“Yes.”
“That is fortunate.”
They sat in a small room off the kitchen. In the main dining room, Sanjay Nullatumbi ate with a dozen other people, most of them Americans who did most of the talking.
Benson found a sports magazine in the sitting room and carried it to his bedroom. But he had no interest in it.
He walked down the hall, entered the room and put on the light. The wall waited. Implacable. It was a majestic opponent that few had mastered.
Feeling intimidated, Benson went unhappily to bed.
That night in the Benson house a kitchen faucet dripped in the darkness. The moon, on the wane, shone through the kitchen window over the checkered floor. It shone on the stair landing on the wreckage and through Renni’s windows on the dolls.
A doll stirred: a Dutch girl with blonde bangs and a delighted smile. She reached up to unhook the cross-stick controller from its peg. Free, she slipped to the floor and walked across the rug, dragging the strings and the wooden controller behind her.
The doorway was blocked by the armoire so she climbed up and stood on it. Then she walked along the long crack to the end of it and looked about as though she were standing on a high promontory of land.
The nylon net and the pulley were still on the landing carpet along with the broken plaster. On the first step to the master bedroom sprawled the witch, the broken brim of her black hat hanging down over her flattened face and cocked eyes. The elbow of her right arm lay broken. Her control strings were entangled round the broken banister she’d intended to use as a cudgel.
On the top step above, by the door to the master bedroom, lay a doll’s glass eye.
The Dutch girl, seeking, listened to the house, heard the faucet dripping in the kitchen, looked at the humped moon, felt the emptiness of the house, then, satisfied, turned and reentered the bedroom to hang her controller on the peg, smiling triumphantly.
As she did so, all the dolls laughed, childish laughter that echoed throughout the dark house, victorious, then stopped.
The dripping faucet was now the only sound in the house.
CHAPTER 7
On the second day Rama awoke Benson before dawn.
“What time is it, Rama?”
“It is five o’clock. You will have no interest in clocks for the next few weeks, Mr. Benson.”
Breakfast was served in his room.
The struggle to concentrate; he would, for short periods, focus on Ael and feel himself beginning to rise, his perception heightening, a sense of other presences near him. Then a random image would appear and, like a hand splashing the surface of a mirror-smooth pool, scatter the mood.
He was aware of the passage of the sun, crossing the curtained windows, marking off segments of his day.
Odd memories occurred to him. Digressions, diversions, seemingly presented by the same being that thrust the bleeding letters at him, scenes from grammar school with the electric bell on the outside brick wall ringing with alarming clarity, shattering his concentration. The old Philadelphia Navy Yard trolley car that hadn’t run in twenty years or more clattered and dinged its way through his mind. Pictures of friends, of houses and streets rose up as though his mind was rummaging through attic trunks: memories with the odor of camphor about them.
Ael. He dragged his mind back. It was like a cat that leaped away as often as he put it in place. Ael. Clear your mind. And the slow-growing perception would begin again.
Periodically, he’d feel Rama’s presence.
His nose would itch. When his legs hurt he’d climb up into the chair, knees practically against the wall. One of his ears developed an intermittent ringing and he’d sit in the silence of that room listening to it fade away. He developed a throat tickle, and coughed over and over.
Rama brought water.
His right calf cramped and he had to pace up and down. Rama made him lie on the rush mat, then pressed the discs and muscles of his lower back, and the cramp disappeared.
It was a wrestling match, Benson versus this recalcitrant child that was his mind. Ultimately, he sensed a rage coursing through his body. He’d feel great irritation, and then the Old English would intervene and squeeze, and angry blood would flow and drip. He learned to sit and wait patiently for the letters to fade.
He napped after each meal, falling into a deep, featureless sleep almost immediately, as though he and his mind were eager to break off communications with each other.
As the afternoon light lit the window drapes, he became aware of a sound. He’d been concentrating on Ael—suddenly a feeling of understanding possessed him, a feeling of great pity, of sadness, for Custis and Sing and Cecelia Garman, even Harry Garman.
