He broke off, and fiddled with his knife Mary’s eyes met mine We said nothing.
`I don’t understand it,’ Landis repeated. ,`I know what it looks like – but that’s sheer nonsense…’
He broke off again.
`What does it look like?’ I prompted, a little sharply.
He hesitated, and then drew a breath.
`More than anything I’ve ever come across it resembles what our unscientific ancestors used to consider a case of “possession” They would have claimed quite simply that this Chocky is a wandering spirit which has invaded Matthew.’
There was a silence. I broke it.’
`But being, as you said, nonsense…?’
`I don’t know… One must be careful not to be as dogmatic in our way as our ancestors were in theirs. It’s easy to over-simplify – that is just what Matthew himself is doing when he says he “talks to”, or “is talked to”, by this Chocky. The ancestors would say he “hears voices”’ but that is only a manner of speaking. Matthew only uses the word “talks” because he has no word for what he really means When he “listens” to Chocky there are no words: he is not really hearing sounds at all. When he replies he doesn’t need to use words – he sometimes does, particularly when he is feeling worked up, but he does it because it is his natural way of expressing his emotions, not because it is necessary. Therefore his “hearing” a voice is a metaphorical expression – but the conversations he holds with this imagined voice are not metaphorical. They are quite real.’
Mary was frowning.
`You’ll have to explain that more,’ she said.
`Well, for one thing, it is quite indisputable that there is some kind of second intelligence somehow involved,’ Landis said. `Just think back to some of the questions he has been asking, and the things he has said to you and David. We’re satisfied he did not invent them himself; that’s why I am here at all, but wasn’t it characteristic of all of them that they were naively, sometimes childishly expressed?’
`After all, he’s not quite twelve,’ Mary pointed out.
`Exactly, and in fact he has an unusually good vocabulary, for a child of his age – but it isn’t adequate to express clearly the questions he wants to ask. He knows what he wants to ask, and often understands quite well what he wants to tell His chief difficulty is in finding the words to make the ideas clear.
`Now if he were passing on questions he had heard, he wouldn’t have that particular difficulty. He’d simply repeat the words, whether he had understood them, or not. or if he’d read the questions in a book he’d know the words. In either case he’d be using the words he needs instead of having this trouble with the limits of his vocabulary.
`It follows, therefore, that he did not, in the ordinary sense, hear these questions, nor rea d them; yet he understand what he is trying to ask. So – how did the quest ions get into his head without the words necessary to carry them there? – And that really is quite a problem…’
`But is it – any more than it always is?’ Mary said. Words are only names for ideas. Everybody gets ideas. They have to come into minds from somewhere before they can be given names.’
I knew the pitch of her voice. Something – possibly, I suspected Landis’s use of the word `possession’ – bad made her antagonistic.
Landis went on:
`Take his use of the binary code. If anyone ha d shown him, or if he had seen it in a book, the odds are that the symbols used would have been ought and one, or plus and minus, or possibly x and y, and he would naturally have used the same symbols himself. But the way he got them appeared to him simply as an affirmative and negative, so he conveniently abbreviated them to Y and N.’
`But,’ Mary objected, `if, as you say, there aren’t any words so that he isn’t listening when he seems to be, what is going on? I mean, why this idea of this Chocky who “talks” at all?’
`Oh, Chocky exists all right. Naturally, I looked at first for some personification of his subconscious, however I was sure quite soon that it wasn’t that. But where Chocky exists, and what she is, beats me completely at present – and it beats Matthew, too.’
That was not what Mary had hoped to hear. She said:
`I can understand that for him she exists. She’s quite real to him: that’s why we’ve been playing up to it, but…’ Land is cut her short:
`Oh, Chocky has a much more definite existence than that. I am quite sure that whatever she is, she is more than his own invention. Consider the car incident. Now, no boy of Matthew’s age would dream for a moment of calling a brand new model of a modern car old_fashioned.,He thinks it’s wonderful. Matthew himself was proud and anxious to show it off. But, according to your account, what happened was exactly what would have happened if another child – or anyone else, for that matter – had been scornful of it – except that no other child, nor his subconscious, would have able to explain how it ought to be radically different.
`And here’s another thing he told me this afternoon, though he couldn’t quite get the concept. It was a kind of power. It seemed to him something like electricity, but he knew that it was really quite different… Anyway, with this source of energy which can be picked up from space radiations and converted to operate motors, there is no question of running out of power – but there Matthew lost the idea among ideas that were quite beyond his grasp As he put it to nne: “She kept on going on, but it didn’t mean anything. It wouldn’t turn into proper words”. (*)
Landis paused. Then he added:
`Now, that again, I’m quite satisfied, did not come out of books. It could have done, but it didn’t.’
`Why?’ Mary demanded.
`Because If there had been some slips caused by misunderstandIngs, or by Inventions of hIs own which did not fit wIth the rest, there’d stIll be the chance that be’s reconstructed it out of things he’s read. As it is, he freely admits he couldn’t understand a lot of it, and it appears that for the rest he’s doing an honest job of reporting.’
`Very well,’ I saId. `And – what’s to be done about all it?’
Landis shook his head again.
`At present I’ve, quite frankly, no idea. At the moment I can’t see – quIte unscientIfically can’t see – I don’t know what’s got into him. I wIsh I did. Something has.’
Mary got up from the table abruptly and decisIvely We loaded the dishes on to the trolley, and she pushed it out. A few minutes later she came back with coffee. As she poured it out she said to Landis:
`So what It amounts to is that all you have to tell us is that you can’t see any way of helping Matthew, is that it?’
Landis’s brow furrowed.
`Helping him?’ he repeated. ‘I don’t know. I’m not even sure that he needs help. His chief need at the moment seems to be for someone he can talk to about this Chocky. He doesn’t particularly like her in fact she frequently irritates hIm, but she does supply him with a great deal that Interests hIm. In fact, it doesn’t seem to be so much Chocky’s existence that troubles him, as his own selfdefensive instinct to keep her exIstence hidden – and in that he’s wise. UntIl now you two have been his any safety-valves. His sister might have been another, but she appears to have et him down.’ (*)
Mary stirred her coffee, gazing at it with abstraction. Then, makIng up her mind, she said forthrighty:
`Now you’re talking as if this Chocky really exists. Let’s get this straight. (*) Chocky is an invention of Matthew’s. It is simply a name for an imagined companion – just as Polly’s Piff was, isn’t it?’
Landis considered her for a moment before he replied:
`I’m afraid I have not made myself clear,’ he said. Any resemblance between Chocky and Piff is quite super-ficial. I would like to believe what you wish to believe – and what my training tells me I should believe – that the whole thing is subjective. That Chocky is a child’s invention, like Piff – an invention of Matthew’s own which has got out of hand. (*) But I can only do that by ignoring the facts to suit what I have been taught; Chocky is, in some way I don’t understand, objective – she comes from outside, not from inside. On the other hand I’m not credulous enough to accept the old idea of “possession”, although it fits the evidence much better , He broke off in thought for some seconds, and then shook his head: