Stories Read online

  What did he do with the letter she sent him four years earlier? He did not even accord it the dignity of burning; it was simply tossed away. If only he could have it now, secreted in his wallet, to fold and unfold, to wet with his tears.

  Please write me, just one letter, he asks humbly, at their last meeting. He has discovered her weeping: Tatyana has no more secrets. Irrevocably married, she has never ceased to love him. He kneels at her feet.

  There will be no letter.

  She forgets nothing.

  There is no future.

  Now I take a deeper breath. Readying myself, ready, faltering. My longing is pithed. It lies at hand, in words.

  Turn up the halogen lamp. There’s not enough light in this room.

  Love, please go on writing. Your letters will always reach me. You can write me in your real, your littlest script. I will hold it to the light. I will magnify it with my love.

  Since my situation is intolerable, I have decided to take steps to resolve it. So I have constructed a lifelike dummy made of various brands of Japanese plastic simulating flesh, hair, nails, and so forth. An electronics engineer of my acquaintance, for a sizable fee, built the interior mechanism of the dummy: it will be able to talk, eat, work, walk, and copulate. I hired an important artist of the old realistic school to paint the features; it took twelve sittings to make a face that perfectly resembles mine. My broad nose is there, my brown hair, the lines on each side of my mouth. Even I could not tell the dummy and myself apart, were it not that from my peculiar vantage point it is quite obvious that he is he and that I am I.

  What remains is to install the dummy in the center of my life. He will go to work instead of me, and receive the approval and censure of my boss. He will bow and scrape and be diligent. All I require of him is that he bring me the check every other Wednesday; I will give him carfare and money for his lunches, but no more. I’ll make out the checks for the rent and the utilities, and pocket the rest myself. The dummy will also be the one who is married to my wife. He will make love to her on Tuesday and Saturday night, watch television with her every evening, eat her wholesome dinners, quarrel with her about how to bring up the children. (My wife, who also works, pays the grocery bills out of her salary.) I will also assign the dummy Monday night bowling with the team from the office, the visit to my mother on Friday night, reading the newspaper each morning, and perhaps buying my clothes (two sets—one for him, one for me). Other tasks I will assign as they come up, as I wish to divest myself of them. I want to keep for myself only what gives me pleasure.

  An ambitious enterprise, you say? But why not? The problems of this world are only truly solved in two ways: by extinction or by duplication. Former ages had only the first choice. But I see no reason not to take advantage of the marvels of modern technology for personal liberation. I have a choice. And, not being the suicidal type, I have decided to duplicate myself.

  On a fine Monday morning I wind the dummy up and set him loose, after making sure he knows what to do—that is, he knows just how I would behave in any familiar situation. The alarm goes off. He rolls over and pokes my wife, who wearily gets out of the double bed and turns off the alarm. She puts on her slippers and robe, then limps, stiff-ankled, into the bathroom. When she comes out and heads for the kitchen, he gets up and takes her place in the bathroom. He urinates, gargles, shaves, comes back into the bedroom and takes his clothes out of the dresser and closet, returns to the bathroom, dresses, then joins my wife in the kitchen. My children are already at the table. The younger girl didn’t finish her homework last night, and my wife is writing a note of excuse to the teacher. The older girl sits haughtily munching the cold toast. “Morning, Daddy,” they say to the dummy. The dummy pecks them on the cheek in return. Breakfast passes without incident, I observe with relief. The children leave. They haven’t noticed a thing. I begin to feel sure my plan is going to work and realize, by my excitement, that I had greatly feared it would not—that there would be some mechanical failure, that the dummy would not recognize his cues. But no, everything is going right, even the way he folds The New York Times is correct; he reproduces exactly the amount of time I spent on the foreign news, and it takes him just as long to read the sports pages as it took me.

  The dummy kisses my wife, he steps out the door, he enters the elevator. (Do machines recognize each other, I wonder.) Into the lobby, out the door, on the street walking at a moderate pace—the dummy has left on time, he doesn’t have to worry—into the subway he goes. Steady, calm, clean (I cleaned him myself Sunday night), untroubled, he goes about his appointed tasks. He will be happy as long as I am satisfied with him. And so I will be, whatever he does, as long as others are satisfied with him.

