Cat's Pajamas (4 page)

“I can't remember,” said Melvin.

“You've
got
to remember.”

“Sorry.”

“Try.”

Melvin picked up the soccer ball and set it in his lap. “Fresh from the guillotine, the head of Maximillien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre,” he said, as if perhaps I'd forgotten he was a paranoid schizophrenic. “Oh, Robespierre, Robespierre, was the triumph of inadvertence over intention ever so total?”

I brought both lunatics home with me. Valerie greeted us with the sad news that the Winter Garden, the Walter Kerr, the Eugene O'Neill, and a half-dozen other White Way theaters had been lost in the Battle of Times Square. I told her there was hope for the Big Apple yet.

“It all depends on our ability to devise a set of robust arguments favoring either scientific materialism or theistic revelation and then communicating the salient points to the Martians in their nonlinguistic language, which was apparently deciphered several years ago by a paranoid schizophrenic named Annie Porlock,” I told Valerie.

“That's not a sentence you hear every day,” she replied.

It turns out that Melvin is even more devoted to board games than Rupert, so the evening went well. We played Scrabble, Clue, and Monopoly, after which Melvin introduced us to an amusement of his own invention, a variation on Trivial Pursuit called Teleological Ambition. Whereas the average Trivial Pursuit conundrum is frivolous, the challenges underlying Teleological Ambition are profound. Melvin remembered at least half of the original questions, writing them out on three-by-five cards. If God is infinite and self-sufficient, why would he care whether his creatures worshiped him or not? Which thought is the more overwhelming: the possibility that the Milky Way is teeming with sentient life, or the possibility that Earthlings and Martians occupy an otherwise empty galaxy? That sort of thing. Bobby hated every minute, and I can't say I blame him.

AUGUST 12

Shortly after breakfast this morning, while he was consuming what may have been the last fresh egg in SoHo, Melvin announced that he knew how to track down Annie Porlock.

“I was thinking of how she's a walking Rosetta Stone, our key to deciphering the Martian tongue,” he explained, strapping on his dish antenna. “Rosetta made me think of Roosevelt, and then I remembered that she's living in a houseboat moored by Roosevelt Island in the middle of the East River.”

I went to the pantry and filled my rucksack with a loaf of stale bread, a jar of instant coffee, a Kellogg's Variety Pack, and six cans of Campbell's soup. The can opener was nowhere to be found, so I tossed in my Swiss army knife. I guided my lunatics out the door.

There were probably only a handful of taxis still functioning in New York—most of them had run out of gas, and their owners couldn't refuel because the pumps worked on electricity—but somehow we managed to nab one at the corner of Houston and Forsyth. The driver, a Russian emigre named Vladimir, was not surprised to learn we had no cash, all the ATM's being dormant, and he agreed to claim his fare in groceries. He piloted us north along First Avenue, running straight through fifty-seven defunct traffic signals, and left us off at the Queensboro Bridge. I gave him two cans of chicken noodle soup and a single-serving box of Frosted Flakes.

The Martian force-field dome had divided Roosevelt Island right down the middle, but luckily Annie Porlock had moored her houseboat on the Manhattan side. “Houseboat” isn't the right word, for the thing was neither a house nor a boat but a decrepit two-room shack sitting atop a half-submerged barge called the
Folly to Be Wise.
Evidently the hull was leaking. If Annie's residence sunk any lower, I thought as we entered the shack, the East River would soon be lapping at her ankles.

A ruddy, zaftig, silver-haired woman in her mid-fifties lay dozing in a wicker chair, her lap occupied by a book about Buddhism and a large calico cat. Her harpsichord rose against the far wall, beside a lamp table holding a large bottle of orange capsules the size of jellybeans. Our footfalls woke her. Recognizing Rupert, Annie let loose a whoop of delight. The cat bailed out. She stood up.

“Melvin Haskin?” said Annie, sashaying across the room. “Is that really you? They let you out?”

Annie extended her right hand. Melvin kissed it.

“Taa-daa!” shouted Rupert, stepping out from behind Melvin's bulky frame. His pressed his mouth against Annie's cheek.

“Rupert Klieg—they sprang you too!” said Annie. “If I knew you were coming, I'd have baked a fruitcake.”

