Sleeping in Flame (14 page)

"Tell me about your sea serpent. That's what I came over to hear."

Weber brought him a glass of ginger ale (he didn't drink alcohol), and between the two of us, we gave him as complete a description as possible. Then we went into the house and watched a video of George Lambert's film. Philip took a piece of paper and pencil off the desk and began
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drawing. After a while he stopped looking at the film.

He held up the drawing. Even in the flickering gray television light, the figure he'd sketched looked too familiar.

"This is an Elasmosaurus. It lived about a hundred and fifty million years ago, in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Fifty feet long, with a neck on it that stretched about as far as the Golden Gate Bridge does. If your creature were real, that's what it'd be."

"What do you mean?"

Philip pointed at the television. "That thing is not classifiable, all told. That's what's scaring the experts. If they had a name for it, even a dinosaur a hundred and thirty-five million years old, they'd be more confident and willing to accept the possibility it's there. But it ain't a dinosaur.

Scientists don't like things they don't know the names for. See the spikes on the tail? No Elasmosaurus had spikes, as far as they know. Its ears were also supposed to be very small. But this one's ears are big. Stop the film, Weber.

Look at the size of those ears.

"The Leucrocotta, Catoblepas, Nasnas, sea serpents. All creatures talked about in legend, but no one's seen any of them since man decided they don't exist anymore. Why? Because man's got to be the biggest and smartest. One of modern man's inventions: If I can't photograph it with my super-duper camera, or get a reading on it with my monster meter, or catch it in my helicopter, then it isn't there.

"Okay, but this thing of yours is there because too many goddamned people _saw_ it. The experts don't want to admit that, so they're scrambling around. Trying to sound convincingly arrogant and dismissive about things like actual sightings, or even your film there. It's all a big trick! You guys did it with hidden wires. Steven Spielberg did it a hundred times better in his last film. Convenient ways of getting out of it, no?

"You know what I was reading about today? Abtu and Anet. Have you heard of them? In Egyptian legend, they were two life-sized fish, identical-looking, that swam in front of the Sun God's ship and protected it from danger. They swam day and night, always on the alert. Isn't that a beautiful image? No Abtu and Anet these days. Only sonar.

"Let's send out for a pizza. I haven't had a good disgusting one since I got back."

While Weber called The Pizza Clinic, Philip turned to me and said in a quiet voice, "I really came over to talk to you. Venasque told me he thought it'd be good if we met and talked a little, if you have any questions or anything."

"Venasque knew I was here?"

Philip smiled and shrugged. "If he can teach you to fly, he can know where you are."

"That makes me nervous."

"It shouldn't. You'll like him. He's an old Jew who watches too much television and eats Doritos.

It just happens he's a shaman, too. The best I've ever met."

I leaned toward Strayhorn, already embarrassed about what I was going to ask. "What exactly _is_ a shaman? A teacher or a holy man?"

"Both. More someone who shows you how to read your own map. No matter what you learn, you'll come out the other side of it knowing more about yourself."

"Did he teach you how to fly?" I looked around cautiously after asking, in case someone might hear and think I was nuts.

"No. He taught me how to swim."

"To _swim_?" I said, too loudly.

He spread both hands and gently breast-stroked the air a few times. "I never learned how. Never cared about it. So Venasque taught me how to swim. I needed it."

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"But just to swim? You could have gone to the YMCA for that. Those were pretty expensive swimming lessons!" I was about to go on, but stopped when I saw his gentle face harden. I'd offended him.

"Forget the cynicism, Walker. A good teacher knows intuitively what you need and gives you exactly that. Sometimes what he suggests shocks you, but then you learn fast he knows better than you. Venasque said I'd spent too much of my life looking inside and had to learn how to look out. Someone I know went to him and learned how to do calligraphy. Now they have the most beautiful handwriting you ever saw. What you need depends on who you are."

"All right, but swimming and good handwriting are one thing, Philip.

You've got to admit that learning to _fly_ is another! Wouldn't you be skeptical if you were me?"

