Flowers for Algernon Read online

  "Feels wet. I made."

  "Yes, well—uh—you won't do that next time, will you? You won't be scared any more, now that you know it doesn't hurt. Now I want you to tell your mom how smart you feel, and she'll bring you here twice a week for shortwave encephalo-reconditioning, and you'll get smarter, and smarter, and smarter."

  Charlie smiles. "I can walk backwards."

  "You can? Let's see," says Guarino closing his folder in mock excitement. "Let me see."

  Slowly, and with great effort, Charlie takes several steps backward, stumbling against the examination table as he goes. Guarino smiles and nods. "Now that's what I call something. Oh, you wait. You're going to be the smartest boy on your block before we're through with you."

  Charlie flushes with pleasure at this praise and attention. It is not often that people smile at him and tell him he has done something well. Even the terror of the machine, and of being strapped down to the table, begins to fade.

  "On the whole block?" The thought fills him as if he cannot take enough air into his lungs no matter how he tries. "Even smarter than Hymie?"

  Guarino smiles again and nods. "Smarter than Hymie."

  Charlie looks at the machine with new wonder and respect. The machine will make him smarter than Hymie who lives two doors away and knows how to read and write and is in the Boy Scouts. "Is that your machine?"

  "Not yet. It belongs to the bank. But soon it'll be mine, and then I'll be able to make lots of boys like you smart." He pats Charlie's head and says, "You're a lot nicer than some of the normal kids whose mothers bring them here hoping I can make geniuses out of them by raising their I.Q.'s."

  "Do they be jean-asses if you raise their eyes?" He put his hands to his face to see if the machine had done anything to raise his eyes. "You gonna make me a jean-ass?"

  Guarino's laugh is friendly as he squeezes Charlie's shoulder. "No, Charlie. Nothing for you to worry about. Only nasty little donkeys become jean-asses. You'll stay just the way you are—a nice kid." And then, thinking better of it he adds: "Of course, a little smarter than you are now."

  He unlocks the door and leads Charlie out to his parents. "Here he is, folks. None the worse for the experience. A good boy. I think we're going to be good friends, eh, Charlie?"

  Charlie nods. He wants Dr. Guarino to like him, but he is terrified when he sees the expression on his mother's face. "Charlie! What did you do?"

  "Just an accident, Mrs. Gordon. He was frightened the first time. But don't blame him or punish him. I wouldn't want him to connect punishment with coming here."

  But Rose Gordon is sick with embarrassment. "It's disgusting. I don't know what to do, Dr. Guarino. Even at home he forgets—and sometimes when we have people in the house. I'm so ashamed when he does that."

  The look of disgust on his mother's face sets him trembling. For a short while he had forgotten how bad he is, how he makes his parents suffer. He doesn't know how, but it frightens him when she says he makes her suffer, and when she cries and screams at him, he turns his face to the wall and moans softly to himself.

  "Now don't upset him, Mrs. Gordon, and don't worry. Bring him to me on Tuesday and Thursday each week at the same time."

  "But will this really do any good?" asks Matt. "Ten dollars is a lot of—"

  "Matt!" she clutches at his sleeve. "Is that anything to talk about at a time like this? Your own flesh and blood, and maybe Dr. Guarino can make him like other children, with the Lord's help, and you talk about money!"

  Matt Gordon starts to defend himself, but then, thinking better of it, he pulls out his wallet.

  "Please..." sighs Guarino, as if embarrassed at the sight of money. "My assistant at the front desk will take care of all the financial arrangements. Thank you." He half bows to Rose, shakes Matt's hand and pats Charlie on the back. "Nice boy. Very nice." Then, smiling again, he disappears behind the door to the inner office.

  They argue all the way home, Matt complaining that barber supply sales have fallen off, and that their savings are dwindling, Rose screeching back that making Charlie normal is more important than anything else.

