Robert Wilson - The Divide

In a way, the theft had been more revealing than the notes themselves. His commandeering of the security guard, his intimidation of Max a few days earlier, had forced a new discovery: he was not weak. He had allowed himself to be dominated by Max’s fears, by the idea that he was different and therefore vulnerable. How intoxicating now to suspect that he might be more than a freak: that he might be functionally superior, better at the things human beings were good at.

A better hunter. A better predator.

“But you still cared about the Woodwards,” Susan said.

Night had fallen. The window was dark, though the snow still beat against it. Susan switched on a lamp.

“I kept them separate in my mind,” John admitted. “I made a special exception for James Woodward. He was an ordinary man and there was nothing I owed him. But I harbored fantasies about pleasing him.”

“It mattered to you.”

“It shouldn’t have.”

“But it did.”

“I think—” He hesitated. “I think I just didn’t want to be disappointed again.”

They had missed lunch altogether, and now it was past dinnertime. Susan went down to the kitchen, fixed a couple of sandwiches and carried them upstairs.

After coffee, John switched on a portable radio for the weather forecast. The news wasn’t good. Record snowfall, schools closed until further notice, City Hall begging motorists to stay off the roads. John shook his head. “We can’t wait much longer.”

To find Amelie, he meant. As if it would be that simple.

But Susan sensed the urgency in his voice.

“No more talk,” he said.

The streetlights were a distant blur through the snow-crusted windows. A gust of wind rattled the panes, and Susan stood up to go to her room.

John reached for her hand.

She hesitated.

“Stay,” he said. “Please stay.”

It was a request, Susan thought. It was not a compulsion, not a demand. She could have left.

She didn’t.

It was his life. But not all his life.

He lay beside her in the darkness and wondered whether his sudden surfeit of conscience was actually Benjamin’s: a wisp of that other self. The touch of Susan’s skin against him was a rebuke, almost painful. She was asleep. He moved against her. She was warm and there was snow against the ice-laced window. He had gone cotton-mouthed laboring at the day’s intimacy, an intimacy of words; honest as far as it went … but oblique, polished, limited.

He hadn’t told her, for instance, about that first act of seduction, the act that had haunted him ever since—most recently in a motel room in Alberta. Seduction as bestiality—making love to the Look. Skin fucking skin, souls in absentia. The story of his life. Except for tonight, with Susan; tonight had been different.

But if this was Benjamin’s conscience that had begun to prick him, then here was an even more disturbing notion: maybe it was Benjamin who had allowed him this moment just past. Maybe it was Benjamin who had maneuvered around the Look; maybe it was Benjamin’s sincerity she had registered—Benjamin’s eyes she had looked into.

Maybe, all those years ago, when he bullied a girl into his bed for the first time, maybe it was Benjamin or some proto-Benjamin or shadow Benjamin who had roused from sleep and pronounced the traitorous words “I love you,” uncalled-for and unwanted, a tacit admission of absurdity, utterly unallowable.

Benjamin, not John, who provoked love. Benjamin who loved Amelie and was loved by Amelie. Benjamin the idiot, savant only in the mathematics of this fathomless emotion.

God damn you, he thought, you truncated false and stupid thing. You prosthetic imitation of a human being.

God damn you for succeeding at it.

A surfeit of conscience and a memory he could not suppress: this does not make for easy sleep.

He listened awhile to the beat of the snow against the window.

After a time, without thinking, he reached up and brushed away Susan’s hair from her ear. The ear was a pink, shadowy cusp in the darkness. He moved his lips, experimentally—hardly more than a whisper.

“I love you,” he said.

She didn’t stir.

But he was calmer now, and slept.

In the morning Susan re-packed her luggage (most of it untouched since her return from California) and went looking for Dr. Kyriakides.

She found him in the study. He was bent over his desk, making notes in a loose-leaf binder. He looked up when she opened the door. How old he seems, Susan thought—suddenly old and humorless.

“We’re leaving today,” she said. “John and I. We’re going to find Amelie.”

Dr. Kyriakides did not react at once. Slowly, he peeled away his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. The silence was professorial, devastating; Susan wanted to cringe.

He said, “That’s absurd.”

“You can’t stop us.”

“Of course I can’t. You’re both adults. You can do what you like. But surely you must see—well, for one thing, Susan, consider the weather! You’d be lucky to get a mile down the road. And I’m certain neither of you know where to find Amelie, wherever she might be. We can’t even be certain she wants to be found. All we know is that she left the house without warning last Saturday—which is her privilege, as it is yours.” He shook his head. “It might be understandable that John conceived this idea. He’s ill, after all. He has a neurological illness. But you, Susan! I thought you were interested in his welfare! Not coddling his disease,”

In spite of herself, Susan blushed. “That’s not what I’m doing. John is perfectly lucid.”

“It was his idea?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t it seem a little out of character?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“He has no interest in Amelie! It was Benjamin who cared about her. John is as far beyond Amelie Desjardins as we are advanced beyond the starfish. And you know it. Why would he want to risk his life for her? Because that’s what this would mean, after all. He seems fine, but the crisis could come at any moment. Fever and disorientation and possibly unconsciousness—possibly death. Can you cope with that? Do you want that to happen while your car is buried in a snowdrift miles from here?”

“It’s important to him.”

“Is it? Has he told you why? Or is this your own conclusion?”

Susan shook her head. “I don’t want to have this discussion. I just thought you should know we’re leaving.”

She turned away.

“Wait,” Dr. Kyriakides said, and Susan was embarrassed to discover she could not resist the command.

She hesitated at the doorway.

“John talked about me—didn’t he? That’s what this is all about.”

“He talked about himself,” Susan said.

“You know I never meant this to happen.”

His voice was suddenly chastened and tentative. He stood up, stepped out from behind the desk. He’s a small man, Susan thought. He’s shorter than I am. Another brand-new observation.

“I had no idea things would turn out the way they did. At every step—please try to understand—I made what I thought was the best decision. The wisest decision. Even when I was tampering with John inutero, even when I was dealing with his mother. She was a stupid woman, Susan. She would have had a stupid child and they would have lived stupid, ordinary lives. She was the kind of passive and amoral creature that allowed a Hitler to come to power—a Stalin.” The words were fervent and his expression was utterly sincere; Susan was transfixed. “When I created John,” he said, “I meant to break that chain. I was funded by a mercenary organization for a mercenary purpose, it’s true, but I never believed the government would benefit from my work in any substantial way. If anything, the opposite. I meant to create a better human being, for whom they would therefore have no use. Not just ‘more intelligent’ in the obvious sense. Authentically better.” He shook his head. “But it’s a terrible burden, and I should not have imposed it on John. I understand that now. I—”