“You know when you’ve heard a rattle somewhere in your car,” I said, “and you take it to the mechanic, and that’s the only time you don’t get the rattle?”
As soon as I’d said it I realized how imperfect the analogy was since he had not asked me to reproduce the blurriness, only to recall and describe it. This was my memory failing me, not the rattle in the car or, in my case, the illness, the problem that had me sitting in his office as nervous as someone on trial. But the ophthalmologist didn’t comment on the analogy, instead preferring to pick up a black handheld device he called an ophthalmoscope. He turned off the room light, told me to pick out a spot on the wall, and looked into each of my eyes. They worked well enough to see the flicker of concern in his eyes when he had put the ophthalmoscope down.
“You’ve said it’s worse after exertion, after exercise?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“But you don’t really remember whether it’s worse in one eye than the other?”
“No, not really. But maybe it is.”
“What about when you’re hot? Does heat exacerbate it?”
“Well . . . I’m sorry, I haven’t really concentrated often on these things and I . . .”
I couldn’t bring myself to tell him what I was often doing when it happened, and I hoped it didn’t matter that I couldn’t.
“That’s okay,” he said. “I’d like you to do something for me. It might sound a little strange at first.”
“Oh, no.”
“No, it’s not that bad.” He smiled reassuringly. “I’d like you to go down to the ground floor and out onto the street. Then I’d like you to run twice around the block.”
“Now?”
“Absolutely. As fast as you can without running into anybody. Then I want you to come back in here as fast as you can.”
“Around the block?”
“Yes, as fast as you can.”
I went out on the street and just stood there for a while looking at all the people going about their business. It felt ridiculous to suddenly start running around the block in the middle of the city. I felt ridiculous and I felt scared. The ophthalmologist obviously had something in mind, and I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to help him determine whether or not he was right. There had been a time when I thought I could have been a dancer. Before that I used to breed birds. Now I had a problem with my eyes and though I knew very well what exacerbated it, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him because I didn’t want to see the look in his eyes when I did. I didn’t want to see the change in the way he looked at me.
It was warm outside as I ran around the block getting hotter with each stride despite the cold dread of that which would get a name only when I got back to the fifteenth floor, back to the ophthalmologist. I ran as hard as I could, weaving my way through the crowd, past the people who, had they ever needed to, could have told the ophthalmologist what they did for a living, what it was they did that made things go glittery before their eyes, hazy, out of focus; who, when he identified their problem, could probably have told their lovers or spouses without fear of losing them. Running around the block a couple of times, with tears in my eyes, dodging people, bouncing off a fire hydrant, it occurred to me that the double life I had led was not an adventure. It was not like backpacking in Paris or Nepal. Whatever was wrong with me was making me question whether I would ever be able to tell people the truth about myself. There are lines we cross, all of them pregnant with consequences. The gestation of the line I had crossed was nearing its term.
He looked into my eyes again, this time not with the ophthalmoscope but with a penlight, which he shone into each eye. He spoke slowly.
“Do you have it now?”
“Yes . . . I think it’s worse in my left eye,” I said, after closing each eye alternately.
“That’s what I thought. Have you had any other health problems lately?”
“Like what?”
“Have you experienced any numbness or tingling sensations, any muscle weakness?”
“No, I don’t think so. I’ve had a bladder problem, which I took a course of antibiotics to get rid of.”
“What do you mean by a bladder problem?”
“I don’t know . . . I’ve been a bit . . . a little . . . leaky.”
“Did the antibiotics get rid of it?” he asked, looking down at the notes he was taking.
“No, not really.”
“Did they take a urine sample?”
“Yes.”
“And what was the result of that?”
“I didn’t seem to have an infection.”
He continued writing it all down and didn’t speak again until he had finished.
“I think it would be a good idea if you made an appointment to see a neurologist.”
“A neurologist? Why?”
“I think you might have a little optic nerve damage. You really should have a brain MRI.”
“I don’t understand.”
“In women of your age with symptoms like yours, we have to rule out the possibility of demyelination. What I mean is, we have to rule out the possibility of multiple sclerosis—MS.”
“You think I have MS?”
“I don’t know. I think you might.”
Within two weeks a neurologist had confirmed what the ophthalmologist had suspected. Now my bladder “inconvenience” had a name. MS explained the visual symptoms as well as the incontinence. He gave me a pamphlet on MS and told me that it wasn’t as bad as it sounded. He wanted me to have a brain MRI every six months. I would have to see him regularly. If my visual problems got worse, I’d have to have intravenous steroid treatment.
“There are probably lots of students that you see every day at the university, studying, getting involved in student activities, who, though you’d never suspect it, have MS.”
I’d told him that I was a student. I let him believe it. I let him believe I was somebody’s daughter when he asked if I wanted him to talk to my parents. “Thank you, but no.” I let him believe that I would tell my boyfriend. I let him believe I didn’t know much about the disease. But I did. I knew about it from the clients who had told me what had happened to their wives, the young wives who had MS. Pallid and mute, I went home.