  Nobody notices anything different in the office, either. The secretary says hello, he smiles back as I always do; then he walks to my cubicle, hangs up his coat, and sits at my desk. The secretary brings him my mail. After reading it, he calls for some dictation. Next, there is a pile of my unfinished business from last Friday to attend to. Phone calls are made, an appointment is set up for lunch with a client from out of town. There is only one irregularity that I notice: the dummy smokes seven cigarettes during the morning; I usually smoke between ten and fifteen. But I set this down to the fact that he is new at his work and has not had time to accumulate the tensions that I feel after working six years in this office. It occurs to me that he will probably not have two martinis—as I always do—during the lunch, but only one, and I am right. But these are mere details, and will be to the dummy’s credit if anyone notices them, which I doubt. His behavior with the out-of-town client is correct—perhaps a shade too deferential, but this, too, I put down to inexperience. Thank God, no simple matter trips him up. His table manners are as they should be. He doesn’t pick at his food, but eats with appetite. And he knows he should sign the check rather than pay with a credit card; the firm has an account at this restaurant.

  In the afternoon there is a sales conference. The vice president explains a new promotional campaign for the Midwest. The dummy makes suggestions. The boss nods. The dummy taps his pencil on the long mahogany table and looks thoughtful. I notice he is chain-smoking. Could he be feeling the pressure so soon? What a hard life I led! After less than a day of it, even a dummy shows some wear and tear. The rest of the afternoon passes without incident. The dummy makes his way home to my wife and children, eats my dinner appreciatively, plays Monopoly with the children for an hour, watches a Western on TV with my wife, bathes, makes himself a ham sandwich, and then retires. I don’t know what dreams he has, but I hope they are restful and pleasant. If my approval can give him an untroubled sleep, he has it. I am entirely pleased with my creation.

  The dummy has been on the job for several months. What can I report? A greater degree of proficiency? But that’s impossible. He was fine the first day. He couldn’t be any more like me than he was at the very beginning. He does not have to get better at his job but only stick at it contentedly, unrebelliously, without mechanical failure. My wife is happy with him—at least, no more unhappy than she was with me. My children call him Daddy and ask him for their allowance. My fellow workers and my boss continue to entrust him with my job.

  Lately, though—just the past week, really—I have noticed something that worries me. It is the attention that the dummy pays to the new secretary, Miss Love. (I hope it isn’t her name that arouses him somewhere in the depths of that complex machinery; I imagine that machines can be literal-minded.) A slight lingering at her desk when he comes in in the morning, a second’s pause, no more, when she says hello; whereas I—and he until recently—used to walk by that desk without breaking stride. And he does seem to be dictating more letters. Could it be from increased zeal on behalf of the firm? I remember how, the very first day, he spoke up at the sales conference. Or could it be the desire to detain Miss Love? Are those letters necessary? I could swear he thinks so. But then you never know what goes on behind that imperturbable dummy’s face of his. I’
m afraid to ask him. Is it because I don’t want to know the worst? Or because I’m afraid he’ll be angry at my violation of his privacy? In any case, I have decided to wait until he tells me.

  Then one day it comes—the news I had dreaded. At eight in the morning the dummy corners me in the shower, where I have been spying on him while he shaves, marveling how he remembers to cut himself every once in a while, as I do. He unburdens himself to me. I am astonished at how much he is moved—astonished and a little envious. I never dreamed a dummy could have so much feeling, that I would see a dummy weep. I try to quiet him. I admonish him, then I reprimand him. It’s no use. His tears become sobs. He, or rather his passion, whose mechanism I cannot fathom, begins to revolt me. I’m also terrified my wife and children will hear him, rush to the bathroom, and there find this berserk creature who would be incapable of normal responses. (Might they find both of us here in the bathroom? That, too, is possible.) I run the shower, open both the sink faucets, and flush the toilet to drown out the painful noises he is making. All this for love! All this for the love of Miss Love! He has barely spoken to her, except in the way of business. Certainly, he hasn’t slept with her, of that I am sure. And yet he is madly, desperately in love. He wants to leave my wife. I explain to him how impossible that is. First of all, he has duties and responsibilities. He is the husband and father to my wife and children. They depend on him; their lives would be smashed by his selfish act. And second, what does he know about Miss Love? She’s at least ten years younger than he is, has given no particular sign of noticing him at all, and probably has a nice boyfriend her own age whom she’s planning to marry.

