Donald Antrim - The Verificationist

“Do you really believe that, Sherwin?” It was Leslie Constant again, daring to speak Lang’s Christian name and, in this way, assume a peer role and mildly undermine her supervisor’s guru status — a potentially dangerous tactic with this man. He did nothing to show that he minded grilling by the trainee, perhaps because it was still early in the evening. Or maybe Leslie’s English accent made her sound literate and shrewd. Sherwin regarded her with a look full of appreciation and, well, appetite — he smiled; and it was clear from his eyes, or I should say it was clear from Sherwin’s decision to smile at Leslie in that generous, charming, menacing way he has, that the man enjoyed knowing the woman was in love with him.

“Sexual hysterias in general tend to manifest as social trends, and come and go in cycles.” Sherwin was getting into teaching mode; once he has started, it can be hard to stop him. “In order to see this clearly, we have to reconsider the notion that psychological functioning shares the same growth curve as technological innovation. It is true that technology is one of the great expressions of the human spirit. As we all know, to be human is to make things. Bombs or poems or cures for diseases, what’s important is making something. And if a thing can be made, it must be made!” At this point Sherwin placed his hand, open and with the palm facing downward, firmly on the tabletop; and the effect of this swift, almost unnoticeably subtle gesture, as he spoke, was a perfect demonstration of the man’s total ability to orchestrate — much in the way that a symphony conductor at the podium will use his head and body and conductor’s baton to organize the various musical strains into a seamless and singularly emotional, spectacular whole — the precise effects of his words on his listeners. Everyone at Sherwin’s table leaned in close, and you could tell by looking at Leslie and Mike Breuer and Elizabeth Cole — Elizabeth so beautiful with her dark hair spilling over her ears — you could tell that for these three, the noises in the restaurant and all the miscellaneous activities and comings and goings of waitresses, all the busy distractions — including me up in Bernhardt’s arms, watching the world, flapping insanely and kicking like a monstrous baby — these noises were, for the English trainee and the two clinical therapists sharing a pancake dinner with Sherwin, temporarily, profoundly out of awareness.

Lang carried on: “All that is neither here nor there except to say that technological and scientific advances are by definition inevitable, yet we are mistaken to expect spiritual or sexual awakenings as a result of breakthroughs in applied fields.”

“You’re saying that people are slow to assimilate to changes in the environment?” This was Elizabeth speaking. Hearing her, my heart pounded in my chest.

Sherwin also was affected by Elizabeth’s voice. He made slow, easeful petting motions with his hand on the table, stroking the table, feeling, with his fingertips, the blue tablecloth; and he said, “The main point is that each generation thinks it has better sex than its parents, who had better sex than their parents. Right? As psychologists, we know that nothing could be further from the truth. But out in the culture, you know, people accept this on faith. Humans in their narcissism apparently must tell themselves that they live always on the verge of a bold new era in which shame and inhibition will be problems of the past.”

“It’s a way of defeating death!” Leslie blurted. She sounded, saying this, like a famous British film actress whose name I could not recall. Lang, amazingly — or maybe not amazingly — let her have the point.

“Yes, Leslie. That’s right.”

Then Leslie, encouraged to go on, raised her voice and said, with sudden, unexpected anger, “But that doesn’t happen, does it? I mean, death comes and takes everything away.”

“We know it does,” said Lang softly to her. He was soothing her. The man and Leslie had reached, in that moment, some deep accord; they were, as people say, in sync. And something in the way each addressed the other made it possible to see that their conversation, that night at the Pancake House, was far from academic; rather, it was an intimate, encrypted courtship: Sherwin and Leslie, with help from Elizabeth and Mike as witnesses — these two accredited professionals standing in, symbolically, as the family that promises to support the “marrying” couple — were, in the space of a few brief statements, telling one another who they were and what they needed. Sherwin would take an educative role, the protector and guide into the fully adult, political world, a temporary father for the younger woman separated from home, orphaned and alone in a foreign country. Hadn’t she just spoken openly and with feeling about death and loss? And hadn’t he allowed her to speak her way toward her grief, then sanctioned her intelligence and her right to participate as a member of the psychotherapeutic community?

The tension around the table, pleasurable, electric, was rising. One had the feeling that Sherwin and Leslie might reach out and touch one another, hold hands like sweethearts. This didn’t happen. Instead, after a hushed, suspenseful interval in which, I think, everyone watching had a chance to recognize the solemn significance of events taking place, Leslie said an amazing and revealing thing. It was one of those mysterious, unpremeditated bombshells people sometimes drop, whenever circumstances make it viable to declare, in a few puzzling, odd, possibly meaningless words, something of the essential and unifying personal logic known in our literature and our hearts as the Self.

Leslie turned and looked hard at Sherwin beside her. Her face was radiant. She gazed at her mentor the way a happy baby gazes at mother. “Maybe,” declared this Englishwoman, “maybe sexual hunger should be described as the terror in love at the beginning of death.”

Everyone had to think about that for a moment. Finally Mike Breuer realized that the time had come for him to perform his “official” symbolic function. I suppose Mike had been cautious, earlier, not to break in on whatever was happening between his colleague and the young woman. In any case, he now said, in a voice that sounded like the voice of a man offering a toast, “Whoa! That sounds damned good to me!” Everyone, including Sherwin, laughed, and the tension around the table was relieved in a completely pleasant way; and then Sherwin announced his answer to the woman who would become his lover: “We live in times of great hysteria. Death will save us.”

This concluded, for the time being, Sherwin Lang’s seduction of Leslie Constant. Lang’s companions understood that important work had been done, understood the pitch and roll of Sherwin’s voice, as he rattled off his last pronouncement, as a form of audible, dramatic cue, or coded instruction; accordingly, everyone at the table lowered his or her head and sat in silence. They were not unlike supplicants, praying.

I peered down, away from all these therapists under the powerful spell of Sherwin Lang, down at my own messy table piled with coffee cups and horrible foods, our preposterous supper.

I looked to Maria. What I needed, I think, was some reality testing, as we are so fond of saying in this business.

Maria, incredibly — and somewhat rudely, I thought — was not paying attention to me. She was talking in subdued tones to the Kleinian beside her, Manuel Escobar.

“Look at me!” I cried at her. Was I very loud? Quiet? Had she heard? Would she care how I felt? I squirmed and thrashed in Bernhardt’s arms. I got red in the face — I mean, my face felt hot — and my holder in his flopping panama hat complained, “Tom, take it easy, you’re going to make me drop you on the floor. I can’t hold you if you bounce around.” Then Maria faced me and I noticed, as I do from time to time, how inviting she looked, her lips red and exquisite beneath bright lights.