"Look, there's some potential in you. I've seen enough of the world to know that. You keep your options open while you can, give your mind time to catch up with your body and all that anger inside of you."
Some shard of flattery managed to get past her armor and it repulsed her. "What's it to you what I do? Yoar comin’ on to me, aint you? Old men sicken me."
"No no no – let my foundation send you to school. You give that skepticism of yours an education, then I'll hire you to size up purchases for my trust. You seem like the kind of person who could sniff out fakers. There’s too many folks out there trying to con me."
"You're crazy. Everything you touch you ruin. Folks around here know that."
Mr. White said nothing. He slid some stationary in front of her and put some change on the counter for his purchase. She did not lift a hand to take it. He shrugged, tipped his hat, and left. She pushed him out the door with her scowl.
He took his stationary and walked the direction of the town square. He found a bench on its periphery and took a seat and began to write. When he finished his letters, he put each in an envelope. He crossed the square and slipped the notes beneath various office doors in the town hall. Then he turned away from the town's colors and noises. The drive home was beautiful and peaceful beneath a purple sky. He sat outside after eating dinner and saw luna moths and hummingbirds dart in the dust around the morning glories beside the porch.
The next day Otto could only stammer when he received the phone calls thanking his employer for his sizable donations to the library and the town heritage foundation and this or that other civic institution. All of the callers assured that his fair's permits had been approved expediently thankyou, no sir, thank you.
Ernest piddled at his museum dioramas but got nothing much else done that day. He ate well that night, then slept peacefully and dreamed of when he had first left that mudhole of a town, under the mistaken impression that people were smarter and better mannered in other parts of the world.
Chapter 14
1920
It all began in the 1920’s with a new-monied young man in a small Midwestern town reading an ad in the back of a magazine left behind in a hotel by a travelling salesman. The world was full of liars and fakirs back then – well, it is full of them now, but back then they used better fonts and had more alluring and a-leering illustrations, and the patina of Oriental mysticism had not yet been worn down to its base metal, and in the West there persisted a yet unburst soap bubble of optimism for a brighter future spawned by technology and prosperity. Especially prosperity. The mogul-rich were a new breed hence unknown to the surface of the earth and their transmigrations between continents birthed epicycles in their wakes like those of giants ships, and in those wakes spun facsimiles of cultures, swirls of color and of lives cast and dashed and hoped and remixed like spilled paints, clinging to the money and the inspiration and the excess, and moving into a form or a role that either held its shape and was towed along further in the slipstream of the vessel or else spun off lazily and detached to dissipate in the sea.
His existence was a bit of both, plus a stripe of pious prairie stock he inherited from his ancestors and by no means had earned for himself, but one that nonetheless might accidentally buoy him the way a house might float intact miles downstream after a flooding of the Mississippi, or (as he had once read) the way a bamboo hut and its savage, painted South- Sea occupants might survive miles out to sea in the wake of a tsunami.
He was a tall, lanky adopted lad with a handsome visage and a shock of yellow hair. He knew he was handsome, and he had successfully sued his adoptive father for the right to the inheritance from his birth parents before its appointed time. From that day until he turned 18 he lived in a room in the nicest hotel in town. But for the availability of wealth it was a solitary life. He chose to be alone, to consider the prospect of the prospects before him, to consider himself in the company of himself. At nights he could be seen through the bright front hotel window sitting in the gilt parlor, his long body sunk into one of the large chairs, reading through magazines, burrowing his mind in the printed mix of high-minded passion and low-browed adventure and futuristic optimism. And slowly and slyly his self fell in love with an idea of itself like a bubble in champagne.
