Flowers for Algernon

Flowers for Algernon

For my mother And in memory of my father

Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees anyone whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den.

Doctor Strauss says I should write down what I think and remember and everything that happens to me from now on. I don't know why but he says it's important so they will see if they can use me. I hope they use me because Miss Kinnian says maybe they can make me smart. I want to be smart. My name is Charlie Gordon I work in Donner's bakery where Mr. Donner gives me eleven dollars a week and bread or cake if I want. I am thirty-two years old and next month is my birthday. I told Doctor Strauss and Professor Nemur I couldn't write good but he says it doesn't matter he says I should write just like I talk and like I write compositions in Miss Kinnian's class at the Beekman College center for retarded adults where I go to learn three times a week on my time off. Doctor Strauss says to write a lot everything I think and everything that happens to me but I couldn't think anymore because I have nothing to write so I will close for today ... yours truly Charlie Gordon.

I had a test today. I think I failed it and I think maybe now they won't use me. What happened is I went to Professor Nemur's office on my lunch time like they said and his secretary took me to a place that said psych department on the door with a long hall and a lot of little rooms with only a desk and chairs. And a nice man was in one of the rooms and he had some white cards with ink spilled all over them. He said sit down Charlie and make yourself comfortable and relax. He had a white coat like a doctor but I don't think he was a doctor because he didn't tell me to open my mouth and say ah. All he had was those white cards. His name is Burt. I forgot his last name because I don't remember so good.

I didn't know what he was gonna do and I was holding on tight to the chair like sometimes when I go to a dentist only Burt isn't a dentist neither but he kept telling me to relax and that gets me scared because it always means it's gonna hurt.

So Burt said Charlie what do you see on this card. I saw the spilled ink and I was very scared even though I got my rabbit's foot in my pocket because when I was a kid I always failed tests in school and I spilled ink to.

I told Burt I saw ink spilled on a white card. Burt said yes and he smiled and that made me feel good. He kept turning all the cards and I told him somebody spilled ink on all of them red and black. I thought that was an easy test but when I got up to go Burt stopped me and said now sit down Charlie we are not through yet. There's more we got to do with these cards. I didn't understand about it but I remember Doctor Strauss said do anything the tester tells you even if it doesn't make no sense because that's testing.

I don't remember so good what Burt said but I remember he wanted me to say what was in the ink. I didn't see nothing in the ink but Burt said there was pictures there. I couldn't see no pictures. I really tried to see. I held the card up close and then far away. Then I said if I had my eyeglasses I could probably see better I usually only wear my eyeglasses in the movies or to watch TV but I said maybe they will help me see the pictures in the ink. I put them on and I said now let me see the card again I bet I find it now.

I tried hard but I still couldn't find the pictures I only saw the ink. I told Burt maybe I need new glasses. He wrote something down on a paper and I got scared of failing the test. So I told him it was a very nice picture of ink with pretty points all around the edges but he shook his head so that wasn't it neither. I asked him if other people saw things in the ink and he said yes they imagine pictures in the inkblot. He told me the ink on the card was called an inkblot.

Burt is very nice and he talks slow like Miss Kinnian does in her class where I go to learn reading for slow adults. He explained me it was a Rorschach test. He said people see things in the ink. I said show me where. He didn't show me he just kept saying think imagine there's something on the card. I told him I imagined an inkblot. He shook his head so that wasn't right either. He said what does it remind you of pretend it's something. I closed my eyes for a long time to pretend and then I said I pretend a bottle of ink spilled all over a white card. And that's when the point on his pencil broke and then we got up and went out.

I don't think I passed the Rorschach test.

March fifth Doctor Strauss and Professor Nemur say it doesn't matter about the ink on the cards. I told them I didn't spill the ink on them and I couldn't see anything in the ink. They said maybe they will still use me. I told Doctor Strauss that Miss Kinnian never gave me tests like that only writing and reading. He said Miss Kinnian told him I was her best pupil in the Beekman School for retarded adults and I tried the hardest because I really wanted to learn I wanted it more even than people who are smarter than me.

Doctor Strauss asked me how come you went to the Beekman School all by yourself Charlie. How did you find out about it. I said I don't remember.

Professor Nemur said but why did you want to learn to read and spell in the first place. I told him because all my life I wanted to be smart and not dumb and my mom always told me to try and learn just like Miss Kinnian tells me but it's very hard to be smart and even when I learn something in Miss Kinnian's class at the school I forget a lot.

Dr. Strauss wrote some things on a piece of paper and Professor Nemur talked to me very seriously. He said, Charlie, we are not sure how this experiment will work on people because we have only tried it so far on animals. I said that's what Miss Kinnian told me, but I don't even care if it hurts or anything because I am strong and I will work hard.

I want to get smart if they will let me. They said they have to get permission from my family, but my uncle Herman who used to take care of me is dead and I don't remember about my family. I didn't see my mother or father or my little sister Norma for a long, long, long time. Maybe they are dead too. Dr. Strauss asked me where they used to live. I think in Brooklyn. He said they will see if maybe they can find them.

I hope I don't have to write too much of these progress reports because it takes along time and I get to sleep very late and I'm tired at work in the morning. Gimpy yelled at me because I dropped a tray full of rolls I was carrying over to the oven. They got dirty and he had to wipe them off before he put them in to bake. Gimpy yells at me all the time when I do something wrong, but he really likes me because he's my friend. Boy, if I get smart, won't he be surprised.

March sixth—I had more crazy tests today in case they use me. That same place but a different little testing room. The nice lady who gave it to me told me the name and I asked her how do you spell it so I can put it down right in my progress report. THEMATIC APPERCEPTION TEST. I don't know the first two words, but I know what test means. You have to pass it or you get bad marks.

This test looked easy because I could see the pictures. Only this time she didn't want me to tell what I saw in the pictures. That mixed me up. I told her yesterday Burt said I should tell what I saw in the ink. She said that doesn't make a difference because this test is something else. Now you have to make up stories about the people in the pictures.

I said how can I tell stories about people I don't know. She said make believe, but I told her that's lies. I never tell lies anymore because when I was a kid I made lies and I always got hit. I got a picture in my wallet of me and Norma with Uncle Herman who got me the job to be a janitor at Donner's bakery before he died.

I said I could make stories about them because I lived with Uncle Herman a long time, but the lady didn't want to hear about them. She said this test and the other one, the Rorschach, was for getting personality. I laughed. I told her how can you get that thing from cards that somebody spilled ink on and pictures of people you don't even know. She looked angry and took the pictures away. I don't care.

I guess I failed that test too.

Then I drew some pictures for her, but I don't draw very well. Later, the other tester, Burt, in the white coat came back; his name is Burt Selden, and he took me to a different place on the same fourth floor in the Beekman University that said PSYCHOLOGY LABORATORY on the door. Burt said psychology means minds and laboratory means a place where they make experiments. I thought he meant like where they made the chewing gum, but now I think it's puzzles and games because that's what we did.

I couldn't work the puzzles very well because it was all broke and the pieces couldn't fit in the holes. One game was a paper with lines in all directions and lots of boxes. On one side it said START and on the other end it said FINISH. He told me that game was called an amaze and I should take the pencil and go from where it said START to where it said FINISH without crossing over any of the lines.

I didn't understand the amaze and we used up a lot of papers. Then Burt said look, I'll show you something; let's go to the experimental lab maybe you'll get the idea. We went up to the fifth floor to another room with lots of cages and animals; they had monkeys and some mice. It had a funny smell like old garbage. And there was other people in white coats playing with the animals so I thought it was like a pet store, but there wasn't any customers. Burt took a white mouse out of the cage and showed him to me. Burt said that's Algernon and he can do the amaze very good. I told him you show me how he does that.

Well, do you know he put Algernon in a box like a big table with a lot of twists and turns like all kinds of walls and a START and a FINISH like the paper had. Only there was a screen over the big table. And Burt took out his clock and lifted up a sliding door and said, let's go, Algernon, and the mouse sniffed two or three times and started to run. First, he ran down one long row and then when he saw he couldn't go any more he came back where he started from and he just stood there a minute wiggling his whiskers. Then he went off in the other direction and started to run again.

It was just like he was doing the same thing Burt wanted me to do with the lines on the paper. I was laughing because I thought it was going to be a hard thing for a mouse to do. But then Algernon kept going all the way through that thing all the right ways till he came out where it said FINISH and he made a squeak. Burt says that means he was happy because he did the thing right.

Boy, I said that's a smart mouse. Burt said would you like to race against Algernon. I said sure and he said he had a different kind of amaze made of wood with rows scratched in it and an electric stick like a pencil. And he could fix up Algernon's amaze to be the same like that one so we could both be doing the same kind.

He moved all the boards around on Algernon's table because they come apart and he could put them together in different ways. And then he put the screen back on top so Algernon wouldn't jump over any rows to get to the finish. Then he gave me the electric stick and showed me how to put it in between the rows and I'm not supposed to lift it off the board just follow the little scratches until the pencil can't move any more or I get a little shock.

He took out his clock and he was trying to hide it. So I tried not to look at him and that made me very nervous.

When he said go I tried to go but I didn't know where to go. I didn't know the way to take. Then I heard Algernon squeaking from the box on the table and his feet scratching like he was running already. I started to go but I went in the wrong way and got stuck and a little shock in my fingers so I went back to the START but every time I went a different way I got stuck and a shock. It didn't hurt or anything just made me jump a little and Burt said it was to show me I did the wrong thing. I was halfway on the board when I heard Algernon squeak like he was happy again and that means he won the race.

And the other ten times we did it over Algernon won every time because I couldn't find the right rows to get to where it says FINISH. I didn't feel bad because I watched Algernon and I learned how to finish the maze even if it takes me a long time.

I didn't know mice were so smart.

They found my sister Norma who lives with my mother in Brookline and she gave permission for the operation. So they're going to use me. I'm so excited I can hardly write it down. But then Professor Nemur and Doctor Strauss had an argument about it first. I was sitting in Professor Nemur's office when Doctor Strauss and Burt Selden came in. Professor Nemur was worried about using me but Doctor Strauss told him I looked like the best one they tested so far. Burt told him Miss Kinnian recommended me the best from all the people who she was teaching at the center for retarded adults. Where I go.

Doctor Strauss said I had something that was very good. He said I had a good motor-vation. I never even knew I had that. I felt good when he said not everybody with an I Q of sixty-eight had that thing like I had it. I don't know what it is or where I got it but he said Algernon had it too. Algernon's motor-vation is the cheese they put in his box. But it can't be only that because I didn't have any cheese this week.

Professor Nemur was worried about my I Q getting too high from mine that was too low and I would get sick from it. And Doctor Strauss told Professor Nemur something I didn't understand so while they were talking I wrote down some of the words in my notebook for keeping my progress reports.

He said Harold, that's Professor Nemur's first name, I know Charlie is not what you had in mind as the first of your new breed of intelligent couldnt get the word *** superman. But most people of his low mental *** are hostile and uncooperative they are usually dull and apathetic and hard to reach. Charlie has a good natcher and he's interested and eager to please.

Then Professor Nemur said remember, he will be the first human being ever to have his intelligence increased by surgery. Doctor Strauss said that's exactly what I meant. Where will we find another retarded adult with this tremendous motor-vation to learn. Look how well he has learned to read and write for his low mental age. A tremen

I didn't get all the words and they were talking too fast but it sounded like Doctor Strauss and Burt were on my side and Professor Nemur wasn't.

Burt kept saying Alice Kinnian feels he has an overwhelming desire to learn. He actually begged to be used. And that's true because I wanted to be smart. Doctor Strauss got up and walked around and said I say we use Charlie. And Burt nodded. Professor Nemur scratched his head and rubbed his nose with his thumb and said maybe you're right. We will use Charlie. But we've got to make him understand that a lot of things can go wrong with the experiment.

When he said that I got so happy and excited I jumped up and shook his hand for being so good to me. I think he got scared when I did that.

He said Charlie, we worked on this for a long time but only on animals like Algernon. We are sure there's no physical danger for you but there are other things we can't tell until we try it. I want you to understand this might fail and then nothing would happen at all. Or it might even succeed temporarily and leave you worse off than you are now. Do you understand what that means. If that happens we will have to send you back to the Warren State Home to live.

I said I didn't care because I ain't afraid of nothing. I'm very strong and I always do good and beside I got my lucky rabbit's foot and I never broke a mirror in my life. I dropped some dishes once but that doesn't count for bad luck.

Then Doctor Strauss said Charlie, even if this fails, you're making a great contribution to science. This experiment has been successful on lots of animals but it's never been tried on a human being. You will be the first.

I told him thanks, doc, you won't be sorry for giving me my second chance like Miss Kinnian says. And I mean it like I told them. After the operation, I'm going to try to be smart. I'm going to try awful hard.

I'm scared. Lots of people who work at the college and the people at the medical school came to wish me luck. Burt, the tester, brought me some flowers he said they were from the people at the psychology department. He wished me luck. I hope I have luck. I got my rabbit's foot and my lucky penny and my horseshoe. Doctor Strauss said don't be so superstitious, Charlie. This is science. I don't know what science is but they all keep saying it so maybe it's something that helps you have good luck. Anyway, I'm keeping my rabbit's foot in one hand and my lucky penny in the other hand with the hole in it. The penny I mean. I wish I could take the horseshoe with me but it's heavy so I'll just leave it in my jacket.

Joe Carp from the bakery brought me a chocolate cake from Mr. Donner and the folks at the bakery and they hope I get better soon. At the bakery, they think I'm sick because that's what Professor Nemur said I should tell them and nothing about an operation for getting smart. That's a secret until after in case it doesn't work or something goes wrong.

Then Miss Kinnian came to see me and she brought me some magazines to read, and she looked kind of nervous and scared. She fixed up the flowers on my table and put everything nice and neat not messed up like I made it. And she fixed the pillow under my head. She likes me a lot because I try very hard to learn everything not like some of the people at the adult center who don't really care. She wants me to get smart. I know.

Then Professor Nemur said I can't have any more visitors because I have to rest. I asked Professor Nemur if I could beat Algernon in the race after the operation and he said maybe. If the operation works good I'll show that mouse I can be as smart as he is even smarter. Then I'll be able to read better and spell the words good and know lots of things and be like other people. Boy that would surprise everyone. If the operation works and I get smart maybe I'll be able to find my mom and dad and sister and show them. Boy would they be surprised to see me smart just like them and my sister.

Professor Nemur says if it works good and it's permanent they will make other people like me smart also. Maybe people all over the world. And he said that means I'm doing something great for science and I'll be famous and my name will go down in the books. I don't care so much about being famous. I

just want to be smart like other people so I can have lots of friends who like me.

They didn't give me anything to eat today. I don't know what eating has to do with getting smart and I'm hungry. Professor Nemur took away my chocolate cake. That Professor Nemur is a growch. Doctor Strauss says I can have it back after the operation. You can't eat before an operation. Not even cheese.

The operation didn't hurt. Doctor Strauss did it while I was sleeping. I don't know how because I didn't see but there were bandages on my eyes and my head for three days so I couldn't make any progress report till today. The skinny nurse who watched me writing says I spelled progress wrong and she told me how to spell it and report to and march. I got to remember that. I have a very bad memory for spelling. Anyway they took off the bandages from my eyes today so I can make a progress report now. But there is still some bandages on my head.

I was scared when they came in and told me it was time to go for the operation. They made me get out of the bed and on another bed that has wheels on it and they rolled me out of the room and down the hall to the door that says surgery. Boy was I surprised that it was a big room with green walls and lots of doctors sitting around up high all around the room watching the operation. I didn't know it was going to be like a show.

A man came up to the table all in white and with a white cloth on his face like in TV shows and rubber gloves and he said relax Charlie it's me Doctor Strauss. I said hi doc I'm scared. He said there's nothing to be scared about Charlie he said you'll just go to sleep. I said that's what I'm scared about. He patted my head and then two other men wearing white masks too came and strapped my arms and legs down so I couldn't move them and that made me very scared and my stomach felt tight like I was going to be sick but I only wet a little and I was going to cry but they put a rubber thing on my face for me to breathe in and it smelled funny. All the time I heard Doctor Strauss talking out loud about the operation telling everybody what he was going to do. But I didn't understand anything about it and I was thinking maybe after the operation I'll be smart and I'll understand all the things he's talking about. So I breathed deep and then I guess I was very tired because I went to sleep.

When I woke up I was back in my bed and it was very dark. I couldn't see anything but I heard some talking. It was the nurse and Burt and I said what's the matter why don't you put on the lights and when are they going to operate. And they laughed and Burt said Charlie it's all over. And it's dark because you've got bandages over your eyes.

It's a funny thing. They did it while I was sleeping.

Burt comes in to see me every day to write down all the things like my temperature and my blood pressure and the other things about me. He says it's on account of the scientific method. They've got to keep records about what happens so they can do it again when they want to. Not to me but to the other people like me who aren't smart.

That's why I've got to do these progress reports. Burt says it's part of the experiment and they will make statistics of the final reports to study them so they will know what is going on in my mind. I don't see how they will know what is going on in my mind by looking at these reports. I read them over and over a lot of times to see what I wrote and I don't know what is going on in my mind so how are they going to.

But anyway that's science and I've got to try to be smart like other people. Then when I am smart they will talk to me and I can sit with them and listen like Joe Carp and Frank and Gimpy do when they talk and have a discussion about important things. While they're working they start talking about things like about God or about the trouble with all the money the president is spending or about the Republicans and Democrats. And they get all excited like they're going to have a fight so Mr. Donner has to come in and tell them to get back to baking or they'll all get canned union or no union. I want to talk about things like that.

If you're smart, you can have lots of friends to talk to and you never get lonely by yourself all the time.

Professor Nemur says it's okay to tell about all the things that happen to me in the progress reports, but he says I should write more about what I feel and what I think and remember about the past. I told him I don't know how to think or remember, and he said just try.

All the time the bandages were on my eyes, I tried to think and remember, but nothing happened. I don't know what to think or remember about. Maybe if I ask him, he will tell me how I can think now that I'm supposed to get smart. What do smart people think about or remember? Fancy things, I bet. I wish I knew some fancy things already.

March twelve—I don't have to write PROGRESS REPORT on top every day just when I start a new batch after Professor Nemur takes the old ones away. I just have to put the date on top. That saves time. It's a good idea. I can sit up in bed and look out the window at the grass and trees outside. The skinny nurse's name is Hilda and she is very good to me. She brings me things to eat and she fixes my bed and she says I was a very brave man to let them do things to my head. She says she would never let them do things to her brain for all the tea in China. I told her it wasn't for tea in China. It was to make me smart. And she said maybe they got no right to make me smart because if God wanted me to be smart, he would have made me born that way. And what about Adam and Eve and the sin with the tree of knowledge and eating the apple and the fall. And maybe Professor Nemur and Doctor Strauss were tampering with things they got no right to tamper with.

She's very skinny and when she talks, her face gets all red. She says maybe I better pray to God to ask him to forgive what they did to me. I didn't eat any apples or do anything sinful. And now I'm scared. Maybe I shouldn't have let them operate on my brain like she said if it's against God. I don't want to make God angry.

March thirteen—They changed my nurse today. This one is pretty. Her name is Lucille; she showed me how to spell it for my progress report, and she has yellow hair and blue eyes. I asked her where was Hilda, and she said Hilda wasn't working in that part of the hospital anymore. Only in the maternity ward by the babies where it doesn't matter if she talks too much.

When I asked her about what was maternity, she said it's about having babies, but when I asked her how they have them, she got red in the face just the same like Hilda and she said she had to take somebody's temperature. Nobody ever tells me about the babies. Maybe if this thing works and I get smart, I'll find out.

Miss Kinnian came to see me today, and she said, Charlie, you look wonderful. I told her I feel fine but I don't feel smart yet. I thought that when the operation was over and they took the bandages off my eyes, I'd be smart and could read and talk about important things like everybody else.

She said that's not the way it works, Charlie. It comes slowly and you have to work very hard to get smart.

I didn't know that. If I have to work hard anyway, what did I have to have the operation for? She said she wasn't sure, but the operation was to make it so that when I did work hard to get smart, it would stick with me and not be like it was before when it didn't stick so good.

Well, I told her that made me kind of feel bad because I thought I was going to be smart right away and I could go back to show the guys at the bakery how smart I am and talk with them about things and maybe even get to be an assistant baker. Then I was going to try and find my mom and dad. They would be surprised to see how smart I got because my mom always wanted me to be smart too. Maybe they wouldn't send me away anymore if they see how smart I am. I told Miss Kinnian I would try hard to be smart as hard as I can. She patted my hand and said I know you will. I have faith in you, Charlie.

March fifteen—I'm out of the hospital but not back at work yet. Nothing is happening. I had lots of tests and different kinds of races with Algernon. I hate that mouse. He always beats me. Professor Nemur says I have to play those games and I have to take those tests over and over again.

Those games are stupid. And those pictures are stupid too. I like to draw the picture of a man and woman, but I won't make up lies about people.

And I can't do the puzzles good.

