The Man in the Tree (26 page)

"There are some very good organizations," Linck said.
"I belong to about thirty of them," said Gene, "but it isn't enough. It
isn't working. Let's go home."
Later that evening Irma found Margaret in the patio, staring at the
fountain. "Still thinking about those kids?"
Margaret nodded. "I know he's right -- he can't help them all, but it
just seems -- "
"That if he wasn't a son of a bitch, he would have done something?"
"I didn't mean it that way."
"That's the way it is, though. When you get right down to it, Gene
doesn't give a damn. Maybe it's because he was an only child. Or it
could be that just because he was so big, he never could make friends
with the other kids."
"It sound s terribly lonesome."
"There you go. Feeling sorry again for the poor rich man."
She smiled. "I was, wasn't I?'
"Sure you were, and so was I. That's what drives me crazy."
Chapter Twenty-one
Margaret was not quite sure what to make of Wilcox. He had fitted himself
unobtrusively into the household, as if he had always been there. Under
his easy flow of talk there was a feeling of reserve, of something not
spoken. Was that it, or was it the deceptions he practiced on them all,
with evident enjoyment, when he picked silver coins out of their ears
or made fans of cards appear and disappear?
One afternoon she found him in the living room playing with some ping-pong
balls on a marble-topped coffee table. One of them fell off, and he said,
"Damn." He looked up. "Maggie, come and watch this, will you? I need the
audience."
She sat down across from him. "What is it?"
"A new thing I'm trying. It may not be any good." He gathered up the
balls in one hand, dropped them in a row on the table. While they were
still bouncing, he passed his hand over them: it was the same row of
bouncing balls, but now there were five instead of four. He did it
again; now there were six. She couldn't see where the extra balls were
coming from, although she leaned over to watch. Another pass, and there
were five balls; then four; and finally a single ball tapping on the
marble. Wilcox picked it up, tossed it into the air; she distinctly saw
it rise, but it never came down. He grinned at her.
"How did you do that?"
"Tricks of the trade."
"I think that's so
frustrating
."
"Because you're not sure if it's real magic or not?"
"Well -- I know it isn't."
"But there's always a moment when you're not sure, isn't that true? I
think that's the point. You know, when I was nine, I was a bit slow
for my age, and I absolutely believed in magic. I thought it would be
a great thing to learn how to do it, so I asked my mother to bring me a
book from the library. Well, it was a disappointment at first, because
what I had in mind was turning flowerpots into bicycles, or whatever,
and this was all about deceiving people with matchsticks and rubber bands.
But once I got over that, it began to be very interesting, especially the
close-up work. The big stage illusions, the ones that mystify everybody,
are actually quite easy. Those are mechanicals, you know, like the
glass box on wheels -- a girl gets in, they cover it with a cloth and
whirl the box around, then whip off the cloth and she's gone, or else
the magician himself pops out. All the big theatrical illusionists are
using that now -- you've probably seen it yourself."
"Yes, on television."
"Well, the only skill involved there is the skill of the people who
invented the trick. Aside from that, it's all showmanship. People don't
care so much about skill, they just want to be amazed. They like to
believe in magic, just for a moment; I think that's what it's really
all about."
Wilcox borrowed Irma's car every afternoon to drive into St. Petersburg
and see his assistant. After ten days she was discharged from the
hospital, and Wilcox brought her out to the house to say good-bye. Her
name was Nan Leach; she was a tall, slender blonde, handsome rather than
pretty; her right leg was in a brace, and she walked by swinging her leg
from the hip. "It's still pretty stiff," she told them. "I'm supposed
to have therapy when I get home."
Her right leg, stretched out in front of her with the foot on a hassock,
was not quite so shapely as the other; it was swollen around the knee,
and the calf looked shrunken.
"That's a shame," Gene said. "Let me see. Do you mind?" As the others
watched, he knelt and put his fingers on her knee.
"No, that's all right," she said with an air of faint surprise, glancing
at Wilcox.
Gene stroked her knee for a moment, then drew his hand away suddenly. Her
body jumped a little.
"I'm sorry, did I hurt you?"
"No. It's all right, it just felt funny." She looked at Wilcox again.
"We'd better go."
