4
Iris occupied several rooms on the second floor of a brownstone in a street with, pleasantest of New York anachronisms, trees. When I entered, she was doing yogi exercises on the floor, sitting crosslegged on a mat, her slender legs in leotards and her face flushed with strain. “It just doesn’t work for me!” she said and stood up without embarrassment for, since I’d found the main door unlocked, I’d opened this one too, without knocking.
“I’m sorry, Iris, the downstairs door was....”
“Don’t be silly.” She rolled up the mat efficiently. “I was expecting you but I lost track of time ... which means it must be working a little. I’ll be right back.” She went into the bedroom and I sat down, amused by this unexpected side to Iris: I wondered if perhaps she was a devotee of wheat germ and mint tea as well. She claimed not. “It’s the only real exercise I get,” she said, changed now to a heavy robe which completely swathed her figure as she sat curled up in a great armchair, drinking Scotch, as did I, the winter outside hid by drawn curtains, by warmth and light.
“Have you done it long?”
“Oh, off and on for years. I never get anywhere but it’s very restful and I’ve felt so jittery lately that anything which relaxes me ...” her voice trailed off idly. She seemed relaxed now.
“I’ve been to see Paul,” I began importantly.
“Ah.”
But I could not, suddenly, generate sufficient anger to speak out with eloquence. I went around my anger stealthily, a murderer stalking his victim. “We disagreed.”
“In what?”
“In everything, I should say.”
“That’s so easy with Paul.” Iris stretched lazily; ice chattered in her glass; a car’s horn melodious and foreign sounded in the street below. “We need him. If it wasn’t Paul, it might be someone a great deal worse. At least he’s intelligent and devoted. That makes up for a lot.”
“I don’t think so; Iris, he’s establishing a sort of supermarket, short-order church for the masses.”
She laughed delightedly. “I like that ... and, in a way, you’re right: that’s what he would do left to himself.”
“He seems in complete control.”
“Only of the office. John makes all the decisions.”
“I wish I could be sure of that.”
“You’ll see on Friday. You’ll be at the meeting, won’t you?”
I nodded. “I have a feeling that between Paul and Stokharin this thing is going to turn into a world-wide clinic for mental health.”
“I expect worse things could happen, but Paul must still contend with me and you and of course the final word is with John.”
“How is Cave, by the way? I haven’t seen him since the night of the first telecast.”
“Quite relaxed, unlike the rest of us. You should come out with me one day to Long Island and see him. I go nearly every day for a few hours. He’s kept completely removed from everyone except the servants and Paul and me.”
“Does he like that?”
“He doesn’t seem to mind. He walks a good deal ... it’s a big place and he’s used to the cold. He reads a little, mostly detective stories ... and then of course there’s the mail that Paul sends on. He works at that off and on all day. I help him and when we’re stuck (you should see the questions!) we consult Stokharin who’s very good on some things, on problems....”
“And a bore the rest of the time.”
“That’s right,” Iris giggled. “I couldn’t have been more furious the other night, but, since then, I’ve seen a good deal of him and he’s not half bad. We’ve got him over the idea that John should become a lay analyst: the response to the telecast finally convinced Stokharin that here was a racial 'folk-father-figure’ ... his very own words. Now he’s out to educate the father so that he will fulfill his children’s needs on the best post-Jungian lines.”
“Does Cave take him seriously?”
“He’s bored to death with him. Stokharin’s the only man who’s ever had the bad sense to lecture John ... who absolutely hates it; but he does feel that Stokharin’s answers to some of the problems we’re confronted with are ingenious. All that ... hints to the lovelorn is too much for John, so we need the Stokharins to take care of details.”
“I hope he’s careful not to get too involved.”
“John’s incorruptible. Not because he is so noble or constant but because he can only think a certain way and other opinions, other evidence, can’t touch him.”
I paused, wondering if this was true; then: “I’m going to make a scene on Friday. I’m going to suggest that Paul is moving in a dangerous direction, toward organization and dogma and that if something is not done soon we’ll all be ruined by that which we most detest: a militant absolutist doctrine.”
Iris looked at me curiously. “Tell me, Gene, what do you want? Why are you still with Cave, with all of us when you so apparently suspect the general direction? You’ve always been perfectly clear about what you did not want (I can recall, I think, every word you said at the farm that night) but, to be specific, what would you like all this to become? How would you direct things if you could?”
I’d been preparing myself for such a question for several months yet I still had no single answer to make which would sharply express my own doubts and wishes. But I made an attempt. “I would not organize, for one thing. I’d have Cave speak regularly, all he likes, but there would be no Cavite, Inc., no Paul planting articles and propagandizing. I’d keep just Cave, nothing more. Let him do his work. Then, gradually, there will be effects, a gradual end to superstition....”
Iris looked at me intently. “If it were possible, I would say we should do what you suggest, even though it would be ruinous not only for us but for everyone....”
“Why ruinous? A freedom to come to a decision on one’s own without....”
“That’s it. No one can be allowed that freedom. One doesn’t need much scholarship or even experience to see that. Everywhere people are held in check by stifling but familiar powers. People are used to tyranny: they expect governments to demand their souls, and they have given up decisions on many levels for love of security. What you suggest is impossible with this race at this time.”