I get headaches from trying to think and remember so much. Doctor Strauss promised he was going to help me, but he doesn't. He doesn't tell me what to think or when I'll get smart. He just makes me lay down on a couch and talk.

Miss Kinnian comes to see me at the college too. I told her nothing was happening. When am I going to get smart? She said you have to be patient, Charlie. These things take time. It will happen so slowly you won't know it's happening. She said Burt told her I was coming along fine.

I still think those races and those tests are stupid and I think writing these progress reports are stupid too.

March sixteen—I ate lunch with Burt at the college restaurant. They got all kinds of good food and I don't have to pay for it neither. I like to sit and watch the college boys and girls. They fool around sometimes, but mostly they talk about all kinds of things just like the bakers do at Donner's bakery. Burt says it's about art and politics and religion. I don't know what those things are about, but I know religion is God. Mom used to tell me all about him and the things he did to make the world. She said I should always love God and pray to him. I don't remember how to pray to him, but I think mom used to make me pray to him a lot when I was a kid that he should make me get better and not be sick. I don't remember how I was sick. I think it was about me not being smart.

Anyway, Burt says if the experiment works, I'll be able to understand all those things the students are talking about, and I said, do you think I'll be smart like them and he laughed and said those kids aren't so smart; you'll pass them as if they're standing still.

He introduced me to a lot of the students and some of them look at me funny like I don't belong in a college. I almost forgot and started to tell them I was going to be very smart soon like them, but Burt interrupted and he told them I was cleaning the psychology department lab. Later he explained to me it's got to be a secret. That means it's a secret.

I don't really understand why I got to keep it a secret. But says it's in case there's a failure. Professor Nemur doesn't want everybody to laugh, especially the people from the Welberg foundation who gave him the money for the project. I said I don't care if people laugh at me. Lots of people laugh at me and they're my friends and we have fun. But put his arm on my shoulder and said it's not you, Nemur is worried about. He doesn't want people to laugh at him.

I didn't think people would laugh at Professor Nemur because he's a scientist in a college, but Bert said no scientist is a great man to his colleagues and his graduate students. Burt is a graduate student and he is a major in psychology like the name on the door to the lab. I didn't know they had majors in college. I thought it was only in the army.

Anyway, I hope I get smart soon because I want to learn everything there is in the world like the college boys know. All about art and politics and God.

March seventeen—When I woke up this morning right away I thought I was going to be smart, but I'm not. Every morning I think I'm going to be smart, but nothing happens. Maybe the experiment didn't work. Maybe I won't get smart and I'll have to go live at the Warren home. I hate the tests and I hate the amazeds and I hate Algernon.

I never knew before that I was dumber than a mouse. I don't feel like writing any more progress reports. I forget things and even when I write them in my notebook sometimes I can't read my own writing and it's very hard. Miss Kinnian says have patients but I feel sick and tired. And I get headaches all the time. I want to go back to work in the bakery and not write progress reports any more.

March twenty—I'm going back to work at the bakery. Doctor Strauss told Professor Nemur it was better I should go back to work, but I still can't tell anyone what the operation was for and I have to come to the lab for two hours every night after work for my tests and keep writing these dumb reports. They are going to pay me every week like for a part-time job because that was part of the arrangement when they got the money from the Welberg foundation. I still don't know what that Welberg thing is. Miss Kinnian explained me but I still don't get it. So if I didn't get smart, why are they paying me to write these dumb things. If they're going to pay me, I'll do it. But it's very hard to write.

I'm glad I'm going back to work because I miss my job at the bakery and all my friends and all the fun we have.

Doctor Strauss says I should keep a notebook in my pocket for things I remember. And I don't have to do the progress reports every day just when I think of something or something special happens. I told him nothing special ever happens to me and it doesn't look like this special experiment is going to happen either. He says don't get discouraged, Charlie, because it takes a long time and it happens slow and you can't notice it right away. He explained how it took a long time with Algernon before he got three times smarter than he was before.

That's why Algernon beats me all the time in that amaze race because he had that operation too. He's a special mouse, the first animal to stay smart so long after the operation. I didn't know he was a special mouse. That makes it different. I could probably do that amaze faster than a regular mouse. Maybe some day I'll beat Algernon. Boy, would that be something. Doctor Strauss says that so far Algernon looks like he might be smart permanent and he says that's a good sign because we both had the same kind of operation.

March twenty-one—we had a lot of fun at the bakery today. Joe Carp said hey look where Charlie had his operation what did they do Charlie put some brains in. I was going to tell him about me getting smart but I remembered Professor

Nemur said no. Then Frank Reilly said what did you do Charlie open a door the hard way. That made me laugh. They're my friends and they really like me.

There's a lot of work to catch up. They didn't have anyone to clean out the place because that was my job but they got a new boy Ernie to do the deliveries that I always done. Mr. Donner said he decided not to fire him for a while to give me a chance to rest up and not work so hard. I told him I was alright and I can make my deliveries and clean up like I always done, but Mr. Donner says we will keep the boy.

I said so what am I gonna do. And Mr. Donner patted me on the shoulder and says Charlie how old are you. I told him thirty-two years going on thirty-three my next birthday. And how long you been here he said. I told him I didn't know. He said you came here seventeen years ago. Your Uncle Herman, God rest his soul, was my best friend. He brought you in here and he asked me to let you work here and look after you as best I could. And when he died two years later and your mother had you committed to the Warren home I got them to release you on outside work placement. Seventeen years it's been Charlie, and I want you to know that the bakery business is not so good but like I always said you got a job here for the rest of your life. So don't worry about me bringing in somebody to take your place. You'll never have to go back to that Warren home.

I ain't worried only what does he need Ernie for to deliver and work around here when I was always delivering the packages good. He says the boy needs the money, Charlie, so I'm going to keep him on as an apprentice to learn him to be a baker. You can be his assistant and help him out on deliveries when he needs it.

I never was an assistant before. Ernie is very smart but the other people in the bakery don't like him so much. They're all my good friends and we have lots of jokes and laughs here.

Sometimes somebody will say hey lookit Frank, or Joe, or even Gimpy. He really pulled a Charlie Gordon that time. I don't know why they say it but they always laugh and I laugh too. This morning Gimpy, he's the head baker and he has a bad foot and he limps, he used my name when he shouted at Ernie because Ernie lost a birthday cake. He said Ernie for goodness' sake you trying to be a Charlie Gordon. I don't know why he said that. I never lost any packages.

I asked Mr. Donner if I could learn to be an apprentice baker like Ernie. I told him I could learn it if he gave me a chance.

Mr. Donner looked at me for a long time funny because I guess I don't talk so much most of the time. And Frank heard me and he laughed and laughed until Mr. Donner told him to shut up and go tend to his oven. Then Mr. Donner said to me, there's lots of time for that Charlie. A baker's work is very important and very complicated and you should not worry about things like that.

I wish I could tell him and all the other people about my real operation. I wish it would really work already so I could get smart like everybody else.

March twenty-fourth, Professor Nemur and Doctor Strauss came to my room tonight to see why I don't come in to the lab like I am supposed to. I told them I don't want to race with Algernon anymore. Professor Nemur said I don't have to for a while but I should come in anyway. He brought me a present only it wasn't a present but just for lend. He said it's a teaching machine that works like TV. It talks and makes pictures and I got to turn it on just before I go to sleep. I said you're kidding. Why should I turn on a TV before I go to sleep. But Professor Nemur said if I want to get smart I have to do what he says. So I told him I didn't think I was going to get smart anyway.

Then Doctor Strauss came over and put his hand on my shoulder and said Charlie, you don't know it yet but you're getting smarter all the time. You won't notice it for a while like you don't notice how the hour hand on a clock moves. That's the way it is with the changes in you. They are happening so slow you can't tell. But we can follow it from the tests and the way you act and talk and your progress reports. He said Charlie, you've got to have faith in us and in yourself. We can't be sure it will be permanent but we are confident that soon you're going to be a very intelligent young man.

I said okay and Professor Nemur showed me how to work the TV that really wasn't a TV. I asked him what it did. First he looked sore again because I asked him to explain me and he said I should just do what he told me. But Doctor Strauss said he should explain it to me because I was beginning to question authority. I don't know what that means but Professor Nemur looked like he was going to bite his lip off. Then he explained it to me very slow that the machine did lots of things to my mind. Some things it did just before I fall asleep like teach me things when I'm very sleepy and a little while after I start to fall asleep I still hear the talk even if I don't see the pictures anymore. Other things is at night it's supposed to make me have dreams and remember things that happened a long time ago when I was a very little kid.

It's scary.

Oh yes I forgot. I asked Professor Nemur when I can go back to Miss Kinnian's class at the adult center and he said soon Miss Kinnian will come to the college testing center to teach me special things. I am glad about that. I didn't see her so much since the operation but she is nice.

March twenty-fifth, that crazy TV kept me up all night. How can I sleep with something yelling crazy things all night in my ears. And the nutty pictures. Wow. I don't know what it says when I'm up so how am I going to know when I'm sleeping. I asked Burt about it and he says it's okay. He says my brain is learning just before I got to sleep and that will help me when Miss Kinnian starts my lessons at the testing center. The testing center isn't a hospital for animals like I thought before. It's a laboratory for science. I don't know what science is except I'm helping it with this experiment.

Anyway I don't know about that TV I think it's crazy. If you can get smart when you're going to sleep why do people go to school. I don't think that thing will work. I used to watch the late show and the late late show on TV all the time before I went to sleep and it never made me smart. Maybe only certain movies make you smart. Maybe like quiz shows.

March twenty-sixth, how am I gonna work in the daytime if that thing keeps waking me up at night. In the middle of the night I woke up and I couldn't go back to sleep because it kept saying remember ... remember ... remember ... So I think I remembered something. I don't remember exactly but it was about Miss Kinnian and the school where I learned about reading. And how I went there.

A long time ago once I asked Joe Carp how he learned to read and if I could learn to read too. He laughed like he always did when I say something funny and he says to me Charlie, why waste your time they can't put any brains in where there aren't any. But Fanny Birden heard me and she asked her cousin who is a college student at Beekman and she told me about the adult center for retarded people at the Beekman college.

She wrote the name down on a paper and Frank laughed and said don't go getting so educated that you won't talk to your old friends. I said don't worry I will always keep my old friends even if I can read and write. He was laughing and Joe Carp was laughing but Gimpy came in and told them to get back to making rolls. They are all good friends to me.

After work I walked over six blocks to the school and I was scared. I was so happy I was going to learn to read that I bought a newspaper to take home with me and read after I learned.

When I got there it was a big long hall with lots of people. I got scared of saying something wrong to somebody so I started to go home. But I don't know why I turned around and went inside again.

I waited until most everybody went away except some people going over by a big timeclock like the one we have at the bakery and I asked the lady if I could learn to read and write because I wanted to read all the things in the newspaper and I showed it to her. She was Miss Kinnian but I didn't know it then. She said if you come back tomorrow and register I will start to teach you how to read. But you have to understand it will take a long time maybe years to learn to read. I told her I didn't know it took so long but I wanted to learn anyway because I made believe a lot of times. I mean I pretend to people I know how to read but it's not true and I wanted to learn.

She shook my hand and said glad to meet you, Mr. Gordon. I will be your teacher. My name is Miss Kinnian. So that's where I went to learn and that's how I met Miss Kinnian.

Thinking and remembering is hard and now I don't sleep so good anymore. That TV is too loud.

March twenty-seventh. Now that I'm starting to have those dreams and remembering Professor Nemur says I have to go to therapy sessions with Doctor Strauss. He says therapy sessions is like when you feel bad you talk to make it better. I told him I don't feel bad and I do plenty of talking all day so why do I have to go to therapy but he got sore and says I have to go anyway.

What therapy is is that I have to lay down on a couch and Doctor Strauss sits in a chair near me and I talk about anything that comes into my head. For a long time I didn't say nothing because I couldn't think of nothing to say. Then I told him about the bakery and the things they do there. But it's silly for me to go to his office and lay down on the couch to talk because I write it down in the progress reports anyway and he could read it. So today I brought the progress report with me and I told him maybe he could just read it and I could take a nap on the couch. I was very tired because that TV kept me up all night but he said no it doesn't work that way. I have to talk. So I talked but then I fell asleep on the couch anyway—right in the middle.

March twenty-eighth. I got a headache. It's not from that TV this time. Doctor Strauss showed me how to keep the TV turned low so now I can sleep. I don't hear a thing. And I still don't understand what it says. A few times I play it over in the morning to find out what I learned before I fell asleep and while I was sleeping and I don't even know the words. Maybe it's another language or something. But most times it sounds American. But it talks too fast.

I asked Doctor Strauss what good is it to get smart in my sleep if I want to be smart when I'm awake. He says it's the same thing and I have two minds. There's the subconscious and the conscious and one doesn't tell the other what it's doing. They don't even talk to each other. That's why I dream. And boy have I been having crazy dreams. Wow. Ever since that night TV The late late late late late movie show.

I forgot to ask Doctor Strauss if it was only me or if everybody has two minds like that.

I just looked up the word in the dictionary Doctor Strauss gave me. Subconscious. Adjective. Of the nature of mental operations yet not present in consciousness; as, subconscious conflict of desires. There's more but I still don't know what it means. This isn't a very good dictionary for dumb people like me.

Anyway, the headache is from the party. Joe Carp and Frank Reilly invited me to go with them after work to Halvorans Bar for some drinks. I don't like to drink whiskey but they said we will have lots of fun. I had a good time. We played games with me doing a dance on the top of the bar with a lampshade on my head and everyone laughing.

Then Joe Carp said I should show the girls how I mop out the toilet in the bakery and he got me a mop. I showed them and everyone laughed when I told them that Mr. Donner said I was the best janitor and errand boy he ever had because I like my job and do it good and never come late or miss a day except for my operation.

I said Miss Kinnian always told me Charlie be proud of the work you do because you do your job good.

Everybody laughed and Frank said that Miss Kinnian must be some cracked up piece if she goes for Charlie and Joe said hey Charlie are you making out with her. I said I didn't know what that means. They gave me lots of drinks and Joe said Charlie is a card when he's potted. I think that means they like me. We have some good times but I can't wait to be smart like my best friends Joe Carp and Frank Reilly.

I don't remember how the party was over but they asked me to go around the corner to see if it was raining and when I came back there was no one there. Maybe they went to find me. I looked for them all over till it was late. But I got lost and I felt bad at myself for getting lost because I bet Algernon could go up and down those streets a hundred times and not get lost like I did.

Then I don't remember so good but Mrs. Flynn says a nice policeman brought me back home.

That same night I dreamed about my mother and father only I could not see her face it was all white and she was blurry. I was crying because we were in a big department store and I was lost and I could not find them and I ran up and down the rows around all the big counters in the store. Then a man came and took me in a big room with benches and gave me a lollipop and told me a big boy like me should not cry because my mother and father would come to find me.

Anyway, that's the dream and I got a headache and a big lump on my head and black and blue marks all over. Joe Carp says maybe I got rolled or the cop let me have it. I don't think policemen do things like that. But anyway I don't think I'll drink whiskey anymore.

March twenty-ninth. I beat Algernon. I didn't even know I beat him until Burt Selden told me. Then the second time I lost because I got so excited. But after that I beat him eight more times. I must be getting smart to beat a smart mouse like Algernon. But I don't feel smarter.

I wanted to race some more but Burt said that's enough for one day. He let me hold Algernon for a minute. Algernon is a nice mouse. Soft like cotton. He blinks and when he opens his eyes, their black and pink on the edges.

I asked can I feed him because I felt bad to beat him and I wanted to be nice and make friends. Burt said no, Algernon is a very special mouse with an operation like mine. He was the first of all the animals to stay smart so long and he said that Algernon is so smart he has to solve a problem with a lock that changes every time he goes in to eat so he has to learn something new to get his food. That made me sad because if he couldn't learn, he wouldn't be able to eat and he would be hungry.

I don't think it's right to make you pass a test to eat. How would Burt like to have to pass a test every time he wants to eat. I think I'll be friends with Algernon.

That reminds me. Dr. Strauss says I should write down all my dreams and the things I think so when I come to his office I can tell them. I told him I don't know how to think yet but he says he means more things like what I wrote about my mom and dad and about when I started school at Miss Kinnian's or anything that happened before the operation is thinking and I wrote them in my progress report.

I didn't know I was thinking and remembering. Maybe that means something is happening to me. I don't feel different but I'm so excited I couldn't sleep.

Dr. Strauss gave me some pink pills to make me sleep good. He says I got to get lots of sleep because that's when most of the changes happen in my brain. It must be true because Uncle Herman used to sleep in our house all the time when he was out of work on the old sofa in the parlor. He was fat and it was hard for him to get a job because he used to paint people's houses and he got very slow going up and down the ladder.

When I once told my mom I wanted to be a painter like Uncle Herman, my sister Norma said yeah, Charlie's going to be the artist of the family. And dad slapped her face and told her not to be so goddamn nasty to her brother. I don't know what an artist is but if Norma got slapped for saying it, I guess it's not a nice thing. I always felt bad when Norma got slapped for being mean to me. When I get smart, I'll go visit her.

March thirty—tonight after work, Miss Kinnian came to the teaching room near the laboratory. She looked glad to see me but nervous. She looks younger than I remembered her. I told her I was trying very hard to be smart. She said I have confidence in you, Charlie, the way you struggled so much to read and write better than all the others. I know you can do it. At worst, you will have it all for a little while and your doing something for other retarded people.

We started to read a very hard book. I never read such a hard book before. It's called Robinson Crusoe about a man who gets marooned on a desert island. He's smart and figures out all kinds of things so he can have a house and food and he's a good swimmer. Only I feel sorry for him because he's all alone and he has no friends. But I think there must be somebody else on the island because there's a picture of him with his funny umbrella looking at footprints. I hope he gets a friend and won't be so lonely.

March thirty-one—Miss Kinnian teaches me how to spell better. She says look at a word and close your eyes and say it over and over again until you remember. I have lots of trouble with through that you say THREW and enough and tough that you don't say ENEW and TEW. You got to say ENUFF and TUFF. That's how I used to write it before I started to get smart. I'm mixed up but Miss Kinnian says don't worry, spelling is not supposed to make sense.

April first—everybody in the bakery came to see me today where I started my new job working by the dough-mixer. It happened like this. Oliver who works on the mixer quit yesterday. I used to help him out before bringing the bags of flour over for him to put in the mixer. Anyway, I didn't know that I knew how to work the mixer. It's very hard and Oliver went to bakers school for one year before he could learn how to be an assistant baker.

But Joe Carp he's my friend he said Charlie why don't you take over Oliver's job. Everybody on the floor came around and they were all laughing and Frank Reilly said yes Charlie, you've been here long enough. Go ahead. Gimpy ain't around and he won't know you tried it. I was scared because Gimpy is the head baker and he told me never to go near the mixer because I would get hurt. Everyone said do it except Fannie Birden who said stop it why don't you leave the poor man alone.

Frank Reilly said shut up Fanny it's April fools day and if Charlie works on the mixer he might fix it good so we will all have the day off. I said I couldn't fix the machine but I could work it because I been watching Oliver ever since I got back.

I worked the dough-mixer and everybody was surprised especially Frank Reilly. Fanny Birden got excited because she said it took Oliver two years to learn how to mix the dough right and he went to bakers school. Bernie Bate who helps on the machine said I did it faster than Oliver did and better. Nobody laughed. When Gimpy came back and Fanny told him he got sore at me for working on the mixer.

But she said watch him and see how he does it. They were playing him for an April Fool joke and he fooled them instead. Gimpy watched and I knew he was sore at me because he don't like when people don't do what he tells them just like Professor Nemur. But he saw how I worked the mixer and he scratched his head and said I see it but I don't believe it. Then he called Mr. Donner and told me to work it again so Mr. Donner could see it.

I was scared he was going to be angry and holler at me so after I was finished I said can I go back to my own job now. I got to sweep out the front of the bakery behind the counter. Mr. Donner looked at me funny for a long time. Then he said this must be some kind of April fools joke you guys are playing on me. What's the catch.

Gimpy said that's what I thought it was some kind of a gag. He limped all around the machine and he said to Mr. Donner I don't understand it either but Charlie knows how to handle it and I got to admit it he does a better job than Oliver.

Everybody was crowded around and talking about it and I got scared because they all looked at me funny and they were excited. Frank said I told you there is something peculiar lately about Charlie. And Joe Carp says yeah I know what you mean. Mr. Donner sent everybody back to work and he took me out to the front of the store with him.

He said Charlie I don't know how you done it but it looks like you finally learned something. I want you to be careful and do the best you can do. You got yourself a new job with a five-dollar raise.

I said I don't want a new job because I like to clean up and sweep and deliver and do things for my friends but Mr. Donner said never mind your friends I need you for this job. I don't think much of a man who don't want to advance.

I said what's advance mean. He scratched his head and looked at me over his glasses. Never mind that Charlie. From now on you work that mixer. That's advance.

