Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (2 page)

“What’s not right?” I tried.

“It’s not fair to Peter.”

Peter was her fiancé, or friend, or whatever. I had known him slightly for years, and he had always seemed likable enough, although a bit boring. But then, probably most people found
me
a bit boring. (I believe that as things turned out she married Peter in the end.)

“To be perfectly honest, I haven’t had a chance yet to work fairness to Peter into my moral calculations.”

This remark seemed to anger her. She stiffened.

“Well, I have, and if you were capable of taking me or anyone else seriously—”

“You’re absolutely right,” I interrupted. “I don’t know why I say these things. Embarrassment, probably. Shyness. It’s to conceal from myself and others the feelings and passions swelling up uncontrollably in the old breast.” Here I tapped my chest mildly with my forefinger. Anne looked at me oddly. “And moral scruples too. Almost ungovernable moral scruples. All hiding beneath the amiable exterior of a clown.” I gave her what I thought was a winning smile.

“The exterior,” she said a little nastily, “is entirely that of a banker. Which is what you are.”

“Not really—” I protested.

“Securities analyst. Whatever. The point is that you wear those nerdy pinstriped suits and old-fashioned shoes, and you’re always stammering and acting so earnest and pretending to strangers that you don’t ever quite know what’s going on. One look at you and anyone can tell you’ll turn out to be wearing boxer shorts. On the outside you’re fine. You seem like a perfectly pleasant, mild-mannered, ineffectual, nice person. It’s on the inside that you turn out not to be so nice at all. More the
interior
of a clown.” She turned and looked aggressively out the window at the dreariest landscape even New Jersey can offer.

“I wear these clothes in the hope that I’ll be mistaken for an investment banker, in fact. It’s considered a rather glamorous look in some sets. Actually, I’ve always worn these clothes. They’re comfortable, last forever, and no one but you has ever taken exception.”

“You should widen your circle of acquaintances. Anyway, you look more like the other kind of banker.” She pursed her lips, annoyed at having forgotten. “What you were telling me yesterday…
commercial…
You look like a commercial banker… Glass-Steagall Act…”

“That’s very good,” I said, in commendation. “And the year?”

“Nineteen thirty-three. Yes, you have more the aura of a commercial banker. Or maybe of someone from a savings and loan, giving out the toasters and electric blankets to old ladies to trick them into accepting unconscionably low interest—”

“Well, to me, you, on the other hand, look unspeakably beautiful.” She turned away again disdainfully, but no one has ever minded such a compliment. “Seriously,” I continued in an earnest tone, “you’ve got to be fair to yourself as well as to Peter.” This suggestion seemed to please her, although I had no idea what it might mean.

“The real issue is not just Peter,” she began discursively. “It’s building a relationship on trust—”

“Absolutely,” I agreed, pressing my advantage perhaps a bit too quickly. “What’s Peter up to these days, anyway? Isn’t he spending a lot of time with Betsy Austin or someone like that?”

“Probably. That would be just like Peter.” She paused sullenly and then added, “I’ve known Peter half my life. I’ve only known you for two weeks. I don’t really know you at all.”

More like one week, I thought. I said: “We’ve known each other for two years—”

“We never had so much as a conversation until—”

“And anyway,” I cut her off, “I’ve thought of nothing but you the entire time. I’m absolutely obsessed. Despite the fact that you are so unremittingly difficult and unreasonable.”

“Besides,” she said, apropos of nothing — unless in illustration of my last observation — “you’re not Jewish.”

“This is true,” I said slowly, having been caught off balance. Anne loved to attack suddenly from unexpected directions. “But not being Jewish,” I went on, “isn’t such a big handicap anymore. Naturally, you have trouble getting into the best schools, but nearly all the professions are open to genuinely qualified non-Jews now. And anyway, there
is
always commercial banking, which you seem to feel I—”

“You can make a joke of it if you like, but it’s important to me.”

“I absolutely don’t want to make a joke of it. I only want to understand why it’s important. I mean, you’re not a Baptist.”

