The Learners: A Novel (No Series) (23 page)

Incredible—for those few seconds that she said it, we weren’t in New Haven anymore.

We were in Nuremberg.

“I started thinking about it metaphorically. I couldn’t help it. It’s how I was taught. Something always means something else. I’m constantly trying to decode things, to find out what they mean.” I was blowing this. Damn it.
Damn
it.

He started to say something, stopped. It was as if I’d lifted the veil on an awkward, dreadful truth. One he didn’t want revealed. Not just yet.

I spoke even faster. “There just seemed to be a larger, deeper context to it. I mean, I know it’s a stretch, but is that it? I’m assuming you’re Jewish, forgive me. I’m sorry to ask, I know this is crazy: Is this an attempt to explain what happened in Germany? How it could have possibly happened. Happened to…your family?” I was embarrassed I’d given him away. Had I? Stop it. Stop talking.

He cleared his throat, looked away to the wall. “How it
could
have happened,” he murmured. I saw then just how young he was. The mustache and beard, the prematurely graying hair, the lab coat, they masked it. But not at this close range. God, he was younger than Tip, had to be. I didn’t think he was even thirty.

“My family,” he said, quietly, “originated in Central Europe, in Munich, Vienna, Prague…I should have been born into the German-speaking Jewish community of Prague in 1933.” He flicked his eyes closed and open. “And died in a gas chamber ten years later. But instead I was born in the Bronx Hospital.”

“Your parents emigrated.”

A nod. “It’s always been the big ‘what if.’ What if they stayed?”

“It’s fate. You were meant to survive.”

“I’m not a big believer in that.”

“I’ve…found that fate doesn’t tend to care if you believe in it or not.” As opposed to God.

He gestured toward the door. “Well, I really have to get back to things. It’s been so interesting to talk with you, really.”

I was boring him. I was such an idiot.

No. Please don’t go. “Of course. I’m sorry I took up so much of your time. You’ve been so kind. Just one more thing, I realize you’re very busy, but…”

“What?”

I hesitated. Who the hell was I to tell this man how to do his work? “You might want to try a way to do this off campus. The whole Yale facade is so imposing. Everyone in New Haven, the townies, they’re in awe of the place. Or terrified of it. You’ll get a truer reading in New Haven itself, as some sort of independent contractor. Take it out of the university, at least for a while. I think you might get a more uninhibited response out of it. For what that’s worth.”

“Interesting.” He grinned, just the merest bit.

“That’s exactly what we’ve planned to do. Glad you agree. We have several controls like that in mind.” He was polite, but time was up.

I didn’t want to leave. If I could stay with him, for at least a few hours, he could sustain me. Maybe even cure me. “Good. That’s good.” He was a doctor. I was sick. If I left now, I couldn’t be sure what would happen.

This visit, it didn’t do what I thought it would.

“You take care of yourself, now.”

I was trying to, honestly. I was running as fast as I could. It wasn’t working. The train was coming, for me, right on schedule.

“Sure.” And what could I do now but say good-bye to him, for the second and last time.

Back to the big “what if.”

I walked home, the long way, through the Old Campus and across the Green. It was lunchtime. I opened the kitchen cabinet above the stove, removed a can of Bambini-Buono Bolognese Bowties, and emptied it into a saucepan. I reached for the knob of the gas burner, stopped.

I didn’t dare turn it on.

Knobs. Switches. Levers. Buttons. They do devious things, I knew that now. They trigger horror in the world. They were to be avoided.

I managed to down two cold spoonfuls and tossed the rest into the garbage.

That night, I awoke, anxious. Something was strange, out of place. I looked over at the clock to see what time it was. I couldn’t make it out, so I turned on the lamp: 2:35 in the morning. And then I saw.

Someone was in the room, with me.

At the foot of the bed. Standing. A man. His face obscured, half in shadow. Weak moonlight mottled the curtains and dimly silhouetted his head and shoulders. He was wearing a hat.

I tried to scream, couldn’t. Mute with pure, hot terror. Backed helplessly against the headboard.
Why
couldn’t I scream? My mouth was flapping, useless, no breath in or out.

He drifted closer. Silently into the lamplight, which crept up his body, inch by inch. Cordovan wing tip shoes, black trousers, leather belt, a white dress shirt with rolled sleeves, a tie the color of dried blood. His top shirt button was undone, and the bottom of his face, his chin, looked familiar—heavyset, pale, light stubble, and…

Heavy, horn-rimmed glasses.