So now instead of delivering packages and washing out the toilets and dumping the garbage. I'm the new mixer. That's advance. Tomorrow I will tell Miss Kinnian. I think she will be happy but I don't know why Frank and Joe are mad at me. I asked Fanny and she said never mind those fools. This is April Fools' day and the joke backfired and made them the fools instead of me.

I asked Joe to tell me what was the joke that backfired and he said go jump in the lake. I guess they're mad at me because I worked the machine but they didn't get the day off like they thought. Does that mean I'm getting smarter.

April three-Finished Robinson Crusoe. I want to find out more about what happens to him but Miss Kinnian says that's all there is. Why.

April four-Miss Kinnian says I'm learning fast. She read some of my progress reports and she looked at me kind of funny. She says I'm a fine person and I'll show them all. I asked her why. She said never mind but I shouldnt feel bad if I find out that everybody isn't nice like I think. She said for a person who God gave so little to you did more than a lot of people with brains they never even used. I said that all my friends are smart people and they're good. They like me and they never did anything that wasn't nice. Then she got something in her eye and she had to run out to the ladies' room.

While I was sitting in the teaching room waiting for her I was wondering about how Miss Kinnian was a nice lady like my mother used to be. I think I remember my mother told me to be good and always be friendly to people. She said but always be careful because some people don't understand and they might think you are trying to make trouble.

That makes me remember when mom had to go away and they put me to stay in Mrs. Leroys house who lived next door. Mom went to the hospital. Dad said she wasn't sick or nothing but she went to the hospital to bring me back a baby sister or a brother. I still don't know how they do that. I told them I want a baby brother to play with and I don't know why they got me a sister instead but she was nice like a doll. Only she cried all the time.

I never hurt her or nothing.

They put her in a crib in their room and once I heard Dad say don't worry Charlie wouldn't harm her.

She was like a bundle all pink and screaming sometimes that I couldn't sleep. And when I went to sleep she woke me up in the nighttime. One time when they were in the kitchen and I was in my bed she was crying. I got up to pick her up and hold her to get quiet the way mom does. But then Mom came in yelling and took her away. And she slapped me so hard I fell on the bed.

Then she started screaming. Don't you ever touch her again. You'll hurt her. She's a baby. You got no business touching her. I didn't know it then but I guess I know it now that she thought I was going to hurt the baby because I was too dumb to know what I was doing. Now that makes me feel bad because I would never of hurt the baby.

When I go to Dr. Straus office I got to tell him about that.

April six-Today, I learned, the comma, this is, a, comma (,) a period, with, a tail, Miss Kinnian, says its, important, because, it makes writing, better, she said, somebody, could lose, a lot, of money, if a comma, isn't in, the right, place, I got, some money, that I, saved from, my job, and what, the foundation, pays me, but not, much and, I don't, see how, a comma, keeps, you from, losing it,

But, she says, everybody, uses commas, so I'll, use them, too,

April seven-I used the comma wrong. It's punctuation. Miss Kinnian told me to look up long words in the dictionary to learn to spell them. I said what's the difference if you can read it anyway. She said it's part of your education so from now on I'll look up all the words I'm not sure how to spell. It takes a long time to write that way but I think I'm remembering more and more.

Anyway that's how come I got the word punctuation right. It's that way in the dictionary. Miss Kinnian says a period is punctuation too, and there are lots of other marks to learn. I told her I thought she meant all the periods had to have tails and be called commas. But she said no.

She said you got to mix them up. She showed me how to mix them up and now I can mix (up all kinds of punctuation in my writing. There are lots of rules to learn but I'm getting them in my head:

One thing I like about, Dear Miss Kinnian: (that's the way it goes in a business letter if I ever go into business?) is that, she always gives me a reason when I ask. She's a genius! I wish I could be smart like her.

Punctuation is fun!

April eight-What a dope I am! I didn't even understand what she was talking about. I read the grammar book last night and it explains the whole thing. Then I saw it was the same way as Miss Kinnian was trying to tell me, but I didn't get it. I got up in the middle of the night and the whole thing straightened out in my mind.

Miss Kinnian said that the TV working, just before I fell asleep and during the night, helped out. She said I reached a plateau. That's like the flat top of a hill.

After I figured out how punctuation worked, I read over all my old progress reports from the beginning. Boy, did I have crazy spelling and punctuation! I told Miss Kinnian I ought to go over the pages and fix all the mistakes, but she said, "No, Charlie, Professor Nemur wants them just as they are. That's why he lets you keep them after they're photostated-to see your own progress. You're coming along fast, Charlie."

That made me feel good. After the lesson I went down and played with Algernon. We don't race any more.

April ten-I feel sick. Not like for a doctor, but inside my chest it feels empty, like getting punched and a heartburn at the same time.

I wasn't going to write about it, but I guess I got to, because it's important. Today was the first day I ever stayed home from work on purpose.

Last night Joe Carp and Frank Reilly invited me to a party. There were lots of girls and Gimpy was there and Ernie too. I remembered how sick I got last time I drank too much, so I told Joe I didn't want to drink anything. He gave me a plain coke instead. It tasted funny, but I thought it was just a bad taste in my mouth.

We had a lot of fun for a while.

"Dance with Ellen," Joe said. "She'll teach you the steps." Then he winked at her like he had something in his eye.

She said, "Why don't you leave him alone?"

He slapped me on the back. "This is Charlie Gordon, my buddy, my pal. He's no ordinary guy-he's been promoted to working on the doughmixing machine. All I did was ask you to dance with him and give him a good time. What's wrong with that?"

He pushed me up close against her. So she danced with me. I fell three times and I couldn't understand why because no one else was dancing besides Ellen and me. And all the time I was tripping because somebody's foot was always sticking out.

They were all around in a circle watching and laughing at the way we were doing the steps. They laughed harder every time I fell, and I was laughing too because it was so funny. But the last time it happened I didn't laugh. I picked myself up and Joe pushed me down again.

Then I saw the look on Joe's face and it gave me a funny feeling in my stomach.

"He's a scream," one of the girls said. Everybody was laughing.

"Oh, you were right, Frank," choked Ellen. "He's a one man side show." Then she said, "Here, Charlie, have a fruit." She gave me an apple, but when I bit into it, it was fake.

Then Frank started laughing and he said, "I told ya he'd eat it. C'n you imagine anyone dumb enough to eat wax fruit?"

Joe said, "I ain't laughed so much since we sent him around the corner to see if it was raining that night we ditched him at Halloran's."

Then I saw a picture that I remembered in my mind when I was a kid and the children in the block let me play with them, hide-and-go-seek and I was IT. After I counted up to ten over and over on my fingers I went to look for the others. I kept looking until it got cold and dark and I had to go home.

But I never found them and I never knew why.

What Frank said reminded me. That was the same thing that happened at Halloran's. And that was what Joe and the rest of them were doing. Laughing at me. And the kids playing hide-and-go-seek were playing tricks on me and they were laughing at me too.

The people at the party were a bunch of blurred faces all looking down and laughing at me.

"Look at him. His face is red."

"He's blushing. Charlie's blushing."

"Hey, Ellen, what'd you do to Charlie? I never saw him act like this before."

"Boy, Ellen sure got him worked up."

I didn't know what to do or where to turn. Her rubbing up against me made me feel funny. Everyone was laughing at me and all of a sudden I felt naked. I wanted to hide myself so they wouldn't see. I ran out of the apartment. It was a large apartment house with lots of halls and I couldn't find my way to the staircase. I forgot all about the elevator. Then, after, I found the stairs and ran out into the street and walked for a long time before I went to my room. I never knew before that Joe and Frank and the others liked to have me around just to make fun of me.

Now I know what they mean when they say "to pull a Charlie Gordon."

I'm ashamed.

And another thing. I dreamed about that girl Ellen dancing and rubbing up against me and when I woke up the sheets were wet and messy.

April thirteen-Still didn't go back to work at the bakery. I told Mrs. Flynn, my landlady, to call and tell Mr. Donner I'm sick. Mrs. Flynn looks at me lately like she's scared of me.

I think it's a good thing about finding out how everybody laughs at me. I thought about it a lot. It's because I'm so dumb and I don't even know when I'm doing something dumb. People think it's funny when a dumb person can't do things the same way they can.

Anyway, now I know I'm getting a little smarter every day. I know punctuation, and I can spell good. I like to look up all the hard words in the dictionary and I remember them. And I try to write these progress reports very careful but that's hard to do. I am reading a lot now, and Miss Kinnian says I read very fast. And I even understand a lot of the things I'm reading about, and they stay in my mind. There are times when I can close my eyes and think of a page and it all comes back like a picture.

But other things come into my head too. Sometimes I close my eyes and I see a clear picture. Like this morning just after I woke up, I was laying in bed with my eyes open. It was like a big hole opened up in the walls of my mind and I can just walk through. I think its far back ... a long time ago when I first started working at Donner's Bakery. I see the street where the bakery is. Fuzzy at first and then it gets patchy with some things so real they are right here now in front of me, and other things stay blurred, and I'm not sure ....

A little old man with a baby carriage made into a pushcart with a charcoal burner, and the smell of roasting chestnuts, and snow on the ground. A young fellow, skinny with wide eyes and a scared look on his face looking up at the store sign. What does it say? Blurred letters in a way that don't make sense. I know now that the sign says DONNER'S BAKERY, but looking back in my memory at the sign I can't read the words through his eyes. None of the signs make sense. I think that fellow with the scared look on his face is me.

Bright neon lights. Christmas trees and sidewalk peddlers. People bundled in coats with collars up and scarves around their necks. But he has no gloves. His hands are cold and he puts down a heavy bundle of brown paper bags. He's stopping to watch the little mechanical toys that the peddler winds up-the tumbling bear, the dog jumping, the seal spinning a ball on its nose. Tumbling, jumping, spinning. If he had all those toys for himself he would be the happiest person in the world.

He wants to ask the red-faced peddler, with his fingers sticking through the brown cotton gloves, if he can hold the tumbling bear for a minute, but he is afraid. He picks up the bundle of paper bags and puts it on his shoulder. He is skinny but he is strong from many years of hard work.

"Charlie! Charlie !... fat head barley!"

Children circle around him laughing and teasing him like little dogs snapping at his feet. Charlie smiles at them. He would like to put down his bundle and play games with them, but when he thinks about it the skin on his back twitches and he feels the way the older boys throw things at him.

Coming back to the bakery he sees some boys standing in the door of a dark hallway.

"Hey look, there's Charlie!"

"Hey, Charlie. What you got there? Want to shoot some craps?"

"C'mere. We won't hurt you."

But there is something about the doorway-the dark hall, the laughing, that makes his skin twitch again. He tries to know what it is but all he can remember is their dirt and piss all over his clothes, and Uncle Herman shouting when he came home all covered with filth, and how Uncle Herman ran out with a hammer in his hand to find the boys who did that to him. Charlie backs away from the boys laughing in the hallway, drops the bundle. Picks it up again and runs the rest of the way to the bakery.

"What took you so long, Charlie?" shouts Gimpy from the doorway to the back of the bakery.

Charlie pushes through the swinging doors to the back of the bakery and sets down the bundle on one of the skids. He leans against the wall shoving his hands into his pockets. He wishes he had his spinner.

He likes it back here in the bakery where the floors are white with flour-whiter than the sooty walls and ceiling.

The thick soles of his own high shoes are crusted with white and there is white in the stitching and lace-eyes, and under his nails and in the cracked chapped skin of his hands.

He relaxes here-squatting against the wall-leaning back in a way that tilts his baseball cap with the D forward over his eyes. He likes the smell of flour, sweet dough, bread and cakes and rolls baking. The oven is crackling and makes him sleepy.

Sweet ... warm ... sleep Suddenly, falling, twisting, head hitting against the wall. Someone has kicked his legs out from under him.

That's all I can remember. I can see it all clearly, but I don't know why it happened. It's like when I used to go to the movies. The first time I never understood because they went too fast but after I saw the picture three or four times I used to understand what they were saying. I've got to ask Dr. Strauss about it.

April fourteen-Dr. Strauss says the important thing is to keep recalling memories like the one I had yesterday and to write them down. Then when I come into his office we can talk about them.

Dr. Strauss is a psychiatrist and a neurosurgeon. I didn't know that. I thought he was just a plain doctor. But when I went to his office this morning, he told me about how important it is for me to learn about myself so that I can understand my problems. I said I didn't have any problems.

He laughed and then he got up from his chair and went to the window. "The more intelligent you become the more problems you'll have, Charlie. Your intellectual growth is going to outstrip your emotional growth. And I think you'll find that as you progress, there will be many things you'll want to talk to me about. I just want you to remember that this is the place for you to come when you need help."

I still don't know what it's all about, but he said even if I don't understand my dreams or memories or why I have them, some time in the future they're all going to connect up, and I'll learn more about myself. He said the important thing is to find out what those people in my memories are saying. It's all about me when I was a boy and I've got to remember what happened.

I never knew about these things before. It's like if I get intelligent enough I'll understand all the words in my mind, and I'll know about those boys standing in the hallway, and about my Uncle Herman and my parents. But what he means is then I'm going to feel bad about it all and I might get sick in my mind.

So I've got to come into his office twice a week now to talk about the things that bother me. We just sit there, and I talk, and Dr. Strauss listens. It's called therapy, and that means talking about things will make me feel better. I told him one of the things that bothers me is about women.

Like dancing with that girl Ellen got me all excited. So we talked about it and I got a funny feeling while I was talking, cold and sweaty, and a buzzing inside my head and I thought I was going to throw up. Maybe because I always thought it was dirty and bad to talk about that. But Dr. Strauss said what happened to me after the party was a wet dream, and it's a natural thing that happens to boys.

So even if I'm getting intelligent and learning a lot of new things, he thinks I'm still a boy about women. It's confusing, but I'm going to find out all about my life.

April fifteen-I'm reading a lot these days and almost everything is staying in my mind. Besides history and geography and arithmetic, Miss Kinnian says I should start learning foreign languages. Prof. Nemur gave me some more tapes to play while I sleep. I still don't know how the conscious and unconscious mind works, but Dr. Strauss says not to worry yet. He made me promise that when I start learning college subjects in a couple of weeks I won't read any books on psychology-that is, until he gives me permission. He says it will confuse me and make me think about psychological theories instead of about my own ideas and feelings. But it's okay to read novels. This week I read The Great Gatsby, An American Tragedy, and Look Homeward, Angel. I never knew about men and women doing things like that.

April sixteen-I feel a lot better today, but I'm still angry that all the time people were laughing and making fun of me.

When I become intelligent the way Prof. Nemur says, with much more than twice my I.Q. of seventy, then maybe people will like me and be my friends.

I'm not sure what I.Q. is anyway. Prof. Nemur said it was something that measured how intelligent you were-like a scale in the drugstore weighs pounds. But Dr. Strauss had a big argument with him and said an I.Q. didn't weigh intelligence at all. He said an I.Q. showed how much intelligence you could get, like the numbers on the outside of a measuring cup. You still had to fill the cup up with stuff.

When I asked Burt Seldon, who gives me my intelligence tests and works with Algernon, he said that some people would say both of them were wrong and according to the things he's been reading up on, the I.Q. measures a lot of different things including some of the things you learned already and it really isn't a good measure of intelligence at all.

So I still don't know what I.Q. is, and everybody says it's something different. Mine is about a hundred now, and it's going to be over a hundred and fifty soon, but they'll still have to fill me up with the stuff. I didn't want to say anything, but I don't see how if they don't know what it is, or where it is-how they know how much of it you've got.

Prof Nemur says I have to take a Rorschach Test the day after tomorrow. I wonder what that is.

April seventeen-I had a nightmare last night, and this morning, after I woke up, I free-associated the way Dr. Strauss told me to do when I remember my dreams. Think about the dream and just let my mind wander until other thoughts come up in my mind. I keep on doing that until my mind goes blank. Dr. Strauss says that it means I've reached a point where my subconscious is trying to block my conscious from remembering. It's a wall between the present and the past. Sometimes the wall stays up and sometimes it breaks down and I can remember what's behind it.

Like this morning.

The dream was about Miss Kinnian reading my progress reports. In the dream I sit down to write but I can't write or read any more. It's all gone. I get frightened so I ask Gimpy at the bakery to write for me. But when Miss Kinnian reads the report she gets angry and tears the pages up because they've got dirty words in them.

When I get home Prof. Nemur and Dr. Strauss are waiting for me and they give me a beating for writing dirty things in the progress report. When they leave me I pick up the torn pages but they turn into lace valentines with blood all over them.

It was a horrible dream but I got out of bed and wrote it all down and then I started to free associate.

Bakery ... baking ... the urn ... someone kicking me ... fall down ... bloody all over ... writing ... big pencil on a red valentine ... a little gold heart ... a locket ... a chain ... all covered with blood ... and he's laughing at me ...

The chain is from a locket ... spinning around ... flashing the sunlight into my eyes. And I like to watch it spin ... watch the chain ... all bunched up and twisting and spinning ... and a little girl is watching me.

Her name is Miss Kin-I mean Harriet.

Harriet ... Harriet ... we all love Harriet.

And then there's nothing. It's blank again.

Miss Kinnian reading my progress reports over my shoulder.

Then we're at the Adult Center for the Retarded, and she's reading over my shoulder as I write my composishuns compositions.

School changes into P.S. thirteen and I'm eleven years old and Miss Kinnian is eleven years old too, but now she's not Miss Kinnian. She's a little girl with dimples and long curls and her name is Harriet. We all love Harriet. It's Valentines Day.

I remember ...

I remember what happened at P.S. thirteen and why they had to change my school and send me to P.S. two hundred twenty-two. It was because of Harriet.

I see Charlie-eleven years old. He has a little gold-color locket he once found in the street. There's no chain, but he has it on a string, and he likes to twirl the locket so that it bunches up the string, and then watch it unwind, spinning around with the sun flicking into his eyes.

Sometimes when the kids play catch they let him play in the middle and he tries to get the ball before one of them catches it. He likes to be in the middle-even if he never catches the ball-and once when Hymie Roth dropped the ball by mistake and he picked it up they wouldn't let him throw it but he had to go in the middle again.

When Harriet passes by, the boys stop playing and look at her. All the boys love Harriet. When she shakes her head her curls bounce up and down, and she has dimples. Charlie doesn't know why they make such a fuss about a girl and why they always want to talk to her (he'd rather play ball or kick-the-can, or ringo-levio than talk to a girl) but all the boys are in love with Harriet so he is in love with her too.

She never teases him like the other kids, and he does tricks for her. He walks on the desks when the teacher isn't there. He throws erasers out the window, scribbles all over the blackboard and walls. And Harriet always screeches and giggles, "Oh, lookit Charlie. Ain't he funny? Oh, ain't he silly?"

It's Valentine's Day, and the boys are talking about valentines they're going to give Harriet, so Charlie says, "I'm gonna give Harriet a valentime too."

They laugh and Barry says, "Where you gonna get a valentime?"

"I'm gonna get her a pretty one. You'll see."

But he doesn't have any money for a valentine, so he decides to give Harriet his locket that is heart-shaped like the valentines in the store windows. That night he takes tissue paper from his mother's drawer, and it takes a long time to wrap and tie it with a piece of red ribbon. Then he takes it to Hymie Roth the next day during lunch period in school and asks Hymie to write on the paper for him.

He tells Hymie to write: "Dear Harriet, I think you are the most prettiest girl in the whole world. I like you very much and I love you. I want you to be my valentime. Your friend, Charlie Gordon."

Hymie prints very carefully in large letters on the paper, laughing all the time, and he tells Charlie, "Boy, this will knock her eyes out. Wait'll she sees this."

Charlie is scared, but he wants to give Harriet that locket, so he follows her home from school and waits until she goes into her house. Then he sneaks into the hall and hangs the package on the inside of the doorknob. He rings the bell twice and runs across the street to hide behind the tree.

When Harriet comes down she looks around to see who rang the bell. Then she sees the package. She takes it and goes upstairs. Charlie goes home from school and he gets a spanking because he took the tissue paper and ribbon out of his mother's drawer without telling her. But he doesn't care. Tomorrow Harriet will wear the locket and tell all the boys he gave it to her. Then they'll see.

The next day he runs all the way to school, but it's too early. Harriet isn't there yet, and he's excited.

But when Harriet comes in she doesn't even look at him. She isn't wearing the locket. And she looks sore.

He does all kinds of things when Mrs. Janson isn't watching: He makes funny faces. He laughs out loud. He stands up on his seat and wiggles his fanny. He even throws a piece of chalk at Harold. But Harriet doesn't look at him even once. Maybe she forgot. Maybe she'll wear it tomorrow. She passes by in the hallway, but when he comes over to ask her she pushes past him without saying a word.

Down in the schoolyard her two big brothers are waiting for him.

Gus pushes him. "You little bastard, did you write this dirty note to my sister?"

Charlie says he didn't write any dirty notes. "I just gave her a valentime."

Oscar who was on the football team before he graduated from high school grabs Charlie's shirt and tears off two buttons. "You keep away from my kid sister, you degenerate. You don't belong in this school anyway."

He pushes Charlie over to Gus who catches him by the throat. Charlie is scared and starts to cry.

