The Devil Tree

by Jerzy Kosiński

  “I pulled her away from the tub and laid her on the floor. The blood still trickled out of her veins and oozed out of the lips of the gashes in her white skin.

  “Then I panicked.

  “I used to date a medical student who was an intern in a Bronx hospital, so I called her, praying to God she was still working there. Well, she was. ‘Norma,’ I said, ‘I have a naked kid in my flat who’s cut her wrists and lost a lot of blood. What do I do?’ ‘Is she still breathing?’ asked Norma. ‘She is.’ ‘Bandage her wrists tightly to stop the bleeding, wrap her in a blanket, and get her here as soon as you can.’ ‘What if the kid dies on me on the way?’ I asked. ‘Then she’s all yours,’ said Norma. ‘Don’t bring her here. This is a hospital, not a morgue.’

  “As I started to dress the girl, her body limp like that of a sick child, I kept asking myself what I would do if she died. Call an ambulance? That would also mean police and press. And what would I tell them? That after a nice dinner with me my date got herself naked and then, for the fun of it, went to my bathroom to kill herself? A likely story! The law wouldn’t think twice before charging me with her murder. Could I risk carrying her body out in a trunk and dropping it into the river? Or should I cut her up and burn the pieces, one by one, in my self-cleaning microwave oven? That was one female anatomy lesson I didn’t need!

  “I carried the girl down to my car—the garage attendant winking and making some comment about my fucking a drunk—and I drove through town, praying all the way. At the hospital, Norma was waiting with a Korean intern she had picked because he knew nothing concerning what our laws said about attempted suicide. The girl was still alive, and while the intern sewed up her wrists and gave her a transfusion, Norma made sure everything was kept hushed up. In a day or two my Persian date was out of the hospital. When I asked her why she had cut her wrists, she simply said she did it to punish me.

  “Now, Mr. Whalen, what if your girl decides one day to punish you like that? If she does, let’s just hope you have me on your side. You see, as your bodyguard it is my duty to know all kinds of people who can be of help when you need them. As for me, I don’t even mind lighting your cigarettes and giving you a good haircut.

  “Of course, to protect you well, I’d have to be with you around the clock. Once I started working for you, I’d know a lot about you and your life. That’s why I could conceivably be the one person most likely to sell you out. I’m telling you this not only because I want you to pay me well for the job, but because sooner or later you would’ve thought of the same thing anyway.”

  • • •

  My mother had met Karen several times. After the first meeting, all my mother had to say about her was “What a pretty girl. Just lovely to look at!” Another time my mother sniffed Karen’s perfume in my room and said, “Tell your little friend not to compete with skunks.” The perfume was a gift from me.

  Once, after a long conversation between Karen and my mother, I asked my mother what Karen had had to say to her. “Say?” exclaimed my mother. “Surely you agree, Jonathan, one doesn’t listen to Karen; one just enjoys her looks!”

  When I showed my mother a photograph of Karen leaning against me in the courtyard at Yale, my mother looked at it carefully and then remarked that I looked handsome but that the hedges needed trimming.

  • • •

  An unexpected postscript to my London psychodrama: at a party, making my way through the crowded room in search of a toilet, I felt a woman’s hand on my arm. I turned around and faced Louise Hunter. She was as glamorous as I remembered her but, somehow, less radiant.

  “You’ve never let me know if our trip made your girl friend jealous,” she said, her smile an easy invitation.

  “I didn’t want to bother you,” I said, at a loss for words. “I heard—I was told that you and Frank—”

  “Oh, yes, we’re divorced,” she said. “Frank used my London escapade with you as proof of adultery.”

  “But the two of you had discussed the London trip long before we left,” I said. “You told me that Frank knew the truth!”

  “Frank was not after the truth.” She frowned. “He was after a divorce. What’s more, all that publicity about you and me did not go down well with my producers, so I wasn’t given the role in the movie version of The Financier.”