“The First Annual Reunion of the Asaph Hall Society will now come to order,” said Melvin, chuckling.

“Have you heard about the Martians?” said Rupert.

Annie's eyes widened grotesquely, offering a brief intimation of the derangement that lay behind. “They've landed? Really? You can't be serious!”

“Cross my heart,” said Rupert. “Even as we speak, the Phobes and the Deems are thrashing out their differences in Times Square.”

“Just as we predicted,” said Annie. Turning from Rupert, she fixed her frowning gaze on me. “I guess that'll show you doubting Thomases…”

Rupert introduced me as “Dr. Onslo, the first in a long line of distinguished psychiatrists who tried to help me before hyperlithium came on the market,” and I didn't bother to contradict him. Instead I explained the situation to Annie, emphasizing Melvin's recent deductions concerning Martian dialectics. She was astonished to learn that the Deimosians and the Phobosians were occupying Manhattan in direct consequence of the old materialism-supernaturalism dispute, and equally astonished to learn that, in contrast to most human minds, the Martian psyche was hardwired to favor rational discourse over pleasurable opinion.

“That must be the strangest evolutionary adaptation ever,” said Annie.

“Certainly the strangest we know about,” said Melvin.

“Can you help us?” I asked.

Approaching her harpsichord, Annie sat on her swiveling stool and rested her hands on the keyboard. “This looks like a harpsichord, but it's really an interplanetary communication device. I've spent the last three years recalibrating the jacks, upgrading the plectrums, and adjusting the strings.”

Her fingers glided across the keys. A jumble of notes leaped forth, so weird and discordant they made Schönberg sound melodic.

“There,” said Annie proudly, pivoting toward her audience. “In the Martian language I just said, ‘Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.'”

“Wow,” said Klieg.

“Terrific,” said Melvin.

Annie turned back to the keyboard and called forth another unruly refrain.

“That meant, ‘There are two kinds of naïveté, the naïveté of optimism and the naïveté of pessimism,'” she explained.

“Who would've guessed there could be so much meaning in cacophony?” I said.

“To a polar bear, the Arctic Ocean feels like a Jacuzzi,” said Rupert.

Annie called forth a third strain—another grotesque non-melody.

“And the translation?” asked Rupert.

“It's an idiomatic expression,” she replied.

“Can you give us a rough paraphrase?”

“‘Hi there, baby. You have great tits. Would you like to fuck?'”

Melvin said, “The problem, of course, is that the Martians are likely to kill each other—along with the remaining population of New York—before we can decide conclusively which worldview enjoys the imprimatur of rationality.”

“All is not lost,” said Rupert.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“We might, just might, have enough time to formulate strong arguments supporting a side of the controversy chosen… arbitrarily,” said Rupert.

“Arbitrarily?” echoed Annie, voice cracking.

“Arbitrarily,” repeated Rupert. “It's the only way.”

The four of us traded glances of reluctant consensus. I removed a quarter from my pants pocket.

“Heads: revelation, God, the Phobes,” said Melvin.

“Tails: materialism, science, the Deems,” said Rupert.

I flipped the quarter. It landed under Annie's piano stool, frightening the cat.

Tails.

And so we went at it, a melee of discourse and disputation that lasted through the long, hot afternoon and well into evening. We napped on the floor. We pissed in the river. We ate cold soup and dry Raisin Bran.

By eight o'clock we'd put the Deimosian worldview on solid ground—or so we believed. The gist of our argument was that sentient species emerged in consequence of certain discoverable properties embedded in nature. Whether Earthling or Martian, aquatic or terrestrial, feathered or furred, scaled or smooth, all lifeforms were inextricably woven into a material biosphere, and it was this astonishing and demonstrable connection, not the agenda of some hypothetical supernatural agency, that made us one with the cosmos and the bearers of its meaning.

“And now, dear Annie, you must set it all to music,” I told the Communications Chairperson, giving her a hug.

Rupert and Melvin decided to spend the night aboard the
Folly to Be Wise,
providing Annie with moral support and instant coffee while she labored over her translation. I knew that Valerie and Bobby would be worried about me, so I said my farewells and headed for home. So great was my exhilaration that I ran the whole three miles to Delancey Street without stopping—not bad for a weekend jogger.

