The Moviegoer

arguments.” “No, dear,” says Jackie Dean. “It was I who wrote the chapter—” etc. Everyone laughs. I notice that nearly all the crowd jamming against me are women, firm middle-aged one-fifty pounders. Under drooping lids I watch the Deans, peculiarly affected by their routine which is staged so effortlessly that during the exchange of quips, they are free to cast business-like looks about them as if no one were present. But when they get down to business, they become as sober as Doukhobors and effuse an air of dedicated almost evangelical helpfulness. A copy of the book lies open on the table. I read: “Now with a tender regard for your partner remove your hand from the nipple and gently manipulate—” It is impossible not to imagine them at their researches, as solemn as a pair of brontosauruses, their heavy old freckled limbs about each other, hands probing skillfully for sensitive zones, pigmented areolas, out-of-the-way mucous glands, dormant vascular nexuses. A wave of prickling passes over me such as I have never experienced before.
    My head, nodding like a daffodil, falls a good three inches toward the St Louisan before it jerks itself up. Kate sits shivering against me, but the St Louisan is as warm and solid as roast beef. As the train rocks along on its unique voyage through space-time, thousands of tiny thing-events bombard us like cosmic particles. Lying in a ditch outside is a scrap of newspaper with the date May 3, 1954. My Geiger counter clicks away like a teletype. But no one else seems to notice. Everyone is buried in his magazine. Kate is shaking like a leaf because she longs to be an anyone who is anywhere and she cannot.
    The St Louisan reads a headline
    SCIENTIST PREDICTS FUTURE IF
    NUCLEAR ENERGY IS NOT MISUSED
    Out comes the gold pencil to make a neat black box. After reading for a moment he comes back to the beginning and is about to make a second concentric box, thinks better of it, takes from his pocket a silver knife, undoes the scissors and clips the whole article, folds it and places it in his wallet. It is impossible to make out any of the underlined passages except the phrase: “the gradual convergence of physical science and social science.”
    A very good phrase. I have to admire the St Louisan for his neat and well-ordered life, his gold pencil and his scissors-knife and his way of clipping articles on the convergence of the physical sciences and the social sciences; it comes over me that in the past few days my own life has gone to seed. I no longer eat and sleep regularly or write philosophical notes in my notebook and my fingernails are dirty. The search has spoiled the pleasure of my tidy and ingenious life in Gentilly. As late as a week ago, such a phrase as “hopefully awaiting the gradual convergence of the physical sciences and the social sciences” would have provoked no more than an ironic tingle or two at the back of my neck. Now it howls through the Ponchitoula Swamp, the very sound and soul of despair.
    Kate has stopped shivering and when she lights up and starts smoking, I am certain she is better. But I am mistaken. “Oooh,” she says in a perfunctory workaday voice and starts forward again. The car lurches and throws her against Sidney’s chair; there the train holds her fast: for three seconds she might be taken for a rapt onlooker of the gin-rummy game. Sidney rocks the deck against the polished wood until the cards are perfectly aligned. The gold ring on his little finger seems to serve as a device, a neat little fastening by means of which his hand movements are harnessed and made trim.
    Half an hour passes and Kate does not return. I find her in her roomette, arms folded and face turned to the dark glass. We sit knee to knee.
    â€œAre you all right?”
    She nods slowly to the window, but her cheek is against me. Outside a square of yellow light flees along an embankment, falls away to the woods and fields, comes roaring back good as new. Suddenly a perky head pops up. Kate is leaning forward hugging herself.
    â€œI am all right. I am never too bad with you.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œNo thanks to you. On the contrary. The others are much more sympathetic than you, especially Mother and Sam.”
    â€œWhat about Merle?”
    â€œMerle! Listen, with Merle I could break wind and he would give me that same quick congratulatory look. But you. You’re nuttier than I am. One look at