Pihkal

by Alexander Shulgin

I could very well have just given that man a solid and final reason to get out of my life and stay out, considering the fact that he's in love with a lady named Ursula and apparently committed to making a future life with her. What the hell am I doing, anyway, involving myself in this situation?

  I'd never been part of a triangle in my life; I'd been too proud, perhaps too arrogant - or maybe too unbelieving in myself - to even momentarily consider the possibility of competing with another woman for a man I liked. It just wasn't my kind of scene. So why, why, was I doing this?

  I poured myself a drink of vodka in cranberry juice, then went down the hall to the bathroom and locked myself inside for a moment of quietness. In the mirror I saw flushed cheeks and very bright eyes. Finally, I said to the face, "All right. We'll see. Good luck, friend."

  By midnight, the crowd had thinned a bit and those who were left were either dancing vigorously, sweat shining on their faces, or sitting in small clusters, talking with the open, expansive, whole-body gestures that emerge when people have had quite a lot to drink and have forgotten to be self-conscious. Shura was sitting with Stan, hands clasped over his knees, listening intently to the young math genius, who looked animated and happy. I left them alone. I checked the record stack and added some more dance music to the top of the pile.

  The fire was still burning and crackling, the way a good fire should.

  He's had plenty of time to tell me he can't stay. Enough time to get cold feet and leave. He's still here. Still here.

  It wasn't until quarter to two in the morning that the last of the guests, fortified with hot coffee, said goodnight and left me alone with Shura and the spitting fire and one of my favorite records playing - Concerto de Aranguez, by Rodrigo - which I had put on to gently discourage further dancing, while maintaining the mellow, pleasurable mood of the evening.

  I turned from locking my front door and said to Shura, who was sitting on the couch, watching me, "I need your help in putting a couple of things back where they belong."

  We pushed the couch into its usual mid-room place, then I went to the under-stair closet and hauled out a thick foam mat which, I explained to him, belonged in front of the fireplace except when there was a party. We placed the mat a few feet back from the hearth because the fire was still throwing off occasional sparks, and I covered it with a double-bed-sized Indian cotton spread with the classic Tree of Life pattern in blue, green and yellow.

  Moving quickly around the big room, I rescued all my floor cushions, big and small, and scattered them around the edges of the mat, then said to Shura, "Help yourself to anything you want in the kitchen. I'm going to change and I'll be back in a moment."

  He was moving toward the tiled bench as I went upstairs to the bedroom and grabbed my best form-fitting blue jeans and a crisp white blouse with a softly ruffled V-neck. I ripped off my black stockings and black top and changed out of my black panties, putting on plain white cotton briefs and a white bra. In the bathroom, I squirted a small spray of musk cologne on my shoulders, considered spraying elsewhere, then decided to powder instead with baby powder, for a warm, innocent, friendly smell. A few minutes later, I was ready. I walked down the stairs, into the living room.

  Shura was seated cross-legged on the mat. In front of the fireplace, sitting on the polished hearthstones, was a bottle of red wine and another, half-full, of white. He had found two of my wine-glasses and put them on the dark, gleaming surface, where they sparkled in the firelight.

  As I eased myself onto the mat, Shura rose to his knees and poured red wine into one of the glasses, then asked, "Which would you like?" I said white, thank you, and took my drink from him.

  We sat cross-legged, our profiles to the fire. I smiled at him apologetically and said what I needed to say, "I hope you'll forgive the presumption - that note - but I very much wanted to have a chance to continue our conversation, at least for a few moments, you know, without hordes of people around ..." I waggled my hand helplessly and shrugged, feeling apprehensive and a bit silly. He was looking at me, smiling slightly.

  "I thank you for the invitation. It was an excellent idea, and if you hadn't come up with it, I'm sure I would have found a way to suggest it myself." It was a slightly formal, gallant gentleman thing to say.

  Well, maybe he would have and maybe he wouldn't, but he doesn't look as if he's here under protest; he looks comfortable and at ease, so no more apologies.