“Are you a Baptist?” she asked with what appeared to be genuine distress. Presumably, if she was to consort with Gentiles she wanted them to be Episcopalians.

“No, but if I were, I wouldn’t care whether you were.”

“Well,” she said in a tone of cold moral superiority, “as it happens, I do care.”

A thought struck me.

“Peter’s not Jewish, is he?” I asked.

“That’s not the point,” she replied. The question had annoyed her. “And I don’t know why you keep harping on Peter. You seem to have some sort of fixation on him.”

She twisted in her seat so that her blouse pulled taut over her breasts, and she looked across at me disdainfully. I looked at her with admiration. Her versatility and total lack of principle in these discussions always dazzled me.

“I do have a fixation, but I can assure you that it’s entirely on you and—”

“And another thing. It’s rude to stare like that at people’s breasts.”

“Is it? I mean, is it that obvious that I’m staring? … Isn’t it flattering anyway?”

“One might like to be stared at for something a little more meaningful than one’s breasts. And anyhow it makes people uncomfortable.” As she said this, she half yawned and stretched languidly, lifting her arms and arching her shoulders back so that her breasts were thrust forward and flattened under her blouse; the nipples stood out in agonizing relief.

“Well, it’s hard to stare at your spiritual qualities, marvelous though they are. Your breasts, as a matter of fact, represent to me the exquisite visible manifestation of those qualities which—”

“Do shove it, Nick,” she said more amiably. Her eyes became more alert, and she added, “Tell me about today.”

“Yes, today,” I said cheerfully, misunderstanding her question. “I thought today we might rent a car in Princeton, put in a quick, token appearance at MicroMagnetics, and then drive up to Basking Ridge. Some friends of mine have gone off to Europe for the year and left me the use of a beautiful place there. If the weather holds, we might hope to put together a virtually perfect spring day for ourselves. And even if it doesn’t—”

“I’m looking forward to this MicroMagnetics thing. It should be more interesting than the usual.”

MicroMagnetics, Inc., as far as I had been able to determine in my rather perfunctory investigations, was a small corporation outside Princeton which performed research on the magnetic containment of nuclear fusion. Its principal asset consisted in the services of its founder and president, one Professor Bernard Wachs, whose imposing reputation for original work in particle physics had enabled him to obtain many millions of dollars of government grants. The only apparent activity of MicroMagnetics to date had been the spending of this money in rather short order, and from my point of view, its first real contribution to humanity was to provide me with an occasion to entice Anne out into the countryside. For MicroMagnetics, Inc., had the week before distributed to a largely indifferent world, press releases proclaiming the discovery or invention of the “
EMF
,” a new type of magnetic field which was to normal everyday magnetic fields as the laser was to normal everyday light waves. It was — depending on the ultimate value of the
EMF
— either a failing or a virtue of the press release that it lacked any information more concrete than this loose analogy or any indication of whether the
EMF
would be of use for fusion containment or for anything else. It was, “Scientists in Princeton, New Jersey, announced today a revolutionary advance…” It was also characterized as a “major discovery” and a “watershed.” Now, many if not all scientists think of their work in these terms, and I was entirely unmoved. But there was to be a press conference and a demonstration of some sort, so I convinced Anne that it was a story she really had to cover and told my office I would be out of town the entire day.

It occurs to me that I should explain what I do. Or did. A securities analyst looks at a business and what it owns and does and what the competition does and at any peculiarities of the stocks or bonds which the business sells to raise money; from all this he tries to determine at what price people ought to buy or sell those stocks or bonds. The abstract argument in favor of this occupation is that it helps allocate resources more efficiently to produce whatever it is that individual people most want. The argument against it, as best I can make it out — Anne would be able to present it more compellingly — is that capitalism is boring and evil, and anyone who makes it function better is himself boring and evil. As a matter of fact, I often found my work a bit boring — although I never found any sign of its being evil. I won’t impose upon you further by explaining the different types of jobs a securities analyst can do, but I should explain that my particular job was very slightly above average in pay and below average in glamour, had relatively reasonable hours, and required no selling. As long as I satisfied my partners, I remained virtually independent, and as much as 20 percent of the time I enjoyed my work quite a lot — which is a good average for any type of work I have ever heard of.

