Burial of the Dead

SERENITY - III.

III.

Levon enters Dr. Ley’s office with the long glass walls and mirrors, so empty, sharp and clean, devoted to function, a place for thinking about thinking, for parsing dreams, naming symbols, shaving feelings, a cold place, arrogant with expertise and the curse of new beginnings.

Dr. Ley moves behind the glass top desk, peripatetic, pacing from one side of the office to the other, from glass wall to mirror and back, hovering at times, then moving again. He says to Levon: “Your equation is wrong.” He says that success is not immoral, that it’s a measure of how well certain tasks are performed in accord with certain rules to obtain a certain result. He tells Levon that his mistake has been to drape the whole process with a self-indulgent concern for morality, which “is like pouring molasses over the inner workings of a watch.”

Levon says nothing.

Dr. Ley says: “You’ve been injected with a strain of religion, endemic to America, a catechism that means nothing of what it says, except to require absolute obedience – a catechism that extols poverty in return for promissory notes that never come due. You’ve been fooled, Matthew, or Levon, or whatever you call yourself. You’ve been sold a bill of goods, and your father never took you aside to let you in on the secret, which is to be polite but not to take it all so seriously. There’s a lot of wiggle room in the Baltimore Catechism.”

The phone rings. Dr. Ley crosses the room and picks it up. Levon listens as Dr. Ley tells someone to purchase a thousand puts as per the information in the morning’s fax. He hangs up the phone. Levon notes the absence of small talk.

“You’re depressed,” Dr. Ley says, “I assume that’s why you’re here. Alcohol or whatever has been your medication. No surprise there. Society approved of it till late mid-century when all those drunk drivers ruined it for the rest of us. Now they’d prefer you watch more TV, live vicariously, virtually, sell your soul to some sports team. Dress up like a fool on Sundays. Cheer for something that won’t harm the state, which of course is not the state.”

Levon thinks about the Yankees and the Red Sox. He’s seen photos of men dressed like dogs in Cleveland, like pigs in D.C.

“You’re depressed because you feel the world’s treated you badly, and your brother’s paying me a fortune so I can tell you it’s all true and commiserate with you and say the world is unfair, which I would do if I were a quack and intended to drop you back into the world as fucked up as the day you got here. Because the inescapable fact that most wounded people can’t seem to accept is that the world isn’t unfair, Matthew. It just is - like nature, like the weather, like the ocean. It doesn’t care about you one way or the other.” And he tells Levon that although he’d been well-trained in certain bookish pursuits, he’d been hamstrung with notions of good and evil, ethics and law, of choice and consequence, of punishment, exile and separation.

“What are laws?” The doctor asks. “A call to honor? Hardly. It’s the minimum. You can fuck a million people a million ways and never come close to breaking any law. And what about ethics? A lot of pretty thoughts cast in the subjunctive mode without consequence: You should do this; you should do that – or else. Or else what? Or else nothing, except maybe a book deal and an hour with Barbara Walters. And as for good and evil? Really. It’s a medieval concept employed to keep people paying, quiet and dumb. Why do you think the Church stands at the right hand of royalty? Because if the minister can scare the shit out of the congregation on Sunday, they’re less likely to toss the King out on his ass on Monday. In the end the Church is little more than a State’s cost effective police force.

“So, were you fucked? Absolutely, but not in the way you think. You were fucked because you were sent on a bear hunt with one bow and no arrows in your quiver, while your competition carried AK-47’s, a map, a compass and a bottle of bear smell.”

Levon looks out the window. Across a narrow bridge over a creek that runs to the lake, past a fountain and a stone garden, Molly carries crates of milk cartons to the storage area. Stella sits on the deck overlooking the lake, swatting flies, talking to Marta, Dr. Ley’s blonde wife, who rubs her young legs with tanning lotion.

After awhile Levon looks at the doctor who’s moved on to some other matter on his blackberry.

“So, that’s it?” Levon asks.

“That’s it, Matthew.”

“Thanks,” Levon says, and he leaves Dr. Ley’s little Bauhuas.