Mockingbird. Part 10

I remember getting drunk on mescaline and gin at the party where the award was given and trying to explain to a bare-breasted actress who sat on a sofa next to me that the only standards of the television industry were monetary, that there was no real motive in television beyond the making of money. She smiled at me all the time I talked, and occasionally ran her fingertips lightly across her nipples. And when I had finished she said, "But money is fulfillment too."

I got her drunk and took her to a motel.

Writing a book, I feel as a Talmudic scholar or an Egyptologist might have felt at Disneyland in the twentieth century. Except, I suppose, I do not really have to wonder if there is anyone who wants to hear what I have to say; I know there is no bne. I can only wonder how many people are left alive who can read. Possibly a few thousand. A friend of mine who works part time as the head of a publishing house says the average book finds about eighty readers. I've asked him why they don't stop publishing altogether. He says he frankly doesn't know, but that his publishing company is such a tiny division of the recreation corporation that owns it that they have probably forgotten about its existence. He doesn't know how to read himself; but he respects books because his mother had been a kind of recluse who read almost constantly, and he had loved her deeply. He is, by the way, one of the few people I know who were brought up in a family. Most of my friends have come out of the dormitories. I was reared in a kibbutz, out in Nebraska. But then I'm Jewish, and that, too, is a pretty rare thing these days: to be Jewish and to know it. I was one of the last members of the kibbutz; it was converted into a state-operated Thinker Dormitory when I was in my twenties.

I was born in 2137. . .

Reading that date I was immediately curious about how long ago Alfred Fain had lived, and I asked Bob. He said, "About two hundred years."

Then I said, "Is there a date now? Does this year have a number?"

He looked at me coldly. "No," he said. "There is no date."

I would like to know the date. I would like for my child to have a birth date.

Bentley DAY NINETY-FIVE.

I am not so tired now. The work is getting easier to do, and I feel stronger.

I am sleeping better at nights, now that I have decided to take my sopors. And the food is pa.s.sable now and I eat a great deal. More than I have ever eaten before in my life.

I do not exactly like the effect of sopors anymore; but they are necessary if I am to sleep properly. They stop some of the pain of my thoughts.

Today I tripped and fell between the rows of plants, and another prisoner who was nearby ran over and helped me up. He was a tall, gray-haired man whom I had noticed before because of the way he whistles at times.

He helped me brush myself off and then looked at me closely and said, "You all right, buddy?"

All of this was terribly intimate-almost obscene-but I did not mind, really. "Yes," I said. "I'm all right." And then one of the robots shouted, "No talking. Invasion of Privacy!" and the man looked at me, grinned broadly, and shrugged. We both went back to work. But as he walked away I heard him mutter, "Stupid G.o.dd.a.m.n robots!" and I was shocked at the strength of unashamed feeling in his voice.

I have seen other prisoners whispering together in the rows. It is often several minutes before a robot notices and stops them.

The robots walk between the rows with us; but they stop before going close to the low cliff at the end of the field. Perhaps they are programmed that way so they will not fall-or be pushed-over the cliff. Anyway they are far enough back by the time I arrive at the seaward end of the row so that there is a short time when they cannot see me, because of a dip in the ground before it comes to the edge of the cliff.

I have learned to speed up, doing two squirts of the gun to each beat of music, toward the end of each row. This gives me time to stand at the edge of the ocean for sixteen beats-and I am thankful I learned to determine this from Arithmetic jor Boys and Girls. I stand and look out over the ocean. It is wonderful to look at- broad and huge and serene. Something deep in my self seems to respond to it, with a feeling I cannot name. But I am learning again to welcome strange feelings. Sometimes there are birds over the ocean, their curved wings outspread, sailing in the air in smooth broad arcs, above my world of men and machines, inscrutable, and breathtaking to see. Looking at them I say sometimes to myself a word I learned from a film: "Splendid!"

I said I am learning to welcome strange feelings, and this is true. How different I now seem from what I was, far less than a yellow ago, when I first began to feel those feelings while watching silent films at my bed-and-desk. I know that I am being disobedient to all that I was taught about feelings toward things outside myself when I was a child, but I do not care. In fact, I enjoy doing what was forbidden once.

I have nothing to lose.