And at night that bubble floated amongst the thoughts and stories and curiosities his mind had accumulated, and he bobbed untethered in an ethereal infinitude of confessors and showmen and liars, each with his own outlandish gaudy farcical sphere – the wolf-boy the faith healer the pygmy shaman the snake oil mystic Hindu the lilting savant soprano farm girl the albino spelunker the cheesy British comedian, the bubble dancer the "Mister, I seen Jesus" transient the refugee the private dick the anarchist the Shadow. It was their lie with and against your lie – you're an enigma you're special you’re a mystery no oath no credo no uniform can confine you; you're old you're young you're rich you're poor but always part of you is an airy angel, free to hold and mold yourself above the sloganized hypnosis of the Big Machine, the modern substitute for fate.
Ernest used to think that everyone was made for something wonderful.
He stayed in town until he graduated school in a ceremony his parents did not attend. The next day he struck into the world to fit himself into the menagerie of conceits he had ingested and invented.
*
"Non-grasping is what you have to learn, non-grasping!" This bit of wisdom was intoned by a bosomy woman with a round monied face and a velvety royal blue dress and a blue-dyed ostrich feather hat. She was middle-age, rounded with comfort, but nonetheless flush with sincerity and enthusiasm. She brushed back a feather with a white-gloved hand and smiled at him. "Your desire is what leads to your misery and misfortune. Non-grasping is what you want. Non-grasping!"
The upper class world of the was full of spiritualistic promises and solutions, all spurned on by new cash-bloated classes looking to have their suddenly rarified existences endorsed by extra-planer beings who had been waiting for the emergence of this new sub-species marked by its level of sophistication and taste for imported crockery and ideas.
The young Ernest White found himself standing at the end of a gangplank with a suitcase in each hand and the whole of Europe spread out before him. The large, earnest society woman was waiting at the dock.
"It's so good to finally meet you ¬– and to think our correspondence began from the ad in the back of a magazine!" she said. "Ah well, the Old Spirit is responsible for the new ways. We hope you'll go far as a member of our little theosophical society. We're certainly a diverse group but we all share one thing: an unqualified optimism about man's spiritual progress in this new unfolding age!"
She helped introduce him around and get him settled, and one week later he found himself invited to his first Theosophical Guild meeting. The lady introduced him to a small, odd group seated in an academician's parlor. Besides the society matron there was: a tall gentleman in a slightly out-of date black suit who sat with sufficient poise to signify his stature in the society; a shorter, hazardously dressed man with wild eyes, a bushy black beard and thick eyebrows; a thin, earnest young man Mr. White could only think of as "Pale Poet"; and a handsome young woman with long brownish-blonde hair and chestnut eyes who always looked like she was about to laugh but never did. He took a seat between her and Bushy Brows at that first meeting, which was held in the crampt foyer of the stick-like black-suited gentleman, who was the headmaster at a dingy public school for children whose parents could not afford to send them where they wished they could.
The group of spiritualists met on an irregular basis as their schedules allowed, but they were enthusiastic and always had lively discussions. The meetings continued throughout the first fall of Mr. White's arrival in London, and he attended them in between art classes and architecture and anthropology lectures at a working university near his purposefully undistinguished flat.
At one theosophical meeting late in September a heat exchange occurred between the b
lack-dressed man and the Matron:
"You have the money but you don't have the ideas!" he said.
She drew herself up straight and looked down at him. "I, sir, am a lady of rareification and refinement. And I have an impulse of charity toward the world that you sadly lack. Why, you yourself said that in a past life I was Joan of Arc."
Bushy Brows leaned across toward Ernest: "There wasn't enough tin in all of France to build that suit of armor!"
"What's that?" the Matron asked.
"Yours is a unique blend of caritas and amour," Bushy Brows replied smoothly.
She blushed all the way down to her pigeon bosom. "Why thank you! It's my inheritance, my gift." She tapped the middle of her forehead significantly. "My unseen eye."