Then they start to hurt him. Oscar punches him in the nose, and Gus knocks him on the ground and kicks him in the side and then both of them kick him, one and then the other, and some of the other kids in the yard- Charlie's friends-come running screaming and clapping hands: "Fight! Fight! They're beating up Charlie!"

His clothes are torn and his nose is bleeding and one of his teeth is broken, and after Gus and Oscar go away he sits on the sidewalk and cries. The blood tastes sour. The other kids just laugh and shout: "Charlie got a licking! Charlie got a licking!" And then Mr. Wagner, one of the caretakers from the school, comes and chases them away. He takes Charlie into the boys' room and tells him to wash off the blood and dirt from his face and hands before he goes back home ....

I guess I was pretty dumb because I believed what people told me. I shouldn't have trusted Hymie or anyone.

I never remembered any of this before today, but it came back to me after I thought about the dream. It has something to do with the feeling about Miss Kinnian reading my progress reports. Anyway, I'm glad now I don't have to ask anyone to write things for me. Now I can do it for myself.

But I just realized something. Harriet never gave me back my locket.

April eighteen-I found out what a Rorschach is. It's the test with the inkblots, the one I took before the operation. As soon as I saw what it was, I got frightened. I knew Burt was going to ask me to find the pictures, and I knew I wouldn't be able to. I was thinking, if only there was some way of knowing what kind of pictures were hidden there. Maybe there weren't any pictures at all. Maybe it was just a trick to see if I was dumb enough to look for something that wasn't there. Just thinking about it made me sore at him.

"All right, Charlie," he said, "you've seen these cards before, remember?"

"Of course, I remember."

The way I said it, he knew I was angry, and he looked up at me surprised.

"Anything wrong, Charlie?"

"No, nothing's wrong. Those inkblots upset me."

He smiled and shook his head. "Nothing to be upset about. This is just one of the standard personality tests. Now I want you to look at this card. What might this be? What do you see on this card? People see all sorts of things in these inkblots. Tell me what it might be for you-what it makes you think of."

I was shocked. I stared at the card and then at him. That wasn't what I had expected him to say at all. "You mean there are no pictures hidden in those inkblots?"

Burt frowned and took off his glasses. "What?"

"Pictures! Hidden in the inkblots! Last time you told me that everyone could see them and you wanted me to find them too."

"No, Charlie. I couldn't have said that."

"What do you mean?" I shouted at him. Being so afraid of the inkblots had made me angry at myself and at Burt too. "That's what you said to me. Just because you're smart enough to go to college doesn't mean you have to make fun of me. I'm sick and tired of everybody laughing at me."

I don't recall ever being so angry before. I don't think it was at Burt himself, but suddenly everything exploded. I tossed the Rorschach cards on the table and walked out. Professor Nemur was passing by in the hall, and when I rushed past him without saying hello he knew something was wrong. He and Burt caught up with me as I was about to go down in the elevator.

"Charlie," said Nemur, grabbing my arm. "Wait a minute. What is this all about?"

I shook free and nodded at Burt. "I'm sick and tired of people making fun of me. That's all. Maybe before I didn't know any better, but now I do, and I don't like it."

"Nobody's making fun of you here, Charlie," said Nemur.

"What about the inkblots? Last time Burt told me there were pictures in the ink-that everyone could see, and I-"

"Look, Charlie, would you like to hear the exact words Burt said to you, and your answers as well? We have a tape-recording of that testing session. We can replay it and let you hear exactly what was said."

I went back with them to the psych office with mixed feelings. I was sure they had made fun of me and tricked me when I was too ignorant to know better. My anger was an exciting feeling, and I didn't give it up easily. I was ready to fight.

As Nemur went to the files to get the tape, Burt explained: "Last time, I used almost the exact words I used today. It's a requirement of these tests that the procedure be the same each time it's administered."

"I'll believe that when I hear it."

A look passed between them. I felt the blood rush to my face again. They were laughing at me. But then I realized what I had just said, and hearing myself I understood the reason for the look. They weren't laughing. They knew what was happening to me. I had reached a new level, and anger and suspicion were my first reactions to the world around me.

Burt's voice boomed over the tape recorder:

"Now I want you to look at this card, Charlie. What might this be? What do you see on this card? People see all kinds of things in these inkblots. Tell me what it makes you think of ..."

The same words, almost the same tone of voice he had used minutes ago in the lab. And then I heard my answers-childish, impossible things. And I dropped limply into the chair beside Professor Nemur's desk. "Was that really me?"

I went back to the lab with Burt, and we went on with the Rorschach. We went through the cards slowly. This time my responses were different. I

"saw" things in the inkblots. A pair of bats tugging at each other. Two men fencing with swords. I imagined all sorts of things. But even so, I found myself not trusting Burt completely any more. I kept turning the cards around, checking the backs to see if there was anything there I was supposed to catch.

I peeked, while he was making his notes. But it was all in code that looked like this:

W F plus A D d F minus Ad original W F-A S F plus object

The test still doesn't make sense. It seems to me that anyone could make up lies about things he didn't really see. How could they know I wasn't making fools of them by saying things I didn't really imagine?

Maybe I'll understand it when Dr. Strauss lets me read up on psychology. It's getting harder for me to write down all my thoughts and feelings because I know that people are reading them. Maybe it would be better if I could keep some of these reports private for a while. I'm going to ask Dr. Strauss. Why should it suddenly start to bother me?

April twenty-first-I figured out a new way to set up the mixing machines in the bakery to speed up production. Mr. Donner says he will save labor costs and increase profits. He gave me a fifty-dollar bonus and a ten-dollar-a-week raise.

I wanted to take Joe Carp and Frank Reilly out to lunch to celebrate, but Joe had to buy some things for his wife, and Frank was meeting his cousin for lunch. I guess it will take time for them to get used to the changes in me.

Everyone seems frightened of me. When I went over to Gimpy and tapped him on the shoulder to ask him something, he jumped up and dropped his cup of coffee all over himself. He stares at me when he thinks I'm not looking. Nobody at the place talks to me any more, or kids around the way they used to. It makes the job kind of lonely.

Thinking about it makes me remember the time I fell asleep standing up and Frank kicked my legs out from under me. The warm sweet smell, the white walls, the roar of the oven when Frank opens the door to shift the loaves.

Suddenly falling ... twisting ... everything out from under me and my head cracking against the wall.

It's me, and yet it's like someone else lying there-another Charlie. He's confused ... rubbing his head ... staring up at Frank, tall and thin, and then at Gimpy nearby, massive, hairy, gray-faced Gimpy with bushy eyebrows that almost hide his blue eyes.

"Leave the kid alone," says Gimp. "Jesus, Frank, why do you always gotta pick on him?"

"It don't mean nothing," laughs Frank. "It don't hurt him. He don't know any better. Do you, Charlie?"

Charlie rubs his head and cringes. He doesn't know what he's done to deserve this punishment, but there is always the chance that there will be more.

"But you know better," says Gimpy, clumping over on his orthopedic boot, "so what the hell you always picking on him for?" The two men sit down at the long table, the tall Frank and the heavy Gimp shaping the dough for the rolls that have to be baked for the evening orders.

They work in silence for a while, and then Frank stops and tips his white cap back. "Hey, Gimp, think Charlie could learn to bake rolls?"

Gimp leans an elbow on the worktable. "Why don't we just leave him alone?"

"No, I mean it, Gimp-seriously. I bet he could learn something simple like making rolls."

The idea seems to appeal to Gimpy who turns to stare at Charlie. "Maybe you got something there. Hey, Charlie, come here a minute."

As he usually does when people are talking about him, Charlie has been keeping his head down, staring at his shoelaces. He knows how to lace and tie them. He could make rolls. He could learn to pound, roll, twist and shape the dough into the small round forms.

Frank looks at him uncertainly. "Maybe we shouldn't, Gimp. Maybe it's wrong. If a moron can't learn maybe we shouldn't start anything with him."

"You leave this to me," says Gimpy who has now taken over Frank's idea. "I think maybe he can learn. Now listen, Charlie. You want to learn something? You want me to teach you how to make rolls like me and Frank are doing?"

Charlie stares at him, the smile melting from his face. He understands what Gimpy wants, and he feels cornered. He wants to please Gimpy, but there is something about the words learn and teach, something to remember about being punished severely, but he doesn't recall what it is-only a thin white hand upraised, hitting him to make him learn something he couldn't understand.

Charlie backs away but Gimpy grabs his arm. "Hey, kid, take it easy. We ain't gonna hurt you. Look at him shaking like he's gonna fall apart. Look, Charlie. I got a nice new shiny good-luck piece for you to play with." He holds out his hand and reveals a brass chain with a shiny brass disc that says STA-BRITE METAL POLISH. He holds the chain by one end and the gleaming gold disc rotates slowly, catching the light of the fluorescent bulbs. The pendant is a brightness that Charlie remembers but he doesn't know why or what.

He doesn't reach for it. He knows you get punished if you reach out for other people's things. If someone puts it into your hand that is all right. But otherwise it's wrong. When he sees that Gimpy is offering it to him, he nods and smiles again.

"That he knows," laughs Frank. "Give him something bright and shiny." Frank, who has let Gimpy take over the experiment, leans forward excitedly. "Maybe if he wants that piece of junk bad enough and you tell him he'll get it if he learns to shape the dough into rolls-maybe it'll work."

As the bakers set to the task of teaching Charlie, others from the shop gather around. Frank clears an area between them on the table, and Gimpy pulls off a medium sized piece of dough for Charlie to work with. There is talk of betting on whether or not Charlie can learn to make rolls.

"Watch us carefully," says Gimpy, putting the pendant beside him on the table where Charlie can see it. "Watch and do everything we do. If you learn how to make rolls, you'll get this shiny good-luck piece."

Charlie hunches over on his stool, intently watching Gimpy pick up the knife and cut off a slab of dough. He studies each movement as Gimpy rolls out the dough into a long roll, breaks it off and twists it into a circle, pausing now and then to sprinkle it with flour.

"Now watch me," says Frank, and he repeats Gimpy's performance. Charlie is confused. There are differences. Gimpy holds his elbows out as he rolls the dough, like a bird's wings, but Frank keeps his arms close to his sides. Gimpy keeps his thumbs together with the rest of his fingers as he kneads the dough, but Frank works with the flat of his palms, keeping thumbs apart from his other fingers and up in the air.

Worrying about these things makes it impossible for Charlie to move when Gimpy says, "Go ahead, try it."

Charlie shakes his head.

"Look, Charlie, I'm gonna do it again slow. Now you watch everything I do, and do each part along with me. Okay? But try to remember everything so then you'll be able to do the whole thing alone. Now come on -like this."

Charlie frowns as he watches Gimpy pull off a section of dough and roll it into a ball. He hesitates, but then he picks up the knife and slices off a piece of dough and sets it down in the center of the table. Slowly, keeping his elbows out exactly as Gimpy does, he rolls it into a ball.

He looks from his own hands to Gimpy's, and he is careful to keep his fingers exactly the same way, thumbs together with the rest of his fingers- slightly cupped. He has to do it right, the way Gimpy wants him to do it. There are echoes inside him that say, do it right and they will like you. And he wants Gimpy and Frank to like him.

When Gimpy has finished working his dough into a ball, he stands back, and so does Charlie. "Hey, that's great. Look, Frank, he made it into a ball." Frank nods and smiles. Charlie sighs and his whole frame trembles as the tension builds. He is unaccustomed to this rare moment of success.

"All right now," says Gimpy. "Now we make a roll." Awkwardly, but carefully, Charlie follows Gimpy's every move. Occasionally, a twitch of his hand or arm mars what he is doing, but in a little while he is able to twist off a section of the dough and fashion it into a roll. Working beside Gimpy he makes six rolls, and sprinkling them with flour he sets them carefully alongside Gimpy's in the large flour-covered tray.

"All right, Charlie." Gimpy's face is serious. "Now, let's see you do it by yourself. Remember all the things you did from the beginning. Now, go ahead."

Charlie stares at the huge slab of dough and at the knife that Gimpy has pushed into his hand. And once again panic comes over him. What did he do first? How did he hold his hand? His fingers? Which way did he roll the ball ?... A thousand confusing ideas burst into his mind at the same time and he stands there smiling. He wants to do it, to make Frank and Gimpy happy and have them like him, and to get the bright good-luck piece that Gimpy has promised him. He turns the smooth, heavy piece of dough around and around on the table, but he cannot bring himself to start. He cannot cut into it because he knows he will fail and he is afraid.

"He forgot already," said Frank. "It don't stick."

He wants it to stick. He frowns and tries to remember: first you start to cut off a piece. Then you roll it out into a ball. But how does it get to be a roll like the ones in the tray? That's something else. Give him time and he'll remember. As soon as the fuzziness passes away he'll remember. Just another few seconds and he'll have it. He wants to hold on to what he's learned-for a little while. He wants it so much.

"Okay, Charlie," sighs Gimpy, taking the cutter out of his hand. "That's all right. Don't worry about it. It's not your work anyway."

Another minute and he'll remember. If only they wouldn't rush him. Why does everything have to be in such a hurry?

"Go ahead, Charlie. Go sit down and look at your comic book. We got to get back to work."

Charlie nods and smiles, and pulls the comic book out of his back pocket. He smooths it out, and puts it on his head as a make-believe hat. Frank laughs and Gimpy finally smiles.

"Go on, you big baby," snorts Gimpy. "Go sit down there until Mr. Donner wants you."

Charlie smiles at him and goes back to the flour sacks in the corner near the mixing machines. He likes to lean back against them while he sits on the floor cross-legged and looks at the pictures in his comic book. As he starts to turn the pages, he feels like crying, but he doesn't know why. What is there to feel sad about? The fuzzy cloud comes and goes, and now he looks forward to the pleasure of the brightly colored pictures in the comic book that he has gone through thirty, forty times. He knows all of the figures in the comic-he has asked their names over and over again (of almost everyone he meets) and he understands that the strange forms of letters and words in the white balloons above the figures means that they are saying something. Would he ever learn to read what was in the balloons? If they gave him enough time-if they didn't rush him or push him too fast-he would get it. But nobody has time.

Charlie pulls his legs up and opens the comic book to the first page where the Batman and Robin are swinging up a long rope to the side of a building. Someday, he decides, he is going to read. And then he will be able to read the story. He feels a hand on his shoulder and he looks up. It is Gimpy holding out the brass disc and chain, letting it swing and twirl around so that it catches the light.

"Here," he says gruffly, tossing it into Charlie's lap, and then he limps away....

I never thought about it before, but that was a nice thing for him to do. Why did he? Anyway, that is my memory of the time, clearer and more complete than anything I have ever experienced before. Like looking out of the kitchen window early when the morning light is still gray. I've come a long way since then, and I owe it all to Dr. Strauss and Professor Nemur, and the other people here at Beekman. But what must Frank and Gimpy think and feel now, seeing how I've changed?

April twenty-second-People at the bakery are changing. Not only ignoring me. I can feel the hostility. Donner is arranging for me to join the baker's union, and I've gotten another raise. The rotten thing is that all of the pleasure is gone because the others resent me. In a way, I can't blame them. They don't understand what has happened to me, and I can't tell them. People are not proud of me the way I expected-not at all.

Still, I've got to have someone to talk to. I'm going to ask Miss Kinnian to go to a movie tomorrow night to celebrate my raise. If I can get up the nerve.

April twenty-fourth-Professor Nemur finally agreed with Dr. Strauss and me that it will be impossible for me to write down everything if I know it's immediately read by people at the lab. I've tried to be completely honest about everything, no matter who I was talking about, but there are things I can't put down unless I can keep them private-at least for a while.

Now, I'm allowed to keep back some of these more personal reports, but before the final report to the Welberg Foundation, Professor Nemur will read through everything to decide what part of it should be published.

What happened today at the lab was very upsetting.

I dropped by the office earlier this evening to ask Dr. Strauss or Professor Nemur if they thought it would be all right for me to ask Alice Kinnian out to a movie, but before I could knock I heard them arguing with each other. I shouldn't have stayed, but it's hard to break the habit of listening because people have always spoken and acted as if I weren't there, as if they never cared what I overheard.

I heard someone bang on the desk, and then Professor Nemur shouted: "I've already informed the convention committee that we will present the paper at Chicago."

Then I heard Dr. Strauss' voice: "But you're wrong, Harold. Six weeks from now is still too soon. He's still changing."

And then Nemur: "We've predicted the pattern correctly so far. We're justified in making an interim report. I tell you, Jay, there's nothing to be afraid of. We've succeeded. It's all positive. Nothing can go wrong now."

Strauss: "This is too important to all of us to bring it out into the open prematurely. You're taking the authority on yourself-"

Nemur: "You forget that I'm the senior member of this project."

Strauss: "And you forget that you're not the only one with a reputation to consider. If we claim too much now, our whole hypothesis will come under fire."

Nemur: "I'm not afraid of regression any more. I've checked and rechecked everything. An interim report will do no harm. I feel sure nothing can go wrong now."

The argument went on that way with Strauss saying that Nemur had his eye on the Chair of Psychology at Hallston, and Nemur saying that Strauss was riding on the coattails of his psychological research. Then Strauss said that the project had as much to do with his techniques in psychosurgery and enzyme-injection patterns, as with Nemur's theories, and that someday thousands of neurosurgeons all over the world would be using his methods, but at this point Nemur reminded him that those new techniques would never have come about if not for his original theory.

They called each other names-opportunist, cynic, pessimist-and I found myself frightened. Suddenly, I realized I no longer had the right to stand there outside the office and listen to them without their knowing it. They might not have cared when I was too feeble-minded to know what was going on, but now that I could understand they wouldn't want me to hear it. I left without waiting for the outcome.

It was dark, and I walked for a long time trying to figure out why I was so frightened. I was seeing them clearly for the first time-not gods or even heroes, but just two men worried about getting something out of their work. Yet, if Nemur is right and the experiment is a success, what does it matter? There's so much to do, so many plans to make.

I'll wait until tomorrow to ask them about taking Miss Kinnian to a movie to celebrate my raise.

April twenty-sixth-I know I shouldn't hang around the college when I'm through at the lab, but seeing the young men and women going back and forth carrying books and hearing them talk about all the things they're learning in their classes excites me. I wish I could sit and talk with them over coffee in the Campus Bowl Luncheonette when they get together to argue about books and politics and ideas. It's exciting to hear them talking about poetry and science and philosophy-about Shakespeare and Milton; Newton and Einstein and Freud; about Plato and Hegel and Kant, and all the other names that echo like great church bells in my mind.

Sometimes I listen in on the conversations at the tables around me, and pretend I'm a college student, even though I'm a lot older than they are. I carry books around, and I've started to smoke a pipe. It's silly, but since I belong at the lab I feel as if I'm a part of the university. I hate to go home to that lonely room.

April twenty-seventh-I've made friends with some of the boys at the Campus Bowl. They were arguing about whether or not Shakespeare really wrote Shakespeare's plays. One of the boys-the fat one with the sweaty face- said that Marlowe wrote all of Shakespeare's plays. But Lenny, the short kid with the dark glasses, didn't believe that business about Marlowe, and he said that everyone knew that Sir Francis Bacon wrote the plays because Shakespeare had never been to college and never had the education that shows up in those plays. That's when the one with the freshman beanie said he had heard a couple of guys in the men's room talking about how Shakespeare's plays were really written by a lady.

And they talked about politics and art and God. I never before heard anyone say that there might not be a God. That frightened me, because for the first time I began to think about what God means.

Now I understand one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you've believed in all your life aren't true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.

All the time they talked and argued, I felt the excitement bubble up inside me. This was what I wanted to do-go to college and hear people talk about important things.

I spend most of my free time at the library now, reading and soaking up what I can from books. I'm not concentrating on anything in particular, just reading a lot of fiction now-Dostoevski, Flaubert, Dickens, Hemingway, Faulkner-everything I can get my hands on-feeding a hunger that can't be satisfied.

April twenty-eighth-In a dream last night I heard Mom screaming at Dad and the teacher at the elementary school P.S. thirteen (my first school before they transferred me to P.S. two hundred twenty-two) ....

"He's normal! He's normal! He'll grow up like other people. Better than others." She was trying to scratch the teacher, but Dad was holding her back. "He'll go to college someday. He'll be somebody." She kept screaming it, clawing at Dad so he'd let go of her. "He'll go to college someday and he'll be somebody."

We were in the principal's office and there were a lot of people looking embarrassed, but the assistant principal was smiling and turning his head so no one would see it.

The principal in my dream had a long beard, and was floating around the room and pointing at me. "He'll have to go to a special school. Put him into the Warren State Home and Training School. We can't have him here."

Dad was pulling Mom out of the principal's office, and she was shouting and crying too. I didn't see her face, but her big red teardrops kept splashing down on me ....

This morning I could recall the dream, but now there's more than that -I can remember through the blur, back to when I was six years old and it all happened. Just before Norma was born. I see Mom, a thin, dark-haired woman who talks too fast and uses her hands too much. As always her face is blurred. Her hair is up in a bun, and her hand goes to touch it, pat it smooth, as if she has to make sure it's still there. I remember that she was always fluttering like a big, white bird-around my father, and he too heavy and tired to escape her pecking.

