The Devil Tree

by Jerzy Kosiński

  As I was listening to the minister, a single thought took possession of me: I’ve allowed myself to betray and mock life, to play hide-and-seek with the very essence of myself. For reasons obscure to me, I have failed to extract from my Protestant heritage its only prophetic and creative truths: that for as long as I live and in every situation, I must protest against the sin of distortion and the limitations of human existence, including the distortion and limitations of my own life and nature; that such protest contains both the hope of my spiritual rebirth and moral resurrection and the peril of uncertainty and personal confusion. Until now I’ve betrayed my sacred calling.

  And I realized that in order to respond to this calling, I would have to begin with myself, with my own life. I would have to return home.

  • • •

  Whenever I am with Karen in a public place, among strangers, I feel an urge to touch her, to confirm my hold over her. At the same time, detached from the reality of the moment, I envision Karen and myself making love in the most outlandish manner, defying the taboos of society as well as the rituals we both still follow. Only Karen triggers in me a state in which I watch my own being as if from a distance.

  • • •

  Photography has never interested me, and that’s why, instead of collecting pictures of myself, I collect and write down my memories and impressions. I expect Karen to do the same: after all, how much can I learn about her from her fashion photographs?

  I still keep a letter Karen once wrote me.

  To live in secrecy, Jonathan, is to fear yourself, to deny your own existence. You have made such a maze of your life that finally you no longer know what is satisfying: you live in an exile of your own making, excluding almost everyone, venturing out only in the name of exploration and expansion. Your psyche is your own POW camp and Barbara, the opium cipher, your prisoner. A woman who loves a man enough to give up a life of her own—but, denied his love, is given only sex—is dying inside.

  That you have separated your love from your sexuality is what makes both your mind so keen and your life so tragic. You have risked many things, but not, it seems, your heart, and risking one’s heart is the greatest risk of all. I have risked little, but with you I did gamble with my heart, and it was broken. With you gone I feel as if you were never here. You told me once that I was invulnerable, yet you set about to prove that I wasn’t. When, finally, I succumbed to you, you blamed me for not being invulnerable—for caring about you and wanting you to care about me. And so you began to play that God-giveth-and-God-taketh-away Whalen game: get on your clothes, I don’t want you anymore, you’re getting out; sorry, I do need you, you’re staying on; no, you’re not staying, you’re leaving now. You once said that with someone dumber than I, you would have been, as you termed it, “emotionally dishonest.” For me, you said, you reserved your “spiritual truth”—which, to me, is nothing but a constant and cruel change of your mind. But in my short life I have discovered that truth is infinite and involves use of the heart. To illustrate: I love you, Jonathan. Has it ever occurred to you that your own heart has been ignored, denied, and subverted? Maybe your heart doesn’t want to play any more Whalen games; maybe it just wants to be loved.

  You know what pleases me: my modeling, being the best and the highest paid, travel, chocolate chip cookies, fucking someone I love—you—and hearing you talk about what it is that you would really want to do with me if I agreed to become your slave. But then I was weaned on peanut butter and jelly—salty goo and sweet mush: I’m an infant seer. I was never meant to be a slave, to be just fucked. I can’t handle it. I don’t know what it means. Mr. Prolong, the Don Juan of American virility and stay-hard bedroom power, whose only desire is to hear a woman scream either “More!” or “Enough!” makes me mute and frightened. My voice comes from mother’s milk, from affection and warmth and support.

  • • •

  Karen measures love by its endurance and intensity. The spiritual loyalty of true lovers to each other has, in her eyes, nothing to do with their sexual faithfulness to each other, which she denounces as a dishonest state enforced by jealousy, a bondage of spirit, a reluctant acceptance of sexual inertia.

  I recall that spring day when Karen and I lay on the grass in New Haven, kissing, reading, pulling up blades of grass. The wind scattered the long-winged nuts from the maples onto our faces, rippled through our clothes, blew Karen’s hair across my face. Then suddenly Karen told me we were finished. She said she didn’t want to see me anymore.

  “New York is important to me,” she said as she sat beside me. “It’s my chance to have fun and to grow up. I have plans, Jonathan. I want to become a fashion model, one of the best ever, and to be free to dash off to Paris in April or Morocco at Christmas, to ski in Italy and Switzerland, to look at the black Goyas in Madrid. I’d like to meet men from England, Germany, and France. I want to sip warm beer in Dublin pubs and invite friends to dinner at my hotel suite in Rome.

