Everything (he kept saying) is something it
isn't. And everybody is always somewhere else. Maybe it was the city, being in
the city, that made him feel how queer everything was and that it was something
else. Maybe (he kept thinking) it was the names of the things. The names were
tex and frequently koid. Or they were flex and oid or they were duroid (sand)
or flexsan (duro), but everything was glass (but not quite glass) and the thing
that you touched (the surface, washable, crease-resistant) was rubber, only it
wasn't quite rubber and you didn't quite touch it but almost. The wall, which
was glass but turned out on being approached not to be a wall, it was something
else, it was an opening or doorway--and the doorway (through which he saw
himself approaching) turned out to be something else, it was a wall. And what
he had eaten not having agreed with him.
He was in a washable house, but he wasn't sure.
Now about those rats, he kept saying to himself. He meant the rats that the
Professor had driven crazy by forcing them to deal with problems which were
beyond the scope of rats, the insoluble problems. He meant the rats that had
been trained to jump at the square card with the circle in the middle, and the
card (because it was something it wasn't) would give way and let the rat into a
place where the food was, but then one day it would be a trick played on the
rat, and the card would be changed, and the rat would jump but the card
wouldn't give way, and it was an impossible situation (for a rat) and the rat
would go insane and into its eyes would come the unspeakably bright imploring
look of the frustrated, and after the convulsions were over and the frantic
racing around, then the passive stage would set in and the willingness to let
anything be done to it, even if it was something else.
He didn't know which door (or wall) or opening
in the house to jump at, to get through, because one was an opening that wasn't
a door (it was a void, or kid) and the other was a wall that wasn't an opening,
it was a sanitary cupboard of the same color. He caught a glimpse of his eyes
staring into his eyes, in the and in them was the expression he had seen in the
picture of the rats--weary after convulsions and the frantic racing around,
when they were willing and did not mind having anything done to them. More and
more (he kept saying) I am confronted by a problem which is incapable of
solution (for this time even if he chose the right door, there would be no food
behind it) and that is what madness is, and things seeming different from what
they are. He heard, in the house where he was, in the city to which he had gone
(as toward a door which might, or might not, give way), a noise--not a loud
noise but more of a low prefabricated humming. It came from a place in the base
of the wall (or stat) where the flue carrying the filterable air was, and not
far from the Minipiano, which was made of the same material nailbrushes are made
of, and which was under the stairs. 'This, too, has been tested,' she said,
pointing, but not at it, 'and found viable.' It wasn't a loud noise, he kept
thinking, sorry that he had seen his eyes, even though it was through his own
eyes that he had seen them.
First will come the convulsions (he said), then
the exhaustion, then the willingness to let anything be done. 'And you better
believe it will be.'
All his life he had been confronted by
situations which were incapable of being solved, and there was a deliberateness
behind all this, behind this changing of the card (or door), because they would
always wait until you had learned to jump at the certain card (or door)--the
one with the circle--and then they would change it on you. There have been so
many doors changed on me, he said, in the last twenty years, but it is now
becoming clear that it is an impossible situation, and the question is whether
to jump again, even though they ruffle you in the rump with a blast of air--to
make you jump. He wished he wasn't standing by the Minipiano. First they would
teach you the prayers and the Psalms, and that would be the right door(the one
with the circle) and the long sweet words with the holy sound, and that would
be the one to jump at to get where the food was. Then one day you jumped and it
didn't give way, so that all you got was the bump on the nose, and the first
bewilderment, the first young bewilderment.
I don't know whether to tell her about the door
they substituted or not, he said, the one with the equation on it and the
picture of the amoeba reproducing itself by division. Or the one with the
photostatic copy of the check for thirty-two dollars and fifty cents. But the
jumping was so long ago, although the bump is . . . how those old wounds hurt! Being
crazy this way wouldn't be so bad if only, if only. If only when you put your
foot forward to take a step, the ground wouldn't come up to meet your foot the
way it does. And the same way in the street (only I may never get back to the
street unless I jump at the right door), the curb coming up to meet your foot,
anticipating ever so delicately the weight of the body, which is somewhere
else. 'We could take your name,' she said, 'and send it to you.' And it
wouldn't be so bad if only you could read a sentence all the way through
without jumping (your eye) to something else on the same page; and then (he
kept thinking) there was that man out in Jersey, the one who started to chop
his trees down, one by one, the man who began talking about how he would take his
house to pieces, brick by brick, because he faced a problem incapable of
solution, probably, so he began to hack at the trees in the yard, began to
pluck with trembling fingers at the bricks in the house. Even if a house is not
washable, it is worth taking down. It is not till later that the exhaustion
sets in.