"I was! Until I met him and talked to him for about an hour. In between his taco chips and Coca-Colas."

"What do you guys want on your pizzas? The works? Anchovies? Extra cheese?" Holding his hand over the receiver, Weber looked at us. Behind him, I could see Maris moving around the kitchen with a couple of green plates in her hands.

Philip got up and started for the phone. Stopping in front of me, he said all he was going to say about the shaman for the rest of the night. "Go and see him. He's waiting for you. Anything else I say will only bias you."

Mansfield Avenue is in the Hancock Park section of Los Angeles. The houses vary in style from Spanish to Tudor to postmodern, but are generally about the same size. What I found most interesting were the front yards.

Almost all of them were small, but so perfectly green and mown that I got the feeling a billiard ball would roll unimpeded from one side to the other if only I gave it a small push. Driving slowly down the street checking for the right house number, I also noticed an inordinate number of men walking around in stiff dark suits, yarmulkas, and chest-length beards. Later, Venasque said with a wry smile that they were Secret Service men. When I asked "For which side?" he cracked up.

"'For which side?' That's good, Walker. You gotta good sense of humor on you. We can use it later."

I don't know what I expected a shaman's house to look like, but Venasque's turned out to be no different from others on the block. A narrow straight driveway bordered one side of the lawn and went to a garage in back.

A shiny black-and-silver Jeep was parked in there. The house itself was khaki-colored, with brown metal awnings and decorative wrought iron over all of the downstairs windows. Most of those windows were wide open when I went up the walk. Loud television noise poured out of them and onto the quiet street.

Before pressing the doorbell, I stopped a moment to hear if I could make out what show he was watching. Maybe if I could, it would tell me something about him. As if on command, the theme song for "I Love Lucy" boomed out. I

looked at my watch -- three in the afternoon. Right on time. I looked through a window and saw a chubby black-and-white bullterrier standing erect on a couch, staring right back at me. I pulled back. He reminded me of the lions in front of the New York Public Library. As soon as I rang the bell, he gave one blunt bark, jumped awkwardly from the couch, and skittered across the floor to the door.

I was nervous, and it didn't help when no one answered for the longest time. I was tempted to ring again but didn't. I would show the shaman patience. Maybe it was one of my first tests.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm coming!"

The dog barked again. Once.

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"Shut up, Big! You know who it is."

I straightened up and quickly tried to decide what expression to have on when he opened the door. A Zen koan I'd once read crossed my mind. "Show me your original face, the face you had before your parents were born."

"Hello, Walker! It's about time you came around."

I don't know how it happened, but the first thing I saw was the pig. It was gun-metal gray and about the same size as the dog. It was definitely a pig, but a scaled-down, swaybacked version.

Wagging its stringy tail like a happy dog, it came up and very loudly sniffed (snorted at) my leg.

"That's Connie, and the dog is Big Top. We were just having lunch. You want a sandwich?" He was short and fat, and had white, crew-cut hair. An almost completely forgettable face. He looked either like a retired policeman or the owner of a hot-dog stand. He wore a red polo shirt and a pair of overalls. The only thing that sort of stood out was that he was barefoot. I didn't know how to answer his sandwich invitation, so I said, "That'd be great," although I wasn't hungry. I couldn't stop looking at the pig and bullterrier. They stood next to each other and the pig licked the dog's face slowly and completely.

"Terrific. I got some great pastrami today at Cantor's. Come on into the kitchen. Just watch out for Connie. She likes walking close. I think she's got a thing for legs, or something."

Sure enough, the pig moved right with me as I walked through the place.

She leaned heavily against my left leg the whole way.

Venasque's home was a real surprise. Although afternoon shadows had moved in, the rooms were so full of colorful, luminous objects and furniture that it _felt_ like there was sun everywhere. The chairs and couches were all soft and round, and covered with tropical flower/exotic bird Lily Pulitzer patterns. Mustard and lime and raspberry carpets sat lightly on the polished blond wood floors. He ate at a white rattan table in a white breakfast room.

The pig stopped in that room and collapsed on the white shag carpet as if the long trip to the kitchen was too much for her. Venasque stopped and shook his head when he saw her flop down.