Over the course of months their meetings and conversations and philosophies wound in and out of each other:
"It will be an age in which man finally achieves his spiritual ideals. Through technology, need will be conquered and work will yield to leisure, and leisure to learning and understanding. With the need to compete for survival defeated, the powers of cooperation and introspection will finally unfold, and social castes will give way to a new spirit of equality and cooperation. It is a journey the world will make with the help of a select group of luminary teachers – an elite order of souls pre-gifted by the Higher Powers to lead the Way. One of the purposes of our group is to find and forge this cadre of teachers, to enlighten them to their true vocation and coordinate them to the common purpose."
"That's where Mr. Weeg's work with young boys comes in," Bushy Brows said.
Mr. Weeg smiled, but tightly, and his eyes narrowed to appraise Bushy Brows' face for signs of irony. The Laughing Girl tucked her lip and looked down. Pale Poet just sat there looking like he might not have eaten in weeks and was subsisting solely on chlorophyll in the green veins beneath his skin.
"How will you identify these potential teachers?" Mr. White asked.
"Oh we are guided, guided!" the Matron said. "You, for instance – there is something about you the reveals and receives this spiritual opportunity. It shows in you like an opened door to your soul. Most men are not like that. You can take one look at them and see that every portal has been boarded and shuttered long ago. But you..."
"Yes yes," Weeg said hurriedly, "but he's too old. Too bad we couldn't have met him sooner. His mind is open enough to learn, but never learn and lead. To raise a leader you must mold his nature, not simply fill his head. You have to get a young boy for that."
The Laughing Girl bent down again, and Bushy Brows took the opportunity to waggle his brows at her, but no laugh was coaxed out.
During a break the Matron came up to him. "Oh, don't you let Mr. Weeg's opinions concern you. He's a great speaker and organizer, but when it comes to true spiritual intuition his skills are far inferior to my own. I could tell from your letters that you have a great thirst for the truth and a keen spiritual perspicacity. In fact, I was thinking of asking you to help me write a book of theosophy. I'll even give you author credit. My gift is for overflowing effusive sentiment, but my weakness is putting it into words. The moment I hover over paper I freeze, but I can tell from your letters that you're so good at it. We can meet in weekly sessions and you can help me write down my ideas..."
She had been such a generous hostess to him that he readily agreed, and after six months of sublimely platonic meets at her villa, with her cats, the first draft was done. The Matron declared it a success and readied it for submission to the New Reformed Spiritualist Press. "Of course we'll have to think up a name for you," she said. "The readership we're courting expects a little something, you know, and if they see ‘Ernest White’ listed as the author they'll never turn past the title page. Let's see.... I know, let's call you 'Mr. Perfect.' With that gold hair and handsome young face of yours I'd say it's fitting enough – and it certainly ought to get them plowing through the chapters."
And he reluctantly agreed to the nom de plume, deferring to her superior sensibilities, and the small volume actually became something of a minor sensation among the tea-and-séance set. When the time came for a second printing the press sent over a photographer and took a picture of 'Mr. Perfect' seated cross-legged in a grassy field beneath the bo tree of his inspiration, palms upturned upon his knees and his fingers twined with oriental serenitude. The Matron never stepped forward to take one jot of credit for the book's content, preferring to take credit for the discovery of its author instead. Mr. Perfect went on a small lecture tour of various provincial theosophical enclaves, mostly regurgitating the content of the book but now and then elaborating with his own ideas. And Ernest White couldn't help but feel a little proud at the book's reception. As he had written it he'd felt some darkness in his head get pushed aside, at least here and there.
The group continued its Utopian ruminations for the better part of a year, but ultimately it was Mr. Weeg's alleged misbehavior that cast a shadow over all their doings. They showed up at the school one blustery autumn day to find out that Weeg was no longer employed there. The next message they received was that the Matron had decided to spend the season in Nice to recover her health after the shock of the revelation. And so Mr. Perfect, Bushy Brows, Pale Poet and Laughing Girl all stood outside in the cold as the iron gates of the school were shut forcefully behind them.
"What now?" Bushy Brows asked.
Pale Poet shrugged. "Back to the whims of fortune, I guess. I doubt the fates will ever twine our threads together again."
