Walker Percy - The Thanatos Syndrome

“Tell me.”

“The hypothesis, Tom,” says Bob, speaking slowly, “is that at least a segment of the human neocortex and of consciousness itself is not only an aberration of evolution but is also the scourge and curse of life on this earth, the source of wars, insanities, perversions — in short, those very pathologies which are peculiar to Homo sapiens. As Vonnegut put it”—his arm is on the back of the seat; I feel his pointy, jokey finger sticking into my shoulder —“the only trouble with Homo sapiens is that parts of our brains are too fucking big. What do you say to that?”

I don’t say anything. He has gone elegaic. We’re in the golden woods of old Vienna.

“Homo sapiens sapiens” he murmurs, lilting. “Or Homo sap sap.” Reviving, he pokes me again. “We’re not zapping the big brain, Tom. To put it in your terms, what we’re doing is cooling the superego which, as you of all people know, can make you pretty miserable, and strengthening the ego by increasing endorphin production. No drugs, Tom — except our own — we’re talking natural highs. Energies are freed up instead of being inhibited!” Here comes another poke. “News item: L.S.U. has not lost a football game in three years, has not had a point scored against them, and get this, old Tom, has not given up a single first down this season. As you well know, nobody talks in Louisiana about anything else.” A final poke. “News item, Tom — not as well known but quite as significant: L.S.U. engineering students no longer use calculators. They’re as obsolete as slide rules. They’ve got their own built-in calculators.”

I look at him. “Do you mean to tell me—”

“All I mean to tell you is that cortical control has unlimited possibilities, once cortical hang-ups are eliminated. Just imagine a team that is always psyched up but never psyched out.”

When Bob Comeaux says “hang-ups,” there is just a faint echo of his Long Island City origins in “hang-gups.”

“That is remarkable.”

“Any questions, Doctor?” He’s made his case and looks at his watch even as I’m looking at mine.

“Why don’t you use some?” I ask him.

He looks right and left for eavesdroppers. “Between you and me I have — in my own family, Tom.”

“I see.”

“You got it, Doc?”

“I was just wondering about the decline in teen pregnancies. The mechanism of that escapes me.”

He lights up. “Tom, it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful because it’s so simple. All great scientific breakthroughs are simple. One change and presto, all the old hassles, twelve-year-olds getting knocked up, contraceptives in school, abortion, child abuse — all the old political and religious hassles are simply bypassed, left behind. Did you ever notice that the great controversies in history are never settled, that they are simply left behind? Somebody has a new idea and the old quarrels become irrelevant.”

“What’s the new idea?”

“It’s been under our nose, so close we couldn’t see it for looking. You’ll kick yourself for asking.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“We simply change cycles, Tom.”

“Change cycles.”

“Sure, from menstrual to estrus. Look, Tom—”

“Yes?”

He rattles off the answer like a talk-show guest who’s used to the question. “You know and I know the difference between a woman’s cycle and most of female mammals’.”

“Yes.”

“The human female can conceive during twenty of the twenty-eight days of her cycle. Any other female mammal can only conceive during estrus — say, eight days out of a hundred and eighty.”

“So?”

“As I like to say, our sister Homo saps, God bless them, are in heat seventy-five percent of the time, and what I say is hurray for them and hurray for us. But any other lady mammal is in heat, say, nine percent of the time. Tom, the numbers tell the story. All you have to do with the hypothalamus is lack it into the estrus cycle and you’ve got a marvelous built-in natural population control. Then it’s merely a matter of controlling a few days of estrus — hell, all you have to do is add one dose of progesterone twice a year to the school cafeteria diet and that’s the end of it — goodbye hassles, goodbye pills, rubbers, your friendly abortionist. Goodbye promiscuity, goodbye sex ed — who needs it? Mom and Dad love it, the kids love it, and the state saves millions. Family life is improved, Tom.”

“You mean you’ve tried it?”

“In one junior high school in Baton Rouge, five hundred black girls, year before last forty percent knocked up by age thirteen, last year one girl pregnant — one girl! — and why? because her mamma was packing her lunch box and she missed her progesterone during estrus. And, Tom, get this: a one hundred percent improvement in ACT scores in computation and memory recall in these very subjects.”

“How about language?”

“Language?”

“You know, reading and writing. Like reading a book. Like writing a sentence.”

“You son of a gun.” Bob gives me another poke. “You don’t miss much, do you? You’re quite right. And for a good reason, as you must also know. We’re in a different age of communication — out of McGuffey Readers and writing a theme on ‘what I did last summer.’ Tom, these kids are way past comic books and Star Wars. They’re into graphic and binary communication — which after all is a lot more accurate than once upon a time there lived a wicked queen.”

“You mean they use two-word sentences.”

“You got it. And using a two-word sentence, you know what you can get out of them?”

“What?”

“They can rattle off the total exports and imports of the port of Baton Rouge — like a spread sheet — or give ’em pencil and paper and they’ll give you a graphic of the tributaries of the Red River.”

“How about the drop in crime and unemployment?”

Bob smiles radiantly. “Tom, would you laugh at me if I told you what we’ve done is restore the best of the Southern Way of Life? Would you think that too corny?”

“Well—”

“Well, never mind. Just the facts, ma’am. Here are the facts: Instead of a thousand young punks hanging around the streets in northwest Baton Rouge, looking for trouble, stoned out, ready to mug you, break into your house, rape your daughter, packed off to Angola where they cost you twenty-five thousand a year, do you want to know what they’re doing? Doing not because somebody forces them — we ain’t talking Simon Legree here, boss — but doing of their own accord?”

“What?”

“Cottage industries, garden plots, but mainly apprenticeships.”

“Apprenticeships?”

“Plumber’s helpers, mechanic’s helpers, gardeners, cook’s helpers, waiters, handymen, fishermen — Tom, Baton Rouge is the only city in the U.S. where young blacks are outperforming the Vietnamese and Hispanics.”

“You’re not talking about vo-tech training.”

“I’m talking apprenticeship. What would you do if you’re running an Exxon station and a young man or woman shows up and makes himself useful for gratis, keeps the place clean, is obviously honest and industrious and willing. I’ll tell you what you’d do, because I know. You’d hire him. You want to know what we’re talking about?”

“What?”

“We’re not talking about old massa and his niggers. We’re not talking about Uncle Tom. We’re talking about Uncle Tom Jefferson and his yeoman farmer and yeoman craftsman. You wouldn’t believe what they can do with half an acre of no good batture land. And look at this.” He shows me the key chain of the Mercedes. It is made of finely wrought wooden links. “Carved from one piece of driftwood.”