Candy (17 page)

He drew out a bead necklace from his pocket, not unlike a rosary chain, with the beads arranged along it in varying groups, and he placed this around Candy’s neck, the girl arching her slender throat graciously to receive it. Then he explained how she was to practice her yoga breathing patterns by feeling the different groupings of beads along the necklace.

Next came instruction in the famous exercise of “opposing thumbs,” then the secret of “standing sleep,” whereby the successful practitioner can receive the physical benefit of 14 hours’ uninterrupted sleep in only two or three minutes while standing with his head pressing firmly into a stone which he has placed against the wall.

“Now, perhaps your most important yoga exercise,” said great Grindle, with extreme seriousness, “is your Exercise Number Four, for it is the true key to Infinite Oneness—I speak, of course, of the
Cosmic Rhythm,
which you must achieve to be in harmony with all things, and to find Nirvana. Now, relax your body, and let it follow movements which the pressure of my hands on it suggests.”

So saying, he placed his hands on Candy’s slim, rounded hips and began to rotate them slowly, back and forth, in a smooth undulating motion.

“Just so,” he said, stepping back to watch her performance, “yes, very good.”

The movement, in any other than a mystical context, would have seemed suggestively sexual, and perhaps even obscene; Candy was aware of this and her lovely face went crimson for an instant, but she crossly blamed herself for making the association and attributed it to her own impure and undeveloped spirit.

While she was practicing Exercise Number Four, and Grindle was directing her, causing her by command to vary the tempo of her gyrations, the dark-haired girl, who had suggested the little green-handled pick to Candy earlier, appeared in the tent doorway and stood watching for a moment, at no pains to conceal the disapproval she felt.

“Very pretty,”
she said, after a moment, and with stinging bitterness.

Candy, so intent on mastering the exercise, had not noticed the girl’s arrival, and was slightly taken aback by the sudden sound of her voice, as indeed was great Grindle himself, completely absorbed in seeing that the execution was correct. At the girl’s words, he gave a bellow of rage, wheeled and rushed against her with clenched fists, as she, in turn, fled hurriedly from the tent.

“He pretends he’s a weirdie,” she cried in retreat, “but he’s just trying to get into your little sugar-scoop!” But her voice trailed away, almost unheard in the darkness beyond the tent.

“That cheap Philistine!” said Grindle in genuine annoyance as he came back to Candy. “What she needs is a horsewhipping!”

Candy was impressed by his show of heat and impatience at the interruption, and was pleasingly flattered that he had such an interest in her progress with the exercises. Certainly too she was keen to get on with her mastery of them and to achieve some real advancement along the mystical path. She tried to divert his annoyance by doubling her zeal in practicing.

“Yes!” said Grindle. “Excellent! Now then, our next. . .” But he stopped short and put his great head sideways in an attitude of listening.

“Hark!” he said,

Then Candy heard it too, a faint whistling, very near the rec-tent.

“Wait here,” said Grindle as he got off the Ping-Pong table and went to the door of the tent. “That is your next exercise: wait here and think of nothing.”

“Right!” said Candy.

Grindle went out the door into the night, and Candy tried to make her mind a blank, but she was too excited for the moment to do so. She thought if she went to the tent door and looked up into the dark sky, she would be able to do it.
“Unless
there are stars!” she said half aloud, and she walked to the tent door and looked out at the sky. As she did, however, she could not help but catch a glimpse of great Grindle, standing in the shadows, at the unloading ramp, standing near the same rail-cart into which she herself had earlier placed her small diggings of coal. He was talking in a low voice to two men there, and one of them seemed to be giving him something—
money,
it appeared to be, from the deliberate way he was handing it over, little by little, as though counting it out, and rather furtively too. Then the two men began quietly pushing the rail-cart down the track and away. Evidently Grindle had just sold a cart of the Cracker coal.

This realization came as a shock to Candy, and she drew away from the door and lowered her head to pout prettily, not raising it when Grindle reentered the tent seconds later. He was rubbing his hands together briskly—in a manner actually suggesting the accomplishment Candy knew of already, to her repulsion and horror.