I see Charlie, standing in the center of the kitchen, playing with his spinner, bright colored beads and rings threaded on a string. He holds the string up in one hand turns the rings so they wind and unwind in bright spinning flashes. He spends long hours watching his spinner. I don't know who made it for him, or what became of it, but I see him standing there fascinated as the string untwists and sets the rings spinning ....

She is screaming at him-no, she's screaming at his father. "I'm not going to take him. There's nothing wrong with him!"

"Rose, it won't do any good pretending any longer that nothing is wrong. Just look at him, Rose. Six years old, and-"

"He's not a dummy. He's normal. He'll be just like everyone else."

He looks sadly at his son with the spinner and Charlie smiles and holds it up to show him how pretty it is when it goes around and around.

"Put that thing away!" Mom shrieks and suddenly she knocks the spinner from Charlie's hand, and it crashes across the kitchen floor. "Go play with your alphabet blocks."

He stands there, frightened by the sudden outburst. He cowers, not knowing what she will do. His body begins to shake. They're arguing, and the voices back and forth make a squeezing pressure inside him and a sense of panic.

"Charlie, go to the bathroom. Don't you dare do it in your pants."

He wants to obey her, but his legs are too soft to move. His arms go up automatically to ward off blows.

"For God's sake, Rose. Leave him alone. You've got him terrified. You always do this, and the poor kid-"

"Then why don't you help me? I have to do it all by myself. Every day I try to teach him-to help him catch up to the others. He's just slow, that's all. But he can learn like everyone else."

"You're fooling yourself, Rose. It's not fair to us or to him. Pretending he's normal. Driving him as if he were an animal that could learn to do tricks. Why don't you leave him alone?"

"Because I want him to be like everyone else."

As they argue, the feeling that grips Charlie's insides becomes greater. His bowels feel as if they will burst and he knows he should go to the bathroom as she has told him so often. But he can't walk. He feels like sitting down right there in the kitchen, but it is wrong and she will slap him.

He wants his spinner. If he has his spinner and he watches it going round and round, he will be able to control himself and not make in his pants. But the spinner is all apart with some of the rings under the table and some under the sink, and the cord is near the stove.

It is very strange that although I can recall the voices clearly their faces are still blurred, and I can see only general outlines. Dad massive and slumped. Mom thin and quick. Hearing them now, arguing with each other across the years, I have the impulse to shout at them: "Look at him. There, down there! Look at Charlie. He has to go to the toilet!"

Charlie stands clutching and pulling at his red checkered shirt as they argue over him. The words are angry sparks between them-an anger and a guilt he can't identify.

"Next September he's going to go back to P.S. thirteen and do the term's work over again."

"Why can't you let yourself see the truth? The teacher says he's not capable of doing the work in a regular class."

"That bitch a teacher? Oh, I've got better names for her. Let her start with me again and I'll do more than just write to the board of education. I'll scratch that dirty slut's eyes out. Charlie, why are you twisting like that? Go to the bathroom. Go by yourself. You know how to go."

"Can't you see he wants you to take him? He's frightened."

"Keep out of this. He's perfectly capable of going to the bathroom himself. The book says it gives him confidence and a feeling of achievement."

The terror that waits in that cold tile room overwhelms him. He is afraid to go there alone. He reaches up for her hand and sobs out: "Toi- toi ..." and she slaps his hand away.

"No more," she says sternly. "You're a big boy now. You can go by yourself. Now march right into that bathroom and pull your pants down the way I taught you. I warn you if you make in your pants you'll get spanked."

I can almost feel it now, the stretching and knotting in his intestines as the two of them stand over him waiting to see what he will do. His whimper becomes a soft crying as suddenly he can control no longer, and he sobs and covers his face with his hands as he dirties himself.

It is soft and warm and he feels the confusion of relief and fear. It is his, but she will take it away from him as she always does. She will take it away and keep it for herself. And she will spank him. She comes toward him, screaming that he is a bad boy, and Charlie runs to his father for help.

Suddenly, I remember that her name is Rose and his name is Matt. It's odd to have forgotten your parents' names. And what about Norma? Strange I haven't thought about them all for a long time. I wish I could see Matt's face now, to know what he was thinking at that moment. All I remember is that as she began to spank me, Matt Gordon turned and walked out of the apartment.

I wish I could see their faces more clearly.

May one-Why haven't I ever noticed how beautiful Alice Kinnian is? She has pigeon-soft brown eyes and feathery brown hair down to the hollow of her neck. When she smiles, her full lips look as if she's pouting.

We went to a movie and then to dinner. I didn't see much of the first picture because I was too conscious of her sitting next to me. Twice her bare arm touched mine on the armrest, and both times the fear that she would become annoyed made me pull back. All I could think about was her soft skin just inches away. Then I saw, two rows ahead of us, a young man with his arm around his girl, and I wanted to put my arm around Miss Kinnian. Terrifying. But if I did it slowly ... first resting my arm on the back of her seat ... moving up ... inch by inch ... to rest near her shoulders and the back of her neck ... casually ...

I didn't dare.

The best I could do was rest my elbow on the back of her seat, but by the time I got there I had to shift position to wipe the perspiration off my face and neck.

Once, her leg accidentally brushed against mine.

It became such an ordeal-so painful-that I forced myself to take my mind off her. The first picture had been a war film, and all I caught was the ending where the G.I. goes back to Europe to marry the woman who saved his life. The second picture interested me. A psychological film about a man and woman apparently in love but actually destroying each other. Everything suggests that the man is going to kill his wife but at the last moment, something she screams out in a nightmare makes him recall something that happened to him during his childhood. The sudden memory shows him that his hatred is really directed at a depraved governess who had terrified him with frightening stories and left a flaw in his personality. Excited at discovering this, he cries out with joy so that his wife awakens. He takes her in his arms and the implication is that all his problems have been solved. It was pat and cheap, and I must have shown my anger because Alice wanted to know what was wrong. "It's a lie," I explained, as we walked out into the lobby. "Things just don't happen that way."

"Of course not." She laughed. "It's a world of make-believe."

"Oh, no! That's no answer." I insisted. "Even in the world of make-believe there have to be rules. The parts have to be consistent and belong together. This kind of picture is a lie. Things are forced to fit because the writer or the director or somebody wanted something in that didn't belong. And it doesn't feel right."

She looked at me thoughtfully as we walked out into the bright dazzling night-lights of Times Square. "You're coming along fast."

"I'm confused. I don't know what I know any more."

"Never mind that," she insisted. "You're beginning to see and understand things." She waved her hand to take in all of the neon and glitter around us as we crossed over to Seventh Avenue. "You're beginning to see what's behind the surface of things. What you say about the parts having to belong together-that was a pretty good insight."

"Oh, come on now. I don't feel as if I'm accomplishing anything. I don't understand about myself or my past. I don't even know where my parents are, or what they look like. Do you know that when I see them in a flash of memory or in a dream the faces are a blur? I want to see their expressions. I can't understand what's going on unless I can see their faces."

"Charlie, calm down." People were turning to stare. She slipped her arm through mine and pulled me close to restrain me. "Be patient. Don't forget you're accomplishing in weeks what takes others a lifetime. You're a giant sponge soaking in knowledge. Soon you'll begin to connect things up, and you'll see how all the different worlds of learning are related. All the levels, Charlie, like steps on a giant ladder. And you'll climb higher and higher to see more and more of the world around you."

As we entered the cafeteria on Forty-fifth Street and picked up our trays, she spoke animatedly. "Ordinary people," she said, "can see only a little bit. They can't change much or go any higher than they are, but you're a genius. You'll keep going up and up, and see more and more. And each step will reveal worlds you never even knew existed."

People on the line who heard her turned to stare at me, and only when I nudged her to stop did she lower her voice. "I just hope to God," she whispered, "that you don't get hurt."

For a little while after that I didn't know what to say. We ordered our food at the counter and carried it to our table and ate without talking. The silence made me nervous. I knew what she meant about her fear, so I joked about it.

"Why should I get hurt? I couldn't be any worse off than I was before. Even Algernon is still smart, isn't he? As long as he's up there I'm in good shape." She toyed with her knife making circular depressions in a pat of butter and the movement hypnotized me. "And besides," I told her, "I overheard something-Professor Nemur and Dr. Strauss were arguing, and Nemur said he's positive that nothing can go wrong."

"I hope so," she said. "You have no idea how afraid I've been that something might go wrong. I feel partly responsible." She saw me staring at the knife and she put it down carefully beside her plate.

"I never would have done it but for you," I said.

She laughed and it made me tremble. That's when I saw that her eyes were soft brown. She looked down at the tablecloth quickly and blushed.

"Thank you, Charlie," she said, and took my hand.

It was the first time anyone had ever done that, and it made me bolder. I leaned forward, holding on to her hand, and the words came out. "I like you very much." After I said it, I was afraid she'd laugh, but she nodded and smiled.

"I like you too, Charlie."

"But it's more than liking. What I mean is ... oh hell! I don't know what I mean!" I knew I was blushing and I didn't know where to look or what to do with my hands. I dropped a fork, and when I tried to retrieve it, I knocked over a glass of water and it spilled on her dress. Suddenly, I had become clumsy and awkward again, and when I tried to apologize I found my tongue had become too large for my mouth.

"That's all right, Charlie," she tried to reassure me. "It's only water. Don't let it upset you this way."

In the taxi on the way home, we were silent for a long time, and then she put down her purse and straightened my tie and puffed up my breast pocket handkerchief. "You were very upset tonight, Charlie."

"I feel ridiculous."

"I upset you by talking about it. I made you self-conscious."

"It's not that. What bothers me is that I can't put into words the way I feel."

"These feelings are new to you. Not everything has to ... be put into words."

I moved closer to her and tried to take her hand again, but she pulled away. "No, Charlie. I don't think this is good for you. I've upset you, and it might have a negative effect."

When she put me off, I felt awkward and ridiculous at the same time. It made me angry with myself and I pulled back to my side of the seat and stared out the window. I hated her as I had never hated anyone before-with her easy answers and maternal fussing. I wanted to slap her face, to make her crawl, and then to hold her in my arms and kiss her.

"Charlie, I'm sorry if I've upset you."

"Forget it."

"But you've got to understand what's happening."

"I understand," I said, "and I'd rather not talk about it."

By the time the cab reached her apartment on Seventy-seventh Street, I was thoroughly miserable.

"Look," she said, "this is my fault. I shouldn't have gone out with you tonight."

"Yes, I see that now."

"What I mean is, we have no right to put this on a personal ... emotional level. You have so much to do. I have no right to come into your life at this time."

"That's my worry, isn't it?"

"Is it? This isn't your private affair any more, Charlie. You've got obligations now-not only to Professor Nemur and Dr. Strauss, but to the millions who may follow in your footsteps."

The more she talked that way, the worse I felt. She highlighted my awkwardness, my lack of knowledge about the right things to say and do. I was a blundering adolescent in her eyes, and she was trying to let me down easy.

As we stood at the door to her apartment, she turned and smiled at me and for a moment I thought she was going to invite me in, but she just whispered: "Good night, Charlie. Thank you for a wonderful evening."

I wanted to kiss her good night. I had worried about it earlier. Didn't a woman expect you to kiss her? In the novels I'd read and the movies I'd seen, the man makes the advances. I had decided last night that I would kiss her. But I kept thinking: what if she turns me down?

I moved closer and reached for her shoulders, but she was too quick for me. She stopped me and took my hand in hers. "We'd better just say good night this way, Charlie. We can't let this get personal. Not yet."

And before I could protest, or ask what she meant by not yet, she started inside. "Good night, Charlie, and thank you again for a lovely ... lovely time." And closed the door.

I was furious at her, myself, and the world, but by the time I got home, I realized she was right. Now, I don't know whether she cares for me or if she was just being kind. What could she possibly see in me? What makes it so awkward is that I've never experienced anything like this before. How does a person go about learning how to act toward another person? How does a man learn how to behave toward a woman?

The books don't help much.

But next time, I'm going to kiss her good night.

May three-One of the things that confuses me is never really knowing when something comes up from my past, whether it really happened that way, or if that was the way it seemed to be at the time, or if I'm inventing it. I'm like a man who's been half-asleep all his life, trying to find out what he was like before he woke up. Everything is strangely slow-motion and blurred.

I had a nightmare last night, and when I woke up I remembered something.

First the nightmare: I'm running down a long corridor, half blinded by the swirls of dust. At times I run forward and then I float around and run backwards, but I'm afraid because I'm hiding something in my pocket. I don't know what it is or where I got it, but I know they want to take it away from me and that frightens me.

The wall breaks down and suddenly there is a red-haired girl with her arms outstretched to me-her face is a blank mask. She takes me into her arms, kisses and caresses me, and I want to hold her tightly but I'm afraid. The more she touches me, the more frightened I become because I know I must never touch a girl. Then, as her body rubs up against mine, I feel a strange bubbling and throbbing inside me that makes me warm. But when I look up I see a bloody knife in her hands.

I try to scream as I run, but no sound comes out of my throat, and my pockets are empty. I search in my pockets but I don't know what it is I've lost or why I was hiding it. I know only that it's gone, and there is blood on my hands too.

When I woke up, I thought of Alice, and I had the same feeling of panic as in the dream. What am I afraid of? Something about the knife.

I made myself a cup of coffee and smoked a cigarette. I'd never had a dream like it before, and I knew it was connected with my evening with Alice. I have begun to think of her in a different way.

Free association is still difficult, because it's hard not to control the direction of your thoughts ... just to leave your mind open and let anything flow into it ... ideas bubbling to the surface like a bubble bath ... a woman bathing ... a girl ... Norma taking a bath ... I am watching through the keyhole ... and when she gets out of the tub to dry herself I see that her body is different from mine. Something is missing.

Running down the hallway ... somebody chasing me ... not a person ... just a big flashing kitchen knife ... and I'm scared and crying but no voice comes out because my neck is cut and I'm bleeding ...

"Mama, Charlie is peeking at me through the keyhole ... "

Why is she different? What happened to her ?... blood ... bleeding ... a dark cubbyhole ...

Three blind mice ... three blind mice,

See how they run! See how they run!

They all run after the farmer's wife,

She cut off their tails with a carving knife,

Did you ever see such a sight in your life, As three blind mice?

Charlie, alone in the kitchen early in the morning. Everyone else asleep, and he amuses himself playing with his spinner. One of the buttons pops off his shirt as he bends over, and it rolls across the intricate line-pattern of the kitchen linoleum. It rolls towards the bathroom and he follows, but then he loses it. Where is the button? He goes into the bathroom to find it. There is a closet in the bathroom where the clothes hamper is, and he likes to take out all the clothes and look at them. His father's things and his mother's ... and Norma's dresses. He would like to try them on and make believe he is Norma, but once when he did that his mother spanked him for it. There in the clothes hamper he finds Norma's underwear with dried blood. What had she done wrong? He was terrified. Whoever had done it might come looking for him ....

Why does a memory like that from childhood remain with me so strongly, and why does it frighten me now? Is it because of my feelings for Alice?

Thinking about it now, I can understand why I was taught to keep away from women. It was wrong for me to express my feelings to Alice. I have no right to think of a woman that way-not yet.

But even as I write these words, something inside shouts that there is more. I'm a person. I was somebody before I went under the surgeon's knife. And I have to love someone.

May eight-Even now that I have learned what has been going on behind Mr. Donner's back, I find it hard to believe. I first noticed something was wrong during the rush hour two days ago. Gimpy was behind the counter wrapping a birthday cake for one of our regular customers-a cake that sells for three dollars and ninety-five cents. But when Gimpy rang up the sale the register showed only three dollars and ninety-five cents. I started to tell him he had made a mistake, but in the mirror behind the counter I saw a wink and smile that passed from the customer to Gimpy and the answering smile on Gimpy's face. And when the man took his change, I saw the flash of a large silver coin left behind in Gimpy's hand, before his fingers closed on it, and the quick movement with which he slipped the half-dollar into his pocket.

"Charlie," said a woman behind me, "are there any more of those cream-filled éclairs?"

"I'll go back and find out."

I was glad of the interruption because it gave me time to think about what I had seen. Certainly, Gimpy had not made a mistake. He had deliberately undercharged the customer, and there had been an understanding between them.

I leaned limply against the wall not knowing what to do. Gimpy had worked for Mr. Donner for over fifteen years. Donner-who always treated his workers like close friends, like relatives-had invited Gimpy's family to his house for dinner more than once. He often put Gimpy in charge of the shop when he had to go out, and I had heard stories of the times Donner gave Gimpy money to pay his wife's hospital bills.

It was incredible that anyone would steal from such a man. There had to be some other explanation. Gimpy had really made a mistake in ringing up the sale, and the half-dollar was a tip. Or perhaps Mr. Donner had made some special arrangement for this one customer who regularly bought cream cakes. Anything rather than believe that Gimpy was stealing. Gimpy had always been so nice to me.

I no longer wanted to know. I kept my eyes averted from the register as I brought out the tray of éclairs and sorted out the cookies, buns, and cakes.

But when the little red-haired woman came in-the one who always pinched my cheek and joked about finding a girl friend for me-I recalled that she came in most often when Donner was out to lunch and Gimpy was behind the counter. Gimpy had often sent me out to deliver orders to her house.

Involuntarily, my mind totaled her purchases to four dollars and fifty-three cents. But I turned away so that I would not see what Gimpy rang up on the cash register. I wanted to know the truth, and yet I was afraid of what I might learn.

"Two forty-five, Mrs. Wheeler," he said.

The ring of the sale. The counting of change. The slam of the drawer. "Thank you, Mrs. Wheeler." I turned just in time to see him putting his hand into his pocket, and I heard the faint clink of coins.

How many times had he used me as a go-between to deliver packages to her, undercharging her so that later they could split the difference? Had he used me all these years to help him steal?

I couldn't take my eyes off Gimpy as he clomped around behind the counter, perspiration streaming down from under his paper cap. He seemed animated and good-natured, but looking up he caught my eye, frowned and turned away.

I wanted to hit him. I wanted to go behind the counter and smash his face in. I don't remember ever hating anyone before-but this morning I hated Gimpy with all my heart.

Pouring this all out on paper in the quiet of my room has not helped. Every time I think of Gimpy stealing from Mr. Donner I want to smash something. Fortunately, I don't think I'm capable of violence. I don't think I ever hit anyone in my life.

But I still have to decide what to do. Tell Donner that his trusted employee has been stealing from him all these years? Gimpy would deny it, and I could never prove it was true. And what would it do to Mr. Donner? I don't know what to do.

May nine-I can't sleep. This has gotten to me. I owe Mr. Donner too much to stand by and see him robbed this way. I'd be as guilty as Gimpy by my silence. And yet, is it my place to inform on him? The thing that bothers me most is that when he sent me on deliveries he used me to help him steal from Donner. Not knowing about it, I was outside it-not to blame. But now that I know, by my silence I am as guilty as he is.

Yet, Gimpy is a co-worker. Three children. What will he do if Donner fires him? He might not be able to get another job-especially with his club foot.

Is that my worry?

What's right? Ironic that all my intelligence doesn't help me solve a problem like this.

May ten-I asked Professor Nemur about it, and he insists that I'm an innocent bystander and there's no reason for me to become involved in what would be an unpleasant situation. The fact that I've been used as a go-between doesn't seem to bother him at all. If I didn't understand what was happening at the time, he says, then it doesn't matter. I'm no more to blame than the knife is to blame in a stabbing, or the car in a collision.

"But I'm not an inanimate object," I argued. "I'm a person."

He looked confused for a moment and then laughed. "Of course, Charlie. But I wasn't referring to now. I meant before the operation."

Smug, pompous-I felt like hitting him too. "I was a person before the operation. In case you forgot-"

"Yes, of course, Charlie. Don't misunderstand. But it was different ... " And then he remembered that he had to check some charts in the lab.

Dr. Strauss doesn't talk much during our psychotherapy sessions, but today when I brought it up, he said that I was morally obligated to tell Mr. Donner. But the more I thought about it the less simple it became. I had to have someone else to break the tie, and the only one I could think of was Alice. Finally, at ten thirty I couldn't hold out any longer. I dialed three times, broke off in the middle each time, but on the fourth try, I managed to hold on until her voice.

At first she didn't think she should see me, but I begged her to meet me at the cafeteria where we had dinner together. "I respect you-you've always given me good advice." And when she still wavered, I insisted. "You have to help me. You're partly responsible. You said so yourself. If not for you I would never have gone into this in the first place. You just can't shrug me off now."

She must have sensed the urgency because she agreed to meet me. I hung up and stared at the phone. Why was it so important for me to know what she thought, how she felt? For more than a year at the Adult Center the only thing that mattered was pleasing her. Was that why I had agreed to the operation in the first place?

I paced up and back in front of the cafeteria until the policeman began to eye me suspiciously. Then I went in and bought coffee. Fortunately, the table we had used last time was empty. She would think of looking for me back there.

