OUT ON a LIMB

by Shirley Maclaine

  I, in fact, was having a problem looking at the truth myself, so why couldn’t I respect the fact that others might experience the same pain? Gerry really must have gone through hell; loving me and caring so much about what I thought, but at the same time feeling it impossible to look at himself in a light that he knew would please me. He had often told me he felt so inadequate in living up to my expectations. I could see what he meant. No man could live with that kind of challenge. He had to be his own man, not the man I wanted him to be. And, if it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough.

  The sun was completely gone now. Life in the mountains revolved around the sun. I felt my stomach settle into a kind of an easy place. When it was easy, I was easy.

  David seemed to be mesmerized by the road. He stared straight ahead saying nothing. Then he turned to me.

  “Shirl?” he said. “There’s something I need to tell you. About a girl called Mayan,”

  “Sure,” I said quietly. “Whatever you want.”

  He drove on for a moment or two. Then he said, “Ask me some questions so I can lead into it, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, liking the game. “Let’s see. Did you have a love affair with her?”

  “Well, yes,” he said, “but it wasn’t what you’d call a regular type love affair. It was more like a cosmic love affair.”

  I chuckled to myself thinking that all love affairs seemed cosmic when you were having them.

  “Well,” I said, “I can understand that. What did she do? I mean did she have a profession?”

  David lit up one of his cigarettes and opened the window to breathe deeper. “Well, actually she’s a geologist. She was up here on a mining expedition.”

  “Here? Oh, I see. So you had your love affair up here in the sulphur baths and along the banks of the bubbling Mantaro?” I realized how sarcastic I must be sounding but I really did it so David would feel comfortable with the teasing.

  He didn’t react. “No,” he said, “I was up here with two other guys just bumming around when I met her.”

  “Oh, a mountain pickup?” I said, going too far.

  He still did not react. “Well, no,” he said. “It wasn’t like that. I was out walking alone one morning and she came driving along this very road in an old Pontiac. She stopped and got out. When I first saw her I thought she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She seemed almost translucent. I mean her skin was shining, I didn’t notice what she was wearing—jeans, probably—but the way she moved was like flowing. And I remember I couldn’t take my eyes off her face. I don’t know. It was the whole effect. It just knocked me for a loop, and yet I felt perfectly and wonderfully peaceful. At peace.”

  As David described his feelings I noticed that his face relaxed. All the muscular tension that was usually operating with quick awareness in him dropped away. He sounded as though he had been instantly hypnotized.

  “What else did she look like?” I asked.

  “Small,” he said. “Real small and petite, with long thick black hair, this marvelous very white transparent skin, and dark dark almost almond-shaped eyes. Not Oriental eyes, I mean not with those lids, but with a tilt, a slant to them. She walked over to me, almost as though she knew I’d be there. We began to walk together. And the strange thing, although it didn’t seem so at the time, is that we didn’t say anything to each other. It was as though we didn’t need to. I had never experienced anything like that before and I didn’t give it much mind. I felt almost that she knew what I was thinking anyway.”

  David stopped, remembering.

  “Yeah,” he continued, shaking his head with memories. “Yeah, so after a while I thought I should say something. So I asked her what she was doing up here, and she said she was with her people doing some geological studies in the mountains. I asked her what people. She said she’d tell me later. That sounded okay. I asked her where she was from. She said she’d tell me that later, too. So I didn’t ask her anything else. Then she began to ask me all about myself. But for some reason I can’t explain I felt there was no need for her to do that.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked, feeling that David was in some other world as he recalled this extraordinary meeting.

  “Well,” he said hesitantly, “you know that feeling you sometimes get when you meet someone new that they really know you and understand you? Well, it was like that. I felt that she really seemed to know all about me and she was just kind of giving me time to get used to the idea.”

  David looked ahead, thinking to himself.

  “And you?” I asked. “Did you feel that you knew her?”

  I thought he was going to tell me that he was feeling he had known her in another life or something.

  “No, not really.” He hesitated. “So then,” he continued, “well, we walked together, and soon she began to talk about all kinds of stuff … the world, governments, different attitudes in different countries, God, languages. I mean it was Greek to me. I wasn’t into any of this stuff at the time, you understand.”

  “So it was quite a time ago?”

  “Yeah. Long time. I was beginning to think she was some kind of international spy only I couldn’t figure out who for. She talked about the negative energy of some of our world leaders and how people needed to believe in themselves, that the most important relationship was between each soul and God. I asked if she was a Jesus freak. She laughed and said in a way she was a lot freakier than that but that if we had really understood what Christ was talking about no one would call it freakish. She talked and talked. We had dinner, and she talked. I loved talking and listening and being with her but I just didn’t know what to make of most of what she said. After awhile I asked her where she was staying. But she wouldn’t tell me. I didn’t press it. Soon she smiled and said she had to leave but that I’d see her again. She showed up the next day and found me. We went for another all day walk and she talked more. Always important stuff. I couldn’t figure out what was going on and told her so. She said she’d tell me when the time came, but if I felt I was learning from her I should just relax and learn.