  “I’m so sorry, Louise,” I said, at a loss again. “I wish I could be of help.”

  She pulled a cigarette from her purse, and as I held out a light, her hand touched mine. “You can be, Jonathan. I’m without a job. I’ll gladly play any role you can think of. In life or on the stage.”

  “I’m finished with psychodrama—and with pretending,” I said.

  “So am I. That’s why I now regret I didn’t let you sleep with me in London. How about making your girl friend jealous again?” she said, putting her arm through mine. “Only for real this time.”

  • • •

  The auditorium grew silent. The lights dimmed. The all-male audience sat motionless, its gaze fixed on the bright spotlight that followed the frail old man walking slowly toward the marble podium. No one moved. Whalen was acutely aware that he had allowed himself to get caught in an irreversible process.

  The secretary of the Order stumbled on one of the steps leading to the podium, but he promptly recovered his balance. He caught his breath and then in a trembling voice intoned the following statement: “Every association of men sets for itself goals which its members hope to attain through the strength of their mutual fellowship. We declare the following to be the aims of this Order: to foster the high ideals of manly character and achievement, to improve our character through intellectual pursuits, and to unite ourselves in lasting friendship and loyalty.

  “But in our striving we must not forget that the individual comes first, along with his virtues: honorable ambition, fair speech, pure thoughts, and straightforward action.

  “You, Jonathan James Whalen, are to be initiated into this Order, whose goals have just been declared. It is because the Brothers have thought you worthy of our trust that we have brought you into our fellowship. We invite you to share our privileges, we offer you our friendship and our loyal help in all your endeavors. We believe you are in sympathy with the goals of the Brotherhood and are prepared to make them your own. If we have erred, and if you find in our goals that which is incompatible with your own highest ideals, it is your obligation here and now to declare it.”

  The spotlight left the stage and settled on Whalen. The entire audience turned toward him. Trapped by their stare, rigid and mute, he summoned the memory of Barbara’s funeral in Rangoon and certain words of the minister: “Of all living creatures, only the human being carries in himself the ultimate threat to his vital existence: the freedom to say yes or no to it, to reaffirm or to transcend the boundaries set for us by the indifferent world.”

  When Whalen said nothing, the secretary continued. “Jonathan James Whalen, you will now rise, turn to face the Brothers, and declare your solemn assent to our purposes.”

  The lights in the room brightened. Whalen rose and heard his voice reciting. “I promise and make covenant with the Brothers of this Order, present and absent, to obey the constitution, traditions, and bylaws of this Order and to forward in every way within my power the goals for which it exists. So help me God.”

  • • •

  Soon after that Whalen was sure that the time had come for him to forge his own covenant. Up to then he had felt the necessity of belonging to a place assigned to him at birth by nature and society. Suddenly the place belonged to him. And where formerly he had had to trust the knowledge and judgment of others, suddenly he felt ripe in his own knowledge of who he was and clear in his own judgment of what he had to do.

  • • •

  My dear Walter, my dear Helen:

  As my godparents, and as the people closest to the memories of my past, you have been generous in assuming the place of moral guardianship that was left vacant by my parents. To show my gratef
ulness for your role in my life, I would like to invite you to be my guests on a trip abroad. Such a trip would allow me, possibly for the first time, to discover myself.

  It will be a leisurely vacation trip. I’ve chartered a jet to take the three of us to East Africa, a region that once made a great impression on me, and I’ve arranged for us to live at a villa on the Indian Ocean.

  At this time of year the climate in the region is very mild. We could leave any day that would be convenient for you. I do hope you will accept.

