Pihkal

by Alexander Shulgin

  Shura spoke, "Please continue with your story. I don't want you to think I wasn't involved with what you were saying, when I remembered about the supplement."

  "Oh, no," I replied, "It isn't that. I just got seduced by some other thoughts. I was realizing how much anxiety I normally live with. I hadn't seen before that a certain level of anxiety is an absolute habit with me. And that's probably been the case for years and years. I'm not sure I can even remember a time when it wasn't there. Except perhaps that day on peyote."

  Shura nodded.

  "It was an interesting bit of insight. Not that I can do anything about it, at this particular time in my life. But it's important for me to realize it consciously, I think."

  I was looking across the space between us at Shura's face in the shadow of the divider wall. I lost myself for a moment in the study of that lion's mane, the deep furrows between nostrils and mustache, the full lips which seemed softer now than they usually did. The MDMA has brought out the warmest part of him, I thought. There was an openness, a vulnerability in his face which I had seen before only on the night we made love.

  He's a very controlled person, and he's allowing some of that control to go; he's not guarding as much as usual. His face is very beautiful. I wonder if he looks so to other people.

  Shura smiled at me, his eyes glinting in the shadows.

  "I was appreciating your face," I said, "You're beautiful, you know."

  "So are you, my little friend," he said, then swung his feet off the hassock and leaned forward.

  "I'm going to ask you to do something, right now, if you would. Go into the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror. Don't stay there long; it's easy to hypnotize yourself, when you're in this state. But I want you to look at your face for a moment, then come back and tell me what you've seen.

  I remembered Sam making the same request, on the peyote day.

  I went to the bathroom and looked into the mirror. The face I saw was radiant, the eyes glowing, pupils large. It looked open and unguarded. There was sadness there, kindness, longing, and a faint touch of hope. I smiled at the reflection.

  When I returned to the living room, I said only, "I saw a person I like very much."

  Shura said, "I was hoping you would. I like you very much, too. For whatever that's worth to you."

  "Thank you. It's worth a great deal."

  I would have it love as well as like, bid that's something neither of us has control over.

  I settled back on the couch and thought about continuing my story, but a question had come to mind.

  "Shura, you said that you never had the experience of being in love before Ursula. Weren't you in love with Helen when you married her?"

  Shura rubbed his beard, thinking. He sighed, "No. We were comfortable with each other and we enjoyed doing things together, but I suspect we got married more to escape being lonely than because we really loved each other. And to aggravate our parents. Hers had made it clear that, in their opinion, I wasn't quite what they had in mind for their daughter, and mine most definitely felt I could do better. We both thought it was very funny, and we decided to elope, I guess to punish them."

  The glow I'd seen in his face a while ago had dimmed. I wondered if it was the remembering.

  "We weren't very happy, I regret to say. She was a good person, kind and intelligent, and she brought a much needed order into my life; you know, a clean house, fresh shirts and meals on time, even when she went back to work. It gave me a routine, a structure I could depend on, especially at times when I had doubts about the wisdom of the decisions I'd made - leaving Dole, going back to school. I wasn't always sure I could make a good enough living as a consultant to allow me to follow my peculiar and very different drummer."

  "But you weren't happy together?"

  "No, not happy. There were several major stones on the path, sorry to say, and neither of us was able to find a satisfactory way around them. For one, Helen was intensely phobic. She was afraid of a lot of things. Her greatest fear, as I said, was of losing control, being vulnerable, and as a result, certain aspects of our relationship suffered."

  I poured ice water into the clean glass Shura had put out for me. I was aware of dryness in my mouth and remembered he'd mentioned dehydration. He took my cue and drank from his glass before continuing. "When she gave birth to Theo, she had a lot of pain, and she told me she didn't want to go through that experience again. She said Theo would have to be an only child, because she couldn't face another childbirth. That saddened me because I'd been an only child and I sometimes thought that it might have been better - many things in my life might have been better - if I'd had siblings. But she felt so strongly about it, I had no choice but to accept her decision."

  "You didn't consider adoption?"

  "No, I can't remember ever discussing adoption, though I suppose it must have been mentioned, somewhere along the way. We were both probably too elitist to seriously consider it."

  "Did she have her tubes tied?"

  "No. Nothing like that. She was too afraid of surgery. She couldn't tolerate the pill and - not unreasonably - she didn't trust condoms. What happened was that we gradually - love-making just happened less and less often. We began to withdraw from each other." He frowned, "Are you sure you want to hear all this?"

  "As long as you don't mind sharing it, I appreciate your telling me. After all, it was a whole thirty years of your life."

  And it means you trust me.

  "No, I don't mind talking about it. Matter of fact, it feels good to talk about it. I haven't told anyone about this aspect of the marriage, even Ursula. She and Dolph knew Helen; they genuinely liked each other, and they got on very well. All four of us got on well. We used to go on weekend trips together, in fact, even after I'd realized I was in love with Ursula and she'd said she loved me. Of course, Helen never knew. Thank God, she never knew."

  "Did Dolph know?"

  "I assumed at the time that he didn't, but at this point, I can't be sure. He gave no indication, then, of feeling differently towards me, but he doesn't now, either - on the phone. And he certainly knows about it now!"