"I started out as just the group's secretary but then became a member," Laughing Girl said, and seemed about to laugh but then didn't. "I haven't taken a note in months but they haven't paid me either. The one thing I need right now is a real job." With that she shoved her hands in the pockets of and walked away.
"So what now?" Ernest asked.
"To each his own!" Bushy laughed, with a note of bravado that was appropriate if a tad forced. And so one by one each drifted away in separate directions into the wet and the cold.
Almost immediately thereafter a telegram came from his mother saying his father was dying and would he come home? He ignored it, but at the second and third letter he bent to his mother’s wishes and went back to the States, waiting for the old man to die and for him to be free again.
1925
He had gone home for his father's funeral and had unexpectedly found his heart broken in a love with a beautiful woman that had spiraled him abruptly to the heights of emotion and just as suddenly had crumbled, and in its ruin a dark mood settled in him. In his mind he felt his veins filled with the old sap and fate and poison of that place, and he was glad to leave it.
He returned to Europe. In fact, he pushed through it like he was trying to push through a jungle and let the branches rip the skin off him. He drew up the energy of the continent through the soles of his feet and set his sights to match its strength with his own. He saw a world polished and healed from war and papered over where it couldn’t heal or polish, and he forced himself into the circles of names you would expect to hear dropped, the literary men and women and the artists, the pearls and the poses and the careful tilts of the head and the seeing to be seen and the dinner jackets and the cufflinks, and the philanthropist sponsors and the would-be philosophers who thought or sought to rein in a formula to attach to this or that tide of conceit, or at least to give one a name that lent itself to repeated reminting and concomitant fame when cast in print.
He attended a party his second night there, given by a friend of a friend of someone who had known him before. Someone laughed at his comments and he felt a part of a shadow fall off him and his self expand and someone asked who he was, and soon he was invited closer to the center of things, to the group of people were supposed to be worth knowing, to the writer who puffed his chest when retelling his adventures, to the man in his cups who shone like a diamond when he could exceed the gravity of his own self-destruction, to the artist who dismissed all adulation of his latest phase with
the back of his hand but ended with the same hand cupped to his ear to hear the last faint human-breathed syllables of praise. He got to have a reputation for being a wit, for being too sardonic for his age but for being sufficiently sardonic for the age in general, and at someone's suggestion he committed a batch of his observations to paper and saw them published as thin essays in Smart Set under the collective title "The Love of Liberty and a Libertine of Love." They were glib and shocking in a predictable way. They were cast as a three-way dialog between Thomas Paine, Socrates and a flapper and made calculatedly deferential references to the latest personages in the quotable class. When they were collected in a thin volume he gave signed copies to the luminaries of the day and they pretended to be pleased, and he assured them they were nothing but they did buy him time while he worked on his great treatise. This brought nods of sympathy. Afterward whenever they saw him they'd ask about the treatise's progress, and they always seemed to commiserate with his halting efforts to rein in his one big idea before it got away.
A few months later he was at a party at Cannes, waist-deep in water with a girl on his shoulders when he happened to meet someone he knew from several years ago. She was tall and had a hard look and had made the transformation from girlishly pretty to strikingly beautiful. She was the Laughing Girl from his old theosophical clique. He promptly discarded the companion and went over to meet her. They fell into each other right away.
"Why are you here?"
"My husband is an art dealer. He has recently acquired a few choice items plundered from Czarist Russia and is here to present them to a potential buyer."
"I need an art dealer for my trust. I've been told I have too much money in stocks and bonds and need to invest in something. Art, I'm told."
"Well, maybe he can help you."
In time Mr. Perfect found himself more interested in art than theosophy. Many of the young people in the borough where he stayed were artists, so by talking with them, he decided to become one too. They were all paint-daubed smocks and strong cigarettes and outrageous banter on the front steps of their boarding house, and it was lively just to sit among them, he in his spotless white suit.