  The dummy refuses to listen. He is inconsolable. He will have Miss Love or—here he makes a threatening gesture—he will destroy himself. He will bang his head against the wall, or jump out of a window, disassembling irrevocably his delicate machinery. I become really alarmed. I see my marvelous scheme, which has left me so beautifully at my leisure and in peace the last months, ruined. I see myself back at the job, making love again to my wife, fighting for space in the subway during the rush hour, watching television, spanking the children. If my life was intolerable to me before, you can imagine how unthinkable it has become. Why, if only you knew how I have spent these last months, while the dummy was administering my life. Without a care in the world, except for occasional curiosity as to the fate of my dummy. I have slid to the bottom of the world. I sleep anywhere now: in flophouses, on the subway (which I only board very late at night), in alleys and doorways. I don’t bother to collect my paycheck from the dummy any more, because there is nothing I want to buy. Only rarely do I shave. My clothes are torn and stained.

  Does this sound very dreary to you? It is not, it is not. Of course, when the dummy first relieved me of my own life, I had grandiose plans for living the lives of others. I wanted to be an Arctic explorer, a concert pianist, a great courtesan, a world statesman. I tried being Alexander the Great, then Mozart, then Bismarck, then Greta Garbo, then Elvis Presley—in my imagination, of course. I imagined that, being none of these people for long, I could have only their pleasure, none of their pain; for I could escape, transform myself, whenever I wanted. But the experiment failed, for lack of interest, from exhaustion, call it what you will. I discovered that I am tired of being a person. Not just tired of being the person I was, but any person at all. I like watching people, but I don’t like talking to them, dealing with them, pleasing them, or offending them. I don’t even like talking to the dummy. I am tired. I would like to be a mountain, a tree, a stone. If I am to continue as a person, the life of the solitary derelict is the only one tolerable. So you will see that it is quite out of the question that I should allow the dummy to destroy himself, and have to take his place and live my old life again.

  I continue my efforts of persuasion. I get him to dry his tears and go out and face the family breakfast, promising him that we will continue our conversation in the office, after he dictates his morning batch of letters to Miss Love. He agrees to try, and makes his red-eyed, somewhat belated appearance at the table. “A cold, dear?” says my wife. The dummy blushes and mumbles something. I pray that he will hurry up. I am afraid he will break down again. I notice with alarm that he can hardly eat, and leaves his coffee cup two-thirds full.

  The dummy makes his way sadly out of the apartment, leaving my wife perplexed and apprehensive. I see him hail a cab instead of heading for the subway. In the office, I eavesdrop as he dictates his letters, sighing between every sentence. Miss Love notices, too. “Why, what’s the matter?” she asks cheerfully. There is a long pause. I peep out of the closet, and what do I see! The dummy and Miss Love in a hot embrace. He is stroking her breasts, her eyes are closed, with their mouths they wound each other. The dummy catches sight of me staring from behind the closet door. I signal wildly, trying to make him understand that we must talk, that I’m on his side, that I’ll help him. “Tonight?” whispers the dummy, slowly releasing the ecstatic Miss Love. “I adore you,” she whispers. “I adore you,” says the dummy in a voice above a whisper, “and I must see you.” “Tonight,” she whispers back. “My place. Here’s the address.”

