I was in the fresh and cool night sky. Find Rachel, I thought. Your test is accomplished. You know now you are free.
He can't stop you. Go now where you will.
But in truth, the experiment would only be complete if I could make myself fully solid once more.
The scarf. I had forgotten about the scarf.
I drew down closer to the building. Only now did I really see its full height and grandeur. Covered all over even to its top floors with granite, it sloped majestically as it rose, rather like an ancient place of worship. There must have been fifty floors. Numbers don't come to me automatically. We had been on the twenty-fifth floor just now.
I descended, peering into the windows as I went, looking for the private living chambers. Offices, I saw hundreds of offices. I moved easily from right to left, amazed at the rooms filled with computers, and then I saw laboratories, highly elaborate laboratories in which serious people were diligently studying tiny things beneath microscopes and measuring potions into vials, which they carefully sealed.
What was this, part of Gregory's religious rackets? Drugs for his followers? Spiritual medicines, like the Soma of the Persian sun worshipers?
But there were so many laboratories! There were men and women in sterile white suits and masks, their hair carefully covered with white caps. There were giant refrigerators and warning signs against "Contamination." There were animals in cages--little gray monkeys with wide, frightened eyes. Doctors were feeding them.
In one area, humans moved sluggishly, encased in very bright colored plastic suits and with ominous windowed helmets worthy of modern warriors. Their hands were covered with giant clumsy gloves.
At their mercy, the monkeys chattered desperately and in vain in their little prisons. Some monkeys lay prostrate with illness or fright.
Most curious. Some Temple of the Mind, I thought.
As last I came down to perhaps the twelfth floor and there I saw the great demilune of a living room in which he and I had quarreled. I moved through the window easily, and through the corridors, moving the doors back slowly and lightly so that it would seem a breeze.
I saw Esther's bed. I saw her bed, and her picture beside it, a smiling girl with others in a silver frame, and I saw across her snow-white bedspread the black beaded scarf, folded neatly. I was overcome with delight. As I entered the room physically, I sensed the perfume of Esther. Here she had slept; here she had dreamed.
On her dressing table, there lay diamond rings and earrings with diamonds, and bracelets with diamonds, a scattering of finery, all delicate and pretty with silver or gold. On the walls were photographs--Gregory, Rachel, Esther--together year after year. One picture had been taken on a boat, another on a beach, another at some ceremony or party which required gowns for the women.
"Esther, tell me! Who did it? Why? Would he kill you simply because you learned about his brother Nathan? Why would that matter to him, Esther?"
But nothing came back from the surfaces of this room. The soul had gone straight into the light and taken every particle of pain or joy it had ever known along with it. It had left nothing. Ah, to be murdered and to rise so cleanly!
I drifted towards the scarf. My hand grew denser and more visible as the weight of the fabric tumbled into it; it was beautifully woven, made of lace in its center, long, and trimmed all over with fine small black beads, exactly as I remembered. It was heavy, very heavy. It was almost a shawl. It was strange and unlike other things of this time. Perhaps she had thought it exotic.
The darkness moved around me. Make yourself whole and flesh. I did. Something brushed me and flashed before me, dimly and uncertainly. But it was only a lost soul, the soul of an unburied man perhaps, mistaking me in the mist for an angel then moving on. Nothing to do with the chamber.
I uttered a curse against the lost souls, and took my stand with the material world.
I wound the scarf tight in my hands, dazzled again that I was formed and answerable to no one. And then once more, keeping this scarf tight within my grip, I let the particles fly from me, and rolled my spirit round and round this scarf, this heavy scarf so that I might carry it with me.
I soared through the noise and smoke hovering over the city. For one moment I saw its lights below sprinkled exquisitely amid the clouds, the scarf like a great heavy stone in the very midst of my being, slowing me, giving me a rise and fall with the wind that felt oddly good.
Like the birds perhaps, I mused.
