the ground floor, the door to the dining-room, the open garden door past which came herbal scents and the distant cries of children. Louder and more sharply than before, he said, ‘Did you never touch alcohol? I mean you yourself?’
‘Oh, I touched it all right. Not to say bashed it. For years. Then I gave it up altogether.’
‘Would you have called yourself a drunk in those days?’
‘Yes. At least I agree that’s what I was then. I should imagine plenty of people called me it at the time.’
Leo nodded his head, looked at Daniel for a moment and dropped his gaze. ‘I don’t quite know how to say this, but back then, did you believe in God?’
‘No.’
‘And . . . did your belief, was your coming to believe connected with your ceasing to be a drunk?’
‘Yes,’ said Daniel, looking back at Leo. ‘It was all part of the same thing.’
‘Daniel!’ called Ruth’s voice from the floor above. ‘Darling, could you come up here a minute?’
Ruth was standing in the bedroom in an unfamiliar attitude, elbows crooked and right hand clasping left. She was smiling, with a look of settled anticipation, as if she had been watching him opening a parcel that contained a birthday present she knew he really wanted. She wore a freshly laundered white dress with a pattern of small blue flowers, one he had always liked her in but had not known her to wear for a long time.
‘I was going to get you to guess,’ she said, ‘but then I thought that would be a bit silly, so I’ll just tell you. You remember a couple of weeks ago I was boring you about some new stuff Eric had put me on, and I said it was early days yet but I thought there might be a slight improvement? – actually it was more than slight, but I was touching wood, and I’ve hung on all this time to try and be on the safe side, but anyway, still touching wood, I’m much better. Perhaps I’m still not quite what I was as a carefree schoolgirl, but I’m much better. I can see the point of things again. I thought I’d tell you before we—’
Daniel started kissing his wife. A few moments later she managed to say, ‘Darling – Leo’s downstairs. We can’t—’
‘So he’s downstairs, as he’d probably say.’
‘But . . . he’s a parson.’
‘So am I.’
‘But an American parson . . .’
In the end it was not so many minutes before Ruth was again ready to receive their guest. Leo put on a wonderful imitation of a man who understood completely the British custom whereby married couples always held a thorough private discussion of the weather before starting the evening. Nearly all the rest of that evening passed quickly and not over-memorably in the kind of semi-informative chatter to be expected of any new acquaintances with time to spare.
But not quite all of it. After Ruth had gone to bed, Leo gave some details of his acceptance of the Christian faith and of how this was connected with his renunciation of strong drink, and Daniel responded with some details of his own.
III
‘If you want to know what it’s called, you can read it off the label on the bottle,’ said Eric Margolis. ‘Remembering it afterwards, of course. Why they give these things such jawbreaking names beats me, unless for moral effect on the patient. If I put you on something called B-23 you may not be gripped enough, but if I say it’s called chromopolyamineoxidase you’re more likely to feel you’re being properly looked after. And why not? But to answer your question: yes, this stuff is indeed reasonably new, in this country at least. They’ve had good results with it in the States and especially Australia, according to a man I know in Sydney who actually understands these matters. It’s a narrow-spectrum deal; there are quite a few people it doesn’t help at all, but those it does help it helps a lot. Ruth sounds as though she’s one of the lucky ones.’
Eric’s consulting room looked less like the traditional sort of consulting room than the drawing room of a small but posh hotel, with nothing overtly medical to be seen, not even a note-pad. Eric himself, a lanky person whose small mostly bald head was eked out with a dense beard, occupied an easy chair near a low table on which lay two or three novels in their jackets. Opposite him a similar chair held Daniel, sitting where he had sat on a couple of previous visits and assorted lunatics and neurotics on many times more. He said now, ‘How long will she have to go on taking this stuff?’
‘Some time. It’s no use putting even an approximate date on it.’
‘But there will be a date eventually, will there? Or will she be on it for the rest of her life?’
‘That’s most unlikely,’ said Eric in his gentle voice, rubbing his fingertips together in the way he had, ‘but at this stage I’m not ruling out anything.’
‘But isn’t there a danger she’ll get addicted?’
‘Addiction to a substance shows when somebody stops using that substance. Patients have come off this substance after a few weeks or a few years without serious trouble, as I told you. Some of them have felt funny or rotten for a while, which one can’t discount, but nothing on the scale of a real drug hangover, like coming off, well, some popular tranquillizers and antidepressives, which some have said is worse than what put them on it in the first place. Ruth stays on till it’s all right for her to come off.’
‘I see. How do we know when we’ve reached that stage?’
‘We get some idea when we try a controlled reduction of the dose.’
‘M’m. If you don’t mind my saying so, Eric, it all sounds rather hit-or-miss to me.’