  Love, and much thought,

  Jonathan

  • • •

  Breakfast was served on the terrace overlooking the ocean. Whalen handed the binoculars to Walter Howmet. “And that’s a baobab,” he said, pointing at the largest tree in the garden. “Baobab means ‘thousand-year-old,’ and many people in Africa believe that the tree was the root of life and witness to the birth of the first man. The native calls the baobab ‘the devil tree’ because he claims that the devil once got tangled in its branches and punished the tree by reversing it. To the native, the roots are branches now, and the branches are roots. To ensure that there would be no more baobabs, the devil destroyed all the young ones. And that’s why, the native says, there are only full-grown baobab trees left.”

  Whalen turned toward the ocean. “Look at the reef,” he said. “Stretching out for miles, it’s a natural barrier that protects the shallows from sharks. The reef is full of caves—each cave an aquarium, containing some of nature’s most exotic creatures.”

  “It was so thoughtful of you, Jonathan, to bring us all the way to Africa,” said Howmet, gently tapping the shell of his egg with a knife. “At our age Helen and I would never have made such a trip on our own; we would have died without ever seeing this natural paradise, wouldn’t we, Helen?”

  Mrs. Howmet was animated. “I just can’t believe it! Only the day before yesterday we were in Woodbury, Connecticut! Look where we are now!” She took the binoculars from her husband and scanned the gleaming shallows directly before them.

  “I visited here once before,” Whalen said, “to watch the Aga Khan race his sand yachts on Bahati Beach. I learned how to sand-sail here.”

  After breakfast Whalen told the servants that he would be spending the day exploring the shallows and that he and his guests would lunch on one of the sandbars near the reef. He ordered the servants to prepare the rubber dinghy, his scuba equipment, and sandwiches, drinks, and fruits.

  He checked the tide table for the time when the rising tide would flow over the reef and flood the shallows, and from the balcony of his room he watched the Howmets as they walked slowly through the villa’s exotic gardens on their way to the beach. Quickly he went down and caught up with them just as they were about to board the dinghy. While the black servant and Walter steadied the small boat, Whalen helped Helen into it. Whalen and Walter climbed aboard, and Whalen started the tiny engine. When the servant cast off and the boat began to move through the clear water, the Howmets peered at the seabed through the boat’s Plexiglas bottom, exclaiming appreciatively each time they saw a fish. Whalen steered the boat diagonally toward the reef, and in minutes, sky, beach, and jungle fused on the horizon behind them.

  Howmet started his movie camera and trained it on his wife, who waved her straw sun hat at him as she leaned out over the water.

  “My mother once told me,” said Whalen, “that my father divided the people he had worked with into the wets and the drys. He only trusted the wets—people who perspired—because he believed that they couldn’t lie to him without being betrayed by their sweat. He never trusted the drys. Yet you, Walter, were my father’s closest associate, and even in this heat you don’t seem to perspire at all. I know that he trusted you, of course. My mother also trusted you.”

  • • •

  They were now far from the mainland, and they could hear the surf crashing on the other side of the reef. Whalen selected a small sandbar, pulled the boat onto the sand, and helped his passengers disembark. He and Walter removed the supplies from the boat and stretched a beach blanket out on the sand. Meanwhile Helen filmed the colorful starfish that were spread on the sand near the water’s edge.

  “What a sweet little island this is! A paradise in the middle of the ocean, miles from the shore, from other beaches—from anything!” Mrs. Howmet exclaimed rapturously. “Only these few starfish. And the sand looks as if it’s just been washed,” she marveled.

  Whalen collected his underwater gear. Through his binoculars he searched the ocean for traces of a boat and scanned the faraway beach for any native dugouts. Nothing. The world was empty.

  “I guess the ocean does wash over this island once in a while, particularly in a storm,” Whalen said distractedly. He was listening to the surf swelling up behind the reef.

  Helen filmed her husband as he helped Whalen fasten his air tanks. When everything was ready, Whalen walked into the water. He dived toward the coral bed and swam along the sandy bottom, frightening schools of fish that zigzagged around him. In one of the coral crannies he saw a blue blowfish. Ready to defend itself, the fish puffed up, and Whalen cornered and caught it, cradling it in his hands. He emerged at the sandbar, surprising the Howmets, who were resting on the blanket with their ankles crossed, their pale faces half hidden under their hats. While Helen filmed the blowfish, her husband took still photographs of her filming the fish.