Wilcox kissed the women, Irma a little more thoroughly than Margaret.
"Come back, Mike," said Gene.
"I will, in a month or two."
One afternoon a few days later, she found Pongo setting the table in the
dining room. "Seven for dinner," he explained. "We could handle it in
the kitchen, but Gene wants to be fancy."
"Who are the two extras?"
"Couple of professors from the university. I'm going to give them fish --
brain food."
At dinner time, when she came in, the others were just gathering around
the table. Gene, at the far end, was listening intently to a slender,
dark-haired man. His voice was high-pitched; he had an accent that
Margaret could not identify. "No, that is not the problem," he said.
"That is not the problem. We understand pretty well how the universe
began. First there was the primordial atom, which exploded in what we
call Big Bang."
The other newcomer said, "But isn't it true that the math shows that if
that happened, the universe never would have formed galaxies and planets
-- all that matter would have just kept on expanding indefinitely in a big
sphere?" He was a rumpled, pudgy young man with a faint brown mustache.
"That is a very good point," said the dark-skinned man. "Yes, and
therefore we must assume a discontinuity either in the primordial atom,
or in the way it expanded during the first few milliseconds." There was
something odd about his vowels; he said "univarse," and "primardial."
"Maggie, let me introduce you," said Gene. The others turned in their
chairs, and the two newcomers stood up. "Margaret Morrow, my secretary.
This is Nirmal Coomaraswami, a famous theoretical physicist --
"
"I am not so famous as all that," saidt Coomaraswami, laughing nervously.
"Very glad to know you."
"And this is Stan Salomon, he teaches biology at the University of Florida."
"Margaret." His hand was plump and cool.
She took the empty place next to Salomon. "We were talking about the
creationism controversy," he said. "You know, whether God created the
universe or whether it just happened."
"Yes, and that is what science cannot tell us," said Coomaraswami. Pongo
put a bowl of soup in front of him; he glanced at it in apparent
surprise. "We know what happened," he went on, "and we know when it
happened, with a very high degree of certainty. But creationists want
us to say why it happened. This is not a scientific question."
Pongo finished serving the soup and sat down across from Irma.
"That may be," said Salomon. "But the origin of man
is
a scientific
problem, and that's what bothers me. Did you know," he said to Margaret,
"that we have to give equal time now to the creationist theory in
biology classes?"
"No, really? I think that's awful."
"It is not awful. It is not awful," said Coomaraswami. "We should examine
both theories and see how well they explain the facts. Then let people
decide for themselves."
"It's religion in the schools," said Salomon.
"That is not necessarily so."
"Creationism isn't religion?" Salomon demanded.
"No, not necessarily. The Bible account of the creation is a myth. In
Hindu religion there is also a creation myth, slightly different. All
over the world there are these creation myths. But even if we say that
a myth is not true, that is not to say that creation cannot be true."
Margaret was watching him in fascination. His skin was no darker than
Pongo's, but it was a different color, a ruddier brown; his crisp black
hair, faintly glossy, clung to his neat narrow head. His fingernails
and the tips of his fingers were pink.
"That's nonsense," said Salomon, with his soup spoon half raised to his
lips. "The evidence for evolution -- "
"Yes-yes, I know, but please let me finish. Of course there is evidence
that living organisms have evolved from other organisms. There is no
question about that, and that is a very good point. But it is possible
to say that organisms were created by God, and then evolved into other
forms, or that there are a limited number of forms -- sort of Platonic
ideals -- that organisms can evolve into."
"The fossil record -- " began Salomon, but fell silent because Anderson
was speaking.
"I remember," he said slowly, "in one of Hemingway's letters he talks
about a new kind of shark that appeared in the ocean off Cuba. Nobody
had ever seen it before. They were black, with no dorsal fin, and their
stomachs were full of swordfish swords. I couldn't help wondering,
what if creation is still going on?"
Early one morning, before it was light, she went into the courtyard. The
fountain was making a lonesome sound. A red spark glimmered not far away.
"Oh," she said, "is that you, Piet?"
"Yes, it's me." He rose and came toward her. "You couldn't sleep?"
"No."
"You have been looking a bit tired. Do you often have insomnia?"
"Fairly often."
"Have you tried hypnosis for it?"
