L'Engle, Madeleine - A Ring of Endless Light (16 page)

"Is it too messed up? Should I copy it again?" "No, it's fine. Is this your only copy?" "I have the original scrawl." "Thanks. Thanks for showing it to me. Listen, don't ever change." I tried raising one eyebrow the way John and Daddy can do. "Is it all right if I grow up?" He grinned. "It really teed you off, my calling you a child, didn't it?" I found myself grinning back. "It did." "Okay, let me try to explain. It isn't just chronology. It's a quality, too, that I don't think you have to lose when you're fully mature physically. Your grandfather has it, and he's one of the most mature people I've ever met. It's a kind of freshness that cuts through shams and sees what's really there." He paused and took a gulp of coffee. "In this psych course I took, it's called archaic understanding." "What's that?" "It's understanding things in their deepest, mythic sense. All children are born with archaic understanding, 232 and then school comes along, and the pragmatic Cartesian world-" "Cartesian?" "After Descartes." "Oh. Yeah." I felt stupid, so I added, "I think, therefore I am." "That's the guy. The thing is, the Cartesian world insists on keeping intellectual control, and that means you have to let go your archaic understanding, because that means going along with all kinds of things you can'tcontrol. Does all this make any sense?" "When dolphins went back to the sea, and gave up hands, did they keep their archaic understanding?" "That's a good question. I'll have to think on it. Okay, now. When you write, you go with your writing, where it wants to take you, don't you?" "I try." "So you let go your own control." "I guess. Yes." "So, if you're lucky, you'll still keep that willingness to go into the unexpected even after you're grown up. It's easy for you now because you're still as close to childhood as you are to adulthood." "Hey, wait, it's not all that easy. And chronologically you're still an adolescent, too," I pointed out. "Yah, but I'm closer to the other side than you are. And I'm a scientist, not a poet. Even when I was a kid I read Scientific American,not fairy tales. My academic parents didn't encourage fairy tales. And I think it was my loss. You didread fairy tales, didn't you?" "Fairy tales, fantasy." 233 "And you communicate with dolphins. Don't you see that it's a bit humiliating for me to have my dolphins come more quickly and respond more fully to you than to me?" "I'm sorry." "That's the way things are. It's nothing for you to be apologetic about. A lot of discoveries come through teamwork, with two completely different types of imagination working together and being far more than either one alone. We make a good team." And just as I was feeling warm with happiness, he went on, "But we also have to face the fact that after this summer we'll probably never see each other again. Berkeley's all the way across the country." "There is, after all, the mail," I ventured. "Some letters actually do get delivered." "I'm a lousy letter writer. But sure-we'll write." He didn't sound at all sure. "What about next summer?" I was afraid I was pushing it, but I couldn't stop myself. "I have a good grant here for this summer. I'll take whatever's the best offer I get, for next summer. I'd like to work with Dr. O'Keefe again, for instance. And what about you? Will you be coming to the Island when your grandfather's not here?" "I don't know. But, Adam, this isn't next summer. It's this summer. And we're here, now." "Yah, you're right." He changed the subject. "We'd better wait for a while before we go swimming. And there's something I want to try . . . C'mon." Adam pushed back from the table. "Adam-when I eat here, do you have to pay for me?" 234 "It's minimal." "I can afford to pay my own way." "Don't be stuffy. It's the least I can do, for all the help you're being to me. We've got Jeb really excited." I followed him out of the cafeteria, into the lab building, through the big room with the tanks of fish and starfish and lizards, and along to a corridor lined with doors. Most of the doors were open, so there'd be a cross-draft. Adam went to the last door on the left and knocked on the door frame. Jeb Nutteley's voice called out, "Come!" He was sitting at his desk, his swivel chair tipped back, his feet up on the desk. When he saw me he stood up. His office was small and crowded; three walls were covered with bookcases jammed with books, papers, all kinds of electronic equipment, snapshots of dolphins, whales, sea lions. The fourth wall was window, and light from the ocean sparkled all over the desk, splashing the mess of books and papers with sunshine. "What's up?" Jeb asked. "Okay if we have Vicky listen to some of your dolphin tapes?" "Sure. Take over. I'm just off to the dolphin pens. Have fun." And he ambled out. Adam had me sit down in Jeb's chair. He fiddled with a big reel-to-reel tape machine, and then fitted headphones on me. I leaned back in the chair and listened, and heard chirpings and duckings and all the dolphin noises I'd become familiar with. Adam