Jacob Atabet

by Michael Murphy

  “In the basement here. They’re good people to know if the crash comes.” He sat down across the table and put the bottle between us. “They make their own cheese and bread, and grow vegetables at their farm in Sonoma. I keep this kitchen so they’ll come up and cook.” He nodded toward an iron stove and laden sideboard. For a moment we were silent. There was a manly quality about him that was completely unlike the voice I had heard on the phone. Could this be the same person? “The smell in here,” I said to break the silence. “It reminds me of a time I lived in Biarritz.”

  “Biarritz?” He leaned back from the table. “I was born there. But further up in the Pyrenees, just west of Pau. What were you doing there?”

  “Seeing Europe one summer in college. Are your people Basque?”

  “As pure as Basque can be.” He smiled handsomely. “My parents were cousins. Both of them could speak the language.” There was a roguish light in his look, a slightly evil insouciance. He was clearly a master of disguises.

  “Do you speak the language yourself?”

  “No, but I did for a couple of years. I was only three when we came to the States. From then on I spoke English mainly. And French. Hardly anyone talks it here, though Eskaldmak, their name for themselves, means the people of the language.” He fell silent and savored the wine.

  There was a tangible aura of well-being around him, a buoyant contagious pleasure. But though he enjoyed this meeting, I could sense his distrust. It would be best to follow his lead in our conversations, best to spend this entire visit letting him get comfortable with me. “Hardly anyone speaks it,” he continued. “Though they do in the old country. They’re a remarkable people, the Basques.”

  “They’re so old. Older than the Indo-Europeans, according to the things I’ve read about them.”

  He studied my face for a moment. “I have a cousin who was a guide at Lascaux. He thinks the people who did the cave drawings might be our ancestors. Do you think there’s anything to it?”

  I said I didn’t know.

  “Does any of your project relate to stone-age religion? I would think you’d find some leads there.”

  “Leads? I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Can’t you see it in their painting? They had that vivid sense of life, and were so physical. I take it that’s what you’re after—the physical side of these things.”

  “You read the articles?”

  “Yes, I read them.” He paused. “But after I did I had to wonder why you’re so interested in me. It was hard to see the connection.”

  “I’m just fishing,” I said, refilling my glass. “That experience I had in the church was like the experience people had around Bernardine Neri. I was over there, you know, and talked to people who knew her. But it might be my imagination. I don’t know what you went through.”

  “That bleeding,” he said. “I should’ve told you on the phone. It was a bloody nose. I get them sometimes when I’m tired. The reason I was tired was that I’d been up painting until three or four the night before.”

  “So nothing unusual happened?” I asked with a sinking sensation.

  “Nothing. I’m sorry I sounded funny on the phone, but I thought you might be in some kind of trouble. Now I can see that you’re fine.”

  “Trouble! What do you mean by that?”

  “You sounded kind of desperate. I didn’t want to cut you off.”

  Was he putting me on? “I’ll be damned,” I murmured. “I sounded that bad? Well, to tell you the truth, I have had some problems lately. You must’ve picked it up.”

  “What kind of problems?” He leaned back from the table.

  “This theory, this project I told you about. It’s been hard to finish. At times I have doubts about it.”

  “Well.” He paused. “What is your theory? I’d like to hear about it.”

  Was he testing me? It was inconceivable that he hadn’t noticed anything strange during that communion service.

  “So, your theory,” he insisted. “Can you summarize it?”

  He could see my confusion, I thought. It was clear he was fending me off while he decided whether to trust me. “My theory?” I asked. “You want a summary of it? Well, that’s hard. But to put it briefly—I think there’s an immense frontier hidden in these things. A frontier that’s hardly been explored. The kind of things that happened to Bernardine Neri—the stigmata and luminosity, ‘her marks of the risen Christ’—point toward it. I’ve collected thousands of examples like hers, from the contemplative literature, psychiatric histories, sport, hypnosis, spiritual healing and other places, to show that there are possibilities in us for an evolutionary transformation, if you will. People like Bernardine Neri are harbingers of it. She’s a dramatic example of course, but similar things are happening all the time, all over the world—an evolutionary ferment that hasn’t been fully understood. By collecting all these examples I want to show how widespread the phenomenon is and discover something about its essential dynamics.”