  “I took a walk in and around these hills every day. And every day she found me, regardless of where I walked. We talked about so many things. Then one day, we were sitting by the river and she began to talk, very specifically, about the human soul and what it was. Before I met Mayan I couldn’t have cared less whether there was life after death or whether God was alive and well and living in Orange County. And souls?… Jesus. But I listened to her and after awhile I realized she sounded as though she was giving me some sort of important scientific information. She said I should write it down because she said I was capable of absorbing it and one day I would pass it on to the right person who would see that it was noticed … maybe that person is you.”

  “Me?” I asked, startled. I was thoroughly absorbed in his story about this Mayan and didn’t see myself as a part of it at all.

  “Well, maybe. She said I should record everything she was teaching me, which I did, and she said I should commit it all to paper so I could look at it and show it to others.”

  “Oh, did you write it down?”

  “Yes. Would you like to read it?”

  “Well, sure. But I think I’m still missing the point. Why didn’t you give me that stuff about her along with all the other reading material you gave me?”

  “Well, because of who she is.”

  “Who she is? What do you mean?”

  David actually blushed. Then he clammed up. “Ask me some more questions,” he said. He sounded a bit strained.

  This was more than a simple tale of boy-meets-girl in the mountains. This was some kind of therapy.

  “Okay,” I said. “Mayan. That’s an exotic name. Where is she from?”

  David choked on his cigarette. “You mean what country or what city?”

  “Well, yeah.” I couldn’t understand the problem. “I mean, from the way you described her she sounded very exotic. Might she have been from Polynesia?”
r />   “No. Further than that.”

  “Further—what do you mean, further east? Is she from Japan or China or something?”

  “No, not further east, further up.”

  “Further up?” I was beginning to sound like the straight man in a vaudeville act.

  “Yes, further up and further out.”

  “David,” I said, “now you’re the one who’s far out. What’s going on here? What are you talking about? Tell me. This is a stupid game. You’ve had enough lead-in—just tell me. Where could she be from that’s so hard to say? Another planet?”

  David turned around and took both hands off the wheel and held them in the air. “You got it!” he said. “You guessed it. You’re right.”

  “What, for God’s sake?”

  “What you just said.”

  “That Mayan was from another planet?”

  “Yes, yes, yes, yes! That’s what I found so hard to tell you. It’s true though. I swear to God, it’s true. And she proved it to me several times over, which I’ll tell you about.”

  I felt myself shut my mouth. I took one of David’s cigarettes from the pack and lit it and inhaled. I opened the window on my side and blew the smoke into the night air. Then, holding the cigarette, I scrunched down into the seat and put my feet on the dashboard and smoked. I remember in detail every move I made because the thing that was mind-boggling to me was that I felt he was sincere. I know it must sound crazy, but I actually felt that he was not nuts or hallucinating or making it up.

  We drove on quietly. I didn’t say anything. Neither did David. The night was clear and dry and cold. The stars hung like zircons in the sky. I looked up. Had I really heard him say what he said? He was a man I trusted. He had been so much a part of my growing spiritual understanding. I at least believed he believed what he had said. In fact I’d heard about quite a few people who claimed to have had contact with extraterrestrials but I had never been in the position of having to evaluate their sincerity. I left that up to interested scientists or psychologists.

  But now it seemed I would have to make some kind of judgment about a friend. I stared at the crystal stars and remembered the Christmas telescope I had received as a child after months of begging. I remembered the nights I had gazed through the telescope into the heavens, feeling somehow that I belonged there. Wasn’t that everyone’s haunting desire? Were the heavens a fundamental reminder that we as humans belonged to the magic network of the cosmos? That we were all an integral piece of a gigantic universal puzzle which was not so clear to us yet because of our limited three-dimensional consciousness? Did David and others like him desire to understand so fervently that they actually believed they had “contact” with a piece of the cosmic puzzle? I smoked my cigarette and then breathed deeply, aware of the contradiction that I desired pure air at the same time that I was polluting my own lungs.

  Llocllapampa was dark and peaceful when we arrived. Next to our “hotel” some piglets truffled around in an old rubber tire enjoying mush grain which was their dinner, while their mother looked on patiently.

  The woman with the child had not returned. Her mother had cooked a kidney stew in wine sauce for the evening meal. The hot thick rolls were freshly baked and sweet churned butter spilled around the edges. Two kerosene lamps hung from a coat hanger on a beam above us giving light to our table. The radio blared with the soccer game as the family’s young children walked in and around our table watching us eat. The older woman used a gas stove to cook on, which was fueled by a propane pipe on the side of the road. The stove and sink and refrigerator were up against one wall of the restaurant and barely had any light over them.

  “Beautiful night tonight,” the older woman said to David. “It would be a good night for the astronomers.”

  David stretched his arms over his head and sighed. Then quite casually he asked her in Spanish, “Have you ever seen a UFO?”