  Frightened by their quarreling, Charlie whimpers. The sound of anger in their voices is painful to him. As soon as they enter the apartment, he pulls away and runs to the corner of the kitchen, behind the door and stands with his forehead pressed against the tile wall, trembling and moaning.

  They pay no attention to him. They have forgotten that he has to be cleaned and changed.

  "I'm not hysterical. I'm just sick of you complaining every time I try to do something for your son. You don't care. You just don't care."

  "That's not true! But I realize there's nothing we can do. When you've got a child like him it's a cross, and you bear it, and love it. Well, I can bear him, but I can't stand your foolish ways. You've spent almost all our savings on quacks and phonies—money I could have used to set me up in a nice business of my own. Yes. Don't look at me that way. For all the money you've thrown down the sewer to do something that can't be done, I could have had a barbershop of my own instead of eating my heart out selling for ten hours a day. My own place with people working for me!"

  "Stop shouting. Look at him, he's frightened."

  "The hell with you. Now I know who's the dope around here. Me! For putting up with you." He storms out, slamming the door behind him.

  ***

  "Sorry to interrupt you, sir, but we're going to be landing in a few minutes. You'll have to fasten your seat belt again ... Oh, you have it on, sir. You've had it on all the way from New York. Close to two hours..."

  "I forgot all about it. I'll just leave it on until we land. It doesn't seem to bother me any more."

  ***

  Now I can see where I got the unusual motivation for becoming smart that so amazed everyone at first. It was something Rose Gordon lived with day and night. Her fear, her guilt, her shame that Charlie was a moron. Her dream that something could be done. The urgent question always: whose fault was it, hers or Matt's? Only after Norma proved to her that she was capable of having normal children, and that I was a freak, did she stop trying to make me over. But I guess I never stopped wanting to be the smart boy she wanted me to be, so that she would love me.

  A funny thing about Guarino. I should resent him for what he did to me, and for taking advantage of Rose and Matt, but somehow I can't. After that first day, he was always pleasant to me. There was always the pat on the shoulder, the smile, the encouraging word that came my way so rarely.

  He treated me—even then—as a human being.

  It may sound like ingratitude, but that is one of the things that I resent here—the attitude that I am a guinea pig. Nemur's constant references to having made me what I am, or that someday there will be others like me who will become real human beings.

  How can I make him understand that he did not create me?

  He makes the same mistake as the others when they look at a feeble-minded person and laugh because they don't understand there are human feelings involved. He doesn't realize that I was a person before I came here.

  I am learning to control my resentment, not to be so impatient, to wait for things. I guess I'm growing up. Each day I learn more and more about myself, and the memories that began as ripples now wash over me in high-breaking waves....

  June 11—The confusion began from the moment we arrived at the Chalmers Hotel in Chicago and discovered that by error our rooms would not be vacant until the next night and until then we would have to stay at the nearby Independence Hotel. Nemur was furious. He took it as a personal affront and quarrelled with everyone in the line of hotel command from the bellhop to the manager. We waited in the lobby as each hotel official went off in search of his superior to see what could be done.

  In the midst of all the confusion—luggage drifting in and piling up all around the lobby, bellboys hustling back and forth with their little baggage carts, members who hadn't seen each other in a year, recognizing and greeting each other—we stood
there feeling increasingly embarrassed as Nemur tried to collar officials connected with the International Psychological Association.

  Finally, when it became apparent that nothing could be done about it, he accepted the fact that we would have to spend our first night in Chicago at the Independence.

  As it turned out, most of the younger psychologists were staying at the Independence, and that was where the big first-night parties were. Here, people had heard about the experiment, and most of them knew who I was. Wherever we went, someone came up and asked my opinions on everything from the effects of the new tax to the latest archaeological discoveries in Finland. It was challenging, and my storehouse of general knowledge made it easy for me to talk about almost anything. But after a while I could see that Nemur was annoyed at all the attention I was getting.

  When an attractive young clinician from Falmouth College asked me if I could explain some of the causes of my own retardation, I told her that Professor Nemur was the man to answer that.

