Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem Page A

stead. This sense of special purpose motivated Perkus to accomplish extraordinary things but also made him lonely, and defiantly angry. Strabo surprised Perkus by finding nothing shameful in this: Perkus evidently made use of productive fear and rage. Each insight Strabo offered as if describing the workings of a car, some fine-tuned Porsche or Jaguar, to its interested owner. There was no air of metaphysics. Strabo went on to explain that Perkus’s constitution was strong. If it wasn’t he wouldn’t have made it even this far, nor accomplished what he had. The suggestion being that this Porsche’s owner had brought his car limping into the garage just barely in time. Strabo’s intuition of Perkus’s special accomplishments and challenges allowed Perkus to feel them himself as though for the first time. What burdens he carried! That Perkus couldn’t go on as he had been was simply manifest and true.
    Strabo Blandiana paused now, as if catching himself too much showing off what one glance had collected from the subject before him. He might be about to turn to the question of treatment, whatever that consisted of. Perkus was at this point only dazzled. Then Strabo again turned that gaze of total discernment in Perkus’s direction. “You understand,” Strabo said, as if incidentally, “that beneath your anger is really mourning. But you feel you can’t afford to mourn.”
    “Mourn who?” said Perkus, feeling a breath disappear, so he had to gulp to replace it. The description seemed to tip him headfirstinto self-understanding, as if from a high diving board. But he hadn’t hit the water yet.
    Strabo shook his head, refusing the obvious. “Before your parents were taken from you, the loss you felt was already real.” Yes, Perkus’s parents had both died, but how did Strabo know this? Or was this one of those specious bold guesses with which a charlatan secured your confidence? Perkus’s suspicions were aroused, but they were overrun by his hunger to understand what Strabo was on about. What loss?
    “You mourn a loss suffered by the world. Something in living memory, but not adequately remembered. You see it as your sole responsibility to commemorate this loss.”
    With this astonishing pronouncement, Strabo shifted efficiently and permanently to the practical effort of the Porsche’s maintenance. Was Perkus aware that he breathed only into his upper chest, never into his stomach? This distinction anyone would be likely to have noted a hundred times, but Strabo, with a guiding touch, made Perkus feel the difference. Perkus then tried to reopen the conversation, but Strabo, with a shrug, conveyed the sense that their talk had been conclusive. He deferred to Perkus’s expertise. “You know what you need to do to continue your work, I can’t teach you anything about that. Let’s just get you balanced, and then we’ll discuss strategies for leaving aside the useless pain. When you were younger you could carry more, but it isn’t efficient or necessary now. Please undress and lie under the sheet, I’ll return momentarily.”
    To reject anything now was out of the question. Perkus made himself ready, folding his suit neatly on a chair back. Strabo returned and got to business. Acupuncture needles didn’t look as Perkus had imagined them, but then he’d never bothered to imagine anything other than a sewing needle. Thin as threads, each with a tiny flag at their end, they entered his body at various points, neckand wrists and shoulders, painlessly. Only a hint of tightness, a feeling he shouldn’t move suddenly, confirmed Strabo had used them at all. Then Strabo lowered the lights and switched on some music, long atmospheric tones that might have been vaguely Eastern. “To someone like you this CD may sound a bit corny,” he said, surprising Perkus. “But it’s specially formulated, there are tones underneath the music that are engaging directly with your limbic system. It works even if you don’t like