The sound he heard was sobbing. Someone was nearby or near in memory, sobbing, inhaling with catches in the breath like a child.
Rama stood in the doorway, but he was unclear, perceived through a curtain of tears. And Benson realized that he himself was doing the weeping.
Rama touched his elbow and led him out of the building. They walked along the paths of the old estate and skirted the glassed-in pavilion crowded with people in dungarees, slacks and tights, sitting on the floor, doing yoga exercises. They seemed so happy, and yet Benson felt such great sympathy for them, such grief that he turned his face from Rama and, walking, wept again.
After a while the tears stopped, leaving Benson chastened and purged. Now he noticed the onset of spring: the leaves were budding. The sun, in a hazy sky, threw a refracted opaque light on the woodland, and he saw the still tight buds on the azaleas. Behind the main house, tulips in reds and whites stirred in the lightly moving air. The sense of exploding beauty was a new discovery to him—far more vivid than he’d ever sensed before. He felt calm again. Reassured. When they walked together back to the carriage house there were only a few hours of sunlight left in the day.
Rama, not having said a word during the whole episode, led him back to the wall and left him.
Shortly Sanjay Nullatumbi entered the room and approached him. He studied Benson’s face and eyes thoughtfully.
“You wept?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Nullatumbi nodded at him, looked at the wall and, with a last glance at Benson, walked out.
That night he stayed in his room, lying on his bed and scowling at the closed door. Now he felt morose, bleak, near despair.
On the third day—the last day that Benson was sure of his count, before all the days blurred into a long, amorphous stretch—he took his nap after breakfast and went, at Rama’s summons, to the wall.
He began his day intimidated and ready for defeat. The aches, pains, coughs, itches and distractions resumed, and the whole morning dragged interminably. Rama appeared from time to time and silently disappeared. At noon, Benson left eagerly for lunch and a dreamless nap.
When Rama led him back to the room, Nullatumbi was standing there in his robe, regarding Benson with affection. “Mr. Benson, I have something for you.” He held up a narrow, long-necked bottle that had held wine vinegar or a syrup. A cork was pushed halfway into the opening.
From the cork projected a long piece of thin wire. Nullatumbi placed it on the floor before the wall. Then he held up a small square of paper, each side about an inch and a half. He folded it diagonally and creased it, then opened it and folded it diagonally from the two remaining corners. He creased it again; opened it. Glancing, amused, at Benson’s frown, he now folded the paper in half and creased it, opened and folded in half the other way and creased and opened it.
Next he folded the paper along its creases so that it resembled a roof with four segments peaking in the middle. He looked once more at Benson and settled the paper in the point of the upright wire. When he touched it with his finger it slowly turned on its axis, wobbling slightly as it revolved.
“This will build your confidence in your own power.” He straightened up. “You turn it.”
Benson bent over and pushed it with his finger. It turned, wobbling.
/>
“Without touching it.”
Benson frowned at Nullatumbi, who with outstretched palm indicated a seat on the rushes in front of the bottle. Benson sat and looked doubtfully up at Nullatumbi, then at Rama. Nullatumbi nodded, and Benson was left alone with the bottle.
A new adversary.
He gazed at the bottle, at the cork, at the wire projecting up from the cork and the little white cap of paper that crowned it.
He willed the paper to turn. It didn’t. He concentrated on it, pictured it in his mind as turning.
He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, imagining the cap as moving. He concentrated intensely on it, felt himself vibrant with will, felt each muscle clench until he sat shuddering, as though he were lifting a great weight.
The paper cap remained still.
He gathered himself, filled his lungs, bent every part of his body to the assignment, concentrating so hard that he shook from top to bottom, from pate to seat, holding his tension, sweating profusely, commanding the cap to turn. It refused to yield.