“Well!” said Grindle with great gusto. “Now then! Where was I?”

“You
were,”
said the girl with cutting hauteur, “at the point of selling a cartload of Cracker coal!” And she burst into tears, covering her face and rushing to one corner of the tent.

“How
could
you?” she cried, really brokenhearted. “How
could you?”

Surprisingly, great Grindle did not seem taken aback by this accusation, but only slightly annoyed at her outburst, and the sound of her crying, which he seemed to find unpleasant.

“That!”
he said, waving his hand and frowning with impatience. “That was nothing—a mere material transaction. Of no significance whatever.”

“But why did you take the
money?”
the girl demanded, raising her lovely tear-glittering face for a moment to show the hurt and betrayal she felt. “Mr.
Uspy
wouldn’t have taken it!” she cried.
“He
said it was all a
dream,
and so did you!
He
wouldn’t have taken it, and he’s only your
secretary!
I think it’s awful!” And she hid her face again, sobbing terribly.

“What
did he say it was?” asked Grindle, coming near her.

“A dream!” whimpered the girl in a child’s voice. “He said it was all a dream, and so did you!”

“Of course it is a dream,” said Grindle, placing a hand on Candy’s shoulder,
“all
reality . . .” his hand described an arc, searching for the word, “. . . is mere appearance, illusion. A
dream,
certainly.”

“But why do you have to have money in a dream?” the girl wanted to know, tearful as ever.

“Ah!” said Grindle, his fingers toying the back of her sweet left ear, “it is a
dream,
yes—but we make it a pleasant dream, not a . . . a
cauchemar!”

“But
you’re
making it a
cauchemar
for the Crackers,” said Candy, “selling their coal like that—it’s . . . it’s like
stealing!”
The last word, and the host of implications it held, caused her to sob anew, oblivious, it seemed, to the lavish caresses along her neck and spine, with which Grindle was trying to soothe her.

“Let me ask you this . . .” said Grindle,
“who
are the happiest people in our world? Who besides, of course, those well advanced on the mystical path are happiest? Is it not those who
create?
Of course! It is the
artist.
It is the artist who is self-sufficient and happiest in our world. Yes! But the great art comes from those who have
suffered—
history will bear me out!” In his discourse, he had abandoned the girl for the moment and was pacing about the tent; this may have been what caused her now to raise her eyes like two saucers and stare after him, somewhat longingly it seemed.

“History will bear me out,” he repeated, “it is the deprived cultures who have produced the greatest number of artists; thus have we, here tonight, struck a blow for all that is fine and good in the dream world!
Art!
The danger, of course, is that these Crackers are on the primary level of participation in the privation-experience, namely that of shoddy masochism! However, in any case it makes no difference.” Candy was watching him wide-eyed and he returned to where she was standing in the corner of the tent. This had the effect of relieving her anxiety in one way, but made her renew her tears just the same.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, hiding her face, “it just seems so . . . so
shoddy,
taking the money like that.”

“Shoddy!” said Grindle. “Twenty dollars I got for it . . . what’s shoddy about that?” He took the bills out of his pocket and stared at them. “Look,” he said, holding the money toward her.

“No, no,” said Candy, shaking her head blindly.

“Very well,” said Grindle, “then I shall . . . shall
eat
it.” And he made an abrupt movement of his hand to his mouth, pretending to put the money in, though adroitly palming it instead.

“Oh no, don’t!” cried Candy, raising her eyes and touching his arm in real concern.

“Too late! Too late!” said Grindle, chewing vigorously, “I’m eating it! I’m eating it! Down it goes!” He pretended to swallow mightily. “There!” he said. “All gone!”

This left Candy with a tremendous feeling of responsibility for the loss.

“Oh, I don’t know
what
to say,” she cried, squeezing his arm.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Grindle, as he surreptitiously pocketed the loot; he lowered his head, looking almost sheepish. “It was just . . . just that I wanted to . . . to buy something pretty for you,” he said, and he allowed a tear to form in his eye and to slowly course down his heavy jowl.