I think the ocean means most to me on rain days, when the water and sky are gray. There is a sandy beach below the cliff; its tan color looks beautiful against the gray water. And the white birds in the gray sky! My heart beats noticeably when I even imagine it, here in my cell. And it is sad, like the horse with the hat on its head in the old film, like King Kong falling-so slowly, so softly, so far-and like the words that I now say aloud: "Only the mockingbird sings at the edge of the woods." Like remembering Mary Lou, cross-legged on the floor, her eyes on her book.

Sadness. Sadness. But I will embrace the sadness, and make it a part of this life that I am memorizing.

I have nothing to lose.

DAY NINETY-SEVEN.

An astonishing thing happened today, out in the field.

I had been working for about two hours; it was nearly time for the second break. I heard a rustling sound behind me where the robot overseer normally stood and I looked around and there the robot was, staggering jerkily in the row. Just as I looked his heavy foot came down on a Protein 4 plant. The plant split open with a disgusting noise and covered his foot with purple juice.

The robot's mouth was grimly set and his eyes stared upward. He staggered for a few more moments, stepped on another plant, and then stood completely still for a moment, as if dormant. Then he fell flat to the ground like a dead weight. The other robot walked over to him, looked down at his inert body, and said, "Rise." But the other did not move. The standing robot bent down and picked up the fallen one and began to carry him back toward the prison buildings.

A minute, later I heard a loud voice in the field shout, "Malfunction, boys!" There were the sounds of running. I looked in astonishment and saw a group of blue-uniformed prisoners running between the rows and then, suddenly, there was an arm around my shoulder-a thing that had never happened before in my life: a stranger putting an arm around my shoulder!-and it was the man with gray hair and he was saying, "Come on, buddy! To the beach," and I found myself running, following him. And I was feeling frightened. Frightened but good.

There was a place where the cliff was low and there was a cleft in the rock where you could climb down worn old steps, themselves made of rock. As I was going down with the others, astonished at the back-slapping and friendly shouting among them- a thing I had never seen even as a child-I noticed a strange thing on one of the cliff rocks beside the stairs. There was writing, in faded white paint. It said: "John loves Julie. Cla.s.s of '94."

Everything was so strange that I felt almost hypnotized by it. Men were saying things to one another and laughing, just as in pirate films. Or, for that matter, in some prison films. But seeing it in a film and then actually seeing it happen are two very different things.

And yet, thinking about it now in my cell, I can see that I was not as upset as I might have been, possibly because I had seen such intimacy in the films.

Some of the men gathered together pieces of driftwood and built a fire on the beach. I had never seen an open fire before and I liked it. Then some of the men actually took off their clothes, ran laughing down the beach and into the water. Some splashed and played in the shallow waters; others went out deeper and began to swim, just as though they were in a Health and Fitness pool. I noticed that they stayed in little groups, both those who were playing and those swimming, and they seemed to want it that way.

The rest of us sat in a circle around the fire. The gray-haired man pulled a joint from his shut pocket and took a twig from the fire and lit it. He seemed to be accustomed to fires-in fact, all of them seemed to have done this many times before.

One man, smiling, said to the man next to nun, "Charlie, how long since the last malfunction?" and Charlie said, "It's been a while. We were overdue." And the other laughed and said, "Yeah!"

The gray-haired man came over and sat by me. He offered me the joint but I shook my head, so he shrugged and gave it to the man on the other side of me. Then he said, "We've got at least an hour. Repair on robots is slow here."

"Where are we?" I asked.

"I'm not sure," he said. "Everybody gets knocked out in court and they don't wake him up till he gets here. But one guy told me once he thought it was North Carolina." He spoke to the man who had taken the joint. The man was pa.s.sing it to the next man. "Is that right, Foreman? North Carolina?"

Foreman turned around. "I heard South," he said, "South Carolina."

"Well, somewhere in there," the gray-haired man said.

For a while we were all silent around the fire, watching its flames in the afternoon air, listening to the sound of the surf against the beach and hearing the occasional cry of a gull overhead. Then one of the older men spoke to me. "What they put you in for? Kill somebody?"

I was embarra.s.sed and didn't know what to say. He would not have understood about reading. "I was living with someone," I said finally. "A woman . . ."

The man's face brightened for a moment and then almost immediately went sad. "I lived with a woman once. For over a blue."

