Walker Percy - Love in the Ruins - The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World

“Yes, but they were either fascists or running dogs or lackeys of the American imperialists. Anyhow, the question has become academic.”

“How is that?”

“Because those who are left do love him.”

I scratch my head. “Why are you carrying that flag?”

“Because North Ecuador stands for peace and freedom.”

“But aren’t you an American?”

“Yes, but America is a cancer in the community of democratic nations. Incidentally, More, my lecture on this subject last month in Stockholm received an even greater ovation than it got at Harvard.”

“If that is the case, why don’t you live in Sweden or North Ecuador?”

Professor Cabot looks at me incredulously as he adjusts a wick in a Coke bottle.

“You’ve got to be kidding, More.”

“No.”

He stands up, looks right and left, and says in a low voice, “Do you know what I’m pulling at Cambridge?”

“No.”

“A hundred thousand a year plus two hundred thousand for my own institute. And Berkeley offered me more. What do you think of that?”

“Very good,” I reply sympathetically, setting as I do as high a value on money as the next man.

“Say, why don’t you join us, More?” asks Coffin Cabot impulsively.

“No thanks. I’ve got to pick up a ah cello.” For some reason I blush.

Cabot grins. “That figures. Fiddling while Rome burns, eh?”

“No. The fact is there are three girls over there in the motel—”

“What?”

“Never mind.” I was on the point of telling him about the dangers of the misuse of my invention when I catch sight of — I It can’t be but it is. There over Coffin Cabot’s shoulder, moving about among the students with my lapsometer, is Art Immelmann!

“Excuse me,” I murmur, but Cabot is already preoccupied with the next batch of golf balls and does not notice Art.

I watch him.

Art Immelmann, it soon becomes clear, is demonstrating my device to the students as the famous fake prop of The Pit, laughing and shaking his head at the preposterousness of it, like a doctor unmasking the latest quackery. The students laugh. Yet, as he does so, he makes passes over the students’ heads.

In the instant he catches sight of me I lay hands on my invention and snatch it away from him.

“Oh, Doc!” he cries with every sign of delight. “Just the man I’m looking for!”

I gaze at him in astonishment. “How did you get here?”

“What do you mean, Doc?”

“I saw you on TV not ten minutes ago and you were in town.”

Art shrugs. “Perhaps it was a tape.”

“It was no tape.” I am examining the lapsometer. “Do you realize you’ve got this thing set for plus ten dosage at the level of the prefrontal abstractive centers?”

“It’s only for purposes of demonstration.”

“Do you realize what this would do to a man, especially a student?”

“I know,” says Art, smiling good-naturedly. “But I like to hear you say it.”

“It would render him totally abstracted from himself, totally alienated from the concrete world, and in such a state of angelism that he will fall prey to the first abstract notion proposed to him and will kill anybody who gets in his way, torture, execute, wipe out entire populations, all with the best possible motives and the best possible intentions, in fact in the name of peace and freedom, etcetera.”

“Yeah, Doc!” cries Art delighted. “Your MOQUOL surpasses my most sanguine expectations. I’ve already elicited positive interactions from both ends of the spectrum—”

“Goddamn, man, do you realize what you’re saying?”

Art winces and turns pale. I swing him round to face me.

“I authorized you to use my invention to diminish, not increase tensions. It says so in the contract.”

“Yeah, but Doc, this is the pilot. In the pilot you have to get the problem out on the table. Then when the pilot’s completed—”

“Screw the pilot,” I am yelling, beside myself with anger.

“How do you mean, Doc?” asks Art, mystified. “How is that possible?”

“Never mind. It’s no use trying to tell you. I’m taking this lapsometer and I want the rest that you stole. Where are they?”

Art looks mournful. “I’m very sorry, Doc, but they’re all in the hands of the interdisciplinary task force—”

“Listen, you son of a bitch, our agreement is canceled as of this moment.”

“Excuse me, Doc.” Art shakes his head regretfully. “In the first place, I don’t understand your imputation about my mother when the fact of the matter is I don’t — but that’s neither here nor there. In the second place, I’m afraid the contract cannot be voided unilaterally.”

“Get out of my way,” I say, suddenly remembering the three girls in room 203.

“Don’t worry about a thing, Doc!” Art waves cheerily. “Don’t worry about the Nobel Prize either. You’re in.”

Though I fling away in a rage, a pleasant tingle spreads across my sacrum. Is it the prospect of the Nobel or the effect of the gin fizz?

I am surprised and dismayed to find Love Clinic humming with activity. Stryker explains that it was the volunteers themselves who, excited by a “new concept in therapy,” had forgone the holiday in order to complete the research.

But how to retrieve the cello without awkward explanations?

Father Kev Kevin sits at the vaginal console reading Commonweal .

But I am blinking at the scene in the behavior room. What a transformation! Nothing is the same. The stark white clinical cube has been decorated in Early American and furnished with a bull’s-eye mirror, cobbler’s bench, rag rugs, and two bundling beds.

“What’s going on?” I ask Stryker, who comes gliding up, one foot swinging wide in a tango step.

“You of all people should know!”

“Why me?”

“It’s thanks to you we made the breakthrough.”

“What breakthrough?”

“The use of substitute partners.”

“The use of what?”

“Ha ha, don’t be modest, Doctor! Your associate told me otherwise.”

“My associate?” I ask with sinking heart.

“Dr. Immelmann.”

“What did he say?”

“He showed us your paper in which you demonstrate that marital love often founders on boredom and the struggle to attain a theoretical orgasmic perfection.”

“But I didn’t suggest—”

“You didn’t have to. We simply implemented your insight.”

“With?”

“Substitute partners! A fresh start!” Like an impresario Stryker waves a graceful hand toward the viewing mirror.

Instead of the usual solitary subject, or at the most two subjects, there are four, two in each bed, J.T. Thigpen, Gloria, and Ted ’n Tanya. But Gloria is in one bed with Ted and J.T. in the other with Tanya. The couples are, for the most part, dressed: the women in Mistress Goody gowns, the men in Cotton Mather knee-britches.

“As you see, Tom, we also make use of your warnings about an abstract and depersonalized environment. We place our lovers in a particular concrete historical setting.”

“But I didn’t suggest—”

Dr. Helga Heine suddenly turns up the music, which is not Early American, however, but Viennese waltzes.

“Okay, keeds!” She speaks into a microphone, keeping time with her free hand. Though she is hefty, she balances lightly on the balls of her feet.

“ Zwei Herzen! Now — bundling partitions up!”

“Hold it!” cries the chaplain from the vaginal console. “They haven’t inserted the sensors! Rats!” He grabs Helga’s microphone. “Hold it, kids! Bundling partitions down! Insert sensors!”

But it is too late. The couples are too engrossed with each other to pay attention. Nor do Stryker and Helga object.