April 11. Our project is coming to a close- unsuccessfully, I am sorry to say. Funding has been cut off, our foundation board having decided that the remaining money might be more profitably spent on some joy-buzzers. After I received the news of our termination, I had to have fresh air to clear my head, and as I walked alone at night by the Charles River I couldn't help reflecting on the limits of science. Perhaps people are meant to choke now and then when they eat. Perhaps it is all part of some unfathomable cosmic design. Are we so conceited as to think research and science can control everything? A man swallows too large a bite of steak, and gags. What could be simpler? What more proof is needed of the exquisite harmony of the universe? We will never know all the answers.

April 20. Yesterday afternoon was our last day, and I chanced upon Shulamith in the Commissary, where she was glancing over a monograph on the new herpes vaccine and gobbling a matjes herring to tide her over till dinnertime. I approached stealthily from the rear and, seeking to surprise her, quietly placed my arms around her, experiencing at that moment the bliss that only a lover feels. Instantly she began choking, a portion of herring having lodged suddenly in her gullet. My arms were still around her, and, as fate would have it, my hands were clasped just under her sternum. Something-call it blind instinct, call it scientific luck-made me form a fist and snap it back against her chest. In a trice, the herring became disengaged, and a moment later the lovely woman was as good as new. When I told Wolfsheim about this, he said, "Yes, of course. It works with herring, but will it work with ferrous metals?"

I don't know what he meant and I don't care. The project is ended, and while it is perhaps true that we have failed, others will follow in our footsteps and, building upon our crude preliminary work, will at last succeed. Indeed, all of us here can foresee the day when our children, or certainly our grandchildren, will live in a world where no individual, regardless of race, creed, or color, will ever be fatally overcome by his own main course. To end on a personal note, Shulamith and I are going to marry, and until the economy begins to brighten a little she and Wolfsheim and I have decided to provide a much-needed service and open up a really first-class tattoo parlor.

The Shallowest Man

Sitting around the delicatessen, discussing shallow people we had known, Koppelman brought up the name of Lenny Mendel. Koppelman said Mendel was positively the shallowest human he'd ever come across, bar none, and then proceeded to relate the following story.

For years there was a weekly poker game amongst roughly the same personnel. It was a small stakes game played for fun and relaxation at a rented hotel room. The men bet and bluffed, ate and drank, and talked of sex and sports and business. After a while (and no one could pinpoint the exact week) the players began to notice that one of them, Meyer Iskowitz, was not looking too well. When they commented on it, Iskowitz pooh-poohed the whole thing.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," he said. "Whose bet?" But as a few months passed he grew progressively worse looking and when he didn't show up to play one week the message was that he had checked into the hospital with hepatitis. Everyone sensed the ominous truth and so it was not a complete surprise three weeks later when Sol Katz phoned Lenny Mendel at the TV show where he worked and said, "Poor Meyer has cancer. The lymph nodes. A bad kind. It's already spread over his body. He's up at Sloan-Kettering."

"How horrible," Mendel said, shaken and suddenly depressed as he sipped weakly from his malted on the other end of the phone.

"Sol and I went to see him today. Poor guy has no family. And he looks awful. He was always robust too. Oy, what a world. Anyhow, it's Sloan-Kettering. 1275 York and visiting hours are twelve to eight."

Katz hung up, leaving Lenny Mendel in a gloomy mood. Mendel was forty-four and healthy as far as he knew. (Suddenly he was qualifying his self-assessment so as not to jinx himself.) He was only six years younger than Iskowitz and though the two were not terribly close they had shared many laughs over cards once a week for five years. The poor man, Mendel thought. I guess I should send some flowers. He instructed Dorothy, one of the secretaries at NBC, to call the florist and handle the details. The news of Iskowitz's imminent death weighed heavily over Mendel that afternoon, but what was beginning to gnaw at him and unnerve him even more was the unshakable realization that he would be expected to visit his poker crony.

What an unpleasant chore, Mendel thought, He felt guilty over his desire to avoid the whole business and yet he dreaded seeing Iskowitz under these circumstances. Of course Mendel understood that all men die and even took some comfort from a paragraph he had once come across in a book that said death is not in opposition to life but a natural part of it; yet when he actually focused on the fact of his own eternal annihilation it caused him to feel limitless panic. He was not religious and not a hero and not a stoic, and during the course of his day-to-day existence he didn't want to know from funerals or hospitals or terminal wards. If a hearse went by in the street the image might stay with him for hours. Now he pictured Meyer Iskowitz's wasted figure in front of him and himself awkwardly trying to make jokes or conversation. How he hated hospitals with their functional tile and institutional lighting. All that hush-hush, quiet atmosphere. And always too warm. Suffocating. And the lunch trays and the bedpans and the elderly and lame shuffling in white gowns through the halls, the heavy air saturated with exotic germs. And what if all the speculation of cancer being a virus is true? I should be in the same room as Meyer Iskowitz? Who knows if it's catching? Let's face it. What the hell do they know about this awful disease? Nothing. So one day they'll find that one of its admittedly myriad forms is transmitted by Iskowitz coughing on me. Or clasping my hand to his chest. The thought of Iskowitz expiring before his eyes horrified him. He saw his once hearty, now emaciated acquaintance (suddenly he was an acquaintance, not actually a friend) gasping a last breath and reaching out to Mendel saying, "Don't let me go-don't let me go!" Jesus, Mendel thought as his forehead beaded up with sweat. I don't relish visiting Meyer. And why the hell must I? We were never close. For God's sake, I saw the man once a week. Strictly for cards. We rarely exchanged more than a few words. He was a poker hand. In five years we never saw one another outside the hotel room. Now he's dying, and suddenly it's incumbent upon me to pay a visit. All of a sudden we're buddies. Intimate yet. I mean, for God's sake, he was tighter with every other person in that game. If anything, I was least close to him. Let them visit him. After all, how much traffic does a sick man need? Hell, he's dying. He wants quiet, not a parade of empty well-wishers. Anyhow I can't go today because there's a dress rehearsal. What do they think I am, a man of leisure? I've just been made associate producer. I got a million things on my mind. And the next few days are out too because it's the Christmas show and it's a madhouse here. So I'll do it next week. What's the big deal? The end of next week. Who knows? Will he even live till the end of next week? Well if he does I'll be there and if not, what the hell's the difference? If that's a hard line, well, then life's hard. Meanwhile the opening monologue on the show needs punching up. Topical humor. The show needs more topical humor. Not so many brand-name jokes.

Using one rationale or another, Lenny Mendel avoided visiting Meyer Iskowitz for two-and-a-half weeks. When his obligation rose more strongly to mind he felt very guilty and worse even yet when he caught himself half hoping that he would receive the news that it was over and Iskowitz had died, thereby getting him off the hook. It's a sure thing anyhow, he reasoned, so why not right away? Why should the man linger and suffer? I mean I know it sounds heartless, he thought to himself, and I know I'm weak, but some people can handle these things better than others. Visits to the dying that is. It's depressing. And like I don't have enough on my mind.