Mockingbird. Part 6

Mary Lou is learning very fast-so much faster than I did that it is astonis.h.i.+ng. But she has me to help her, and I had no one.

I found some easy books with big print and pictures and I would read slowly aloud to Mary Lou and have her say words after me. And on the third day we made a discovery. It was in the Arithmetic for Boys and Girls book. One problem began: "There are twenty-six letters in the alphabet. . ." Mary Lou said, "What's *alphabet'?" and I decided to try to find it in Dictionary. And I did. And Dictionary said: "Alphabet: the letters of a given language, arranged in the order fixed by custom. See facing page." I puzzled for a moment over what a "given" language might be, and a "facing" page, and then I looked at the page on the other side of the book and it was a chart, with the letter "A" at the top and the letter "Z" at the bottom. They were all familiar, and their order seemed familiar too. I counted them, and there were twenty-six, just as Arithmetic for Boys and Girls had said. "The order fixed by custom" seemed to mean the way people arranged them, like plants in a row. But people didn't arrange letters. Mary Lou and I were, as far as I knew, the only people who knew what a letter was. But of course people-perhaps everybody-had once known letters, and they must have put them into an order that was called an alphabet.

I looked at them and said them aloud: "A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J . . ." And then it struck me. That was the way the words were put into Dictionary! The "A" words were first, and then the "B" words!

I explained it to Mary Lou and she seemed to understand immediately. She took the book and leafed through it. I noticed that she had already become expert at handling books; her awkwardness with them was gone. After a minute she said, "We should memorize the alphabet."

Memorize. To learn by heart. "Why?" I said.

She looked up at my face. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, in her yellow Synlon dress that I had bought her, and I was sitting at my bed-and-desk, with books piled on it in front of me. "I'm not sure," she said. She looked back down at the book in her lap. "Maybe it would help us use this book, if we could say the alphabet?"

I thought about that a moment. "All right," I said.

So we memorized it. And I was embarra.s.sed because she could say it long before I could. But she helped me learn to say it, and I finally did learn. It was difficult-especially the last part that went "W, X, Y, Z"-but I finally got it straight and said the whole twenty-six letters exactly right twice. When I finished Mary Lou laughed and said, "Now we know something together," and I laughed too. I didn't know why. It wasn't really funny.

She looked at my face a moment, smiling. Then she said, "Come here and sit by me." And I found myself doing it, sitting on the rug next to her.

Then she said, "Let's say it one after the other," and she squeezed my arm and said, "A."

This time the touch of her did not embarra.s.s me or make me self-conscious. Not at all. I said, "B."

She said, "C," and turned herself around to face me.

I said, "D," and watched her mouth, waiting for her to say her letter. She moistened her lips with her tongue, and said it softly. "E." It sounded like a sigh.

I said, "F," quickly. My heart was beginning to beat fast.

She turned her face and put her mouth next to my ear and said, "G." Then she giggled softly. And I felt something that almost made me jump. It was warm and wet, on my ear, and I realized it was her tongue. My heart almost stopped.

I did not know what to do, so I said, "H."

This time her tongue was actually in my ear. It made a shudder, a soft shudder, pa.s.s through my body, and something seemed to go loose in my stomach. And in my mind. With her tongue still in my ear she breathed, "I"-stretching it out so that it sounded: "aaaaiiiiiieeeeeeeee."

Frankly I had not had a s.e.xual experience for blues and yellows. And what I was feeling now was something altogether new to me, and so exciting, so overwhelming, so shaking to my body and my imagination that I found myself sitting on the floor with her face against mine and I was crying. My face was becoming wet with tears.

And she whispered, "Jesus, Paul. You're crying. In front of me."

"Yes," I said. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't. . ."

"Do you feel bad?"

I wiped at my cheek with my hand, and it brushed against hers. I held still, with the, back of my hand against her cheek, and then I felt her hand turning mine, ever so gently, until my palm was holding her cheek. I felt a wave of a new feeling, a soft, sweet feeling like that of a powerful drug, enter me. I looked at her face, at her wide and curious eyes, now somewhat sad. "No," I said. "No. I don't feel bad at all. I feel . . . something. I don't know." I was still crying. "It's a very good thing, what I feel."

