The Link

by Richard Matheson

  “I had my private vengeance on this man!” says Dadashev, laughing, in the coffee house. “I scared him silly!”

  “Most commendable,” Teddie says. He looks at Ludmilla. “Translate,” he tells her.

  Later, in the limousine, Ludmilla speaks in defense of Dadashev.

  “He is, perhaps, the least bit self-aggrandized,” she begins.

  “How can you say that?” Teddie asks in a sympathetic tone.

  “I know you think he is,” says Ludmilla, reddening slightly. “But you must understand the strain under which this man lives. He must stay in training for his art with the same dedication as an athlete training for the Olympics. He exercises regularly to keep in good physical shape, paying particular attention to his abdominal and jaw muscles.”

  “The latter of which are very well developed indeed,” Teddie says.

  “That’s enough,” Peter warns him quietly.

  “Every day he rises early,” Ludmilla persists, “eats a light breakfast, then heads for the center of whatever city he may be staying in and seeks out the area where the crowds are thickest. There he spends hours picking up the thoughts of passersby. He practices intensely.”

  “Miss Viyakov,” says Peter. “We appreciate his dedication. Please understand. The views of Mr. Berger are his own.”

  She nods embarrassedly.

  “Further, we are more than happy with everything you have shown us.”

  Teddie starts to speak and Robert, knowing what he’s going to say, gives him a look to stop it.

  “I am sure you will be entertained by his performance tonight,” says Ludmilla.

  “Not me,” says Teddie. “One de Vries is enough.”

  Waiting outside the hotel that evening for Ludmilla and the limousine, the three discuss Teddie.

  “He’s going to ruin this entire trip,” Cathy says. “He’s getting worse all the time.”

  Robert tries to defend him by reminding them of his traumatic background in Nazi Germany.

  “Granted, old man,” Peter says. “But this isn’t Nazi Germany no matter what he thinks. These people are our hosts. We can’t just have him insulting them whenever he chooses.”

  Robert nods. “I know,” he says.

  Later; the theatre. Dadashev, in a neat dark suit, is having an audience member tie a blindfold over his eyes, then places a black hood over his head. A panel of five members from the audience observes.

  More volunteers are called on stage. Dadashev exhorts them to, “Think. Concentrate.” (Ludmilla whispers to them.) Dadashev holds his hands outstretched toward them as though attempting to pick up invisible thoughts.

  The audience watches in silence as the hooded psychic goes down the stage steps and up the aisle, his movements as certain as though he were not blindfolded and hooded.

  He stops and turns around slowly as though attempting to zero in on a mental signal.

  Then he moves abruptly up the aisle again and touches the shoulder of an elderly man, asks the man to return to the stage with him.

  The two return to the stage. Dadashev faces the volunteers again, saying impatiently, “Whoever has sent me this thought, I know I have not completed everything yet. Keep sending your commands.”

  After a few moments, with a quick decisive move, Dadashev reaches out and extracts a small notebook from the pocket of the elderly man. He flicks through the book and stops at a page near the end, hands the open book to one of the volunteers and turns to the audience, addressing them.

  “Our volunteer is the son of the elderly man I asked to come on stage with me,” he says. “He mentally commanded me to find his father, take his notebook and select a telephone number on a certain page. That number is on the third line of the page to which I opened the book.”

  The father and son are stunned, verifying what Dadashev says. The audience explodes with applause.

  “It could be a trick, I suppose,” Robert whispers to Peter.

  One of the panel steps forward and reads aloud a note given to him by the volunteer before Dadashev’s demonstration.

  “I gave my new telephone number to my father who is in the audience,” he reads (Ludmilla translating). “I want Dadashev to find him, bring him to the stage, take the notebook out of his pocket, open the notebook to the letter S and point to the number.”

  Dadashev raises his arms to still the thunder of renewed applause.

  “If he had only asked me to tell him the number itself, I would have done so!” he cries, laughing.