"Give a pig M & Ms and she gets tired halfway through the day. All that sugar goes right to her head. No more candy, Connie. I don't know why I keep letting you have them."

The pig looked at him and squeaked. He shook his head again, and started for the kitchen.

"What kind of pig is she?"

"Vietnamese. An old Vietnamese pig. Over there in Germany they call them

'Vietnamese hanging stomach' pigs. That's not a very nice name, is it?

Especially not for someone as smart as her. Besides, she keeps Big Top company when I'm not around."

The kitchen was different. Unlike the frilly, feminine feel of the other rooms, this one was all tile and stainless steel. Very high-tech and "cool,"

but done in such an interesting, individual way, that I couldn't stop looking around at it while he assembled my sandwich.

"This is a marvelous room."

"You like it? Harry Radcliffe designed it. You know Harry?"

"The architect? Of course." I didn't know much about the subject, but Radcliffe was so famous that it would have been hard not to know who he was.

Besides that, he was one of Maris's big heroes, and she had photographs of his buildings up all over her apartment.

"Yeah, well, Harry studied with me a while. Funny, funny man. After we finished, I asked him to design me a kitchen instead of paying cash. But nothing too expensive, you know? Something for an old man who likes a straight line and a clean angle." He looked at me over his shoulder and winked. "I'll tell you something interesting. Harry is one of the biggest hotshot architects in the
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world, right? But a tin ear on that man like you can't imagine! The only thing he had to learn was how to listen to music. So I taught him how to play the accordion. He has about three of them now. But even after he learned how, you didn't want to be in the same room with him and that instrument when he played. A great architect and a terrible musician." He smiled and went back to stacking pastrami.

"Now where's that mustard? I put it right out here on the counter. Big Top, go get me the mustard, will you?"

The bullterrier walked straight to the refrigerator and somehow, with a flick of his head (or nose), opened it. He got up on his hind legs, leaned deep into the fridge. Sticking his head forward, he put his mouth around something. A yellow tube of mustard. Jumping down, he closed the door with another head flick, and brought the tube to his master.

Venasque paid not attention. "Thanks, Big."

2.

"You want to rub your back up against my history, huh? Well, that's only fair. You told me yours."

We were sitting out on the small patio behind his house, drinking tea.

January night had come and along with it, a coolness that snuck right into your bones. The tea tasted warm and good. Connie and Big Top slept on their respectively named pillows nearby.

The pig never seemed to get comfortable:

She kept hopping up, grunting as if something had bitten her ass, then trying to settle herself the right way.

"Walker, I'll tell you something. Honesty fades as you grow older. You get better at lying, so you do it more. Specially about yourself. But you want to know about me, okay." He scratched his head, then rubbed both hands over the top of it. "I come from the South of France, originally.

My parents were

German circus people. They traveled through that area once in their lives on the way to a date in Monte Carlo. They liked it so much they jumped out of their old lives right there and stayed. In the circus they'd had an animal act, which is one of my first memories -- funny animals living in our house.

They sold the circus caravan they'd lived in, and a couple of horses, and bought a farm out in the middle of nowhere. Do you know France? About fifteen miles from Carpentras and an hour and a half from Avignon. The place wasn't so special, but they loved it enough to work like crazy to get it going in the beginning. Then a little gift from God happened to us; my mother got interested in perfume. She cooked up some kind of special blend that only she knew how to do.

That, and what we got from the farm, put us in good shape. Not great, but comfortable, and still happy to be there. Then my sister Ilonka and

I were born one year after the other.

"We grew up with perfume smells, funny animals, and that French countryside. It was a heaven, Walker. When I was seven, my father taught me how to walk the tightrope. He tied a horse rope between the two olive trees right in front of our door. In the summer we went into the fields and picked lavender for my mother. Have you ever seen a lavender field blowing in the wind? We spoke German with our parents and French with our friends. When we got tired of one language, we'd switch to the other and have a whole other world of words to use." He stopped and scratched the dog with a bare foot. Big