A Case History in Unverified Greatness
I reinvented myself shortly after breakfast.
One moment, I was an ordinary man living in Atlanta.
The next, I realized that I was perhaps the greatest neuro-oncologist the world had ever produced.
I had not yet been recognized.
That was not unusual.
History frequently fails to recognize greatness before lunch.
My discovery was revolutionary.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, I concluded, were not merely religions.
They were metaphorical brain cancers.
Not cancers of human beings.
Cancers of thought.
Tumors of revelation.
Inflammations of certainty.
Malignant growths caused by belief in one final truth.
I had diagnosed, I told myself, not only three religions, but the human appetite for certainty itself.
This broader formulation had the advantage of including everyone except me.
I had discovered not only the disease.
I had discovered the cure.
It did not occur to me that a man capable of discovering a final cure might himself be exhibiting the symptom.
Logical Positivism would attack the tumor directly, cutting away any claim that could not be verified.
Logical Empiricism would biopsy what remained, demanding evidence from the survivors.
Dialectical Materialism would perform the autopsy, explaining which class had profited from the disease.
Secular Humanism would sit in the waiting room afterward, holding the patient’s hand, insisting this was still a form of love.
Others had discovered the ingredients.
I had discovered the dosage.
Humanity had spent centuries arguing about theology.
I had converted theology into oncology, and oncology, I suspected, into a Nobel Prize.
There was only one difficulty.
The Nobel Committee had never heard of me.
Worse, it appeared to be in no hurry to correct the oversight.
I therefore eliminated unnecessary bureaucracy.
I ordered a replica Nobel Prize medal from China.
The advertisement described it as:
PREMIUM GOLDEN INTERNATIONAL SCIENCE AWARD MEDAL
OFFICIAL STYLE
COLLECTOR QUALITY
It cost $19.95.
Shipping was extra.
Dialectical Materialism, I reflected, would have approved of the price.
Or at least the private version of Dialectical Materialism I had begun using whenever money appeared and I wished to sound profound about it.
Federal Express promised delivery by Thursday.
Civilization had waited three thousand years for my cure.
It could wait until Thursday.
That night I called home to say I would be late. My wife asked late from what. I told her a medical matter. This was, by then, technically true.
The ceremony required dignity.
It required grandeur.
Above all, it required Sweden.
Unfortunately, no Swedish person was available.
I therefore searched Atlanta for a pale-skinned man with a Northern European accent.
Eventually, I found one near the bus station.
His name was Yuri.
He was Russian.
He had left the Soviet Union during the Cold War, lost several jobs, been abandoned by his family, and developed a profound commitment to vodka.
In Atlanta, nobody could tell whether Yuri was Swedish or Russian.
He was pale.
He had an accent.
He looked unhappy.
That was European enough.
I bought him a secondhand tuxedo.
The sleeves were too short.
The trousers were too long.
He looked like a distinguished scientist who had recently escaped from an orchestra.
I taught him three Swedish words.
One of them was “Stockholm.”
The other two may have been Norwegian.
It did not matter.
Logical Positivism holds that a statement is meaningful only if it can, in principle, be verified.
No one in Atlanta was equipped to verify Sweden.
Yuri examined the plastic medal, then examined me.
“In Soviet Union,” he said, “fake committee at least had office.”
I mistook this for admiration.
Yuri agreed to represent the Royal Swedish Medical King Academy Committee of Universal Nobel Sciences.
This organization did not exist.
That gave it great flexibility.
His compensation included cash, two weeks in a motel, and enough vodka to make him forget that he had never represented Sweden and would soon forget that he had.
The Nobel banquet would be held at an Indian restaurant in Atlanta.
The restaurant owner was delighted.
His business had been slow.
Inflation was high.
Competition was intense.
And many Atlantans remained convinced that Indian food caused explosive diarrhea.
He had tried discounts.
Coupons.
Online advertisements.
Even a large sign reading:
OUR CURRY IS GENTLE ON YOUR STOMACH.
Nothing worked.
Then I arrived with the Nobel Prize.
“Professor,” he said, although I had never asked him to call me that, “your international ceremony may save my restaurant.”