Her face was very close to mine. She seemed to understand what I was saying, and she nodded her head. "Shall we finish saying the letters?"

I smiled. Then I said, "J." And I took my hand from her cheek and placed it on her back. "*J' is the next letter."

She smiled.

We did not get to the difficult part of the alphabet. The "W, X, Y and Z."

DAY FIFTY-NINE.

Mary Lou has moved in with me! For two nights now we have slept together in my bed. By unfastening the desk part of it and setting it against the wall, she was able to make room for herself.

It was difficult for me to sleep with another person in the bed with me. I had heard of men and women sharing beds, but never to sleep in. But that was the way she wanted to do it, so I have done it.

I am self-conscious about her body, afraid to touch her or press against her. But I awoke this morning to find myself holding her in my arms. She was snoring lightly. I smelled her hair and kissed her lightly on the back of the neck and then just lay there, holding her sleeping body for a long, long time, until she woke.

She laughed when she woke and found me holding her and snuggled against me warmly. I became self-conscious again. But then we started talking and I forgot my self-consciousness. She talked about learning to read. She said she had dreamt she was reading-had dreamt that she had already read thousands and thousands of books and now knew everything there was to know about life.

"What is there to know about life?" I asked.

"Everything," she said. "They keep us so ignorant."

I wasn't certain I understood that-or who "they" were-so I said nothing.

"Let's have breakfast," she said. And I called the servo and we ate soybars and pig bacon. I felt very good, even though I had slept little.

During breakfast she leaned over the desk and kissed me. Just like that! I liked it.

After breakfast I decided to work on a film, and Mary Lou watched it with me. It was called The Stock Broker and its star was Buster Keaton. Buster Keaton is a very intense man who has many unusual difficulties in his films. They would be funny if they were not so sad.

Mary Lou was fascinated. She had never seen any films of any kind before and was only familiar with holographic TV, which she did not like.

Early in the first reel, when Buster Keaton was painting a house and kept painting the face of a man who would put his head out the window, Mary Lou said, "Paul, Buster Keaton looks exactly like you. He's so ... serious!"

And she was right.

After the film we spent the day studying reading. She learns amazingly fast and asks interesting questions. I have had many students in the university where I teach, but none like her. And my reading is improving too.

Everything about her is delightful.

It is evening now, and Mary Lou is watching me write this at the desk propped against the wall. I explained to her about writing and she was excited and said that she must learn to do that too so that she could write down the memory of her life. "And write down other things I think of. So I can read them," she said.

That was interesting. Maybe that is the true reason that I write this-since I write so much more than Spofforth ever meant for me to record-I write it so I can read it. Reading it does something strange and exciting in my mind.

Perhaps one reason Mary Lou is bolder than I is that she lived in a Worker Dormitory before she ran away and I, of course, am a graduate of a Thinker Dormitory. Yet she is so fiercely intelligent! Why would she have been trained to be a Worker and not a Thinker? Perhaps the choices are made on some basis other than intelligence.

I must remember to get more paper, so that Mary Lou can learn to write and can begin to print out the memory of her life.

DAY SIXTY-FIVE.

She has lived with me nine days now, against all principles of Individualism and Privacy. I feel guilty at times, compromising my Interior Development by the whims of another person, but I don't think about the immorality of that very often. In fact, these have been the happiest nine days of my life.

And she already reads nearly as well as I do! Amazing! And she has begun to write the memory of her life.

We are together constantly. It seems at times like Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford-except they were too well-trained to have s.e.x.

There is no s.e.x at all in the old films, although many of the people live together in the most intimate and immoral ways. p.o.r.no, of the kind normally taught in Cla.s.sics courses, was apparently undiscovered, like TV, at the time these silent films were made.

We make love as often as I am able. Sometimes it just happens while we are reading together, with her repeating the sentences after me. Once it took us almost all afternoon to finish a little book called Making Paper Kites because we kept stopping.

Neither of us smokes pot or takes pills. I am often very nervous and excited and feel that I cannot sit still. Sometimes we take short walks when that happens. And, although a part of me seems to cry out against the intensity of the way I am living and working and making love, I know that it is better this way than any other way that I have ever been.

