Pihkal

by Alexander Shulgin

  I couldn't forgive her, any more than I could forgive myself.

  Christopher was a good father, gradually healing himself by being to his boys what his parents had not been to him. Like most abused children, he could be a difficult and demanding grownup, and I blessed Jane for being patient and determined and loving him enough to stay with him, even though he often showed little tolerance for her inadequacies and mistakes. She, too, had scars from childhood, and sometimes the two of them bruised each other emotionally, but there seemed to be a deep commitment at some level that kept them together.

  I once sat in on Christopher's class, and - watching him with the youngsters - felt a bursting pride in having a son who was so excellent a teacher - I consider teaching to be the most important of all the professions. After saying goodbye at the end of my visit, I sat in my car for a while, tears running down my cheeks, aching with the knowledge that Brian, if he'd had teachers like his older brother, would have been spared much of the sorrow and rage and, above all, helplessness, he'd experienced so very young. Christopher did not allow scapegoating in his class.

  I was working, now, at a private hospital, transcribing medical reports, typing very fast and very accurately and spelling all the medical words properly. I was one of five women in a small room where a huge tape drum revolved all day long, as doctors inside and outside the hospital phoned in their descriptions of surgical procedures, reports on physical examinations and letters to colleagues, all of it recorded on the tape. We had ten minutes each morning for a coffee break, half an hour for lunch, and ten minutes' break in the afternoon again. We worked all day, eight hours a day, with earphones on our heads; we were transcribing machines, paid the way most non-unionized hospital workers were paid - badly. I had a theory that, long ago, all hospital administrators had caught on to the fact that there are a certain number of people in the world who love medicine, would have become doctors if they'd been able to, and would put up with relatively poor pay and often stressful working conditions, just to be around those who practiced medicine, to feel themselves part of the medical world. I was one of them.

  It was a hard job, but I'd never worked at an easy one, and to some extent it helped me to avoid thinking about Shura and Ursula. By the beginning of the second week of the lady's stay, I was getting accustomed to an unsettling sensation, a mixture of hope and dark despair that tended to make itself felt at unexpected moments, somewhere around the area of my diaphragm. I would clamp down on it quickly, telling myself to be patient; I'd know sooner or later and there was nothing to be done in the meantime but work and be mother.

  At the end of the second week, Shura phoned. It was a Friday evening/ and the children had crossed the street to their father's house. I was cleaning the tiled shelf, stacking papers and a few books to one side, half watching the evening news on television, when the phone rang.

  With the sound of his soft hello, my automatic pilot switched on and - while the rest of me stood there, frozen in shock -1 heard myself saying cheerfully, "How nice to hear from you!

  I've been wondering how things were going."

  "I thought you might want to know," said the tenor voice, "Ursula was here -"

  I know, I know.

  "- for two weeks, and she's just gone back to Germany. I put her on the plane a couple of hours ago." "Oh."

  "It was a wonderful visit, and she says she's going to take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and tell Dolph that she's going to get a divorce and come and live with me here."

  "Ah," I said, feeling absolutely nothing.

  "She says that this time she'll really do it and that she's still very worried that Dolph may do something violent, but she's not going to postpone it any longer."

  It was like a replay of the night at Hilda's party. 1 was hearing a cheerful message spoken in a voice that didn't match. I took a deep breath and asked, "Shura, what's wrong? Are you just tired, or is it something else?"

  There was a moment of silence. When he spoke again, there was no mistaking the sound of discouragement. "I'm just not sure, that's all. It's so hard to understand exactly what's going on, and I've heard all these promises before. I don't know. I suppose I'm a bit tired, too."

  I took a chance, "Would you like to come over and just relax? The kids have left for the weekend, and you can talk all you want or just be quiet and listen to music and have some wine."

  Oh Lord - there's no red wine in the house.

  There was another pause, then he said, "It wouldn't be fair to you, for me to come over and talk about - about somebody else."

  Please, don't back away. I'll take you under any conditions, Beautiful!

  "That's nonsense. Of course you need to talk about Ursula, and I'd love to see you. Don't complicate things that are perfectly simple. Just come over."

  "I appreciate your offer and I'd like to accept it, if you think you can put up with me -"

  "I'll put up. There's one thing you can do for me, though: bring your own red wine. I don't think I've got any here."

  "I'll be glad to do that. It'll take me about an hour, all right?"

  "Fine. See you when you get here."

  When he finally stood in the doorway, I went completely quiet inside. The scurrying around of the previous hour - the choosing of dark green skirt and pale blue blouse and filigree earrings, the stacking of pillows around the mat before the fireplace - all vanished in the rightness of his being here, now, with me. In that instant, everything in the world was where it belonged, and there was all the time we needed.

  Shura made a fire and talked as he stacked the wood. I handed him old newspapers to twist for fuses and listened. He told about Ursula going through the house, pulling him by the hand, pointing out what she would want to put here and take away there - little things, homey things, he said - and how he had begun to believe it, believe that she actually would make the break and come to him. And stay.

  "It was wonderful, being with her. She's a beautiful woman, kind and intelligent and - and passionate. We share a love for so many things, classical music, art, taking journeys with the materials. And we dislike a good many of the same things," he smiled, "Which can be just as important."

