This evening, after a light repast, Amberwell, assuming the lotus position, chanted the following mantra for two hours:
Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow,
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go.
Hari Mary,
Rama lamb-a,
Amberwell loves Ganesh.
Upstairs on my born-again TV I watched a cable broadcast of The Atomic Café, a montage of old Civil Defense instruction films that does for the defense industry what Reefer Madness did for narcs. From time to time I would tune in to Amberwell’s progress in the basement. Only twice did he flag and require correction.
February 5
Saturday. My soon-to-be-ex-wife dropped by unannounced at lunchtime, letting herself in with the key she’d assured me she didn’t have.
“Whatever are you listening to?” Adelle asked, as she set down her matching (“The Bag”) canvas totes and I hastened to turn off the broadcast of Amberwell’s noontide mantra from the torture chamber.
“Oh nothing. Some new piece by Terry Riley I think the announcer said.”
“Spare me,” said Adelle.
“Have I ever forced you to listen to Terry Riley?”
“Yes. Often.”
“I didn’t think you had another set of keys,” I noted, holding out my hand.
“Until I’ve got all my things out, I have every right to have a set of keys.”
“I thought you had everything now you agreed you had any right to.”
“I made of list of what I’d forgotten.” She handed me her list.
I ran down the two columns, which were headed “Negotiable” and “Non-negotiable.” The blender was non-negotiable. “The blender?” I protested. You’ve got the food processor. It does everything a blender can do.”
“The blender was a wedding present from my cousin in Tarrytown. There’s no reason you should have it.”
“No. I suppose not. But you’ll have to wash it out.”
“Fine.” She stared at me defiantly, waiting for further objections, but none were forthcoming, She seemed disappointed. She once complained that my unwillingness to be combative about small things showed a lack of feeling.
For the next hour I tagged after her from room to room as she filled first one tote and then the other with all the negotiable and non-negotiable items. Vases vanished from tabletops, records from shelves, the Canadian codeine-laced aspirin from the medicine cabinet. By the time we’d reached the kitchen her second bag was nearly full.
“On second thought,” she said, “I’ll let you keep the carving board. There’s really no room for it in the cupboard I’ve got now.”
“Thanks.”
“But I do want the blender.”
“It’s in the icebox.”
She got the blender out of the refrigerator and sniffed at what was in it. “Yuck!”
“Try it, you’ll like it.”
“What in hell is it?”
“It’s a kind of bean paste from the Pritikin Program Cookbook. Remember? You got it for me for my birthday two years ago.”
“It smells awful.”
“It tastes better on a cracker than just plain. But I’m out of crackers.”
“I’ll let you keep the blender,” Adelle conceded. “Since you’ve been so nice about everything else.”
“I’m a basically nice guy.”
She grimaced. Her eye lighted on the door to the basement. “I suppose I should have one last look down there.”
“There’s nothing on your list that would be down there,” I said in what must have been a different tone of voice.
She looked at me strangely.
“Whatever is in the basement now is mine,” I insisted. “That’s my non-negotiable demand. Now give me those keys; you’ve got what you came for.”
She gave me the keys, and another odd look, and then I helped her take the loaded totebags out to her car. When they were stowed in the backseat she offered her hand to be shaken.
“I must say,” she said, “you seem a whole lot more . . . relaxed. Than last year, or even a month ago.”
“I guess it’s the Pritikin Program.”
“Or not having me to contend with?”
“Honestly, Adelle, I never thought you were all that much trouble.”
“You’re still the world’s coldest icicle—that hasn’t changed.”
“And you’re still as pretty as the day we met. Age cannot wither.”
“Go to hell,” she said with a smile. She started her Datsun. “Go directly to hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.”
She also still thought parroting catch-phrases counted as a sense of humor, but I didn’t rub her nose in that. I just said “Bye now,” and stood back from the curb.
Back in the house I tuned in on Amberwell. He’d left off chanting his mantra, and I could hear him, ever so faintly, crying. Somehow, though there was no surface resemblance, the sound he was making put me in mind of the Environments record, Gentle Rain in a Pine Forest.
