Norman Rush - Mortals

Imploring was the abyss, or rather it was right next to it, the real abyss being begging, sheer begging. He could see himself falling into that as a last resort, if his interrogation strategy failed, which it couldn’t. He was a professional. He had been trained in unusual subjects. He had to remember that. Be yourself, he thought.

Morel was being intolerably dignified. Ray felt he couldn’t take much more of it.

He had to go on. “Look, can you do me the favor of saying yes or not, I mean no, no it wasn’t anything sexual, some sexual thing, accident, misstep, what have you, or yes unfortunately it was, whichever is the truth.”

He had kept himself from saying please, by a hair. He was glad. But he seemed to be in a maze, with every step, every turn, taking him back to the beast at the heart of the maze, the beast with two backs, in fact.

“Don’t put me in this position,” Morel said.

“I don’t mean to. But look at it this way. This will be medication for me, sort of.”

Ray had something he wanted to communicate about sex before he forgot it, lost his grip on it. The thought was important. But Morel was hardly the correct recipient. And Ray wanted to remember it, for later. And it was an insight he was having about the sex act with a beloved, and the insight was that the poets were wrong and that sex was not a metaphor for loving, a good metaphor for love, for entering a beloved, unifying with her, making a unity. It was difficult to put clearly. But sex was not a good metaphor for loving because there was a form of connection between real lovers that made sex look like an approximation of it. People like Lawrence were responsible for getting the less important thing moved up to the head of the line where it didn’t belong. It was possible he was making this up so good sex between Iris and Morel wouldn’t be so painful. Iris would understand what he meant, or she would have. And there was the rub, so to speak. Of course it was possible that his insights were commonplace and uninteresting. That was why he needed Iris. Because not only would she know if they were, no, the fact was that just framing a way to set something in front of her mind would cause him to think twice, see it for what it was, dump it or postpone it, or improve it enough to go with. That was then, he thought. It was something he had to get used to.

Morel said, “Okay look you can stop worrying about that kind of thing.” He said it rapidly and Ray knew why. He was speeding through it because it made him feel false. He was affirming that there hadn’t been some kind of precursory sexual situation with Iris, which he could do with a clear conscience. And at the same time he was skating past the fact that he was having an affair in the present, right at present, if affair was the right word for it. He was skating past a sex situation that was worse, more monumental.

“Thank you,” Ray said.

“My pleasure,” Morel answered. Ray resented Morel’s choice of language.

“So then can you just go a little further for me, on what it is you feel you have to be confidential about? I mean, narrow it down in some way.”

“Okay, let me see. Well, very generally, it was for therapy.”

“As in psychotherapy.”

“Yes.”

“She was … what?”

“She was in need of therapy. Oh fuck it, man, she was depressed. That’s it.”

“And now she isn’t.”

“Right, she isn’t.”

“Now she’s happy.”

“I didn’t say she’s happy. What I am saying is that she isn’t depressed.”

“Clinically depressed, you’re saying she was?”

“I don’t know what that is. It’s a label. She was unhappy enough to want to talk about it and do something about it.”

Don’t make me kill you, Ray thought. The fact was he had some respect for Morel’s ethics so far. He was holding back information he knew would be painful to Ray, holding it back as well as he could. And he was couching everything he did say so that nothing would be a lie direct when they got to the heart of the labyrinth and met the beast, the one with two backs. Because they were going to get there. On the other hand the man was intolerable and it was intolerable that what he was saying without actually saying it was that Iris was much happier now that she was receiving the doctor’s mighty affection, the doctor’s love and care with the emphasis on love, the clouds lifting, landscapes of joy by Maxfield Parrish springing into view, paradise, O paradise . And she was a paradise … a portable one, apparently. No, Morel was smart and tough, but he was going to have to let everything out. It was coming. The man was intelligent. He had to know.

Ray was ready for Morel to be adamant in denial, but this was probably the best moment to go in for the truth. The Adamant Penis would be a good title for a porn thing. It could go with the titles of unwritten books in his brother’s olla podrida. The Butcher Elf was one of those. He had to get Strange News back from the bastards who had it now. It was urgent. He had to try.

“You admire my wife,” Ray said, which was wrong, which would remind Morel of her legal status. It would put his back up. He was going to stick strictly to Iris for the foreseeable future.

“Of course,” Morel said.

Ray felt he needed to switch his angle of attack.

He said, “By the way, I don’t know if this is the right question but what, um, school of therapy are you in, or from? That is, who do you follow? I’m curious.”

Ray waited. There were a number of ludicrous or exploded names he could think of that might be mentioned, like Jung, like the Englishman whose name he couldn’t remember who had encouraged people to go nuts as a form of liberation. And of course Freud himself was in a certain amount of bad odor. It was too much to hope for that Morel would mention somebody Ray knew was an established fool. We live in hope, Ray thought.

Morel said, “No particular school. I took the basic courses for qualifying in psychiatry but I never got a certificate. I read a lot and I rejected a lot and I came up with my own mix.”

“Your own mix.”

“Yes. Well, I like the work of Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom , do you know it?”

The name was a name he knew and that was all he knew. But he didn’t necessarily like the title of the book Morel had mentioned. And he did realize he had made a mistake, opening up an avenue to a discussion of different schools of therapy instead of getting to the subject matter. He had to retreat so he could attack properly, reculer pour mieux sauter, was the phrase. We live out phrases we barely remember, he thought.

Suddenly something intrusive was going on outside, at a distance. There were cries. He and Morel tried to listen seriously together. The cries stopped. Ray realized that his injuries had come back to life, hurting, all at once. They had been fine when he had been concentrating on the subject matter. Something terrible was going on in what it was fair to call the outside world, but he wanted it to stop mainly so he could continue going where he had been going with Morel. He couldn’t help it.

Morel wanted to keep on listening to the fracas or whatever it was. He wanted Ray to listen with him and that was unacceptable because the subject matter had to be gotten through. Nothing would be normal until that was accomplished.

Ray said, “You find Iris attractive.”

Morel made a show of reluctance in turning his attention back to Ray, to the subject matter.

“When did I say that?” Morel asked.

“But do you or don’t you?”

“She’s an attractive woman. Yes.”

“So you find her attractive?”

“What is this?”

“She’s staying at your place, isn’t she? Can we establish that?”