  He paused to drink, and I kept quiet.

  "We did our best to be good parents, Helen and I. I think we were good parents, in every way but one. Neither of us really gave Theo the depth of acceptance and love that he needed.

  Helen did better than I, in that respect, but there was something missing for Theo. I wasn't as supportive as I should have been, and I've regretted it deeply without knowing how to remedy it. As I said, I wasn't a very loving human being at that time."

  I nodded.

  "I suppose I was too critical and judgemental, and I know I was often impatient with poor Theo, and he suffered from it. He could never be sure, really sure, at the deepest level, that he was a worthwhile person and unconditionally loved, and I was more to blame than Helen for that. But, to be fair - to myself -1 was gradually becoming emotionally dried up, withdrawing from people more and more."

  He lit a cigarette, and so did I.

  "I think that, for many years, I was unable to give much love to anyone. Until Ursula happened to me, and I began to thaw out a lot of what had been frozen for so long. I even felt more love for Helen, at that time, than I ever had before. And I actually felt kind, on occasion, and bit my tongue instead of delivering my usual devastatingly clever, cutting comments. I was careful not to overdo it, of course. There wasn't any point in alarming everybody!"

  I laughed. I couldn't imagine him as an unkind man with a dry heart. The critical, impatient aspect, I had seen hints of; I could believe in that. But not in lack of kindness.

  Is he judging himself too harshly, remembering the past? Or is he warning me - unconsciously, maybe - of some aspects of himself I don't know yet?

  "We irritated each other too often, Helen and I. We argued a lot about little things, things not worth arguing about. It was a reflection of the deeper disappointment we both felt about the whole relationship, the
way our marriage had turned out."

  "But she never tried to stop you from doing your research, you said?"

  "No, she wasn't in any way negative about that. She was interested in my descriptions of effects, but she declined to take part in any experiment. Until that one time with mescaline. It must have been very hard for her sometimes, knowing the kind of research I was engaged in; phobic as she was, I'm sure she was often scared of my doing myself some injury, but she kept it to herself, and I bless her for that."

  "What kind of phobias did she have?"

  "She was afraid of straining her body in any way - thus the withdrawal from sex - and of injury, of course. I always helped with anything in the kitchen that involved the use of a sharp knife, for instance. And of death, which is not unusual, I realize, but there were times when she seemed a bit obsessed with the threat of death. We got a little 20-foot sailboat, and for a while she enjoyed it when we went out as a family, but she was terrified for my safety when I went sailing alone. Eventually, she came to be afraid of sailing altogether."

  "Poor soul!"

  "When I learned to fly a small plane," said Shura, "She refused to drive down with me to the flying school. If we had to take a regular airline flight to anywhere, I had to give her Miltown before we got on board. None of this, you understand, prevented her from functioning quite nor mally and efficiently, in most respects. It's just that fear was always part of our life together, and it came between us in a lot of ways."

  "She never went into any kind of therapy?"

  "Oh, no. Psychotherapy was frightening to her, too. She dismissed any such suggestion out of hand."

  "Unfortunately," I said, "that's not unusual. A lot of people think a therapist is going to lay open everything bad and unacceptable in them;

  they really expect some kind of professional Final Judgement."

  Shura nodded, stubbing out his cigarette. "After she had her first minor stroke, several years before her death, we developed a quite different relationship. She allowed herself to trust me, and I was able to help her a great deal. I wanted her to gain independence from her medications as soon as possible, so I introduced her to biofeedback. She learned to regulate her blood pressure, to the point where she could get off both her medications - with the doctor's approval, of course - without any negative consequences."

  "That's wonderful!"

  "She showed tremendous courage. It touched me very deeply, her courage and her trust in me. And it paid off. She was able to stop thinking of herself as an invalid and go back to the job she loved, in Berkeley."

  "You said she didn't enjoy living out here on the Farm?"

  "Not really. She wanted to like it, but this kind of life just wasn't her cup of tea. She was a city girl at heart. That's just the way it was. She took care of everything, she was an excellent housekeeper, as I said. I am not a very neat or tidy person, and I left it to her to keep things picked up and running smoothly, and that's what she did, but she was never able to love this place the way I do."

  He needs to live with someone organized and tidy, and I'm neither.

  I asked him, "Did she have another stroke, or was her death due to something else?"

  "She was working in the library - this was about three years after the first stroke - and apparently she complained to a friend that her right arm had suddenly gone dead, then she lost consciousness and - well, she never woke up. Pontine hemorrhage; a massive stroke."

  "Oh, dear." I knew there were tears on the shadowed face, and I thought, how very good that he had wanted to tell me all of it. I wondered whether it might be one of the effects of MDMA, this kind of trust and openness.

  "Thank you for telling me."

  "I suppose I needed to talk about it. Thank you for being interested."

  I smiled at him, then focused on taking a drink from my water glass, because I needed the water and because it would give him a chance to wipe his eyes. I heard the sound of a nose being unashamedly blown, and saw a balled up Kleenex drop to the floor.

  Shura asked, his voice thickened but cheerful, "How are you feeling right now?"