She saw me and waved to me, but stopped at the counter for coffee before she came over to the table. She smiled and I knew it was because I had chosen the same table. A foolish, romantic gesture.

"I know it's late," I apologized, "but I swear I was going out of my mind. I had to talk to you."

She sipped her coffee and listened quietly as I explained how I had found out about Gimpy's cheating, my own reaction, and the conflicting advice I'd gotten at the lab. When I finished, she sat back and shook her head.

"Charlie, you amaze me. In some ways you're so advanced, and yet when it comes to making a decision, you're still a child. I can't decide for you, Charlie. The answer can't be found in books-or be solved by bringing it to other people. Not unless you want to remain a child all your life. You've got to find the answer inside you-feel the right thing to do. Charlie, you've got to learn to trust yourself."

At first, I was annoyed at her lecture, but then suddenly-it began to make sense. "You mean, I've got to decide?"

She nodded.

"In fact," I said, "now that I think of it, I believe I've already decided some of it! I think Nemur and Strauss are both wrong!"

She was watching me closely, excitedly. "Something is happening to you, Charlie. If you could only see your face."

"You're damned right, something is happening! A cloud of smoke was hanging in front of my eyes, and with one breath you blew it away. A simple idea. Trust myself. And it never occurred to me before."

"Charlie, you're wonderful."

I caught her hand and held it. "No, it's you. You touch my eyes and make me see."

She blushed and pulled her hand back.

"The last time we were here," I said, "I told you I liked you. I should have trusted myself to say I love you."

"Don't, Charlie. Not yet."

"Not yet?" I shouted. "That's what you said last time. Why not yet?"

"Shhhh ... Wait a while, Charlie. Finish your studies. See where they lead you. You're changing too fast."

"What does that have to do with it? My feeling for you won't change because I'm becoming intelligent. I'll only love you more."

"But you're changing emotionally too. In a peculiar sense I'm the first woman you've ever been really aware of-in this way. Up to now I've been your teacher-someone you turn to for help and advice. You're bound to think you're in love with me. See other women. Give yourself more time."

"What you're saying is that young boys are always falling in love with their teachers, and that emotionally I'm still just a boy."

"You're twisting my words around. No, I don't think of you as a boy."

"Emotionally retarded then."

"No."

"Then, why?"

"Charlie, don't push me. I don't know. Already, you've gone beyond my intellectual reach. In a few months or even weeks, you'll be a different person. When you mature intellectually, we may not be able to communicate. When you mature emotionally, you may not even want me. I've got to think of myself too, Charlie. Let's wait and see. Be patient."

She was making sense, but I wasn't letting myself listen. "The other night-" I choked out, "You don't know how much I looked forward to that date. I was out of my mind wondering how to behave, what to say, wanting to make the best impression, and terrified I might say something to make you angry."

"You didn't make me angry. I was flattered."

"Then, when can I see you again?"

"I have no right to let you get involved."

"But I am involved!" I shouted, and then seeing people turn to look, I lowered my voice until it trembled with anger. "I'm a person-a man-and I can't live with just books and tapes and electronic mazes. You say, 'see other women.' How can I when I don't know any other women? Something inside is burning me up, and all I know is it makes me think of you. I'm in the middle of a page and I see your face on it-not blurred like those in my past, but clear and alive. I touch the page and your face is gone and I want to tear the book apart and throw it away."

"Please, Charlie ..."

"Let me see you again."

"Tomorrow at the lab."

"You know that's not what I mean. Away from the lab. Away from the university. Alone."

I could tell she wanted to say yes. She was surprised by my insistence. I was surprised at myself. I only knew that I couldn't stop pressing her. And yet there was a terror in my throat as I begged her. My palms were damp. Was I afraid she'd say no, or afraid she'd say yes? If she hadn't broken the tension by answering me, I think I would have fainted.

"All right, Charlie. Away from the lab and the university, but not alone. I don't think we should be alone together."

"Anywhere you say," I gasped. "Just so I can be with you and not think of tests ... statistics ... questions ... answers ..."

She frowned for a moment. "All right. They have free spring concerts in Central Park. Next week you can take me to one of the concerts."

When we got to her doorway, she turned quickly and kissed my cheek. "Good night, Charlie. I'm glad you called me. I'll see you at the lab." She closed the door and I stood outside the building and looked at the light in her apartment window until it went out.

There is no question about it now. I'm in love.

May eleventh-After all this thinking and worrying, I realized Alice was right. I had to trust my intuition. At the bakery, I watched Gimpy more closely. Three times today, I saw him undercharging customers and pocketing his portion of the difference as the customers passed money back to him. It was only with certain regular customers that he did it, and it occurred to me that these people were as guilty as he. Without their agreement this could never take place. Why should Gimpy be the scapegoat?

That's when I decided on the compromise. It might not be the perfect decision, but it was my decision, and it seemed to be the best answer under the circumstances. I would tell Gimpy what I knew and warn him to stop.

I got him alone back by the washroom, and when I came up to him he started away. "I've got something important to talk to you about," I said. "I want your advice for a friend who has a problem. He's discovered that one of his fellow employees is cheating his boss, and he doesn't know what to do about it. He doesn't like the idea of informing and getting the guy into trouble, but he won't stand by and let his boss-who has been good to both of them-be cheated."

Gimpy looked at me hard. "What does this friend of yours plan to do about it?"

"That's the trouble. He doesn't want to do anything. He feels if the stealing stops there would be nothing gained by doing anything at all. He would forget about it."

"Your friend ought to keep his nose in his own business," said Gimpy, shifting off his club foot. "He ought to keep his eyes closed to things like that and know who his friends are. A boss is a boss, and working people got to stick together."

"My friend doesn't feel that way."

"It's none of his business."

"He feels that if he knows about it he's partly responsible. So he's decided that if the thing stops, he's got nothing more to say. Otherwise, he'll tell the whole story. I wanted to ask your opinion. Do you think that under the circumstances the stealing will stop?"

It was a strain for him to conceal his anger. I could see that he wanted to hit me, but he just kept squeezing his fist.

"Tell your friend the guy doesn't seem to have any choice."

"That's fine," I said. "That will make my friend very happy."

Gimpy started away, and then he paused and looked back. "Your friend -could it be maybe he's interested in a cut? Is that his reason?"

"No, he just wants the whole thing to stop."

He glared at me. "I can tell you, you'll be sorry you stuck your nose in. I always stood up for you. I should of had my head examined." And then he limped off.

Perhaps I ought to have told Donner the whole story and had Gimpy fired-I don't know. Doing it this way has something to be said for it. It's over and done with. But how many people are there like Gimpy who use other people that way?

May fifteen-My studies are going well. The university library is my second home now. They've had to get me a private room because it takes me only a second to absorb the printed page, and curious students invariably gather around me as I flip through my books.

My most absorbing interests at the present time are etymologies of ancient languages, the newer works on the calculus of variations, and Hindu history. It's amazing the way things, apparently disconnected, hang together. I've moved up to another plateau, and now the streams of the various disciplines seem to be closer to each other as if they flow from a single source.

Strange how when I'm in the college cafeteria and hear the students arguing about history or politics or religion, it all seems so childish.

I find no pleasure in discussing ideas any more on such an elementary level. People resent being shown that they don't approach the complexities of the problem-they don't know what exists beyond the surface ripples. It's just as bad on a higher level, and I've given up any attempt to discuss these things with the professors at Beekman.

Burt introduced me to an economics professor at the faculty cafeteria, one well known for his work on the economic factors affecting interest rates. I had long wanted to talk to an economist about some of the ideas I had come across in my reading. The moral aspects of the military blockade as a weapon in times of peace had been bothering me. I asked him what he thought of the suggestion by some senators that we begin using such tactics as "blacklisting" and reinforcement of the navicert controls that had been used in World Wars one and two, against some of the smaller nations which now oppose us.

He listened quietly, staring off into space, and I assumed he was collecting his thoughts for an answer, but a few minutes later he cleared his throat and shook his head. That, he explained apologetically, was outside his area of specialization. His interest was in interest rates, and he hadn't given military economics much thought. He suggested I see Dr. Wessey, who once did a paper on War Trade Agreements during World War two. He might be able to help me.

Before I could say anything else, he grabbed my hand and shook it. He had been glad to meet me, but there were some notes he had to assemble for a lecture. And then he was gone.

The same thing happened when I tried to discuss Chaucer with an American literature specialist, questioned an Orientalist about the Trobriand Islanders, and tried to focus on the problems of automation-caused unemployment with a social psychologist who specialized in public opinion polls on adolescent behavior. They would always find excuses to slip away, afraid to reveal the narrowness of their knowledge.

How different they seem to be now. And how foolish I was ever to have thought that professors were intellectual giants. They're people-and afraid the rest of the world will find out. And Alice is a person too-a woman, not a goddess-and I'm taking her to the concert tomorrow night.

May seventeen-Almost morning and I can't fall asleep. I've got to understand what happened to me last night at the concert.

The evening started out well enough. The Mall at Central Park had filled up early, and Alice and I had to pick our way among the couples stretched out on the grass. Finally, far back from the path, we found an unused tree where-out of the range of lamplight-the only evidence of other couples was the protesting female laughter and the glow of lit cigarettes.

"This will be fine," she said. "No reason to be right on top of the orchestra."

"What's that they're playing now?" I asked.

"Debussy's La Mer. Do you like it?"

I settled down beside her. "I don't know much about this kind of music. I have to think about it."

"Don't think about it," she whispered. "Feel it. Let it sweep over you like the sea without trying to understand." She lay back on the grass and turned her face in the direction of the music.

I had no way of knowing what she expected of me. This was far from the clear lines of problem-solving and the systematic acquisition of knowledge. I kept telling myself that the sweating palms, the tightness in my chest, the desire to put my arms around her were merely biochemical reactions. I even traced the pattern of stimulus-and-reaction that caused my nervousness and excitement. Yet everything was fuzzy and uncertain. Should I put my arm around her or not? Was she waiting for me to do it? Would she get angry? I could tell I was still behaving like an adolescent and it angered me.

"Here," I choked, "why don't you make yourself more comfortable? Rest on my shoulder." She let me put my arm around her, but she didn't look at me. She seemed to be too absorbed in the music to realize what I

was doing. Did she want me to hold her that way, or was she merely tolerating it? As I slipped my arm down to her waist, I felt her tremble, but still she kept staring in the direction of the orchestra. She was pretending to be concentrating on the music so that she wouldn't have to respond to me. She didn't want to know what was happening. As long as she looked away, and listened, she could pretend that my closeness, my arms around her, were without her knowledge or consent. She wanted me to make love to her body while she kept her mind on higher things. I reached over roughly and turned her chin. "Why don't you look at me? Are you pretending I don't exist?"

"No, Charlie," she whispered. "I'm pretending I don't exist."

When I touched her shoulder she stiffened and trembled, but I pulled her toward me. Then it happened. It started as a hollow buzzing in my ears ... an electric saw ... far away. Then the cold: arms and legs prickly, and finger numbing. Suddenly, I had the feeling I was being watched.

A sharp switch in perception. I saw, from some point in the darkness behind a tree, the two of us lying in each other's arms.

I looked up to see a boy of fifteen or sixteen, crouching nearby. "Hey!" I shouted. As he stood up, I saw his trousers were open and he was exposed.

"What's the matter?" she gasped.

I jumped up, and he vanished into the darkness. "Did you see him?"

"No," she said, smoothing her skirt nervously. "I didn't see anyone."

"Standing right here. Watching us. Close enough to touch you."

"Charlie, where are you going?"

"He couldn't have gotten very far."

"Leave him alone, Charlie. It doesn't matter."

But it mattered to me. I ran into the darkness, stumbling over startled couples, but there was no way to tell where he had gone.

The more I thought about him, the worse became the queasy feeling that comes before fainting. Lost and alone in a great wilderness. And then I caught hold of myself and found my way back to where Alice was sitting.

"Did you find him?"

"No, but he was there. I saw him."

She looked at me strangely. "Are you all right?"

"I will be ... in a minute ... Just that damned buzzing in my ears."

"Maybe we'd better go."

All the way back to her apartment, it was on my mind that the boy had been crouching there in the darkness, and for one second I had caught a glimpse of what he was seeing-the two of us lying in each other's arms.

"Would you like to come in? I could make some coffee."

I wanted to, but something warned me against it. "Better not. I've got a lot of work to do tonight."

"Charlie, is it anything I said or did?"

"Of course not. Just that kid watching us upset me."

She was standing close to me, waiting for me to kiss her. I put my arm around her, but it happened again. If I didn't get away quickly, I would pass out.

"Charlie, you look sick."

"Did you see him, Alice? The truth ... "

She shook her head. "No. It was too dark. But I'm sure-"

"I've got to go. I'll call you." And before she could stop me, I pulled away. I had to get out of that building before everything caved in.

Thinking about it now, I'm certain it was a hallucination. Dr. Strauss feels that emotionally I'm still in that adolescent state where being close to a woman, or thinking of sex, sets off anxiety, panic, even hallucinations. He feels that my rapid intellectual development has deceived me into thinking I could live a normal emotional life. But I've got to accept the fact that the fears and blocks triggered in these sexual situations reveal that emotionally I'm still an adolescent-sexually retarded. I guess he means I'm not ready for a relationship with a woman like Alice Kinnian. Not yet.

May twenty-I've been fired from my job at the bakery. I know it was foolish of me to hang on to the past, but there was something about the place with its white brick walls browned by oven heat ... It was home to me.

What did I do to make them hate me so?

I can't blame Donner. He's got to think of his business, and the other employees. And yet, he's been closer to me than a father.

He called me into his office, cleared the statements and bills off the solitary chair beside his roll-top desk, and without looking up at me, he said, "I've been meaning to talk to you. Now is as good a time as any."

It seems foolish now, but as I sat there staring at him-short, chubby, with the ragged light-brown moustache comically drooping over his upper lip-it was as if both of me, the old Charlie and the new, were sitting on that chair, frightened at what Old Mr. Donner was going to say.

"Charlie, your Uncle Herman was a good friend of mine. I kept my promise to him to keep you on the job, good times and bad, so that you didn't ever want for a dollar in your pocket and a place to lay your head without being put away in that home."

"The bakery is my home-"

"And I treated you like my own son who gave up his life for his country. And when Herman died-how old were you? seventeen? more like a six-year-old boy-I swore to myself ... I said, Arthur Donner, as long as you got a bakery and a business over your head, you're going to look after Charlie. He is going to have a place to work, a bed to sleep in, and bread in his mouth. When they committed you to that Warren place, I told them how you would work for me, and I would take care of you. You didn't spend even one night in that place. I got you a room and I looked after you. Now, have I kept that solemn promise?"

I nodded, but I could see by the way he was folding and unfolding his bills that he was having trouble. And as much as I didn't want to know-I knew. "I've tried my best to do a good job. I've worked hard .... "

"I know, Charlie. Nothing's wrong with your work. But something happened to you, and I don't understand what it means. Not only me. Everyone has been talking about it. I've had them in here a dozen times in the last few weeks. They're all upset. Charlie, I got to let you go."

I tried to stop him but he shook his head.

"There was a delegation in to see me last night. Charlie, I got my business to hold together."

He was staring at his hands, turning the paper over and over as if he hoped to find something on it that was not there before. "I'm sorry, Charlie."

"But where will I go?"

He peered up at me for the first time since we'd walked into his cubbyhole office. "You know as well as I do that you don't need to work here any more."

"Mr. Donner, I've never worked anywhere else."

"Let's face it. You're not the Charlie who came in here seventeen years ago-not even the same Charlie of four months ago. You haven't talked about it. It's your own affair. Maybe a miracle of some kind-who knows? But you've changed into a very smart young man. And operating the dough mixer and delivering packages is no work for a smart young man."

He was right, of course, but something inside me wanted to make him change his mind.

"You've got to let me stay, Mr. Donner. Give me another chance. You said yourself that you promised Uncle Herman I would have a job here for as long as I needed it. Well, I still need it, Mr. Donner."

"You don't, Charlie. If you did then I'd tell them I don't care about their delegations and their petitions, and I'd stick up for you against all of them. But as it is now, they're all scared to death of you. I got to think of my own family too."

"What if they change their minds? Let me try to convince them." I was making it harder for him than he expected. I knew I should stop, but I couldn't control myself. "I'll make them understand," I pleaded.

"All right," he sighed finally. "Go ahead, try. But you're only going to hurt yourself."

As I came out of his office, Frank Reilly and Joe Carp walked by me, and I knew what he had said was true. Having me around to look at was too much for them. I made them all uncomfortable.

Frank had just picked up a tray of rolls and both he and Joe turned when I called. "Look, Charlie, I'm busy. Maybe later-"

"No," I insisted. "Now-right now. Both of you have been avoiding me. Why?"

Frank, the fast talker, the ladies' man, the arranger, studied me for a moment and then set the tray down on the table. "Why? I'll tell you why. Because all of a sudden you're a big shot, a know-it-all, a brain! Now you're a regular whiz kid, an egghead. Always with a book-always with all the answers. Well, I'll tell you something. You think you're better than the rest of us here? Okay, go someplace else."

"But what did I do to you?"

"What did he do? Hear that, Joe? I'll tell you what you did, Mister Gordon. You come pushing in here with your ideas and suggestions and make the rest of us all look like a bunch of dopes. But I'll tell you something. To me you're still a moron. Maybe I don't understand some of them big words or the names of the books, but I'm as good as you are- better even."

"Yeah." Joe nodded, turning to emphasize the point to Gimpy who had just come up behind him.

"I'm not asking you to be my friends," I said, "or have anything to do with me. Just let me keep my job. Mr. Donner says it's up to you."

Gimpy glared at me and then shook his head in disgust. "You got a nerve," he shouted. "You can go to hell!" Then he turned and limped off heavily.

And so it went. Most of them felt the way Joe and Frank and Gimpy did. It had been all right as long they could laugh at me and appear clever at my expense, but now they were feeling inferior to the moron. I began to see that by my astonishing growth I had made them shrink and emphasized their inadequacies. I had betrayed them, and they hated me for it.

Fanny Birden was the only one who didn't think I should be forced to leave, and despite their pressure and threats, she had been the only one not to sign the petition.

"Which don't mean to say," she remarked, "that I don't think there's something mighty strange about you, Charlie. The way you've changed! I don't know. You used to be a good, dependable man-ordinary, not too bright maybe, but honest-and who knows what you done to yourself to get so smart all of a sudden. Like everybody's been saying-it ain't right."

"But what's wrong with a person wanting to be more intelligent, to acquire knowledge, and understand himself and the world?"

"If you'd read your Bible, Charlie, you'd know that it's not meant for man to know more than was given to him to know by the Lord in the first place. The fruit of that tree was forbidden to man. Charlie, if you done anything you wasn't supposed to-you know, like with the devil or something-maybe it ain't too late to get out of it. Maybe you could go back to being the good simple man you was before."

"There's no going back, Fanny. I haven't done anything wrong. I'm like a man born blind who has been given a chance to see light. That can't be sinful. Soon there'll be millions like me all over the world. Science can do it, Fanny."

She stared down at the bride and groom on the wedding cake she was decorating and I could see her lips barely move as she whispered: "It was evil when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge. It was evil when they saw they was naked, and learned about lust and shame. And they was driven out of Paradise and the gates was closed to them. If not for that none of us would have to grow old and be sick and die."

There was nothing more to say, to her or to the rest of them. None of them would look into my eyes. I can still feel the hostility. Before, they had laughed at me, despising me for my ignorance and dullness; now, they hated me for my knowledge and understanding. Why? What in God's name did they want of me?

This intelligence has driven a wedge between me and all the people I knew and loved, driven me out of the bakery. Now, I'm more alone than ever before. I wonder what would happen if they put Algernon back in the big cage with some of the other mice. Would they turn against him?

May twenty-fifth-So this is how a person can come to despise himself-knowing he's doing the wrong thing and not being able to stop. Against my will I found myself drawn to Alice's apartment. She was surprised but she let me in.

"You're soaked. The water is streaming down your face."

"It's raining. Good for the flowers."

"Come on in. Let me get you a towel. You'll catch pneumonia."

"You're the only one I can talk to," I said. "Let me stay."

"I've got a pot of fresh coffee on the stove. Go ahead and dry yourself and then we can talk."

I looked around while she went to get the coffee. It was the first time I had ever been inside her apartment. I felt a sense of pleasure, but there was something disturbing about the room.

Everything was neat. The porcelain figurines were in a straight line on the window-ledge, all facing the same way. And the throw-pillows on the sofa hadn't been thrown at all, but were regularly spaced on the clear plastic covers that protected the upholstery. Two of the end tables had magazines, neatly stacked so that the titles were clearly visible. On one table: The

Reporter, The Saturday Review, The New Yorker; on the other: Mademoiselle, House Beautiful, and Reader's Digest.