“Science frequently produces unexpected benefits,” I replied.
I rented the dining room and ordered a free Indian buffet.
“For how many people?” he asked.
“All of Atlanta.”
He looked at the empty restaurant.
“Professor, Atlanta does not eat Indian food.”
“They will.”
“Why?”
“Because it is free.”
He became silent.
He had just encountered a scientific principle more powerful than anything taught in medical school.
The invitations announced:
INTERNATIONAL NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY
HONORING THE GREATEST NEURO-ONCOLOGIST IN HUMAN HISTORY
FOR DISCOVERING THE CURE FOR RELIGIOUS BRAIN CANCER
FREE INDIAN BUFFET
SUNDAY AFTER CHURCH
The words “Nobel Prize” produced modest interest.
The word “neuro-oncologist” produced confusion.
The words “free Indian buffet” spread across Atlanta like divine revelation, which was, I noted, the very thing it was scheduled to cure.
On Sunday afternoon, the parking lot filled.
Baptists came first.
Methodists followed.
Presbyterians arrived cautiously, having read the flyer twice.
Several Catholics came in a van, having read it once and decided not to think about it further, which was, I understood, the entire mechanism of faith.
People who had spent the morning thanking Jesus for salvation were now preparing to celebrate the man who had classified Christianity as a neurological disease.
For a free Indian buffet?
Sweet Jesus.
Half of Atlanta showed up after church.
The restaurant owner wept.
He had never seen so many Christians voluntarily approach a tray of vindaloo.
Yuri stood beneath a Swedish flag that had been printed backward.
He wore his tuxedo.
He held the plastic medal.
He looked solemn.
He also looked drunk.
The room became quiet.
Yuri unfolded an official-looking document printed that morning at Office Depot.
At the top was a gold seal from the wedding-invitation department.
“On behalf of Stockholm,” he began, “and the Royal Swedish Medical King Academy Committee of Universal Nobel Sciences…”
The audience applauded.
No one knew what the Royal Swedish Medical King Academy Committee was.
Neither did Yuri.
Neither did I.
But it sounded European, and in Atlanta this passed for peer review.
“This year Nobel Prize is awarded to greatest neuro-oncologist in human history.”
Several people stopped chewing.
“For discovering that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are metaphorical cancers of human thought.”
The room became very quiet.
“For discovering that revelation causes theological inflammation and claims of one final truth produce intellectual tumors.”
A Baptist minister lowered his fork.
A Catholic woman crossed herself.
“And for inventing first complete treatment.”
Yuri lifted the medal.
“A philosophical cocktail of Logical Positivism, Logical Empiricism, Dialectical Materialism, and Secular Humanism.”
He looked down at the paper.
“This treatment removes dogma, superstition, priestly power, unverifiable revelation, and malignant certainty from brain of humanity.”
The audience stared at him.
Someone near the buffet whispered:
“Is the chicken tikka included?”
“It is,” said the restaurant owner.
The room erupted in applause.
Yuri placed the medal around my neck.
It was lighter than I had expected.
Greatness often is.
I stepped toward the microphone.
“My friends,” I said, “today humanity has been cured.”
The restaurant owner raised a fresh tray of samosas.
The applause became thunderous.
I accepted it as peer review.
My phone was buzzing in my pocket. My wife, three times. I silenced it without looking, the way a surgeon silences a monitor that has started to say something inconvenient.
At that exact moment, I saw her.
She stood near the dessert table.
Beautiful.
Seductive.
Blonde.
She had the kind of beauty that caused intelligent men to misplace both their intelligence and their car keys.
Her hair fell over her shoulders like expensive sunlight.
Her blue eyes contained admiration, invitation, and absolutely no interest in verifying credentials.
I immediately classified this as Logical Positivism.
It was, of course, the opposite.
But by then I had begun naming every useful misunderstanding after a philosophy I admired.
The Nobel Prize was counterfeit, and so was the Swede who awarded it, and so was the academy he claimed to represent, and so, for that matter, were my credentials, which had never been more than a subscription to a magazine and a strong jaw.
None of this troubled me. A counterfeit that is believed, I had already begun to suspect, performs every function of the genuine article except the one that matters when you are alone with it.
