Sleeping in Flame

by Jonathan Carroll

  "But just to swim? You could have gone to the YMCA for that. Those were pretty expensive swimming lessons!" I was about to go on, but stopped when I saw his gentle face harden. I'd offended him.

  "Forget the cynicism, Walker. A good teacher knows intuitively what you need and gives you exactly that. Sometimes what he suggests shocks you, but then you learn fast he knows better than you. Venasque said I'd spent too much of my life looking inside and had to learn how to look out. Someone I know went to him and learned how to do calligraphy. Now they have the most beautiful handwriting you ever saw. What you need depends on who you are."

  "All right, but swimming and good handwriting are one thing, Philip. You've got to admit that learning to fly is another! Wouldn't you be skeptical if you were me?"

  "I was! Until I met him and talked to him for about an hour. In between his taco chips and Coca-Colas."

  "What do you guys want on your pizzas? The works? Anchovies? Extra cheese?" Holding his hand over the receiver, Weber looked at us. Behind him, I could see Maris moving around the kitchen with a couple of green plates in her hands.

  Philip got up and started for the phone. Stopping in front of me, he said all he was going to say about the shaman for the rest of the night. "Go and see him. He's waiting for you. Anything else I say will only bias you."

  Mansfield Avenue is in the Hancock Park section of Los Angeles. The houses vary in style from Spanish to Tudor to postmodern, but are generally about the same size. What I found most interesting were the front yards. Almost all of them were small, but so perfectly green and mown that I got the feeling a billiard ball would roll unimpeded from one side to the other if only I gave it a small push. Driving slowly down the street checking for the right house number, I also noticed an inordinate number of men walking around in stiff dark suits, yarmulkas, and chest-length beards. Later, Venasque said with a wry smile that they were Secret Service men. When I asked "For which side?" he cracked up.

  "'For which side?' That's good, Walker. You gotta good sense of humor on you. We can use it later."

  I don't know what I expected a shaman's house to look like, but Venasque's turned out to be no different from others on the block. A narrow straight driveway bordered one side of the lawn and went to a garage in back. A shiny black-and-silver Jeep was parked in there. The house itself was khaki-colored, with brown metal awnings and decorative wrought iron over all of the downstairs windows. Most of those windows were wide open when I went up the walk. Loud television noise poured out of them and onto the quiet street.

  Before pressing the doorbell, I stopped a moment to hear if I could make out what show he was watching. Maybe if I could, it would tell me something about him. As if on command, the theme song for "I Love Lucy" boomed out. I looked at my watch – three in the afternoon. Right on time. I looked through a window and saw a chubby black-and-white bullterrier standing erect on a couch, staring right back at me. I pulled back. He reminded me of the lions in front of the New York Public Library. As soon as I rang the bell, he gave one blunt bark, jumped awkwardly from the couch, and skittered across the floor to the door.

  I was nervous, and it didn't help when no one answered for the longest time. I was tempted to ring again but didn't. I would show the shaman patience. Maybe it was one of my first tests.

  "Wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm coming!"

  The dog barked again. Once.

  "Shut up, Big! You know who it is."

  I straightened up and quickly tried to decide what expression to have on when he opened the door. A Zen koan I'd once read crossed my mind. "Show me your original face, the face you had before your parents were born."

  "Hello, Walker! It's about time you came around."

  I don't know how it happened, but the first thing I saw was the pig. It was gun-metal gray and about the same size as the dog. It was definitely a pig, but a scaled-down, swaybacked version. Wagging its stringy tail like a happy dog, it came up and very loudly sniffed (snorted at) my leg.

  "That's Connie, and the dog is Big Top. We were just having lunch. You want a sandwich?" He was short and fat, and had white, crew-cut hair. An almost completely forgettable face. He looked either like a retired policeman or the owner of a hot-dog stand. He wore a red polo shirt and a pair of overalls. The only thing that sort of stood out was that he was barefoot. I didn't know how to answer his sandwich invitation, so I said, "That'd be great," although I wasn't hungry. I couldn't stop looking at the pig and bullterrier. They stood next to each other and the pig licked the dog's face slowly and completely.

