Some Came Running (110 page)

“How?” Dave asked.

Bob nodded. “What is the one cardinal phenomenon by which he grows?”

“I’m lost,” Dave said. “You’ve lost me.”

Bob smiled. “A hint, then. The classic worn example: The child who although he has been told not to, puts his hand on the hot stove.”

Dave stared at him, feeling totally ridiculous now, and also for some reason a little scared. “Pain,” he said. “Suffering.”

“Pain. There never has been, and never will be—contrary to what we humans would like to believe—any growth or any learning, without pain. Pain the great Destroyer, and the great Healer.” Bob smiled. “I think if we ‘humans’ should give thanks to God for any single thing at all, we should do so first for our God-given ability to suffer pain.”

“That sounds like some sort of new cult of masochism,” Dave said.

Bob grinned. “Perhaps it should be! A new Beatitude!” he smiled. “Blessed are the Masochists for they shall be the heirs of the Sadists.

“Well, there you have your
simple
answer: Which, as I said, you already know in your heart. You asked why on the spiritual level does man fall in love: I should say that because only there, in the self-sealed self-love that man lives in on the mental plane, can the only truly shell-breaking, crust-dissolving pain be found.”

“But that’s a plain paradox,” Dave protested.

Bob smiled and spread his corded-veined hands. “Of course? What is not? Is it not also a paradox that in our efforts to escape pain we all run immediately for salvation to human love where we find the greatest pain of all? Perhaps Old Plato was not so wrong after all, with his idea that male and female once inhabited the same body, and have ever since spent their lives frantically trying to find their Other Self. Today we prefer to look on this statement of his as an amusing, rather sly, symbolism; but perhaps—” he smiled, “he was actually, factually correct.”

Dave was rubbing his hand over his jaw, which he had neglected to shave today. “Well, you’ve solved my technical problem, anyway, Bob. In order to make my love affair believable—if I decided to write it in, of course—all I have to do is show that my GI and my French girl—or any other two lovers in the world—are just simply both plain blind fools.”

“Of course,” Bob smiled. “Handle it just the same way you would handle your heroes, and your soldiers, and your warfare. I have a book inside in the house that explains it all very well. It’s written by a man—a Master—who calls himself simply ‘the Tibetan.’ The way he explains it is that it’s all a problem of
Glamours.
Everything in the world is a
Glamour.
Because, after all, the world doesn’t really exist. War is a
Glamour.
Politics is another
Glamour.
Religion, as man knows it, is another
Glamour.
So the problem really resolves itself into one of simply getting rid of all one’s
Glamours.
And love—love is probably the greatest
Glamour
of them all.

“It’s really all very simple,” he smiled.

“Yeh,” Dave said. He got up off the stool. For some reason, he wanted, or needed, or felt it was proper to shake hands with Bob, and he held out his hand. Bob French grasped it warmly, smiling.

“I’ll go in and get it for you if you’d like,” he offered.

“No,” Dave said. “No, not now. Right now I’ve got a whole hell of a lot more than I can digest. Perhaps some other time.”

Bob smiled. “You know,” he added, “I have a little theory that I’ve been sort of developing over the last few years, in connection with reincarnation, that the true artist—whose work I have always held to be the greatest endeavor of man—is really only the last evolutionary stage the individual soul goes through, before it becomes, as the ‘occult’ books call them: the beginning Disciple, working specifically with some Great Master; and that all the suffering artists like you and I go through—all our great vanity and our oversexualization (which cause us much pain)—all these are both a sort of testing ground for us and also the very means by which we learn to sluff off those
Glamours
which we must get rid of in order to become a lowly Disciple.

“It’s rather a comforting thought,” he smiled; “and also a very humbling one. I figure it will take me about three to ten lives—depending on my various Karma—to become a truly great enough artist to be able to make the crossover.”

“You think so, hunh?” Dave said with a weak grin. “Jesus Christ! then where does that put me?”

“Ah! but one never knows,” Bob smiled. “You may be far ahead of me. In fact, considering the work you’re doing lately, I suspect that you are.”

“Say, you know,” Dave said suddenly, “I’ve got a friend I’d like for you to meet. He thinks a very great deal like you do, though of course he can’t say it as well. It’s ’Bama Dillert; the gambler I buddy around with. What you’ve been saying about
Glamours
made me think of him.”

