Mushroom.Man

  I was breathing easily and felt carefully around my neck. I could feel my gills opening and closing in time with my breath. I looked at my hands, unsurprised to see skin webbing between the fingers. I moved away from the weed bed and swam to deeper water. The bottom was free of weed – perhaps thirty or forty feet deep. I swam to the bottom. A movement behind a boulder caught my eye. Two crayfish were engaged in a strange dance, hopping on their tails like fleas. They were locked together by their claws; dust rose in clouds with every hop. I sat on the river bed, motionless, engrossed in their dance. I could hear the creaks of their tails as the segments bent and straightened.

  A school of minnows passed me by, turning and darting simultaneously, as though directed by a single will. A round stone, well smoothed by the water, lay by my feet. I turned it over to find the terrifying ugliness of a crane fly larva, startled by exposure. It startled us both, that unexpected meeting. I was gulping in water, shocked by its unremitting ugliness and closeness. Horrid things that live under stones, hiding their shame: covert horrors that are the stuff of nightmare.

  It occurred to me that if this was a dream, then I could do what I wanted; perhaps, as Greg once explained, I could control the dream. I decided to swim fast for the surface and emerge flying. I broke the surface, I willed for flight, but none came. I swam to the shore and lay on the grassy verge. In the light green sky bright stars flickered, making constellations that I had never seen. An unfamiliar sky; wrong colour; stars by day. I turned and lay on my front. The grass was soft, but was made of fibre. Between the blades there were psilocybin mushrooms growing: I picked and ate all that were in reach. I watched a fog roll down the river valley, billowing like a cloud, cascading in slow motion, filling the space between the trees.

  I was enveloped in a warm, moist blanket. I could see clearly the tiny droplets that made the mist – sparkling, bright droplets that shimmered, danced in agitation. It caressed me like a bath, I could feel it in my lungs. When I exhaled my breath was visible, blue against the white mist. I became aware of the mist’s noise; a kind of gentle thunder, like a far-away storm. It moved past me, the tiny droplets hopping and bouncing, crashing into one another in the haste of their Brownian motion.

  When it had passed I was standing on a high crag, looking at a valley that stretched out below me into a hazy horizon. A loud caw made me turn. Perhaps twenty feet from me a large raptor, maybe an eagle, was in a nest. It was trampling the nest bottom, moving round and round in circles inside the eyrie. I noticed that its mate was circling above, riding a thermal. Gradually it became harder to see as its helical path took it higher into the light green sky.

  I was sure now that I was dreaming. There was no logic to my movements; only dream-time logic. I had no idea where this valley was, I’d never seen it before. It was big, stretching into the distance, covered in what seemed to be fields. I stared at my hands; I pinched one. I saw the red welt of the pinch form. I pinched again. I heard a voice calling me. It was Jane.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked as she walked up to me.

  ‘I’m not sure. I was watching the eagle.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Why did you leave me?’

  ‘I didn’t. You left me. You were never with me. You never made me part of your life.’

  ‘That’s not true. I loved you. I think I still do.’

  She sat down on the craggy outcrop and scanned the horizon. She was silent and still. I watched her; her long black hair moved in the occasional breeze, her shoulders imperceptibly rising and falling with breath.

  She turned.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here, you know.’

  ‘Where’s here?’

  She laughed and pointed behind me. I saw my house between the trees. When I turned she was gone. There was a large henge in the field in front of the house made of huge, irregular granite boulders. In the centre was a trilith shaped like an altar. A man sat on its lip. When he turned to me, it was Greg.

  ‘Greg?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I stopped. Greg couldn’t be here. I shook my head. He watched me for a moment, then laughed. His mouth was wide open and I saw that his teeth were black and rotting. Two front ones were missing.

  ‘Greg?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you really here?’

  ‘Of course. You called me.’

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘You called me here. You ought to know.’

  ‘But I don’t. Jane was here too. I just saw her.’

  ‘Of course you did. What do you want?’

  ‘I want to know where I am.’

  ‘Knowing where you are is a good start.’

  He jumped down from the rock and dusted the seat of his pants. He looked about.

  ‘Some sort of megalithic lunar observatory, I suppose.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘This is. It’s where you are.’ He smiled. His teeth disturbed me.

  ‘I don’t understand. I thought you were dead. I thought Jane was in London. That isn’t my house. There’s no stone circle outside my house.’

  ‘That’s your house there.’

  ‘I’m lost, I think. I was sitting in my house, in the armchair, I was thinking. Maybe I fell asleep. If this is a dream then I’m probably sitting in the armchair in there.’

  ‘Not unless you can be in two places at once.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Easy. If you’re here, you can’t be there.’

  I was bewildered. I remembered an old man had told me once that if the fairies bewitch you in a field you’ll never find the gate. The only way to break the spell is to take your coat off, turn it inside out and put it on again. But I was still wearing only trousers. A wave of panic seized me and I vomited. The bitter taste of bile was lodged in my throat. Greg led me to the house.