  I told him I suspected the effects might be starting to fade, just a bit, "It's a barely perceptible change. Perhaps I'm just getting used to the state."

  "Maybe, but I wouldn't be surprised if you were starting to experience the decline."

  "Already?"

  Shura was smiling, "Do I detect a bit of disappointment?"

  "Oh, of course you detect disappointment. It would be nice to keep going this way for a lot longer."

  "I'm glad it's been a good experience. Very glad."

  He means it, he really is pleased. I wonder how much of the pleasure is because he cares for me or because he believes this stuff is good and wants it to be good for everyone. Maybe a bit of both. Doesn't matter.

  We spent the next hour or so wandering over the Farm. I asked how the MDMA had been for him, and he told me that he'd had a pleasant experience, but that it didn't do the same things for him that it seemed to do for so many other people.

  "Just my peculiar body chemistry, I guess," he said, "I don't mind."

  "You don't mind?"

  "No, I enjoy what it does give me, and since I take it these days only with other people, I also enjoy the experience of seeing them open up and discover themselves. I don't do it often, but every time I have shared it with somebody else, I've felt truly privileged. That's the only way I can put it."

  We made our way down an overgrown path behind the garage, and Shura opened the door of a small greenhouse which was missing some sections of its glass. There was a hole in the back wall through which a few ground vines had entered. Patches of yellowing grass were growing on the floor and red pots clustered on an old redwood table. Some of the pots contained unidentifiable green plants and one held a small cactus.

  Shura said, regretfully, "Have to get this fixed up and working again."

  We walked past a slope of grass where a single grapevine, leafless still, wound itself around a crude wooden frame. Beyond it was a very old, dark barn, where Shura showed me the remnants of a huge wine barrel and a wall of bottles - homemade plum wine - resting on their sides in rows, barely visible in the dark. He said the lights hadn't worked for years and that he fully intended, one of these days, to repair them. In the meantime, he cautioned, I should watch my step, because there were all sorts of things lying around on the floor, waiting to turn ankles.

  After the barn we saw more grapevines and a place on the hill where he said there used to be a vegetable garden, and would be again, when he got around to doing some work on it. On our way back, we talked about the satisfaction of growing one's own vegetables, and the virtues of drip irrigation. I told him that it seemed to me the effects of the MDMA were gone, or almost gone.

  "How do you feel, now?"

  We were standing at the top of the brick stairway in front of the house. I put out a hand to explore the texture of juniper and thought carefully before answering.

  "There's still a peacefulness inside. There's a kind of acceptance of things as they are, a feeling that everything is - everything makes some kind of sense. Not to the mind, because intellectually, there's a lot of confusion, but in the heart. And a - what I can only call excitement. Some part of me can't wait to see what life's going to come up with next!

  Anticipation without the usual anxiety. And underneath it all is the feeling that we both belong here, just as we are, right now."

  I think I said that pretty well. I've even impressed myself.

  "Do you feel hungry?" asked Shura.

  "Hungry?"

  What kind of response is that, to my gorgeous speech?

  Shura was asking, a tease in his voice, "How does the idea of pork chops and mashed potatoes strike you?"

  I thought of pork chops and mashed potatoes, and replied, "Not the most alluring thing in the world, exactly."

  He grinned as if I had passed a difficult exam.

  "That's the normal response. MD
MA is highly anorexic. You probably won't feel like eating for quite a few hours yet."

  We returned to the living room and I remarked that, although my appetite was gone, I certainly felt thirsty, and proceeded to drink all the remaining water in my glass.

  "Good girl," said Shura, "Keep drinking."

  I flashed him a good-girl smile, baring my teeth, then said what I had to say, "I'd better think about getting home, you know."

  For just a fraction of a moment, there was a look of confusion on his face, as if my words had surprised him. Then he looked away and said, "Yes, of course. I hadn't thought about you going home, to tell the truth."

  Oh, thank you, love.

  "1 feel perfectly fine, Shura. I wouldn't suggest going home if I had any doubts about driving."

  "No, of course not," he said, "But let me give you a quick check, anyway. Go into the bathroom for a moment and I'll get my flashlight."

  What in heaven's name is he going to do with a flashlight?

  When he joined me in the bathroom, he turned off the light and told me to stand with my back to the window. He said, "Tell me if you see any tracers - you know what I mean by tracers, don't you?"

  "The after-impression you get from a moving point of light, if you're under the influence, yes?"

  "Right."

  He clicked on the flashlight and swept it across my field of vision, then turned it off. I assured him there were no tracers.

  "Fine," he said, leading me back to the living room, "But you might still get light flashes at the periphery of your vision. Just be prepared for them, especially when you're facing headlights on the highway. Don't get confused."

  I said I was sure I wouldn't get confused, and I hadn't seen any peripheral light flashes yet.

  Shura urged, "Promise me, if you feel the slightest unease while you're driving, either turn right around and come back here, or at least get off the highway and wait for a while. All right?"

  He was holding my shoulders, looking into my face.

  "Of course I will," I promised him, "I have great respect for my own health and safety, believe me. I'll come right back here if there's any question at all."