Rachel, Rachel, Rachel. I pictured her as I'd left her, not below me, screaming at my disappearance, but how she had been when she was seated across from me, with large hard eyes and all the silver shimmering in her hair, as if it had been threaded there deliberately by twenty slaves to make her magnificent in age.
Within seconds I felt close to her. I could almost see her. She moved through the night as swiftly as I did, and I circled her, rising high above her and then drawing near. I couldn't see her clearly enough. Her image was tangled with movement and light.
It was the plane.
I couldn't enter the plane. I wasn't sure enough to enter it. It was just going too fast. I didn't know if I had the strength. I didn't know if I could bring together the matter for a body in the compartment of such a swiftly moving machine. The whole technology of the plane seemed too full of contradictions, and precarious adjustments. I imagined some hideous catastrophe in which I'd be knocked back once more into oblivion, unable to revive.
If that happened, the scarf would fall to earth, like a bit of burnt black forest, moving back and forth on the wind until it entered the lower atmosphere and then pooled on the ground. Esther's scarf, divorced from all things that had to do with her, and those who loved her. Esther's scarf in some strange city--we were high above small cities.
I drifted without making a choice. I wasn't uncertain however. I would meet her, I resolved.
I waited and I followed; the plane led me like a tiny firefly in the night.
We were above the southern seas. The plane was circling and descending. I saw then the great sprawl of Miami as I came down under the clouds. Glorious in this warm air, this sea-filled, watery air, air as lovely as some ancient city where I had once been very happy as a spirit, learning from a wise man. I could almost...
But I had to concentrate. I saw the long stream of eerie colored lights that made the Ocean Drive of Miami Beach. I saw it as clearly as if she'd drawn me a map, and I saw the building with the pink beacon atop it, the very last one on the bony finger of the peninsula.
Slowly I descended, not close to the building, but a few blocks from it, drifting quickly into the large crowd that moved along the street, between the beach and the cafes. The warm air was grand and exhilarating. I almost cried for the sweetness of it, and the sight of the great sea, and the beautiful billowing clouds of the sky. I thought if I had to die, I should like to die here too.
It was a remarkable mix of humans which surrounded me, wholly unlike the busy people of New York. These were pleasure seekers, all rather agreeable, and all eyes for one another, yet most tolerant of the great casual variety of styles intermingled here, and the obvious mix of the very young in ostentatious seductive attire, right along with the commonplace and the very old.
But my clothes were not right. I glanced about at the men. Men wore loose garments, short pants, sandals. No. There was a man in a beautiful white suit, like Gregory's suit, with a shirt and open collar.
I took that style. When my feet hit the pavement, I was dressed like that man and carrying the scarf in my hand and walking south on Ocean Drive towards Esther's building.
Heads turned, people smiled, people here looked at each other, people here wanted to see beauty. There was an atmosphere of festivity. Suddenly a girl grasped my arm. I was startled. I wheeled around and stopped and bowed.
"Yes, what is it?" I asked.
She was little more than a child with huge breasts, almost naked under her pink cotton tunic. Her hair was blond and fleecy an
d gathered back with a big pink bow.
"Your hair, your beautiful hair," she said. She had a dreamy look.
"In this breeze, it's a nuisance," I said, laughing.
"I thought that was it," she said. "When I saw you coming, you looked so happy, except your hair kept blowing in your face. Here, let me give you this." She laughed with simple gaiety as she removed a long gold chain from around her neck.
"But I have nothing to give you for it," I said.
"Your smile is what you gave me," she said, and rushing behind me, she gathered my hair back at the nape of my neck and looped the chain around it. "Ah, now, you look cooler and more comfortable," she said, jumping in front of me. Her little tunic barely covered her underwear, and she danced on naked legs and sandals that had only one buckle to them.
"Thank you, thank you most kindly," I said with a deep bow. "Oh, I wish I had something, I don't know where to..." How could I bring to myself some valuable object without stealing it? I felt ashamed as I looked at the scarf.
"Oh, I would give you this..."
