The Divide

“It’s an inevitable process,” Max told him. “It’s good. Nothing is lost.”

John wondered whether this was true.

He began to understand the way in which he was different, though no one would really explain it and even Dr. Kyriakides dodged the subject. He learned how to slip into the research unit’s snail medical library when his keepers weren’t looking, usually during lunch hours or bathroom breaks. The neurological tomes that resided there were too advanced for him, but he could divine a little of their subject. The brain. The mind. Intelligence.

On his fifth birthday he asked Dr. Kyriakides, “Did you make me the way I am?”

After a hesitation and a frown, Max admitted it. “Yes.”

“Then you’re my father.”

“I suppose … in a way. But Marga wouldn’t understand, if you told her.”

“I won’t tell her, then,” John said.

It didn’t matter. He understood.

Outside this small room in Toronto, the snow continued to fall. Susan wondered whether Amelie could see the snow. Whether Amelie was cold—wherever she was.

The tape recorder popped up a cassette. Susan inserted a new one.

“I trusted Max until he farmed me out to the Woodwards,” John said. “Even then—at first—I gave him the benefit of the doubt.”

The explanation was plain enough. Max had explained meticulously. The research was funded by the government and now the funding had been revoked. The legality of it was questionable and people were afraid of the truth getting out. John would have to be careful about what he told the Woodwards. “Also, we won’t be able to see each other for a while. I hope you understand.”

John didn’t answer.

Max had checked the family out and they were decent enough people, an older couple, childless, referred through a contact in an adoption agency. “Obviously, they don’t know what you are. You may have to conceal your nature. Do you understand? You’ll have to become at least passably ‘normal’—for everyone’s sake.”

John listened politely, watching Max across the barrier of his polished oak desk in this indifferent room, his book-lined office. “You have to do what the government tells you,” he said to Max. John was five years old.

“Yes, I do. In this case.”

“But you’re a Communist,” John said.

Max rose slightly in his chair. “What do you mean? Who told you that?”

“Nobody told me. I watch you when people talk about politics. I watched you when Ke

Max laughed. John was pleased: even at this terrible moment, the hour of his exile, he was able to make Max happy. “I should never mistake you for a child,” Max said. “But I always do. No, I’m not a Communist. I was at one time. During the war. I gave it up when I came to this country. My uncle died fighting for Veloukhiotis, and it was pointless—completely futile. Now we have the Generals. Is there any sense in that? I don’t believe in revolution any more.”

“But you believe in the rest of it,” John pressed. “Marxism. Leninism.”

He had read the entry under “Communism” in the Columbia Encyclopedia and these questions had been on his mind.

“Not even that,” Max said, more soberly. “I gave it all up.”

“You stopped believing in Marxism?”

“Do you really want to know?”

John nodded.

“I stopped believing in ‘the people.’ I’m an apostate from that central faith. Marx believed that mankind was perfectible through economics. But it’s a childish idea. People talk about Stalinism, but Stalinism is only fascism with a different accent, and fascism is simply the politics of the monkey cage. The failure is here”—he thumped his chest—“in the mechanism of the cells. In our ontogeny. If you want to perfect mankind, that’s where you begin.”

“But you still believe in the perfectibility of mankind.”

“Wouldn’t you rather talk about the Woodwards? Your future?”

“I want to know,” John said.

“Whether I believe in the perfectibility of mankind? I will tell you this: human beings are cowards and thieves and torturers. That I believe. And yes, I believe the species can be improved. Why not? The only alternative is despair.”

But there’s a contradiction here, John wanted to say. How could you want to improve a thing when you despised it so entirely to begin with? What could you build out of that contempt?—especially if the contempt encompasses your own being?

But he didn’t ask. Max was going on about the Woodwards, about school—“Don’t trust anyone,” he said. “Anyone might be your enemy.”

It was a sweeping statement. Including you? John wondered. Should I mistrust you, too? Is that what this is all about?

But it was not a question he could bring himself to ask. He was not a child, Max was right; but neither was he old enough to endure the possibility that he might be fundamentally alone in the world.

Life with the Woodwards, then, began as a deception, a concealment, not always successful. But at least he understood the rules of the game. For years John chose to believe that Max would eventually come and get him.

Even if they couldn’t be together, Max was still his truest father; Max cared about him.

He banked this belief in the most private recesses of his mind; he never allowed the flame to flicker. But Max did not come. And on his twelfth birthday, after a perfunctory celebration with the Woodwards, John began to admit to himself that Max might never come.

So he broke a promise. He went looking for Max.

It was spring, and he rode a bus into the city through thawing snow-patches and muddy lots. He had packed a bag lunch, solemnly. He ate it sitting on a transit bench outside Marga’s old house, a couple of blocks from the university. Did he want to see Marga? He wasn’t sure. But no one entered or left the house. The shutters were closed and the siding had been painted eggshell blue. Maybe Marga had moved away.

He stood and walked through the raw spring air to the research complex, to Max’s office there.

He opened the door and walked in. Max looked up, maybe expecting to see an undergraduate, frowning when he recognized John. Max was older than John remembered him, fashionably shaggier; he had grown his sideburns long.

His eyes widened and then narrowed. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

“It’s good to see you, too.”

“Don’t be flippant. I could lose my tenure. People in this building have long memories.” He frowned at his watch. “Meet me in the parking lot. I have a car there—a black Ford.”

John left the building and waited twenty minutes in the pallid sunlight, shivering on the curb beside the automobile. Then Max came striding out and opened the passenger door for him. John climbed aboard. “I wanted to see you,” John said. “I wanted to talk.”

“It’s dangerous for both of us.”

“I understand. You don’t want to lose your job.”

“I don’t want to lose my job, and I presume you don’t want to be brought to the attention of any powerful interests. We’re privileged to be an inactive file in someone’s cabinet. I would like to keep it that way.”

“I thought you might try to see me. At least try.”

Max compressed his lips. “I’ve driven past the Woodwards’ house from time to time. Once I saw you walking to school. I have a contact at the Board of Education; he’s been forwarding your records—”

“But we haven’t talked.”

“We’re not allowed to talk.”

“Revolutionary,” John mocked.

“You know I’m not.”

“But you’re brave enough to bend your ethics from time to time. For instance, a little genetic manipulation.”