  I sat across from him on the mat with my wine glass half full, waiting, with no feeling of impatience, to discover the reason for the sadness, the discouragement.

  "We discussed the possibility of her staying for several months, this time, phoning Dolph from here and telling him what she'd decided to do, so he would have time to get used to it before she went back to see a lawyer and pack up all her things."

  I kept my eyes on his face/ that young, alive face with the lines and the white hair.

  "But she didn't want to do it that way. She said it would be too cold/ over the phone; she had to do it in person, looking into his eyes and holding his hands. She explained that she would worry about his doing something terrible to himself, if she didn't go about it the right way. A few days ago she said to me.'I have to go home. I want to get it over with, and I must go home to do it.' So I put her on the plane for Germany, and now it's the waiting game again."

  I still couldn't understand the depression. I asked, "What is it that worries you, then? It sounds as if you're going to have everything you want, doesn't it?"

  Shura gazed into the fire for a while, then turned to me and said, "This is the third time it's gone this way. She tells me she's going to leave him, she's finally going to come and be with me, and I'm always left waiting for word from Germany, thinking 'This time, it's happening.'

  Then she writes and explains how disturbed and emotionally fragile Dolph is, and how she'll have to pick the right moment, asking me to just be patient." "What do you think is going on?"

  Shura reached over to his wine bottle and poured his glass full. When he touched the rim of my glass with a finger, I said No thanks, I still had some.

  "I don't know," he said, "I don't understand. Sometimes I wonder if she's - if maybe she has a fantasy that she lives when we'
re together, and that it doesn't - that it loses its reality when she's back home." "What about Dolph - is that short for Adolph?" "Yes, yes it is."

  "You're sure he knows his wife is with you, when she's away?" "Oh, there's no question about that; he's made references to her coming here. He knows she's with me. But, as I told you before, whenever I've phoned there and caught him instead of Ursula, he's sounded friendly and spontaneous and warm; not a hint of distress." "That's weird."

  "Completely weird. There are moments when I actually wonder if I'm suffering from some kind of delusion - simply imagining the whole thing. But this time, she will either move on this, very soon, or I'll begin to think I've been made a fool of. But that wouldn't make sense, either. I know what she feels for me; I have no doubt at all that she loves me. You can't be under the influence of psychedelic drugs and play games with the truth - not without the other person sensing it. Not when you're that close, that intimate. If there's a lie, you can hear it in the voice, feel it in your gut. I know she hasn't been lying about her feelings."

  I tried to sum it up, "You're wondering, then, whether there's a possibility that she believes it completely when she's saying it? That maybe she's not consciously lying at all, just living a scenario that falls apart when she gets home?"

  He didn't answer that directly, nor did he deny it, "Well, I should know before long. By the end of the week, one of us is going to call the other and by then, she should have said what she has to say to Dolph. Something must have happened by then, something clear and understandable to all parties."

  This is crazy. It's not like me to be in the middle of a mess like this. Listening to a man I've fallen in love with, a man I want to be with the rest of my life, while he talks about the woman he loves. Reassuring him, being a good friend. Crazy. But I don't have much choice.

  I asked, "And if nothing has happened by then?"

  Shura shook his head, rubbing his eyes with one hand, "Again, I don't know. I suppose it depends on what she says. Cross that bridge when it looms in front of me."

  "Yes, I suppose that's all you can do."

  I felt a subtle shift in him. He was letting me come into view, focusing îïòå.

  "You're very good, very generous - listening to all this. I must apologize. It's a ridiculous thing for me to be doing - dumping my problems onto you. Not at all considerate."

  I laughed and leaned forward to pat his knee. "No apologies, please. We already went through that on the phone. I care very much about you and the only thing I can do for you right now is to listen and try to help you solve the puzzle."

  "Would you like to see the Farm?"

  The question took me by surprise. I stared at him, my mouth open, then nodded, "I'd love to see it, yes."

  "How about coming out tomorrow? I'll give you a very good set of directions - it can be a bit hard to find without them. I'd like to show you around the house and my funny little lab."

  "Yes, please."

  I brought him a large pad of paper and a pen. He wrote rapidly for a few minutes, then tore the page off and handed it to me. I said, "What time should I be there?"

  "What's best for you? I'm usually up around seven, even on weekends, so any time after that is fine for me."

  "I gather it takes about an hour from here? I'll plan on eleven, if that's all right?"

  "Eleven it is." He stood and stretched. "Time to get some sleep. It's been a long day." He grasped my hand to pull me up and said, "Again, thank you."

  At the door, he placed his hands on my shoulders and turned me around to face him. I looked up at the shadowed eyes and the full, sensual mouth, remembering a night two weeks ago.

  This time there was no kiss, but he put his arms around me and held me to his chest, rocking very slightly. I closed my eyes until I felt his arms leave me, then he was gone and I was locking the door behind him.

  I sat down again on the mat, facing the fire while I finished my wine, reviewing what had been said by both of us. The phrase, "Girding for battle," sprang to mind, and I caught myself smiling.