“What?”
said the girl, too amazed. “Oh my darling,” she said, putting her arms around him, “my precious baby,” and she stroked and fondled him feverishly to bring comfort, drawing his great head down to her shoulder and rocking it there like a big strange infant.

They were standing like this then, with Grindle letting his massive head slide down the front of the girl’s shift, cleverly manipulating his huge cleft chin to undo the buttons of it, when four or five young people came into the tent.

“Break it up, you Crackers!” said one of the boys jovially. “We’re going to have a campfire sing! Come on, join the gang!” And they were soon gathered around the two, hustling them along outside for some group fun.

Round the blazing campfire, the young people’s voices lifted in the rousing Cracker song:

“Quack! Quack! Quack!” they were shouting.

No sooner had Candy and Grindle, escorted by the others, joined the group, than Grindle drew the girl aside into the shadows.

“More important work awaits us,” he said, inadvertently, or so it seemed, touching her crotch for a moment. “Come.”

So saying, he took her hand and led the way, along the rocky path and down the bramblebush hill to a stream there at the bottom, which they followed then, curving around the hill and the Cracker camp above.

Candy ran alongside the stream, lifting her skirt a bit, terribly excited by the wild moonlit aspect of the countryside and overjoyed at this sort of informal outing she and Grindle were having—so unlike anything she had ever done with Daddy.

Round a bend, and they came to a shimmering pool, and behind it a grotto, or water-cave, the mouth of it dark against the silver water.

“Oh, how lovely!” cried the girl, clasping her hands together at her breast, as though the sight were so lovely indeed that it gave her a pang there.

“Come,” said Grindle, taking her hand again, “we must go inside.”

They had to walk through a foot or so of water to reach the mouth of the grotto, which Candy did with little squeals and shrieks of pure delight: then they were inside, and Grindle lit a lamp that was sitting on the wide reef-ledge of the grotto. With this soft yellow light and the moon coming in through the mouth, the already interesting interior, its cavernous roof spidered with stalactite formations and glints of quartz, took on a quite remarkable beauty. Blue-green moss and richest fern grew in abundance along the walls and on the ledge itself, forming a veritable carpet there, the thickness, almost, of a love-couch.

“The path is arduous,” Grindle intoned. “This is where I give lessons.”

“Oh it’s just too marvelous,” said Candy in a whisper, looking down now into the blue pool itself and the deep, wavering splinters of phosphorus below the surface.

Grindle, though, was watching the young girl; in this setting she was nothing so much as a perfect nymph, or the immortal beauty Diana herself.

“It’s good that you wear that simple shift,” he said, matter-of-factly, “it will expedite the next lesson considerably.”

“Are we really to have another mystical lesson now!” exclaimed Candy in sheer delight, actually giving a little jump of joy; it was all
too
perfect already! And now another mystical lesson as well! She sat down eagerly on the fluffy bed of moss, arranged her skirt primly, tucking it under her precious knees, getting comfortable and making her mind ready and alert, just the way she had always done in the interesting courses at school. She had a momentary regret that she didn’t have her notebook and pencil along, but she quickly dismissed this thought for the infinitely more preferable notion of Arcadia, with the students sitting around under the trees, listening to the master talk, and
not
taking notes but absorbing everything, everything. That’s the
pure
way and the
true way,
thought Candy and was extremely pleased.

“First,” said Grindle, sitting down beside her, “we’ll want to get out of this worldly apparel.” And he began taking off his wet shoes. Then he started undoing his trousers.

“Do we
have
to?” asked the girl uneasily; she hadn’t anticipated this and was somehow put off by the idea.

“‘Put your house in order,’” quoted Grindle, “‘that is the
first
step.’ Certainly we must divest ourselves of all material concern—in both spirit and body.”

“Right!” said Candy firmly, in an effort to dispel the great warm reservoir of feminine modesty she felt glowing up inside her and finally flushing her pretty face, as she slipped out of the simple garment.