Flowers for Algernon Read online

  "What do you see, Charlie? What's the matter?"

  ***

  Upward, moving, like a leaf in an upcurrent of warm air. Speeding, the atoms of my body hurtling away from each other. I grow lighter, less dense, and larger ... larger ... exploding outward into the sun. I am an expanding universe swimming upward in a silent sea. Small at first, encompassing with my body, the room, the building, the city, the country, until I know that if I look down I will see my shadow blotting out the earth.

  Light and unfeeling. Drifting and expanding through time and space.

  And then, as I know I am about to pierce the crust of existence, like a flying fish leaping out of the sea, I feel the pull from below.

  It annoys me. I want to shake it off. On the verge of blending with the universe I hear the whispers around the ridges of consciousness. And that ever-so-slight tug holds me to the finite and mortal world below.

  Slowly, as waves recede, my expanding spirit shrinks back into earthly dimensions—not voluntarily, because I would prefer to lose myself, but I am pulled from below, back to myself, into myself, so that for just one moment I am on the couch again, fitting the fingers of my awareness into the glove of my flesh. And I know I can move this finger or wink that eye—if I want to. But I don't want to move. I will not move!

  I wait, and leave myself open, passive, to whatever this experience means. Charlie doesn't want me to pierce the upper curtain of the mind. Charlie doesn't want to know what lies beyond.

  Does he fear seeing God?

  Or seeing nothing?

  As I lie here waiting, the moment passes during which I am myself in myself, and again I lose all feeling of body or sensation. Charlie is drawing me down into myself. I stare inward in the center of my unseeing eye at the red spot that transforms itself into a multipetaled flower—the shimmering, swirling, luminescent flower that lies deep in the core of my unconscious.

  I am shrinking. Not in the sense of the atoms of my body becoming closer and more dense, but a fusion—as the atoms of my-self merge into microcosm. There will be great heat and unbearable light—the hell within hell—but I don't look at the light, only at the flower, un multiplying, undividing itself back from the many toward one. And for an instant the shimmering flower turns into the golden disk twirling on a string, and then to the bubble of swirling rainbows, and finally I am back in the cave where everything is quiet and dark and I swim the wet labyrinth searching for one to receive me ... embrace me ... absorb me ... into itself.

  That I may begin.

  In the core I see the light again, an opening in the darkest of caves, now tiny and far away—through the wrong end of a telescope—brilliant, blinding, shimmering, and once again the multipetaled flower (swirling lotus—that floats near the entrance of the unconscious). At the entrance of that cave I will find the answer, if I dare go back and plunge through it into the grotto of light beyond.

  Not yet!

  I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been. And as I start through the opening, I feel the pressure around me, propelling me in violent wavelike motions toward the mouth of the cave.

  It's too small! I can't get through!

  And suddenly I am hurled against the walls, again and again, and forced through the opening where the light threatens to burst my eyes. Again, I know I will pierce the crust into that holy light. More than I can bear. Pain as I have never known, and coldness, and nausea, and the great buzzing over my head flapping like a thousand wings. I open my eyes, blinded by the intense light. And flail the air and tremble and scream.

  ***

  I came out of it at the insistence of a hand shaking me roughly. Dr. Strauss.

  "Thank God," he said, when I looked into his eyes. "You had me worried."

  I shook my head. "I'm all right."

  "I think maybe that's all for today."

  I got up and swayed as I regained my perspective. The room seemed very small. "Not only for today," I said. "I don't think I should have any more sessions. I don't want to see any more."

  He was upset, but he didn't try to talk me out of it. I took my hat and coat and left.

  And now—Plato's words mock me in the shadows on the ledge behind the flames:

  "...the men of the cave would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes.... "

  October 5—Sitting down to type these reports is difficult, and I can't think with the tape recorder going. I keep putting it off for most of the day, but I know how important it is, and I've got to do it. I've told myself I won't have dinner until I sit down and write something—anything.

  Professor Nemur sent for me again this morning. He wanted me at the lab for some tests, the kind I used to do. At first I figured it was only right, because they're still paying me, and it's important I have the record complete, but when I got down to Beekman and went through it all with Burt, I knew it would be too much for me.

  First it was the paper and pencil maze. I remembered how it was before when I learned to do it quickly, and when I raced against Algernon. I could tell it was taking me a lot longer to solve the maze now. Burt had his hand out to take the paper, but I tore it up instead and threw the pieces into the waste basket.

  "No more. I'm through running the maze. I'm in a blind alley now, and that's all there is to it."

  He was afraid I'd run out, so he calmed me down. "That's all right, Charlie. Just take it easy."

  "What do you mean 'take it easy'? You don't know what it's like."

  "No, but I can imagine. We all feel pretty sick about it."

  "Keep your sympathy. Just leave me alone."

  He was embarrassed, and then I realized it wasn't his fault, and I was being lousy toward him. "Sorry I blew up," I said. "How's everything going? Got your thesis finished yet?"

  He nodded. "Having it retyped now. I'll get my Ph.D. in February."