  Inside was familiar, but not exactly as I knew it. It was as if the house was someone else’s memory of my house. Mostly right, but with details missing or wrong. There was a bronze horse on the window ledge that I’d never seen before. The walls weren’t the right colour. Greg lit a fire in the grate. The wood crackled and spat. He sat down on the sofa and looked at me.

  ‘Why did you call me here?’

  I didn’t. I don’t think I did. I don’t know what’s happening. This makes no sense. I don’t think this is my house. It just looks like it.’

  ‘It’s your house, old buddy. Yours and Jane’s.’

  ‘No, Jane’s gone. She doesn’t live with me any more.’

  ‘Well that looks like Jane to me coming up the path.’

  He pointed through the window. Jane was walking toward the house with some cut flowers in her hand. She saw me in the window and waved. I turned to Greg.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘What’s to understand?’

  The door opened and Jane walked in. She found a vase, a strange blue glass one, and put the flowers in.

  ‘There.’ She stood back and admired them. ‘Don’t they look nice?’

  ‘They’re beautiful,’ said Greg.

  Jane sat down on the sofa next to Greg. They were both facing me, like a jury in judgement. Jane watched me carefully for a moment.

  ‘You don’t look very well,’ she said.

  ‘I’m fine. I’m well. I’m just a bit tired. A bit tired, that’s all. I saw a pike today. I ate some mushrooms. Maybe that’s it. I ate some mushrooms. I remember now, by the river. They were growing in the grass. But it wasn’t grass. Maybe I imagined it. I don’t know. I thought I’d fallen asleep.’

  ‘You don’t look well to me, either,’ said Greg. ‘You look sick.’

  At this Greg and Jane were convulsed with giggles. I noticed Greg’s teeth again. I could feel my stomach knotting. I opened a window and took deep breaths. I could hear them behind me, laughing. The sky still had that pale green colour. It was light, but there was no sign of a sun; no source for the brightness. Suddenly I felt very cold. There were g
oose pimples on my arms – the hairs were standing on end.

  ‘I’m going to put on a sweater,’ I said.

  ‘Good idea.’ They broke into laughter again.

  My bedroom was completely unfamiliar. The thought occurred to me again that this was someone else’s idea of where I lived. Someone who didn’t really know what the bedroom looked like. Couldn’t be Jane. Maybe this was Greg’s idea, Greg’s reality. That made sense. This was Greg’s reality; how he remembered our house; how he remembered us. He couldn’t know that Jane had left me – she didn’t leave till after he was dead. The two things came together – they were connected. I found a pullover on the bed and put it on. It wasn’t mine. I felt more comfortable, warmer, less confused. This was not my reality.

  I walked back into the sitting room. Greg was standing with his back to the fire, Jane was still sitting on the sofa. I decided to ask him.

  ‘Is this how you remember us?’

  ‘This is how I see you.’

  ‘Together?’

  ‘The three of us together.’

  I looked at Jane. I wanted to know if this was the Jane of my memories or his. I tried to remember if any of her things were in the bedroom. Clothes, or perfume, or anything. I asked her.

  ‘Is this where we live?’

  ‘It’s where I live. My house. That’s my pullover you’re wearing.’

  ‘You live in London. You have children.’

  ‘I live here. I told you outside, I’m not sure you should be here.’

  ‘Where should I be?’

  ‘I don’t know – it’s just that I don’t think you should be here now. Not now.’

  I looked at my wrist, hoping to see my watch. It wasn’t there. I had no idea what time it was, what date it was. I was sure that if I knew that, then I could make sense of it all.

  Greg went to the door. He beckoned me to follow. I walked out behind him and we were standing on the crag overlooking the valley. The eagle and its nest were gone. It was getting dark.

  ‘Look there.’ Greg pointed to the lights of a sprawling city that I hadn’t seen the last time. ‘That’s where I live. I come up here to get away from it all, to get a perspective. There are eagles up here.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Down there is where I work. Up here is where I think. I keep the two things separate. Thinking and working. Yin and Yang. Separate, but entwined. The work is very demanding, you have no idea.’

  ‘I think I might.’

  ‘It’s not like college. There’s a pressure that’s hard to explain. A pressure to get results, thousands of tiny goals that are set and then have to be reached. None of any consequence individually, but daunting because of their number, their continuous, unrelenting presence. There’s a pressure to have new ideas, to find new ways of seeing problems. It’s a vortex, old buddy. The more ideas you have, the more are demanded of you. It becomes expected, it becomes the norm. The pressure to create.’

  ‘Do you love Jane?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you love her?’

  ‘You weren’t listening, were you?’

  ‘I just want to know did you love her, I mean, do you love her?’

  ‘Of course I love her. She was my first love – probably the only real love of my life.’

  ‘Why did you leave her?’

  ‘Is that why you called me? Why you brought me here? Is that what you wanted to know?’

  ‘I suppose it must be. I’ve never known the answer. Never talked about it before.’

