Sophie's Choice - William Styron [266]
Larry interrupted me gently, with a smile that could not quite mask the pain behind the expression. “Excuse me, Stingo—I hope I can call you that—excuse me, but I want to tell you this right away, along with the other things you must know. But Nathan is not a research biologist. He is not a bona-fide scientist, and he has no degree of any kind. All that is a simple fabrication. I’m sorry, but you’d better know this.”
God in heaven! Was I fated to go through life a gullible and simple-minded waif, with those whom I cared for the most forever pulling the wool over my eyes? It was bad enough that Sophie had lied to me so often, now Nathan—“But I don’t understand,” I began, “do you mean—”
“I mean this,” Larry put in gently. “I mean that this biologist business is my brother’s masquerade—a cover, nothing more than that. Oh, he does report in to Pfizer each day. He does have a job in the company library, an undemanding sinecure where he can do a lot of reading without bothering anyone, and occasionally he does a little research for one of the legitimate biologists on the staff. It keeps him out of harm’s way. No one knows about it, least of all that sweet girl of his, Sophie.”
I was as close to being speechless as I had ever been. “But how...” I struggled for words.
“One of the chief officials of the company is a close friend of our father’s. Just a very nice favor. It was easy enough to arrange, and when Nathan’s in control of himself he apparently does a good job at the little he is required to do. After all, as you well know, Nathan is boundlessly bright, maybe a genius. It’s just that most of his life he’s been haywire, off the track. I have no doubt that he could have been fantastically brilliant at anything he might have tried out. Writing. Biology. Mathematics. Medicine. Astronomy. Philology. Whatever. But he never got his mind in order.” Larry gave again his wan, pained smile and pressed the palms of his hands silently together. “The truth is that my brother’s quite mad.”
“Oh Christ,” I murmured.
“Paranoid schizophrenic, or so the diagnosis goes, although I’m not at all sure if those brain specialists really know what they’re up to. At any rate, it’s one of those conditions where weeks, months, even years will go by without a manifestation and then—pow!—he’s off. What’s aggravated the situation horribly in these recent months is these drugs he’s been getting. That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Oh Christ,” I said again.
Sitting there, listening to Larry tell me these wretched things with such straightforward resignation and equanimity, I tried to still the turmoil in my brain. I felt stricken by an emotion that was very nearly grief, and I could not have been victim of more shock and chagrin had he told me that Nathan was dying of some incurably degenerative physical disease. I began to stammer, grasping at scraps, straws. “But it’s so hard to believe. When he told me about Harvard—”
“Oh, Nathan never went to Harvard. He never went to any college. Not that he wasn’t more than capable mentally, of course. On his own he’s read more books already than I ever will in my lifetime. But when one is as sick as Nathan has been one simply cannot find the continuity to get a formal education. His real schools have been Sheppard Pratt, McLean’s, Payne Whitney, and so on. You name the expensive funny farm and he has been a student there.”
“Oh, it’s so goddamned sad and awful,” I heard myself whisper. “I knew he was...” I hesitated.
“You mean you have known that he was not exactly stable. Not... normal.”
“Yes,” I replied, “I guess any fool could tell that. But I just didn’t know how—well, how serious it was.”
“Once there was a time—a period of about two years when he was in his late teens—when it looked as if he were going to be completely well. It was an illusion, of course. Our parents were living in a fine house in Brooklyn Heights then, it was a year or so before the war. One night after a furious argument Nathan took it into his head to try to burn the house down, and he almost did. That was when we had to put him away for a long period. It was the first time... but not the last.