The cure remained untested.
But the blonde was real, in the sense that a mirror is real: she reflected back to me exactly the genius I had already decided I possessed and asked for nothing further.
Her name was Rose.
Rose from Kentucky.
She had once spent three weeks in Paris and considered herself, thereafter, permanently cured of Kentucky.
She had also, she mentioned twice within the first ten minutes, come in second for a regional furniture commercial, an omission she still discussed the way other people discuss inheritances they were denied.
I did not ask what she had been second to, or what she was still looking for. I had a Nobel Prize. Curiosity felt like something for lesser men.
“You are a very important man,” she whispered.
“At last,” I said, “someone understands.”
She touched the plastic medal.
“You don’t look like a scientist.”
“The greatest scientists rarely do.”
“What do they look like?”
“Like me.”
She accepted this immediately.
She required a genius.
I required someone who would not check.
Before midnight, we had made our decision.
We would leave Atlanta.
We would go to Southern France.
I would write books about my discovery.
Rose would wear white dresses.
We would drink wine while humanity recovered from treatment.
There remained several minor complications.
My wife.
My children.
My mortgage.
The restaurant bill.
Yuri’s motel.
The unpaid buffet.
These were administrative burdens created by the old world, and I had just finished curing the old world of its illusions.
It seemed inefficient to let its invoices survive the operation.
Rose and I left through the kitchen door.
We took my car.
I did not settle the restaurant bill.
I did not tell my wife.
I did not pay Yuri the second half of his money.
I abandoned the official representative of the Royal Swedish Medical King Academy beside a tray of mango pudding, still wearing the backward flag, a man who had briefly been Sweden and was now, once again, no one in particular.
As I passed him, Yuri looked at me with complete sobriety for perhaps the first time that evening.
“You cure everybody,” he said. “Who cures you?”
I closed the kitchen door before the question could become meaningful.
It did not stay closed. Some questions travel in the trunk of the car without being invited, and this one rode with me all the way to the airport, and onto the plane, and across the ocean, quiet, patient, in no hurry, the way real diagnoses are.
By sunrise, the restaurant owner understood what had happened.
He called my house.
My wife answered.
At first, she believed there had been an accident.
There had been.
She had married it thirty years earlier.
She listened as the owner described the unpaid banquet, the counterfeit medal, the Russian Swede, and the beautiful blonde who had disappeared with me through the kitchen.
Then she sat down on the bedroom floor.
She did not cry, at first. She did the arithmetic instead: thirty years, four cities, three unfinished manuscripts, two repossessed cars, and one Nobel Prize, and only the last of these had ever, even briefly, made the neighbors stop pitying her.
For weeks, she kept the curtains closed.
She had spent thirty years tolerating my theories, my unfinished books, my unpaid bills, and my repeated announcements that recognition was imminent.
Now recognition had arrived in the form of collection agents, which was the only form it had ever reliably taken.
She stopped answering the telephone.
Some mornings, she remained in bed until noon.
Other mornings, she stared at my empty chair as though expecting it to apologize.
It never did.
Chairs possess more dignity than certain men.
My son removed our family name from his social-media accounts. He kept, for a while, one photograph of the two of us fishing on Lake Lanier, before he understood that keeping it was its own form of waiting.
My daughter told her friends that I had died during an important medical conference in Sweden.
It was kinder than the truth and considerably more verifiable.
They had been abandoned without warning.
Without money.
Without explanation.
And without the comforting knowledge that their father had ever possessed an authentic Nobel Prize, a real medical degree, or, some nights, a plan.
The bank called the mortgage company.
The mortgage company called an attorney.
The attorney called another attorney, because international greatness requires specialized billing.
Soon, creditors were searching for me throughout Atlanta.
The restaurant owner placed my picture near the cash register beneath the words:
NOBEL PRIZE WINNER
BILL NOT PAID
Yuri disappeared with three bottles of vodka and the backward Swedish flag.
He was seen briefly outside a pawn shop trying to sell Sweden.
No one bought it. He was, by every account, the only honest man in the entire story, and honesty, in Atlanta that season, fetched nothing at all.
