Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

He said, glancing down at the card, “On the subject of death there are similar definitional problems. Medically, death is not a moment but a process. Some organs may die while others live. At what point in this process do we declare that death has come? When, if ever, are we justified in preserving the living dead for the recycling of their functioning organs? Or take the area of sexual intercourse …” He caught himself just in time to prevent, or at least divert, an instinctual glance at Gail. He almost evaded the glance at Gail by a glance at Janet, but caught that too. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that, studiously, mournfully, Gail was writing something, clearly not class notes—he suspected it was a letter—in her notebook. He read: “It will obviously be telling if one immediately defines sexual intercourse as ‘the marital act.’ The widely respected moralist Richard McCormick”—he gave the words an ironic twist—“has written: ‘Since sexual intercourse and its proximate antecedents represent total personal exchange, they can be separated from total personal relationship (marriage) only by undermining their truly human, their expressive character.’ ” He looked up. “Obviously, McCormick is answering, by his lights, the ‘what’ question regarding sexual intercourse. Either it is marital or it is objectively wrong.” Now for just an instant he did look balefully at Gail. She was buried in her writing. “Do you think this is a good idea?” she had asked, distressed. He thought of Donnie Matthews.

His pipe had gone out. He held a match to it, his hand slightly trembling, then said: “Well, so much for the ‘what’ component in every moral decision.” He looked up from his cards. The soft, pale white Jewish woman whose name he did not know was also accessible. His penis was as hard as a petrified tree. “It comes down to simply this: if we don’t get reality right, if we misunderstand the case we’re examining, all we say will be poppycock.” He looked at his watch. Thirty minutes to go, then a fifteen-minute break. Could the watch be broken?

“Let’s turn to the ‘why’ and ‘how,’ that is, ends and means.” He was skipping cards now. He had several more on the ‘what’ component. He chattered as he hunted. “Take government, for instance. Every government is basically intended … Every government is basically intended to promote the common good, but the preservation of the government—as you all know, as loyal Americans”—he looked up for a second and smiled—“giving your money to support the I.R.S., the F.B.I., the C.I.A.—as you all know, the preservation of the government can easily come to seem more important than the common good it was designed to insure. If you look at history, you’ll find this is a pattern, not an exception.” Now he’d found his card. “Or take jobs. A job is a means to survival and, hopefully, personal fulfillment. But we all know how a job can become a man’s life. Think of the popular term ‘workaholic’ ” He turned the card. “Or take wealth. Wealth is obviously nothing but a means to happiness and well-being. But when wealth becomes an end, as it often does, people under its sway will sacrifice both happiness and well-being—even life itself—for money.” Impatiently, looking at his watch again, he turned to another card.

“Or take armaments. The avowed purpose of armaments is always to bring security and power.” He almost flipped this card too, then changed his mind. “Tsar Nicholas the Second of Russia in his proposal for the first Hague Conference in 1899 spotted the fatal flaw in equating arms and safety: ‘In proportion as the armaments of each power increase, so do they less and less fulfill the objects which the Governments have set before themselves. … It appears evident that if this state of things were prolonged, it would inevitably lead to the very cataclysm which it is designed to avert, and the horrors of which make every thinking man shudder in advance.’ Think about that,” Mickelsson said, looking up, “in relation to our present situation—sixteen tons of T.N.T.—atomic equivalent—for every man, woman, and child in the world!” For reasons not instantly clear to him, tears sprang to his eyes. “Think about it,” he said, catching himself, forcing himself to smile. “If we were true philosophers we might well be terrorists, trying to bring down the nukes.”

His son, in the photograph, stood eerily alone, framed by the two SWAT men bending to lift the girl. His hair, flying wildly in all directions under the top-hat, and his eyes, aloof and shadowy—his chin slightly raised, like that of a nineteenth-century prince posing for a painting—gave him a mad look, or rather, to be precise, the look of some good man profoundly wronged by people who could not know better, forgiving his persecutors and waiting, with a still and terrible rage, for his meeting with God.

“The question ‘who,’ ” Mickelsson said, “enters into the calculus of ethics to make us address the following realities: What is right for one person may be wrong for another. What is right for a person now may be wrong for the same person at another time. Some persons are, in ethical calculations, worth more than others. …”

He remembered his ex-wife’s sobbing on the telephone, his own senseless cruelty to The Comedian.

Then suddenly he felt nothing. As if from a distance, he heard his voice droning, changing now and then to a different drone, for emphasis, or irony, or to present a seemingly spontaneous example. He listened to himself like a man judging the performance of a colleague, then let his mind wander. He saw again the wary look on Mark’s face, the look one might give to an injured boa-constrictor. The other Mickelsson talked on, paused for questions, told a joke. He forgot to give the mid-period break.