Pihkal

by Alexander Shulgin

  If there's some unknown dark thing in either of us, this might well bring it out in the open - at least, we'd get a glimpse of it. It would have to be acknowledged, talked about.

  The music had changed to our beloved Prokofiev by the time Shura had finished tying me. I looked up at him and tried to smile, feeling suddenly exposed and painfully shy. His eyes were shining, but his expression was more thoughtful than lustful, searching my face. Then he moved downward, and I closed my eyes.

  Inside my head, Prokofiev flared blue-green and gold. I was distantly aware that my body was trembling and that I was being very loud. The world was a tunnel, spiraling down to soft darkness, then there was coming out of that far shadowed place - rising toward me with exquisite slowness - an immensity of petals unfolding, dark purple to blood-red, and as my throat opened in one long, final cry, a sear of light passed through my eyes and out the top of my head.

  Shura quietly untied the bonds and lay down beside me, one leg over my thighs, his hand resting on my stomach, while my heartbeat slowed.

  When I was breathing evenly again, I turned to him and whispered, "Thank you, love."

  "I was with you, little one. I went with you."

  After a while, I rose on one elbow and grinned down at him, "Now. Your turn."

  Halfway through the business of tying him up, carefully, so that although he was secure, the nylon cord wouldn't bite into his wrists or ankles too much, I glanced at his face and found him watching me, and decided that I would feel a lot less self-conscious if he were blindfolded. I told him to relax, that I had to get something essential, and left the room. I found my shopping bag - the one in which I packed my clothes for the weekend - and took out the long silk scarf which I used to tie around my head after washing my hair. Back in the bedroom, I bound it around Shura's head, covering the eyes but leaving both ears free for the music.

  He said, "Ahhh."

  Looking down at him, I knew he was immersed in sensations he had only imagined until now.

  This was something he'd wanted to have, wanted to explore. On his face was the same seriousness, the same concentration you see in a small child when he unwraps the one Christmas present he most hoped for. I felt a surge of tenderness for him, and wondered what I would do when he was completely tied. I had no pattern to go by. I hadn't done much reading in these realms.

  So, I'll go with instinct. Just be sure it's graceful.

  We now had a Strauss waltz and, as I tied the last knot around the leg of the bed, I muttered my impatience and said I was going to search the radio dial for something else.

  "Not the most erotic music in the world, is it?" He was finally smiling.

  "Nope. Intolerable." I found another of our favorite stations, KDFC, and breathed, "Hooray!" It was Bach, and deliciously familiar.

  "Well, well," I said, turning back to my victim, "The gods are smiling."

  "It's one of the Brandenburgs," Shura said, contentedly.

  He had told me, the first time we had made love in his bed, that he had very sensitive nipples, and that he loved having them touched. I hadn't asked him if he'd shared that with Ursula; it was reasonable to assume he had. I feather-touched them now, seeing them shrivel in a sea of gooseflesh. I closed my eyes. The Bach was a moving thread of silver against a background of blue and emerald, then I sensed other colors - orange and sun-yellow - pulsing from behind the music, coming swiftly toward me.

  Masses of deep orange, edged with red, flooded my mind. I opened my eyes for a second to see Shura's head rising from the pillow as his body strained against the ropes, then Bach was drowned in a roar that echoed off the walls.

  All right, this is what I want. It's all worth it - whatever it's going to be like, whatever is going to happen - just for this. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  We lay side by side, the nylon cords abandoned on the floor, with only the light from the radio dial to see by, and we talked about what it felt like, what it meant, to trust somebody that way.

  Shura said, "It's an extraordinary thing, knowing that you have complete power over the other person, that you can hurt - misuse that power in some way, any way you want - and that you won't do it, don't choose to do it; that you can trust yourself, even the darkest corners of yourself, not to do something the rest of you doesn't want to do."

  "Uh-huh."

  "And then it's your turn to experience being helpless, and it's the other person who has to be aware of hidden dark impulses, and make those choices."

  I murmured, "And you can only lie there, hoping they know themselves well enough."

  "Yes," he said, "Yes. And yet," he paused, "I have to say, I didn't have any fear. I just knew."

  That you could trust me. Yes. Of course you knew. Just as you know other things you won't allow yourself to be aware of.

  I asked him if he'd ever seen the paintings of the German artist called Sulamith Wolfing. He said the name wasn't familiar.

