by Frank Lauria
“Maybe”—Redson’s heavy voice broke the pause”—maybe you should wait a little longer, Owen. Argyle’s back now. Perhaps you should see what happens.”
Orient was annoyed to find that he had to think it over before he answered.
“We couldn’t stop what happens if Susej makes it tonight, he said. “No one could.”
For the next two hours Orient tried vainly to relax. His brain was whirring with a hundred details, emotional elements that refused to combine. And there was the fear. He knew that the best way to evaporate his fear was to empty his mind, but he couldn’t achieve the balance, the harmony needed for control.
Each time he began the breathing pattern his thoughts would drift to Malta and topple the balance.
He decided to take a long walk.
It was a perfect afternoon.
Orient walked slowly through the streets, his mind and body completely receptive to the lemon-bright rays of the sun. He thought of nothing except the physical reality of earth spinning around a small star… the solar system; a cluster of particles held in place by some cosmic need. The need.
From birth to death all existence a need. The ever restless yearning of a universe realizing its infinite potentials.
He was at one of the entrances to Central Park. He went into it. As he walked he felt the raw vibration of creation guiding his thoughts to the potentials of his human race. He stepped off a narrow path and approached the gentle slope of a large rock.
The area around the rock was deserted and when Orient reached the top he saw that the tree branches cut off one side from view. He looked across the flat meadows to the gleaming columns of New York.
He stood for a moment then took off his coat, spread it out on the ground and sat down facing the shimmering towers of his city.
He let his already rhythmic breath intensify, allowing his thoughts to go back to the deep sun that centered his being. The first light. His light…
The slap of breath exploding light into his birth. The long dreamy drift through zooming fragments of consciousness. The first impression of cause. The itch of flesh. The efforts of movement. The focus of recognition.
He made the sound and knew he had accomplished it. The sounds became words and fenced his dreamy into a geometry. The dreams. The dreams absorbed the lines. He often wondered why the dreams disappeared when he was awake.
The sharp emptiness of the dream. The plane. The airplane. Night after night and then even when he was awake. The sharp emptiness of the dream.
And suddenly the new dream. The feel of the light from both of them. The calm light.
For a long time he was separated from his direction. The instinct pulsing constant. The impulse of his movement guiding him closer. The dream.
The old man. High above the emptiness. His mind opening to the dream. His mind opening while he was awake. Opening. Slowly adjusting to the light. The new light. The variations of light. The cold light.
The journey. The crawling inevitable journey to the dream… welcome opening his mind to primary light… The slow accomplishment of recognition… The growing facility of focus enabling recognition of variations… recognition of the billion species of light. The incomprehensible sense of the primary light. The primary light. The single source.
He focused on the memory of that sense and felt for the primary light.
The deep sun of first light. Om.
The center. The need. The first light. The primary light. The need. Om.
He opened his eyes to the pastel shadings of a brilliant sunset. Streaks of purple and pink clouds lingered to form a soft counterpoint to the brazen entrance of flashing neon across the walls of the city.
He stood and stretched wide, opening his nose to the minty taste of plant-purified oxygen.
As he turned to pick up his coat from the ground he saw her and the blood dropped from his stomach, sucking air from his lungs.
Malta was climbing up the slope.
XXIV
The sharp shiver of wind moving through the branches emphasized the profound stillness at the summit of the rock.
A crowd of emotions danced in his mind as he watched her approaching, her pale skin luminous against the dark silk of her tunic. Then she was hurrying the last few steps up the slope, running lightly to him and he felt her long smooth arms under his palms, cooling the sudden moist flush of his hands.
Inside his arms Malta was a slender ripple of whispering flesh huddling against his chest. As he held her close to him his brain screamed the question. Reluctantly he moved his hands to her shoulders and drew back from her.
“Is something wrong?” she said. Her smile was sad and tired.
He didn’t answer. He looked into her face and squeezed her shoulders, trying to comprehend that she was here in front of him.
“I had to see you,” she was saying.
“Where were you?” he managed finally. “Where did you go?”
“I wanted to be by myself, where I could think.” She searched his eyes. “You must understand how I felt. You and Hap and all those questions.”
“We thought you were dead,” he said softly.
She pulled back, rubbing her arms with her hands. “Dead? What gave you the idea that I was dead?” she said, smiling uncertainly.
“I contacted you. You told me about D’Te and the Seventh Door.” As he spoke his thoughts began to fall into sequence. “I contacted you in a séance.”
“But you did contact me,” she said. “Last week I had a terrible dream. An Indian was pulling my hair, pulling my hair. Then you came, and he went away. That’s when I started looking for you.”
The tinkling music swirled loudly through his brain as he reached out and closed his arms around her.
“I wanted to find you,” she said, her voice muffled. “I wanted to tell you the truth about myself.”
Orient let the warmth of her body linger against him, soothing the awkward tautness of his body.