"Oh?" I said.

"Yeah. A blue and a yellow. At least. That isn't what they put me here for, though. s.h.i.t, I'm a thief is why. But I sure do remember . . ." He was wrinkled and thin and bent; there were only a few hairs on his head, and his hands shook as he took the joint and inhaled from it and then pa.s.sed it to the younger man next to him.

"Women," the gray-haired man beside me said, breaking the silence.

Something about that one word seemed to open up the older man. "I used to fix coffee for her," he said, "and we'd drink it in bed. Real coffee with real milk in it, and sometimes when I could find it a piece of fruit. An orange, maybe. She'd drink that coffee out of a gray mug and I'd just sit at the other end of the bed facing her and pretend to be thinking about my own coffee but what I was really doing was watching her. G.o.d, I could watch that woman." He shook his head.

I could feel his sadness. There were goose b.u.mps on my arms and legs from hearing him talk like that. I had never heard another person speak for me like that before. He had said what I felt and, sad as I was, there was relief for me in it.

Someone else said softly, "What become of her?"

For a while the old man didn't answer. Then he said, "Don't know. One day I come home from the mill and she wasn't there. Never saw her again."

There was silence for a moment and then one of the younger prisoners spoke up. He was trying, I suppose, to be helpful. "Well, quick s.e.x is best," he said philosophically.

The old man turned his head slowly and stared at the man who had just spoken. And then he said to him, strongly and evenly, "f.u.c.k that. You can just f.u.c.k that."

The younger man looked fl.u.s.tered, and turned his face away. "I didn't mean. . ."

"f.u.c.k it," the old man said. "f.u.c.k your quick s.e.x. I know what my life's been like." Then he turned toward the ocean again and said softly, repeating himself, "I know what my life's been like."

Hearing this and seeing the way the old man looked toward the ocean with his thin shoulders squared under his faded blue prison shirt and the breeze blowing the few wisps of hair on his old, tight-skinned head, I felt such sadness that it was beyond tears. And I was thinking of Mary Lou and of the way she had looked, in the mornings sometimes, drinking tea. Or of her hand on the back of my neck and the way that, sometimes, she would stare at me and stare, and then smile. . .

I must have sat there thinking these things about Mary Lou and feeling my own grief for a long while, looking out toward the ocean, past the old man. And then I heard the gray-haired man next to me say softly, "You wanta swim?" I looked up at him, startled, and said, "No," perhaps too quickly. But the thought of getting naked with all those strangers had brought me back to the present with a start.

Yet I love to swim.

In the Thinker Dormitories, each child has the pool to himself for ten minutes. Dormitories are very strict about Individualism.

I was thinking about this when the gray-haired man suddenly said, "My name's Belasco."

I looked down at the sand at my feet. "h.e.l.lo," I said.

And then, a moment later, he said, "What's your name, buddy?"

"Oh," I said, still looking at the sand. "Bentley." And I felt his hand on my shoulder and looked up, startled, at his face. He was grinning at me. "Good to know you, Bentley," he said.

After a while I got up and walked down to the water's edge but away from the swimmers. I know that I have changed much since I left Ohio; but all that intimacy and feeling were more than I could stand at once. And I wanted to be alone with my thoughts of Mary Lou.

At the water's edge I found a hermit crab, in a small, curled whelk sh.e.l.l. I knew it was a hermit crab from a picture in a book Mary Lou had found: Seash.o.r.e Creatures of North America.

There was a strong, briny, clean smell along the edge of the water, and the waves, gently rolling in along the wet sands, made a sound like I had never heard before. I stood there in the sun watching, and smelling the smell, and listening to the water-sound, until Belasco's voice called me back. "Time to go, Bentley. They'll have him fixed before long."

We all climbed silently up the stairs and went back to our positions in the field and waited.

After a while the robots came back. They did not notice that we had made no progress in their absence. Stupid robots.

I bent to work, in time to music.

When I got to the seaward end of the row, I looked down at the beach. Our fire was still burning.

I realize that I have just written "our fire." How strange, that I should think of it as belonging to all of us-to us as a group!