  “Oh yes,” she said, “many. And my uncle has seen them fly right into Lake Titicaca and disappear. He was frightened at first because he thought maybe he was going loco.” She pointed to her head. “But then several of his friends told him they had seen the same thing. He felt better.”

  David sighed deeply again as though he were relieved at what she said. She went to the stove and dished out some stew for us. I followed her.

  “What do you think they are?” I said, feeling like one of thousands of tourists who must have asked the same question.

  She put the stew on the table for us. “Extraterrestrial aliens,” she said. “Everyone knows that.”

  “Do you think they’re friendly?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I think so,” she said. “They live high in the mountains and they fly their discs way under the mountains so that no one can find them.”

  She brought us some hot rolls to go with the stew and asked if we had enjoyed Ataura. I nodded and smiled. But she didn’t seem particularly interested in pursuing the preposterous nature of her previous subject of conversation: like our friend in the car, the extraterrestrials in her landscape were unimportant, a curiosity that did not affect her life. Daily living, making ends meet, had a lot more significance for her.

  Now, having observed the conversational amenities, she simply set our table and went about her after-dinner chores.

  I looked at David across the steaming stew. I wasn’t hungry.

  “That’s the way they all act up here,” he said apologetically. “They’re just used to it. They wonder why people like us are so intrigued. They laugh about the astronomers who come to study and wait. They say the discs will never come out when they are here. They say the disc people like to be alone, and that’s the way the mountain people treat them. The mountain people don’t know why they’re here, except a lot of them say they are mining minerals in the mountains.”

  “And they’re not afraid of them?”

  “Don’t seem to be. They say they’ve never hurt anybody, in fact, they say they run away.”

  “And lots of people have seen them?”

  “Shirley,” said David, “everyone I’ve talked to up here has a flying-disc story. Every single one.”

  I looked into his eyes. They were calm and I would have to say relieved.

  “David,” I said, “where can I find your Mayan?”

  He looked at me and let his shoulders drop away as though a big load had been removed from his back.

  “I can’t find Mayan,” he said quietly. “I miss her terribly and keep coming back here hoping she’ll turn up. She changed my life. Everything I think now is because of what I learned from her. She is the reason I found such peace in myself. And I want to impart it all to you.”

  I looked out the window of the building called FOOD into the dark night of the Andes mountains.

  “David,” I said, “whatever I could say about what I’ve suddenly found myself involved in here would be truly—to coin a cliché—a masterpiece of understatement.”

  I got up from the table. We walked under the low-slung gateway to our “hotel.”

  “But thanks, David,” I said, “thanks for trusting me and for telling me about it.”

  His hand squeezed gently on my shoulder. In the dark his voice caught in his throat.

  “G’night,” he said. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  I kissed him on the cheek and went into my dark and dank sleeping room and fell asleep immediately because I was frankly a little bit frightened to stay awake and think about what was going on.

  Chapter 23

  “Looking at the matter from the most rigidly scientific point of view, the assumption that, amidst the myriads of worlds scattered through endless space, there can be no intelligence, as much greater than man’s as his is greater than a blackbeetle’s, no being endowed with powers of influencing the course of nature as much greater than his, as his is greater than a snail’s, seems to me not merely baseless, but impertinent. Without stepping beyond the analogy of that which is known, it is easy to people the cosmos with en
tities, in ascending scale until we reach something practically indistinguishable from omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience.”

  —THOMAS H. HUXLEY

  Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions

  The next morning I stepped into the sunlight refreshed as though I had slept for a week.

  David was waiting. He had some of our famous hot milk and rolls for me and we drank and ate as we began to walk.

  I looked out across the mountainous plains toward the Ice Peaks on the horizon. “So what else hides up there besides all the UFOs the locals chat about?” I asked, gently choking on a roll.

  David laughed. “Well, since you ask—Mayan said the valleys in between the peaks are unreachable by land. That’s why it’s safe for them. When she first described it to me it sounded like Lost Horizon.”

  “David,” I said, “umm—did Mayan say exactly where she was from?”

  “Sure. The Pleiades.”

  “Well. Did you ever question her claim that she was an extraterrestrial?”

  David laughed and spit out part of his roll.

  “Are you kidding? I thought I had gotten ahold of some bad pot. Or she had. Of course I didn’t believe her. In fact, after she told me I was openly hostile to her. Then one day very early in the morning, sunrise, as a matter of fact—long before anyone else was up—she instructed me to go to the base of one of the foothills over there and watch the top of a specific peak. I did. And you know what I saw?”

  “What?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  “I looked up into the sky and exactly over that peak came one of those flying discs I had heard the peasants talk about. I thought I would crap. From then on she had no problem with me. But I have to tell you she scolded me for forcing her to use the ‘seeing is believing’ technique. She said I should have been more intelligent and open-minded.”

  “You mean gullible like me?”

  “Well,” he answered, “I told you in the beginning—real intelligence is being open-minded. That doesn’t make you a fool.”