  “Its essential dynamics?” He frowned. “Don’t the Scriptures tell us how they work? Your articles remind me of St. Theresa . . . .”

  “The Scriptures don’t tell us everything. The more research I do the more I’m convinced that the contemplative traditions have misperceived part of the process, especially in regard to the body. Take Bernardine Neri. I was over in Italy and talked to a dozen priests who knew her. Nearly all of them wanted to discount her physical changes. There’s a bias against this kind of thing, partly from a fear of sensationalism and a rejection of gross superstition, but partly from ignorance too—ignorance of this stupendous power we’re carrying around inside us.”

  “Sheer ignorance. Yes.” He looked down at the table. “A bias in the church, you mean?”

  “A bias everywhere. In yoga, hypnosis, psychiatry— among artists and athletes. Transformations like hers happen in the damnedest places—these thousands of examples I’ve collected show that clearly. Even in sport . . .”

  “In sport? What happens in sport?”

  “Moments of superhuman grace. Telepathy. Visions. Sudden changes in the body to accommodate these erupting powers. I’ve talked to dozens of athletes—to mountain climbers, sailors, football players, skiers. There’s an Indian runner, for example, who was supposed to have run a marathon in an hour and fifty-eight minutes . . . . You know what that time represents?”

  “Yes, I do. I’ve run a couple of marathons myself.”

  “You have? Well, I’ll be damned.”

  “Hey, wait a minute!” He leaned back with a grin. “You think I’m too fragile, or too old, or what? Hey, I don’t like that.”

  “But it surprises me. How fast did you do them?”

  “Two forty-five the first time. Two forty-one the second. Not bad for a guy in his thirties.”

  “When did you run them?”

  “One last year and one the year before that.” He seemed proud of his accomplishment. “And I only started running five years ago.”

  “Those are great times. Especially for someone your age. How old are you now?”

  “Almost thirty-nine.” He couldn’t suppress a smile of pride. “I was thirty-six the first time and thirty-seven the second. And I was training only fifty miles a week.”

  This was an opening, I thought, maybe the opening I was waiting for. “You must be in incredible shape!” I said. “Most marathoners train much more than that. How do you do it?”

  “It must be a gift,” he shrugged. “I run sometimes with a gang down at the Dolphin South End Club. But there’s nothing special about it. No, I think it’s a gift.”

  “But you seem too muscular. Most marathoners are all skin and bones.”

  “I know. I weigh about one sixty-five. But maybe the theories are wrong for me.”

  “And how tall are you?”

  “About six feet, depending on the time of day. But hell. Some guys my age can do it in under two-twenty.” He raised his glass toward his mouth. “So you think these chang
es are misunderstood, in sport as well as religion?”

  “In the sense I’m talking about. Hardly anyone seems to grasp the possibility they point to. The people who have studied hypnosis or suggestion, for example, have rarely seen the process in this light. When you read their flattened-out descriptions, well . . . Have you heard of Esdaile?”

  “A little.”

  “You know he operated without anaesthetics, using hypnotism, in India during the 1840s. Hundreds of operations. The recoveries he reported are astounding, yet his work is almost forgotten. And there are others like him. We’ve had enormous clues and enormous bodies of work like his to learn from, but we’ve failed to appreciate them. Maybe we couldn’t until now. I think we needed the evolutionary idea to comprehend it all, and a feeling that there was a destiny for the individual beyond the ordinary ego. In the religious traditions, the goal of life was generally conceived in terms of release rather than embodiment. Release from the body and the ego because they were the source of suffering and limitation. Moksha, liberation—have you read the Indian scriptures?”

