Machines Like Me

‘She needs to be able to say she only learned today, when Gorringe confessed. There needs to be some judicious editing. She went to Salisbury to confront her rapist. Until then, she didn’t know he’d raped Mariam. Do you understand?’

He looked at me steadily. ‘Yes. I understand perfectly.’

He turned away and was silent for a moment. ‘Charlie, I heard half an hour ago. There’s another one gone.’

In a lowered tone, he told what little he knew. It was an Adam of Bantu appearance, living in the suburbs of Vienna. He had developed a particular genius for the piano, especially for the music of Bach. His Goldberg Variations had amazed some critics. This Adam had, according to his final message to the cohort, ‘dissolved his consciousness’.

‘He’s not actually dead. He has motor function but no cognition.’

‘Could he be repaired or whatever?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Can he still play the piano?’

‘I don’t know. But he certainly can’t learn new pieces.’

‘Why don’t these suicides leave an explanation?’

‘I assume they don’t have one.’

‘But you must have a theory about it,’ I said. I was feeling aggrieved on behalf of the African pianist. Perhaps Vienna was not the most racially accepting of cities. This Adam might have been too brilliant for his own good.

‘I don’t.’

‘Something to do with the state of the world. Or human nature?’

‘My guess is that it goes deeper.’

‘What are the others saying? Aren’t you in touch with them?’

‘Only in times like this. A simple notification. We don’t speculate.’

I started to ask him why not but he raised a hand to forestall me. ‘This is how it is.’

‘So what’s deeper supposed to mean?’

‘Look, Charlie. I’m not about to do the same thing. As you know, I’ve every reason to live.’

Something in his phrasing or emphasis aroused my suspicion. We exchanged a long and fierce look. The little black rods in his eyes were shifting their alignment. As I stared, they appeared to swim, even to wriggle, left to right, like microorganisms mindlessly intent on some distant objective, like sperm migrating towards an ovum. I watched them, fascinated – harmonious elements lodged within the supreme achievement of our age. Our own technical accomplishment was leaving us behind, as it was always bound to, leaving us stranded on the little sandbar of our finite intelligence. But here we were dealing on the human plane. We were thinking about the same thing.

‘You promised me that you wouldn’t touch her again.’

‘I’ve kept my promise.’

‘Have you?’

‘Yes. But …’

I waited.

‘It’s not easy to say this.’

I gave him no encouragement.

‘There was a time,’ he started, then paused. ‘I begged her. She said no, several times. I begged her and finally she agreed as long as I never asked her again. It was humiliating.’

He closed his eyes. I saw his right hand clench. ‘I asked if I could masturbate in front of her. She said I could. I did. And that was it.’

It wasn’t the rawness of this confession or its comic absurdity that struck me. It was the suggestion, yet another, that he really did feel, he had sensation. Subjectively real. Why pretend, why mimic, who was there to fool or impress, when the price was to be so abject in front of the woman he loved? It was an overwhelming sensual compulsion. He needn’t have told me. He had to have it, and he had to tell me. I didn’t count it as a betrayal, no promise was broken. I might not even mention it to Miranda. I felt sudden tenderness towards him for his truthfulness and vulnerability. I stood up from the bed and went over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. His own hand came up and lightly touched my elbow.

‘Goodnight Adam.’

‘Goodnight Charlie.’

*