“You’re talking nonsense. After all, obeisance to established religions is the order of the day, yet look at the response to Cave who is undermining the whole Christian structure.”
“And wait until you see the fight they’re going to put up!” said Iris grimly. “Fortunately, Cave’s word is the mortal blow though Cave himself would be their certain victim if he was protected, if there was no organization to guard him, and the Word.”
“So Paul and his—his team, his proselytes are to become merely an equivalent power, combating the old superstitions with their own weapons.”
“More or less, yes. That’s what it has come to.”
“Even though his talking to the people would be enough? Let them use him, not he them.”
“A good slogan,” Iris smiled. “But I think I’m right. No one would have a chance to see or hear him if it weren’t for Paul; you should read the threatening letters we’ve been getting.”
“I thought all the mail was most admiring?”
“All that came from people who’ve actually heard him but there’s a lot coming in now from religious fanatics. They are very extreme. And of course the churches, one by one, are starting to take notice.”
“I saw Bishop Winston in Paul’s office today.”
“He’s been trying to see John all week. He finally settled for Paul, I gather. In any case, after the next telecast there will really be a storm.”
“The next? What’s going to happen then?”
“John will tell them that there’s no need for the churches, that their power derives from superstition and bloody deeds.”
I was startled. “When did this hit him? I thought he intended to go on as he was, without ever coming out openly against them.”
“I was surprised too. He told me yesterday; he’d been brooding all day and, suddenly, he started to attack them. It’s going to be murderous.”
“I hope not for him.”
“Oh, he’ll convince, I’m sure of that: but their revenge....” She gave a troubled sigh. “Anyway, Gene, you do see why we can’t, for our own safety, dispense with Paul and his financiers and press agents and all the squalid but necessary crew.”
“It may be too late,” I agreed. “But I fear the end.”
“No one can tell; besides, as long as you and I are there with John it will be all right.”
I felt her confidence was not entirely justified but I determined, for the moment, to defer my attack on Paul’s methods until a safer time.
We argued about the wisdom of the coming telecast: was it really necessary to confront the enemy explicitly? and in his own country, so to speak? Iris was not sure, but she felt Cave’s instinct was right even though he had, perhaps, been goaded into action sooner than we’d anticipated by the harsh letters of Christian zealots.
And then by slow degrees, by careful circling, the conversation grew personal.
“I’ve never told anyone else,” said Iris, looking at me speculatively.
“Don’t worry; I haven’t repeated any of it.” And, as always at such times, I felt a warm flood of guilt: any direct statement of personal innocence has always made me feel completely criminal.
“But since I’ve told you, I ... it’s a relief to have someone I can talk to about John. I don’t dare mention his name to my family, to my old friends ... I don’t think they even know yet that I’ve met him.”
“I thought it has all been in the papers.”
“I haven’t been mentioned but, after Friday, everyone will know. Paul says there’s no way for us to duck inquiries. After the directors’ meeting he’ll issue a statement naming directors, stockholders and so on.”
“But even then, why should anyone suspect you were interested in Cave or he in you? It’s possible merely to be a director, isn’t it?”
Iris shrugged. “You know how people are. Clarissa keeps wanting to have what she calls a comfy chat about everything and I keep putting her off. Stokharin now takes it for granted that John and I sleep together, that he is the father-image to me and I the mother to him.”
It had an odd ring to it and I laughed. “Do you think that’s a sound post-Jungian analysis?”
Iris smiled faintly. “Whatever it is, the feeling, such as it is, is all on my side.”
“And he shows no sign of returning your affection?”
“None at all. He’s devoted to me, I think. He relies on my judgment. He trusts me, which is more than he does anyone else I know of....”
“Even me?” Always the “I” coming between me and what I wished to know: that insatiable, distressing “I.”
“Yes, even you, dear, and Paul too. He’s on guard against everyone, but not in a nasty or suspicious way. He ... what is the phrase? he keeps his own counsel.”
“And you are the counsel?”
“In a sense, and nothing more.”
“Perhaps you should give up. It would seem that ... love was not possible for him. If so, it’s unwise for you to put yourself in such a position ... harmful, too.”
“But there’s still the other Cave. I love him as well and the two are, finally, the same.”
“A metaphysique?”
“No, or at least I don’t see a paradox. It’s something else; it’s like coming out of an illness with no past at all, only a memory of pain and dullness which soon goes in the wonderful present.”
“It?”
“My love is it.” Her voice grew strong. “I’ve learned that in loving him I love life, which I never did before. Why, I can even value others now, value all those faceless creatures whom I knew without ever bothering to see, to bring in focus the dim blurs of all that world alive. I lived asleep. Now I am awake.”
“He does not love you.”
“Why should he? It’s gone beyond that. I’m no longer the scales most lovers are, weighing the deeds and gifts and treasures proffered against those received or stolen from the other, trying always to bring into fatal balance two separate imponderables. I give myself and what I take is life, the knowledge that there is another creature in the world whose wonder, to me at least, is all-satisfying by merely being.”
“Is it so terrible to be alive?”
“Beyond all expectation, my poor friend.” And then I left her to return to winter, to the snow-filled streets and my old pain.