Perhaps, he had once conjectured, it was because there really was such a condition as autism. It was a childhood form of schizophrenia, which a lot of people had; schizophrenia was a major illness which touched sooner or later almost every family. It meant, simply, a person who could not live out the drives implanted in him by his society. The reality which the schizophrenic fell away from–or never incorporated in the first place–was the reality of interpersonal living, of life in a given culture with given values; it was not biological life, or any form of inherited life, but _life which was learned_. It had to be picked up bit by bit from those around one, parents and teachers, authority figures in general . . . from everyone a person came in contact with during his formative years.
The Public School, then, was right to eject a child who did not learn. Because what the child was learning was not merely facts or the basis of a money-making or even useful career. It went much deeper. The child learned that certain things in the culture around him were worth preserving at any cost. His values were fused with some objective human enterprise. And so he himself became a part of the tradition handed down to him; he maintained his heritage during his lifetime and even improved on it. He cared. True autism, Jack had decided, was in the last analysis an apathy toward public endeavor; it was a private existence carried on as if the individual person were the creator of all value, rather than merely the repository of inherited values. And Jack Bohlen, for the life of him, could not accept the Public School with its teaching machines as the sole arbiter of what was and what wasn’t of value. For the values of a society were in ceaseless flux, and the Public School was an attempt to stabilize those values, to jell them at a fixed point–to embalm them.
The Public School, he had long ago decided, was neurotic. It wanted a world in which nothing new came about, in which there were no surprises. And that was the world of the compulsive-obsessive neurotic; it was not a healthy world at all.
Once, a couple of years ago, he had told his wife his theory. Silvia had listened with a reasonable amount of attention and then she had said, “But you don’t see the point, Jack. Try to understand. There are things so much worse than neurosis.” Her voice had been low and firm, and he had listened. “We’re just beginning to find them out. You know what they are. _You’ve gone through them_.”
And he had nodded, because he did know what she meant. He himself had had a psychotic interlude, in his early twenties. It was common. It was natural, And, he had to admit, it was horrible. It made the fixed, rigid, compulsive-neurotic Public School seem a reference point by which one could gratefully steer one’s course back to mankind and shared reality. It made him comprehend why a neurosis was a deliberate artifact, deliberately constructed by the ailing individual or by a society in crisis. It was an invention arising from necessity.
“Don’t knock neurosis,” Silvia had said to him and he understood. Neurosis was a deliberate stopping, a freezing somewhere along the path of life. Because beyond lay–.
Every schizophrenic knew what lay there. And every exschizophrenic, Jack thought, as he remembered his own episode.
The two men across the room from him gazed at him queerly. What had he said? _Herbert Hoover was a much better head of the FBI than Carrington will ever be_. “I know I’m right,” he added. “I’ll lay you odds.” His mind seemed fuzzy, and he sipped at his beer. Everything had become heavy, his arm, and the glass itself; it was easier to look down rather than up. . . . He studied the match folder on the coffee table.
“You don’t mean Herbert Hoover,” Lou Notting said. “You mean J. Edgar–”
Christ! Jack thought in dismay. Yes, he had said Herbert Hoover, and until they had pointed it out it seemed O.K. What’s the matter with me? he wondered. I feel like I’m half asleep. And yet he had gone to bed at ten the night before, had slept almost twelve hours. “Excuse me,” he said. “Of course I mean . . .” He felt his tongue stumble. With care he said, “J. Edgar Hoover.” But his voice sounded blurred and slowed down, like a turntable losing its momentum. And now it was almost impossible for him to raise his head; he was falling asleep where he sat, there in Notting’s living room, and yet his eyes weren’t closing–he found when he tried that he couldn’t close them. His attention had become riveted on the match folder. Close cover before striking, he read. Can you draw this horse? First art lesson free, no obligation. Turn over for free enrollment blank. Unblinking, he stared on and on, while Lou Notting and Fred Clarke argued about abstract ideas such as the curtailment of liberties, the democratic process . . . he heard all the words perfectly clearly, and he did not mind listening. But he felt no desire to argue, even though he knew they both were wrong. He let them argue on; it was easier. It simply happened. And he let it happen.
“Jack’s not with us tonight,” Clarke was saying. With a start, Jack Bohlen realized they had turned their attention on him; he had to do or say something, now.
“Sure I am,” he said, and it cost him terrific effort; it was like rising up out of the sea. “Go on, I’m listening.”
“God, you’re like a dummy,” Notting said. “Go home and go to bed, for chrissakes.”
Entering the living room, Lou’s wife Phyllis said, “You’ll never get to Mars in the state you’re in now, Jack.” She turned up the hi-fl; it was a progressive jazz group, vibes and double bass, or perhaps it was an electronic instrument playing. Blonde, pert Phyllis seated herself on the couch near him and studied him. “Jack, are you sore at us? I mean, you’re so withdrawn.”
“It’s just one of his moods,” Notting said. “When we were in the service he used to get them, especially on Saturday night. Morose and silent, brooding. What are you brooding about right now, Jack?”
The question seemed odd to him; he was not brooding about anything, his mind was empty. The match folder still filled up his range of perception. Nevertheless, it was necessary that he give them an account of what he was brooding over; they all expected it, so, dutifully, he made up a topic. “The air,” he said. “On Mars. How long will it take me to adjust? Varies, among different people.” A yawn, which never came out, had lodged in his chest, diffusing throughout his lungs and windpipe. It left his mouth hanging partly open; with an effort he managed to close his jaws. “Guess I better go on,” he said. “Hit the sack.” With the use of all his strength he managed to get to his feet.
“At nine o’clock?” Fred Clarke yelled.
Later, as he walked home to his own apartment, along the cool dark streets of Oakland, he felt fine. He wondered what had been wrong back there at Notting’s. Maybe bad air or the ventilation.
But something was wrong.
Mars, he thought. He had cut the ties, in particular his job, had sold his Plymouth, given notice to the official who was his landlord. And it had taken him a year to get the apartment; the building was owned by the nonprofit West Coast Co-op, an enormous structure partly underground, with thousands of units, its own supermarket, laundries, child-care center, clinic, even its own psychiatrist, down below in the arcade of shops beneath the street level. There was an FM radio station on the top floor which broadcast classical music chosen by the building residents, and in the center of the building could be found a theater and meeting hall. This was the newest of the huge cooperative apartment buildings–and he had given it all up, suddenly. One day he had been in the building’s bookstore, waiting in line to buy a book, and the idea came to him.
After he had given notice he had wandered along the corridors of the co-op arcade. When he came to the bulletin board with its tacked-up notices, he had halted automatically to read them. Children scampered past him, on their way to the playground behind the building. One notice, large and printed, attracted his attention.
HELP SPREAD THE CO-OP MOVEMENT TO NEWLY COLONIZED
AREAS. EMIGRATION PREPARED BY THE CO-OP BOARD IN
SACRAMENTO IN ANSWER TO BIG BUSINESS AND BIG LABOR UNION
EXPLOITATION OF MINERAL-RICH AREAS OF MARS. SIGN UP NOW!
It read much like all the co-Op notices, and yet–why not? A lot of young people were going. And what was left for him on Earth? He had given up his co-op apartment, but he was still a member; he still had his share of stock and his number.