‘That’s how it is. More miss than hit, too, though fortunately things are getting better every year. About point-one of one per cent a year. The gloomy view of the situation is that we’re no nearer understanding how these materials work than we were twenty years ago, so we’ve no way of telling
which one will help which patient, and the consequence of that is we chop and change and keep our eyes and ears open for anything new that might be good.’
‘Thank you, doctor,’ said Daniel. ‘Would there be a cheerful view?’
‘No. But there is a slightly less gloomy one this time round. Let’s say we have scored a hit with Ruth. That means there’s something like an even chance she can be kept as she now is while in the meantime she gets better. A mental illness, if a prolonged bout of depression can be called that at all, is only like a physical illness in a couple of ways, but one of them is that its victims sometimes make a full recovery. Thank God.’
‘What sort of long-term chance do you give Ruth at this stage?’
‘More than evens, Daniel. Substantially more. With her intelligence and good temperament she’s beginning to shape up as one of my successes. The last, what, area to count your chickens in is the mind, but . . . I won’t say any more. Just, there’s a good deal of hope where before there was only average hope, average hope being better than no hope at all but not much. Well, unless you’ve got anything more . . .’
Eric stood up. Daniel did the same, but said, ‘Actually there is one other item, but could we talk about it somewhere else? What about that pub down on the corner?’
‘Not there if you don’t mind. They know me there because I take the occasional arachnophobe or homicidal maniac there. We’ll try another place.’
On their way to it, Daniel asked, ‘Don’t you ever take notes of what a patient says?’
‘No, I take a secret tape which I turn on and off with a secret switch. Better all round.’
‘Did you turn it on for me?’
‘I should say not. Tape costs money, you know. Sorry.’
‘That’s all right, only my nose does feel a little bit out of joint.’
Eric’s other place was another pub, an extensive pub where, at this early hour, there was room to sit apart. By way of a token of decorum, a concealed apparatus quietly played one of the more understandably neglected of Handel’s operas. Daniel brought Eric the gin and tonic he had asked for.
‘Aren’t you having anything at all?’
‘I’m not thirsty.’
Daniel spoke with enough emphasis to make Eric glance at him but not pursue the matter. Soon afterwards Eric said, ‘What was this item you were going to raise?’
‘Oh yes. Well, it’s a bit difficult to put neatly. More a feeling.’
‘Some quite important points are that.’
‘Yeah. Well . . . I’m afraid it rather brings in philosophical things. Things to do with belief. You know, church doctrine.’
‘To me, you can say anything you like about that. It’s one of the great advantages of me from your point of view. But try not to go too fast.’
‘Right.’ Daniel paused again, then nodded to himself. ‘Right. For all your professional pessimism, you’d agree that more and more drugs are being discovered every day and the field of their application is widening all the time.’
‘Yes. Exponentially.’
‘Is there any theoretical limit to their expansion?’
‘I don’t quite know what you mean by that, but if it’s, will there come a time when there are no more drugs to discover, then I haven’t thought about it but it’s certainly a long way off. If it’s, are there going to turn out to be parts of the mind and human behaviour that can never be reached by drugs, then I have thought about that but to little effect. Actually theory doesn’t help much there, because the question takes us outside pharmacology and biology and any other ology and into, what you said, philosophy, where I’m near enough at sea. But you want something more than that.’ Eric poked inconclusively at the slice of lemon in his glass. Then he said rather quickly, ‘Nothing I’ve learnt in the sense of being able to write it down, write it out, none of it tells me there are any areas of consciousness beyond the reach of human modification, and if the resulting prospect displeases you, don’t investigate recent findings on the results of physical interferences with the brain by surgery or accident or both at once. As for gene surgery, I’ve made a personal point of not investigating that.’
‘But,’ said Daniel. ‘At least I hope there’s a but.’
‘Oh, there is, beyond argument and beyond fact. Something tells me, and I mean tells me, not just suggests to me – something tells me that that is not so, that there is a part of each one of us no man could ever touch. I am I and you are you and will remain so. Unalterably. That something is very old, many times older than pharmacology. In my case it goes back at least as far as Abraham. In yours, Daniel,’ said Eric gently, ‘you’ll allow me to say it’s a little more recent than Abraham. But your personal . . . something . . . is stronger than mine. God has blessed you, my friend. I needn’t tell you to be grateful for that.’
After a silence, Daniel said, ‘I remember you telling me once that mad or disturbed people whose troubles disappear under the right chemotherapy, that some of them get to feel so well or at least so all right that they reckon they can manage without, and are back to square one in no time. Could anything like that happen to Ruth?’