  “You and I keep thinking we need our independence. You’re trying to free me, and I’m trying to free you. It has dawned on me that I don’t want to waste any more time being miserable over you and our adolescent love affair. Don’t blame it all on me, Jonathan. I’m as rational about it as you are.”

  Prior to her announcement, we had driven around in her car for hours. We’d run out of gas on a hill, and I’d stumbled down into the valley and climbed back up in a chill wind, a can of gasoline in one hand and a peppermint-stick ice-cream cone in the other.

  After she said it, it occurred to me that one day my wealth could make it possible for her to become as free as she desired—free to create her own identity, free to impose order on all the circumstances and events of her life. Yet in accepting it from me, she would no longer be free to treat my presence in her life as the result of her free choice; rather, she would have to accept her new life as the calculated result of a choice that was initially not hers but mine. The cruel paradox of such a gift was that the very accepting of it would automatically diminish her freedom—her freedom in relation to me.

  A while later, as I strolled barefoot around the lake, I saw Karen standing, her hair tumbled about, her pink and white striped blouse half unbuttoned. She walked to her car, the car door slammed, and she drove away. I kept on looking at the lake and wishing I could dissolve in it.

  • • •

  As a boy, I collected the cork tips of my father’s cigarettes, believing they contained his unspoken thoughts and feelings. Now I collect my memories, hoping to discover the links between them.

  • • •

  The summer was ending. In Central Park the leaves had not yet turned yellow, but the air gave off a scent of decay. Layers of gray clouds hung low over the city.

  Whalen drove along the Hudson River, past the docks with the transatlantic ships. He parked his car on a downtown pier and got out, scanning the riverbank until he found the spot he was looking for. He walked to the embankment, stood at the water’s edge, and looked at the apartment buildings over in New Jersey.

  Years ago, during one winter vacation, his parents had come to New York to see the new Broadway plays and attend all the benefit parties. Jonathan came with them, and to keep him company, his parents invited Peter, one of his grade school friends. One evening after his parents left the house, he and Peter decided to test Never Say Die, a book they had read about surviving under any circumstances, from being lost in the Sahara to fighting Russians on the steppes. For the test, Jonathan chose a night crossing of the Hudson River. Dressed in layers of sweaters and underwear, the boys took a taxi to an abandoned pier, where, reconnoitering the day before, Jonathan had spotted a crude row-boat left at the dock, perhaps by one of the dock workers.

  The river heaved with chunks of ice. Through folds of fog the boys could see an occasional light flickering on the New Jersey shore.

  Jonathan untied the boat and steadied it as Peter jumped in and sat in the stern. Then Jonathan climbed aboard, and as the current seized the boat
and carried them away from shore, Jonathan braced his legs, dipped the oars awkwardly into the water, and heaving his body back and forth, began to row frantically. In the darkness, jagged pieces of ice banged against the trembling boat as it took them rapidly downstream. When they saw the lights of the Statue of Liberty and heard the horn of the Staten Island ferry, Jonathan realized that they were on their way out to sea. Never Say Die contained no instructions on how to save the crew of a small boat about to be tossed into the Atlantic on a dark and foggy night.

  As the strong current swept them along the Manhattan shore, Jonathan could not control the boat. Tired and frightened, he loosened his grip on the oars, and sensing his surrender, Peter screamed and upset the balance of the boat. The boat turned sideways and capsized, throwing the boys into the water amid blades of ice and sloshing waves. Hanging on to the overturned boat, they drifted rapidly, then slammed into a pile of rocks. When Jonathan heaved himself out of the water, Peter was right behind him, but his body was limp. Quickly Jonathan pulled him from the river, and they both collapsed on the wet stone.

  They climbed over an embankment and, cold and shivering, ran to the West Side Highway and crossed it. About two hundred yards down a street on the other side, the neon sign of a gas station glowed through the mist.

  Behind it, high above the other buildings, Jonathan saw other lighted signs—among them the logo of his father’s company at the top of the building that housed its Wall Street headquarters. Twice before, he had visited his father there.

