Pihkal

by Alexander Shulgin

  He chuckled and wished me good dreams, then he thanked me again. When I'd put the phone down, my Observer shook its head disapprovingly, but I knew I'd done what I was supposed to do and there was no point in questioning it.

  During the night, I dreamed I was housekeeping a mountain highway, cliffs on one side of me and a sheer drop on the other. It was my job to fit a wide red carpet exactly and properly to the road so that trucks coming around the blind corner wouldn't skid or be off balance. I felt very cheerful.

  CHAPTER 32. TRANSITION

  It was Thursday evening when Shura phoned me. His voice was strained. He told me that the night before, not having heard from Ursula about what plane she was going to be on, or what time she would arrive, he had phoned Germany.

  "What happened?"

  "Dolph answered the phone," said Shura, "Nice and friendly, as usual. He told me that Ursula left a message for me. The message was that she had gone to a retreat of some kind to think out some conflicts, and that she would be in touch with me when she returned."

  "Oh, Lord," I breathed. No plane. No suitcases. Not this Thursday, anyway.

  "I asked Dolph if he had any idea when she would be returning, and he said - very sympathetically - that he didn't think she'd be away for more than a few days, although he couldn't be absolutely sure, of course."

  "Oh, boy."

  "Yeah. Oh boy."

  "But she sent her books, Shura!"

  He said, deadly quiet, "Did she?"

  "Oh - I see what you mean. We only have her word for that. No trunk has actually arrived yet."

  "Precisely."

  I thought back to the Voice of Authority that had broken up my rage-rest, two nights earlier.

  Thank you for that message, that warning, thank you, Whoever you are. Thanks for making me wait. If I'd gone with my anger and sent those notes, I'd be strangling myself right now.

  Probably would have lost him.

  I asked, "Is there anything I can do to help?"

  Shura sighed, then after a little silence he said, "It's just good knowing you're there. Thank you for being there for me to talk to, my friend. I simply don't know what's going on, what's going to happen next; I don't know what she intends, what she wants, and why did she just leave me dangling all these days, waiting? Why couldn't she have phoned me herself? Leaving me in silence, waiting for word, waiting to find out which plane -1 don't understand somebody doing that to the person they love."

  "Neither do I," I said, but softly. I didn't want to put him in the position of having to defend Ursula.

  "You see," he said, "With that silence just at the time I should have been hearing from her about travel details, you can imagine what I thought must have happened!"

  "Oh, of course," I said, suddenly remembering, "You thought maybe murder and suicide."

  "I was beginning to be really terrified; I was talking myself into all sorts of ghastly scenarios. I was so convinced that something was horribly wrong, I couldn't believe I was hearing Dolph's voice on the phone for the first second. I mean, he was not only alive and answering the phone, he was sounding perfectly normal. I just couldn't take it in for a moment, then I felt this tremendous relief, because I knew he couldn't sound that way if there had been some kind of - you know - and then I had one of those milliseconds of wondering if - if I was completely crazy and I'd imagined this entire love affair, the whole thing. Utter disorientation." "Yes. I know what you mean. Reality gone up-side-down." "And now," he said, his voice sounding less strained, "I think I'm going to have the rest of my bottle of Burgundy and go to bed as bombed as I can manage, and get some sleep." "This all happened last night?"

  "Yes, last night. I've been trying to come to grips with it all day. Didn't sleep much after the call. Have to catch up tonight."

  "My dear Shura," I said softly, "I'm with you, I'm here for you in whatever way you need me; you know that. Sleep as well as you can and let me know what's happening when you find out."

  "Thank you, Alice," he said, his voice coming a bit more to life, "I'll let you know everything I know as soon as I know it. You deserve that." "Yes," I agreed, "I bloody well do."

  "Oh, by the way," he said, "Just a closing thought I'll share with you. I can't help feeling that Ursula was there all the time, listening to Dolph telling me she'd gone to think things over in a monastery. Just standing quietly there, you know?"

  "That's a rather grim thought," I said, thinking that he'd probably hit the nail on the head.

  "Yes, it is, rather." I murmured, "Get some sleep, honey." I put the phone down and sat there, trying to think, but all that came to mind was a profoundly silly question that skittered through my head and out the other side.

  He said a monastery. Do monasteries take ladies? Or does it have to be a nunnery? Never mind. Never mind.

  Shura called me every evening while he waited for further word from Ursula, reporting in, his voice flat, depressed. I gave out as much warmth as I could over the phone, knowing that he was going into a grieving state and that he wouldn't register much of what I said, only the tone of voice.

  I said nothing about coming out to the Farm. I realized that the last thing I should do now was push myself on him. I was not a substitute for Ursula, didn't intend to be a fill-in for Ursula, and whatever place I was to have in his life - if at all - it would have to be a completely different one than it had been. And it might not turn out that way at all. Ursula could phone at any moment and say that she was coming, she was over her cold feet, she was ready and she would be on plane this and flight that. It could still happen.

  But the Tuesday Night Voice didn't say, "temporary discomfort." It said Shura would be in pain and in need of me. So far, it's been right.

  I sat down at my typewriter on Sunday night after the children had gone to bed, and wrote my second and final letter to the German Lady.