On the far wall, across from the sofa, hung an ornately framed reproduction of Picasso's "Mother and Child," and directly opposite, above the sofa, was a painting of a dashing Renaissance courtier, masked, sword in hand, protecting a frightened, pink-cheeked maiden. Taken all together, it was wrong. As if Alice couldn't make up her mind who she was and which world she wanted to live in.

"You haven't been to the lab for a few days," she called from the kitchen. "Professor Nemur is worried about you."

"I couldn't face them," I said. "I know there's no reason for me to be ashamed, but it's an empty feeling not going in to work every day-not seeing the shop, the ovens, the people. It's too much. Last night and the night before, I had nightmares of drowning."

She set the tray in the center of the coffee table-the napkins folded into triangles, and the cookies laid out in a circular display pattern. "You mustn't take it so hard, Charlie. It has nothing to do with you."

"It doesn't help to tell myself that. Those people-for all these years- were my family. It was like being thrown out of my own home."

"That's just it," she said. "This has become a symbolic repetition of experiences you had as a child. Being rejected by your parents ... being sent away ... "

"Oh, Christ! Never mind giving it a nice neat label. What matters is that before I got involved in this experiment I had friends, people who cared for me. Now I'm afraid-"

"You've still got friends."

"It's not the same."

"Fear is a normal reaction."

"It's more than that. I've been afraid before. Afraid of being strapped for not giving in to Norma, afraid of passing Howells Street where the gang used to tease me and push me around. And I was afraid of the schoolteacher, Mrs. Libby, who tied my hands so I wouldn't fidget with things on my desk. But those things were real-something I was justified in being afraid of. This terror at being kicked out of the bakery is vague, a fear I don't understand."

"Get hold of yourself."

"You don't feel the panic."

"But, Charlie, it's to be expected. You're a new swimmer forced off a diving raft and terrified of losing the solid wood under your feet. Mr. Donner was good to you, and you were sheltered all these years. Being driven out of the bakery this way is an even greater shock than you expected."

"Knowing it intellectually doesn't help. I can't sit alone in my room any more. I wander into the streets at all hours of the day or night, not knowing what I'm looking for ... walking until I'm lost ... finding myself outside the bakery. Last night I walked all the way from Washington Square to Central Park, and I slept in the park. What the hell am I searching for?"

The more I talked, the more upset she became. "What can I do to help you, Charlie?"

"I don't know. I'm like an animal who's been locked out of his nice, safe cage."

She sat beside me on the couch. "They're pushing you too fast. You're confused. You want to be an adult, but there's still a little boy inside you. Alone and frightened." She put my head on her shoulder, trying to comfort me, and as she stroked my hair I knew that she needed me the way I needed her.

"Charlie," she whispered after a while, "whatever you want ... don't be afraid of me .... "

I wanted to tell her I was waiting for the panic.

Once-during a bakery delivery-Charlie had nearly fainted when a middle-aged woman, just out of the bath, amused herself by opening her bathrobe and exposing herself. Had he ever seen a woman without clothes on? Did he know how to make love? His terror-his whining-must have frightened her because she clutched her robe together and gave him a quarter to forget what had happened. She was only testing him, she warned, to see if he was a good boy.

He tried to be good, he told her, and not look at women, because his mother used to beat him whenever that happened in his pants ....

Now he had the clear picture of Charlie's mother, screaming at him, holding a leather belt in her hand, and his father trying to hold her back. "Enough, Rose! You'll kill him! Leave him alone!" His mother straining forward to lash at him, just out of reach now so that the belt swishes past his shoulder as he writhes and twists away from it on the floor.

"Look at him!" Rose screams. "He can't learn to read and write, but he knows enough to look at a girl that way. I'll beat that filth out of his mind."

"He can't help it if he gets an erection. It's normal. He didn't do anything."

"He's got no business to think that way about girls. A friend of his sister's comes to the house and he starts thinking like that! I'll teach him so he never forgets. Do you hear? If you ever touch a girl, I'll put you away in a cage, like an animal, for the rest of your life. Do you hear me ?... "

I still hear her. But perhaps I had been released. Maybe the fear and nausea was no longer a sea to drown in, but only a pool of water reflecting the past alongside the now. Was I free?

If I could reach Alice in time-without thinking about it, before it overwhelmed me-maybe the panic wouldn't happen. If only I could make my mind a blank. I managed to choke out: "You ... you do it! Hold me!" And before I knew what she was doing, she was kissing me, holding me closer than anyone had ever held me before. But at the moment I should have come closest of all, it started: the buzzing, the chill, and the nausea. I turned away from her.

She tried to soothe me, to tell me it didn't matter, that there was no reason to blame myself. But ashamed, and no longer able to control my anguish, I began to sob. There in her arms I cried myself to sleep, and I dreamed of the courtier and the pink-cheeked maiden. But in my dream it was the maiden who held the sword.

June five-Nemur is upset because I haven't turned in any progress reports in almost two weeks (and he's justified because the Welberg Foundation has begun paying me a salary out of the grant so that I won't have to look for a job). The International Psychological Convention at Chicago is only a week away. He wants his preliminary report to be as full as possible, since Algernon and I are the prime exhibits for his presentation.

Our relationship is becoming increasingly strained. I resent Nemur's constant references to me as a laboratory specimen. He makes me feel that before the experiment I was not really a human being.

I told Strauss that I was too involved in thinking, reading, and digging into myself, trying to understand who and what I am, and that writing was such a slow process it made me impatient to get my ideas down. I followed his suggestion that I learn to type, and now that I can type nearly seventy-five words a minute, it's easier to get it all down on paper.

Strauss again brought up my need to speak and write simply and directly so that people will understand me. He reminds me that language is sometimes a barrier instead of a pathway. Ironic to find myself on the other side of the intellectual fence.

I see Alice occasionally, but we don't discuss what happened. Our relationship remains platonic. But for three nights after I left the bakery there were the nightmares. Hard to believe it was two weeks ago.

I am pursued down the empty streets at night by ghostly figures. Though I always run to the bakery, the door is locked, and the people inside never turn to look at me. Through the window, the bride and groom on the wedding cake point at me and laugh-the air becomes charged with laughter until I can't stand it-and the two cupids wave their flaming arrows. I scream. I pound on the door, but there is no sound. I see Charlie staring back at me from inside. Is it only a reflection? Things clutch at my legs and drag me away from the bakery down into the shadows of the alleyway, and just as they begin to ooze all over me I wake up.

Other times the window of the bakery opens into the past and looking through it I see other things and other people.

It's astonishing how my power of recall is developing. I cannot control it completely yet, but sometimes when I'm busy reading or working on a problem, I get a feeling of intense clarity.

I know it's some kind of subconscious warning signal, and now instead of waiting for the memory to come to me, I close my eyes and reach out for it. Eventually, I'll be able to bring this recall completely under control, to explore not only the sum of my past experiences, but also all of the untapped faculties of the mind.

Even now, as I think about it, I feel the sharp stillness. I see the bakery window ... reach out and touch it ... cold and vibrating, and then the glass becomes warm ... hotter ... fingers burning. The window reflecting my image becomes bright, and as the glass turns into a mirror, I see little Charlie Gordon-fourteen or fifteen-looking out at me through the window of his house, and it's doubly strange to realize how different he was....

He has been waiting for his sister to come from school, and when he sees her turn the corner onto Marks Street, he waves and calls her name and runs out onto the porch to meet her.

Norma waves a paper. "I got an A in my history test. I knew all the answers. Mrs. Baffin said it was the best paper in the whole class."

She is a pretty girl with light brown hair carefully braided and coiled about her head in a crown, and as she looks up at her big brother the smile turns to a frown and she skips away, leaving him behind as she darts up the steps into the house.

Smiling, he follows her.

His mother and father are in the kitchen, and Charlie, bursting with the excitement of Norma's good news, blurts it out before she has a chance.

"She got an A! She got an A!"

"No!" shrieks Norma. "Not you. You don't tell. It's my mark, and I'm going to tell."

"Now wait a minute, young lady." Matt puts his newspaper down and addresses her sternly. "That's no way to talk to your brother."

"He had no right to tell!"

"Never mind." Matt glares at her over his warning finger. "He meant no harm by it, and you mustn't shout at him that way."

She turns to her mother for support. "I got an A-the best mark in class. Now I can have a dog? You promised. You said if I got a good mark in my test. And I got an A. A brown dog with white spots. And I'm going to call him Napoleon because that was the question I answered best on the test. Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo."

Rose nods. "Go out on the porch and play with Charlie. He's been waiting over an hour for you to come home from school."

"I don't want to play with him."

"Go out on the porch," says Matt.

Norma looks at her father and then at Charlie. "I don't have to. Mother said I don't have to play with him if I don't want to."

"Now, young lady"-Matt rises out of his chair and comes toward her -"you just apologize to your brother."

"I don't have to," she screeches, rushing behind her mother's chair. "He's like a baby. He can't play Monopoly or checkers or anything ... he gets everything all mixed up. I won't play with him any more."

"Then go to your room!"

"Can I have a dog now, Mama?"

Matt hits the table with his fist. "There'll be no dog in this house as long as you take this attitude, young lady."

"I promised her a dog if she did well in school-"

"A brown one with white spots!" adds Norma.

Matt points to Charlie standing near the wall. "Did you forget you told your son he couldn't have one because we didn't have the room, and no one to take care of it. Remember? When he asked for a dog? Are you going back on what you said to him?"

"But I can take care of my own dog," insists Norma. "I'll feed him, and wash him, and take him out..."

Charlie, who has been standing near the table, playing with his large red button at the end of a string, suddenly speaks out.

"I'll help her take care of the dog! I'll help her feed it and brush it and I won't let the other dogs bite it!"

But before either Matt or Rose can answer, Norma shrieks: "No! It's going to be my dog. Only my dog!"

Matt nods. "You see?"

Rose sits beside her and strokes her braids to calm her. "But we have to share things, dear. Charlie can help you take care of it."

"No! Only mine !... I'm the one who got the A in history-not him! He never gets good marks like me. Why should he help with the dog? And then the dog will like him more than me, and it'll be his dog instead of mine. No! If I can't have it for myself I don't want it."

"That settles it," says Matt picking up his newspaper and settling down in his chair again. "No dog."

Suddenly, Norma jumps off the couch and grabs the history test she had brought home so eagerly just a few minutes earlier. She tears it and throws the pieces into Charlie's startled face. "I hate you! I hate you!"

"Norma, stop that at once!" Rose grabs her but she twists away.

"And I hate school! I hate it! I'll stop studying, and I'll be a dummy like him. I'll forget everything I learned and then I'll be just like him." She runs out of the room, shrieking: "It's happening to me already. I'm forgetting everything ... I'm forgetting ... I don't remember anything I learned any more!"

Rose, terrified, runs after her. Matt sits there staring at the newspaper in his lap. Charlie, frightened by the hysteria and the screaming, shrinks into a chair whimpering softly. What has he done wrong? And feeling the wetness in his trousers and the trickling down his leg, he sits there waiting for the slap he knows will come when his mother returns.

The scene fades, but from that time Norma spent all her free moments with her friends, or playing alone in her room. She kept the door to her room closed, and I was forbidden to enter without her permission.

I recall once overhearing Norma and one of her girl friends playing in her room, and Norma shouting: "He is not my real brother! He's just a boy we took in because we felt sorry for him. My mamma told me, and she said I can tell everyone now that he's not really my brother at all."

I wish this memory were a photograph so that I could tear it up and throw it back into her face. I want to call back across the years and tell her I never meant to stop her from getting her dog. She could have had it all to herself, and I wouldn't have fed it, or brushed it, or played with it-and I

would never have made it like me more than it liked her. I only wanted her to play games with me the way we used to. I never meant to do anything that would hurt her at all.

June sixth-My first real quarrel with Alice today. My fault. I wanted to see her. Often, after a disturbing memory or dream, talking to her-just being with her-makes me feel better. But it was a mistake to go down to the Center to pick her up.

I had not been back to the Center for Retarded Adults since the operation, and the thought of seeing the place was exciting. It's on Twenty-third Street, east of Fifth Avenue, in an old schoolhouse that has been used by the Beekman University Clinic for the last five years as a center for experimental education-special classes for the handicapped. The sign outside on the doorway, framed by the old spiked gateway, is just a gleaming brass plate that says C. R. A. Beekman Extension.

Her class ended at eight, but I wanted to see the room where-not so long ago-I had struggled over simple reading and writing and learned to count change of a dollar.

I went inside, slipped up to the door, and, keeping out of sight, I looked through the window. Alice was at her desk, and in a chair beside her was a thin-faced woman I didn't recognize. She was frowning that open frown of unconcealed puzzlement, and I wondered what Alice was trying to explain.

Near the blackboard was Mike Dorni in his wheelchair, and there in his usual first-row first-seat was Lester Braun, who, Alice said, was the smartest in the group. Lester had learned easily what I had struggled over, but he came when he felt like it, or he stayed away to earn money waxing floors. I guess if he had cared at all-if it had been important to him as it was to me-they would have used him for this experiment. There were new faces, too, people I didn't know.

Finally, I got up the nerve to go in.

"It's Charlie!" said Mike, whirling his wheelchair around.

I waved to him.

Bernice, the pretty blonde with empty eyes, looked up and smiled dully. "Where ya been, Charlie? That's a nice suit."

The others who remembered me waved to me and I waved back. Suddenly, I could see by Alice's expression that she was annoyed.

"It's almost eight o'clock," she announced. "Time to put things away."

Each person had an assigned task, the putting away of chalk, erasers, papers, books, pencils, note paper, paints, and demonstration material. Each one knew his job and took pride in doing it well. They all started on their tasks except Bernice. She was staring at me.

"Why ain't Charlie been coming to school?" asked Bernice. "What's the matter, Charlie? Are you coming back?"

The others looked up at me. I looked to Alice, waiting for her to answer for me, and there was a long silence. What could I tell them that would not hurt them?

"This is just a visit," I said.

One of the girls started to giggle-Francine, whom Alice was always worried about. She had given birth to three children by the time she was eighteen, before her parents arranged for a hysterectomy. She wasn't pretty -not nearly as attractive as Bernice-but she had been an easy mark for dozens of men who bought her something pretty, or paid her way to the movies. She lived at a boarding house approved for outside work trainees by the Warren State Home, and was permitted out in the evenings to come to the Center. Twice she hadn't shown up-picked up by men on the way to school-and now she was allowed out only with an escort.

"He talks like a big shot now," she giggled.

"All right," said Alice, breaking in sharply. "Class dismissed. I'll see you all tomorrow night at six."

When they were gone, I could see by the way she was slamming her own things into her closet, that she was angry.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I was going to wait for you downstairs, and then I got curious about the old classroom. My alma mater. I just wanted to look through the window. And before I knew what I was doing I came in. What's bothering you?"

"Nothing-nothing's bothering me."

"Come on. Your anger is all out of proportion to what's happened. Something's on your mind."

She slammed down a book she was holding. "All right. You want to know? You're different. You've changed. And I'm not talking about your I.Q. It's your attitude toward people-you're not the same kind of human being-"

"Oh, come on now! Don't-"

"Don't interrupt me!" The real anger in her voice pushed me back. "I mean it. There was something in you before. I don't know ... a warmth, an openness, a kindness that made everyone like you and like to have you around. Now, with all your intelligence and knowledge, there are differences that-"

I couldn't let myself listen. "What did you expect? Did you think I'd remain a docile pup, wagging my tail and licking the foot that kicks me? Sure, all this has changed me and the way I think about myself. I no longer have to take the kind of crap that people have been handing me all my life."

"People have not been bad to you."

"What do you know about it? Listen, the best of them have been smug and patronizing-using me to make themselves superior and secure in their own limitations. Anyone can feel intelligent beside a moron."

After I said it, I knew she was going to take it the wrong way.

"You put me in that category too, I suppose."

"Don't be absurd. You know damned well I-"

"Of course, in a sense, I guess you're right. Next to you I am rather dull-witted. Nowadays every time we see each other, after I leave you I go home with the miserable feeling that I'm slow and dense about everything. I review things I've said, and come up with all the bright and witty things I should have said, and I feel like kicking myself because I didn't mention them when we were together."

"That's a common experience."

"I find myself wanting to impress you in a way I never thought about doing before, but being with you has undermined my self-confidence. I question my motives now, about everything I do."

I tried to get her off the subject, but she kept coming back to it. "Look, I didn't come here to argue with you," I finally said. "Will you let me take you home? I need someone to talk to."

"So do I. But these days I can't talk to you. All I can do is listen and nod my head and pretend I understand all about cultural variants, and neo-"

Boulean mathematics, and post-symbolic logic, and I feel more and more stupid, and when you leave the apartment, I have to stare in the mirror and scream at myself: 'No, you're not growing duller every day! You're not losing your intelligence! You're not getting senile and dull-witted. It's Charlie exploding forward so quickly that it makes it appear as if you're slipping backwards.' I say that to myself, Charlie, but whenever we meet and you tell me something and look at me in that impatient way, I know you're laughing.

"And when you explain things to me, and I can't remember them, you think it's because I'm not interested and don't want to take the trouble. But you don't know how I torture myself when you're gone. You don't know the books I've struggled over, the lectures I've sat in on at Beekman, and yet whenever I talk about something, I see how impatient you are, as if it were all childish. I wanted you to be intelligent. I wanted to help you and share with you-and now you've shut me out of your life."

As I listened to what she was saying, the enormity of it dawned on me. I had been so absorbed in myself and what was happening to me that I never thought about what was happening to her.

She was crying silently as we left the school, and I found myself without words. All during the ride on the bus I thought to myself how upside-down the situation had become. She was terrified of me. The ice had broken between us and the gap was widening as the current of my mind carried me swiftly into the open sea.

She was right in refusing to torture herself by being with me. We no longer had anything in common. Simple conversation had become strained. And all there was between us now was the embarrassed silence and unsatisfied longing in a darkened room.

"You're very serious," she said, breaking out of her own mood and looking up at me.

"About us."

"It shouldn't make you so serious. I don't want to upset you. You're going through a great trial." She was trying to smile.

"But you did. Only I don't know what to do about it."

On the way from the bus stop to her apartment, she said, "I'm not going to the convention with you. I called Professor Nemur this morning and told him. There will be a lot for you to do there. Interesting people-the excitement of the spotlight for a while. I don't want to be in the way-"

"Alice-"

"-and no matter what you say about it now, I know that's how I'm going to feel, so if you don't mind, I'll hang on to my splintering ego-thank you."

"But you're making more of this than it is. I'm sure if you'll just-"

"You know? You're sure?" She turned and glared at me on the front steps of her apartment building. "Oh, how insufferable you've become. How do you know what I feel? You take liberties with other people's minds. You can't tell how I feel or what I feel or why I feel."

She started inside and then she looked back at me, her voice shaky: "I'll be here when you get back. I'm just upset, that's all, and I want both of us to have a chance to think this out while we're a good distance apart."

For the first time in many weeks she didn't ask me inside. I stared at the closed door with the anger mounting inside me. I wanted to create a scene, to bang on the door, to break it down. I wanted my anger to consume the building.

But as I walked away I felt a kind of simmering, then cooling, and finally a relief. I walked so fast I was drifting along the streets, and the feeling that hit my cheek was a cool breeze out of the summer night. Suddenly free.

I realize now that my feeling for Alice had been moving backward against the current of my learning, from worship, to love, to fondness, to a feeling of gratitude and responsibility. My confused feeling for her had been holding me back, and I had clung to her out of my fear of being forced out on my own, and cut adrift.

But with the freedom came a sadness. I wanted to be in love with her. I wanted to overcome my emotional and sexual fears, to marry, have children, settle down.

Now it's impossible. I am just as far away from Alice with an I.Q. of one hundred eighty-five as I was when I had an I.Q. of seventy. And this time we both know it.

June eighth-What drives me out of the apartment to prowl through the city? I wander through the streets alone-not the relaxing stroll of a summer night, but the tense hurry to get-where? Down alleyways, looking into doorways, peering into half-shuttered windows, wanting someone to talk to and yet afraid to meet anyone. Up one street, and down another, through the endless labyrinth, hurling myself against the neon cage of the city. Searching ... for what?

I met a woman in Central Park. She was sitting on a bench near the lake, with a coat clutched around her despite the heat. She smiled and motioned for me to sit beside her. We looked at the bright skyline on Central Park South, the honeycomb of lighted cells against the blackness, and I wished I could absorb them all.

Yes, I told her, I was from New York. No, I had never been to Newport News, Virginia. That's where she was from, and where she had married this sailor who was at sea now, and she hadn't seen him in two and a half years.

She twisted and knotted a handkerchief, using it from time to time to wipe the beaded sweat from her forehead. Even in the dim light reflected from the lake, I could see that she wore a great deal of make-up, but she looked attractive with her straight dark hair loose to her shoulders-except that her face was puffy and swollen as if she had just gotten up from sleep. She wanted to talk about herself, and I wanted to listen.

Her father had given her a good home, an education, everything a wealthy shipbuilder could give his only daughter-but not forgiveness. He would never forgive her elopement with the sailor.

