She would have functioned perfectly, I imagine, among the Australian primitives. She might even have been raised to power and eminence among them, for, as I said, she was the essence of goodness, she knew no evil. But so far as living the civilized life goes she was helpless; she not only had no desire to kill but she had no desire to thrive at the expense of others. She was incapacitated for work, because even if they had been able to train her to make caps for high explosives, for example, she might absent-mindedly throw her wages in the river on the way home or she might give them to a beggar in the street. Often in my presence she was whipped like a dog for having performed some beautiful act of grace in her absent-mindedness, as they called it. Nothing was worse, I learned as a child, than to do a good deed without reason.
I had received the same punishment as my sister, in the beginning, because I too had a habit of giving things away, especially new things which had just been given me. I had even received a bearing once, at the age of five, for having advised my mother to cut a wart off her finger. She had asked me what to do about it one day and, with my limited knowledge of medicine, I told her to cut it off with scissors, which she did, like an idiot. A few days later she got blood poisoning and then she got hold of me and she said – “you told me to cut it off, didn’t you?” and she gave me a sound thrashing. From that day on I knew that I was born in the wrong household. From that day on I learned like lightning. Talk about adaptation! By the time I was ten I had lived out the whole theory of evolution. And there I was, evolving through all the phases of animal life and yet chained to this creature called my “sister” who was evidently a primitive being and who would never, even at the age of ninety, arrive at a comprehension of the alphabet Instead of growing up like a stalwart tree I began to lean to one side, in complete defiance of the law of gravity. Instead of shooting out limbs and leaves I grew windows and turrets. The whole being, as it grew, was turning into stone, and the higher I shot up the more I defied the law of gravity.
I was a phenomenon in the midst of the landscape, but one which attracted people and elicited praise. If the mother who bore us had only made another effort perhaps a marvellous white buffalo might have been born and the three of us might have been permanently installed in a museum and protected for life. The conversations which took place between the leaning tower of Pisa, the whipping post, the snorting machine and the pterodactyl in human flesh were, to say the least, a bit queer. Anything might be the subject of conversation – a bread crumb which the “sister” had overlooked in brushing the tablecloth or Joseph’s coat of many colours which, in the old man’s tailoring brain, might have been either double-breasted or cutaway or frock. If I came from the ice pond, where I had been skating all afternoon, the important thing was not the ozone which I had breathed free of charge, nor the geometric convolutions which were strengthening my muscles, but the little spot of rust under the clamps which, if not rubbed off immediately, might deteriorate the whole skate and bring about the dissolution of some pragmatic value which was incomprehensible to my prodigal turn of thought.
This little rust spot, to take a trifling example, might entrain the most hallucinating results. Perhaps the “sister”, in searching for the kerosene can, might overturn the jar of prunes which were being stewed and thus endanger all our lives by robbing us of the required calories in the morrow’s meal. A severe beating would have to be given, not in anger, because that would disturb the digestive apparatus, but silently and efficiently, as a chemist would beat up the white of an egg in preparation for a minor analysis. But the “sister”, not understanding the prophylactic nature of the punishment, would give vent to the most bloodcurdling screams and this would so affect the old man that he would .go out for a walk and return two or three hours later blind drunk and, what was worse, scratching a little paint off the rolling doors in his blind staggers. The little piece of paint that had been chipped off would bring on a battle royal which was very bad for my dream life, because in my dream life I frequently changed places with my sister, accepting the tortures inflicted upon her and nourishing them with my supersensitive brain. It was in these dreams, always accompanied by the sound of glass breaking, of shrieks, curses, groans and sobs, that I gathered an unformulated knowledge of the ancient mysteries, of the rites of initiation, of the transmigration of souls and so on. It might begin with a scene from real life – the sister standing by the blackboard in the kitchen, the mother towering over her with a ruler, saying two and two makes how much? and the sister screaming five.
Bang! no, seven. Bang! no, thirteen, eighteen as twenty! I would be sitting at the table, doing my lessons, just in real life during these scenes, when by a slight twist or squirm, perhaps as I saw the ruler come down on the sister’s face, suddenly I would be in another realm where glass was unknown, as it was unknown to the Kickapoos or the Lenni-Lenapi. The faces of those about me were familiar – they were my uterine relatives who, for some mysterious reason, failed to recognize me in this new ambiance. They were garbed in black and the colour of their skin was ash grey, like that of the Tibetan devils. They were all fitted out with knives and other instruments of torture; they belonged to the caste of sacrificial butchers. I seemed to have absolute liberty and the authority of a god, and yet by some capricious turn of events the end would be that I’d be lying on the sacrificial block and one of my charming uterine relatives would be bending over me with a gleaming knife to cut out my heart. In sweat and terror I would begin to recite “my lessons” in a high, screaming voice, faster and faster, as I felt the knife searching for my heart.
Two and two is four, five and five is ten, earth, air, fire, water, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, Meocene, Pleocene, Eocene, the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, red, blue, yellow, the sorrel, the persimmon, the pawpaw, the catalpa .. .faster and faster… Odin, Wotan, Parsifal, King Alfred, Frederick the Great, the Hanseatic League, the Battle of Hastings, Thermopylae, 1492,1786, 18l2, Admiral Farragut, Pickett’s charge. The Light Brigade, we are gathered here today, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not, one and indivisible, no, 16, no, 27, help! murder! police! – and yelling louder and louder and going faster and faster I go completely off my nut and there is no more pain, no more terror, even though they are piercing me everywhere with knives. Suddenly I am absolutely calm and the body which is lying on the block, which they are still gouging with glee and ecstasy, feels nothing because I, the owner of it, have escaped. I have become a tower of stone which leans over the scene and watches with scientific interest. I have only to succumb to the law of gravity and I will fall on them and obliterate them. But I do not succumb to the law of gravity because I am too fascinated by the horror of it all. I am so fascinated, in fact, that I grow more and more windows. And as the light penetrates the stone interior of my being I can feel that my roots, which are in the earth, are alive and that I shall one day be able to remove myself at will from this trance in which I am fixed.
So much for the dream, in which I am helplessly rooted. But in actuality, when the dear uterine relatives come, I am as free as a bird and darting to and fro like a magnetic needle. If they ask me a question I give them five answers, each of which is better than the other; if they ask me to play a waltz I play a double-breasted sonata for the left hand; if they ask me to help myself to another leg of chicken I dean up the plate, dressing and all; if they urge me to go out and play in the street I go out and in my enthusiasm I cut my cousin’s head open with a tin can: if they threaten to give me a thrashing I say go to it, I don’t mind! If they pat me on the head for my good progress at school I spit on the floor to show that I have still something to learn. I do everything they wish me to do plus. If they wish me to be quiet and say nothing I become as quiet as a rock: I don’t hear when they
