Behind the Eyes of Dreamers (19 page)

“That takes time,” she said, “especially if you’re used to solitude. And I have to …”

“Yes?”

“I don’t quite know how to put it. Everyone else seems so accomplished.”

“It’s difficult to live a long time without that being the case.”

“No it’s not,” she replied. “I haven’t done much.”

Merripen chuckled. “Almost everyone I’ve seen has told me that. So I’ll have to tell you what I told them. First of all, I wouldn’t have asked any of you to become involved unless I had a good opinion of you. Second, although I’ve always admired modesty, I don’t like meekness, especially in prospective parents who need strength for any problems they may face. You should all be more at ease when you become better acquainted.”

“I guess,” she responded, as if accepting his exhortation. He was not deceiving her. Almost no one wanted to be a parent now; of the few who did, most had probably rejected Merripen’s offer. He had probably taken those he could get, rejecting only those obviously unsuitable.

Merripen seemed worried. He was pulling at his moustache. Josepha resumed her knitting. “I hope,” she said, “that you’re not having doubts.” She said it lightly.

“Of course I am,” he replied, startling her with his harsh tone.

“But then why—”

“Not about you people, not about whether we should go ahead, that’s settled.” She sat up stiffly, clutching her needles, shocked at the way he had interrupted her in midsentence.

“I’m terribly sorry, please forgive me,” he said more quietly. “At any rate, I didn’t come here to discuss my worries. I wanted to talk about your child. Have you decided on who the second parent will be, or do you intend to form a liaison with one of the people here?” Each child, she knew, was to have two parents, as that would provide each with more links to other human beings and avoid possible emotional problems for a parent whose child was his or hers alone. It was hoped that the children would regard all of the people in the village as members of a family. “We need time to make tests, as you know,” he went on. “We have to check for possible incompatibilities or flaws that need correcting.”

“I’ve decided. I made up my mind a while ago and just didn’t realize it till now.” She put the knitting aside. “Nicholas Krol.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nicholas Krol,” she repeated. “The other parent. He was a composer, maybe you’ve heard the name.”

“Did you know him?”

“Yes, I knew him, I knew him well. I was in love with him.” As she spoke, Josepha saw Nicholas Krol’s steady gray eyes and his ash brown hair, but she could not remember his face clearly. Something inside her seemed to break at the realization. “I met him after my divorce, we lived together for a couple of years. He was ambitious, he wanted me to be ambitious too, accomplish something, but I was afraid to try, too afraid of failing. We broke up finally, he didn’t want to, but I—” For a moment, she recalled his face. She tried desperately to hold it in her mind, and lost it.

“Why?” Merripen asked. “Why Krol?”

“I don’t know if I can explain it. He challenged me, he encouraged me. Everyone else just accepted me the way I was. I shouldn’t have left him.”

“Then why did you leave?”

“Because it was easier to give up.”

Merripen seemed puzzled. “It seems a strange motive for picking him, your having regrets.”

“It isn’t only regrets. He was the most important person in my life, although it took me much too long to see that.”

She realized she sounded shrill. “I was self-destructive when I was in my twenties, always acting against my own self-interest. That’s why I left Nick. Later I changed, and acquired a sort of stubborn passivity.” She closed her eyes for a moment, waiting for her sorrow and bitterness to pass.

“May I be frank?” the biologist asked. She nodded. “You want the child of a man you loved long ago, so perhaps you’re trying to recapture that love. Is Krol still alive?”

She shook her head.

“So guilt enters the picture as well. You’re alive and he isn’t. Do you even know whether we can acquire his genetic material?”

“He would have had his sperm frozen, I know it. You don’t know what he was like. He would have made sure of it. He had a bit of vanity, I used to tease him about it.”

“I’m sorry, Josepha. I think you’re making a mistake.”

“If you have another suggestion, please offer it. I’m willing to listen. But I don’t think I’ll change my mind.”

“I would like your child to be mine as well.”

She stiffened in surprise. She was sure that the man had no romantic interest in her. “Why?”

“I’m in charge of this project, it was really my idea in the beginning. I’ll be living here most of the time, it seems only suitable that I should also be a parent and share this role with you people. If you wish, I can become your lover, if you feel that would strengthen our bond as parents.”

The proposal repelled her. She picked up her knitting. Her needles clicked. She heard a few Chinese phrases as two people passed the gate outside. At last she put down the needles and looked at Merripen.

“I must say no.” She could not leave it at that. “I think it would be a mistake for you to have your own child here. If you’re going to be in charge, you shouldn’t be in a position where you might favor one child over the others. And you should try to preserve some objectivity.”

“You think it’s possible for anyone to be completely objective?”

“Of course not. I do think you can get so personally involved that you don’t notice certain things, that emotional considerations become more important. And anyway, I think you want this child out of some misplaced desire to be like all of us here—you can feel noble, not asking us to do something you wouldn’t do yourself, and …” She paused. “There’s only one reason for having a child, Merripen.”

“And what is that?”

“Because you want to help another human being learn and grow. You should regard all the children here as yours. Isn’t that enough for you? You don’t have to prove anything to the parents here, and you might ruin what you’re working for by trying.”

“You won’t reconsider?”

“No. I suppose, if you wanted to, you could prevent me from having a child at all as well as barring me from the project.”

“What do you think I am?” Merripen replied in injured tones. “We don’t force our desires on others, our work is for everyone’s benefit. You should know that by now.”

“You have power whether you want it or not and whether you want to recognize it or not. Everyone knows it. It’s just nicer not to mention it.”

“Are my wishes more irrational than yours?” He smiled lopsidedly. “You want a dead lover as the father.”