“I wanted to tell you about D’Te. I was running away from D’Te when Hap found me. I know now that you can protect me from him.” She held his wrists and stepped back. “Will you help me now?” she said.
He struggled for the questions darting through the waves of sound inside his head. He felt her thin fingers holding his wrists and understood that she was waiting for him to answer. Somewhere far away an ambulance was wailing. “But the séance.” He looked down into the clear sea green of her eyes.
“You contacted me while you had a séance. But since I’m not dead you contacted me the same way Hap did.” Her eyes darkened with amusement.
She took his hand and held it to her neck. “I’m not dead,” she repeated gently. “Don’t you know me?”
His mind leaped at the words and he felt the warm, soft skin of her neck making the word a reality. He knew Malta. He had always known her.
She was kissing him, her mouth moving over his face, her breath leaving moist impressions of heat on his skin. When he slid his hands across the silk clinging to her breast, she shuddered, and relaxed under him, her weight pulling them both down to the ground.
He pushed the dress away from her hips and felt the cold shock of air on his back as she pulled at his clothes. Then his face was against her belly, kissing the smooth, smooth softness there. He remembered the smell of her and his nerves caught fire.
He lifted his body as she shifted under him, then pressed down into her dissolving hips.
As he entered the wetness of her, his thoughts convulsed and folded inward, the monotonous imperative of the song drawing him far away… far back… and yet close…
The thick, damp grass of the temple garden dabbed cool patches on his fevered skin. She clung fiercely to his body, whimpering and thrashing beneath him, her teeth stinging his neck and her warm tears soothing the pain. His thoughts began to bud and drop away from him, and his nerves bristled with the truth.
They were joined like this now in the temple garden and were also locked together through all the
cycles of existence. She yelped and he felt himself opening, his body warm with the light of Urvashi.
He buried his face in her hair and she began to breathe the singsong of their childhood rhyme against his ear.
His passion surged as the song caressed his brain and he thrust deep inside her, reaching for the cedar scent of her hair. Eager for the smell of her.
The scent eluded him. Her voice blanketed his thoughts, muffling the memory. He reached out again.
But the scent was barely an echo, dim and fading.
Confused, he lifted, and the memory of her became sharp, tearing through the thick fabric of the droning voice. Then he understood and the metallic taste of disgust soured his tongue.
There was no cedar scent to the hair of the heaving woman under him. Only the heavy fumes of oil mingled with the greedy stench of lust.
It hadn’t been her song that pierced his mind. Not the prayer that they had shared since childhood. He had been tricked into breaking his vow. His vow. The vow that protected their love.
Roaring with fear and rage, he pinned the woman’s shoulders to the ground. Then he recognized the sullen face of Ka, the temple servant, and his hands leaped for revenge.
But as his fingers closed around her thin neck, her croaking laugh crumbled his anger. Drained and helpless, he crawled to the statue and knelt before the impassive goddess Urvashi.
As he looked into her calm face he was gently torn away from his frenzied sorrow, and pulled back from the garden, the fading sound of Ka’s strident laughter following him, through all the twisting corridors of his existence… mocking his presence in the universe…
Orient was standing on the rock.
The girl was still lying on the ground, looking up at him, a sly smile pouting her lovely mouth. She was a child.
His legs shivered in the chill of the evening wind as he drew on his clothes.
The girl stretched her arms, her uplifted hands an invitation.
“Why did you leave me?” she moaned. “Come back to me.” Her body arched up, her narrow hips writhing with unquenched passion. Dead. His brain was battered by the jabbing repetition of the word.
“Why were you sent here?” He squeezed the question through his constricted throat.
“I came to give you Malta,” she said.
“Malta’s dead.” He closed his eyes.
“The power can give you Malta,” she crooned. “The power can give you any woman you desire. The power is greater than time.”
“She’s dead,” Orient repeated.
The girl laughed. “Malta’s yours. Everything can be yours.”
He opened his eyes. The girl was moving toward him. She stood in front of him, her breasts cupped in her hands, her fingers deliberately stroking the stiff, throbbing nipples. “Come back to me,” she whispered, her violet eyes opaque with desire. “I will give you Malta.”
Orient saw his wrinkled hands reach out for her, his cracked fingers opening and closing with pathetic longing.
He roared and twisted away, cold fury dashing against his weakness. Blood poured over his eyes as he clawed at the ground and his fingers found a heavy stone.
Sobbing with effort, he lurched and lifted the stone high above his head with both hands, anticipating her crushed skull.
But she was already moving away, gliding swiftly down the slope and into the shadows at the base of the trees, melting out of his sight.
Dead. He let the stone fall to the ground.
Malta was dead and he’d been tricked into severing the bond between them. The child had been sent to weaken him… to confuse him. He’d been deceived into breaking the bond.
He remembered his twitching hands reaching out for the girl.
She had showed him his weakness. She had been sent to drain his faith. And she had won. And Malta was dead.
He stood alone in the stillness at the top of the rock repeating the word.
