21a. Eddie's Reassignment
Eddie, after 6 months at the 42nd Street Army Recruiting Center, where he got trained at one of the Army's earliest computing-machines, receives orders, reassigning. He gets promoted from PFC to corporal and adds a second stripe to his arm.
His time with Miss Pris comes to end when Eddie in Eisenhower jacket, his army duffle bag bulging full by the door, sits facing her across the table by the window.
Wiping her cheeks with a pink handkerchief, she tells him. "I am going to look after you when you leave me, in more than the cliche way, Mr Soldier." She gets up, goes to the bookcase-cupboard along the wall, slides open the glass and takes out a hand-size medicine bottle. She brings it back and he sees it is filled with very small round white pills.
"Each little pill contains one milligram Morphine Sulfate. Dr. Stan Pelc has been doing research with these. He finds they clarify thinking by removing the basic anxieties we all have about our lives. He directed the hospital pharmacy to make up these one-milligrams - you cannot get them outside - and Dr. Davidoff put me in charge of supply. There should be one thousand in this bottle. You use it like a person uses aspirin for headache, but not for headache. When you need a time to think, when you need to relax, try putting one under tongue. It tastes bitter but tolerably so. She pauses. "He knows I am giving you these pills. He would like you to keep a journal of your impressions using them. It is pathfinder research."
Eddie listens without reply. The idea of his being a pathfinder excites him. His experience with Pris reinforces his confidence in her words and he admires Stan from the seminars.
Stan is the model scientist Eddie's clarifying ambition is driving him towards becoming. He takes the bottle and puts it in his shoulder bag. He and Pris embrace briefly without kissing. She sits back down, looks out the window, and does not speak as he walks to the door, puts the duffle bag on his shoulder and leaves.
Croton-on-Hudson
The 20th Century Limited 30 minutes out of Grand Central slows. Minutes later, Eddie, shouldering his army bag, climbs onto the middle coach and shows his ticket to the dark-uniformed Negro porter.
Chicago's Union Station arrival will be next morning. Eddie does not waste money on Pullman sleepers; he buys coach seat for overnight train runs. His seat is on the right in the train, which will give a northern view during much of the run. He stows his bag on overhead rack and sits, falling into repose as the train jerks forward from its stop; and, then, moving more smoothly, gains speed. He sleeps.
He regains awareness of being on a moving train, opens eyes and sees a river out the window - Hudson River, he thinks. Later, the train makes a long curve to left and he guesses it is turning west for the straight run to Chicago. Shortly, his window starts showing a coast line along a shore. Lake Erie, he thinks. Then, feeling a little energetic, he reaches into his bag and takes out Fundamentals of Neuroscience that Leo Davidoff handed him as going-away gift after his months of helping the great Leo by proof-reading his soon-to-be-published Principles of Neurosurgery. Davidoff is hoping Eddie will decide for medical school after he finishes the Army.
In pulling out his book, the bottle of pills gets unintentionally dragged out. Well, why not try my first one and see, he thinks. He unscrews the cap, tilts the bottle, and a few of the small round pills - like small beads of candy - fall onto his open hand. He puts all but one pill back, screws the cap back on, and drops the bottle back into his bag. He opens his book to the chapter on how the mind tells time for the body, and, holding the little pill between right thumb and forefinger, places it in his mouth under tongue, thinking Here goes nothing from nothing.
Effect of 1 Milligram Morphine the First-Time
Eddie begins to read. As usual in reading for study he tries to pay it attention but finds mind wandering. Fleetingly, his mind touches the feelings of being on a moving train; the anxieties of living, the little discomfort in his chest last night? - Is it first sign of a terrible illness? -; the pleasure recall like his last sex with Pris - How good she feels inside!
The small pill dissolves under tongue, with mildly bitter taste he will come to recognize as morphine in mouth.
A minute passes and he thinks Is this all there is? He keeps on reading.
He is not timing so he cannot pinpoint when he starts feeling different.
The different is a disappearing of the outside stimuli. No intrusion of the moving train feelings; no more anxieties. A heightening of attention to what he is reading, each word, phrase, sentence. A sense of time almost standing still, like he has an unending future to read this one paragraph and get it in his brain.
Later, thinking back, he realizes he had lost his sense of time. And, minutes into his reading, he finds he is reading without the usual impatience. He is no longer thinking When is the damn chapter going to end?
At the end of the first section of the chapter - actually 2 pages on -, when he stops the reading, he glances at his wristwatch and is surprised - based on how the time's passage seemed in his mind. Only 5 minutes! he thinks. I could swear it was an hour!
The other effect is not something he has to think back on to recognize. First in ankles, knees, wrists, navel and groin, it is a faintly vibrating pleasure.
The reading finished, he closes the book and puts it on the empty seat on left, and settles back, eyes open as the window-view smoothly moves by, and he thinks What will I do for the rest of today? and How will I deal with the reassignment? After a bit he takes out his pocket notebook and scribbles his first observations.
For next click 14.(22-24) Eddie's Posting to Occupied Japan
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