It was Wallace. From the lab.

I should have been relieved. But something about this was unbearable. He stared at me, blankly at first, then his face grew with annoyance. How did he get in here? Was he sleepwalking? Wasn’t the door locked?

He was right next to me now, at the side of the bed.

My hand, tremulous, reached out to his, which he brought forward, slow with reluctance.

I touched him.

It was like flipping a switch. His eyes threw themselves open, full, his pupils became terrible black bullets shooting out of a white sky—aimed right at mine. His mouth exploded with a deafening, electric shriek:

“LET ME OUT!”

no.

“LET ME OUT!”

stop it.

“LET ME OUT!”

please.

“LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT! LETMEOUTLETMEOUT LETMEOUTLETMEOUT!”

I reached

“LET ME OUT!”

out to

“LET ME OUT!”

to turn

“LET ME OUT!”

him off.

“LET ME—”

And then I woke up.

WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK,
QUICK AS A BUNNY.

C
ONTENT AS
M
ETAPHOR
.

So, what’s a metaphor for me, Metaphor? How about: a label. A street sign, an entry in a dictionary. Simply, I am something that represents, or stands for, something else. So why would anyone want to use me? To get their point across more effectively, of course, but more specifically to give visual presence to things that can’t otherwise be depicted. There are things that we can’t see until we see them as something else.

Take Evil, for example: What does Evil look like? It’s the snake in the Garden of Eden. The grinning red man with horns, a tail, and a pitchfork. A skull and crossbones. Hitler.

And what about Good? Oh, you know—a human being with a glowing ring hovering over his head and wings on his back. A Lamb. Gold. The Old Days.

But keep in mind that the same metaphors can mean completely different things, depending on how you use them. That snake, for example. In Genesis, he is Evil Temptation, but put him on a flag that says “Don’t Tread on Me” and he’s Righteous Revolution. Wrap two of him intertwined around a caduceus and he is Medicine.

So you see, I can be very, very powerful. I am the political cartoons by Thomas Nast that brought down Boss Tweed’s Tammany Hall. I am the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union. I am the Rising Sun. I am the bald eagle that IS the United States of America.

Words of warning: Don’t mix me up.

You wouldn’t want to gild that lily, especially if you’re only going to whitewash it in the process.

That spark of life could be the kiss of death.

Monday morning at nine I lingered in Tip’s office doorway, waiting for him to notice. “Truce,” I said, my hand next to my head. He smiled and motioned for me to sit.

“What’s the word?” he asked, hands folded behind his head. Then his face darkened. “You look like the dog’s dinner, by the way. Are you missing sleep?”

God. “Some, I guess. I’ve been at this thing like we all have.”

He made a notation on one of his ever-present legal pads. “I’ll get you something for that. Works wonders. My doctor is practically the Sandman.”

“Not necessary, thanks. But I have a new idea for you. Preston would never go for it, so I thought why not toss it your way. This is going to sound weird, but…The first time, when Mimi said ‘taste test.’ It struck me—that’s what you should do.”

“Taste test.”

“But I mean literally. Even if we’d gotten more, well, normal people to interview, for the shoes, we were going about it the wrong way. Too direct. When people are on the spot they freeze up, don’t know what to say. But they’re much more on the level when you just talk to them, in a normal social context.”

“Okay, so you’re suggesting…”

“Try doing it as—” Say it. Say, it. “…as an experiment.”

“An experiment. How?”

“Catch them off guard. Shoes are one thing. But potato chips are another.”

“Potato chips.”

“I know, it sounds nuts. Listen: run a new ad, but
only
in the
Yale Daily
. That should weed out weirdo townies. Recruit the Yalies for a Krinkle Kutt blind taste test, against some other local brands—Utz or Wise or Good’s or what have you. And then, in the middle of it, ask them casually about the shoes they’re wearing, what they think about them.”

He furrowed his brow, suspicious.

“They’ll probably be more honest, revealing. For better or worse.”

Tip buried his face in his hands. Finally, “Jesus, how did you ever think of that?”

If you only knew. If I could only
stop
thinking about it.

“It’s brilliant.” He exhaled, leaned back. “You bastard.”

Yes—at least on the second count, I thought so, too.

About an hour later, back at my desk, the phone jarred me out of a waking daydream of coupons, grocery circulars, and tortured screams. “Mr. Ware would like to see you in his office, please.” Miss Preech’s voice reached my ear from a world away, like it was coming through a waxed string via a tin can.