  The fire spat orange, then settled into a comfortable crackling.

  I wonder if he remembers our conversation at Hilda's place. Don't know how many conversations this man has with interesting people maybe every day; he may not remember that evening, although I can't believe he would completely forget holding my hand.

  I took a sip of wine and plunged, "I have so much to ask you, I don't know where to begin. I'll

  just have to dive in and bombard you with questions, if you can stand it?" I looked at him, suddenly anxious. Maybe he didn't want to answer questions right now?

  "Go right ahead. Ask."

  "Let me try to lay out what I think I understand of your life, so far. You teach some kind of chemistry at University of California, on the Berkeley campus, yes?" He nodded. I hurried on, "And you have a private laboratory behind your house, and you have official licenses to do the work you're doing, and you are an expert - a consultant - on the effects of psychedelic drugs in human beings, right?"

  "Yes."

  "Who asks you about those effects; I mean, what kind of people consult you?"

  "Well, let's see," Shura said thoughtfully, "I've been consulted by NIDA - that's the National Institute on Drug Abuse - and NIMH, which stands for the National Institute of Mental Health -"

  I nodded my familiarity with the names as he continued, "I was a consultant to NASA for a while, which is an interesting story I'll tell you some day, and I'm occasionally an expert witness in court cases involving so-called illegal drugs and what the police insist on calling illegal labs, although there's no such thing as an illegal lab, because it isn't against the law to have a lab; it's only the activity inside it that can be termed illegal."

  He was wearing dark blue corduroy slacks and a cream-colored, silky shirt. I could see his nipples through the fabric.

  I nodded, smiling, " see. All right."

  "Also, there are people in the DEA - the Drug Enforcement Administration - who consult with me and sometimes refer people in other government agencies to me when they've got an unusual problem they think I might be of help with. And local county labs. And private individuals with questions. I think that's about all I can think of at the moment," he concluded and drank from his glass.

  He's a bit of a ham, too. Not one for false modesty and aw-shucks.

  I laughed and said, "NASA, huh? I want to hear about that! But first, another question, okay?"

  Shura poured himself more wine, then held out his hand for my glass and replaced the little I had drunk.

  "You told me that you invent new psychedelics and that you have a group of people who try them out after you've made sure they're safe and ,/

  He interrupted, "Not safe. There is no such thing as safety. Not with drugs and not with anything else. You can only presume relative safety. Too much of anything is unsafe. Too much food, too much drink, too much aspirin, too much anything you can name, is likely to be unsafe."

  He was looking very intent, almost scowling.

  Boy, I guess we hit a button, we did.

  "The most I can ever do in regard to a drug," he continued, a shade more gently, "Is establish what appears to be a relatively safe level for myself, for my own body and mind, and invite my fellow researchers to sample the same material at what we decide is a relatively safe level for their particular bodies and nervous systems."

  He paused, glancing at my eyes, "Sorry to pounce on you, but I feel it's an important point to make."

  "Absolutely," I reassured him, "Pounce all you like. It's all new learning for me."

  I had a flash of amus
ement, realizing that the invitation to pounce could be taken more than one way.

  I sipped some wine and continued, "So you check the new inventions out with your group, then you publish articles telling all about them, how to make them in the lab and what their effects are on people?"

  He nodded.

  "And do all the government people who consult you for drug information - do all of them know that you're doing this, that you're creating new ones and publishing everything about them? I mean, don't they ever get uncomfortable or try to stop you doing it?" "Well, as to the first part of the question, a lot of them have some idea, I suppose, if they've done their homework, but most people don't really read much, especially in the scientific literature. Second part: no.

  They've never tried to get in the way. They may be a bit uncomfortable about what they think I'm doing, some of them, but they have no reason to stop me. I'm not doing anything that's in any way against the law -"

  I nodded quickly, hoping I hadn't sounded naive. Well, I was naive about this kind of thing.