  ‘You’re something else, old buddy. Of all the things you need answers to, that’s what you want to ask me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This isn’t easy. But I’ll tell you the truth. You remember the night in the van?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I felt that I’d sullied her somehow. I felt guilty. I couldn’t look her in the eye any more, so I knew it was hopeless. Anyway I think she liked you.’

  ‘Liked me.’

  ‘Loved. You know what I mean.’

  ‘Do you remember when we went canoeing?

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You were in the woods with her, picking mushrooms.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you make love to her?’

  ‘What kind of question is that?’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No. I told her what I’ve just told you. I told her that I’d always loved her and always would. Perhaps distance, time and guilt built it up into something unrealistic, something unreal. But it’s how I feel. You know, you’re a lucky man, old buddy, not many people ever find straight answers to their questions.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Pity the questions were so stupid.’

  The city lights shimmered in the increasing darkness. I could hear the cricket song gathering momentum. Cars moved in an endless procession up and down the highways that cut across the valley floor.

  ‘Greg?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is this real?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The valley. The city. You.’

  ‘If you perceive it, then it’s real. Reality is about perception. You want to know about objective realities, and I’ll tell you. Sit still and listen. Reality is the product of intelligence. Your intelligence creates the reality you perceive; creates it out of sensory stimuli. Similar intelligences create similar realities, so there are common points of reference. You can call that objective reality if you like. But a different intelligence will not inhabit the same reality as you, there will be few if any points of common reference. I can conceive of a machine intelligence that senses its environment like you do, that can react to it and even modify it. But I’m sure whatever reality exists for machine intelligence, it’s very different from that of biological intelligence.’

  ‘Can you do it? Create intelligence?’

  ‘All depends on what you mean by intelligence, doesn’t it?

  ‘I feel tired.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I miss you, Greg. I’m sorry we didn’t have more time with one another. We could have grown old together.’

  ‘You can see me anytime you want.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘All you have to do is call.’

  I heard Jane calling for Greg. He stood up.

  ‘I have to go now, old buddy. See you.’

  He walked away and a rush of sadness engulfed me. Sadness for how things were; how they could have been. I missed him, I missed Jane. I cried the self-indulgent tears of a man pleased with his sorrow. Had she ever loved me?

  I watched the city lights through eyes filled with salty tears, enjoying the prickling sensation in my eyelids. The crickets were loud now, their song coming in waves, washing over me like a lullaby. I fought sleep – I was scared of where I might wake up. But I couldn’t move. A heavy lethargy had overtaken me, and I knew that I couldn’t leave this spot. There was soft grass on the crag, welcoming. I lay back and stared at the sky, black now, with the same strange constellations. I saw a spider made of stars, a hand, a face. I think I slept.

  I woke up on the river bank in daylight, cold and stiff. Stones had been pressing into my back; I felt bruised and sore. I was wearing my own clothes, but they were damp with the fallen dew. My watch said seven o’clock, the sun was in the east – it was morning.

  I walked back to my house. The lights were on and the front door was wide open. The remains of a fire glowed in the hearth. The dog stretched, yawned, and wagged its tail. I was home, this was my house.

  Coprinus comatus. The Shaggy Ink Cap or Lawyer’s Wig.

  4–6 inches high. In family groups.

  White auto-digesting to black.

  Common on paths and roadsides. Late summer to autumn.

  Edible while white, good for soup. Once used for ink.

  eight

  I was beginning, I thought, to have a clearer idea of who the mushroom.man was. I began preparing a paper on the effects of long-term use of psychedelics, using t
he mushroom. man as my reference. Although the life he described was essentially simple and rural, it included computers, so there was some element of sophistication. If what he was sending me was an accurate description of his way of life then it seemed that he still retained an ability to deal effectively with daily life. This is something that long-term users of heroin, for example, are incapable of for the most part.

  He was obviously well educated and had evolved ideas about reality that were quirky, but plausible. Not all of them made much sense to me, some seemed to be the ramblings of a mind damaged by chemical ingestion. Still, the ideas were interesting from a clinical point of view. I was keen to make an impression on my department and I felt that this kind of field research might well impress my colleagues.

  I’d been pressing him recently for his thoughts on what he called his psychic travels. Specifically I wanted to know if there was a coherent philosophy underpinning his use of psychedelics. By this stage I had done a lot of research on the subject in the university library. There was a large body of work done in the sixties on psychedelics, and LSD in particular, which I read assiduously. Most of it concerned the clinical use of LSD in psychiatry as a tool for analysis, but one report caught my eye as being of relevance. It concerned the effects of cannabis on jazz musicians. Once the mushroom. man had written that his use of cannabis was to enhance his enjoyment of music. The study that I had found, by E.G. Williams in the US Public Health Report, was clear in its conclusions. Despite the claims of jazz musicians that the drug was enhancing their music, the laboratory tests showed that their ability to identify a single note or assess its duration was impaired. It seemed fairly conclusive to me.