  One more kiss and Miss Love goes out. I emerge from the closet and lock the door of the little office. “Well,” says the dummy. “It’s Love or death.” “All right,” I say sadly. “I won’t try to talk you out of it any more. She seems like a nice girl. And quite attractive. Who knows, if she had been working here when I was here …” I see the dummy frowning angrily, and don’t finish the sentence. “But you’ll have to give me a little time,” I say. “What are you going to do? As far as I can see, there’s nothing you can do,” says the dummy. “If you think I’m going home to your wife and kids any more, after I’ve found Love—” I plead with him for time.

  What do I have in mind? Simply this. The dummy is now in my original position. His present arrangements for life are intolerable to him. But having more appetite for a real, individual life than I ever had, he doesn’t want to vanish from the world. He just wants to replace my admittedly second-hand wife and two noisy daughters with the delightful, childless Miss Love. Well then, why shouldn’t my solution—duplication—work for him as it did for me? Anything is better than suicide. The time I need is time to make another dummy, one to stay with my wife and children and go to my job while this dummy (the true dummy, I must now call him) elopes with Miss Love.

  Later that morning, I borrow some money from him to go to a Turkish bath and get cleaned up, to get a haircut and shave at the barber’s, and to buy myself a suit like the one he is wearing. On his suggestion, we meet for lunch at a small restaurant in Greenwich Village, where it is impossible that he meet anyone who might recognize him. I’m not sure what he is afraid of. Of having lunch alone, and being seen talking to himself? Of being seen with me? But I am perfectly presentable now. And if we are seen as two, what could be more normal than a pair of identical adult male twins, dressed alike, having lunch together and engaged in earnest conversation? We both order spaghetti al burro and baked clams. After three drinks, he comes around to my point of view. In consideration of my wife’s feelings, he says— not mine, he insists several times in a rather harsh tone of voice—he will wait. But only a few months, no more. I point out that in this interim I will not ask that he not sleep with Miss Love but only that he be discreet in his adultery.

  Making the second dummy is harder than making the first. My entire savings are wiped out. The prices of humanoid plastic and the other material, the fees of the engineer and the artist, have all gone up within just a year’s time. The dummy’s salary, I might add, hasn’t gone up at all, despite the boss’s increased appreciation of his value to the firm. The dummy is annoyed that I insist that he, rather than I, sit for the artist when the facial features are being molded and painted. But I point out to him that if the second dummy is modeled on me again, there is a chance that it would be a blurred or faded copy. Undoubtedly, some disparities have developed between the
appearance of the first dummy and my own, even though I cannot detect them. I want the second dummy to be like him, wherever there is the slightest difference between him and me. I shall have to take the risk that in the second dummy might also be reproduced the unforeseen human passion that robbed the first dummy of his value to me.

  Finally, the second dummy is ready. The first dummy, at my insistence (and reluctantly, since he wanted to spend his spare time with Miss Love), takes charge of his training and indoctrination period, lasting several weeks. Then the great day arrives. The second dummy is installed in the first dummy’s life in the midst of a Saturday afternoon baseball game, during the seventh-inning stretch. It has been arranged that the first dummy will go out to buy hot dogs and Cokes for my wife and children. It is the first dummy who goes out, the second who returns laden with the food and drinks. The first dummy then leaps into a cab, off to the waiting arms of Miss Love.

  That was nine years ago. The second dummy is living with my wife in no more exalted or depressed a fashion than I had managed. The older girl is in college, the second in high school; and there is a new child, a boy, now six years old. They have moved to a co-op apartment in Forest Hills; my wife has quit her job; and the second dummy is assistant vice president of the firm. The first dummy went back to college nights while working as a waiter during the day; Miss Love also went back to college and got her teacher’s license. He is now an architect with a growing practice; she teaches English at Julia Richman High School. They have two children, a boy and a girl, and are remarkably happy. From time to time, I visit both my dummies—never without sprucing myself up first, you understand. I consider myself a relative and the godfather, sometimes the uncle, of all their children. They are not very happy to see me, perhaps because of my shabby appearance, but they haven’t the courage to turn me out. I never stay long, but I wish them well, and congratulate myself for having solved in so equitable and responsible a manner the problems of this one poor short life that was allotted me.