Benson relaxed and sat back. He reached out a finger and touched the cap and watched it turn freely, wobbling like a ship compass on its gimbals.
He gathered himself again, took another deep breath and settled his mind in one concentrated clench, like a hand trying to open a sealed jar. Slowly he shut his eyes, concentrating.
Now he heard a grunting sound, like something under water. A picture of a tunnel shooting away to infinity appeared before his closed eyes and was gone, a picture that lasted a microsecond. He opened one eye and peeked at the cap. Unmoved. The afterimage of the tunnel remained, as did the echo of the grunt. He felt that he’d torn something, cracked something—something, somewhere, had yielded to his mental clutch.
He sat back on his haunches and contemplated the bottle. He tried to be that cap, tried to feel himself turning, balanced on the point of wire.
Without preamble, the scarlet letters leapt before his eyes and leaked like a sponge, filling his eyes with blood.
Rama appeared and gazed without comment on Benson’s damp gown and sweat-soaked head.
“Enough for today.”
He stayed in his room again that evening, unwilling to break the solitude of his mind. A waiting hunter at a water hole. Images would appear in flashes, like single frames from a film. They appeared and were gone so quickly that he could catch few details. The tunnel came several times, then a triangle undulating like a cloth floating in water, then various spots of light.
He sat on his bed with one low lamp on and freely hallucinated as though things—sounds, lights, forms—were gathering around him, on the brink of tremendous events.
At last he put out the light and collapsed in exhausted sleep.
Was it the fourth day? He wasn’t completely sure. He felt irritable, hostile, combative.
Having awakened before Rama entered his room, he arose with the expectations of a man about to attend a meeting at which all the other members were already assembled, waiting in silence for him.
After breakfast he reluctantly napped. He felt tense, restless, a runner before a race. Nonetheless, his sleep was so deep that Rama had to wake him.
“Now.”
Benson stood up and walked down the hall to the room. The wall waited, and at the foot of its vast unconquered implacability stood the bottle, barely discernible in the weak light.
He sat before it, felt the stinging kiss of the mats on his anklebones and observed the bottle.
As he gazed at it, he felt himself drawing into a tight ball once again. The sweat would appear momentarily; the tensed trembling would begin. He paused, relaxed his muscles, exhaled. Now he considered the paper cap. Instead of forcing it, instead of binding himself into a knot with his own muscles, he would finesse it, would lightly stir it.
Clearing his mind of all else, he fixed his attention on the cap and mentally breathed on it. The red letters appeared, and with only a slight effort he made them disappear. A major event: he dismissed the letters and impelled his mind to concentrate.
He sensed at one time the movement of sunlight across the mats, realizing that what had taken hours had seemed to have taken minutes, seconds. He had concentrated without break on an object for the better part of the morning.
Rama entered, observed, left. Benson thought of the breeze in his mind, traveling over a beautiful garden, past a tumbling fountain, approaching the cap to turn it.
Had it turned? He felt that it had. And realized his eyes were shut. He opened them and stared at the cap, wondering if it had turned while his eyes had been shut. It seemed to have changed position.
His mind reentered the garden, blew across the fountain and made the cap turn. He opened his eyes. The cap had changed position.
He fixed his eyes on it, determined not to clench. The cap wobbled slightly. Hadn’t it? He watched it, urged it and saw it stir again.
He raised his two hands and touched his eyelids. Open. Not a hallucination. He concentrated again, feeling an odd vibration in his stomach. The cap made one complete revolution, then refused to turn any further. Had he imagined it?
Benson sat back on braced arms and looked at the glow of light through the curtain. After resting for a moment, he sat again before the bottle and urged the cap to turn. He hadn’t imagined it: it revolved slowly, hesitantly, but he was turning it without touching it.
Shortly before noon Rama entered and observed the turning paper cap and withdrew.
At noon he summoned Benson to lunch. They ate in silence in the main house. Benson was barely aware of his surroundings, not hearing the murmur of voices at the large dining-room table, conscious just briefly of Nullatumbi’s eyes on him.