  This one, she won't send back to Shura. Ursula:

  This will be the last time I write to you, and I do so more as an exercise in futile anger than in the hope that it will accomplish anything worthwhile, because you seem to live in a world that is not understandable to me, and I cannot identify with what you feel and do, although I have tried to do just that for more than six months.

  You have been portrayed to me by Shura as a highly intelligent, sensitive, deeply feeling and responsible woman; a woman who opened the long-closed doors inside him and showed him how to experience emotions he had buried for most of his adult life. You were the magic, beautiful and loving person who was his refuge, his other self, his future.

  For a long time I believed this to be the true picture, even allowing for his obvious tendency to see everything about you through the well known rose-colored glasses. I did have a hint of something else, from someone close to Shura who loves him dearly and wants to see him happy - a perceptive and wise person who said, with what now appears to be extraordinary insight, "Ursula needs to be wanted and adored, but she needs this from more than one man.

  She is compelled to fulfill a man's fantasy, to become his ideal, his inspiration. She is a classic anima woman, using Jung's term, and completely unconscious of her own drives and motivations. I believe she is not capable of really giving herself - neither to her husband, nor to anyone else. She cannot commit herself emotionally. And I'm very much afraid of what she will do to Shura - perhaps in a week, perhaps in a year. She will not stay with him, after the first excitement wears off. And he will be desperately hurt."

  The friend had not said this to Shura, since he knew it would not be believed, and it could put a strain on a friendship that means a great deal to him. But he did say it to me.

  Yet, through Shura I learned a little of your search for yourself, your deep need not to hurt, your apparent determination to bring the relationship with your husband to a graceful close, with kindness and caring, so that you would leave no emotional loose ends. I learned of your great love for Shura, your longing to be with him. I believed it for a long time.

  I
understood your apparent struggle to find a good way to resolve your question of what to do about these two men in your life. That struggle, that search, obviously had to have an end, a final answer.

  The only answer you seemed to come up with was the temporary (and obviously exciting) one of visits across the ocean to the adoring White Knight in California - for a week or so - until the pull of the adoring husband took you back to Germany. Not long enough for the honeymoon to be over, for the reality of septic tanks and dry yellow hills and ironic, angry moods and impatience and head colds and being too tired to make love - not long enough for any of that to assert itself and have to be lived with and dealt with. Just long enough to confirm the adoration and the yearning, to warm yourself in the sexual fire and the open loving made even more open and spiritual by the chemicals. A good vacation for your body and soul.

  He was yours, all yours, and he would wait. You knew he loved deeply and would not easily be turned from you. You knew your own beauty and intelligence and ability to make contact with that soul-love - you knew it well enough to assume that he would stay yours until you chose to come for longer, if you wanted to. And there, in your home, was the other man who yearned and wanted and needed. An embarrassment of riches for any woman.

  It becomes even more tempting as one approaches 40, to exercise that kind of power, to know that one can attract, hold, and keep an interesting and desirable man. It's a temptation that one learns - or should learn - to relinquish. That power to seduce carries with it a great deal of excitement. A woman with intelligence and insight feels out the power and recognizes it as a potential danger to herself and to the men who fall in love with her. She learns to be careful of opening up what she will not assuredly nurture. The Buddhists say that, if you save a human being from death, you are forever responsible for the rest of that person's life. That doesn't mean you shouldn't save someone from death; it does mean that you should be aware of your actions and their consequences. In opening up a person's soul, you have the same obligation to be aware of what you're doing, to be careful, and to accept responsibility.

  Seeing Shura's love and need and anxiety, I sent you, some time ago, a letter which was very hard to write. There have been many aspects of my love for Shura about which I had no choice - I could not choose to have him love differently; I could not decide how his relationship with you would go. I did, however, have a choice about that letter. And, to ease your mind and heart, I gave you the kind of assurance that every woman truly in love wants and certainly never - almost never - gets from her rival. I told you that the man I love loves you. Who could have asked for more, Ursula?

  What you have done since, and most especially what you have done during the past two weeks, has made it impossible for me to see you through Shura's eyes any longer. I believe in your intelligence; I do not believe in your insight. I believe in your need for love; I do not believe in your capacity for real and deep, lifelong loving. I can believe in your agony and conflict in making these choices about your husband and your lover, but I'm no longer sure that it is much more than a need for drama - emotional drama - in your life. It keeps things exciting, and when you can live the fantasy through letters and phone calls, the drama and sparkle of your life is maintained. It continues to feed you. And, most important of all, Ursula is kept assured of her own desirability.

  As I write this, you may indeed be on your way to Shura. Your motives may or may not be what I think they are - most probably you are quite unconscious of them yourself - but I have no faith that you come to him with the kind of changes inside you that he has hoped for, and is still hoping for. I do not think you are capable of those changes or that kind of maturing. And I can do nothing about it - I can only wish that you might be able to understand and acknowledge your deepest needs as they really are and - understanding them - free Shura.

  I wish you well, Ursula. But I love the man who loves you. And I wish to see him loved as he is capable of loving, for the rest of his life.