  Returning to the hotel, an enthusiastic Ludmilla tells them. “Tofik baffles everyone! He can even read the minds of people who do not speak Russian! I have seen this myself!”

  At the hotel, she bids them goodnight, telling them that in a day or two—allowing them time to tour Leningrad—they will move on to the next item on the agenda: D.O.P. She smiles at their blank expressions.

  “Dermo-optical perception,” she says.

  A tour of Leningrad reminds them that, during World War Two, the city withstood the assault of 43 German and 22 Finnish divisions—about a million men. 107,000 bombs were dropped on it, 240,000 shells fired into it. The city was battered by 12,000 cannons, 1,500 tanks, 1,200 aircraft.

  There was no electricity and no transportation during the entire assault. Water had to be drawn from rivers and canals.

  During the winter of 1941-42, 17,000 people were killed by bombs and shells, a million died of starvation.

  “It makes one wonder what our peoples would be like had they undergone such an ordeal,” Peter says.

  “You people did go through an ordeal,” Robert replies.

  Peter shakes his head. “Nothing like this,” he says.

  “Rosa Kulashova’s story is well known,” says a woman’s voice with a heavy Russian accent.

  We see what she speaks of.

  “She made headlines in the early and mid 1960’s when she was found to possess the ability to see with her hands.

  “Blind-folded, she could read newspaper headlines and, more slowly, even smaller type.

  “She could identify, by touch, the color of objects.

  “She could describe drawings and photographs either by touch or by sensing them with her fingers.

  “Even through metal plates.”

  The group is being escorted through the hallway of a government building by a Russian scientist, DR. LARISA VILENSKAYA. They are back in Moscow.

  “If it weren’t for Kuleshova, the research we are conducting now would be non-existent,” she tells them. “What she triggered was a scientific initiative of tremendous proportions involving hundreds of scientists and subjects in at least six Soviet cities.

  “Investigation of optical sensitivity of the human skin to record images both by direct contact and at a distance is the sum and substance of our work. We have found a link between the Kirlian effect and sight-by-touch in that the same radiation of bio-energy is involved.”

  They look back at the sound of Ludmilla’s soft giggle; she is talking with Teddie. She blushes and apologizes to Dr. Vilenskaya.

  Peter makes an obvious point of separating her from Teddie.

  “You understand,” Dr. Vilenskaya continues as they enter a testing room, “that this is only a minor center for DOP studies. The three main centers are unfortunately inaccessible to you because of the coincidence of their being military production areas.”

  Peter gives Teddie a quick glance to make sure he doesn’t say anything. Teddie only glowers at him.

  The demonstration they witness is an astounding one.

  Vasili Borisov is a totally blind man who lost his sight in a factory accident. Genady Girgoriev, a worker at the same plant, is near blind, her sight at one per cent of normal vision.

  Both demonstrate how they can see with their fingers and hands.

  The tests the group observe are in the nature of a “final exam”, Dr. Vilenskaya tells them.

  They are remarkable indeed.

  In the first test, one hundred sh
eets of colored paper are brought out. Different members of the examining committee pull out sheets at random and hand them to a laboratory assistant who places them in front of the two blind people. As a seemingly pointless extra precaution, Borisov wears black goggles and Girgoriev is blindfolded.

  They are each allowed to touch a different sheet briefly, then call out the colors which are red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, deep blue and purple as well as mixtures of these colors and the achromatic shades of black, white and gray.

  They pass the test with flying colors. Once when Borisov mistakes light blue for deep blue, he makes a disgusted sound for committing such a “silly” mistake.

  “A child would know better,” he grumbles.

  Intriguingly, each subject, in describing the colors, uses the word “see”. (“I see the color red.” “I see the color purple.”)

  At one point in the test, when Girgoriev is having difficulty with an orange sheet, she asks for a red sheet so she can “compare” the two.

  Dr. Vilenskaya signals to the lab assistant who hands Grigoriev a yellow sheet instead.

  The moment she touches it, Grigoriev frowns. “This is not red, this is yellow. Give me red.”

