He sits surrounded by his languid charm, radiating diffuse gas unintensively with the beginning of a concentration that may ultimately form something, entering the main sequence perhaps fairly low down in the spectral levels, unless already degenerate matter, just passing through, you know, can I think with you, dad? No, I don’t want you. But you’ve got me, dad, though sometimes, of course, I’ve got you. I don’t care who’s got whom, go away. So I just thought I’d come and talk to you.
— Talk to me? What about?
— Well, my future, for one. Mr Mellek says I may have to take matters into my own hands, whatever he means by that. I know what I mean by it.
— Oh?
— Well, he says you can’t pay my school fees any more, want to retire or something. That suits me, father. I want to retire too.
— The alarm may go off at any minute.
— What alarm?
— Sorry, I thought I heard a noise. You’ve grown, Martin.
— Yes, father. Don’t you recognise me, then?
— Of course I recognise you. But — well, I didn’t realise — it sort of pushes one into the grave.
— You had a narrow escape, didn’t you, father? How did it feel exactly, to come back? I mean, do you remember anything, dream anything?
— No. I never dream.
— Like me. I never dream either.
— Do you like noise, Martin?
— Noise? What sort of noise?
— Well, young people seem to love noise these days. A sort of roar of adolescence. I wonder whether I –
— Oh you mean motorbikes and sports-cars. No. But how clever of you all the same. Mother warned me I’d find it difficult to get through to you, but you’ve hit the nail bang on the head.
The needles oscillate violently, swing round with a loud creak, the alarm shrieks then goes suddenly silent, except for the loud ticking of something or other in non-natural impulses to the furthest region that may send a reply such as what do you mean, you want to retire?
— From school, father. I hate school.
— But you know nothing, Martin. Your reports –
— Precisely. I hate work, you see, that kind of work, history, Latin, Shakespeare, biology and all that.
— Because you don’t try to understand it. But it all counts later. Someone used to say to me, I forget who, when you don’t understand something, go on as if you do, it will all become clear later, and useful, too.
— Useful in what?
— Mathematics works that way.
— But father, I don’t want to do mathematics, or science, and become one of those lunatics we live among, like Dr Dekko, and Professor Head, and –
— Oh, yes, Head.
— He died, didn’t he?
— I believe so.
— Oh come, father, don’t you know?
— Yes, yes. It all seems such a long time. Infinite space exhausts me.
— Or medicine for that matter. You didn’t, want me to follow in your footsteps, did you, father?
— No. Oh no, don’t do that.
— Well then. Good. We agree. After all if you can’t afford it, and I have no capacity for it –
— What have you capacity for, Martin?
— A good question, father. Quite frankly, nothing. If I could do exactly as I liked, I’d do nothing at all. I’d get around on pure charm. You see, I’ve discovered how to do it. Just listen to people and smile, pretending a deep interest, well, not even pretending, after all, one learns a lot that way. But it flatters people and they start giving out, giving out diffuse gas unintensively, faintly, like the beginning of a concentration that may ultimately form a star, and enter the main sequence somewhere low down in the spectral levels, unless, perhaps already degenerate matter of high density, its luminosity decreasing with its mass like a White Dwarf in the final stage of its long life, or with some others, expanding, cooling, increasing in luminosity and moving out of the main sequence as Red Giants high in the spectral level, in elliptical orbits at the nucleus of a galaxy, or towards the spiral arms, bright cepheids, Blue Giants, colliding with another galaxy and filling the whole room, bursting its walls, the street, the sky. But then, you see, I realise one can’t quite rely on that. Most people have nothing to give, unfortunately.
Most people find him charming and he sits in it lazily, gracefully, saying nothing, I’d do nothing at all. Except, the noise begins, racing around the orbits or along the square of the hypotenuse, surely you must have noticed it, every circle has its square, I drove into the wrong one first, hence the time I took, and the noise, moving in total immobility against the ultra-violet light, producing no vibration except noise, since you hit the nail, well, a new noise, in fact. These hands –
— that heal –
— instruments, father, not human innards. I have miraculous hands on the notes of a jazz trumpet. And good lungs. And a good ear. I learnt to play at school. And at home too, though you didn’t seem to hear. I can create a new noise, father, one doesn’t need higher education for that.
— But you have an artist’s hands.
He stretches them out, long and lanky, feminine perhaps, but then you never noticed them, father, you never allowed for that.
— I did, Martin, I did. You had your collection. I gave you enough pocket-money for your collection of records. Primitive jazz, you called it.
— Oh, that. I’ve grown out of that.
— Yes, I even liked some of it, genial stuff. I took an interest, surely. But I thought, well, at first your school reports showed promise.
— Anyone can show promise at what he thinks will grip him, give him something, well, but you might have known, since you began as a physicist, mother tells me, and found you had no capacity for it –
— What else did she tell you?
— Oh, lots of things.
— Things?
— You sounded just like Stanley when you said that. Things? I have no interest in things, I like people.
— You seem to know a lot.
— Mother says people consist of things. Do they, father? Do your patients? I mean, you sort of live on people consisting of things, don’t you?
— That sounds like Stanley too, if I may say so.
— Yes, well, she goes for the same type. Silly girl.
— So. You think your mother silly? Have you any such outstandingly original views on myself?
— Oh come, father, I have a high regard for you. You know that.
— Do I?
— Well, haven’t I proved, by coming here, and talking –
— to your satisfaction, yes.
— Oh dear. She warned me I’d find it hard to get through to you. She said she couldn’t communicate with you at all, that you said nothing to her, nothing that made the slightest sense, during the whole time, two years or more, since –
— I died.
— Yes, well, I know, you had a ghastly experience but what about her, she went through hell too, father, besides, time heals and all that.
— I thought, that we … communicated … a great deal.
— You used to sit there, even during the holidays, and say nothing, nothing at all. Mother had to send Patricia away, so that she wouldn’t see.
— Did you, come home, during the holidays?
— Yes father.
— I had thought, that we communicated. Brenda and I. But perhaps I dreamt it.
— You never dream.
— No.
— I wouldn’t say that death and recovery, however amazing, justified …
— What? My behaviour? Or hers?
— Well, all this, mess. And your crazy notion of retiring.
— So she did send you?
— No, of course she didn’t. She never wants to see you again if you care to know the truth. Not in your present state.
— So you came, like a great clumsy oaf, to change my state.