  I explained, "Most people know her work from the yearly calendars she puts out, and her old calendars from years ago are sold at exactly the same price as the current ones, because her fans will do anything to get their hands on her paintings - never mind the year. Her publishers finally put out postcards - in Marin County you can find them in all the bookstores. The picture that I love best, the one that moves me most, shows the head of a big, dark green dragon. Its mouth is open, and curled up on the big red tongue is a tiny baby, sound asleep."

  Shura smiled.

  "That's what our little experiment reminds me of," I said. "It's like bringing a beautiful fire-breathing dragon out of its cave and making friends with it."

  "Walking the dragon," said Shura, "I like the image."

  "Me, too."

  He rose on his elbow, hair springing in all directions, and looked into my face, "Did you enjoy that as much as I did?"

  "You know perfectly well I did."

  Closing my eyes, I saw a multi-colored dragon with jeweled scales. Its wings were black, tipped with gold, and around its neck was a long brown dog leash, which - it assured me - it didn't mind at all.

  CHAPTER 26. FUNGUS

  One Friday, after I had cleared the supper dishes and we were sitting at the table with our wine, Shura told me about the letter from Ursula that had arrived the day before.

  "She said she's getting really frightened by the way Dolph is acting; seems there are increasing signs of depression, and a couple of times he's flared up with an intensity she's never seen before. She told me she's had nightmares about Dolph killing them both. He's barely speaking to her now, apparently, except when other people are around, to keep up appearances."

  Shura traced around the rim of his glass with a finger, "She said surely I could understand why she has to wait just a little while longer before she sits down and holds his hands and says the final goodbye and all that."

  "It sounds bad."

  "Yes," said Shura, "Not exactly new, but pretty bad."

  I waited, knowing there was more.

  "So, I telephoned Germany this morning," he glanced at me, "To urge her to get out of there, to just pack a few things in a bag and get out, not to take the chance of something tragic happening, not now, when she's so close to resolving the whole thing!"

  I realized my mouth was gaping, and closed it.

  Shura sipped from his glass, then continued, "Dolph answered the phone."

  He certainly has an instinct/or the dramatic pause, whether he's aware of it or not.

  "Oh."

  "I don't have to tell you what happened!"

  I kept quiet.

  Shura leaned back in his chair, throwing his arms wide, "My dear old friend, Dolph, his voice full of sunshine, positively bubbling with delight that I was calling; how was I and had I seen the latest article on enkepha-lins in Arzneimittel Forschung? When we'd talked about that for a couple of minutes, he asked me did I want to speak to Ursula, and I could hear him calling her to the phone, 'Darling, come quickly, it's Shura!"'

  "Methin
ks I've heard something like this before."

  "If he was acting, it was the kind that gets you all sorts of prizes in that Hollywood operation -

  what's it called - ?"

  I nodded absentmindedly, "Academy Awards - the Oscars."

  "Whatever."

  What's going on? What's happening in that house in Germany?

  Shura's elbows were back on the table, "Then Ursula came to the phone. She whispered to me that I shouldn't have phoned; things were very sensitive, very precarious. I just went ahead and said everything I'd planned to say. Pack your bag. Get out quickly. Get away. She said she couldn't talk any more on the telephone, but she would tell me everything in a letter. Then she said - still whispering - that she loved me and now she must go, and goodbye."

  I waited, not moving.

  "So, what do we think?" He looked at me, his face expressionless.

  I remembered Ben, sitting across from me in the living room, telling me he thought it wouldn't be long now before Ursula moved to bring things to some kind of closure. This wasn't any kind of closure; this was crazy, and it was going on and on.

  I replied, "We are reduced to a lot of guessing, as before."

  Shura nodded.

  Something's got to be done. He can't keep living in this state of uncertainty and misery.

  What's going on, for God's sake?

  After supper, Shura worked in his study. He told me he was completing the first draft of an article he was going to submit to a new chemical journal. We went to bed early, both of us tired.

  Curled against Shura's back in the dark, I tried to open myself to what was inside him, as he settled into sleep. Underneath the good humor that remained from the past couple of hours, I sensed a dark knot of bewilderment and fear.

  What kind of woman is the Lovely Ursula? Is this her way of letting him down gradually, weaning him from his hopes? Or is Ben wrong, and she's telling the truth, and really intends to come and live here? Nothing explains the husband sounding so warm and friendly, though.

  Unless Shura isn't as good at reading voices as he believes he is. That's possible. Whatever's happening, it can't go on this way much longer.