  Shura was saying, " - and I'm a quiet person; I don't make a lot of noise in public; I'm not leading any new social movements. I don't sell drugs. I have done work, under contract to the government, which involved making reference samples for them, and I bill them for my time, but it's a matter of principle for me, not to exchange drugs for money in any way. It keeps life a lot simpler. In the meantime, there are probably a lot of people in the government who are very interested indeed in what I publish. I have no doubt whatsoever that the CIA and probably the Defense Department take a close look at some or all of the compounds I write up; they probably feel I'm doing a lot of their work for them, as a matter of fact."

  "You mean, testing them for use in war - biological warfare sort of stuff?"

  Shura shrugged, "Or possibly for crowd control, or prisoner-of-war interrogation, or maybe helping drive an unfriendly head of state into some kind of befuddlement - who knows? Their objectives are not my objectives."

  I leaned forward and asked softly, "What is your goal, then - discovering how the mind works, or the psyche, just the pure excitement of finding out everything you can?"

  Shura drank from his glass and brushed moisture off his mustache before answering, "Isn't that sufficient reason?"

  There's a faint touch of tease here, but he also wants to know how I'm relating to all this.

  I said, "Sure, that's a perfectly respectable objective. But there's another one, isn't there?"

  If he's the kind that gets irritated easily, I'll probably find out now.

  "All right," he said, showing no signs of irritation, "But let me turn that question back to you and ask what other goal you feel there could be, or should be?"

  Each of us is determined to find out as fast as possible what the other one's philosophy and ways of thinking are. And, for that matter, whether or not the other is basically sane and rational. Okay. Here goes.

  I sat staring at my knees for a moment as I tried to put broad, wide images into small, tidy words, "Well, my day with peyote helped me clarify a lot of things I had thought and felt all my life, but not pinned down, not really sorted out. It was - I think it really was the most extraordinary day of my life. It was such a treasure of an experience/ I remember thinking just before I went to sleep that if I should wake up dead, it would have been worth it. I've done a lot of thinking about what I learned that day - years of thinking. And I understand more and more, all the time, about that one experience. The understanding keeps unfolding, bit by bit."

  I looked up at Shura, who was leaning back on one elbow, his face attentive.

  I went on, "It seems to me that the magic plants - and the psychedelic drugs - are there to be used because the human race needs some way of finding out what it is, some way of remembering things we've usually forgotten by the time we're grown up. I also think that the whole 1960's eruption - all that psychedelic experimenting and exploring - was due to some very strong instinct - maybe on the collective unconscious level, if you want to use Jung's term - an instinct that's telling us if we don't hurry up and find out why we are the way we are, and why we do the things we do, as a species, we could very soon wipe ourselves out completely."

  "Which is," said Shura, "The very reason I publish."

  "Aaah," I said, and paused for a moment, "So it doesn't matter if the CIA people or whoever are interested in your drugs for their own reasons _ô

  He completed it for me, "I'm still putting the information out, broadcasting as widely as I can/

  in as quiet a way as I can, and perhaps among the readers will be a few souls who have the same concerns I do, and will put them to the right use."

  "Yes, I see."

  "That's the hope. There's no avoiding the fact that a lot of idiots who don't know diddley-squat about chemistry are going to go to work to make some of those drugs - the easier ones - for sale on the street. And people are going to take them at parties and use them in stupid, irresponsible ways, the same way they use alcohol. All kinds of people read the journals I publish in. At least, psychedelics are not physically addictive and most people find them anything but psychologically addictive. My hope is that, here and there, someone with a good mind - and heart - uses one of these tools and perhaps begins to understand something he didn't understand before. And that there may be a few with the courage and ability to write about what they've learned/ so that others can read and begin to think. And so on and so on."

  "Like Huxley."

  "Yes. Unfortunately, there aren't many Huxleys around, ever. But each voice counts. All I can hope for is that there'll be enough voices and enough time."