"No. Do you think that would work?"
"Well, we can find out if you are a good subject, at least. Do you want
to try now? Wait until I turn on the fountain light. Now stand there,
please, and close your eyes."
Margaret did as she was told, feeling foolish.
"Now I want you to be aware of your right arm," said Linck's voice. "Feel
how relaxed it is; it is very relaxed and soft, there is no tension in
it. Your right arm is very relaxed, and now it is becoming lighter. It
wants to rise because it is so light, almost as light as a balloon, and
now it is rising, you can't stop it from rising, and you don't want to
stop it. It is lighter and lighter, your arm is rising because it is so
light . . . "
His voice went on, remote and almost inaudible, talking about her
arm. She could feel her arm coming up a little, but she was not sure
where it was. And his voice went on.
"You can open your eyes now," he said.
To her surprise, her right arm was extended almost at a right angle from
her shoulder. She lowered it, feeling even more foolish.
"That was very good," Linck said. "You are a good subject, much better
than Gene."
"Oh, have you hypnotized him?"
"No, because he is a very bad subject. But if you want to do something
about your insomnia, I don't think we will have any trouble."
They had their first session that night in Linck's sitting room
upstairs. Linck had her stare at the illuminated crystal of a clock in
the darkened room, and suggested to her that her eyelids were growing
heavy, that she was becoming drowsy, that she could not keep her eyes
open. After she closed them, his voice went on, and she felt herself
drifting deeper and deeper into a black velvety space in which she was
aware but bodiless and without anxiety or volition. He told her that
she would remember everything he said to her unless he ordered her not
to, and that she would always awake from trance feeling refreshed and
cheerful. He told her that in future she would always go directly into
trance when he said, "Go to sleep, Maggie."
In their second session, two days later, Linck told her to imagine
herself in an elevator descending very slowly down an endless shaft;
each time the elevator passed another floor, her trance was deepened. He
repeated his previous suggestions, and told her that when she went to
bed she would feel relaxed and drowsy, and would have no anxiety about
getting to sleep. That night she slept nine hours.
In their third session, Linck gave her a "sleep blanket": he told her
that whenever she wanted to go to sleep, she could imagine a warm blanket
being pulled up gradually over her body; when it got to her chin, she
would fall into a deep natural sleep. And it worked.
Gradually and gently the world was slipping into winter. They turned off
the air conditioning, opened the sliding glass doors to the garden and
the clerestory windows in front. Loose papers blew like birds around
the living room until Gene brought out a boxful of glass paperweights
to put on them.
One afternoon she found him in his workroom, bent over the drawing
board. "Gene, these letters ought to be signed."
"Okay." He laid his brush aside. A half-finished drawing was in front of
him; others were spread out to dry on the table. They were delicate pen
sketches with a wash of sepia: faces, floating hair, oak leaves. "What
are those for?" she asked.
"Christmas cards." He scrawled his name at the bottom of a letter,
picked up another one.
"Oh, my. I wish I could do that."
"Can't draw?"
"No. I can draw a pig, and that's about all."
"Let me see your pig." He pushed a blank card toward her.
"I don't want to spoil this."
"That's all right, there are plenty more."
Margaret took the pen he gave her and made a pig: a sort of bucket
shape on its side for the head, then a round body, four stick legs,
and a curlicue for the tail.
Gene looked at it without comment. "Would you like to make some
cards? I'll show you a way without drawing."
"Yes, I'd love to."
"Get rid of these letters and I'll meet you in the dining room."
When she got there, Gene was spreading newspapers over one end of the
table. When he was finished, he began taking jars of paint out of a
shopping bag. "This is tempera -- it'll wash off, but it's messy. Get
me some spoons from the kitchen, will you, and some little bowls, and
a glass of water."
"How many spoons?"
"Half a dozen."
Gene arranged the open paint jars, bowls, and spoons in the middle of the
table. "Sit down and I'll show you what to do. First you fold a card
in half, like this. Then you drop a little paint on it, wherever you
want." He dipped up some red with a spoon, then blue, then a few drops
of yellow. The paint stood up in biobs on the shiny white card. "Now you
just fold it over." He demonstrated, pressing the card down vigorously
with the heel of his hand.