  "Terrific. I got some great pastrami today at Cantor's. Come on into the kitchen. Just watch out for Connie. She likes walking close. I think she's got a thing for legs, or something."

  Sure enough, the pig moved right with me as I walked through the place. She leaned heavily against my left leg the whole way.

  Venasque's home was a real surprise. Although afternoon shadows had moved in, the rooms were so full of colorful, luminous objects and furniture that it felt like there was sun everywhere. The chairs and couches were all soft and round, and covered with tropical flower/exotic bird Lily Pulitzer patterns. Mustard and lime and raspberry carpets sat lightly on the polished blond wood floors. He ate at a white rattan table in a white breakfast room. The pig stopped in that room and collapsed on the white shag carpet as if the long trip to the kitchen was too much for her. Venasque stopped and shook his head when he saw her flop down.

  "Give a pig M & Ms and she gets tired halfway through the day. All that sugar goes right to her head. No more candy, Connie. I don't know why I keep letting you have them."

  The pig looked at him and squeaked. He shook his head again, and started for the kitchen.

  "What kind of pig is she?"

  "Vietnamese. An old Vietnamese pig. Over there in Germany they call them 'Vietnamese hanging stomach' pigs. That's not a very nice name, is it? Especially not for someone as smart as her. Besides, she keeps Big Top company when I'm not around."

  The kitchen was different. Unlike the frilly, feminine feel of the other rooms, this one was all tile and stainless steel. Very high-tech and "cool," but done in such an interesting, individual way, that I couldn't stop looking around at it while he assembled my sandwich.

  "This is a marvelous room."

  "You like it? Harry Radcliffe designed it. You know Harry?"

  "The architect? Of course." I didn't know much about the subject, but Radcliffe was so famous that it would have been hard not to know who he was. Besides that, he was one of Maris's big heroes, and she had photographs of his buildings up all over her apartment.

  "Yeah, well, Harry studied with me a while. Funny, funny man. After we finished, I asked him to design me a kitchen instead of paying cash. But nothing too expensive, you know? Something for an old man who likes a straight line and a clean angle." He looked at me over his shoulder and winked. "I'll tell you something interesting. Harry is one of the biggest hotshot architects in the world, right? But a tin ear on that man like you can't imagine! The only thing he had to learn was how to listen to music. So I taught him how to play the accordion. He has about three of them now. But even after he learned how, you didn't want to be in the same room with him and that instrument when he played. A great architect and a terrible musician." He smiled and went back to stacking pastrami.

  "Now where's that mustard? I put it right out here on the counter. Big Top, go get me the mustard, will you?"

  The bullterrier walked straight to the refrigerator and somehow, with a flick of his head (or nose), opened it. He got up on his hind legs, leaned deep into the fridge. Sticking his head forward, he put his mouth around something. A yellow tube of mustard. Jumping down, he closed the door with another head flick, and brought the tube to his master.

  Venasque paid not attention. "Thanks, Big."

  2.

  "You want to rub your back up against my history, huh? Well, that's only fair. You told me yours."

  We were sitting out on the s
mall patio behind his house, drinking tea. January night had come and along with it, a coolness that snuck right into your bones. The tea tasted warm and good. Connie and Big Top slept on their respectively named pillows nearby. The pig never seemed to get comfortable: She kept hopping up, grunting as if something had bitten her ass, then trying to settle herself the right way.

