In Search of Love and Beauty (22 page)

It was the prelude to Leo's weekly address—which he never wanted to give, disclaimed the right to make. “Come on,” he said, “a bit more music, let's swing, okay? I'm in the mood.” “Leo, Leo, talk to us!” “Ach, talk. Who wants to talk when they can sing?” And he sang again—by himself this time, with a lot of swing and uplift, snapping his fingers, swaying his body in the monk's robe so that his silver pendant swung to and fro. Everyone was silent—all crowded along the paths and around the flower beds and the rim of the pool into which water continued to drip from the goddess's nipple; and then, when there was absolutely no sound except for this dripping—and the unseen secret night life of insects in the tangled gardens all around—then at last Leo said “Okay.” And he talked.

He talked about The Point. This was the summit of his philosophy—at least the summit he had so far reached: though, as he always said, “While there's life there's hope,” and he still had life in him—plenty!—and might yet ascend higher, as human beings are supposed to do. He had never drawn back from that, from striking off into new directions in order to reach a new summit. But so far, here and now, at the Academy, this summit was The Point. It was where he had got to over all these years and had taken anyone who cared to follow him. Here was the climax of all his various experiences and experiments: his theater group, his psychological encounter group, his quasi-psychiatric practice, his study of Eastern philosophies, his absorption in Ahmed's music, his travels up and down America, his years of residence in California, the drugs he tried, the religions, and the love affairs with women, with girls, sometimes (“just for fun”) with boys, his mental and physical exercises, everything he was and thought and felt—it was all summed up, for now, in The Point. This was, for him, and by extension for everyone, what it was all about.

The Point had a double meaning: it was both the point of human life—its goal—and also the point of intersection where its highest attainment, by which he meant its highest experiences, met. And what were these highest experiences? They were twofold, he explained: one on the physical plane, the other on the—what do you want to call it?—the psychic, the spiritual? Whatever. “Now, what would you call the highest human experience on the physical plane?” he asked his audience on these Saturday nights in the sunken garden. No answer, a hushed stillness except for the incessant plash from the fountain, and the insects shrieking (sometimes a bird woke up and sang by mistake from the depths of some dark tree). “What, no one knows? You don't even know that? What have I done to deserve this bunch of dummies?” And then he supplied the answer himself: “The orgasm, of course—isn't that it? Isn't that the Point of our highest physical experience?” It was, there was no question of it. Yes, Socrates. “Okay. Now: and what, may I ask, is the highest human experience on the spiritual—the psychic—the you-name-it plane? . . . Give up? Well, I must say, you're for the birds. It's a wonder I don't pack up and get out right this minute. The answer is—of course—again the orgasm! My God, any child knows that. What's your problem? Don't you know that there's an orgasm of the soul just as of the body? Haven't you heard of the frisson that takes place there and is every bit as delicious as that of the body? And some say, if you can believe it, even more delicious—a thousand times more delicious—but we won't get into that. We haven't got there yet. We can't say. But what we can say—what we do say—what
I
say—is that there is a Point to be reached. A Point of intersection for both our highest points, and that's what it's all about! That's The Point. To be reached. By all of us. Play, brother, play and sing.” And the follower with the guitar strummed up again and he sang and everyone joined in while
Leo refreshed his throat with another plastic cup of his Saturday night punch.

Whenever Leo sent for Stephanie, the same thing happened as the first time: only now they both expected it, and she wasn't the only one who laughed, he did too—a bit ruefully but still, amused. And after that he put himself out to entertain her in other ways. He played her his Wagner records and sang all the parts himself—Isolde and everything, rising on tiptoe and with his hands laid on his heart: or he declaimed and translated German love poems to her that he hadn't thought of in years. If it got too hot for her in his den—it was stifling in there, he had to have the heat on high all the time—he allowed her to open the window a fraction on condition that she keep him warm. So then she lay very close to him while he held her and breathed and snuffled in her hair. When, overcome with heat and fatigue, she fell asleep, he tried to rouse her, begging her not to leave him alone, thinking up some joke he hadn't yet told her. To oblige him, she laughed but in the wrong place and before he finished and then she went to sleep again. He shook her chin between his fingers, he called her—“Hey! Hey!”—but when he couldn't wake her, he smiled with a tenderness and indulgence he had never before shown to anyone.