“Well, by all means bring him over,” Bob said.

“Well, it’s not that simple. I’ve been trying to get him to come over with me for six months. But he’s shy.”

“Good Heavens!” Bob exclaimed; “surely he’s not shy of someone like Gwen and myself.”

“Well, he thinks you’re both intellectuals, you know?”

“Great Scott!” Bob grinned. “What have I ever done to him that he should insult me so?”

Dave laughed. “Well, maybe I can drag him over sometime. He really does think an awful lot like you do. In fact, he reads a number of occult books himself.”

“I should very much like to meet him,” Bob said in his exquisitely polite way.

“Well, we’ll see,” Dave said. “I’ll see you, Bob.”

“Dave,” Bob said gently. The younger man stopped at the door of the shop. “Why don’t you just go on in the house and wait? Gwen should be home at any moment—if she isn’t here already. Go ahead,” he smiled. “Make yourself at home, if she isn’t here yet.”

“Well,” Dave said. “All right.”

And so that was what he did. He crossed the snow-covered yard, and in the house he put some of Bob’s classical records on the player and got himself a can of beer and just wandered around looking at some of the books on the walls, as he had done so many times before. He still could not tell just how far below the surface of all this Bob French could see. Had Bob merely invited him to go on in out of innocence? Or had he done it because he was aware of everything, and just didn’t care? Maybe he had done it to deliberately show Dave that he
was
aware, and that he
didn’t
care? All that occultism stuff was on Dave’s mind, too. Evidently, Bob did really seriously believe in the reincarnation of souls; and the fact that he did shook Dave. A man like that, with the real mind he had. For him to believe that stuff— When Gwen came home from school in a little while, he had already drunk three cans of beer, and they went for another ride out through the forbidding hard-frozen, winter Illinois landscape. As they drove along, he told her about the discussion with Bob, and asked her about it.

“Does he really believe in reincarnation?”

“Oh yes,” Gwen said. “We’ve had a lot of discussions about it.”

“Do you believe in it, too?”

“Yes, I think I do,” she said. “I don’t know of course that it’s a fact; but of all the different systems of religion, and so-called life after death, reincarnation seems to me the only really logical answer to the problems of the soul.”

“Logical!” Dave exclaimed.

“Yes. Logical. After all, what could be more illogical than what the various forms of Christianity teach: That an individual soul is created every time a child is born; and that then, when it dies after a span of sixty or seventy years, it is judged for all eternity by what it did or did not do during those few years. To me that’s simply ridiculous. It’s unjust on the part of God in the first place, and in the second place, it’s simply wasteful. Think how many new souls that takes every day! Heavens, God would be so busy making new human souls that He wouldn’t have time to create new galaxies or solar systems or other life forms or anything else. And all just so they could live some sixty or seventy years in order to be judged. No; I think it’s all just our incredible human vanity, which makes it impossible for us to believe that our ‘I’ could ever be used again by some other personality.

“It just seems the most logical hypothesis. Why should souls not also evolve? since everything else does? And if I am to believe in God at all, I must be able to believe He is
just.”

“Sure,” Dave said; “me, too. But that’s no proof. God may very easily be
un
just, for all we know. Maybe God’s idea of justice and ours don’t necessarily coincide.”

“Probably they don’t,” Gwen said. “I didn’t mean that God must be just by human terms. I meant He must be just by His own terms; since those are the only terms there are, He therefore
must
be.”

“That doesn’t necessarily follow,” Dave said.

“I didn’t say it did. All I said was, that’s how
I
feel. What I was
trying
to say was: If Whoever or Whatever it was that created everything, did create it—and I think we can assume Something or Someone did create it—then everything must be just in an abstract sense because it is all a part of Him and is all there is. So it
must
be just, according to His concept of just—whatever that is.”

“Oh,” Dave said; “oh. I think I see what you mean, now. But it’s a hard thing to try to say.

Just simply because of the fact it’s all there is, it
is
all there is. So it has to be accepted as just.”