After a while he picked up his coat and moved off in the same direction the girl had taken.
Halfway down the slope he threw up.
He checked his watch as he stood sagging against a mailbox, waiting for a cab. According to the time given on the ticket the rally had begun five minutes ago. He could figure on a fifteen-minute delay at the stadium but he had to maintain his timing with Levi. A cab came toward him, and he loped heavily to meet it, his legs working with agonizing slowness.
Inside the cab he huddled into a corner, going over the long deliberate pattern of efficient breath. As his body opened and relaxed he focused his entire being into concentration on his first purpose. The light.
But even as he sensed the illumination, his mind was raked with fear and drew back. He had severed his bond with Malta. He had added momentum to the cycle of loss that pursued their fate.
He reached gingerly past the stinging fear for the presence of the light. He was calm then and the ragged emotions scratching at his brain moved back and were replaced by the sure steady pulse of the prayer.
His car moved slowly in the heavy traffic and Orient’s eyes kept going to his watch, the long spaces of his meditation intersected by his concern with time.
Twenty minutes later they weren’t even close to the stadium and the cab had stopped again in the congestion. He concentrated on the light and felt the soft connections being made as he reached Levi.
He withdrew the contact instantly as a cold turbulence came up to meet the flow. His body oozed sweat under his coat, causing his shirt to stick uncomfortably to his back.
He hoped the contact had been long enough. He wondered if excitement would make Redson resist tonight. He breathed deep and gave his being over to the purpose.
The purpose.
The light.
When they finally reached sight of the stadium he stuffed some bills into the driver’s hand and stepped out into the stalled traffic.
The street in front of the stadium was clogged with people and cars. A dull, steady roar was coming from inside the high walls and outside there was a constant blare of confusion as the automobiles tried to move through the throngs jamming the street. He worked his way through the noisy mob to the entrance at the far side of the street. Further down the block he saw a cordon of policemen checking tickets.
He was relieved to see that the crowd had slowed the progress of the rally. The line of people still waiting to get inside was thick and long.
As he shuffled through the gates he sensed the raw energy being generated by the exhilarated crowd and was overcome by the sodden weariness of his own plodding body. He wondered if he should turn around and go back to the serene quiet of Redson’s home.
Woodenly he passed through the gate and let the slow crush of people take him inside.
He moved with the flow, following it along the corridors behind the arena until the walls broke, dividing the flow into rapid streams, and he emerged onto a ramp running above the steep slant of the seats. He stared out numbly at the faceless, restless swell of massed humanity around him.
The powerful lights heightened the presence of the huge gathering, accentuating the rise and fall of color and movement in the stands.
Thousands of folding chairs had been placed on the playing field, expanding considerably the seating capacity of the already vast stadium. A wide aisle slashed through these seats from the competitor’s rooms at the far end of the arena to a large platform set in a clearing at the center of the field. A ribbon of uniformed policemen, two seats deep, seamed both sides of the aisle.
In front of them, Secret Service men were positioned at intervals along each side of the path.
The file of civilian police extended past the seats and up the low slope of a ramp that connected the platform to the stadium floor. The platform itself was surrounded with soldiers, their polished chrome helmets flashing under the lights.
The twelve chairs on the platform were arranged to form a semicircle around the cluster of microphones. There were two stationary, and four hand-held television cameras on
the stadium floor. A boom camera floated over one side of the ramp. On the other side, behind the Secret Service men, was a dark knot of photographers.
As Orient searched his pockets for his stub he recognized the cocky stance of Martin Weldon in front of the microphones. The murmur of the crowd underneath the flat echoes of the loudspeakers carried away most of his words.
An usher scrambled up the steps, looked at his ticket and directed him down to the lower section of the stadium. In the lower section another usher directed him further down to the boxes.
His seat gave him an almost unobstructed view and he could clearly make out the twelve honored guests seated on the stage. They were well-known, influential men and women from every strata. Orient recognized Joe Kirk, the governor and the mayor among them.
Weldon raised his arms and the murmur of the audience lowered, making his words distinct.
“… this man who represents every principle of faith is here tonight at my request because I feel that you”—he paused and looked around into the stands—“you, the people of America, should learn for yourselves the great power of faith.”
Weldon pushed his hat back on his head and reached into the pocket of his coat. He pulled his hand out and held something over his head.
“I want to demonstrate for you the oldest example of this power,” he said. “All of you go into your pockets and purses and take out an ordinary paper match.”
A buzz from the crowd as they shifted in their seats. Orient saw people passing books of matches down the aisles. He emptied his mind and began burrowing into himself, reaching away from the noise to the calm orbit of his concentration.
“An ordinary paper match, one-twentieth of a cent… ” Weldon was saying. “But if we all light this match at the same time, its light will be as great as the light of day.” He turned to the people on the stage and said something that couldn’t be heard. He turned again to the microphone and held his hands out in front of him. “When I count to three the lights are going to go off. I want you all to strike your match and hold it out in front of you.”