  CHAPTER 22. WINDOW

  I missed the road, the first time. It was tucked right behind a blind corner formed by an outcropping of rock and scrub. I swept by and kept going for a few blocks until there was an opportunity to turn around and retrace my way. At the entrance, a small sign nailed to a telephone pole announced "Borodin Road."

  I'll have to ask him how he managed that.

  I'd built an imaginary Farm in my mind, long ago, ever since Shura had first mentioned it to me. So far, it wasn't at all like my fantasy. To the left of the narrow road, grassy fields sloped gently to a line of trees below. Beyond that stretched a wide valley and on the horizon was what I assumed was Mount Diablo, an immense, mist-softened shape rising from rounded foothills. To the right of the road, which seemed to be mostly clay with occasional patches of ancient concrete, I could see only an uphill sweep of grass and several huge live oaks, magnificent trees with thick, twisting branches, bearing shadowy clusters of mistletoe.

  The big wooden farm gate was open, as Shura had promised it would be. I followed the driveway up to a large circular parking area in front of an open garage, and looked down on a single-storey wooden house whose dove-grey paint showed heavy weathering.

  As I parked my car, Shura appeared at the top of a stairway leading up from the house.

  Flanked by two overgrown juniper bushes, he stood on the red bricks, legs apart, hands tucked into the front pockets of his brown corduroy pants. He wore a woolen blue and green plaid sports shirt. His hair stirred in a light breeze and he was smiling broadly.

  When we walked into the living room, my chest tightened. I hadn't known what to expect, but had hoped it would be something like this. Books lined one entire wall, and the room was divided into two sections by a center wall of stacked bookshelves that stretched to the ceiling.

  At the far end of the room, there were big windows through which I could see the mountain, and in one corner sat a grand piano. On the floor were several worn Persian rugs and there was a long blue couch behind a coffee table. Above the small fireplace hung a large framed map, in blue and white. Moving closer, I recognized the outline of the lie de la Cite from many photographs I'd seen of Paris. The map showed a section of streets and buildings on either side of the Seine. I looked up at Shura and said, "That's wonderful. Do you know Paris very well?"

  "Not very well. It would take years to know it very well. But what I have seen of it, I love.

  You've never been there?"

  "No. I grew up in Italy - a good part of my childhood was spent there. My father was American Consul in Trieste, and my brother and I saw Venice and some other places, but I never got to France. Or England. Or most other countries in Europe."

  God, would I love to go back! I long to see Europe again, as an adult, this time, knowing what I'm seeing. Wonder if it'll ever happen.

  The kitchen was comfortably large, with a linoleum floor so old its original pattern was lost in a general brown-ness. It had been swept clean, but no broom or mop could really rescue it, I decided. Past the far half-wall I could see a small dining room where an oval table, its polished wood shining in the morning light, was sitting on a beige, blue and grey Chinese rug. There was a basket of fresh fruit on the table; I reminded myself that it had probably been here for Ursula.

  Shura showed me the bedroom with its oversized bed, long enough for a very tall man.

  Windows ran the entire length of the room's outer wall, and there was a floor of red-brown tiles.

  It's beautiful. He made love with Ursula on this bed. Don't look at it for too long; he'll know damned well what you're thinking.

  Across the hall from the bedroom was his study. Ceiling high bookcases thrust out into the room, three rows of them, crammed with books; there were more books piled on the floor between each row. Long shelves high above his desk were filled with magazines, journals and thick catalogues;

  steel filing cabinets lined the far wall. His b
ig wooden desk had a clear space in the center, but papers were stacked at the sides. I saw what looked like letters and envelopes on one pile, and a magazine with the title, "Journal of Psychoactive Drugs," and I laughed at the wonderful, lived-in mess. A scholar's study.

  I was reminded of another study I'd seen years ago, when Walter and I had visited the writer-philosopher Alan Watts on board his houseboat in Sausalito. Alan's living room was decorated and furnished in the style of a Japanese house, immaculate and serene, with wide stretches of polished wood floor and every piece of furniture apparently chosen, not only for comfort, but also for beauty of shape and color. It was a work of art, created for quiet thought and meditation. When he showed us his study, I had been delighted at the contrast. Every inch of wall was covered with notes, photographs and memos, each corner piled high with books and pamphlets. No Japanese clarity and serenity here; it was the study of a busy scholar, a man who read and wrote a great deal. As was this.

  "What?" asked Shura, bending his head to look at my face. He meant the laugh.

  "Oh, it's just - it's so much what I hoped it would be - "

  "Well/ wait 'til you see the lab," he said. He led me down the hall and out the back door. We walked along a narrow dirt path, past clumps of early narcissus, under buckeye and pine trees, until we came to a small stone building which had once been painted white. Ivy covered its walls. Pine branches were overhanging the roof and scraping the sides of a small chimney.

  Inside, I saw a laboratory which could have been the original inspiration for every mad-scientist movie ever made, with an additional touch of color the movie sets had lacked: small brown piles of dead leaves, swept up against the sides of several oversized glass bottles and metal cans clustered under the work benches. I supposed that the wind blew them in. They gave a certain flavor to the place; so did the spiderwebs, which were definitely out of Dr.