  Dr. Vilenskaya signals again and the lab assistant hands the blind woman a green sheet.

  “What are you doing?” Grigoriev demands angrily. “Why did you give me green?”

  The group watches, fascinated, as the blind woman is handed a red sheet and quickly identifies the other sheet as orange.

  “I might point out,” says Dr. Vileskaya, “that the color sheets are all of a different texture and have been colored with a variety of agents from water color to oil to colored ink to crayons—thus eliminating any possible tactile clue.”

  In the concluding test, the members of the examining board are also blindfolded—“to preclude any possibility of voluntary or involuntary mental suggestion,” Dr. Vilenskaya explains.

  Again, the subjects pass the test almost perfectly.

  Afterward, they talk to the two people, Ludmilla translating, and are told how the colors “feel”.

  “Red feels sticky, rough and heavy grained,” says Borisov. “Also warm. Yellow is smooth, soft, porous and ‘dusty’, you might say. Orange is the heaviest grained, also sticky but less so than red.”

  “And cooler than red,” Grigoriev breaks in. “But warmer than yellow.”

  “That is so,” agrees Borisov.

  “Light blue is cold, slippery, dense and small grained,” Grigoriev tells them. “Green has an adhesive graininess, feels thicker and a little warmer than light blue. Deep blue is cold and hard. But also sticky.”

  “And purple is cool and thick,” adds Borisov. “Rougher than deep blue. Black is evenly coarse and has definable friction. It is also warmer than gray which is smooth and cool and slippery with miniature ridges on its surface running in the same direction.”

  “And white,” concludes Grigoriev, “is smooth grained but has some coarseness. And feels cool.”

  “Incredible,” murmurs Robert.

  “Amen,” says Peter. Cathy can only shake her head in wonderment. Even Teddie is moved by what they have seen.

  “But we are well beyond mere colors,” Dr. Vilenskaya says.

  As the group watches in awe, the two subjects demonstrate their ability to “read” with their fingers and hands. (“It is only the initial stage, you understand,” says Dr. Vilenskaya.)

  Demonstration cards are brought out on which letters from the Russian alphabet are printed in block letters about two inches high. Dr. Vilenskaya has each of the group run their fingers over the cards to show them that there is no embossing, that the surfaces are uniformly glossy.

  The two subjects lightly run their fingertips over the surface of the cards.

  They are correct on every single one.

  “We believe,” Dr. Vilenskaya tells the group after the tests have concluded, “that this is just a beginning. That, in actuality, the human body is covered with microscopic organs united with the central nervous system and that these are, in fact dormant eyes.

  “Interestingly enough,” she adds, “seeing with the skin is something the Samoans practiced thousands of years ago.”

  Robert stares at her. Of all the wonders they have seen that afternoon, her last remark seems the most wonderful of all. It makes him flash back to their lunch with Bellenger, the scientist saying, “For what appears to be, from the legends of ancient civilizations to the philosophical and mathematical literature of classic times, is a body of tantalizing hints of lost knowledge that had come to terms with phenomena not yet acceptable to modern science—phenomena which, most definitely, includes those of parapsychology.”

  PICTURE FREEZES on the benign features of Arthur Bellenger, SLOWLY DISSOLVES.

  They are at supper in the hotel dining room, discussing what they saw that afternoon (“Actually, it’s hard to imagine any psi phenomenon which does not involve the skin,” Cathy is saying. “Psycho-kinesis is effected on objects in proximity to the hands. Psychic healing involves the so-called ‘laying on’ of hands.”) when a phone call is announced for Peter.

  He returns in minutes. “Nothing important,” he says. “Easton checking up to see how it’s going.”

  Casually, he asks them if they’d like to come up to his room after dinner to continue the discussion. The invitation is atypical of him but they agree except for Teddie who says he’s tired and is going to bed.

  When they reach Peter’s room, he tells them that there was no call from Easton. They are going to have a visitor soon.