  It was the chance he had been waiting for to show his authority, and for the first time since we'd known each other he put his hand on my shoulder. "We don't know exactly what causes the type of phenylketonuria that Charlie was suffering from as a child—some unusual biochemical or genetic situation, possibly ionizing radiation or natural radiation or even a virus attack on the fetus—whatever it was resulted in a defective gene which produces a, shall we say, 'maverick enzyme' that creates defective biochemical reactions. And, of course, newly produced amino acids compete with the normal enzymes causing brain damage."

  The girl frowned. She had not expected a lecture, but Nemur had seized the floor and he went on in the same vein. "I call it competitive inhibition of enzymes. Let me give you an example of how it works. Think of the enzyme produced by the defective gene as a wrong key which fits into the chemical lock of the central nervous system—but won't turn. Because it's there, the true key—the right enzyme—can't even enter the lock. It's blocked. Result? Irreversible destruction of proteins in the brain tissue."

  "But if it is irreversible," intruded one of the other psychologists who had joined the little audience, "how is it possible that Mr. Gordon here is no longer retarded?"

  "Ah!" crowed Nemur, "I said the destruction to the tissue was irreversible, not the process itself. Many researchers have been able to reverse the process through injections of chemicals which combine with the defective enzymes, changing the molecular shape of the interfering key, as it were. This is central to our own technique as well. But first, we remove the damaged portions of the brain and permit the implanted brain tissue which has been chemically revitalized to produce brain proteins at a supernormal rate—"

  "Just a minute, Professor Nemur," I said, interrupting him at the height of his peroration. "What about Rahajamati's work in that field?"

  He looked at me blankly. "Who?"

  "Rahajamati. His article attacks Tanida's theory of enzyme fusion—the concept of changing the chemical structure of the enzyme blocking the step in the metabolic pathway."

  He frowned. "Where was that article translated?"

  "It hasn't been translated yet. I read it in the Hindu Journal of Psychopathology just a few days ago."

  He looked at his audience and tried to shrug it off. "Well, I don't think we have anything to worry about. Our results speak for themselves."

  "But Tanida himself first propounded the theory of blocking the maverick enzyme through combination, and now he points out that—"

  "Oh, come now, Charlie. Just because a man is the first to come forth with a theory doesn't make him the final word on its experimental development. I think everyone here will agree that the research done in the United States and Britain far outshines the work done in India and Japan. We still have the best laboratories and the best equipment in the world."

  "But that doesn't answer Rahajamati's point that—"

  "This is not the time or place to go into that. I'm certain all of these points will be adequately dealt with in tomorrow's session." He turned to talk to someone about an old college friend, cutting me off completely, and I stood there dumbfounded.

  I managed to get Strauss off to one side, and I started questioning him. "All right, now. You've been telling me I'm too sensitive to him. What did I say that upset him that way?"

  "You're making him feel inferior and he can't take it."

  "I'm serious, for God's sake. Tell me the truth."

  "Charlie, you've got to stop thinking that everyone is laughing at you. Nemur couldn't discuss those articles because he hasn't read them. He can't read those languages."

  "Not read Hindi and Japanese? Oh, come on now."

  "Charlie, not everyone has your gift for languages."

  "But then how can he refute Rahajamati's attack on this method, and Tanida's challenge to the validity of this kind of control? He must know about those—"

  "No...," said Strauss thoughtfully. "Those papers must be recent. There hasn't been time to get translations made."

  "You mean you haven't read them either?"

  He shrugged. "I'm an even worse linguist than he is. But I'm certain before the final reports are turned in, all the journals will be combed for additional data."

  I didn't know what to say. To hear him admit that both of them were ignorant of whole areas in their own fields was terrifying. "What languages do you know?" I asked him.

  "French, German, Spanish, Italian, and enough Swedish to get along."

  "No Russian, Chinese, Portuguese?"

  He reminded me that as a practicing psychiatrist and neurosurgeon he had very little time for languages. And the only ancient languages that he could read were Latin and Greek. Nothing of the ancient Oriental tongues.