I'm writing this entry in our bedroom. Bobby's asleep. Valerie wants to hear about my day, so I'd better sign off The news from Clarence Morant is distressing. Defeated in the Battle of Times Square, the Deimosians have retreated to the New York Public Library and taken up positions on the steps between the stone lions. The Phobosians are encamped outside Grand Central Station, barely a block away.

There are over two million volumes in the New York Public Library, Morant tells us, including hundreds of irreplaceable first editions. When the fighting starts, the Martians will be firing their heat rays amidst a paper cache of incalculable value.

AUGUST 13

Phobos and Deimos. When Asaph Hall went to name his discoveries, he logically evoked the two sons and companions of Ares, the Greek god of war. Phobos, avatar of fear. Deimos, purveyor of panic.

Fear and panic. Is there a difference? I believe so. Beyond the obvious semantic distinction—fear the chronic condition, panic the acute—it seems to me that the Phobosians and the Deimosians, whether through meaningless coincidence or Jungian synchronicity, picked the right moons. Phobos, fear. Is fear not a principal engine behind the supernaturalist worldview? (The universe is manifestly full of terrifying forces controlled by powerful gods. If we worship them, maybe they won't destroy us.) Deimos, panic. At first blush, the scientific worldview has nothing to do with panic. But consider the etymology here.
Panic
from Pan, Greek god of forests, pastures, flocks, and shepherds. Pan affirms the physical world. Pan says yes to material reality. Pan might panic on occasion, but he does not live in fear.

When I returned to the
Folly to Be Wise
this morning, the lunatics were asleep, Rupert lying in the far corner, Annie curled up in her tiny bedroom, Melvin snoring beside her. He still wore his dish antenna. The pro-Deimosian argument lay on the harpsichord, twelve pages of sheet music. Annie had titled it “Materialist Prelude and Fugue in C-Sharp Minor.”

I awoke my friends and told them about the imminent clash of arms at the New York Public Library. We agreed there was no time to hear the fugue right now—the world premiere would have to occur on the battlefield—but Annie could not resist pointing out some of its more compelling passages. “Look here,” she said, indicating a staff in the middle of page three. “A celebration of the self-correcting ethos at the heart of the scientific enterprise.” She turned to page seven and ran her finger on the topmost measures. “A brief history of postmodern academia's failure to relativize scientific knowledge.” She drew my attention to a coda on page eleven. “Depending on the definitions you employ, the materialist worldview precludes neither a creator-god nor the possibility of transcendence through art, religion, or love.”

I put the score in my rucksack, and then we took hold of the harpsichord, each of us lifting a corner. We proceeded with excruciating care, as if the instrument were made of glass, lest we misalign any of Annie's clever tinkerings and canny modifications. Slowly we carried the harpsichord across the deck, off the island, and over the bridge. At the intersection of Second Avenue and 57th Street, we paused to catch our breath.

“Fifteen blocks,” said Rupert.

“Can we do it in fifteen minutes?” I asked.

“We're the Asaph Hall Society,” said Annie. “We've never failed to thwart an extraterrestrial invasion.”

And so our great mission began. 56th Street. 55th Street. 54th Street. 53rd Street. Traffic being minimal, we forsook the sidewalks with their frequent impediments—scaffolding, trash barrels, police barriers—and moved directly along the asphalt. Doubts tormented me. What if we'd picked the wrong side of the controversy? What if we'd picked the right side but our arguments sounded feeble to the Phobosians? What if panic seized Annie, raw Deimosian panic, and she choked up at the keyboard?

By the time we were in the Forties, we could hear the Martians' glissando chirpings. Our collective pace quickened. At last we reached 42nd Street. We turned right and bore the peace machine past the Chrysler Building and the Grand Hyatt Hotel. Arriving at Grand Central Station, we paused to behold the Phobosian infantry maneuvering for a frontal assault on the Deimosian army, still presumably holding the library steps. The air vibrated with extraterrestrial tweets and twitters, as if midtown Manhattan had become a vast pet store filled with demented parakeets.