  Dragging Peter along by the arm, Jonathan stumbled into the gas station and asked the attendant to call them a taxi. But the sleepy attendant looked up at Jonathan only long enough to blink. In a loud voice Jonathan told him that he was the son of Horace Sumner Whalen, and pointed out the sign on the building. At that the attendant promptly got up and summoned a taxi, and the two boys arrived home long before Jonathan’s parents returned from their evening out. In the following days, although both boys came down with fevers, neither Jonathan nor Peter mentioned their escapade to anyone. The attempt to cross the Hudson was Jonathan’s first heroic attempt. It failed. Dodging the draft was his second.

  Whalen got back in his car and headed north. At dawn he was driving past meadows and ponds in Connecticut. Turning off the main highway, he continued along a marsh road. The sun dispersed the mist that hung over the fields, and the car’s wheels churned slowly in the sand. Scrub pine grew beside the road, and the green needles filtered the sun and dappled the hood of the car. He felt invisible and secure behind the wheel.

  • • •

  “Your mother was anxious to keep you abroad, Jonathan. In fact, she was desperate.” The doctor avoided facing him. “In her nightmares you had often appeared buried as the unknown soldier. That’s why she was pleased by your decision to leave the country before a draft notice could be delivered to you. As long as she and the company trustees didn’t know your whereabouts, the draft notice couldn’t be forwarded to you, and technically you were not legally liable. But your mother was very disturbed about not knowing where you were at any given time.”

  “To remain not liable, I had to be on the move, with no forwarding address.”

  “Well, yes, that’s what was so upsetting. She imagined you with long hair and a beard, wearing army fatigues, high on drugs and hitchhiking through Burma, India, or Africa with only a knapsack and guitar.” The doctor scratched his neck. “We tried to keep track of you—the best detectives from Burns took months to locate you, although at times we knew approximately where you were because you kept drawing money from affiliated banks by signing plain pieces of paper.” The doctor grinned and looked at Jonathan. “As I recall, you wrote the last such check in Ankara—or was it Tripoli?—for something like thirty thousand dollars. In any case it exceeded your trust allowance for that period. Still, because you’d lived on less than half that for the previous two or three months, the trustees allowed the check to clear. Then your safari jeep was found abandoned. Your mother was frantic. Fearing you might have been kidnapped, and acting on my advice, she once again hired Burns detectives to locate you.”

  “How did they find me?”

  “They traced you to a group of American hippies in Nepal. Apparently you had desecrated a temple; either you entered it naked, or you undressed inside—and there was a girl with you. A bank there that dealt with the National Midland managed to get you released from the local prison. Then we found out that you had settled in Rangoon and that, soon after, you became sick; you were either still smoking opium or already withdrawing, or maybe doing both.”

  The doctor put out his cigarette. “During that year your mother was hospitalized several times. To avoid unnecessary publicity, her nurse would call us whenever there was danger of an attack, and I would personally bring her here to the hospital. As your mother often refused to cooperate, even though it was obvious that for her own sake she should be under treatment, sometimes we had to”—he paused, searching for the words—” tranquilize her. Actually, though, she loved it here. She said she never wanted to leave. That’s how my staff and I know so much about you, Jonathan. The National Midland and the trustees called me continually. And your mother always spoke so fondly about you. She kept your photograph on her night table.”

  “What photograph?”

  “You as a child standing next to your father in Whalenburg.”

  “How did my mother die?”

  The doctor squinted thoughtfully. “It was an accident, really,” he said.

  “Did she kill herself?”

  “Since your father’s death, your mother had often been depressed,” the doctor continued. “She kept all the medication I prescribed for her in small, clearly labeled bottles stored in her own special refrigerator in her bedroom. One day when the maid defrosted the refrigerator, the bottles got wet, and some of the labels slid off. That day, confusing the dosages, your mother simply took too much medication. Her death was a tragic accident.”

  “Was there an autopsy?”

  “The law does not require an autopsy when the patient dies while under the care of a reputable physician. At the time of her death your mother was under my professional care.”

  “Why would my mother need your care and so many strong drugs?”

  “When your father died, the demands that she considered her reason for living ceased abruptly. She became depressed because no one needed her.”

  “I did,” said Whalen.

  “Well, yes. But having failed school, the draft was upon you, and then you were gone. To your mother, this meant that even you had abandoned her. And so she died—alone.”