  I said, "Well, the world seems to be full of people trying all kinds of ways to change consciousness; I mean, there are lots of meditation teachings, and hypnotic trance, and breathing techniques -"

  Shura replied, "Of course, there are many ways to alter your consciousness and your perceptions; there always have been, and new ways will keep being developed. Drugs are only one way, but I feel they're the way that brings about the changes most rapidly, and - in some ways - most dependably. Which makes them very valuable when the person using them knows what he's doing."

  He paused to drink from his glass, then continued, "I thought for a while that I could use music to accomplish what I wanted to do, because music can be a very powerful consciousness changer, but when I discovered that I had a certain knack for chemistry, I made a decision to go that way, to concentrate on developing these tools. Mostly, I suppose, because these particular drugs, these materials, are a way to bring about new insights and perceptions quickly, and - well, I just don't know if we have much time. Sometimes I suspect it may be too late already."

  I sat there, thinking Oh, dear. Shura's eyes were for a moment unfocused, and I knew he was in private territory, with images I had no way of sharing. I kept silent for a few moments, in deference to the possibly imminent end of the human race.

  Finally, I shrugged. "I tend to be something of an incurable optimist; I figure we've got to have enough time, so we will have enough time."

  Shura's eyes focused again, and he grinned at me, "You may be right, but I have no intention of getting lazy, and there's nothing better than a suspicion that time's running out, to keep you working hard."

  I drank the last of my wine and decided to head into different and more dangerous territory.

  "Tell me about Ursula. Does she experiment with you -1 mean, does she take your potions with you?"

  "Yes, she enjoys them tremendously and she uses them well. I suppose that's been one of the strongest elements in our closeness. And it's one of the reasons I find it hard to understand some things about our relationship, because it's almost impossible to get away with lying about your feelings when you're sharing an altered state. She's a very intelligent woman; she's had difficult and complex insights and she's shared them with me/ as I've shared mine. I know how she feels about me."

  He hesitated, then said, "I should amend th
at. To be exact, I know how she feels about me when we're alone together. When she goes back to her home and her husband, though, she -

  it's as if she's disappeared into another world; I can't quite reach her there. I don't really know what to think, and I'm beginning to wonder how long we can keep things going this way, with nothing resolved and no way of being sure it ever will be." "Has she begun divorce proceedings yet?"

  "No. She says she'll have to make the final break with Dolph at just the right moment, when he's calmer, when there's less risk of his exploding into some kind of suicidal violence, or something of that sort. And it always seems that the right moment hasn't arrived yet."

  "Yet, she leaves him to be with you for a couple of weeks or so - how often?"

  "She's been here twice and gone back."

  "And with all this, her husband is still friendly to you on the phone?" Shura looked at me, frowning, "Sounds bizarre, doesn't it?" I said carefully, "Well, it sounds like a rather unusual sort of marriage."

  His face had saddened and there was anxiety in the air between us, and I thought, time to change subjects again. I got to my knees, leaning forward to touch the bottle of white wine, knowing that my body was outlined by the firelight, and that he could be expected to notice.

  He stirred and came to my rescue, lifting the bottle and pouring my glass full.

  When I returned to the pad this time, I lay lengthwise, supporting my head on one hand, holding the wine glass steady with the other.

  The atmosphere had begun to change in a subtle way. I knew that his focus had shifted and that he wasn't remembering Ursula, just at the moment. I spoke, almost apologetically, not wanting to say something that would drive him back to sadness, "Please tell me if you'd rather not talk about it right now, but I'd like very much to know what your marriage was like. What kind of person was your wife - Helen?"

  I caught what looked like a flicker of amusement in his eyes as he replied, "Yes, Helen. No, I don't mind talking about her. I think I told you we were married for 30 years. She was a good person. Very bright, interested in a lot of different things. She was always completely supportive of me, even when I wanted to make a break with my perfectly good job at Dole - I mentioned that to you before - to start doing something I believed in. When I told her I needed to study two years of medicine, she went to work in the University library, to help pay the bills. She enjoyed getting back into the Berkeley activity, actually. She didn't really like the Farm that much - "