"If you have in fact attempted any sexual activity it was undoubtedly with a prostitute and she expected too high a level of sophistication from you. You are easily ashamed, you couldn't cope, and so you have not had intercourse. Correct?"
"What are you! What are you trying to do to me!"
"I am a psychoanalyst, of course. Anybody whose complaints can't be handled by our bureaucratic authority figure out in front obviously needs help, not another bureaucrat. I want to help you. I'm your friend." And suddenly the anger was replaced by the utter incongruity of this nordic masterman wanting to help little Hiram Cloward. The unemployed professor laughed.
"Humor! Very healthy!" said the Aryan.
"What is this? I thought shrinks were supposed to be subtle."
"With some people-- notably paranoids, which you are not, and schizoids, which
you are not either."
"And what am I?"
"I told you. Denial and repression strategies. Very unhealthy. Acting out-- less
healthy yet. But you're extremely intelligent, able to do many things. I personally think it's a damn shame you can't teach."
"I'm an excellent teacher."
"Tests with randomly selected students showed that you had an extremely heavy emphasis on esoterica. Only people like you would really enjoy a class from a person like you. There aren't many people like you. You don't fit into many of the normal categories."
"And so I'm being persecuted."
"Don't try to pretend to be paranoid." The Aryan smiled. Hiram smiled back. This
is insane. Lewis Carroll, where are you now that we really need you?
"If you're a shrink, then I should talk freely to you."
"If you like."
"I don't like."
"And why not?"
"Because you're so godutterlydamn Aryan, that's why."
The Aryan leaned forward with interest. "Does that bother you?"
"It makes me want to throw up."
"And why is that?" The look of interest was too keen, too delightful. Hiram couldn't resist. "You don't know about my experiences in the war, then, is that it?"
"What war? There hasn't been a war recently enough--"
"I was very, very young. It was in Germany. My parents aren't really my parents, you know. They were in Germany with the American embassy. In Berlin in 1938, before the war broke out. My real parents were there, too-- German Jews, or half Jews, anyway. My real father-- but let that pass, you don't need my whole genealogy. Let's just say that when I was only eleven days old, totally unregistered, my real Jewish father took me to his friend, Mr. Cloward in the American embassy, whose wife had just had a miscarriage. 'Take my child,' he said.
"'Why?' Cloward asked.
" 'Because my wife and I have a perfect, utterly foolproof plan to kill Hitler. But there is no way for us to survive it.' And so Cloward, my adopted father, took me in.
"And then, the next day, he read in the papers about how my real parents had been killed in an accident in the street. He investigated-- and discovered that just by chance, while my parents were on their way to carry out their foolproof plan, some brown shirts in the street had seen them. Someone pointed them out as Jews. They were bored-- so they attacked them. Had no idea they were saving Hitler's life, of course. These nordic mastermen started beating my mother, forcing my father to watch as they stripped her and raped her and then disemboweled her. My father was then subjected to experimental use of the latest model testicle-crusher until he bit off his own tongue in agony and bled to death. I don't like nordic types." Hiram sat back, his eyes full of tears and emotion, and realized that he had actually been able to cry-- not much, but it was hopeful.
"Mr. Cloward," said the Aryan, "you were born in Missouri in 1951. Your parcnts of rccord are your natural parents."
Hiram smiled. "But it was one hell of a Freudian fantasy, wasn't it? My mother raped, my father emasculated to death, myself divorced from my true heritage, etc., etc."
The Aryan smiled. "You should be a writer, Mr. Cloward."
"I'd rather read. Please, let me read."
"I can't stop you from reading." "Turn off Sarah Wynn. Turn off the mansions from which young girls flee from the menace of a man who turns out to be friendly and loving. Turn off the commercials for cars and condoms."
"And leave you alone to wallow in cataleptic fantasies among your depressing Russian novels?"
Hiram shook his head. Am I begging? he wondered. Yes, he decided. "I'm begging. My Russian novels aren't depressing. They're exalting, uplifting, overwhelming."
"It's part of your sickness, Mr. Cloward, that you long to be overwhelmed."
"Every time I read Dostoevski, I feel fulfilled."
"You have read everything by Dostoevski twenty times over. And everything by Tolstoy a dozen times."
"Every time I read Dostoevski is the first time!"
"We can't leave you alone."
"I'll kill myself!" Hiram shouted. "I can't live like this much longer!"
"Then make friends," the Aryan said simply. Hiram gasped and panted, gathering his rage back under control. This is not happening. I am not angry. Put it away, put it back, get control, smile. Smile at the Aryan.
"You're my friend, right?" Hiram asked.
"If you'll let me," the Aryan answered.
"I'll let you," Hiram said. Then he got up and left the office.
On the way home he passed a church. He had often seen the church before. He had little interest in religion-- it had been too thoroughly dissected for him in the novels. What Twain had left alive, Dostoevski had withered and Pasternak had killed. But his mother was a passionate Presbyterian. He went into the church.
At the front of the building was a huge television screen. On it a very charismatic young man was speaking. The tones were subdued-- only those in the front could hear it. Those in the back seemed to be meditating. Cloward knelt at a bench to meditate, too. But he couldn't take his eyes off the screen. The young man stepped aside, and an older man took his place, intoning something about Christ. Hiram could hear the word Christ, but no others.
The walls were decorated with crosses. Row on row of crosses. This was a Protestant church-- none of the crosses contained a figure of Jesus bleeding. But Hiram's imagination supplied him nonetheless. Jesus, his hands and wrists nailed to the cross, his feet pegged to the cross, his throat at the intersection of the beams.
Why the cross, after all? The intersection of two utterly opposite lines, perpendicular that can only touch at one point. The epitome of the life of a man, passing through eternity without a backward glance at those encountered along the way, each in his own, endlessly divergent direction. The cross. But not at all the symbol of today, Hiram decided. Today we are in spheres. Today we are curves, not lines, bending back on ourselves, touching everybody again and again, wrapped up inside little balls, none of us daring to be on the outside. Pull me in, we cry, pull me and keep me safe, don't let me fall out, don't let me fall off the edge of the world.
But the world has an edge now, and we can all see it, Hiram decided. We know where it is, and we can't bear to let anyone find his own way of staying on top.
Or do I want to stay on top?
The age of crosses is over. Now the age of spheres. Balls.
"We are your friends," said the old man on the screen. "We can help you."
There is a grandeur, Hiram answered silently, about muddling through alone.
"Why be alone when Jesus can take your burden?" said the man on the screen.
If I were alone, Hiram answered, there would be no burden to bear.
"Pick up your cross, fight the good fight," said the man on the screen.