Hush, poor Amberwell, I thought, as I scooped out his dinner from the blender. Hush, poor bare forked radish, hush.
February 6
After twice feigning he was incapable of writing, Amberwell has been persuaded to write, at my dictation, the following letter:
Dear Ann,
Who could have predicted that seeing a movie could change a man’s life so completely as mine has changed—and in only a week’s time! You won’t easily believe what I have to tell you. I can scarcely believe it myself. Here’s what’s happened. I missed my flight on Sunday, the traffic was snarled on the way to the airport, and decided to take in the movie Gandhi, which has been getting such good reviews. Watching the movie, I was overcome with remorse for all the wrong and hurtful things I’ve done in the course of my business career. A Higher Spirit must have been looking on, for after the movie I was guided into the waiting arms of the good people who have helped me to understand how I can make restitution for the wrongs I’ve done. Some of my colleagues, who helped me commit those crimes and shared in ill-gotten profits, must suffer, but Justice must be done, I see that now. I shall write to the appropriate authorities in due course to give them the information they will need to begin an investigation, but I write to you first, my dear wife, so that you may prepare yourself to cooperate with the authorities, make my papers and bank statements available to them, etc. Do not attempt to stay the course of Justice. When they find, as they surely will, compelling proofs of my malfeasances, cooperate with them in making immediate restitution to those I’ve wronged. I am sorry I cannot be with you during the approaching period of travail, but my virtue is still a frail reed, and so I must continue under the guidance of my Spiritual Master. I will offer prayers for your enlightenment to Rama, avatar of the great Vishnu, and to his wife Sita, whose attendants are white elephants. May the light soon enter your life that has entered mine.
With holy love,
Alec Amberwell
P.S. I am leaving the Lincoln for you.
P.P.S. Go see Gandhi as soon as you can.
I put the letter into an envelope together with one of the Polaroids I’d taken on Friday. Then I drove to the airport parking lot, where Amberwell’s limousine was parked in the same space I’d left it a week ago. I put the letter in the driver’s seat, the keys beneath it out of sight. Then I phoned Amberwell’s home and informed the maid that I was an airport security officer and that Mr. Amberwell’s Lincoln appeared to have been deserted at the airport parking lot. I made her write down the precise directions for finding the car and then hung up.
The trouble with sending Christmas presents to faraway friends is that you can’t be on hand to see them unwrapped.
Got home just in time to catch the start of The Winds of War.
February 7
The office was a madhouse today, but in the rush of more important matters I did not neglect to phone Amberwell’s secretary and
ask to have his decision about Unitask’s option to purchase some ten thousand depositary receipts. (It had been the ongoing negotiations over this matter, conducted mainly through his secretary, that had allowed me to pick up the odds and ends of information I’d needed in order to waylay Amberwell at the opportune moment of his intended departure.)
I was informed that Mr. Amberwell was not in.
“Oh,” said I. “I understood that he was due back today. There’s no one else who can handle this, is there? The option expires on Friday.”
“It will be the first thing Mr. Amberwell deals with when he gets back,” I was assured.
This evening, after episode 2 of The Winds of War, I began to help Amberwell form an inventory of those corporate crimes he’s assisted in for which tangible evidence is likely to be still recoverable. He spilled the beans like a silo in orgasm. Half this fair continent would seem to be planted with Unitask’s time bombs, and every filing cabinet to conceal a smoking gun. I began to suspect that Amberwell was inventing crimes simply to appease my hunger for righteousness, but it’s hard to doubt his sincerity at the moment of truth. Besides, Amberwell doesn’t have enough imagination to spin a web of lies. His lies are all denials: “No, we didn’t do it. No, I didn’t write that memo. No, I don’t know.” What he can do—the reason there is a head on his shoulders—is remember details. His mind is all retrieval system, and that, of course, makes him just the right executive for this position. By 2 A.M. the first dossier was ready for mailing: top copy to Mrs. Amberwell, urging her to share its contents with the press; first carbon to J. M. Carnell, Chairman of the Board of the ship Amberwell’s revelations will scuttle; second carbon to Elizabeth Golub, author of Our Children and the Toxic Timebomb (Grossman, 1980).
