"I remember," I said, "the first time it happened to me."
"What happened?"
"The first time I was really in love. Her name was Ruth. She was a
little gal. Light-brown hair and the kind of eyes that look up at you.
Little breasts and shy, inquisitive hands. I--"
"Save it for the magazines."
"I was crazy about her. But I had to go to college and I couldn't
afford to see her often. Couldn't afford to take her to the proms. A
Christmas vacation came around and we threw a party at the house of
a friend whose folks had gone south. We all got tight. I missed her
when I was dancing--and started looking. I found her upstairs--in a
bedroom--with a guy in my class. After that--"
"--you knew they were just like trolley cars."
"When I was working on the _New Yorker_--I fell again. A gal from
Holyoke--"
"Horse manure to Holyoke."
"Paul. What are we supposed to think--to do--when we spend all the
energy and time and dough to make a brilliant adult out of a promising
kid? By 'we'--I mean at least a hundred men and women. The kid turns
out to be super-good. Everybody chips in to make sure he has every
possible opportunity. He is tops in his class. He gets an inside hot
spot on the most important project in his nation. Every single person
who ever knew him--loves him--and is button-popping proud of him. But
one day he has his feelings hurt badly--and there's not one thing we
can do for him. We try. But it's no dice. So he climbs out of a window
and slams about a billion dollars' worth of brains and the time and
energy, and hope of other people, to smithereens, on the curb. We bury
what's left of him. And then we sit around asking each other what the
use is. Our best wasn't good enough for him or for us. We keep asking
ourselves what the hell he did expect of life--and of us--that he
didn't get."
Paul at least listened--which was a clue: he'd listen to a piece about
himself.
But he said coldly, "Your values are pretty sleazy, Phil. Only a day
or two ago, you were telling me that we physicists had sinned. That
we deserved to be punished. That all we'd done was evil. Now--because
you're in a corner--physics is suddenly the most important thing in the
nation. May I repeat--horse manure!"
"Sins of omission," I said. "You guys think of yourselves as
honest--and you are, in one way. About science, you don't cheat
or lie, ever. It's the solitary triumph of our age. And look at
the results. Progress in objectivity accelerates by a factor of
hundreds--thousands--in a couple of centuries. I'm for that. But
that--alone--isn't enough. You birds look at your objective integrity
as if it were all there is to virtue. It's not. Listen, Paulo. There
are two functions of virtue: one is to find new truths; the other is to
dispel old lies; the whole man practices both, equally."
"Grant that--but don't we educate people as fast as we can?"
I shook my head. "Look at you. The scientific description of your
situation on this bloody shelf is known to tens of thousands. But not
to you. You're the victim of old lies. You're about to toss yourself
into the late afternoon because you were so busy learning new truths
in physics that you never bothered to dispel the old lies in your
psychology. You're a damned anachronism! A burnt offering to Woman.
You're a puppet of a lot of myths and legends and poor child training.
You might as well be a pagan male virgin--offered up to some fat,
female goddess by your tribe. A man that isn't a man. A scientist from
the neck up--and a howling heathen from the waist down. Unaware of the
fact. A pretty picture!"
"I suppose," he said with the utmost bitterness, "that I would be
sitting in your apartment chortling happily--if I had ideals like
yours. The scientific integrity of a whore-master."
"My ideals," I said, "at least keep a mediocre author plugging to the
end. Yours, apparently won't save one of the world's top mathematicians
from one lousy pair of legs."
"That's all you feel about a woman!"
"That's all _you_ feel! Fate took away your candy and now you won't
play. It was public candy, anyhow--and only good for all the boys. You
wouldn't face that. But if you want to love women realistically, that's
just what you'll have to face, among a lot of other things. Love lies
a long way beyond Marcia's behavior." I tried to grin at him. "I'm
supposed to be a psychologist, myself. There should be a way by which
I could persuade what's left of your senses to stop playing Prometheus
and get off your rock."
"Outsmart me?"
"Shouldn't I be able? If my dope's any good?"
"It isn't any good, though. Just a flashy bunch of extrapolation and
phony biology. You're no real philosopher, Phil."
"Maybe not. Still--it isn't my product. It's Jung's. He's something of
a brain."
"Horse manure."
"There is plenty of it down there in the street," I said. "If you want
to add yourself--by a method that will make you indistinguishable from
the rest of it--"
He doubled up his fist and smacked the concrete. "Can't you see I'm
tormented--?"