Damon Knight - Orbit 18

Atop the stack of his poems he clips a covering letter, hoping his name will make up for their defects, and takes the manila envelope out to mail.

He had begun to see his life as a series of bubbles, precise little scenes that went toward a biography, the way submodules went together into an Apollo system. But so much of his life was nonfunctional, inconclusive. There was no order to it, no logical progression to climax and resolution. His life would make poor drama. In fact, it would make poor biography.

The image of his book haunted him, the image of himself as author. He had a greater feeling of fame now than he had ever had in the frantic years following his flight. He wondered at that until he found a line in Yeats that pierced him with its truth: Man is in love, and loves what vanishes.

Alone, becalmed, it was fine, for he had books to read and silence in which to think and money enough to last the summer, a quiet season of the soul that he knew would pass but which seemed timeless because it was all so new. But it passed. His reenlistment forms came; Kevin was preparing for college; he had to grow used to the idea of divorce. The house took on a dull dead feel, as if his eyes in passing over objects too many times had burnt the life from them. He felt adrift, becalmed, beyond continuing.

Until one evening he called his wife at the number she had left. When he heard her voice he sickened and softened inside and was near tears when he asked to come up and see her and she said yes.

Start from scratch.

Is it true that most women reach their sexual maturity in their late thirties?

Is it true that most men undergo a depression of the sexual faculties at that age?

How may this relate to marital difficulties among couples in their late thirties?

Is it true that there is a correspondence between the cycle of lunar phases and some women’s menstrual cycles?

Is it true that more women encounter their menstrual cycles during full moons than can be accounted for by chance?

Is it true that intercourse is impossible, or at least unpleasant, during menstruation?

Is it true that Edwards’ aversion to the gibbous moon is due at least in part to his wife’s periodic denials of sexual access?

Is it true that a man’s potency is affected by altering gravitational environments?

Is it true that the Moon landing was the most significant event in human history?

Is it true that macroscopically the course of human history follows the same cycles manifest in tides and biological functions microscopically?

Is it true that periodicity or repetition is a recurring theme in human endeavor, manifesting itself as it does in history, biology, chemistry, physics, electronics, music, religion, literature, and art?

Discuss periodicity as it functions on a multitude of levels in time. Include etymologies of the terms “minute,” “hour,” “day,” “month,” “year,” “century.”

Discuss how the Sanskrit word sandhyas, meaning “region of change,” applies to the quarters of the day.

How many orders of magnitude are there between the smallest and largest levels of periodicity in time? Is this enough?

Is periodicity an inherent characteristic of time, or an imposed structure?

Is repetition a valid form for a construction that intends to elude time by using time?

Is it true that all good art is timeless?

Are dreams works of art?

Are events of history, of themselves, works of art?

Is it true that Edwards’ attempts at poetry are primitive attempts to see his actions in the context of history as a work of art?

Is art necessary?

Where do we go from here?

He carries a knot of anticipation in his stomach as he drives. It is a sinking, scrotum-tightening feeling compounded of fear and anxiety and simple adrenalin. His pulse is up and this makes his chest light and there is the heaviness in his gut and the tearing knotted anticipation centered squarely between.

An odd feeling now: he has lost his biographical sense, that way of looking on things happening as already past. He feels now, driving into an alien situation, of his own volition (there’s the difference between this journey and his history-making jaunt to the Moon), the course of his future is in doubt.

But why is he afraid? Simply as a preliminary to confrontation, yes, he sees it as that, the old order against the new; he is afraid of this great symbolical enemy Youth, their attitudes and mores exposed to him by Time magazine. He sees teen-aged girls drifting through the Teaneck summer. To find himself at that age he would have to go back to Waco, 1953—and all the driving and adrenalin makes that for an instant seem possible, exit 12 for the McCarthy hearings, 13 for the Korean War; it seems he can travel back those roads to his youth as easily as he now takes the Thruway. The thought is repellent; he was an ugly boy. So in his fear he sees envy of these new children, no, not children, but manifestations of a graceful adolescence he would have thought impossible. This generation seems astute, mature, beyond their years, beyond perhaps even his.

The commune is not at all what he expected. Instead of a rambling farmhouse, wide furrowed fields, cows, sheep grazing, it is a modest two-story home surrounded by neatly pruned shrubs. In a small garden he sees a man almost his own age shade his eyes to watch the car lurch up the dirt drive. This is the author, no doubt. The man sets down his hoe and approaches.

“Hello, I’m Eric Byrne. You must be Colonel Edwards. Charlotte told us to expect you.”

He is weak and drained from the trip; the sun hits him another blow as he climbs out of the air-conditioning. He shakes hands, feeling the man’s grip, feeling it as if it were on his wife.

“Come inside and I’ll introduce you around. We’re glad you decided to come up.”

He already dislikes Byrne, his bluff cordiality, the veneer of sexuality that seems to lie on his skin like a deep tan.

The only person inside, though, is Charlotte, cross-legged on the sofa, reading; she looks up when he enters—she has heard the car and arranged herself purposely into that neutral position, and stays seated, realizing that a hug would be too intimate, a handshake too cold. In his consideration of adolescence, in his high pitch of sexual awareness, all he can think of is how much he has missed her physically.

Charlotte rises. “I’ll show John around until dinner.”

They go out; they speak little as they walk. She tells him there are half a dozen teenagers, sometimes more, living here, working and paying what they can. Eric bears most of the expense. There is a small barn behind the house, hens, a couple of pigs, some turkeys and ducks. Charlotte says hello to a couple, Robert and Barbara, as they emerge from the barn, smiling with slight embarrassment. Edwards looks at Charlotte, squeezes her hand. And soon enough they end up back in her bedroom.

He sees this scene in crystal, he steps outside himself and observes them both there in the waning light. Charlotte unbuttons her soft blue shirt and the sun is gold and shadow on her. The room is vivid in oranges and browns. Even Edwards’ large body, going quickly to fat from lack of training, training that was always more abuse than development, is handsome in the twilight. He lies naked on the bed, the sheets cool, the air gentle, Charlotte sliding silken over him. He sighs. She massages him gently as the sun sets and her breasts glow pale against her tan, twin globes rising over him. She moves onto him as in his dream: he is still as death, as in the dream: and suddenly suffocating, he thrusts against her—she slows him, pressing—he moves again, frantic now to break the spell of shadowed timeless dream that seems to hover close—she presses harder—and furious, he grabs her shoulders and wrenches her down with a small gasp under him, pumping desperate mad for assertion, starting a rhythm, a continuity, feeling that in these seconds, these thrusts, he can vindicate all their time passed and gone.