Once, on a walk, we became excited and I suggested we go to a quick-s.e.x bar at Times Square. So we did, and I used my NYU credit card to get the best cubicle they had. There were the usual big p.o.r.no holographs in the lobby, and two robot doxies with naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s and black boots offered to a.s.sist us in an orgy, but Mary Lou, thank goodness, told them to bug off. And I turned down the offer of s.e.x-up pills that the bartender made. We went to the cubicle alone, turned off the lights, and made love on the padded floor. But it was not really any good that way.

That was the way my lovemaking had always been before, and the way it is supposed to be. "Quick s.e.x protects," as my Interpersonal Relations teacher used to say. But I wanted to be at my own place with Mary Lou, making love in my own bed and talking afterward. Except for the s.e.x, I wanted to be like Mother and Father in one of the ancient films. I wanted to buy her flowers and to dance with her.

When we had finished Mary Lou said, "Let's get out of this s.e.x factory," and then, as we were leaving, "I think that place is what Simon meant by a *Chicago wh.o.r.ehouse.'"

And I did buy her flowers, at a vending machine. White carnations, like Gloria Swanson wore in Queen of Them All.

And before we went to bed that night I asked her to dance. I pinned a flower to her Synlon dress and I played the background music from a TV program, and we danced together. She had never heard of two people dancing together before, but any serious student of films knows about dancing. I had seen it many times. We were awkward and we stepped on each other's feet several times, but it was fun.

But when we went to bed something, I don't know what, frightened me. I held her close until she fell asleep. Then I lay awake for a long time, thinking. Something about the quick-s.e.x place had frightened me, I think.

So I got out of bed and finished writing this. I am tired now, but I still feel frightened. Am I afraid she will leave? Am I afraid I will lose her?

DAY SEVENTY-SIX.

She has been here eighteen days now, and I have not written anything down for the last nine.

My happiness has grown! I do not think about the immorality of our cohabitation, or of its being probably against the law. I think about Mary Lou and about what I see in films and what I read and what she reads.

All day yesterday she read a new kind of writing called poems. Some of them she read aloud. In places they were like chess-incomprehensible-and in other places they said strange and interesting things. She read this one to me twice: O Western wind, when wilt thou blow, That the small rain down can rain?

Christ! That my love were in my arms And I in my bed again!

I had to look up "thou" in Dictionary. The second time she read the lines I felt the feeling I have felt in watching some of the strong scenes in films. An expansive feeling, painfully joyful, in my chest.

When she had finished I said, for some strange reason, "Only the mockingbird sings at the edge of the woods."

She looked up from the book and said, "What?" and I said it again: "Only the mockingbird sings at the edge of the woods."

"What does that mean?" she said.

"I don't know. It's from a film."

She pursed her lips. "It's like the words I just read, isn't it? It makes you feel something and you don't know what it is."

"Yes," I said, astonished, almost awed, to find that she had said what I wanted to say. "Yes. Exactly."

Then she read more poems, but none of them made me feel that way again. I liked hearing her read them anyway. I watched her sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring at the book, and listening to her serious and clear voice as she read to us both. She holds the book much closer to her face than I do, and there is something very touching about her when she reads.

We take walks together every day and have lunch in a different place.

DAY SEVENTY-SEVEN.

Mary Lou went out this morning, as she often does, to buy some Quik-Serv food for us. She uses my credit card for this. When she was gone I started up the projector and began to watch a film with Lillian Gish and to read the dialogue from it into the recorder when suddenly the door opened and I looked up to see Spofforth standing there in the doorway. He was so tall and so powerful-looking that he seemed to fill up all the s.p.a.ce just standing there. And yet I was not frightened by him this time. Spofforth is, after all, only a robot. I turned off the projector and invited him in. He came in and sat in the white plastic chair by the far wall, facing me. He was wearing khaki pants, sandals, and a white T-s.h.i.+rt. His face was unsmiling, but not harsh.

After we had sat silently for a while I said, "Have you been listening to my journal?" I hadn't seen him for a long time, and he had never been in my room before.

He nodded. "When I have time."

Something about this annoyed me, and I felt bold with him. "Why do you want to know about me?" I said. "Why do you want me to keep a journal of my life?"

He didn't answer. After a moment he said, "The teaching of reading is a crime. You could be sent to prison for it."