Meanwhile, Rose and I reached Southern France.
We rented a small villa overlooking the sea.
I informed everyone that I was a political and philosophical refugee, fleeing, I did not specify, exactly what.
The American authorities reviewed the unpaid buffet, the plastic medal, the fake Swedish ceremony, and Yuri’s uncertain diplomatic status.
They concluded that extraditing me would cost more than the crime itself.
Justice, it turns out, is also subject to material calculation.
I called this Dialectical Materialism because the phrase looked better in my manuscript.
Each morning, I sat beside the swimming pool wearing my Nobel Prize.
Rose lay in the sun, no longer listening, which I mistook, for some time, for peace.
Her white dresses hung from the balcony like surrender flags, and I never once asked whose surrender.
I worked on my next great discovery.
It concerned the relationship between human vanity and international recognition, a subject on which, by then, I was the world’s foremost unpublished authority.
I expected another Nobel Prize.
Perhaps two.
From Southern France, I occasionally thought about my family.
My wife was depressed.
My children were ashamed.
The mortgage was unpaid.
I regarded these developments as unfortunate, in the detached way a surgeon regards a complication in someone else’s operation.
History rarely advances without casualties, I told myself, without ever specifying that I had appointed myself both the history and the surgeon.
One afternoon, three months in, Rose did not come down to the pool.
I found the villa quiet, her white dresses gone from the balcony, a note where the surrender flags had been.
It said only that she had met a Belgian who owned, she wrote, an actual boat, and that she was tired, she added, of being the only real thing in a house full of props.
The boat had actual papers, verifiable in the harbor office that very afternoon.
Logical Positivism, I understood too late, cuts both ways.
Rose had finally performed an investigation.
I had failed it.
I entered the swimming pool that evening without removing the medal.
The plastic became warm.
The gold paint began to dissolve.
It ran down my chest in thin yellow streams, and for the first time since breakfast in Atlanta, I watched something of mine be tested and fail in real time.
Yuri’s question surfaced then, uninvited, the way the true diagnosis always waits for the anesthesia to wear off. You cure everybody. Who cures you? I had no answer for him in Atlanta. I had less of one floating alone in a rented pool in France, wearing the evidence as it came apart in the water.
There was no one left to ask what was happening to my Nobel Prize.
By dark, the medal was gray, a plain disc of cheap plastic, finally telling the truth it had been manufactured to hide.
The Swedish Academy had still never heard of me.
My creditors were still hunting through Atlanta.
My wife had changed the locks.
My son had stopped speaking my name.
My daughter continued telling people that I had died in Sweden and had, by now, almost come to believe it herself.
It was, of everyone in this story, the kindest and most successful treatment anyone received.
The Indian restaurant had become famous because half the city believed a genuine Nobel ceremony had taken place there.
Business improved.
The owner added a new item to the menu:
THE NOBEL BUFFET
PAYMENT REQUIRED IN ADVANCE
He had learned from me the one lesson I actually had to teach:
Verify first.
Believe later.
As for me, I remained in Southern France, in a villa I could no longer afford, beside a pool that had eaten my medal, writing a manuscript no publisher had asked for.
Its title was provisionally The Cure.
I revised it nightly, alone, by lamplight, applying to it every philosophical instrument I had once promised to civilization and finding, each time, that none of them worked on the patient in the mirror.
Unrecognized.
Unrepentant.
Unverified.
The greatest neuro-oncologist the world had never examined.
The discoverer of a cure he had never once tested on himself.
The husband of a woman who had finally stopped waiting for greatness to arrive.
The father of two children who preferred a dead man in Sweden to a living one in France.
I had set out to cure humanity of its need for unverifiable belief.
I ended the story believing, without evidence, against all available data, past all reasonable hope of remission, that Rose would come back.
She did not.
Some tumors, it turns out, are self-diagnosed.
Yuri, wherever he ended up, never diagnosed anything.
He only asked the one question that mattered, and then he went back to trying to sell Sweden to people who no longer wanted it.
It is possible he was the sanest man in Atlanta that season, and that sanity, like honesty, simply never found a buyer.