  "Walker, I'll tell you something. Honesty fades as you grow older. You get better at lying, so you do it more. Specially about yourself. But you want to know about me, okay." He scratched his head, then rubbed both hands over the top of it. "I come from the South of France, originally. My parents were German circus people. They traveled through that area once in their lives on the way to a date in Monte Carlo. They liked it so much they jumped out of their old lives right there and stayed. In the circus they'd had an animal act, which is one of my first memories – funny animals living in our house. They sold the circus caravan they'd lived in, and a couple of horses, and bought a farm out in the middle of nowhere. Do you know France? About fifteen miles from Carpentras and an hour and a half from Avignon. The place wasn't so special, but they loved it enough to work like crazy to get it going in the beginning. Then a little gift from God happened to us; my mother got interested in perfume. She cooked up some kind of special blend that only she knew how to do. That, and what we got from the farm, put us in good shape. Not great, but comfortable, and still happy to be there. Then my sister Ilonka and I were born one year after the other.

  "We grew up with perfume smells, funny animals, and that French countryside. It was a heaven, Walker. When I was seven, my father taught me how to walk the tightrope. He tied a horse rope between the two olive trees right in front of our door. In the summer we went into the fields and picked lavender for my mother. Have you ever seen a lavender field blowing in the wind? We spoke German with our parents and French with our friends. When we got tired of one language, we'd switch to the other and have a whole other world of words to use." He stopped and scratched the dog with a bare foot. Big Top looked up sleepily and licked the foot. Once. "You know what I remember? Glasses full of sunlight. Having family picnics and seeing the sun in every glass we used."

  My lessons began at the end of that sentence. I blinked once, thinking about his family and their picnics. The moment I closed my eyes, there was a completely different smell in the air. California night is damp and ripe; fresh-cut grass and dew, night-blooming flowers somewhere nearby. This new smell was dry and sunny, hot flowers and earth giving up their scent to two o'clock on an August afternoon. In the South of France, 1920.

  When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was a boy riding a zebra bareback past a field of lavender. Black, white, lavender, all moving, all movement. He wore white shorts but no shirt or shoes. Both boy and animal had the same serious, thoughtful expression on their faces.

  "Do you want some wine?"

  A woman with brown flyaway hair and bold green eyes knelt by my side, a glass of wine in her hand. I realized I was sitting in the shifting shade of a (chestnut?) tree with giant yellow leaves as my moving roof.

  "The boy knows you're watching, Walker, so he's riding like a good cadet. If you weren't here, he'd go like the devil flying through hell. Here, come on and drink this." She shoved the glass at me with one hand, and pushed the hair out of her face with the other. I took it and, still watching the boy and zebra canter back and forth, forgot to thank her.

  "It's Venasque, isn't it? When he was a boy."

  "He is a boy! What do you think?" His mother's voice was a challenge.

  A young girl with something cupped tightly between two small hands came from behind the tree. Smiling, she held it out to us: it was ours if we wanted. She looked very much like the boy.

  "Mama, regarde!"

  "What now, Ilonka, another lizard? Put it down. Show us."

  The girl dropped to her knees, hands still cupped. She was eight. "Ilonka" means apple tree in Hungarian. Her husband's name was . . . would be . . . Raymond. She would be shot by the Nazis when she was twenty-eight. How did I know these things?

  A gray-green lizard sat still between her slowly opening hands. Before she could do anything, it shot out and right up the tree. I watched her while her happy eyes followed it up. She kept a blue flower in her dresser drawer, pretending it had been given to her by a boy she knew. Just that morning she'd put a finger in her own shit and, electric with guilt, tasted it. She'd been especially good today as contrition for having done such a wicked thing, although no one knew about it, besides the two of us. She looked at me and smiled sneakily. She knew what I was thinking.

  I was about to say something unimportant when I heard Venasque's voice. His adult voice fingered its way through my conscious mind.

  ". . . mother liked the name Ilonka. It means –"

  "Apple tree in Hungarian." I'd put my head down and closed my eyes, knowing what would be there when I opened them again: today, California, sixty years later. I was right. Both hands locked behind his neck, Venasque was staring at the night sky.

  "Good, you saw! I wasn't sure. It was nice there, huh?"

  "Was I really there?"

  He grabbed for something in the air and brought his hand down to show me what it was. Sitting in there was the lizard his sister had let run up the tree.