She took my hand as she spoke, and rested her head on my shoulder. "The night Gary and I were married," she whispered, "I was a terrified virgin. And he just went crazy. First, he had to slap me and beat me. And then he took me with no love-making. That was the last time we were ever together. I never let him touch me again."

She could probably tell by the trembling of my hand that I was startled. It was too violent and intimate for me. Feeling my hand stir, she gripped it tighter as if she had to finish her story before she could let me go. It was important to her, and I sat quietly as one sits before a bird that feeds from your palm.

"Not that I don't like men," she assured me with wide-eyed openness. "I've been with other men. Not him, but lots of others. Most men are gentle and tender with a woman. They make love slowly, with caresses and kisses first." She looked at me meaningfully, and let her open palm brush back and forth against mine.

It was what I had heard about, read about, dreamed about. I didn't know her name, and she didn't ask mine. She just wanted me to take her someplace where we could be alone. I wondered what Alice would think.

I caressed her awkwardly and kissed her still more hesitantly so that she looked up at me. "What's the matter?" she whispered. "What are you thinking?"

"About you."

"Do you have a place we can go?"

Each step forward was caution. At what point would the ground give way and plunge me into anxiety? Something kept me moving ahead to test my footing.

"If you don't have a place, the Mansion Hotel on Fifty-third doesn't cost too much. And they don't bother you about luggage if you pay in advance."

"I have a room-"

She looked at me with new respect. "Well, that's fine."

Still nothing. And that in itself was curious. How far could I go without being overwhelmed by symptoms of panic? When we were alone in the room? When she undressed? When I saw her body? When we were lying together?

Suddenly, it was important to know if I could be like other men, if I could ever ask a woman to share a life with me. Having intelligence and knowledge wasn't enough. I wanted this, too. The sense of release and looseness was strong now with the feeling that it was possible. The excitement that came over me when I kissed her again communicated itself, and I was sure I could be normal with her. She was different from Alice. She was the kind of woman who had been around.

Then her voice changed, uncertain. "Before we go ... Just one thing ... " She stood up and took a step toward me in the spray of lamplight, opening her coat, and I could see the shape of her body as I had not imagined it all the time we were sitting next to each other in the shadows. "Only the fifth month," she said. "It doesn't make any difference. You don't mind, do you?"

Standing there with her coat open, she was superimposed as a double exposure on the picture of the middle-aged woman just out of the bathtub, holding open her bathrobe for Charlie to see. And I waited, as a blasphemer waits for lightning. I looked away. It was the last thing I had expected, but the coat wrapped tightly around her on such a hot night should have warned me that something was wrong.

"It's not my husband's," she assured me. "I wasn't lying to you about what I said before. I haven't seen him for years. It was a salesman I met about eight months ago. I was living with him. I'm not going to see him any more, but I'm going to keep the baby. We've just got to be careful-not rough or anything like that. But otherwise you don't have to worry."

Her voice ran down when she saw my anger. "That's filthy!" I shouted. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

She drew away, wrapping her coat quickly around her to protect what lay within.

As she made that protective gesture, I saw the second double image: my mother, heavy with my sister, in the days when she was holding me less, warming me less with her voice and touch, protecting me less against anyone who dared to say I was subnormal.

I think I grabbed her shoulder-I'm not sure, but then she was screaming, and I was sharply back to reality with the sense of danger. I wanted to tell her I had meant no harm-I would never hurt her or anyone. "Please, don't scream!"

But she was screaming, and I heard the running footsteps on the darkened path. This was something no one would understand. I ran into the darkness, to find an exit from the park, zig-zagging across one path and down another. I didn't know the park, and suddenly I crashed into something that threw me backwards. A wire-mesh fence-a dead end. Then I saw the swings and slides and realized it was a children's playground locked up for the night. I followed the fence, and kept going, half-running, stumbling over twisted roots. At the lake that curved around near the playground, I doubled back, found another path, went over the small footbridge and then around and under it. No exit.

"What is it? What happened, lady?"

"A maniac?"

"You all right?"

"Which way did he go?"

I had circled back to where I had started from. I slipped behind the huge outcropping of a rock and a screen of bramble and dropped flat on my stomach.

"Get a cop. There's never a cop when you need one."

"What happened?"

"A degenerate tried to rape her."

"Hey, some guy down there is chasing him. There he goes!"

"Come on! Get the bastard before he gets outta the park!"

"Careful. He's got a knife and a gun .... "

It was obvious that the shouting had flushed out the night crawlers because the cry of "there he goes!" was echoed from behind me, and looking out from behind the rock I could see a lone runner being chased down the lamplit path into the darkness. Seconds later, another one passed in front of the rock and disappeared into the shadows. I pictured myself being caught by this eager mob and beaten and torn by them. I deserved it. I almost wanted it.

I stood up, brushed the leaves and dirt from my clothing and walked slowly down the path in the direction from which I had come. I expected every second to be grabbed from behind and pulled down into the dirt and darkness, but soon I saw the bright lights of Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, and I came out of the park.

Thinking about it now, in the security of my room, I am shaken with the rawness that touched me. Remembering how my mother looked before she gave birth to my sister is frightening. But even more frightening is the feeling that I wanted them to catch me and beat me. Why did I want to be punished? Shadows out of the past clutch at my legs and drag me down. I open my mouth to scream, but I am voiceless. My hands are trembling, I feel cold, and there is a distant humming in my ears.

PROGRESS REPORT Thirteen

June ten-We're on a Strato-jet about to take off for Chicago. I owe this progress report to Burt who had the bright idea that I could dictate this on a transistor tape recorder and have a public stenographer in Chicago type it up. Nemur likes the idea. In fact, he wants me to use the recorder up to the last minute. He feels it will add to the report if they play the most recent tape at the end of the session.

So here I am, sitting off by myself in our private section of a jet on the way to Chicago, trying to get used to thinking aloud, and to the sound of my own voice. I suppose the typist can get rid of all the uhm's, er's and ah's, and make it all seem natural on paper (I can't help the paralysis that comes over me when I think hundreds of people are going to listen to the words I'm saying now).

My mind is a blank. At this point my feelings are more important than anything else.

The idea of going up in the air terrifies me.

As far as I can tell, in the days before the operation, I never really understood what planes were. I never connected the movies and TV close-ups of planes with the things that I saw zooming overhead. Now that we're about to take off I can think only of what might happen if we crash. A cold feeling, and the thought that I don't want to die. Brings to mind those discussions about God.

I've thought about death often in recent weeks, but not really about God. My mother took me to church occasionally-but I don't recall ever connecting that up with the thought of God. She mentioned Him quite often, and I had to pray to Him at night, but I never thought much about it. I remember Him as a distant uncle with a long beard on a throne (like Santa Claus in the department store on his big chair, who picks you up on his knee and asks you if you've been good, and what would you like him to give you?). She was afraid of Him, but asked favors anyway. My father never mentioned Him-it was as if God was one of Rose's relatives he'd rather not get involved with.

"We're ready to take off, sir. May I help you fasten your seat belt?"

"Do I have to? I don't like to be strapped down."

"Until we're airborne."

"I'd rather not, unless it's necessary. I've got this fear of being strapped in. It'll probably make me sick."

"It's regulations, sir. Here, let me help you."

"No! I'll do it myself."

"No ... that one goes through here."

"Wait, uh .... Okay."

Ridiculous. There's nothing to be afraid of. Seat belt isn't too tight- doesn't hurt. Why should putting on the damned seat belt be so terrifying? That, and the vibrations of the plane taking off. Anxiety all out of proportion to the situation ... so it must be something ... what ... flying up into and through dark clouds ... fasten your seat belts ... strapped down ... straining forward ... odor of sweaty leather ... vibrations and a roaring sound in my ears.

Through the window-in the clouds-I see Charlie. Age is difficult to tell, about five years old. Before Norma ...

"Are you two ready yet?" His father comes to the doorway, heavy, especially in the sagging fleshiness of his face and neck. He has a tired look. "I said, are you ready?" "Just a minute," answers Rose. "I'm getting my hat on. See if his shirt is buttoned, and tie his shoelaces."

"Come on, let's get this thing over with."

"Where?" asks Charlie. "Where ... Charlie ... go?"

His father looks at him and frowns. Matt Gordon never knows how to react to his son's questions.

Rose appears in the doorway of her bedroom, adjusting the half-veil of her hat. She is a birdlike woman, and her arms-up to her head, elbows out-look like wings. "We're going to the doctor who is going to help you get smart."

The veil makes it look as if she were peering down at him through a wire screen. He is always frightened when they dress up to go out this way, because he knows he will have to meet other people and his mother will become upset and angry.

He wants to run, but there is no place for him to go.

"Why do you have to tell him that?" said Matt.

"Because it's the truth. Dr. Guarino can help him."

Matt paces the floor like a man who has given up hope but will make one last attempt to reason. "How do you know? What do you know about this man? If there was anything that could be done, the doctors would have told us long ago."

"Don't say that," she screeches. "Don't tell me there's nothing they can do." She grabs Charlie and presses his head against her bosom. "He's going to be normal, whatever we have to do, whatever it costs."

"It's not something money can buy."

"It's Charlie I'm talking about. Your son ... your only child." She rocks him from side to side, near hysteria now. "I won't listen to that talk. They don't know, so they say nothing can be done. Dr. Guarino explained it all to me. They won't sponsor his invention, he says, because it will prove they're wrong. Like it was with those other scientists, Pasteur and Jennings, and the rest of them. He told me all about your fine medical doctors afraid of progress."

Talking back to Matt this way, she becomes relaxed and sure of herself again. When she lets go of Charlie, he goes to the corner and stands against the wall frightened and shivering.

"Look," she says, "you got him upset again."

"Me?"

"You always start these things in front of him."

"Oh, Christ! Come on, let's get this damned thing over with."

All the way to Dr. Guarino's office they avoid speaking to each other. Silence on the bus, and silence walking three blocks from the bus to the downtown office building. After about fifteen minutes, Dr. Guarino comes out to the waiting room to greet them. He is fat and balding, and he looks as if he would pop through his white lab jacket. Charlie is fascinated by the thick white eyebrows and white moustache that twitch from time to time. Sometimes the moustache twitches first, followed by the raising of both eyebrows, but sometimes the brows go up first and the moustache twitch follows.

The large white room into which Guarino ushers them smells recently painted, and it is almost bare-two desks on one side of the room, and on the other, a huge machine with rows of dials and four long arms like dentist's drills. Nearby is a black leather examination table with thick, webbed, restraining straps.

"Well, well, well," says Guarino, raising his eyebrows, "so this is Charlie." He grips the boy's shoulders firmly. "We're going to be friends."

"Can you really do anything for him, Dr. Guarino?" says Matt. "Have you ever treated this kind of thing before? We don't have much money."

The eyebrows come down like shutters as Guarino frowns. "Mr. Gordon, have I said anything yet about what I could do? Don't I have to examine him first? Maybe something can be done, maybe not. First there will have to be physical and mental tests to determine the causes of the pathology. There will be enough time later to talk of prognosis. Actually, I'm very busy these days. I only agreed to look into this case because I'm doing a special study of this type of neural retardation. Of course, if you have qualms, then perhaps ... "

His voice trails off sadly, and he turns away, but Rose Gordon jabs at Matt with her elbow. "My husband doesn't mean that at all, Dr. Guarino. He talks too much." She glares at Matt again to warn him to apologize.

Matt sighs. "If there is any way you can help Charlie, we'll do anything you ask. Things are slow these days. I sell barbershop supplies, but whatever I have I'll be glad to-""Just one thing I must insist on," says Guarino, pursing his lips as if making a decision. "Once we start, the treatment must continue all the way. In cases of this type, the results often come suddenly after long months without any sign of improvement. Not that I am promising you success, mind you. Nothing is guaranteed. But you must give the treatment a chance, otherwise you're better off not starting at all."

He frowns at them to let his warning sink in, and his brows are white shades from under which his bright blue eyes stare. "Now, if you'll just step outside and let me examine the boy."

Matt hesitates to leave Charlie alone with him, but Guarino nods. "This is the best way," he says, ushering them both outside to the waiting room. "The results are always more significant if the patient and I am alone when the psychosubstantiation tests are performed. External distractions have a deleterious effect on the ramified scores."

Rose smiles at her husband triumphantly, and Matt follows her meekly outside.

Alone with Charlie, Dr. Guarino pats him on the head. He has a kindly smile.

"Okay, kid. On the table."

When Charlie doesn't respond, he lifts him gently onto the leather-padded table and straps him down securely with heavy webbed straps. The table smells of deeply ingrained sweat, and leather.

"Maaaa!"

"She's outside. Don't worry, Charlie. This won't hurt a bit."

"Want Ma!" Charlie is confused at being restrained this way. He has no sense of what is being done to him, but there have been other doctors who were not so gentle after his parents left the room.

Guarino tries to calm him. "Take it easy, kid. Nothing to be scared of. You see this big machine here? Know what I'm going to do with it?"

Charlie cringes, and then he recalls his mother's words. "Make me smart."

"That's right. At least you know what you're here for. Now, just close your eyes and relax while I turn on these switches. It'll make a loud noise, like an airplane, but it won't hurt you. And we'll see if we can make you a little bit smarter than you are now."

Guarino snaps on the switch that sets the huge machine humming, red and blue lights blinking on and off. Charlie is terrified. He cringes and shivers, straining against the straps that hold him fast to the table.

He starts to scream, but Guarino quickly pushes a wad of cloth into his mouth. "Now, now, Charlie. None of that. You be a good little boy. I told you it won't hurt."

He tries to scream again, but all that comes out is a muffled choking that makes him want to throw up. He feels the wetness and the stickiness around his legs, and the odor tells him that his mother will punish him with the spanking and the corner for making in his pants. He could not control it. Whenever he feels trapped and panic sets in, he loses control and dirties himself. Choking ... sick ... nausea ... and everything goes black ...

There is no way of knowing how much time passes, but when Charlie opens his eyes, the cloth is out of his mouth, and the straps have been removed. Dr. Guarino pretends he does not smell the odor. "Now that didn't hurt you a bit, did it?"

"N-no ..."

"Well, then what are you trembling like that for? All I did was use that machine to make you smarter. How does it feel to be smarter now than you were before?"

Forgetting his terror, Charlie stares wide-eyed at the machine. "Did I get smart?"

"Of course you did. Uh, stand back over there. How does it feel?"

"Feels wet. I made."

"Yes, well-uh-you won't do that next time, will you? You won't be scared any more, now that you know it doesn't hurt. Now I want you to tell your mom how smart you feel, and she'll bring you here twice a week for shortwave encephalo-reconditioning, and you'll get smarter, and smarter, and smarter."

Charlie smiles. "I can walk backwards."

"You can? Let's see," says Guarino closing his folder in mock excitement. "Let me see."

Slowly, and with great effort, Charlie takes several steps backward, stumbling against the examination table as he goes. Guarino smiles and nods. "Now that's what I call something. Oh, you wait. You're going to be the smartest boy on your block before we're through with you."

Charlie flushes with pleasure at this praise and attention. It is not often that people smile at him and tell him he has done something well. Even the terror of the machine, and of being strapped down to the table, begins to fade.

"On the whole block?" The thought fills him as if he cannot take enough air into his lungs no matter how he tries. "Even smarter than Hymie?"

Guarino smiles again and nods. "Smarter than Hymie."

Charlie looks at the machine with new wonder and respect. The machine will make him smarter than Hymie who lives two doors away and knows how to read and write and is in the Boy Scouts. "Is that your machine?"

"Not yet. It belongs to the bank. But soon it'll be mine, and then I'll be able to make lots of boys like you smart." He pats Charlie's head and says, "You're a lot nicer than some of the normal kids whose mothers bring them here hoping I can make geniuses out of them by raising their I.Q.'s."

"Do they become geniuses if you raise their I.Q.'s?" He put his hands to his face to see if the machine had done anything to raise his I.Q.. "You gonna make me a genius?"

Guarino's laugh is friendly as he squeezes Charlie's shoulder. "No, Charlie. Nothing for you to worry about. Only nasty little donkeys become geniuses. You'll stay just the way you are-a nice kid." And then, thinking better of it he adds: "Of course, a little smarter than you are now."

He unlocks the door and leads Charlie out to his parents. "Here he is, folks. None the worse for the experience. A good boy. I think we're going to be good friends, eh, Charlie?"

Charlie nods. He wants Dr. Guarino to like him, but he is terrified when he sees the expression on his mother's face. "Charlie! What did you do?"

"Just an accident, Mrs. Gordon. He was frightened the first time. But don't blame him or punish him. I wouldn't want him to connect punishment with coming here."

But Rose Gordon is sick with embarrassment. "It's disgusting. I don't know what to do, Dr. Guarino. Even at home he forgets-and sometimes when we have people in the house. I'm so ashamed when he does that."

The look of disgust on his mother's face sets him trembling. For a short while he had forgotten how bad he is, how he makes his parents suffer. He doesn't know how, but it frightens him when she says he makes her suffer, and when she cries and screams at him, he turns his face to the wall and moans softly to himself.

"Now don't upset him, Mrs. Gordon, and don't worry. Bring him to me on Tuesday and Thursday each week at the same time."

"But will this really do any good?" asks Matt. "Ten dollars is a lot of "

"Matt!" she clutches at his sleeve. "Is that anything to talk about at a time like this? Your own flesh and blood, and maybe Dr. Guarino can make him like other children, with the Lord's help, and you talk about money!"

Matt Gordon starts to defend himself, but then, thinking better of it, he pulls out his wallet.

"Please ... " sighs Guarino, as if embarrassed at the sight of money. "My assistant at the front desk will take care of all the financial arrangements. Thank you." He half bows to Rose, shakes Matt's hand and pats Charlie on the back. "Nice boy. Very nice." Then, smiling again, he disappears behind the door to the inner office.

They argue all the way home, Matt complaining that barber supply sales have fallen off, and that their savings are dwindling, Rose screeching back that making Charlie normal is more important than anything else.

Frightened by their quarreling, Charlie whimpers. The sound of anger in their voices is painful to him. As soon as they enter the apartment, he pulls away and runs to the corner of the kitchen, behind the door and stands with his forehead pressed against the tile wall, trembling and moaning.

They pay no attention to him. They have forgotten that he has to be cleaned and changed.

"I'm not hysterical. I'm just sick of you complaining every time I try to do something for your son. You don't care. You just don't care."

"That's not true! But I realize there's nothing we can do. When you've got a child like him it's a cross, and you bear it, and love it. Well, I can bear him, but I can't stand your foolish ways. You've spent almost all our savings on quacks and phonies-money I could have used to set me up in a nice business of my own. Yes. Don't look at me that way. For all the money you've thrown down the sewer to do something that can't be done, I could have had a barbershop of my own instead of eating my heart out selling for ten hours a day. My own place with people working for me!"

"Stop shouting. Look at him, he's frightened."

"The hell with you. Now I know who's the dope around here. Me! For putting up with you." He storms out, slamming the door behind him.

"Sorry to interrupt you, sir, but we're going to be landing in a few minutes. You'll have to fasten your seat belt again ... Oh, you have it on, sir. You've had it on all the way from New York. Close to two hours ..."

"I forgot all about it. I'll just leave it on until we land. It doesn't seem to bother me any more."

Now I can see where I got the unusual motivation for becoming smart that so amazed everyone at first. It was something Rose Gordon lived with day and night. Her fear, her guilt, her shame that Charlie was a moron. Her dream that something could be done. The urgent question always: whose fault was it, hers or Matt's? Only after Norma proved to her that she was capable of having normal children, and that I was a freak, did she stop trying to make me over. But I guess I never stopped wanting to be the smart boy she wanted me to be, so that she would love me.

A funny thing about Guarino. I should resent him for what he did to me, and for taking advantage of Rose and Matt, but somehow I can't. After that first day, he was always pleasant to me. There was always the pat on the shoulder, the smile, the encouraging word that came my way so rarely.

He treated me-even then-as a human being.

It may sound like ingratitude, but that is one of the things that I resent here-the attitude that I am a guinea pig. Nemur's constant references to having made me what I am, or that someday there will be others like me who will become real human beings.

How can I make him understand that he did not create me?

He makes the same mistake as the others when they look at a feeble-minded person and laugh because they don't understand there are human feelings involved. He doesn't realize that I was a person before I came here.

I am learning to control my resentment, not to be so impatient, to wait for things. I guess I'm growing up. Each day I learn more and more about myself, and the memories that began as ripples now wash over me in high-breaking waves ....

June eleventh-The confusion began from the moment we arrived at the Chalmers Hotel in Chicago and discovered that by error our rooms would not be vacant until the next night and until then we would have to stay at the nearby Independence Hotel. Nemur was furious. He took it as a personal affront and quarreled with everyone in the line of hotel command from the bellhop to the manager. We waited in the lobby as each hotel official went off in search of his superior to see what could be done.

In the midst of all the confusion-luggage drifting in and piling up all around the lobby, bellboys hustling back and forth with their little baggage carts, members who hadn't seen each other in a year, recognizing and greeting each other-we stood there feeling increasingly embarrassed as Nemur tried to collar officials connected with the International Psychological Association.