That did not frighten me. I thought of what Mary Lou had said about Detection, about how no one ever got detected. "Why?" I said. I was violating a Rule of Conduct: "Don't ask; relax." But I didn't care. I wanted to know why it should be a crime to teach someone to read. And why Spofforth hadn't told me this before, when I had first suggested teaching reading at NYU. "Why shouldn't I teach Mary Lou how to read?"

Spofforth leaned forward, putting his huge hands on his knees, staring at me. His stare was a bit frightening, but I did not look away from it.

"Reading is too intimate," Spofforth said. "It will put you too close to the feelings and the ideas of others. It will disturb and confuse you."

I was beginning to feel a bit frightened. It was not easy to be in Spofforth's presence, and to listen to his deep, authoritative voice and not want to be obedient, and unquestioning. But I remembered something I had read in a book: "Others can be wrong too, you know," and I held on to that. "Why should it be a crime to be disturbed and confused? And to know what others have thought and felt?"

Spofforth stared at me. "Don't you want to be happy?" he said.

I had heard that question asked before, by my robot-teachers at the dormitory; it had always seemed unanswerable. But now, here in my room, with Mary Lou's things in it and with my projector and cans of film, and with my mind undrugged, it made me suddenly angry. "People who don't read are killing themselves, burning their bodies with fire. Are they happy?"

Spofforth stared at me. Then, suddenly, he looked away, toward the back of another chair where Mary Lou's red dress was lying, crumpled, with a pair of her sandals sitting on the seat by it. "It is also a crime," he said, but softer now, "to live for over a week with another person."

"What is a week?" I said.

"Seven days," Spofforth said.

"Why not seven days?" I said. "Or seven hundred? I am happy with Mary Lou. Happier than I ever was before, with dope and with quick s.e.x."

"You're frightened," Spofforth said. "I can see that you're frightened right now."

Suddenly I stood up. "So what?" I said. "So what? It's better to be living than to be-to be a robot."

I was frightened. Frightened of Spofforth, frightened of the future. Frightened of my own anger. For a moment I had a strong desire, standing there silently, to take a sopor-to take a whole handful of them and to make myself calm, unruffled, unfeeling. But I liked being angry, and I was not ready to let go of it. "Why should you care if I'm happy?" I said. "What business is it of yours what I do? You're some kind of machine, anyway."

And then Spofforth did a surprising thing. He threw back his head and laughed, loud and deep, for a long time. And, crazily, I felt my anger going away and I began to laugh with him. Finally he stopped and said, "Okay, Bentley. Okay." He stood up. "You're more than I thought you were. Go on living with her." He walked toward the door and then turned around and faced me. "For a while."

I just looked at him and said nothing. He left, closing the door behind him.

When he was gone I sat down on my bed-and-desk again and found that my arms were trembling uncontrollably and that my heart was pounding. I had never talked like that to anyone before and certainly not to a robot. I was terribly frightened of myself. But, deeper, I was elated. It was strange. I had never felt that way before.

When Mary Lou returned I told her nothing about my visitor. But when she wanted to go on with our reading I made love to her instead. She was a little angry with that at first; but my desire for her was so strong, and we made love so powerfully, on the carpet on the floor, with my holding her body tightly and forcing myself into her strongly, that before long she was kissing me all over my face and laughing.

And afterward I felt so good, so relaxed, that I said, "Let's read for a while." And we did. And nothing happened. Spofforth did not return.

Mary Lou has been writing down the memory of her life at the same time that I have been writing this. I am at my desk and she is sitting in my< extra="" chair,="" using="" a="" large="" book="" in="" her="" lap="" as="" a="" writing="" surface.="" she="" prints="" beautifully,="" methodically,="" in="" small,="" neat="" letters.="" i="" am="" embarra.s.sed="" that="" after="" such="" a="" short="" time="" she="" can="" write="" better="" than="" i.="" yet="" i="" was="" her="" teacher,="" and="" i="" am="" proud="" of="" that.="" i="" think="" now="" that="" in="" my="" years="" at="" the="" university="" i="" never="" taught="" anyone="" anything="" worth="" knowing;="" i="" have="" more="" pleasure="" from="" what="" i="" have="" taught="" mary="" lou="" than="" in="" all="" my="" work="" in="">

DAY SEVENTY-EIGHT.