  "Good boy." I slapped him on the shoulder to show him I wasn't angry with him. "Keep plugging. Nothing like an education. Look, forget what I said before. I'll do anything else you want. Just no more mazes—that's all."

  "Well, Nemur wants a Rorschach check."

  "To see what's happening down deep? What does he expect to find?"

  I must have looked upset, because he started to back off. "We don't have to. You're here voluntarily. If you don't want to—"

  "That's all right. Go ahead. Deal out the cards. But don't tell me what you find out."

  He didn't have to.

  I knew enough about the Rorschach to know that it wasn't what you saw in the cards that counted, but how you reacted to them. As wholes, or parts, with movement or just motionless figures, with special attention to the color spots or ignoring them, with lots of ideas or just a few stereotyped responses.

  "It's not valid," I said. "I know what you're looking for. I know the kind of responses I'm supposed to have, to create a certain picture of what my mind is like. All I've got to do is..."

  He looked up at me, waiting.

  "All I've got to do is..."

  But then it hit me like a fist against the side of my head that I didn't remember what I had to do. It was as if I had been looking at the whole thing clearly on the blackboard of my mind, but when I turned to read it, part of it had been erased and the rest didn't make sense.

  At first, I refused to believe it. I went through the cards in a panic, so fast that I was choking on my words. I wanted to tear the inkblots apart to make them reveal themselves. Somewhere in those inkblots there were answers I had known just a little while ago. Not really in the inkblots, but in the part of my mind that would give form and meaning to them and project my imprint on them.

  And I couldn't do it. I couldn't remember what I had to say. All missing.

  "That's a woman..." I said, "...on her knees washing the floors. I mean—no—it's a man holding a knife." And even as I said it, I knew what I was saying and I switched away and started off in another direction. "Two figures tugging at something ..
. like a doll ... and each one is pulling so it looks as if they're going to tear it apart and—no!—I mean it's two faces staring at each other through the window, and—"

  I swept the cards off the table and got up.

  "No more tests. I don't want to take any more tests."

  "All right, Charlie. We'll stop for today."

  "Not just for today. I'm not coming back here any more. Whatever there is left in me that you need, you can get from the progress reports. I'm through running the maze. I'm not a guinea pig any more. I've done enough. I want to be left alone now."

  "All right, Charlie. I understand."

  "No, you don't understand because it isn't happening to you, and no one can understand but me. I don't blame you. You've got your job to do, and your Ph.D. to get, and—oh, yes, don't tell me, I know you're in this largely out of love of humanity, but still you've got your life to live and we don't happen to belong on the same level. I passed your floor on the way up, and now I'm passing it on the way down, and I don't think I'll be taking this elevator again. So let's just say good-bye here and now."

  "Don't you think you should talk to Dr.—"

  "Say good-bye to everyone for me, will you? I don't feel like facing any of them again."

  Before he could say any more or try to stop me, I was out of the lab, and I caught the elevator down and out of Beekman for the last time.

  October 7—Strauss tried to see me again this morning, but I wouldn't open the door. I want to be left to myself now.

  It's a strange sensation to pick up a book you read and enjoyed just a few months ago and discover you don't remember it. I recall how wonderful I thought Milton was. When I picked up Paradise Lost I could only remember it was about Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge, but now I couldn't make sense of it.

  I stood up and closed my eyes and saw Charlie—myself—six or seven years old, sitting at the dinner table with a schoolbook, learning to read, saying the words over and over with my mother sitting beside him, beside me...

  "Try it again."

  "See Jack. See Jack run. See Jack see."

  "No! Not See Jack see! It's Run Jack run!" Pointing with her rough-scrubbed finger.

  "See Jack. See Jack run. Run Jack see."

  "No! You're not trying. Do it again!"

  Do it again ... do it again ... do it again...

  "Leave the boy alone. You've got him terrified."

  "He's got to learn. He's too lazy to concentrate."

  Run Jack run ... run Jack run ... run Jack run ... run Jack run...

  "He's slower than the other children. Give him time."

  "He's normal. There's nothing wrong with him. Just lazy. I'll beat it into him until he learns."

  Run Jack run ... run Jack run ... run Jack run ... run Jack run...

  And then looking up from the table, it seems to me I saw myself, through Charlie's eyes, holding Paradise Lost, and I realized I was breaking the binding with the pressure of both hands as if I wanted to tear the book in half. I broke the back of it, ripped out a handful of pages, and flung them and the book across the room to the corner where the broken records were. I let it lay there and its torn white tongues were laughing because I couldn't understand what they were saying.

  I've got to try to hold onto some of the things I've learned. Please, God, don't take it all away.

  October 10—Usually at night I go out for walks, wander around the city. I don't know why. To see faces, I guess. Last night I couldn't remember where I lived. A policeman took me home. I have the strange feeling that this has all happened to me before—a long time ago. I don't want to write it down, but I keep reminding myself that I'm the only one in the world who can describe what happens when it goes this way.