Jeff still stole up to the attic sometimes, or Stephanie and Natasha went to visit him in his gatekeeper's cottage at Mark's house. Stephanie and Jeff were completely free with Natasha, not only in making love when she was there, but also in talking about their deepest, most private concerns. Of course that was nothing new—everyone at the Academy was talking about those, it was what they were there for. But it wasn't always or even often interesting. The students got really deep into themselves: they analyzed their own motives, and interpreted their own actions or, rather, reactions—there
didn't seem to be much action—or, most boring of all, their dreams. Natasha always had difficulty pretending she was listening. But when Stephanie said “Shall I wash my hair?” or “Should I wear my pink T-shirt?”—that was a degree of intimacy that Natasha really cherished.

Leo didn't like their excursions to Mark's house, but he was powerless to prevent them. Yes, for the first time in his life, Leo was powerless: and this when he was at the height of his career, was absolute master of his house and all its inmates! But when he told Stephanie not to go to Mark's house, she promised she wouldn't—and went nevertheless as often as she pleased.

Natasha was surprised by the casual way in which Stephanie deceived Leo. She didn't seem to think anything of it. One day Leo, who suspected these visits, was standing in wait for them when Jeff brought them back in the old pickup Mark had given him to drive around in. As soon as Jeff saw Leo standing on the front steps, he dropped off the two girls and backed his truck out through the gates, just waving his arm out the window in farewell.

“Oh, hi, Leo,” Stephanie said, skipping up the steps, shaking her long hair and her small hips, and evidently terribly pleased to see him.

Natasha was coming up behind, and it was she whom Leo asked: “Where did you go?” He spoke mildly, though at the same time fixing her with his uncomfortably flat porcelain eyes.

There was need for a lie, but Natasha had no experience in telling one. Stephanie, however, didn't waste a second: “Jeff took us over to Great Barrington to do some shopping.”

“What did you buy?” asked Leo, still mild as milk.

“Oh, shit—we left it in the truck!” cried Stephanie, stamping her foot at herself and shaking back her hair again, in temper this time.

“Hm,” Leo said. He gave them both another of his looks,
but when Stephanie met it with a pout at her own carelessness, he turned and shambled off, in his monk's robe like an elephant's loose skin.

Later, Leo called Natasha to his den. She was embarrassed, fearing she would have to tell lies to protect Stephanie. But Leo asked for nothing like that. He was gentle and reasonable. He told Natasha that Stephanie was there to work on herself and that it was his responsibility to see that she did. Left to herself, she would just go off again into every kind of wrong direction. All his students were like that.

“Why do you think these people come to me?” asked this gentle, reasonable Leo, looking straight at Natasha perched uncomfortably in one of his old-uncle armchairs. When she raised her eyes, she saw that he was looking at her not in any of the ways in which he looked at people—always in some superior capacity—but as at an equal; and he spoke to her as to an equal. “Because they've made a mess of themselves and can't deal with it. Psychologically, they're all waifs and strays. Not like you,” he said, smiling his small teeth at Natasha—she who, physically, was the epitome of all waifs and strays. “You're strong,” he said. “You know what you want. You've found your Point.”

Natasha was amazed. She didn't know what he meant. In fact, she never did know what he meant when he talked about The Point. She couldn't understand about the division between the physical and the other part and had come to the conclusion that she was lacking in one or the other or maybe both. In a way, her life was simpler than other people's: she had few attachments, and these were strong, unquestioned, and had never changed. When she was small, the most unhappy moments she knew were when Mark had no time for her. He had gone to school six years before she did, and every day she would run from window to window in her grandmother's apartment to watch him walk away with his school bag on his back. Sometimes he was joined by other boys, and
though the street was far below and they were tiny figures, she could easily make out how lively and interested he was with them. Of course, he never knew she was there watching so he didn't look up to wave; but Louise came and knelt behind her and put her arms around her and said “Never mind, worm, soon you'll go to school too.” But when Natasha did go, she wasn't interested at all and only waited for it to be time to return home.

