The Anatomy Lesson (26 page)

“
No, sir.
”

“
Take a guess.
”

“
Better if I concentrate on my driving, sir. Heavy traffic.
”

“
Twenty percent. Tops. Eighty percent watch. Like television. Spectator stuff. But it
’
s not like Hefner
’
s mansion and the champagne parties for his entourage. I see him and Barbi on television and I want to throw up. I provide a service for the common man, I give entertainment, information—I legitimize feelings in people as real as anybody else. They need it dirty to get turned on? So what? They
’
re still human beings, you know, and there are millions of them out there. Ail the men
’
s magazines taken together have thirty million readers. That
’
s more pe
ople
than voted for McGove
rn
. If the men
’
s magazines had got together and held a convention and put up a candidate, he would have beaten George McGove
rn
. That
’
s more men buying magazines to jerk off with than there are people living in Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, and Norway combined. Still, the analyst tells me that all I
’
ve done is institutionalized my neurosis. So did Napoleon, So did Sigmund Freud! This is the problem with analysis for me. Sure I want to be a better father. I have to deal with a seven-year-old son who is very bright, very precious to me. and very difficult. He
’
s a ball-breaking, bright kid, who
’
s constantly interrogating everything
I
do. Do I give my little Nathan values where he
’
s to challenge authority or to accept authority? I don
’
t have a glimmer. I don
’
t like the job of forbidding something
’
—it
’
s not my way. But here I am, grossing seven million a year, the most wanted terrorist of the sexual revolution, and I don
’
t have a fucking glimmer what to teach him. I want to learn to share with him. I want him to feel my strength and who I am, and to enjoy him. I
’
m concerned about Nathan. In some ways people are going to treat him badly because of me. But must I change my entire life for him? Right now he
’
s only seven and he doesn
’
t quite know who I am. He knows that sometimes people ask me for my autograph, but he doesn
’
t know what the business is.
I
tell him I make movies and
I
own a nightclub and I publish a magazine. He once wanted to look at
Lickety Split.
I tell him.
‘
It
’
s not for you, it
’
s for grown-ups.
’
He says,
‘
Well, what
’
s in it?
’
I say,
‘
People making love.
’
He says,
‘
Oh.
’
‘
What do you think making love is?
’
I ask him. So he says,
‘
How should I know?
’
—very indignant. But when he knows, it
’
s going to be difficult for him. When I pick him up at school, the twelve-year-olds know who I am—and I
’
m concerned about that. But analysis is complicated for someone like me. I
’
ve gotten such payoffs from being repulsive. I hear the analyst talking about monogamy and making a commitment to marriage, and these ideas are sort of goofy to me. That
’
s what he holds up to me as health. I don
’
t know—am I defending a stupid entrenched neurosis, or am I paying a hundred dollars an hour to get myself brainwashed by a professional bourgeois? I have a lot of girl friends. I
’
m supposed to get rid of them. I do group sex. I
’
m supposed to cut it out. I get blow jobs from my receptionist. I
’
m supposed to stop. My wife is sort of tuned-out—she
’
s detached and innocent and good, and she doesn
’
t know. People can
’
t believe she doesn
’
t know, but that
’
s the kind
of woman she is, and I
’
m careful. So there
’
s
The Milton Appel Story:
the most notorious po
rn
ographer in America, and
I
l
ive the dishonest life of most Americans about my sexuality. Ridiculous. The wildest antisocial desperado of them all, the embodiment of crudity, the Castro of cock, the personification of orgasmic mania, commander in chief of the American Democracy—
”

He couldn
”
t have stopped if he
’
d wanted to.
Let him speak.

> 5 <

He
had registered as a man grossing seven million a year. He remembered, some time earlier, trying a sentimental walk around the Loop as himself. When that didn
’
t work he got back in the car, and they drove on to the Ambassador East. They drank in the bar. As best he remembered, he
’
d brought tremendous pressure on her to come back with him to New York to drive his Rolls. When men like that want something, they don
’
t stop till they get it. He
’
d offered an enormous future as chauffeur to Milton Appel. She laughed, a good-natured girl of twenty-seven, only a few years out of rural Minnesota, cheery, polite, not at all so simple as she
’
d first sounded, with remarkable turquoise eyes and a blond braid and the chunky arms of a healthy child, She laughed and said no, but he wouldn
’
t let up. The well-known pornographical paradox: one has to esteem innocence highly to enjoy its violation. He was taking her to the Pump Room, he told her, to negotiate further over dinner, but when he came up to his room to wash and to change, he
’
d dropped onto the bed to assuage the flesh, and now it was a dim winter morning.