After his nap Rama led him back to the room. There were now two capped bottles standing before the wall.
Benson felt intimidated: it was unjust, too hard, too soon. He was entitled to gloat over the one conquest, entitled to praise, even applause. He felt a furious hatred for Nullatumbi. In his mind he plucked his gray beard, pulled the locks of hair—and then felt shame. He’d done something irrevocable, if only in his imagination.
He settled before the two bottles and told himself to relax, to clear his mind, to settle on a point of light before his eyes and ask the two caps to turn. Success came in less than an hour. Both caps turned in tempo. Within two hours he’d coaxed the caps to turn first in opposite directions from each other, then at differing speeds.
He laughed. He sat with his eyes open, his hands on his thighs, squatting before the two spinning caps, and laughed at the most absurd thing he’d ever seen—himself in a robe, in a strange building, far away from office and camera, home and family, making two paper caps on two wires spin like a child’s little pinwheels. He laughed and laughed, and for the first time in his life felt tears of hilarity fill his eyes. For the rest of his life he would remember that laugh. It was like a message to his spirit.
Rama entered midafternoon with another bottle. By late afternoon there were six bottles lined up, and all of them—festive, dancing, obliging—turned for him. He felt himself a master of revels.
But he was aware also of the great price he’d paid to make the little caps turn: the hours of pain and dismay before the wall, the jeopardizing of his film career and marriage. And before him, the wall, and if that was not enough challenge for one man in one lifetime, beyond the wall waited Tran Cao Kheim.
Rama removed the bottles and placed at the foot of the wall a six-foot board with a groove down the center. A block of wood was nailed to each end. Rama put on the track a wooden croquet ball and with a finger push rolled it down the track. It came to rest against the wooden block at the right end. Then, gathering up the bottles, he left the room.
Benson was more than ready. His mind gripped the ball eagerly and pushed. It remained still. He redoubled his efforts and found himself locked in combat with his own muscles; he sat trembling from exertion, the sweat coating his face again, his eyes shut in mighty effort.
&nb
sp; He paused, filled his lungs, calmed himself. Deep in concentration, he shut his eyes and told the ball to move, to roll down the track. He broadcast his will in a long, determined thought that would have set the paper caps spinning violently. Then he opened his eyes. The ball was unmoved.
He sat and looked at it—identified himself with its being, its smooth wooden grain. Then he settled himself for another try. He was somehow generating less energy, he felt. Perhaps it was fatigue—a whole day at the wall would exhaust anyone. It was too heavy; he would have to develop more mental strength before he could move it.
Hearing a tap, he opened his eyes. The ball had rolled the length of the board and come to rest against the wooden block at the left.
He concentrated on rolling it back, now feeling new strength, deeper concentration. The ball rolled back—he heard its movement along the track. He stared at it, impelled it a few inches, stopped it, rolled it back. He rolled it the entire length of the board. It moved quickly. He ordered it back, and it slammed into the block and tumbled out of its track.
He picked it up and replaced it. His mind felt as though it were drawing on extraordinary sources of power, of crushing strength. He concentrated now and sent the ball rocketing along its track. It slammed into the right-hand block and broke it free from the board.
The block and the ball lay on the mat in the dusky light. In the doorway, Rama stood watching.
He walked that evening with Rama, barely aware of his surroundings. Benson was gloating. Never had his mind been so clear. Never had his mental strength seemed so great. He felt he could uproot trees just by willing it.
“I have been reading,” said Rama.
Benson, resenting the intrusion, didn’t reply. He wanted to dwell on his own thoughts, exult in his new superiority.
“I have been reading the Bible,” Rama insisted. “It is one of the four or five great books of the world. Have you read it?”
Benson shook his head and looked away at a suitable tree. Bigger than that oak. His mind could tear it out of the ground.
Keeper of the Children Page 11