"I don't want anything from you!" she said, laying a little hand on mine and on the scarf. "Smile again!" And when I did she cried out with laughter.
"I wish you blessings all your life," I said. "I wish I could kiss you."
She stood on tiptoe, threw her arms around my neck, and planted on me a luscious kiss that woke every molecule of the body. I trembled, not able to gently remove her from me, but fast becoming her utter slave, and all this on the brightly lighted street in the brisk ocean breeze, with hundreds meandering on both sides.
Something distracted me. It was a call. It was Rachel's call to me, and Rachel was very close, and she was crying.
"I have to go now, pretty girl," I said. "You lovely girl." And I kissed her again and hurried down the street, trying to remember to walk at a human pace. I could see Rachel's building up the slope.
I was there in less than five minutes. The kiss of the girl had been like a drink of wine for a mortal man. I was laughing to myself. I was so happy to be alive suddenly that I even felt a morsel of compassion for all those who had ever wronged me or anyone. But that passed fast enough. Hate was too much a part of my character.
These kind gentle people might melt it, however. These kind ones.
Approaching the garden terraces of the building, I looked up at its glorious height. Then I climbed quickly over the fence and sprinted on the drive, hardly realizing that I had bypassed a security gate as I headed for the front doors of Rachel's home.
A huge white limousine was parked there and Rachel was just getting out of it. Ritchie, the faithful driver, had her by the arm. He was agitated though silent. No reporters or anyone around. Only the building attendants in white uniforms, and the breeze rippling through the purple Egyptian lilies.
I turned and saw the sea again stretching forever under the white clouds. This was like heaven to me. Then in the other direction beyond the building I saw an inland bay. More gleaming, dreamy beautiful water, and beyond it towers of light.
I loved this world.
As I drew up to her, I babbled with joy.
"Look, Rachel, there's water all around us," I said. "And the sky is so visible, so high, look at the curling and rolling clouds. You can see their shapes and their whiteness as if it's day here."
She was rigid. She stared.
I slipped the scarf into her hands, and wound her hands up with it.
"That's the scarf," I said. "It was on Esther's bed."
She shook her head. She wanted to say things. She and the somber Ritchie both stared at me in plain shock.
"I've never fainted in my life," she said. "I think I might now."
"No, no, it's only me. I've come back. I saw Gregory, I know what he's up to, this is the scarf. Don't faint. But if you want to faint, go ahead. I'll carry you."
The wide glass doors swung open. Attendants preceded her with her leather bundle and some other suitcase I'd never seen before. Ritchie stared at me and shook his head. His wrinkled face showed anger.
Then she came close.
"Now you see," I said, "all I've told you is true."
"Is it?" she whispered. She was dead white.
"Come on, let's get inside," said Ritchie. He did pick her up, and he carried her in front of me to the elevator. Old as he was, he carried her inside easily in his arms.
"Let me in," I said as the doors started to close. But Ritchie glared at me with a darkly furrowed brow, and jabbed the button and blocked my path.
"All right, have it your way," I said.
I met them at the top. It was just a speedy rush up the steps, rather like racing when I was a boy.
Dumbfounded and enraged, and still carrying her, as she staled at me, Ritchie rushed to her doors and put the key in the lock. The attendants went in with her luggage.
"Put me down now, Ritchie," she said. "It's okay. Wait downstairs. Take the others with you."
"Rachel!" he said. He was staunch, suffering. His gnarled old fingers were curled for a fight.
"Why are you so afraid of me?" I asked. "You think I would hurt her?"
"I don't know what to think!" he said in a roughened, aged voice. "I'm not thinking."
She pulled me into the door. "All of you, go," she said.
I saw a blurred panorama of beautiful rooms, many open to the sea, and others open to a garden, just like the courtyard of our house when I was a boy, and the courtyard I could almost remember from that Greek city on the sea where I'd been most unhappy and then happy. I was dazed.