12. I will always wonder whether it was because of my own illness that I did not fully appreciate just how sick Simon was becoming. Were there clues in his behavior, or in the things he said, that should have alerted me to what he was going to do? There might have been, but toward the end I was not able to give him the attention I’d given him before. Simon would be talking about William Empson and his contribution to ambiguity, about history being littered with good ideas getting ruined when taken to extremes, and I would be wondering whether I should tell him about my illness and whether he would leave me if I did, whether he would leave me if he knew, for example, that one in two people with MS need help walking within fifteen years of the onset of the disease. I would be wondering how I was going to support myself, and how I was ever going to mean more to him than Anna did when I couldn’t even displace her in his hagiography when I was well.
So we drank more than ever toward the end, and that and the different voices inside each of us blocked out most of everything else. Reluctant to interfere with our drinking, Alex Klima came in and out, joining us occasionally to drink more than was normal for him because, as I would learn later, it was helping him through the dissolution of his marriage and separation from his children. But mostly, Simon and I by then were practicing to be apart, rehearsing together in the same room and often in the same conversation.
“So, picture it, Angel,” Simon said before taking another half-mouthful of scotch to quiet his turmoil, “he’s twenty-three, an undergraduate, and he reads to his tutor an essay he’s written about ambiguity in Shakespeare. He’s twenty-three and the tutor, who would never have heard anything like it, doesn’t demolish him or make him feel stupid. He actually encourages him to write more. You can believe it. There is no necessary job
at the end of it, just academic excellence.
“So Empson goes away and writes a bit more, about thirty thousand words more. He gets a first in English and a research fellowship. What happens then? Not long after this he gets turned in, handed over to the university authorities, after a college servant finds a packet of condoms in his rooms. And they expel him. They banish him forever because of the condoms!”
“Condoms are mandatory nowadays,” I volunteered my expertise.
“Yes, if they had to comment on them at all, they should have applauded their use. But this was at a time when chastity rather than safe sex was de rigueur for young unmarried people.”
“So he was thrown out?”
“Yes, he was thrown out. He went home and continued his landmark work, which became Seven Types of Ambiguity.”
“Simon, you’ve told me about this. He’s trying to work out what makes certain pieces of poetry beautiful, right?”
“Yes, he is, and even the fact of the undertaking deserves praise. He forms the view, maybe tentative at first, that it’s the presence of ambiguity in a poem or in a line of poetry that makes the poem what we call poetic.”
“Okay, don’t laugh but what exactly is ambiguity? I mean . . . isn’t it just what everyone thinks it is?”
“A dictionary will tell you that an ambiguity is an expression capable of more than one meaning.”
“And what does Empson say it is?”
“Well, he extends it a little to include any slight verbal nod, any nuance of expression that permits alternative responses.”
“What do you mean, ‘responses’?”
“Cognitive or emotional reactions to the words from the reader. He says most good poetry contains ambiguity. It permits alternative responses, more than one interpretation. Then he classifies this ambiguity into seven types. I’ve tried to explain all this to Alex, but he’s less than impressed. He thinks that there are far more significant ambiguities than the linguistic ones Empson considered. The one he keeps talking about is what he calls the ambiguity of human relationships. He says that, just like a verbal expression, a relationship between two people is ambiguous if it is open to different interpretations, but that unlike most words, most relationships are seriously ambiguous. And, he contends, if two people have different views, not simply about the state of their relationship, but about its very nature, then that can affect the entire course of their lives. It’s funny how often he talks about that. Seems to be a bit of an idée fixe for him.”
Alex’s thoughts on relationships were not new to me. Nor were they something I wanted to grapple with right then. “So for poetry to be any good, even clever, well-read people have to be unsure what it means?” I asked, not yet having given up pretending that I cared. If I gave that up, he might see me for what I was. There were times when I had cared and had tried to follow everything. But I did not have that luxury anymore. I didn’t have the strength.
“I think he’s saying that there has to be more than one meaning. If the poem is any good, we’ll find them. Listen to this line from Swinburne, a very underrated poet. Have I mentioned him?”
“More than I can remember.”
“Very good, Angel. That’s capable of more than one meaning right there. I won’t ask for your preferred meaning. So, Swinburne, right? He has a verse in a poem called ‘In the Orchard,’ very sensual. You’d like it. It’s something like . . .
Lie closer, lean your face upon my side,
Feel where the dew fell that has hardly dried,
Hear how the blood beats that went nigh to swoon;
The pleasure lives there when the sense has died;
Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon.
“The first thing you should notice, the thing that gets you in is the music in there, all achieved without a note, only rhythm and the sound of the words. Listen to the line . . . ‘The pleasure lives there when the sense had died.’ There’s a melody in that line and that’s even before we go in search of the meaning. ‘When the sense has died.’ Does he mean sensation or does he mean sense as in common sense or reason? Sensation and reason might even be said to be opposites. I think this might be an example of Empson’s seventh type of ambiguity, one that allows alternative meanings that contradict each other.”
“Does he quote that example in his book?”
“Swinburne’s line is a good example, but no, I don’t think Empson discusses that particular poem.”
“So you’ve applied all of this to your own reading of poetry?”
“Well, I’ve tried to.”