So then Louise and Marietta decided that the only way was for her to grow up and develop and form new attachments. They told her about the changes in a girl's body, and she was informed about sex in detail by both of them in two differing versions. But her breasts hardly grew, and she was sixteen before she had her first period and after that it only came very haphazardly, as if she had been forgotten about in some evolutionary cycle. Regi asked more often “Are you sure she's all right?” But Natasha never missed anything—having dates, or being whistled at down the street—she hardly noticed that it happened to other girls and not to her.

When Jeff came to the Academy at night, he threw handfuls of gravel up at the attic window. He had pretty good aim, but the window was too high and he missed frequently, so that his missiles fell in spurts to the ground. Natasha had learned to listen for them. She woke up Stephanie who cursed a bit at first, but then—tousled, warm, and fragrant from sleep—she stole down the stairs, rubbing her eyes.

On nights when Stephanie was with Leo, Natasha had to go down and tell Jeff. He was angry and disappointed and he cursed Leo. So one night when Jeff said, “You come along, then,” Natasha agreed, just to put him in a better humor. He took her back to Mark's house, driving her in his truck through country lanes so narrow that the hedges lining them swept the car roof and tapped the glass as with ghostly fingers. But then the land cleared, and Mark's house, standing
on its hill, rose from out of the black trees. Jeff parked his truck inside the gate and invited Natasha into his one-room stone house. It was bare and masculine inside, with a wood stove in the middle and the old bedstead he had found somewhere and his clothes hanging from nails he had hammered into the wall. His shoes stood under the bed, including a pair of battered hiking boots, and also under the bed was his knapsack, which was all he traveled with. He didn't have much else except his transistor and an oval stone that looked as if it held magical properties, for him at any rate. There was nothing there that couldn't be packed up in a moment and stuffed back into the knapsack and carried away on his back.

Natasha stood around like an awkward guest, not knowing what was expected of her. But also like a guest she was eager to oblige her host, so that when Jeff asked her to take her clothes off, she did so at once. It was quickly done, anyway—she only had to step out of her Indian cotton skirt and slip her cheesecloth blouse over her head, and there she stood—inadequate, but bare and willing. Jeff looked her up and down; he was surprised both by what he saw—he was used to girls who were girls—and by her attitude. He couldn't make out whether this was indifferent, experimental, or sacrificial. But there were the two of them alone in the night and he would have considered it unnatural not to get together.

Matching her politeness with some of his own, he inquired: “You sure you want to?”

She nodded and smiled, and he said, “Okay” with what was almost a sigh. He asked her to lie on the bed and she did so. They resembled doctor and patient. He stepped out of his clothes. She didn't look at him—he had a perfect boy's body, but she wouldn't have been able to appreciate that. She lay flat on her back with her arms by her sides and looked up at the light bulb. It was so bare and bright that it was like looking into the sun, but she forced herself to; she was bracing herself to feel pain and not cry out. But nothing happened
except that Jeff grew heavier on top of her and wet with perspiration like he was really working hard. “Relax, for Christ's sake,” he panted. She thought she
was
relaxed. She was prepared to continue lying still for as long as required. But this was not very long. He tumbled off her and fell beside her on the bed and lay there, exhausted and amazed.

She turned her eyes to look at him; she wondered if she had done something wrong but didn't like to ask. He looked back at her. It was strange, this meeting of their eyes—hers so dark and deep they seemed to reach down into caverns way beneath the earth and his blue and clear as a lake into which the sun could shine all the way to the bottom.

“You remind me of someone,” he said. “Someone I knew as a kid. Myrtle her name was—she was half Indian and living with her mom in this shack in the Great Smokies. Her old lady didn't like it, her playing with me, on account I had a bad name around there. But we didn't do anything bad—we had nice games, a bit sexual but clean.” He raised his hand to the switch he had fixed up so he could turn the light off without getting out of bed. He said: “It's like that with you; like we're both ten years old.”