  • • •

  I remember a luncheon given by the parents of one of Karen’s college roommates. After lunch the parents went to their country club to play cards and golf, the other students went swimming, and I was left alone with Karen, who stood at the door watching the cars drive away. I pushed her hair back from her face and kissed her neck. She stood still and said nothing. I stopped, and we looked at each other. Her eyes moved lazily over my hair, forehead, eyes, and mouth. I slid my hands under her blouse, felt her skin, cupped her breasts. She pressed against me, her lips trembling, then quickly disengaged herself and, prompted by a quick decision, took my hand and led me to one of the guest bedrooms. Slowly, as if testing my control, she locked the door, pulled the window shades down, disconnected the phone from the wall, and took off the bedspread, folding it neatly.

  I reached for her again and was about to kiss her on the mouth when she freed herself. Deliberately languid, Karen started to undress, slipping out of her dress, stepping out of her panties, kicking away her shoes. In seconds she was naked, lying on her back, her breasts heaving, her legs slightly bent. Uneasily I undressed, aware of her watching me as I stepped out of my trousers and briefs.

  I lay on her, her taut body against mine. We kissed, and as she bit my lips and licked my tongue, I could sense her excitement, her wanting me. Just as I raised myself to slide
into her, she told me to stop. She was not taking the pill, she said, because the side effects made her sick, and she had no diaphragm with her. I kissed her breasts, her nipples, guiding my hand over her stomach, the curve of her hip, rubbing my flesh against the inside of her thighs. I told her how much I wanted to have her feel me inside her, and that I would withdraw before my orgasm, but she resisted, whispering that waiting for me to pull out of her would kill her pleasure. As I moved down on her, she thrust her hips upward, inviting my tongue. My fingers inside her, I kept kissing and sucking her, but twisting and quivering, slowly she pushed me away. When I tried to hold her she pulled back, and covering her face with a pillow, she began to weep. After she had quieted down, I put my arms around her and asked why she hadn’t come.

  She said nothing at first, but after a moment she admitted that she couldn’t reach an orgasm under pressure. With me, she said, she was too calculating, too anxious to please me and show how much she wanted me.

  She told me about an African student, a gentle, soft-spoken black boy who had eyed her shyly for months but had hardly ever talked to her. He had finally offered to get some stuff for them to trip on, and one evening the two of them had gone to his room. They snorted coke and swallowed a sugarlike substance, and within minutes they started to trip. While Karen lay down, her world fragmenting, her will in tatters, the black boy seemed to solidify, and he became noisier and more excited. Dressed, then naked, he was all over her, his eyeballs rolling as he freed her breasts, then her hips, touching and kissing her gently, whispering how beautiful she was. All the while, she said, she was dreaming of being raped in front of him by me, whom he would then have to fight.

  The man’s sweat was oily; he smelled sour; and only when she noticed that he was not circumcised did she realize that he was naked and moving down over her face. He tried to enter in her mouth, but like a stubborn chipmunk hoarding a chestnut she kept her lips tightly closed, watching his eyeballs roll under his delicate long lashes as he rubbed his flesh, heavy and rigid like a stone, against her face, her neck, her breasts, coating her with his fluid. His fist between her thighs, he now tried to force her thighs apart, but she crossed her legs, stiffening like a taut canvas. Excited by his fist boring into her, she dreamt of letting go, of having an orgasm while faking that she couldn’t have it. By now he was too high to know the difference; he was falling off her body, crawling onto her again. In his final effort he picked her up by her shoulders and turned her over, pinning her to the bed, trying to push her legs apart until her thighs began to burn beneath his thrusts. The two of them fell to the floor, but he found her again, entering her like a wedge. When she heard him moan and shake on top of her, she felt safe and loosened her limbs. Her orgasm shook her entire frame, the canvas of her body torn apart. She did not remember what happened next—or when her lover got limp inside of her, but it was with him that, for the first time, she became aware of experiencing two different kinds of orgasms. One came from being penetrated deeply again and again, the man’s entire length and weight assaulting her almost painfully, yet in its steadiness and rhythm the assault becoming subservient to the rising wave of excitement that in one powerful moment would overcome her being. The other was brought about by her lover’s hand and tongue on her clitoris, leading time after time to a frantic release that left her restless, as if yet to be fulfilled.