Back in 1949, when the dangers of night stalking were still all metaphorical, he
’
d circle the Loop three and four times after dark. Starting at Orchestra Hall, where the unmusical boy raised on
“
Make-Believe Ballroom
”
and
“
Your Hit Parade
”
had first heard Beethoven
’
s Fifth, he would cut across to LaSalle (seething with hatred for the Stock Exchange) and on up to Randolph and the garish downtown that rem
inded him always of home, of
Market Street back in Newark, of the chop-suey joints and cheap specialty shops, the saloon grills, the shoe stores, the penny arcades, alt battened down beneath rooftop billboards and fastened in by the movie palaces. At State and Lake he
’
d pass under the El and, resting against a pillar, wait for the thrill of the first vibrations. That he who had been born in New Jersey should hear an elevated train pounding overhead in Illinois seemed to him as dark and exalting as any of the impenetrable mysteries tormenting Eugene Grant in
Of Time and the River. If this can happen, anything can happen.
Meaning by
“
anything
”
nothing at all like the pain in the neck that in 1973 forced him back to the limousine after just a few blocks, and on to the hotel where he
’
d slept for ten hours in his clothes.

He
’
d dreamed all night. There was a nude woman. She was short and firm, her face obscure, her age indecipherable except for the youthful breasts, grotesquely high and spherical and hard. She was posing on a platform for an art class. It was his mother. Drenched in yearning, he dreamed again. She flew into his room, this time clearly his mother and no one else—only she flew in as a dove, a white dove with a large round white disc, toothed like a circular saw, whirling between her wings to keep her aloft.
“
Strife,
”
she said, and flew out through an open window. He called after her from where he was pinned to his bed. Never had he felt so wretched. He was six and calling,
“
Mama, i didn
’
t mean it, please come back.
”

She
’
s with me here.
At 3 a.m., in the Ambassador East, where he was doubly disguised—falsely registered under his worst enemy
’
s name, and passing himself off as a social menace—his mother
’
s ghost had tracked him down. He wasn
’
t being poetic or mad. Some power of his mother
’
s spirit had survived her body. Always he had tended to think rationally, as a rationalist, that life ends with the death of the human body. But at three that night, wide awake in the dark, he understood that this is not so. It ends and it doesn
’
t. There is some spiritual power, some mental power, that lives after the body is dead, and that clings to those who think about the dead one, and my mother has revealed hers here in Chicago. People would say this is only more subjectivity. I would have said so myself. But subjectivity is a mystery too. Do birds have subjectivity? Subjectivity is just the name for the route she takes to reach me. It
’
s not that I want to have this contact or that she wants to have this contact, and it
’
s not that the contact will continue forever.
It is also dying tike the body
is dying, this remnant of her spirit is dying too, but it
’
s not quite gone yet. It
’
s in this room. It
’
s beside this bed.

“
Close,
”
he said to her, very softly,
“
,.. but not too close.
”

When she was alive she didn
’
t want to risk antagonizing me. She wanted me to
l
ove her. She didn
’
t want to lose my love and would never be critical or argue. Now she doesn
’
t care if I love her or not. She doesn
’
t need love, she doesn
’
t need support, she is beyond all these encumbrances. All that is left is the wound I inflicted. And it was a terrible wound.
“
You were intelligent enough to know that literature is literature, but still, there were things that were real that Nathan had used, and you loved Nathan more than anything else in the world…
”

He didn
’
t know if the sound of her voice would be wonderful or terrifying. He didn
’
t find out. He waited for what she would say, but she wasn
’
t speaking: simply purely present.

“
Mother, what do you want?
”

But she was dead. She wanted nothing.

He awakened in a large penthouse suite looking out over the lake. Before even removing his clothes to shower, he called Bobby
’
s house. But by eight Bobby
’
s hospital day had already begun. Eight to eight, thought Zuckerman, and at night the emergency calls.

Mr. Freytag answered the phone. The old man was vacuuming carpets and had to turn off the machine in order to hear him. He said that Bobby was gone.

“
The mornings aren
’
t good.
”
he told Zuckerman.
“
I cleaned out the oven, I defrosted the freezer—but my Julie. I want her back. Is that wrong, is that only selfish, to want my Julie back for myself?
”

“
No, it isn
’
t.
”

“
I
’
ve been up since five. Gregory never came home. I don
’
t understand how Bobby accepts it. He hasn
’
t even called to tell his father where he is. It
’
s morning. It
’
s starting to snow. We
’
re going to have that storm, and big. Everybody in the world knows. The
‘
Today Show
’
says so. The papers say so. Only Gregory hasn
’
t heard. I
’
m supposed to go out this morning before it really starts up, but where is Gregory?
”
He was beginning to sob.
“
To snow—to snow so soon. Zuck. I can
’
t stand it. Two feet of snow.
”

“
Suppose
I
take you. Suppose we go out in a taxi together.
”

“
I
’
ve got my car, it runs beautiful—only Bobby would be furious if I went alone, especially
in this weather. How she loved
to look out the window when it snowed. Like a little girl, whenever she saw the first snow.
”

“
I
’
ll take you in your car.
”

“
Out of the question. You have a life to live. I wouldn
’
t hear of it.
”

