Robert Wilson - The Divide

“Are you all right?” Susan asked.

Amelie touched the sore part of her cheek. It would swell and bruise; it would look shitty. She was bruised down around her belly, too. But it was nothing terrible. She told Susan so.

“Nice guy,” Susan commented.

Amelie shrugged.

“I guess he wanted to know where you were going?”

“Yes,” Amelie said.

“Did you tell him?”

“No.”

“That’s why he hit you.”

Amelie nodded.

Susan said, “That was pretty brave—not telling him.”

“Brave?” Amelie said. She almost laughed. “Jesus, Susan!—for a smart person, you’re not very bright sometimes.”

They took a long route back to make sure Roch hadn’t managed to follow. Coming up on Amelie’s rooming house, Susan slowed. There was no sign of the van… Roch wasn’t here.

But he had been. He must not have tried to follow at all; he must have come straight back. Amelie’s things had been trashed. “Oh, no,” Susan said. She waited for some response from Amelie, but there was none. Amelie only looked morosely at the pile of wreckage that had been her stereo, the little TV, a suitcase full of clothes. “Stop,” she said, as the Honda rolled past. She opened the passenger door and leaned out to collect a couple of blouses, some tapes, a pair of Levis from the snowy gutter. She held these on her lap.

“All that other stuff,” Susan said, “you know, we can replace all that.”

Amelie shrugged and closed the door. She did not look back as Susan drove away.

Amelie was silent during most of the ride to the house Dr. Kyriakides had rented, seeming to watch the snow that had begun to accumulate across the brown farm fields and the cold marshes north of the city. Susan drove carefully, grateful for the silence and the chance to begin to assimilate everything that had happened. That terrible man … and, my God, she had almost killed him, slamming the car door into him … !

“The thing is,” Amelie said quietly, “I just don’t know.”

Susan looked across at her. “Know what?”

Amelie studied her fingernails.

“About Roch,” she said. “I don’t know whether we can do something like that to him. I mean, and get away with it.” She turned her large, shiny eyes on Susan. “I don’t know if he’ll let us.”

From the notebooks of Maxim Kyriakides:

Finally we are all together in this house, presumably for the duration of the winter. (The snow continues to deepen; we are all confined by it — though of course it isn’t the snow that keeps us together.) In our isolation, certain things have become clear.

I begin to realize that there is, underlying all else, the question of Benjamin. The question of his sudden new presence in John’s life. The question of where Benjamin comes from, and perhaps what he will become.

From the taped transcripts of their meetings: Maxim Kyriakides and John Shaw, January 12:

Kyriakides: Hello, John. Please, sit down. [The sound of a chair being pulled up.] This is the room I’ve set aside for my work. I hope we’ll be meeting here often. [A long pause.] You’re staring at me. … Is something wrong?

John: [His voice firm but somewhat subdued.] I’m wondering what you want from me.

Kyriakides: Well, that’s a complicated question. I won’t attempt to lie to you. Let’s say—for the moment, I’m your doctor.

John: You won’t lie, but you will condescend to me.

Kyriakides: Is that what I’m doing?

John: I know you, Max. It’s been years, obviously. But I haven’t forgotten.

Kyriakides: You understand, this is difficult for me, too. I know you. I know what you’re capable of. I know what you could do as a child. … I can guess what you’re capable of now. So there’s an element of caution.

John: Of fear.

Kyriakides: If you like. Does that make you happy?

John: Is this psychoanalysis?

Kyriakides: I suppose, on one level, it is. I can be a better judge of what’s happening if we’re able to talk to one another.

John: You can judge my deterioration, you mean.

Kyriakides: If it happens that way. I hope to be able to prevent it. [A pause.] We’re being honest, here.

John: All those years …

Kyriakides: You resented me.

John: No, Max. I hated you.

John: Tell me about the treatment.

Kyriakides: Treatment can’t begin until we have more information. I have an arrangement with Dr. Collingwood—he’s a neurologist. He’ll be examining you, and he has connections at the University and at Toronto General, so we’ll have access to PET scanners and that sort of thing. We need a complete neurological workup before we can proceed.

John: In other words, you don’t have any treatment in mind.

Kyriakides: What I mean is that I won’t discuss treatment until we know more. I don’t want you second-guessing me.

John: Even if my guesses are better than yours.

Kyriakides: It isn’t a question of pride. I admit that I need a certain amount of elbow-room—emotional, intellectual.

John: You did animal studies.

Kyriakides: Yes …

John: The animals experienced loss of cortical tissue.

Kyriakides: They did.

John: Did they die? [Pause.] Max? Did the animals die?

Kyriakides: Some of them—yes.

Kyriakides: I think we have to begin by talking about Benjamin.

John: I won’t submit to amateur psychoanalysis—I thought I’d made that clear. The problem is physiological.

Kyriakides: The symptoms may not be. This is relevant, John. You do accept the implication that Benjamin—his manifestation over the last year or two—is a symptom?

John: Of something. Are you asking me to diagnose myself?

Kyriakides: I’m trying to justify my interest.

John: You’re suggesting Benjamin began to manifest as a result of cortical disfunction. Maybe so, maybe not. Sometimes I think I just … lost interest. When I invented him, you know, it was a willful act—I wanted someone to run all the routine chores, to gratify all the expectations I couldn’t fulfill. He was a kind of autopilot. Do you understand? But I think that’s the danger. I created an autonomous cortical subroutine and allowed it access to my voluntary motor activity. That must have created profound neural channeling—it’s not the sort of thing you can simply erase. And when being John Shaw became too difficult, Benjamin was there. He was waiting.

Kyriakides: Why was it difficult to be John Shaw?

John: Maybe I was sick. Maybe I was just … tired.

Kyriakides: But it was a conscious decision.

John: To resurrect Benjamin? No—it was not.

Kyriakides: Therefore we have to examine it.

John: This is still parlor Freudianism, Max. Benjamin as the unconscious mind of John Shaw. The Three Faces of Eve. But it isn’t like that. You should know better. Freud was a bourgeois apologist, wasn’t he?

Kyriakides: I’m not a Marxist anymore, John.

John: How they fade—the passions of our youth.

Kyriakides: You’re trying to nettle me. Is that why you keep calling me “Max”?

John: That’s what they used to call you, isn’t it? Your colleagues in the Network?