“I knew him. Krol’s child will have intelligence and strength. And if we really do value life as much as we profess to, then what is so irrational about wanting some part of a dead man to live again?”

He slouched in his chair. For a moment, Josepha thought she saw conflicting emotions in his dark eyes, disappointment warring with relief. He had made his noble gesture without having to follow it up.

“You have to remember,” the biologist said softly, “that these children will not be quite like us. You may be disappointed if you’re trying to recapture something you’ve lost.”

Josepha sighed. “I suppose you’ll ask someone else to be a parent with you.”

“No. The others have already made their choices.”

She felt relieved by the answer, but remained disturbed. She worried again about Merripen’s reasons for beginning the project.

Josepha had gradually become better acquainted with the other village residents. She felt most at ease with the three now sitting at her round mahogany table sipping brandy; Vladislav Pascal, a small, wiry man who had been a painter, Warner Chavez, a tall, slender woman with impossibly large black eyes who was once an architect, and Chane Maggio.

Warner and Vladislav were going to raise a child together. Many of the villagers had already paired off or formed groups, but Josepha was still alone.

She had gone that afternoon to the nearby laboratory where the embryos were gestating. She had peered at the glassy womb enclosing her child, Krol’s child—it had looked like all the others. Feeling vaguely uneasy, she had left quickly.

Looking around the table at her guests, Josepha saw Warner gaze sleepily at Vladislav. Chane had said little all evening as the three reminisced about their second youth, during the Transition, everyone’s favorite topic lately; even the hardships of the period had acquired a benign glow in retrospect. The shabbiness of the towns and decay of the cities had not mattered to any of them. With their newly youthful bodies and restored health, anything had seemed possible.

Josepha had migrated to the nearest large city after her treatments, with hordes of others. She had lived in a decrepit hotel, sharing a bathroom with ten people and had not minded. Surrounded by people constantly meeting to plan new cities, new machines, new arts, new ventures and experiments, she had known that the hardships would be temporary. They were all high on dreams, sure the worst was over, too busy to remember the dead. Now she sat, like the others, amid what they had built and looked backward to the building and dreaming while awaiting a new beginning.

Warner smoothed back her thick red hair and rose. Vladislav got up also. “No, don’t show us out,” he said to Josepha before she could stand. “Lovely meal, lovely. Don’t forget tomorrow, we’re expecting you both. Most of the village will probably be there and we’ll all try to forget that it’s a party for the psychologists.” He bowed to Chane and the couple left.

Chane seemed abstracted. He toyed with his snifter. She said nothing, sensing that he wanted silence.

She did not know Chane that well in spite of his frequent visits. The public record of his life had told her little. He had been his African nation’s ambassador to China, then its foreign minister during the years before the Transition. His grandfather had been an Italian. His life during the Transition was a mystery. But somehow she was at ease with him. She could sit there pursuing her own thoughts while he was lost in his own. Occasionally they looked at each other and smiled; they did not have to fill the silences with words.

Tonight he seemed more apprehensive than usual. She lit a cigarette and pushed the ivory cigarette box to him across the table; Chane too was a secret smoker. He shook his head. “I must ask you something, Josepha. I’ve been putting it off. May I be open with you?” His deep voice was subdued.

“Of course.”

He put his hands in front of him, palms down on the dark wood. “I must tell you something first. As you know, I was married in my previous life and had a family. You have undoubtedly guessed that my relations with them left something to be desired.”

She nodded, not knowing what to say.

“My wife was an intelligent, educated woman and I thought enough of her to make her one of my advisors. We married late in life, in our thirties. We agreed on everything, almost never fighting. After our children were born, I began to feel that she became more demanding, that instead of helping me, she was distracting me. I began to blame her for everything that went wrong. Eventually, I took to spending more time away from her. It probably seems a familiar story. Eventually, we separated. I was very bitter about it.”

“Chane, why are you telling me this? You don’t have to justify yourself to me, I made plenty of mistakes too.”

“But I want you to understand this before I make my request. It took a long time for me to see that much of this was my fault. I was telling myself how important my ministry was, my country was in a very difficult period then and I couldn’t take the time for personal problems.”

“Wasn’t it true?”

“Of course it was,” he replied. “It’s no excuse. Work is a wonderful thing, especially demanding work. It means you have a good excuse for not trying to solve your personal problems, for avoiding them, for taking and not giving because the work is more important than anything.”

“Well, sometimes it is, isn’t it?” She stubbed out her cigarette, spilling some ashes on the table.

“Oh, sometimes. Very rarely. The world is moved by historical forces, by certain developments, by things we don’t control.”

“The Transition changed things, and that was the result of scientific research by a few people.”

Chane finished his brandy and lit a cigarette. “A transition of some sort was bound to happen anyway, events were moving toward one. It was a more complex situation than you imply. The world was already changing and the biologists only hastened it. Look at them now. What can they really do?”

Josepha shook her head. “You’re wrong, Chane. Here we are with this project. You’re saying it won’t make any difference at all, but you’re here just the same. You’re contradicting—”

“No, you don’t hear what I’m saying.” His voice was firm. “There is only one way people can influence the future and that is by the quality of their relationships with others, the ways in which they treat people, caring about them and showing it constructively. Sharing what you might learn with someone, loving someone, raising a child to be both inquisitive and compassionate. There is no one more powerless than a person who has the power to intervene, you either become driven by it and by forces you don’t understand, holding it at whatever cost, or you realize that all you can do is be a moral and rational example, a symbol perhaps of something better. Or you run away in the end, as I did.”