The loveliness of the place, its warmth, its windows framing Heaven is almost impossible to describe. It flooded me with love, and I think the memory of Zurvan touched me, not with words but with revelations. I was washed clean by love and felt a sense of ease. I understood that there could be a world in which only love was the significant virtue. A sense of well-being overcame me. But I did not try to remember anything.
Everywhere soft white curtains waved in the wind. The courtyard exploded with giant red African flowers, lovely purple vines, and the most lacy and soft trees, dancing in the captured breeze. The place was full of the scent of the flowers.
Rachel slammed the front door on those outside, including her driver angel, and she slid the lock and put up a little chain, and then she looked at me.
"You believe me now?" I asked.
She leaned towards me.
"Let me hold you."
She tumbled softly against me. "Take me to my bed," she said. "There, through the garden and over there, to the left, my bed."
She put her arms around my neck and I did as she said. She was light, perfumed, tender.
It was the most marvelous room, open to the sea on all three sides, it was windows and windows; a rush of remembered warmth overcame me again. But where in the world had I ever seen such clouds, and tossed among them in the glowing light the stars, so friendly and small, and kindly.
I set her down on a huge bed of silk, covered with silk blankets and pillows; a soft golden color seemed to be in every fabric or tapestry or design in some way, and the room was filled with soft molded chairs, Turkish luxury.
I smelled the salt, and her perfumed sweetness, and I looked down on her, her wax-pure face. Tenderly as I could, I kissed her forehead.
"Don't be afraid, darling one," I said. "Everything I told you was true. You must believe me. You must tell me what you know about Esther and Nathan."
She began to sob, and then turned, faint, and shivering, and nestled into the pillows. I sat there. I pulled up a silken cover over her, something full of the French flowers. But she didn't need it.
"No, the air itself," she said. "The air. Kiss me again. Hold me again. Be with me."
"I have you in my arms. My lips touch your forehead, your cheek, your chin, your shoulder, your hand..." I said. Truth was, I could hardly resist her. I wanted to loosen her fancy clothes, release her in my power.
I softly locked my hand around her fragil
e wrist. She really was dying.
"Don't fear me, beloved," I said, "unless it eases the pain. Sometimes it does, to fear one thing instead of others."
In answer, she turned and kissed me again, tugging my head down close to her, so that she could push her tongue into my mouth. It was a luscious kiss, full of passion and utter yielding. I kissed her longingly. I felt her hips lift against me. I felt my own body hard for her.
I had to have her, I had to make her happy. And the world would let me know my power in this as it had let me know in everything else. If I lost all power in her arms, so be it.
There was too much human heat here for anything but love-making now. The sky itself, the dreamy stars, the high white clouds--these things as well--decreed it.
21
She pulled weakly at the buttons of her blouse. "Undress me, please, help me," she said. I quickly removed all her clothes as she wished. She guided me and assisted me. She sank deep in the pillows, pale, but with a body as firm to touch as a young woman's body.
I kissed the calves of her legs, her thighs. The garden rustled and sighed behind me. For the first time I heard a waterfall, its gentle trickle, and then I listened to the sound of water touching leaves, but my body was an engine of desire, and what drove me was her naked breasts, rather small, with the pink nipples of a girl, and the smell of death, rising sweet like a crushing lily. It was not that the death attracted me; it was that it made her all the more precious, something to be lost in a moment.
She lay back, heaving a deep sigh. The angles of her face were tight and delicate and precise in the dimness.
"Let me see you without your clothes," she said. She reached for buttons, but I gestured there was no need. I stood up and back from her.
Not an electric light burned in the place. It was the dreamiest darkness.
I stretched out my arms and looked up at the sky. Though suddenly aware of a fatigue from all the night's tricks, I nevertheless told my clothes to assemble themselves nearby and await my command. I would be naked.
It worked even more swiftly and completely than last time. I looked down for the first time on my own chest, pubic hair, erect organ. I was too happy for humility, and to feel the sinews in my arms tighten was to be among living things, and surely some of those things must be good things.