“You haven’t been wasting your time, have you?” The words escaped from inside of me, and the pleasure briefly lived there when the sense had died. I regretted it more quickly than I had said it. “Simon, I’m sorry. I get defensive. It’s all hard work for me, you know. I don’t want you . . . I never want you to think I’m stupid.”
“But you think I’m stupid because I turn my mind to things that will never earn me any money. My father would agree with you.”
“Simon.”
“But none of you knows how important it is to get to the meaning, the real meaning of things, of words, the truth behind the galaxies of obfuscation . . . of shit.”
“Simon, I’m not like your father.”
“You see many things the same way. You see me the same way.”
“No, Simon, how can you say that? I see most things through your eyes.”
“You, my father, Joe Geraghty . . . Perhaps it’s not completely your fault. The good ideas mankind has come up with are nowhere near as familiar as the pathological extremes that are their progeny.”
“I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Our capacity to come up with great ideas is exceeded only by our capacity to ruin them, to destroy what is good in them, to poison them, by taking them to extremes. You take literary criticism, take Empson. Poetry represents the most sophisticated use of language possible. It is able to inform us, and through its concomitant musicality, to move us. Language is what separates us from other animals. It certainly isn’t our behavior. Now, Empson pioneers a form of analysis of that particular use of language. I admire it. I test it privately in my spare time but since I don’t have a way of readily turning it into income, most people laugh at me. But that’s another story. Many of the people whose business is words, who earn their living from the study of words, have, in effect, taken the ambiguity of words in poetry, and by extending its ambit to cover all language, in all disciplines, they have devised a new kind of vandalism. It’s called deconstructionism. You see, according to the deconstructionists, words, be they in any field, be they in everyday discourse, do not have relatively fixed, widely accepted meanings. For them, no interpretation of any ‘text’—that’s the word they love to use for anything written or said—is privileged. If they were right, we’d never be able to understand one another at all. How something so patently absurd could ever get off the ground defies the imagination. But it did. Deconstructionism even denies meaning to itself, not that that’s a problem. But what is a problem is that it also denies the legitimacy of all human communication and thought, the legitimacy of all that distinguishes us from animals.”
“Simon, you’re drunk, sweetheart. I don’t begin to know what you’re talking about.” My haunted lover was drunk and railing against the world. I didn’t want him to be upset but his anger was beyond my understanding and, as long as it wasn’t solely directed against me, I thought I could survive it, anesthetized as I was by my own problems. But I should have understood that Simon’s ranting, what Alex Klima called his increasingly vehement tilting at windmills, signaled his weakening hold on reality.
“So they turn university English departments into cultural studies departments where you can’t teach Shakespeare unless you sandwich him between Jacques Derrida and Wes Craven’s schlock. Okay, most people don’t think this matters. My father wouldn’t think this matters. He would think you could
get along very well without Shakespeare even though nobody tells us more about ourselves than Shakespeare. But then most people live in terror of knowing very much about themselves. They can barely stand their own reflection for too long.”
“Simon!”
“Okay then, let’s forget Shakespeare, he who saw inside each of us. What about the outside of us, the collective outside of us? Sometime in the nineteenth century it was recognized by certain thinkers that the state should, as a corollary of the social contract implicit in the aggregation of people into a society for their mutual benefit, take more responsibility for the economic well-being of its individual citizens. Good thinking! But what happens? The idea is taken to an extreme. More responsibility is extrapolated to total responsibility, total responsibility and total control by the state of all economic activity. The extrapolation is implemented in Russia and China, and millions of people are imprisoned or die in its name. It comes to tyrannize half the world for most of the next century. Its opponents are killed or imprisoned and labeled insane. When it is finally so discredited that it is abandoned by its own advocates, we see its polar opposite blindly triumphant, and the emergence of a different tyranny. Total responsibility by the state for the economic well-being of individuals is reduced, not to partial responsibility, but to zero responsibility. One extreme gives way to an opposite extreme, a new madness, called neo-liberal economics or, euphemistically, globalization, which insists that the state should not interfere with the dog-eat-dog working of the market. All talk of a common good is seen as intellectually suspect and the product of unhinged minds.”
What used to be occasional observations ostensibly for my edification were becoming increasingly frequent harangues.
“Simon, I still don’t know what you’re talking about, but it’s got nothing to do with us.”
“No, it has everything to do with us. I used to teach small children, and I was good at it. Now the government gets told by some agent of the money market that if it wants a triple-A credit rating it has to spend less on education and everything else. They’re taking education out of the mouths of babes and taking me out of work. Children are the most important thing we’ve got, and governments are stealing from them because they want to collect less tax in order to win elections and to attract investment. Investment in what? There’s nothing more worthy of investment than children. And hardly anybody talks about this. You’re made to feel utterly alone, that there’s nothing you can do about it. If you think there are more important things for society to think about than an annual budget surplus, Angel, then you must be one of those crazy people wandering the streets with all the other victims of sound economic management. Heaven forbid you should ever spend a moment reading poetry when you could be out there taking it up the ass for a living and trying to convince yourself it’s some kind of . . . way of life . . .”