As it happened, I had a particular responsibility for covering the energy industry, which at the time was a good thing because there had been several years of real turmoil in energy, with great quantities of money to be made and lost, so that my work and opinion were in constant demand. As a sort of frivolous sideline I also followed what was known as “alternative energy,” which was even more trendy. This used up very little time, since there was very little in the way of actual securities worth analyzing. Every few weeks someone would announce a scheme to turn water into hydrogen or float icebergs to Kansas with dirigibles or use sunlight to make water run uphill. On the rare occasions when one of these things made scientific sense, you could usually, using even the most optimistic assumptions, easily run the numbers and determine that it didn’t make economic sense. As the whole thing was so fashionable at the time, I would get a lot of attention and phone calls soliciting my expert opinion. And then there was always the remote but tantalizing hope that one of these things would figure, in which case you might do very well for yourself.

Certainly I entertained no particular hopes for MicroMagnetics that day. My hopes revolved around getting Anne off as quickly as possible to some pleasant lunch with the best wine my partners could afford and after that making love to her in Basking Ridge in a room looking out on pastures and streams. When I had first formulated this plan I was not certain that I would ever make love to Anne, but now, after last night, I thought that I might reasonably expect to enjoy the best day of this — or perhaps any— spring.

“What,” I asked, genuinely puzzled, “makes you think Micro-Magnetics will be so interesting?”

“Well, for one thing, you told me it would be.”

“Yes, I suppose I did. And I’m sure it will be. But mainly I said that to entice you out into the countryside.” She turned impassively and looked out the window, past which flowed the panorama of decaying industrial buildings that line the railroad tracks from one end of New Jersey to the other, relieved only by occasional clusters of refining equipment painted in cheerful colors. “The main thing really was to get you outdoors, to smell the spring earth, taste the Arcadian delights of New Jersey. To ravish you.”

As if I had not spoken, she continued, “And anyway, it has a political dimension for once.”

I was genuinely pleased for Anne that the MicroMagnetics dog and pony show might have a political dimension, but puzzled as to what it might be.

“You mean as an alternative source of energy,” I tried. “Liberation from dependence on fossil fuels and so on. When you come to think about it, it probably does have political ramifications… Ecological benefits and so forth…” I added as a vague afterthought.

“It’s not alternate energy at all,” she said with irritation. “It’s nuclear.”

“Nuclear” — as opposed to “alternate” — was bad. I knew that much about politics.

“Actually, I don’t think it is ‘nuclear’ in the sense you mean: it wouldn’t have anything to do with nuclear
fission
anyway. All the research these people have done is related to magnetic containment of
fusion,
which has none of the pollution or other nasty properties your environmental friends object to. In fact it’s the ideal energy source from your point of view: for one thing, no one seems to be able to make it work… Although now that you raise the issue, I don’t think there was any actual mention of fusion in the press release… Anyway, I assume it is just another little twist in the magnetic bottle, and you surely wouldn’t have any objection to—”

“It’s all nuclear,” she said very definitely. “It is a crime against the earth and against future generations. If we had a government concerned with meeting the real needs of the people instead of just helping the rich grow richer, we would be generating power directly from sunlight, instead of poisoning ourselves. The technology exists today.”

Her eyes narrowed, and her exquisite mouth set firmly, conveying moral rectitude. I seemed to have annoyed her. Best to keep the discussion on a technical level.

“Although,” I said, “with the technology that exists today, you would be paying somewhere between fifty cents and a dollar per kilowatt hour as opposed to six to twelve cents for conventionally generated power. Unless you’re counting amorphous silicon as ‘technology that exists today,’ in which case you would want to see cells with a conversion efficiency of at least seven percent in actual production—”

“If these things aren’t ‘in actual production’ with a ‘conversion efficiency’ that suits you,” she interrupted sarcastically, “it’s small wonder, with a government that does nothing but sit by and let big corporations make these decisions by default.”