E. Doctorow - Andrew's Brain

When one morning Briony and her mother went off in a taxi to shop at a mall, Bill sat me down in their little backyard garden for our morning coffee, lit himself a cigar, crossed his little legs, waited for me to speak of something so that he could tell me what he knew about it. There was an assertiveness to him, some inner demand that he prove himself to whatever person of normal stature he happened to be with. He was a kind of pouncing conversationalist. When I mentioned that Briony and I had been reading Mark Twain aloud, he shook his head and said, What do you think of the ending of Huckleberry Finn , Professor? It’s a goddamn disaster, isn’t it? Ruined the whole story for me. When Tom makes his late entrance, it’s Twain throwin’ in the towel, coming in with his trickster shtick to wrap things up and while he’s at it to make the whole grand thing of Huck and Jim going down the river neither here nor there. I know a little bit about the cruelties of life and I’ll tell you, this is a damn shame of an ending, Twain bein’ in such a hurry to finish his tale any which way and so crap up what might have been a huge story for all time.

Did you know, Bill, that he stopped work on that book for seven years before coming up with the ending?

Sure I knew, that’s what I’m sayin’. Couldn’t work it out, and said, Damn it all, I’ll just get this thing off my desk. Some more coffee?

Actually, Andrew, I happen to agree with that criticism.

I asked about The Wizard of Oz —had he ever worked maybe not in the movie, that was an earlier generation, but in some stage version? He took a big hit on his cigar and set it down in the ashtray. Professor, never mind the movie, you got to read the book. You haven’t, have you?

Got me there, Bill.

According to some, the whole thing is communist.

What is?

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz . See, what the moral is, is don’t rely on me, don’t trust me, my rule is a scam, you’ve got the stuff to run things yoursels. You and your comrades. All you got to do to take over is get up your courage, use your brain, everone’s your equal, ’cept for some at the top, of course, and the world’s your oyster. That’s communist allegory, according to some.

I don’t know, Bill. An allegory — doesn’t that mean everything in it stands for something else? Then who are the Munchkins, and why the Wicked Witch of the West, and why is the road of yellow brick? They would have to stand for something besides themselves.

The yellow brick road, well, that’s the way to the gold. The Wicked Witch, well, she’s the West, you see, meaning us, and with all those flying monkeys being her military forces, if you don’t do something she will be even worse than the phony Wizard. And I know who the Munchkins stand for. Believe me, I’m the authority on that.

I’ll tell you about the party they gave us the night before we left.

There was a party?

Bill and Betty — to announce our engagement. It was a mostly Diminutive crowd. You know the way New York neighborhoods become Greek, Italian, Latino, the way Koreans run the convenience stores, the Muslims drive the taxis? So in the same way this town had its share of little people who made their living in show business. One elderly fellow sat in a chair and was deferred to by the others — he had actually been a Munchkin. Maybe the last of them alive. The liquor flowed, and the decibels were birdlike. Naturally the rug was rolled up and Bill and Betty did one of their vaudeville routines, the old soft shoe, a George M. Cohan number, “… for it was Mary, Mary, plain as any name can be …” And with such grace and ease, laughing as they accomplished this or that move, Bill at one point essaying some kind of double time step and Betty glancing to heaven. One of their friends had hoisted himself up onto the piano bench to accompany them and sing the lyrics in his mute tenor, and it was so fine, Briony and I the audience they played to, Briony sitting on the floor, beside me, her legs tucked under her, and her face luminous with joy. “But with propriety, society will say ‘Marie’ …” Others stepped up to do their signature routines, a mock lecture here, a poetry declamation there, all of it great fun, and I remember at one point the Diminutive pastor of the local church meeting me at the self-service bar and asking what I would do, if I were president, about the terrible turbulence in the world. I said I’d go to war to stop it, and it was against his better judgment but he laughed.

Sounds as if you were having a good time.

Well, I saw how Briony loved her parents’ routine, laughing and clapping for something she must have seen a hundred times. Watching her lifted me into a comparable state of happiness. As if it had arced brain to brain. This was a pure, unreflective, unselfconscious emotion. It had taken me by surprise and was almost too much to bear — happiness. I felt it as something expressed from my heart and squeezing out of my eyes. And I think as we all laughed and applauded at the end of the soft-shoe number I may have sobbed with joy. And I was made fearless in that feeling, it was not tainted by anxiety, I at that moment had no concern that I might trip and fall over one of them and squash him to death.

So that cold clear emotionless pond of silence—

I was rising from it to living and breathing, to great gasping breaths of life. Finding redemption in the loving attentions of this girl.

Afterward, we excused ourselves and she led me to the dead end of the street. We climbed over the retaining wall where a path through the ground cover led down to the beach. We found ourselves alone on the beach, not in moonlight, there was no moon to be seen, but in the misty dim light of the cities to the north, the light pollution of Los Angeles spreading out over the sea. I had resisted going for a swim in daylight, not wanting to display my concave chest and skinny arms to the world. Briony had of course seen me in the nude, but one’s structure in a bedroom at night when the predominant light is one’s intellectual presence is not the vulnerable thing that a pale white professor of cognitive science, bony and slightly potbellied, conveys to the world on a public beach. But nothing could stop me now, we kicked off our shoes, dropped our clothes in the sand, and ran into the surf, which was warm and lapping. We swam together in the Pacific sea, and kissed of course, and I felt the smoothness of her, the tautness of her nipples in the briny sea, running my hand between her legs, holding her by the waist, kissing her as we clasped each other as we were rolled over and over together, cupped in the curl of the waves.

When we came out I dried her with my shirt and we dressed and sat there on little thrones I built out of the sand. This was the time of peaceful reflection when I chose to satisfy my curiosity. I had seen on the wall of Bill’s study two framed naturalization certificates. Bill and Betty hadn’t been born here.

Pop was born in Czechoslovakia, Briony said. That’s the Czech Republic now. Mom is Irish, from Limerick.

Well, how did they meet?

Ah, she laughed, then you’ve never heard of Leo Singer!

At this, Briony jumped up and pulled me to my feet. She walked backward, holding my hands. And she told me about this man who went around Europe finding people like her mom and dad, hiring them and training them to work in his show, Leo Singer’s Lilliputians.

Here Briony turned, ran ahead, and found it necessary to do a cartwheel. When she was back on her feet I said, What kind of a show?

Well, Mom says the theme changed every season, and the costumes, but it was essentially vaudeville, with songs and sketches and routines like you saw tonight. Circus acts like jugglers, and wire walkers, people who could play the fiddle behind their back, everything you could think of. The attraction was their size, and how many things they could do anyway that people would come to see and marvel at.