But it is inevitable that they will keep
changing the doors on you, he said, because that is what they are for; and the
thing is to get used to it and not let it unsettle the mind. But that would mean
not jumping, and you can't. Nobody can not jump. There will be no not-jumping. Among
rats, perhaps, but among people never. Everybody has to keep jumping at a door
(the one with the circle on it) because that is the way everybody is,
especially some people. You wouldn't want me, standing here, to tell you, would
you, about my friend the poet (deceased) who said, 'My heart has followed all
my days something I cannot name'? (It had the circle on it.) And like many
poets, although few so beloved, he is gone. It killed him, the jumping. First,
of course, there were the preliminary bouts, the convulsions, and the calm and
the willingness.
I remember the door with the picture of the
girl on it (only it was spring), her arms outstretched in loveliness, her dress
(it was the one with the circle on it) uncaught, beginning the slow, clear,
blinding cascade-and I guess we would all like to try that door again, for it
seemed like the way and for a while it was the way, the door would open and you
would go through winged and exalted (like any rat) and the food would be there,
the way the Professor had it arranged, everything O.K., and you had chosen the
right door for the world was young. The time they changed that door on me, my
nose bled for a hundred hours--how do you like that, Madam? Or would you prefer
to show me further through this so strange house, or you could take my name and
send it to me, for although my heart has followed all my days something I
cannot name, I am tired of the jumping and I do not know which way to go,
Madam, and I am not even sure that I am not tired beyond the endurance of man
(rat, if you will) and have taken leave of sanity. What are you following these
days, old friend, after your recovery from the last bump? What is the name, or
is it something you cannot name? The rats have a name for it by this time,
perhaps, but I don't know what they call it. I call it and it comes in sheets,
something like insulating board, unattainable and ugli-proof.
And there was the man out in Jersey, because I
keep thinking about his terrible necessity and the passion and trouble he had
gone to all those years in the indescribable abundance of a householder's
detail, building the estate and the planting of the trees and in spring the
lawn-dressing and in fall the bulbs for the spring burgeoning, and the watering
of the
grass on the long light evenings in summer and
the gravel for the driveway (all had to be thought out, planned) and the
decorative borders, probably, the perennials and the bug spray, and the building
of the house from plans of the architect, first the sills, then the studs, then
the full corn in the ear, the floors laid on the floor timbers, smoothed, and
then the carpets upon the smooth floors and the curtains and the rods therefor.
And then, almost without warning, he would be jumping at the same old door and
it wouldn't give: they had changed it on him, making life no longer supportable
under the elms in the elm shade, under the maples in the maple shade.
'Here you have the maximum of openness in a
small room.'
It was impossible to say (maybe it was the
city) what made him feel the way he did, and I am not the only one either, he
kept thinking--ask any doctor if I am. The doctors, they know how many there
are, they even know where the trouble is only they don't like to tell you about
the prefrontal lobe because that means making a hole in your skull and removing
the work of centuries. It took so long coming, this lobe, so many, many years. (Is
it something you read in the paper, perhaps?) And now, the strain being so
great, the door having been changed by the Professor once too often . . . but
it only means a whiff of ether, a few deft strokes, and the higher animal
becomes a little easier in his mind and more like the lower one. From now on,
you see, that's the way it will be, the ones with the small prefrontal lobes
will win because the other ones are hurt too much by this incessant bumping. They
can stand just so much, em, Doctor? (And what is that, pray, that you have in
your hand?) Still, you never can tell, em, Madam?
He crossed (carefully) the room, the thick
carpet under him softly, and went toward the door carefully, which was glass
and he could see himself in it, and which, at his approach, opened to allow him
to pass through; and beyond he half expected to find one of the old doors that
he had known, perhaps the one with the circle, the one with the girl her arms
outstretched in loveliness and beauty before him. But he saw instead a moving
stairway, and descended in light (he kept thinking) to the street below and to
the other people. As he stepped off, the ground came up slightly, to meet his
foot.