  “Why the mystery?” asks Cathy.

  “The visit, I fear, would be categorized, by our hosts, as ‘non-sanctioned’.”

  Cathy looks immediately uneasy.

  “There was no phone call actually,” Peter continues. “I just had a note put in my hand saying that our visitor would be at my door at eight-thirty.”

  “What visitor?” asks Cathy. “Is this wise, Peter?”

  “Wise or not, we can’t turn our backs on a visit from Ivanova herself,” Peter says.

  “Oh,” says Cathy in a subdued voice.

  “The psychic?” Robert asks.

  “The psychic,” Peter says. “Unmatched by any in the western world. Healer, clairvoyant, telepathist, telekinesis medium, hypnotist—”

  “Reincarnationist,” Cathy adds. She doesn’t look pleased at all. “Peter—”

  He continues over her. “She is particularly known for her ability to diagnose and cure illnesses by telephone, in one documented case at a range of eight thousand miles.”

  “She is also not particularly popular with the government,” Cathy says. “Peter, if this endangers our entire trip—”

  Peter is adamant. “Leave if you wish,” he says, “but I will not say no to this woman.”

  At precisely eight-thirty, there are hurried footsteps in the corridor outside the door, a hasty knock.

  Peter opens the door and VARVARA IVANOVA bursts in, looking more like a typical, robust Soviet housewife than a famous psychic.

  She shuts the door herself, hurriedly, and leans back against it, blowing out a heavy breath. She grins. “So,” she says, in English, “another exercise in evading the secret police.”

  CUT TO Cathy listening to Ivanova later, her expression making it clear that she is doubly out of sorts—apprehensive about the risk of seeing this woman at all and in disagreement with every word she speaks.

  CAMERA PULLS BACK TO REVEAL that Robert and Peter are amused and charmed by the broad-set, animated Ivanova.

  “Skills learned in previous lives can explain a great deal why some people show unusual talents in their early life,” she is saying. “I, myself, have been, in former lives, a Brazilian and a German. And I have spoken German perfectly since childhood, Portuguese perfectly.”

  Cathy looks at her wristwatch, making the gesture very visible.

  “Let me amplify,” says Ivanova, either not noticing or not reveal
ing that she’s noticed Cathy’s gesture. “Previous lives are not individual experiences but are interconnected, stored in our present subconscious. Hence, it is well for people to be attentive to inexplicable fears and habits in themselves for they reveal much.

  “For instance, claustrophobia might be the result of being locked up for years in a tiny cell hundreds of years ago. Fear of heights may have been instilled when one met death in a former life by being pushed from a high place. One of my friends had a dread of cats. I saw, in a clairvoyant flash, that, in a previous incarnation, she had been killed by a black panther.”

  “Peter,” Cathy murmurs.

  Ivanova smiles at her. “My presence makes you nervous,” she says.

  “Well,” says Cathy, “we are here conditionally.”

  “Child,” says Ivanova patiently. “You must realize that I am a scientist not a charlatan. The high level authorities in this country know that full well even if few of them comprehend what I do.

  “But then,” she adds, casually, “when have scientific freedom and government control walked hand in hand down the garden path?”

  She chuckles. “The amusing thing about it all,” she says, “is that the average Russian believes firmly in miracles, visions, premonitions, holy cures, soothsayers and prophets.” She laughs aloud. “There are more fortune tellers per capita in the Soviet Union than in any other country.

  “However—” she rises. “I do not wish to make you uncomfortable.”

  “Madame Ivanova, you do not make us uncomfortable in the least,” Peter says, glancing critically at Cathy.

  “No offense taken,” Ivanova says, putting on her coat. “I understand completely. Have you met with the Krivorotvs yet?”

  “They’re not on our list,” Peter tells her.

  “A pity,” she says. “Perhaps they will be.”

  “Do you ever see Kulagina?” Peter asks her.

  “No, no, no one sees her anymore,” she says. “Poor woman. She is totally worn out.”