“Satisfying!” he exploded.
I gulped.
“What makes you think graduate school is supposed to be satisfying? Literature is work, not fun,” he said.
“Yes,” I said meekly.
“You come to graduate school because you love to read, because you love literature-well, literature is hard work! It’s not a game!” Professor Stanton seemed to have found his true subject.
“Yes, but if you’ll excuse me Professor Stanton, it does seem that all this criticism is out of keeping with the spirit of Fielding or Pope or Swift. I mean I always imagine them lying there in their graves and laughing at us all. This is just the sort of thing they’d find funny. I mean I read Pope or Swift or Fielding and it makes me want to write. It starts my mind going on poems. The criticism seems sort of silly to me. I’m sorry to say this, but it does.”
“Who made you the guardian of the spirit of Pope? Or Swift? Or Fielding?”
“No one.”
“Then what the hell are you complaining about?”
“I’m not complaining. I just think I may have made a mistake. I think I really want to write.”
“Mrs. Stollerman, you’ll have plenty of time to write after you get you Ph.D. under your belt. And then you’ll always have something to fall back on just in case you’re not Emily Dickinson.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I said, and went home to sleep.
Brian woke me up with a bang in June. I’m not exactly sure when the onset of it was, but sometime in mid-June, I noticed that he had become more manic than usual. He had stopped sleeping entirely. He wanted me to sit up all night with him and discuss heaven and hell. Not that this was so unusual for Brian. He’s always been extraordinarily interested in heaven and hell. But now he began talking about the Second Coming quite a lot and he talked about it in a new way.
What if (he asked) Christ came back to earth as an obscure market research executive?
What if nobody believed Him again?
What if He tried to prove his identity by walking across the water on Central Park Lake? Would CBS Evening News cover the occurrence? Would it be billed as a human interest story?
I laughed. Brian laughed too. It was only an idea for a science fiction novel, he said. It was only a joke.
In the days that followed, the jokes multiplied.
What if he were Zeus and I were Hera? What if he were Dante and I Beatrice? What if there were two of each of us- matter and antimatter, three-dimensional and no-dimensional? What if the people on the subway were really communicating with him telepathically and asking him to save them? What if Christ came back and liberated all the animals in the Central Park Zoo? What if the yaks followed Him down Fifth Avenue and birds sat and sang on His shoulders? Would people believe who He was then? What if He blessed the computers and instead of spewing out printed sheets about which housewives buy the most detergent, they suddenly started spewing out loaves and fishes? What if the world was really controlled by a gigantic computer and nobody knew it except Brian? What if this computer ran on human blood? What if, as Sartre said, we were all in hell right now? What if we were all controlled by complex machines which were controlled by other complex machines which were controlled by other complex machines? What if we had no freedom at all? What if man could only assert his freedom by dying on the cross? What if you walked across the streets of New York against red lights with your eyes closed for a whole week and you weren’t even grazed by a car? Did that prove you were God? What if every book you opened at random had the letters GOD somewhere in every paragraph? Wasn’t that proof positive?
Night after night the questions continued. Brian repeated them at me like a catechism. What if? What if? What if? Listen to me. Don’t fall asleep! Listen to me! The world is ending and you’re going to sleep through it! Listen to me!
In his frenzy to have a constant audience he even slapped my cheek once or twice to awaken me. Dazed and bleary-eyed, I listened. And listened. And listened. After the fifth night, it was no longer possible to doubt that Brian had no plans for science fiction. He himself was the Second Coming. The recognition was slow to dawn. When it did, I wasn’t actually sure he wasn’t God. But, according to his logic, if he was Jesus, then I was the Holy Ghost. And bleary-eyed as I was, I knew that was crazy.
On Friday, Brian’s boss left town for the weekend and delegated him to close an important deal with the makers of an oven-cleaning product called Miracle Foam. Brian was supposed to meet with the Miracle Foam people in the computer center on Saturday, but he never made it there. The Miracle Foam people waited. Then they called me. Then they called me again. Brian did not come. I phoned everyone I could think of and finally just sat at home chewing my nails and knowing something dreadful was going to happen.
At five o’clock Brian called to read me a “poem” he claimed to have written while walking across Central Park Lake. It went:
“How do you like it, honey?” he asked, all naiveté.
“Brian-do you realize that the Miracle Foam people have been trying to reach you all day?”
“Isn’t it brilliant? It really sums the whole thing up, I think. I’m planning to send it to The New York Times. The only thing is I wonder whether The Times will print a poem with the word ‘damned’ in it. What do you think?”
“Brian-do you realize that I’ve been sitting here all day answering calls from Miracle Foam? Where in hell have you been?”
“That’s precisely where I’ve been.”
“Where?”
“In hell. Just as you’re in hell and I’m in hell and we’re all in hell. How can you worry about a mere bubble like Miracle Foam?”
“What in God’s name are you going to do about the contract?”
“Just that.”
“Just what?”
“In God’s name, I’m going to forget about it. I’m not going to do anything about it. Why don’t you come downtown and meet me and I’ll show you my poem.”
“Where are you?”
“In hell.”
“OK, I know you’re in hell, but where should I meet you?”
“You ought to know. You sent me here.”
“Where?”
“To hell. Where I am now. Where you are now. You’re pretty slow, baby.”
“Brian, please be reasonable-”
“I’m perfectly reasonable. You’re the one who cares about a mere bubble You’re the one who thinks it matters if there are calls from Miracle Foam.”
“Just tell me what corner to meet you on in hell and I’ll come. I swear I will. Just tell me what corner.”
“Don’t you know?”
“No. Honestly I don’t. Please tell me.”
“I think you’re trying to make a fool of me.”
“Brian, darling, I only want to see you. Please let me see you.”
“You can see me right now in your mind’s eye. Your blindness is of your own making. You and King Lear.”
“Are you in a phone booth? Or a bar? Please tell me.”
“You already know!”
The conversation went on like this for some time. Brian hung up on me twice and then called back. Finally he agreed to identify the phone booth he was in, not by name but by a sort of guessing game. I had to participate in it by eliminating the possibilities. This took another twenty minutes and several nickels. Finally it turned out he was at the Gotham Bar. I dashed out and took a cab down to meet him. I learned that he had spent the day taking Puerto Rican and black kids for boat rides on Central Park Lake, buying them ice cream, giving money away to people in the park, and planning his escape from hell. He had not actually walked on the water but he had thought about it quite a lot. Now he was ready to change his life. He had discovered he was possessed of a fund of superhuman energy. Other mortals needed sleep. He did not. Other mortals needed jobs and degrees and all the paraphernalia of everyday life. He did not. He was going to embark on the destiny which had always awaited him-saving the world. I was to help him.