“Yes, but he didn’t tamper directly with your brain.”
“Actually, it was a she, but no matter. Her tools were psychological rather than chemical, it’s true, but her aim was the same as that of the psychosurgeons—to modify the individual consciousness.”
“But you did it out of your own volition, through a process of self-enlightenment. Psychosurgery is so mechanistic. It’s a denial of free will.”
“How so? Claire made the decision to undergo the operation freely. It’s just that the process of self-enlightenment, if you want to call it that, is now achieved through extraneous action, though objective rather than subjective processes. Personality restructuring is a far more exact science these days. Older methods were far more random and uncontrolled—and much less effective.”
He stared at Malcolm, saying nothing. Malcolm studied his wine glass. “I’m not saying that psychosurgery is necessarily a good thing. But this much is clear: if you have grave mental problems which are interfering with your life—by which I mean endangering your very existence or that of other people—if this is the case, then I think that psychosurgery is often the only possible solution. What I object to is the gratuitous modifications which people with no deep-rooted emotional problems undertake.”
“So you think Claire has done the right thing?”
“I’m afraid so, Neal.”
He rang the hospital again the following morning. Claire would see him at noon. Had there been any complications? None, she was fine. As he replaced the receiver he felt the anger and frustration of the past two days melt away, leaving a core of apprehension.
Malcolm was due to return home that afternoon but he agreed to accompany Neal to the hospital. They arrived fifteen minutes early, Neal a little groggy from the mintranqs he had been sucking all morning.
Claire was ensconced in a private room at the end of a long corridor. The doctor—a different one from the woman he had spoken to—talked about the operation, explaining how it was all accomplished with hypodermics and short-wave radiation, how there were no incisions and therefore no scars. Neal and Malcolm sat down on the leather bench outside the door while the doctor entered Claire’s room to announce their arrival. Neal felt giddy, weak with anxiety. Malcolm talked soothingly, telling him a frivolous story about one of his holidays, but he could not concentrate on the tale.
The doctor emerged and said to Malcolm: “She’d like to see you for a few moments first.”
Neal sat squirming in his seat, wondering why Claire had insisted on seeing Malcolm, for whom she had always expressed a mild dislike. He felt abandoned, snubbed, at a complete loss to know how he would handle his own meeting with her. Past experiences might not help him at all now that she had undergone psychosurgery.
Malcolm emerged within minutes, age-long minutes for him. He smiled faintly and said, “Go on in.” Neal pushed past, afraid even to look at him.
Claire was sitting up in bed, three pillows at her back, a padded white skullcap covering her shaven head. He’d been prepared for this, having been told that pinpoint accuracy was required in the insertion of the hypodermics. But the cap, and the white hospital gown, gave her an institutionalized look. She appeared perfectly alert, though, her hazel eyes regarding him calmly as he took a seat beside the bed.
“You look well,” he said immediately. “I was expecting a bolt through your temples.”
It was a feeble, ungracious attempt at humour, but she smiled. In the past she might have been offended by the comment.
“I’m fine,” she said. “A little dizzy if I move my head too fast, but the doctor says that’ll pass in a few days. Otherwise, I feel good.” She looked healthy, somehow more robust now that the anxious wildness was gone from her eyes. She’d always been an especially beautiful woman in repose: at nights, when things were good, he would sometimes wake and just lie there, watching her sleeping.
“How did it feel?” he asked. “The operation, I mean.”
“Nothing special. I was anaesthetized and I woke, I think it was eleven hours later. I don’t remember anything.” Then, as though realizing what he wanted to know, she added: “Waking up was the nicest part. It was like coming out of a beautiful relaxing sleep. I just lay there, drifting, no pressures, no horrible thoughts. It was like being a little girl again. Carefree.”
“That dramatic?”
“No, not dramatic at all. Quite the reverse, in fact. I wasn’t really making any comparisons at the time. I wasn’t aware of thinking about anything in particular because there didn’t seem to be anything to be that concerned about immediately.”
He imagined the molecules of the psycosmetic drugs as solid entities, travelling along the neural network of her brain like safari hunters blasting away at the unruly native life. Here a spark of rebellion. Bang. There an over-emotional tendency. Zap.
“Are you happy now?”
“Happiness is something you can only register after the fact,” she said, echoing one of their many conversations on the subject. At least she remembered. “I’m contented. I’m not worried or depressed or confused. I’m just OK. And you?”
“I’ve missed you,” he said, reaching out and taking her hand. She did not reject or encourage him. “I tried to see you. I didn’t want you to have the operation.”
“I know. That’s why I had to make sure you didn’t.”
“I was afraid they’d turn you into a zombie.”
“Well, you can see they haven’t. I’m really all right.”
His hand was trembling. She took it between hers and held it still.
“I’ve brought you something,” he said, fumbling in his pocket and producing the page from her notepad.
She took it from him, unfolded it and scanned what she had written. Without any expression whatsoever. “It’ll be a good poem when you finish it,” he said, though he knew that the fragments were far from her best work. “No,” she replied. “I don’t think so. I really couldn’t do any more with it.” He wondered if she simply meant she was abandoning it as an inferior poem.
“Are you going to continue to write?” “I don’t know.” Her exhalation was like a sigh. “Oh, I expect so. I think the urge is still there. Only it’s more of a mild desire than a compulsion.”
“You can’t just let it slip away.”
“A lot of my poetry came from the part of me that was sick, Neal. It was cathartic art.” She smiled: this had been another perennial dialogue of theirs. “I don’t know whether I need to do that any more.”
“When you come home you’ll get back into it just like before.”
The page lay discarded on the bed. “I won’t be coming home, Neal. I’m going away.”
“Away? Where?”
The words came out like gobbets of glue. Glop. Glop.
“To my aunt on the West Coast. She’s agreed to put me up for a couple of months. I need a change and a rest.”
“But you’ll be back?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t decided.”
“You have to come back. We have to pick it up.”
Something that might have been pity crossed her face. “I’m sorry, Neal. There isn’t going to be any going back.”
“What do you mean? Why not?”
“Since the operation I see things in a different light. You must realize that. I couldn’t go back to living with you.”
“Why not?” he repeated. Frantic.
“The good times we had were really good, and I’ll always remember you with affection for them. But the bad times were equally bad, and I couldn’t go through it all again.”