“Yes.” Gwen turned to smile at him, that incredibly warm, lambent lovers’ look, and he smiled back at her—their eyes saying many silent things—and wanting desperately to take her in his arms here in her car and make love to her. A little chill went over him when he remembered that so short a time ago Bob had so devastatingly held up for him the whys and wherefores of “love.” Had, in effect, proved almost conclusively that there wasn’t any such a thing as “love,” except insofar as it was love of self. But, damn it, if you
felt
things they existed didn’t they? If he could only figure out what it was that was wrong, with her. Something, somewhere, was wrong; he could feel it. If he could only reach her, find out what this thing was . . .

Gwen’s Christmas vacation started three days later. Dave said no more to her about making the trip to Chicago. Once the college had let out he started spending more and more time over at their house in Israel. He still worked some in the mornings; but not nearly as much, and he began spending most of the nights over there, too, in that same bedroom he had occupied before. He had shaving things and toilet articles he kept there, and a number of his clothes hung perpetually in the closet whether he was there or not. It was, in fact,
his
room now; “Dave’s room” was what they all called it.

More than once, as he lay in the bed in “his” room, he was more than half a mind to just simply slip out of bed and go down there and accost her, where she lay only two doors away, so near he could almost imagine he could hear her breathing, and yet at the same time seemingly solar systems away; just accost her, and force her to sleep with him. He was sure, somehow, that if he did, everything would somehow be all right then. If he succeeded. But always in the end, the thought that he might not succeed stopped him. She had made it plain she didn’t want to sleep with him. And if he did
not
succeed, everything would come down about his ears, and there wouldn’t be
anything
left. And after all, he was a guest in her house. So he would simply lie, running his hands up and down over the fat of his belly, hating himself for being so unattractive, and for being so gutless, until he finally went to sleep.

Christmas in 1948 was not like Christmas in 1947. This year, it was a real white Christmas, and Dave was over there in Israel almost all of that time; he helped decorate the house and tree and plan the party they would have; he was consulted on what presents to buy for the various ones; and he went to Terre Haute by himself to buy his own gifts for all of them. He came home drunk and exhausted. It was all of it ridiculous; he detested it; but once the shopping part was done, it was nevertheless fun to have done. It was, in short, Christmas.

’Bama had decided since Dave was going to be in Israel, to go down to the farm for Christmas this year. So the house in Parkman was locked up, and a key given only to Dewey and Hubie. Doris Fredric was going to be home Christmas with her family.

Wally and Dawn—who was home for Christmas from Western Reserve—were very much in evidence in Israel during the preparations for Christmas. Dawn didn’t seem to have changed much—except that maybe she was a little less openly displayful of her sophistication now; and also she seemed a little more cold. Whatever warmth there had been between her and Wally last summer had apparently either gone underground or else gone away entirely—although they were together all the time, just the same.

Wally himself, on the other hand, appeared just as reserved and cold as Dawnie did—although he had apparently given up Rosalie Sansome while Dawn was home. And for the first time since early last summer, he was being distant again with Dave. The only reason Dave had been able to figure out for it was the acceptance of his story by Gwen’s lady editor friend with New Living Literature. But during the holidays, when they were all over at Israel so much, he discovered there was more to it than that. Wally was jealous of him with Gwen. He obviously thought they were lovers, Dave deduced wryly.

On Christmas Day, Frank and Agnes came over for their eggnog and to see the presents. It was the first time Dave had seen either of them face to face since Frank had come up to the hotel after he got back from Florida. He and Frank eyed each other, and said hello politely.

“How’re you making out, Frank?”

“Oh, I’m doing pretty good,” Frank said, cold-eyed. “I guess I’m making out all right. And you?”

“Fine, Frank, fine,” he said. “I couldn’t be doing better. My book’s over half done.”

“Well, that’s good,” Frank said. He did not sniff, actually, but he looked as if he wanted to. And when they left, moved by some vague feeling of warmth and all the things that he truly owed his brother, Dave went up and said goodby and held out his hand to him. For a moment, it looked as if Frank was not even going to take it, but then—half tight from the eggnogs he had been drinking all morning; and probably with some obscure feeling about Christmas Cheer and Good Will to Men—he took Dave’s hand and shook it, though of course they both knew—from the very moment he hesitated—that it really meant nothing.