asked, "Can you tell what they're saying?" I lifted the phone from one ear and he repeated his question. "No," I answered. "I haven't any idea." 235 "Not any?" I couldn't tell whether or not he was disappointed. "Adam, they're not talking to me." "Yah. Listen a little longer." I listened, but it was just noise. I looked around the room, at the desk, and there in a silver frame was a picture of a young woman and a small boy: it must be Jeb's wife and child. I felt a wave of cold wash over me, as though the sun had gone in, but light continued to splash brightly all over the room, and onto the picture. "Does it make any sense at all?" Adam asked. I lifted the earphone again, and he repeated his question patiently. "No. And I don't think Basil could understand meif he just heard my voice on a tape. Anyhow, this is a lot of different dolphins, not Basil or Norberta." "Okay." "Let's go pay them a visit." �*� When we'd swum out, the water dazzling our eyes, I asked, "Do you want me to call all of them, all three?" "Try calling just Basil, since you saw Norberta and Njord yesterday." I turned on my back and floated, closing my eyes against the glare, against Adam, against outside thoughts. Basil. Basil. Basil. I tried to put myself outside of time passing, tried not to think whether it was taking a long or a short time, tried to be in the very moment. "Here!" Adam called, and I rolled over. He came first to Adam, then quickly to me with pleased nudgings and chirrupings of greeting, then back to Adam, 236 and the two of them went into a noisy wrestling match. Finally Basil flung Adam from him, so that he splashed into the water, laughing. Then Basil came to me. What shall we do?I asked him silently, and listened for his response with my inner ear. I seized his dorsal fin and we went flying through the air. Then he dove into the water, what must have been a shallow dive for the dolphin but was deep for me, and up, up into the air again. He was much gentler with me than he was with Adam; it was, in fact, a completely different game. He wasn't trying to dislodge me, but to see how high he could leap into the air with me holding on, how deep he could go without my having to let go and surface. Leap, dive, in a regular but increasing rhythm, so that each time we were longer out of the water, deeper under the wrinkled skin of the surface. He seemed to know just when it would have been impossible for me to hold my underwater breath one moment longer, for he broke up into the air and gently flipped me off. Then he swam rapid and widening circles around Adam and me, then came back and nudged me, as though wanting something. I began to scratch his chest, gently but firmly, and he wriggled with pleasure. "Right," Adam said. "Playtime's over. Ask him something." I pushed slightly away from Basil and he bathed me with his smile, and my hand almost automatically reached for his dorsal fin, and he did a dolphin cartwheel with me holding on. Now a backward one with Adam.Aloud, I said, to Adam, "Take his dorsal fin." 237 And Basil flipped over, backward. "Terrif," Adam said. "Try something else. Simple. In a few minutes you can try something more complicated." Swim, dear darling Basil, and I mean every bit of the dear and darling because you're very dear and darling to me. Swim out to the horizon and then turn around and come back to us. Like a flash he was gone, and then as he was about to vanish from sight he was back. "Right," Adam said. "Now maybe you could try something a little more subtle." What I wanted to do was to ask Basil to give me all the answers to everything, as though he weren't a dolphin but some kind of cosmic computer. And I knew that that was not only not realistic, it wasn't fair. But I wondered . . . I thought of Ynid and her grief at her dead baby, and I asked Basil, Is Ynid's baby all right? (Is Commander Rodney all right? Is my grandfather all right? Am I? Is it all right?) Basil pulled himself up out of the water and a series of sounds came from him, singing sounds. And what it reminded me of was Grandfather standing by Commander Rodney's open grave and saying those terrible words and then crying out, full of joy, Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia! Then Basil was gone, flashing through sea and sky, to disappear at the horizon. Adam beckoned to me, and turned to swim into shore. I followed. He was standing on his head when I splashed in. "Good for the brain," he said, upside down. 238 I sat down at the edge of the water, letting the little waves lap about me. Adam gave a dolphin-like flip and stood on his feet instead of his head. "I wish ..." "What?" "Oh, several million unobtainable things." He came and sat down in the water beside me. "When it occurred to me to involve you in my project, I was thinking of John Austin's kid sister, who was a bit at loose ends and available. I did think of you as a child, at least in comparison to John and me. And then-" I didn't look at him. I looked down at the water and traced the pattern of a wavelet with my fingers. "You're full of surprises, Vicky. First, there's that