As we were going back to the fields from the beach I walked beside the white-haired old man. I wanted, for a moment, to say something kind to him, to thank him for making my own sadness more bearable, or, even, to put my arm around his frail-looking old shoulders. But I did none of these. I do not know how to do such things. I wish I knew how; I sincerely wish it. But I do not.

DAY NINETY-NINE.

Alone in my cell at night I think a great deal. I think sometimes of the things I have read in books, or about my boyhood, or about my three blues as a professor in Ohio. Sometimes I think about that time when I first learned to read, over two yellows ago, when I found the box with the film and the flash cards and the little books with pictures. The words on the box said: "Beginning Readers' Kit. They were the first printed words I had ever seen, and of course I could not read them. Whatever gave me the patience to persist until I learned to read words from a book?

If I had not learned to read in Ohio and then come to New York to try to become a professor of reading, I would not be in prison now. And I would not have met Mary Lou. I would not be filled with this sadness.

I think of her more than I think of any other thing. I see her, trying not to look frightened, as Spofforth took her out the door of my room at the library. That was the last time I saw her. I do not know where Spofforth took her, or what has become of her. She is probably in a prison for women, but I'm not certain of that.

I tried to get Spofforth to tell me what would become of her, while we were riding in the thought bus to my hearing; but he would not answer me.

I have tried to draw a picture of her face on my sheets of drawing paper, using colored crayons. But it is no good; I was never able to draw.

Yellows and blues ago there was a boy in my dormitory who could draw beautifully. One time he put some of his drawings on my desk in a cla.s.sroom and I looked at them with awe. There were pictures of birds and of cows and of people and trees and of the robot who monitored the hall outside the cla.s.sroom. They were remarkable pictures, with clear lines and with amazing accuracy.

I did not know what to do with the pictures. Taking or giving private things to others was a terrible thing to do and could cause high punishment. So I left them on my desk and the next day they were gone. And a few days after that the boy who drew them was also gone. I do not know what became of him. n.o.body spoke of him.

Will it be the same with Mary Lou? Is it all over, and will there be no mention of her in the world again?

Tonight I have taken four sopors. I do not want to remember so much.

DAY ONE HUNDRED FOUR.

After supper this evening Belasco came to my cell! And he had a small gray-and-white animal under his arm.

I was sitting in my chair, thinking about Mary Lou and remembering the sound of her voice when she read aloud, when suddenly I saw my door come open. And there Belasco stood, grinning at me, with that animal under his arm.

"How. . . ?" I said.

He held a finger to his lips and then said softly, "None of the doors are locked tonight, Bentley. You might call it another malfunction." He pushed the door shut and then set the animal on the floor. It sat and looked at me with a kind of bored curiosity; then it began scratching its ear with a hind foot. It was something like a dog, but smaller.

"The doors are locked at night by a computer; but sometimes the computer forgets to lock them."

"Oh," I said, still watching the little animal. Then I said, "What is it?"

"What is what?" Belasco said.

"The animal."

He stared at me with great surprise. "You don't know what a cat is, Bentley?"

"I never saw one before."

He shook his head. Then he reached down and stroked the animal a few times. "This is a cat. It's a pet."

"A pet?" I said.

Belasco shook his head, grinning. "Boy! You don't know anything they don't each in school, do you? A pet is an amimal you keep for yourself. It's a Mend."

Of course, I thought. Like Roberto and Consuela and their dog Biff, in the book I had learned to read from. Biff was the pet of Roberto and Consuela. And the book had said, "Roberto is Consuela's friend," and that was what a friend was. Somebody you were with more than a person should be with anyone else. Apparently an animal could be a friend, too.

I wanted to bend down and touch the cat, but I was afraid to. "Does it have a name?"

"No," Belasco said. He walked over and sat on the edge of my bed, still speaking only barely above a whisper. "No. I just call it *cat.'" He pulled a joint out of his shirt pocket and put it in his mouth. His blue prison jacket sleeves were rolled up and I could see that he had some kind of decorations that looked as if they were printed in blue ink on each of his forearms, just above the bracelets on his wrists. On his right arm was a heart and on his left the outline of a naked woman.

He lit the joint. "You can give the cat a name if you want to, Bentley."

"You mean I can just decide what to call it?"

"That's right." He pa.s.sed me the joint and I took it quite casually-considering that I knew sharing was illegal-and drew a puff from it and pa.s.sed it back.