Now for a couple days I’d better coddle the goose who lays such golden eggs. I fear I may have activated an ulcer, for Amberwell’s stools are vermilion.
February 8
Easing the tension doesn’t seem to have helped. Amberwell is in a state of almost total physical and mental collapse. Running a high temperature, incontinent, and babbling (when he thinks he’s alone).
What’s needed now is someone able to play the role of nice-guy partner, as against my blue meany, someone who could come in and stroke Amberwell’s psyche and win his confidence and lift his morale. Lacking that, the best I could manage was a story: at dinnertime, while I spooned lovely, fresh-baked custard into his slack mouth, I told Amberwell how I’ve been ordered by our Spiritual Leader to treat him with more consideration as a reward for his confession (which I mailed off this morning from the central P.O.).
A gleam—of intelligence? purpose? hope? who can say?—came into his right eye. (His left is swollen shut.) “Who . . . is . . . our—”
I pressed my hands together, Gandhi-style. “Her name is Kali-Ananda, Kali’s Joy. She cannot come to you until your purification has been complete, but if you would like to venerate her picture, you can do that.”
“Yes.” Amberwell nodded. “Let me . . . venerate her picture.”
Up in the bedroom I dug out the box of memorabilia from the back of the closet and sorted through the various 8-by-11 prints I’d made of Adelle back in the days when the torture chamber was only a darkroom. The one I was looking for showed her in ballet tights, in lotus position (the Iyengar book was hers originally), and smiling that caught-in-the-act smile a camera always induced from her. It wasn’t at all hard to re-imagine this Adelle as Kali-Ananda.
Back in the torture chamber I taped this icon of our Spiritual Leader to the wall between the posters of Ganesh and Shiva.
“Hail, Kali-Ananda!” I declared.
“Hail, Kali-Ananda,” Amberwell agreed.
Then, without a hint from me, anxious to comply as a newly housebroken dog whining beside the door to the street, Amberwell wrestled his legs into a lotus position, faced the photograph of Adelle, and began to chant his mantra.
Later I revealed to him, as to one being initiated into a solemn mystery, the last of the nursery rhyme’s four stanzas:
Why does the lamb love Mary so?
The eager children cry;
Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know,
The teacher did reply.
Amberwell’s reaction was to break down, quite helplessly, into tears. He’s much more in touch with his feelings these days.
“Amberwell,” I said softly, “why are you crying?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“There must be a reason.”
“Please,” he said. The tears were gone. “Don’t hurt me anymore. Just kill me and be done with it. You’ll have to some day, I understand that. It’s obvious that you can never let me go free. And I’ve told you everything you need to shaft Unitask in court, anything more would just be trimming. So please don’t hurt me anymore, please.”
“I will ask Kali-Ananda,” I promised him. “She knows what is best for all her minions. I too once despaired, Mr. Amberwell, but now I rejoice to be her servant.” I turned to Adelle’s photo and made an obeisance. “So may you, Mr. Amberwell . . . in time. Now, hold your arms out.”
Amberwell held out his arms, like a child accepting his pajamas, and I assisted him into his straitjacket.
February 9
Speaking more truly than she knew, Amberwell’s secretary informs me that he has taken a leave of absence for reasons of personal health. Mr. Kramer has been assigned to deal with me in the matter of the option to purchase. Kramer was one of the four Unitask VIPs whom Amberwell’s confession most deeply and provably implicate. Patience! I only mailed off Amberwell’s manuscript yesterday. Unitask may not have an inkling yet of the tornado heading their way. Unless Mrs. Amberwell went to them, rather than to the police, with her husband’s letter. Come to think of it, she must be cooperating in the story of her husband’s “leave of absence,” or there would already be headlines: TOP EXEC JOINS NUT CULT.