  I could see he wanted to end the discussion at that point, but somehow I couldn't let go. I had to find out just how much he knew.

  I found out.

  Physics: nothing beyond the quantum theory of fields. Geology: nothing about geomorphology or stratigraphy or even petrology. Nothing about the micro- or macro-economic theory. Little in mathematics beyond the elementary level of calculus of variations, and nothing at all about Banach algebra or Riemannian manifolds. It was the first inkling of the revelations that were in store for me this weekend.

  I couldn't stay at the party. I slipped away to walk and think this out. Frauds—both of them. They had pretended to be geniuses. But they were just ordinary men working blindly, pretending to be able to bring light into the darkness. Why is it that everyone lies? No one I know is what he appears to be. As I turned the corner I caught a glimpse of Burt coming after me.

  "What's the matter?" I said as he caught up to me. "Are you following me?"

  He shrugged and laughed uncomfortably. "Exhibit A, star of the show. Can't have you run down by one of these motorized Chicago cowboys or mugged and rolled on State Street?"

  "I don't like being kept in custody."

  He avoided my gaze as he walked beside me, his hands deep in his pockets. "Take it easy, Charlie. The old man is on edge. This convention means a lot to him. His reputation is at stake."

  "I didn't know you were so close to him," I taunted, recalling all the times Burt had complained about the professor's narrowness and pushing.

  "I'm not close to him." He looked at me defiantly. "But he's put his whole life into this. He's no Freud or Jung or Pavlov or Watson, but he's doing something important and I respect his dedication—maybe even more because he's just an ordinary man trying to do a great man's work, while the great men are all busy making bombs."

  "I'd like to hear you call him ordinary to his face."

  "It doesn't matter what he thinks of himself. Sure he's egotistic, so what? It takes that kind of ego to make a man attempt a thing like this. I've seen enough of men like him to know that mixed in with that pompousness and self-assertion is a goddamned good measure of uncertainty and fear."

  "And phoniness and shallowness," I added. "I see them now as they really are, phonies. I sus
pected it of Nemur. He always seemed frightened of something. But Strauss surprised me."

  Burt paused and let out a long stream of breath. We turned into a luncheonette for coffee, and I didn't see his face, but the sound revealed his exasperation.

  "You think I'm wrong?"

  "Just that you've come a long way kind of fast," he said. "You've got a superb mind now, intelligence that can't really be calculated, more knowledge absorbed by now than most people pick up in a long lifetime. But you're lopsided. You know things. You see things. But you haven't developed understanding, or—I have to use the word—tolerance. You call them phonies, but when did either of them ever claim to be perfect, or superhuman? They're ordinary people. You're the genius."

  He broke off awkwardly, suddenly aware that he was preaching at me.

  "Go ahead."

  "Ever meet Nemur's wife?"

  "No."

  "If you want to understand why he's under tension all the time, even when things are going well at the lab and in his lectures, you've got to know Bertha Nemur. Did you know she's got him his professorship? Did you know she used her father's influence to get him the Welberg Foundation grant? Well, now she's pushed him into this premature presentation at the convention. Until you've had a woman like her riding you, don't think you can understand the man who has."

  I didn't say anything, and I could see he wanted to get back to the hotel. All the way back we were silent.

  ***

  Am I a genius? I don't think so. Not yet anyway. As Burt would put it, mocking the euphemisms of educational jargon, I'm exceptional—a democratic term used to avoid the damning labels of gifted and deprived (which used to mean bright and retarded) and as soon as exceptional begins to mean anything to anyone they'll change it. The idea seems to be: use an expression only as long as it doesn't mean anything to anybody. Exceptional refers to both ends of the spectrum, so all my life I've been exceptional.

  Strange about learning; the farther I go the more I see that I never knew even existed. A short while ago I foolishly thought I could learn everything—all the knowledge in the world. Now I hope only to be able to know of its existence, and to understand one grain of it.