  “I’m leaving you again,” said Whalen. “I want to chase sea snakes.”

  Walter smiled and Helen waved her hand. Then they both lay back, pulling their hats over their faces for a nap in the sun. As Whalen walked past the dinghy, he dropped the blowfish back into the sea and casually threw the boat’s towrope overboard. He dived into the water, and from beneath the surface he grabbed the rope and pulled it, easing the boat slowly off its perch. Once free of the sandbar, the dinghy, pushed by the wind and tide, would aimlessly drift away. Whalen began his long swim back to the villa.

  • • •

  Looking back at the Howmets, two mere spots now on the patch of sand, Whalen felt abruptly severed from the whole breadth of his past. When the Howmets were no longer in sight, he felt as if he were at last able to look toward himself, to rise up and anchor himself on a sandbar of his own.

  He saw a sea snake, poised to attack as it followed him, and keeping an eye on the creature he swam submerged until the sea snake left him for another target. He rose to the water’s surface and looked back. As the rising tide rolled over the reef, the sandbar, like a water-skier cut from a towrope, vanished under the curling waves.

  Whalen emerged on Ukunda’s beach. The jungle was still, the sky cloudless, the sea tranquil. The world was in order.

  Reaching the villa, he summoned the servants and instructed them to launch the speedboat and start looking for his missing guests. While he was skin-diving, he explained, the Howmets must have gone exploring in the dinghy. Now, he said, he was worried about their being out there all alone, at the mercy of the incoming tide.

  • • •

  The bodies of Helen and Walter Howmet were never found, and Whalen, like a starving man who had suddenly been nourished from an unknown source, felt new energy flowing into him. But there were often moments when he gave in to fatigue and a sense of futility, when he felt as though he were living on the far side of communicable thoughts and feelings. He fought these moments, trying to tear off the membrane that seemed to enclose his mind and inhibit his will. But he was helpless, beyond self-control.

  He confronted himself. He could remain free, setting the rules for his own acts and determining the value of their consequences, with Karen as the intermediary through whom he would discover himself. Or he could try to perceive himself without Karen, as a man who knows himself only through principles set for him by the world.

  Then he thought of the lesson taught by the Indian Panchadasi concerning the Self: “How shall I grasp it? Do not grasp it. That which remains when there is no more grasping is the Self.”
/>
  • • •

  Dearest Jonathan:

  I remember being in your room at Yale when we both read aloud and recognized ourselves in a passage from Rilke: “We discover, indeed, that we do not know our part: we look for a mirror; we want to rub off the paint, to remove all that is artificial, and to become real. But somewhere a bit of masking that we forget still clings to us. A trace of exaggeration remains in our eyebrows; we do not notice that the corners of our lips are twisted. And thus we go about, a laughingstock, a mere half-thing: neither real beings nor actors.” But now with you, I’m not a laughingstock, a mere half-thing. I’m as real as are my emotions, and of all people I know and care for, you’re the closest to me.

  When I was a girl, I thought that loving was magic—magic that made one’s lover free, happy, fruitful, fulfilled. I’ve fastened all my desires on you because you’re my pleasure, my freedom, my occasion for joy. Fastening on you has given me a new gravity—the dependable force of our love. Now, free to do anything, go anywhere, be with anyone, I’m secure in the knowledge that our love will always bring me back to you. The loss of you would be a wound for which I have no balm.

  Karen

  • • •

  Karen undid the top button of her blouse and with a single movement crossed her arms and lifted the thin fabric over her head. Her breasts quivered as she shifted her body to unzip her skirt and slide it over her hips. Still looking at him, she hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her black slip and pushed it very slowly down to her ankles. Then she stepped away from the small pile of clothing.