‘Ah. Well, since she’s not in hospital there’s nothing to stop her cutting her dosage down or even out. But if she does she’ll soon start feeling rotten enough to go back on it off her own bat. Whereas . . .’
‘Whereas if she doesn’t feel rotten we could be starting to win.’
‘We’ve won the first battle already, but yes. My turn to buy a drink. Another zero for you, or something more substantial?’
‘I . . . Could I have a glass of water?’
‘Water coming up.’
When Eric was back in his seat, Daniel said to him, ‘Just to sum up, or put it another way: those domains of thought and action traditionally annexed to free will are being more and more encroached upon by the development of drugs and other novelties, and at present no end to this progression is foreseen. Sorry to sound so cut-and-dried, but it’s the way I’m beginning to think these days. Have I left anything out?’
‘But,’ said Eric.
‘I hadn’t forgotten about but,’ said Daniel.
‘It’s just that my Church is more easy-going than yours,’ said Leo.
Daniel shook his head. ‘That can’t be true as things are today. Years ago it probably was.’
‘Even now I doubt very much if your boys and girls would have scraped a helpless, hopeless drunk off the street and not only brought him back all the way but encouraged him, and I mean encouraged, not just put no obstacle in his way but positively begged him to take holy orders.’
‘Well, that’s an excellent description of what our lot did for me only a short time ago.’
‘Oh, great. So here we are with another piece of our lives that’s been pretty much the same for us both.’
‘Part of us that’s the same.’
‘Pretty much the same.’
‘Exactly the same.’
‘Because we’re exactly the same.’
‘Exactly the same.’
Daniel felt comforted by the complete identity of himself with his twin and their complete accord in the matter. As before they sat in the kitchen, at the table. He turned his head away and looked out of the open garden door. Outside it was very bright and very still, with nearer objects in deep shade, paving stones and a stone tablet, evergreen plants and small shrubs in stone urns and earthenware pots, coils of dark-green hosepipe that had left dark puddles and patches of damp. The sight seemed to Daniel to reflect the tranquillity of his life. At the same time it occurred to him that he had not noticed the stone tablet before. He fancied it bore an inscription, but it was too far off for him to be certain of that, let alone to read whatever might have been there. He was about to get up and go and look when he heard a small sound from the far side of the table and turned back towards it.
A replica of himself was facing him. Ears, eyebrows, hair and its length and arrangement, shape of face, ears, everything was as Daniel
was used to seeing it in the mirror, although he strongly suspected that that summary could not be true in fact.
‘Who are you?’ he asked curiously.
‘It’s hard to find a single word for who I am,’ replied what he recognized as his own voice. ‘Or what I am. Nevertheless, if you and Leo are twins, you and he and I could be triplets. Quite conceivable, if you’ll pardon the impropriety, vicar. As our brother recently explained to you, monozygotic twins come from a single fertilized ovum that has split into two. When one of those moieties splits again, we’re presented with identical triplets and, as you may have read in various newspapers, there’s no theoretical limit to the number of times that can happen, or be induced to happen. Are you with me so far, Daniel?’
‘Yes.’ Daniel might have added that what was being said to him was also to be heard, with total synchronicity, inside his head, but thought it advisable to keep quiet about that.
‘Whatever their number,’ resumed the being across the table, ‘all the resulting persons or animals or vegetal entities are identical. The artificial process, known as cloning, has long been a botanical commonplace and one day, perhaps quite soon, may be practically as well as theoretically applicable to human beings. Compared with non-uniform organisms, clones offer an untold, unexplored range of advantages and possibilities. Some of these are of course social, even political, indicating a community as simple as an anthill or a beehive. But you and I, brother, aren’t interested in that, in what may or may not actually happen in the future; our concern is philosophical and so timeless. When the uniqueness of the individual is found to be limited and finite, instead of universal and infinite, it ceases to be a usable concept. It follows that any ideas of free choice that may be nourished by a human unit, formerly known as an individual, are illusory and false. Your path to God, Daniel, was already there waiting for you. You had no alternative.’
The last few sentences had been audible only inside Daniel’s head, and when he looked up he was alone in the kitchen. Aware of nothing more than his need to do so, he got up and at his natural brisk pace walked out of the house by the garden door. He made for where he had seen the stone tablet, but could not find it. At the moment when he saw it was not there to be found, darkness closed about him. He stood still for a short time, then, for greater safety as he thought, dropped into a crouching position. What was under his hands and feet now was not stone but bare earth. The darkness that surrounded him was intense but not absolute; there was enough light from somewhere to show him that he was encircled by a flat, featureless plain that reached to the horizon in every direction. He felt that his spirit was leaving him.
Dear Illusion Page 47
