Flowers for Algernon

The restaurant grew silent. I cursed myself for losing control and creating a scene, and I tried not to look at the boy as I paid my check and walked out without touching my food. I felt ashamed for both of us. How strange it is that people of honest feelings and 138 sibility, who would not take advantage of a man born ensi without arms or legs or eyes-how such people think nothing of abusing a man born with low intelligence. It infuriated me to remember that not too long ago I-like this boy had foolishly played the clown. And I had almost forgotten.

Only a short time ago, I learned that people laughed at me. Now I can see that unknowingly I joined them in laughing at myself. That hurts most of all. I have often reread my early progress reports and seen the illiteracy, the childish naivet6, the mind of low intelligence peering from a dark room, through the keyhole, at the dazzling light outside. In my dreams and memories I’ve seen Charlie smiling happily and uncertainly at what people around him were saying. Even in my dullness I knew I was inferior. Other people had something I lacked-something denied me. In my mental blindness, I had believed it was somehow connected with the ability to read and write, and I was sure that if I could get those skills I would have intelligence too. Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men. A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger.

This day was good for me. I’ve got to stop this childish worrying about myself-my past and my future. Let me give something of myself to others. I’ve got to use my knowledge and skills to work in the field of increasing human intelligence. Who is better equipped? Who else has lived in both worlds? Tomorrow, I’m going to get in touch with the board of directors at the Welberg Foundation and ask for permission to do some independent work on the project. If they’ll let me, I may be able to help them. I have some ideas. There is so much that can be done with this technique, if it is perfected. If I could be made into a genius, what about the more than five million mentally retarded in the United States? What about the countless millions all over the world, and those yet unborn destined to be retarded? What fantastic levels might be achieved by using this technique on normal people. On geniuses?

There are so many doors to open I am impatient to apply my own knowledge and skills to the problem. I’ve 139 got to make them all see that this is something important for me to do. I’m sure the Foundation will grant me permission. But I can’t be alone any more. I have to tell Alice about it.

June 25 I called Alice today. I was nervous, and I must have sounded incoherent, but it was good to hear her voice, and she sounded happy to hear from me. She agreed to see me, and I took a taxi uptown, impatient at the slowness with which we moved.

Before I could knock, she opened the door and threw her arms around me. “Charlie, we’ve been so worried about you. I had horrible visions of you dead in an alleyway, or wandering around skid row with amnesia. Why didn’t you let us know you were all right? You could have done that.”

“Don’t scold me. I had to be alone for a while to find some answers.”

“Come in the kitchen. I’ll make some coffee. What have you been doing?”

“Days-I’ve been thinking, reading, and writing; and nights-wandering in search of myself. And I’ve discovered that Charlie is watching me.”

“Don’t talk like that,” she shuddered. “This business about being watched isn’t real. You’ve built it up in your mind.”

“I can’t help feeling that I’m not me. I’ve usurped his place and locked him out the way they locked me out of the bakery. What I mean to say is that Charlie Gordon exists in the past, and the past is real. You can’t put up a new building on a site until you destroy the old one, and the old Charlie can’t be destroyed. He exists. At first I was searching for him: I went to see his-my-father. All I wanted to do was prove that Charlie existed as a person in the past, so that I could justify my own existence. I was insulted when Nemur said he created me. But I’ve discovered that not only did Charlie exist in the past, he exists now. In me and around me. He’s been coming between us all along. I thought my intelligence created the barrier-my pompous, foolish pride, the feeling we had nothing in common because I had gone beyond you .140 You put that idea into my head. But that’s not it. It’s Charlie, the little boy who’s afraid of women because of things his mother did to him. Don’t you see? All these months while I’ve been growing up intellectually, I’ve still had the emotional wiring of the childlike Charlie. And every time I came close to you, or thought about making love to you, there was a short circuit.”

I was excited, and my voice pounded at her until she began to quiver. Her face became flushed. “Charlie,” she whispered, “can’t I do anything? Can’t I help?”