  Instead of walking I was floating through space, not clear and sharp, but with a gray film over everything. I know what's happening to me, but there is nothing I can do about it. I walk, or just stand on the sidewalk and watch people go by. Some of them look at me, and some of them don't but nobody says anything to me—except one night a man came up and asked if I wanted a girl. He took me to a place. He wanted ten dollars first and I gave it to him, but he never came back.

  And then I remembered what a fool I was.

  October 11—When I came into my apartment this morning, I found Alice there, asleep on the couch. Everything was cleaned up, and at first I thought I was in the wrong apartment, but then I saw she hadn't touched the smashed records or the torn books or the sheet music in the corner of the room. The floor creaked and she woke up and looked at me.

  "Hi," she laughed. "Some night owl."

  "Not an owl. More of a dodo. A dumb dodo. How'd you get in here?"

  "Through the fire escape. Fay's place. I called her to find out about you and she said she was worried. She says you've been acting strangely—causing disturbances. So, I decided it was time for me to put in an appearance. I straightened up a bit. I didn't think you'd mind."

  "I do mind ... very much. I don't want anybody coming around feeling sorry for me."

  She went to the mirror to comb her hair. "I'm not here because I feel sorry for you. It's because I feel sorry for me."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "It doesn't mean," she shrugged. "It just is—like a poem. I wanted to see you."

  "What's wrong with the zoo?"

  "Oh, come off it, Charlie. Don't fence with me. I waited long enough for you to come and get me. I decided to come to you."

  "Why?"

  "Because there's still time. And I want to spend it with you."

  "Is that a song?"

  "Charlie, don't laugh at me."

  "I'm not laughing. But I can't afford to spend my time with anyone—there's only enough left for myself."

  "I can't believe you want to be completely alone."

  "I do."

  "We had a little time together before we got out of touch. We had things to talk about, and things to do together. It didn't last very long but it was something. Look, we've known this might happen. It was no secret. I didn't go away, Charlie, I've just been waiting. You're about at my level again, aren't you?"

  I stormed around the apartment. "But that's crazy. There's nothing to look forward to. I don't dare let myself think ahead—only back. In a few months, weeks, days—who the hell knows?—I'll go back to Warren. You can't follow me there."

  "No," she admitted, "and I probably won't even visit you there. Once you're in Warren I'll do my best to forget you. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But until you go, there's no reason for either of us to be alone."

  Before I could say anything, she kissed me. I waited, as she sat beside me on the couch, resting her head against my chest, but the panic didn't come. Alice was a woman, but perhaps now Charlie would understand that she wasn't his mother or his sister.

  With the relief of knowing I had passed through a crisis, I sighed because there was nothing to hold me back. It was no time for fear or pretense, because it could never be this way with anyone else. All the barriers were gone. I had unwound the string she had given me, and found my way out of the labyrinth to where she was waiting. I loved her with more than my body.

  I don't pretend to understand the mystery of love, but this time it was more than sex, more than using a woman's body. It was being lifted off the earth, outside fear and torment, being part of something greater than myself. I was lifted out of the dark cell of my own mind, to become part of someone else—just as I had experienced it that day on the couch in therapy. It was the first step outward to the universe—beyond the universe—because in it and with it we merged to recreate and perpetuate the human spirit. Expanding and bursting outward, and contracting and forming inward, it was the rhythm of being—of breathing, of heartbeat, of day and night—and the rhythm of our bodies set off an echo in my mind. It was the way it had been back there in that strange vision. The gray murk lifted from my mind, and through it the light pierced into my brain (how strange that light should blind!), and my body wa
s absorbed back into a great sea of space, washed under in a strange baptism. My body shuddered with giving, and her body shuddered its acceptance.

  This was the way we loved, until the night became a silent day. And as I lay there with her I could see how important physical love was, how necessary it was for us to be in each other's arms, giving and taking. The universe was exploding, each particle away from the next, hurtling us into dark and lonely space, eternally tearing us away from each other—child out of the womb, friend away from friend, moving from each other, each through his own pathway toward the goal-box of solitary death.

  But this was the counterweight, the act of binding and holding. As when men to keep from being swept overboard in the storm clutch at each other's hands to resist being torn apart, so our bodies fused a link in the human chain that kept us from being swept into nothing.

  And in the moment before I fell off into sleep, I remembered the way it had been between Fay and myself, and I smiled. No wonder that had been easy. It had been only physical. This with Alice was a mystery.

  I leaned over and kissed her eyes.

  Alice knows everything about me now, and accepts the fact that we can be together for only a short while. She has agreed to go away when I tell her to go. It's painful to think about that, but what we have, I suspect, is more than most people find in a lifetime.

  October 14—I wake up in the morning and don't know where I am or what I'm doing here, and then I see her beside me and I remember. She senses when something is happening to me, and she moves quietly around the apartment, making breakfast, cleaning up the place, or going out and leaving me to myself, without any questions.

  We went to a concert this evening, but I got bored and we left in the middle. Can't seem to pay much attention any more. I went because I know I used to like Stravinsky but somehow I no longer have the patience for it.

  The only bad thing about having Alice here with me is that now I feel I should fight this thing. I want to stop time, freeze myself at this level and never let go of her.