incredible rapport you have with dolphins. And added to that, you very quickly stopped being just my friend's young sister. You're very much Vicky. Very special Vicky. And it's too soon." "Too soon for what?" It simply was,and sooner or later didn't have anything to do with it. Adam, too, dabbled his fingers in the water. "Added to which, you've gone far beyond my wildest dreams in my project..." "Is that bad?" Now he sprang to his feet. "It's so good I don't quite know what to do about it." "Why not do as Confucius advises?" "Relax and enjoy it?" "Right." "Yah, I should be able to. But I'm confused." "So join the club," I said bitterly. "Zachary tells me he's 239 confused. Leo tells me he's confused. Now you tell me you're confused. So what's new? I'm confused, too. Life is confusing." "Is John confused?" he asked me. "He hasn't told me he is, but John's human, so he's confused. Anyhow, he's old-fashioned." "You mean conservative?" "I think John thinks of it more as being radical." "John and I feel the same way about a lot of things; that's why we became good friends so quickly. Okay if I invite myself to dinner tonight?" "Sure, that'll be fine." "Listen, will you do something for me?" "What kind of something?" "Will you go home and write about you and Basil, and you and Norberta and Njord?" "Write how?" "I've been keeping very detailed notes, but it's all from my point of view. So what I want is to have you write it all out from your own point of view, how you feel about them; how they feel about you. How Basil answered your questions. How he tells you things. I realize I'm asking a lot of you, but would you try, please? It could be invaluable." "If you don't want anything formal, I've already written a lot about them. Since I can't talk to anybody except you about them, and I go home bursting with wanting to talk, I write it all out in my journal. I could copy some of that for you." "That would be great! And it isokay if I show your sonnet to Jeb?" 240 "Why not?" Suddenly I wasn't afraid of having Jeb see my work. "See you tonight, then," Adam said. �*� As soon as I got home I went in to Grandfather. His eyes were glittery, as though he had fever. "Are you all right?" I asked. "Should I get Daddy?" "I just have a small cold. Don't bother your father. Are we going to read?" "That's what I'm here for." And I opened the book we'd just started, The Limitations of Science.I was deep in it, and so I was startled when Grandfather burst out: "Why all of this, my Lord and my God? Either bring the world to an end or remedy these evils! No heart can support this any longer. I beseech Thee, O Eternal Father, do not permit any more of this-" I dropped the book. "Grandfather!" "Teresa of Avila said that, in the sixteenth century. It should comfort me that there have always been outrages to the Divine Majesty. But it doesn't." "Grandfather-what's the matter?" I was frightened, I'd never heard Grandfather talk wildly like this before. He pointed to the newspaper on his hospital table. The headline was a plane crash, a big one, with everybody killed. "It's not so much the crash itself"-Grandfather's voice had returned to its normal quietness-"though that's bad enough. It's the vandalizing of the dead bodies for money and jewelry. The National Guard had to be sent for to protect the corpses, and thirty people were arrested. It seems that there are no depths of depravity the human creature cannot sink to. Sorry I startled you ..." 241 "Oh, Grandfather-" I said helplessly. I'd avoided newspapers as much as possible this summer, and after pointing out the article on dolphins Daddy had kept what was in the paper to himself. And if Mother and John saw any horrors they didn't pass them on. But not reading the paper only kept me from not knowing things; it didn't keep them from happening. Grandfather reached for the box of tissues and blew his nose. "Maybe instant information isn't good for us. We can't absorb it." "So we drop out," I said. "At least that's what I've done this summer." "Perhaps I shouldn't have pulled you back in. Oh, Caro, is dropping out what I was doing when I left Boston and went to Alaska? Are anyone's motives ever pure?" I hated it when he thought I was our grandmother even more than when he thought I was Mother. He continued, "And perhaps, my dear, my vocation in my last days is simply to pray. To pray for the broken world. To pray for people so lost they can rush to steal from fragments of dead bodies of their fellow human beings. I can no longer go bodily to where I think I'm needed. And prayer may in the end be stronger than all my actions. But I need your support, my Caro." I didn't know how to handle it. I went and called Daddy. Grandfather did have fever. Daddy gave him a shot of penicillin. But the fever didn't cause the horrible