No matter. Even if Mrs. A. joins Unitask in a cover-up, there is still the copy that went to Elizabeth Golub. She is certain to avail herself of Amberwell’s revelations. So there’s no need to worry—only to wait.
At home, Amberwell is on the mend. His temperature’s down to a mild 101°. He’s re-established sovereignity over his bowels. His appetite is back. And he asked me to forget what he’d said yesterday. He was depressed and delirious. He does not want to die. He will be Kali-Ananda’s servant in all she requires.
“Our Spiritual Leader will be happy to hear of your devotion,” I assured him. “And tonight, after our hour of worship, I will tell you the story of her holy life. But first—” I handed him a plastic waterbucket and a sponge. “—you’d better get this place cleaned up. It’s getting smelly in here.”
Upstairs I phoned for a take-out delivery from the area’s one Indian restaurant, then finished all the snowy parts of the jigsaw. Nothing left now but the dark pieces—pine trees and shadowed stone.
The delivery came just as episode 4 of The Winds of War was repeating its opening montage/synopsis. I nipped downstairs to retrieve the bucket and the sponge, buckled Amberwell into the chair (as a change of pace from the lotus-position-cum-straitjacket), and set him to chanting his mantra. Then back to the living room for two hours of video popcorn and beef vindaloo. Also, a tad too much Courvoisier, inspired by which I thought it would be amusing—and more verisimilar—if I were to appear before Amberwell in the spare dhoti that I’d bought with his incontinence in mind. To show him that we are both worshippers of Shiva, Ganesh, and Kali-Ananda.
He seemed duly impressed. I lighted a candle and a stick of incense, then fed Amberwell the remains of my curry dinner. I spoke to him, consolingly, of the life he might expect to lead someday on our ashram in Nepal, doing penitence for his sins as a Unitask executive and worshipping our Spiritual Leader.
Then I told him the story of her life: how she was born in the all-too-aptly-named town of Bitter Lake, Michigan, attended the Bitter Lake schools, and drank the chlorinated waters of Bi
tter Lake, never suspecting that there were other chemicals than chlorine added to those waters, chemicals that were the cause of the cramps and headaches she’d suffered through her adolescent years and of the kidney disorder her younger brother died of when he was thirteen, chemicals that would, even ten years after she had moved away from Bitter Lake, be responsible for the miscarriage of her first pregnancy and the severe abnormalities of her only child, Jonathan, now living a vegetable life in a home for vegetable children not five miles from the Unitask Corp. facility that had produced the toluene wastes that Gurnsey Hauling had hauled to Bitter Lake and Axelrod Disposal Systems had there disposed of.
Gurnsey Hauling and Axelrod Disposal Systems were both wholly owned subsidiaries of Unitask, and much of Amberwell’s confession detailed the means by which Unitask had divested itself of the embarrassment that Gurnsey and Axelrod had come to represent—and, at the same time, evaded any legal responsibility for their actions. That part of the story, of course, Amberwell already knew.
“There you have it, Mr. Amberwell,” I said, as the candle guttered in its socket. “The story of the youth and young womanhood of our Spiritual Leader, and the reasons why she, and so many other concerned citizens, including myself, feel a grievance against Unitask Corporation, Gurnsey Hauling, and Axelrod Disposal Systems.”
Is it a true story, you may be asking yourself. Was this nameless narrator’s wife really one of the Bitter Lake disaster victims? Or is he just saying this to underscore Amberwell’s guilt, to make at least one of Unitask’s victims something more than a statistic?
Scout’s honor, it’s all true, all but the obvious lie that my-not-yet-ex-wife has been the guiding light behind Amberwell’s re-education. For, far from being the sternly avenging Kali-Ananda I’d painted to Amberwell’s imagination, Adelle is one of your classic cheek-turning, placard-bearing liberals who think they’ve scored points against the Unitasks of the world if they can get Rachel Carson’s face on a postage stamp. It had been this—her milky-mild goodness—more than even a steadily encroaching tendency to vegetarianism that had led to our mostly amicable breakup.
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