“
I
’
ll be by at ten.
”

“
But if Gregory comes back—
”

“
If he
’
s back, go. If no one
’
s home, I
’
ll understand that you went with him.
”

Under the shower he tested his torso. Nothing encouraging there. The change was that for a second consecutive day it would be him taking charge, not the pain. The best adaptation to make to pain is to make no adaptation. A year and a half to learn but now he knew. First, he would take Mr. Freytag to visit the grave before the snow buried his wife for a second time. His own son was busy, his grandson still missing, but Zuckerman was free and fit enough. To so easily answer a father
’
s need! It was a job for which he
’
d received an excellen
t
education—for which he
’
d displayed prodigious talent even as a very small boy. Only when he was fully grown did the task for which his other talents equipped him keep getting in the way. How he went about
that
estranged him from father, mother, brother, and then from three wives—rooted more in the writing than in them, the sacrificial relationship with the books and not with the people who
’
d helped to inspire them. As the years passed, along with the charge of being out of reach, there were sexual complaints from the wives. Then the pain, so persistent as to estrange him even from the writing. On the playmat every other predicament, large or small, was inconceivable: no character imaginable other than the one in pain. What prevents my recovery, what I do or what I don
’
t do? What does this illness want with me anyway? Or is il I who want something from it? The interrogation had no useful purpose, yet the sole motif of his existence was this hourly search for the missing meaning. Had he kept a pain diary, the only entry would have been one word: Myself.

Back when he
’
d still been hunting for a hidden cause, he
’
d even come to wonder if the aim of the affliction mightn
’
t be to provide a fresh subject, the anatomy
’
s gift to the vanishing muse. Some gift. To pay not only a patient
’
s fixated attention to a mystifying infirmity hut an obsessional writer
’
s as well! God only knew what his body would come up with, if physical suffering turned out to be good for his work.

No, divorce number four from the flesh and its incessant wailing. Once and for all to dissolve that misalliance and resume life as your own man. First, out to the cemetery as a stand-in son, then lunch with Bobby and, if he
’
ll arrange it (and he will, if at lunch I insist), fifteen minutes with the medical-school dean. Didn
’
t Bobby see how the dean could make a big thing out of this?
“
We believe in diversity in this medical school. We brought in this writer, and we put him here with these other students, and it
’
s going to be a new and broadening experience for him, it
’
s going to be a new and broadening experience for all of us. We are all going to benefit by this ingenious alchemy that I, Or. Innovative, have wrought.
”
Why the he
l
l not? At least let me have my crack at him. And after lunch, the registrar, to sign on for the first quarter back in the college. By nightfall his career as a writer would be officially over and the future as a physician underway. As of yesterday, he
’
d officially signed off as a patient. This was as far as he
’
d be pushed by mindless matter. Now for the spirit to speak out. I have longings and they must be met.

He washed down a Percodan with a mouthful of vodka and from a phone beside the toilet rang for coffee to be sent up while he shaved. He
’
d have to watch the booze and the pills. And enough of Milton Appel. Ail that raw force pouring out over his life. More squeezed out of him in that limousine than in the last four years at his desk. He
’
d felt like some enormous tube of linguistic paste. Diatribe, alibi, anecdote, confession, expostulation, promotion, pedagogy, philosophy, assault, apologia, denunciation, a foaming confluence of passion and language, and all for an audience of one. Into his parched-out desert, that oasis of words! The more energy he spends, the more he gains. They are hypnotic, these talking nuts. They go all the way out, and not just on paper. They say it all. His humanity. His depravity. His ideals. Is this guy a charlatan? Zuckerman wondered. Doesn
’
t seem to know himself, doesn
’
t know whether to make himself sound worse than he is or better. Though had he really said much that we haven
’
t already heard in
Mrs
.
Warren
’
s Profession?
The language may have ripened since Shaw, but nothing much had happened to the wisdom: the madam is more moral than the sick and hypocritical society. It was still Sade, and not the publisher of
Licke
t
y Split,
who could carry that argument to the bottom of the bottom and dispense with every moral pretext—no other claim than that pleasure justifies everything. Perhaps it was only the wife and the analyst and the kid—a
nd you make his life
much easier by giving him a son instead of a daughter—but he still couldn
’
t get himself to go that far. Of course, he was a Jew, and anti-Semitically speaking, if a Jew wants to make money running a brothel, hell
,
make it sound like an adult day-care center. Philo-Semitically speaking, what poor Ricky had endured in that bar was a saint in the line of the great healer Jews going back to Freud and his circle: crusading, do-gooding Dr. Appel, easing suffering mankind out of its psychic tensions. The noble cause of Milton
’
s Millennia. Not a fistfight there in eighteen months—if the place catches on like McDonald
’
s, it might mean the end of the war. Yet, the moral stubbornness, the passionate otherness—maybe he is what makes one secretly proudest of being a Jew after all. The more he sits with me, the more I find to like.