  He nodded.

  “Moksha before siddhi, liberation before powers. Things like Bernardine Neri’s physical light were seen as distractions from the path into God. Part of what I’m doing is simply to show what a frontier there is in the simultaneous transformation of consciousness and the body, what an adventure there is in embodied existence.”

  “So you don’t see the body as an impediment to realization?” He stood and went to the window. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I’m saying more than that. I’m saying that the body is meant to manifest the glories. The ‘marks of the risen Christ’ were just what Bernardine Neri said they were—translated into her own language. The Indian marathoner had his way of describing what happened to him. Everyone sees through their own filters. But behind the culture-bound language an enormous process is working, a process we might further once we saw what it was.”

  “We fear the sunrise in us,” he whispered. “Yes, we do.”

  There was silence and I could tell he was suppressing a sudden excitement. Was this the opening I had been waiting for? He turned to face me. “Can I read your book?” he asked. “There are things that come up in my painting . . . Yes, and some other things.”

  “You can read the whole thing. Of course I’d have to get the manuscript put together right. It would take a couple of days.”

  “Maybe some of it would be over my head.” He came back to the table. “But I’d like to see it. But tell me what happened in the church. I couldn’t tell from our phone conversation what you meant exactly.”

  He was still testing me, I thought, but our conversation had lowered his defenses. If I revealed more of myself, he might begin to tell me what had happened. “This may seem hard to believe,” I said. “But the light I saw seemed to come through the people between us. For an instant, everyone was joined. You, the priests, the people, the building, everything. And a fleeting image of a figure hurtling toward the sun. I’ve been having these images lately . . .”

  “And you saw this with your eyes open?”

  “With my eyes open? Yes, I think so. Yes, they were open. But the next thing I knew you were coming down the aisle. The whole thing was so overwhelming I couldn’t tell how long it lasted.”

  His dark eyes were tracking every change in my face. “It must’ve scared the hell out of you,” he said. “How did the people around you react?”

  “Some of them thought you pushed Father Zimbardo over. They actually thought they saw you do it. But no one I talked to after the service saw the things I did. I found a lady later though who saw the same kind of light. And then Zimbardo. He thought he saw you disappear.”

  “Saw me disappear? It must’ve been the shock.”

  “I don’t know. A lot depends on what happened to you. Maybe there was some kind of electrical accident. Some bad wiring or blown fuses. The woman who saw that light around you heard an explosion in the roof. That’s why I’ve wanted to see you. But what did you experience?”

  “I was tired.” He smiled. “I almost passed out on the steps there. Then I had a bloody nose and wiped it off. That’s all. Does that disappoint you?”

  He had created a marvelous defense against intruders, I thought. Most people would have to believe him. “Yes, it does disappoint me,” I nodded. “I had begun to imagine you were some kind of prodigy like Bernardine Neri. But it was too much to expect, I guess—to find it here in my own neighborhood. These things are pretty rare.”

  “Well, hell.” He swung forward. “You’re going to find more stuff for your theories. The world’s a surprising place. Would you like to see some of my paintings?”

  If our talk had shaken him, he had masked it completely. Or was he telling the truth? Suppressing a sense of frustration, I followed him into the adjoining room. Unused canvases were stacked against walls and there was a workbench covered with brushes. “Here’s one I’m working on.” He gestured toward an easel. “It’s a view of the city from the roof here.”

  The painting showed the streets of North Beach rising toward the ridge of Russian Hill. But there were tricks of perspective involved, making it difficult to tell the difference between foreground and background. “It reminds me of Escher,” I said. “All the lines make a Mobius strip.” He opened the shutters on a window near the easel, revealing the vista which the painting depicted. With slight turns of my head I could imagine the same shifting perspectives in the streets below. I played with the startling effect, and for a moment the hills below the building swam in and out of focus. Then I found myself looking away. The Bay had split off from the land and hovered in a separate space, just as it did in the painting.