  Goodbye. Alice Parr

  I wouldn't tell Shura about the letter, I thought. Perhaps some day, but not yet. It would serve no purpose. I mailed it the next morning, on my way to work.

  I didn't ask to see him the next weekend, either/ and he didn't invite me to come out to the Farm. It was his dark night of the soul, and he was going to go through it by himself, as I would have, in his place.

  Sunday, on the phone, he let the bitterness come through. He said, "I don't think I'm going to allow that kind of thing to happen to me again. I'm never going to let myself be that vulnerable again. Nothing is worth this degree of pain. Nothing and no one."

  I scanned my innards for the right words and the right tone. What rose up inside me came out of my mouth immediately, "Don't be silly, Shura. That's just the pain talking, and you know damned well you're not going to wall yourself off from life because of this one betrayal. It hurts and it doesn't help to be mad at yourself for having trusted, but it's not as if you've committed a crime; you fell in love, and trust is one of the things that goes along with falling in love, if you're a healthy human being."

  "I don't know. I keep wondering how a person of my supposed intelligence could have failed to see - "

  "Shura," I said urgently, softly, "You're human. You were in love. It's a strange sickness, and it alters perceptions a lot more effectively than psychedelics. It just hadn't happened to you before, from what you've told me. It's happened to most people at least once - being in love and a bit blinded - and they all tend to make the same mistakes. It's got nothing to do with logic or intelligence."

  "You're probably right, but at the moment I seem to be catching up with everything I failed to look at before. I'm seeing all the messages she kept sending and I kept overlooking. I was like a young boy, fixated, able to see and hear only what I wanted to. What idiocy!"

  For the first time it occurred to me that he'd probably had quite a bit of wine already this evening; I had just noticed a hint of slurring in his voice.

  Oh, hell. I should be there.

  I said softly, "Wish I were with you, dear. It's up to you, of course, when I come out there. But please feel my warmth around you. You're not alone in this, remember."

  "Thank you, my little friend. I've got to get through this mourning period by myself, first.

  Before I ask you to come out here again."

  "After all, Shura," I said, reluctantly, "There's a real possibility that she actually is working through some very hard problems and that she still could be coming out to be with you, isn't there?"

  "No," he said, his voice suddenly harsh, "No, there is no such possibility. It's been quite clear to me for several days now that it's over. She simply didn't know how to bring it to the right sort of happy-ever-after conclusion. I think she got herself stuck and had to ask Dolph to help her get out of the trap she'd woven for herself. She plays fantasy games, Alice. I think she truly believes them herself, for a while, at least. I believe she and I could have gone on forever with what she essentially saw as a spiritual love-affair, if only Helen hadn't died. That made it a different ball-game, and she just didn't know how to enjoy all the goodies she could have with me without getting deeper and deeper into a commitment she had no desire for. She never intended to leave Dolph. It's a strange marriage; about that, I was right. About all the rest, I was one more blind, love-sick fool."

  Oft, Jesus Aitch. That's maybe being a bit too hard on the girl. I wonder, though. Didn't Ben say something about her having let slip to him, when she was on the psychedelics, that she'd had problems in other affairs with married men?

  "Shura," I asked, "This is just an off-the-wall question, but do you have any way of knowing whether she's ever done this with anyone else -1 mean, has she ever had an affair before you - during her marriage - that you know of?"

  "Oh, yes," he said, "She made no secret of it. There were other involvements; there was another professor, in Germany, just before she met me. She described it as a very brief episode, which she b
rought to an end because he was married and she didn't want to be responsible for damaging a marriage. But all I know is her version of events, of course. I don't know details; I didn't ask for any. She swore to me she had never been in love before the way she was - ," I heard a sharp intake of breath, and said nothing. After a moment, he continued, his voice under control, "So the answer to your question is yes. I was not the first. I suspect I will not be the last."

  When he'd said goodnight, I sat by the phone, thinking intently. It was, in a way, like discovering I'd been holding my breath for days without knowing it. I had been supposing that Ursula could well change her mind and decide to come to California - for whatever period of time --and that Shura would not be able to resist one more meeting. I hadn't expected the brutally realistic view he'd presented. It meant that he really was through, that she could not manipulate him any further. It meant a lot of things.

  The following evening, Shura phoned me and his voice was cool. He said, "I hope you'll understand, I have a lot of thinking to do. I might not be in touch as much as I have been/ for a while. Please be patient. I'll get back to you and tell you what decisions I've come to, if I come to any at all. But for a while, I'm probably going to have to isolate myself until I work things through."

  It was like a ball of ice hitting the inside of my stomach, and my guard clanged up, loudly and hard. I said, " understand very well, my dear. If you and I have any future together, it's going to have to be on a completely different basis, needless to say, and that means thinking a lot of things through, for both of us."

  So, nyah to you too, kid! I'm not going to beg, you know. Not any more. No more Mrs. Goody-goody for this baby. You either need me and really love me, or at least see the possibility of having those feelings for me, or I'm lost to you. No more second-best, ever, ever. That would be worse than never seeing you again. My gut doesn't believe that, but it's true.

  It was the beginning of a different kind of agony, and it lasted every inch of three weeks.