things in the newspaper. Mother and Mrs. Rodney and Rob came in. They'd been doing errands in the village. Mrs. Rodney said she'd 242 give Grandfather an alcohol rub to bring the fever down. She sounded calm and undisturbed. "His defenses are very low and he's open to infection," she said to Mother. "Don't worry. This is just a cold and we'll take care of it." If anyone could take care of it, Mrs. Rodney could. Mother nodded, but she could not disguise the strain in her face. I felt helpless, but I asked, "Anything I can do to help?" "Yes, Vic. It was hot and sticky in the village. It'd be a big help if you'll take Rob for a swim." So I took my journal and my wet bathing suit and Rob and went down to the beach. After we'd had a swim Rob started to build a sand castle, and though I knew he wanted me to do it with him, I said, "Start off by yourself, Rob, while I copy out something for Adam he asked me to do, okay? Then I'll help you with the moat." I looked at Rob and he was happily concentrating on his sand castle. So I started copying out everything in my journal that referred to the dolphins and my meetings with them. And when I had finished, I remembered that he was coming for dinner and I hadn't told Mother. But first I'd help Rob finish his sand castle. 10 �*�After lunch Rob had a nap. I'd promised to sit with him till he fell asleep, which he did, almost immediately. His face was flushed and angelic and he had one arm flung over Elephant's Child. He looked like my baby brother, but he wasn't. Not any more. He hadn't been a baby for a long time. Instead of going back down, I took my pen and notebook and started a story about a degenerate white dwarf trying to make a red giant fall off his horizontal branch. That cheered me up and when Rob woke up I was out of my gloomy mood. And we had a good evening. Adam seemed cheerful and easy, though after I'd given him my sheaf of papers and he said he would read them as soon as he got back to the station, he talked more to John than to me. After dinner Mother read, and we all relaxed and listened and laughed, and then we sang, and without saying anything we all chose things that Grandfather particularly 244 liked, so he could hear them from the hospital bed in his study. And the world had somehow righted itself again. �*� In the morning Suzy woke up with a sore throat and a runny nose and Daddy told her to stay home. "But Jacky and Leo need me!" John and I looked across the breakfast table to each other but we didn't laugh, and we didn't say anything. For me, at any rate, that was progress. Daddy said, "Better miss one day and get rid of your cold than go to work and get really sick. I'll phone them for you. I don't want you getting germs on the phone." She started to protest, then said, "But tell them I'll be there tomorrow, for sure." Mother poured her an extra glass of juice. "And, Suzy, I don't want you to go near Grandfather." Now she did protest. "Why not? He has a cold. I probably got it from him!" Daddy, on his way to the phone in the kitchen, stopped in the doorway. "Suzy, your grandfather's resistance to infection is very low. You ought to understand that." She blew her nose and looked down at her plate. "Oh. Yes. I forgot." Daddy simply nodded and went to the phone. Mother pushed a nonexistent wisp of hair back from her forehead. "Rob, you've been invited to the Woods' again for the day. In the afternoon they'll take you to the docks when the lobster boats are coming in, and you can bring us home lobster for dinner." Rob's face brightened at the mention of lobster. He'd seemed very unenthusiastic till then. 245 Suzy asked, "What're you doing today, Vic?" "Reading to Grandfather this morning if he's up to it. This afternoon I'm going flying with Zachary, then dinner." "You have all the luck!" Mother said, "I'm really not totally happy with the flying-" "Oh, Mother-" I started. Then, more quietly, "Zachary isn't doing the flying. It's a trained pilot." I did notmention the stunt flying. Suzy said, "I bet it's terrifically expensive." "Money's not Zachary's problem." "Or is it? People like Zachary don't give away something for nothing." Suzy's eyes narrowed. "What's he want of you?" "Suzy," Mother remonstrated. "I think," I said, "that he wants me to believe in him." And I know that Zachary did want that, that it mattered. "He needs me." "Oh, c'mon," Suzy said, "a guy like Zachary's catnip for someone like you. Anyhow, don't get too beholden to him." "I don't feel any more beholden to Zachary than I do to Leo or Adam. Money isn't what makes people beholden." "It helps." She sniffed and blew her nose again. "Come on, Suze, give me a hand with Mother and Daddy's bed." We made the big beautiful bed in silence. The bed takes up most of the room, and the east wall is all one huge window, right down to the floor, so that when you're in bed there's nothing between you and the ocean. I broke the silence. "Grandfather must miss this view." 246 Suzy burst out, "Vicky, you haven't talked to me all summer." I turned from the ocean and looked at my sister. I love her. Because she's my sister. I can't imagine the world without her. But I've never talked to her much. I've shared more with Rob than I've ever shared with Suzy. Maybe because Suzy's always been so much better at everything than I have, even little things, like playing catch or spud. Have I been, am I jealous?