The alternative was bachelorhood, the endless round of conquests, the game being played in monotonous succession. Until the final surrender, and then what was there? Hadn’t the preparation been more interesting than the act itself? By God, if only the Ree was in reality what the Vike pictured him to be.
No, the Ree was a strange breed, a conventional contradiction of statements, denying on one hand, plying on the other. Like a man in the arms of a harlot, protesting to his wife he is only playing poker with the boys.
Why couldn’t I have told this to Brant, Pelazi wondered. Instead, I behaved like a tongue-tied fool, a Freshman fumbling with a three minute speech in a college course.
Pelazi cursed his awkwardness, cursed the Vikes because they always made him feel inefficient and bumbling in their sleek, streamlined presence.
This Brant had been a typical Vike, proud, assured — so certain he was doing the right thing. Pelazi had spent hours checking into his background, had gone to the interview fully prepared with the facts. The case history had read like that of a million Vikes in the city, except — of course — that Brant was a success. Most Vikes lived from day to day, substituting the vague shadows of a drug-infested world for the real experience of living. The real experience. We know the bed, and even that we do not know too well. It is the only luxury we permit ourselves, that and our sterile legitimate stage. Luxury, hell! The bed is our opiate! But discounting Brant’s success, the picture was the same.
VAN BRANT, born John Albert Branoski, twenty-seven years old.
FATHER: tailor. Deceased.
MOTHER: housewife. Deceased.
BROTHERS: Arthur Branoski, fourteen years senior. Heroin addict before legalization of drugs. Died of tetanus, allegedly contracted from infected syringe, or bad shipment of drug.
HISTORY? Parents divorced when Brant was sixteen. At seventeen, Vike Movement attracted him. Left home shortly after father went off with another woman. (Was the old man a Ree? Pelazi wondered.) Mother died when Brant was eighteen; he had contributed to her support until then.
Began writing under the name Van Brant, finally changed it officially at age twenty. Free-lanced for two years longer, working mostly for the paperbacks, doing occasional stereoscopic stints. Started literary agency at age twenty-two. Drug-addict, of course. Morphine.
And Pelazi had known all this, had come to the man’s office prepared to show him the wisdom of quick capitulation. He had not known exactly how he would bring the surrender about. He could certainly not reveal his hand. The trial business, oh yes, but nothing more. But he’d been certain of success, certain he could sway the man, enlist his cooperation.
Instead, the man had stifled him completely. A man with nothing more than a grammar school education, Brant’s speech had been fluid and unhesitant. He knew the history of the Vike Movement the way he knew the back of his checkbook. He reeled it off, and there was no doubt that he believed every word he spouted.
And Pelazi had sat there... He could have said... He could have said...
The things one “could have said.” The countless self-kickings afterwards. Afterwards, when it’s too late. The brilliant repartee, the biting remark, the caustic comment, the telling point in a vacillating argument.
But there had been no argument. There had been only Brant the professor, and Pelazi the student. And why had he childishly insisted on calling the other man Branoski? It was too late now. The moment was gone, and with it the opportunity. Oh God, he thought. Couldn’t I have done the right thing? Wouldn’t it have been just as easy to have done the right thing? Or is it possible to discuss sanity with a madman? Can one discuss logic with someone who illogical? Could I have said, Branoski, Brant, this is all wrong. This is desperately wrong. Can’t you see, my friend? Can’t you see that this is all sham, that the way to fight life is not to escape it but to face it? Can’t you see that all this is temporary, that the ultimate disillusionment will be the shattering of your carefully constructed dream? And when that happens, then what? Who will pick up the shattered, scattered pieces of the dream?
Will it be your Vikes, my friend? No, because they are sick. Yes, Brant, they are terribly sick, and more sick because they do not even recognize the symptoms of their ailment. Who then? Will it be the Realists? Will it be they who gather up the broken shards? And here, here I would have clasped hands with the man, and our eyes would have spoken of the future — if only I had done it correctly.
No, Brant. Not the Realists. Because we, too, you see, are sick.
Chapter 10
“It’s so beautiful, Rog. All this color! Red, and gold, and brown, and orange. I’d almost forgotten what it could be like.”
“The dirge of the city dweller, Deb. Nature’s lost cousins.”
“What made you think of it? Have you been here before?”
“This spot? No, never. I just thought you’d appreciate a ride in the country. You can get sick of concrete and steel... and people.”
“Especially people. It’s wonderful, Rog. Not a soul for miles. Just trees and shrubs and bushes and rocks... and they don’t give a good goddamn.”
“This used to be a common thing, you know. I mean, long ago. People would pack up their families, and away we go. A few sandwiches, a jug of orangeade, the salt, the mustard. All set for a picnic.”
“That sounds Ree.”
“It is, I guess. Maybe they still do it.”
“Is this a picnic?”
“Except for the lack of food, yes.”
“Then I like picnics.”
“Good.”
“Is that wrong? Liking something that I know is Ree?”
“I can’t see any harm in it.”
“Then I like it; I like it very much. And I like you for thinking of it.”
“You seemed troubled, Deb. I thought...”
“What kind of a tree is this?”
“I don’t know. Maple, maybe. Yes, I think it’s maple.”
“It looks majestic. Aren’t oaks supposed to be majestic.”
“If you like.”
“Let’s call it an oak then. Maple sounds like a small street in a small town. Trees should either be majestic or pathetic, but they should never remind you of small towns.”
“Well, small towns can be pathetic, you know.”
“But never majestic. This is an oak.”
“All right, it’s an oak.”
“Am I crazy, Rog?”
“No.”
“Do normal people call maples oaks?”
“Normal people fool themselves in a lot of ways.”
“And am I fooling myself when I pretend this maple is an oak?”
“Yes, but it’s a mild deception. You see, you know it’s really a maple. If you were convinced it was an oak, something would be wrong.”
“Were you born in the country, Rog?”
“No, I’ve lived in the city all my life.”
“How do you know so much about trees?”
“Me? I don’t know a birch from an elm.”
“I don’t, either. Are you sure we’re not both crazy?”
“I’m sure.”
“Am I neurotic?”
“We all are.”
“But am I especially neurotic?”
“Do you think you are?”
“No. Well, maybe. I don’t know.”
“Tell me.”
“Oh, you’re turning into the professional man again. Here I was beginning to respect you as a man of the soil, and bingo! You’re a psych.”
“A psych without his couch. Good Lord, I’m lost.”
“Do you really want to psych me?”
“Hell, no; I want to enjoy Autumn.”