  "Walker, there are two important things you've got to know before we get started. You know everything about everyone. We all do. You're surprised you could go back to that day in my life? Don't be. It's an easy trick to learn. Someplace in you is the knowledge of every day of my life. I gave you a little push this time to find it, but soon you'll be able to do it whenever you want. But you won't use it. Know why? Because you won't want to. Even with your own life. Hopefully, by then you'll want to figure out how to live without making stupid mistakes on your own. Do you read mystery novels? Yes? It's the same with them. A fool can read ten pages and then turn to the end of the book to see if the butler did it. But why ruin the whole process? The fun is trying to figure out the mystery yourself. If you get it right at the end then you really feel good and not a cheat."

  "Why would I want to learn about this place in myself if I'm not going to use it?"

  "For the power and the discipline! Only weak, helpless people learn karate so they can hit someone. Don't you ever watch 'Kung Fu'? One of my favorite shows. Remember I told you I was going to teach you how to fly? Well, I am, but you won't ever do it. You'll never want to, if I teach you right. The satisfaction is knowing you can."

  "What was the second thing I should know before we start?"

  "That's something else. The second is, we know the past is a few million years old. But the future . . . there's no guarantee it will be even half as long. Right? Well, that's what I wanted to tell you – it won't be half as long.

  "Connie. Connie! Come here. I gotta lizard for you."

  The pig sprang up and waddled over. Venasque put his open hand in front of her. She gave it one fast shloop with her wet mouth and the sixty-year-old lizard was gone. She nuzzled his hand to make sure nothing else delicious was there before returning to her pillow. Venasque shook his head in wonderment, as if she had done something special.

  "There are a few years left, but that's not important. I think it'll be best when everything is over."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Us, life, man's whole long story will finally have "The End' written across it. What nobody understands is what comes after that. Only some of those who are around when it does happen will be able to find that out. I hope I'm one of them, but I may never come back at that time."

  "Come back? You mean reincarnation?"

  "They've been talking and writing about reincarnation forever, but no one seems to get the hint, you know? Man is so dumb, down deep. You think people have talked about it for thousands of years because they're making a mistake? No. Reincarnation means coming back and working on life until you get things right, Walker. But even people who do believe in it never think that maybe life on
earth won't go on forever. They think you live and die and come back maybe ten or fifty or a hundred years from now. That's wrong. You do live and die and come back, but not always in the future. Know why? Because after a certain date, there isn't a future. There's an end to our time here. Pretty soon some idiots will make a big mistake that'll lead to other big mistakes, and then the world will die. And I mean everything will die – man, animals, bugs. Sad, but that's the way it is. Getting back to what I was saying, there's only this certain amount of time available to us humans to live in. You can come back in 1390 or 1790 or 1990, but not so long after that because if you did, you'd be born on a charcoal briquette! So we live and work out our troubles now, or in our past. Sometimes we Ping-Pong back and forth, depending on what we need and where it is in our history. It even happens to animals. That sea monster you saw? Where do you think it came from?"

  "Philip Strayhorn said –"

  The old man waved away the rest of my sentence. "Phil Strayhorn's read too many books. He should swim more. I'll give you the technical name of that thing if you want, but all you gotta do is look at those old sea maps explorers used. There's a dragon like yours drawn on each one. That part is No Man's Land! Don't sail here! You think guys like Columbus and Magellan were fooling around? You think they were crazy? Hell no! They said don't sail there because they'd seen sea monsters there. But monsters come back too, Walker. From what I can understand, they usually die and come right back to the same time, but sometimes they pop up nearby. Like out at Santa Monica." He smiled.

  "Why would a sea serpent be reincarnated?" Did I believe any of this? I did.

  "For the same reason man is reincarnated – to work things out. It doesn't matter where we are in time because the problems are always the same. I can imagine the same is true for sea monsters.

  "I'm going to show you something now which I shouldn't do yet, but you need it to believe what I've been telling you. Don't get scared, though. Even if it gets bad, try not to get scared."