  “You’re open to this kind of thing.” He smiled as if he were pleased. “And you’re right about Escher. I got part of the idea from him. But look at this.” He put another canvas on the bench. “This is the other kind of thing I’m doing.”

  The canvas was a pageant of sealife—of octopi, fish, and seaweed intertwined with one another. And in the midst of these were human organs. Hearts, livers and lungs were wrapped in the arms of a squid. I felt myself backing away. “You don’t like it?” He seemed amused. “Don’t back all the way into the kitchen.”

  From a few feet away some parts of the painting looked healthier than others. One lung seemed slightly decayed. To achieve these different effects, he must have studied the subtleties of organs for years.

  “Space and human flesh. They’re my two interests,” he said. “I wish I had more to show you.” We went back to the kitchen. There had been something unsettling about the paintings side by side. Had he shown them to me for a reason? He slumped in his chair, arms hanging to the floor, staring out through the windows.

  In the distance a foghorn was blowing. “Well,” he sighed. “I’m afraid we have to call it a day. I promised some people I would see them at five o’clock. When can you bring me that book?”

  “In a couple of days. The thing is spread all over my office and I’ll have to get it organized. But maybe I could bring it to you a couple of chapters at a time. It’s almost seventeen hundred pages long.”

  “Seventeen hundred pages! And you’ve worked on it how long?”

  “For nine years. Since I graduated from college, it’s been my chief occupation. The Greenwich Press is a sideline really. My family’s given me some money that lets me do this.”

  “So you’re just thirty years old.” He looked me up and down. “You look a little older.”

  “I’m thirty-one.”

  “You look a little out of shape. With all this interest in the body, don’t you exercise? You’re thirty pounds too heavy, and the color of your skin’s wrong. Are those liver spots?”

  “Freckles and liver spots both. The doctor says it’s poor circulation.”

  There was silence and I felt myself blushing. “God, you look almost forty,” he said. “It’s time you did something about it. When you’re
in that kind of shape you’re bound to have problems. Are you married?”

  “No more. I was divorced in ’67, the year I came here from New York. No, I live alone now.”

  “Maybe you need someone to live with.” He slapped the arm of his chair. “But anyway, I’ve got to go. Leave the book in the box at the landing, and I’ll let you know what I think.”

  4

  THE GUTTERS ON GRANT Avenue were littered with garbage, and boxes by the grocery shops overflowed onto the sidewalk. The street reflected my state—Atabet’s comments as we parted had left me ashamed and depressed. But why had he ended our conversation that way? For whatever reason, he had fended me off completely.

  A heavy fog was rolling in across North Beach, making everything distant and gloomy. What was there about me to make him suspicious? What was it he didn’t trust? I went up the stairs to my office. Leafing through the papers in my files I saw that it would be impossible to give him the entire manuscript without a week of sorting and collation. Maybe it was best to forget it. I could tell him that the thing would take a month to assemble and let the episode pass. There was little chance he would read the book anyway. No one yet had worked their way through all 1,700 pages.

  The thought came with a quiver of pleasure. This was a way to retaliate for his parting comments. The contemptuous son of a bitch!—he had fended me off and had added insult to it. Maybe it was best to let the whole thing rest.

  An image of his face appeared. His irises were almost black, yet in his studio they had subtly changed color. I could see them now, catching the blue and violet shades of his paintings. They were remarkable eyes, full of startling shifts in expression; our meeting had gone by so swiftly that I had missed some of the things they conveyed. His comments about my appearance, for example, had been accompanied by a sympathy and good humor that only now was coming to me.

  More had happened than I thought. That perceptual release his painting had triggered, for example, the Bay breaking off in my vision. The meeting had been filled with sudden turns and with double messages. Had he been giving me hints after all, clues to test my understanding? Was he hiding an interior project related to the events in the church?