  The next morning, we began the day in Shura's preferred way, reading the San Francisco Chronicle, in silence, with our coffee. He always began the paper with the last section, working his way to the front; I read it from front to back. He read quickly, barely glancing at some parts; I tended to read every word, except for the business and sports sections, which I usually ignored. When we were through, he sat back in his chair as I poured more coffee and said, "How would you like to try one of the great classic psychedelics today?"

  "Which particular great classic psychedelic do you have reference to?" "Ever heard of psilocybin? The magic mushroom?" "Oh, yes, of course. I remember that wonderful article in Life magazine, years ago. Wasson? Was that his name?"

  "Gordon Wasson, yes. You've never tried it, have you?" "Never. I've been very curious about it." "So - think you might venture?" "Absolutely. I'd love to."

  "I don't have the mushrooms themselves, but I do have some of the active ingredient, psilocybin," he said, "So you won't have to munch a whole lot of little dried things."

  "Does the psilocybin by itself give you the full experience? I mean, the same as you'd get from the mushrooms?"

  "Well, I've taken it both ways, in the form of mushrooms and as a white powder, and I find no difference at all in the effects. Although, of course, there are people who will swear that the natural plant gives the only true, genuine experience. I just don't find it so."

  Shura remembered that he had to correct student exams, so we decided to postpone the mushroom world until evening, when all his paperwork would be completed. I spent the rest of the day in his living room, writing my own overdue letters on his typewriter.

  At 7 o'clock, having bathed and put on our dressing gowns, we each took fifteen milligrams of a sparkling crystalline substance, dissolved in fruit juice, Shura noting the time on a slip of paper, as usual. Then we walked out to the lab, hugging ourselves against the evening chill, so that he could close down a chemical reaction he'd had going all afternoon, and put the lab to sleep for the night.

  Inside the laboratory, I leaned against the door and spoke about something he had mentioned that morning.

  "You know, I've been thinking over what you said earlier, about people who believe that if there's a psychedelic plant, you should only use the natural growing thing, not a synthetic form of the - what do you call it? - the active ingredient?"

  "Yeah," said Shura, fiddling with stopcocks and flasks, "There's a very interesting and quite delightful person I know - you'll have to meet him someday - named Terence McKenna, who writes and lectures about sacred plants; it's his specialty, and he's an absolutely persuasive speaker on the subject." "The name sounds familiar, though I can't remember where I've come across it."

  "Well," continued Shura, "He believes, absolutely believes, that only in the plant itself can you find the particular balance of - well, I suppose you could say spiritual essences or influences -

  along with the actual chemicals, which go to make up the true experience that the plant - or, in this case, the mushroom - has to offer. He's absolutely adamant about the synthetic chemical not giving you the genuine thing. We've argued about it - in a friendly way, of course - for years."

  "Well," I said, hesitatingly, "As a matter of fact, I have a lot of sympathy with that view, and I'd like to explore it a bit."

  "Of course," said the alchemist in the brown dressing-gown, taking my arm and turning off the light, "Tell me. After all, how can I convince you of the error of your viewpoint unless I know what that viewpoint is?"

  I stopped on the path to aim a symbolic kick at his rear. He ducked and took my arm again.

  I said, "I know this sounds absolutely ridiculous to a scientist, but I was brought up believing something which I still believe, and that is that all growing things have some kind of -1 don't know exactly what word to use - some form of consciousness attached to them. Not human-type consciousness, but a - a plant-awareness of some kind."

  He opened the back door for me, as I continued, "Remember those experiments which proved - well, they seemed to prove - that plants react to human thought?"

  "Carrots having nervous breakdowns when someone thought boiling water at them? Yes, I remember."

  "Well?"

  "Well, what?" Shura was going through the house, locking doors and closing windows, as I followed. "Do I think there's a possibility that plants have some non-physical level of awareness? Well, let me take the so-called scientific experiments first. I don't know the details of how the experiments were done, so I can't say much about them. I think I would have to be there myself, in the lab, before I could accept the findings without question. And even then -

  frankly, I tend to be skeptical. Scientists can fool themselves just like non-scientists, I'm afraid, especially when they have an emotional investment in a certain outcome."

  I nodded. Shura came close to me, "Before we continue with this very interesting subject, I need to check on how you're feeling?"

  "There's sort of a chill - kind of a variation on the energy tremor. It comes and goes."

  "Any other effects?"

  I went inside myself and explored for a moment, then reported, "Yes. I'm definitely off baseline. Gentle, but distinctly something." Shura grinned.

  "How's your level?" I asked him, and saw that his eyes were glowing as they always did when he was on.

  "About the same, except that I don't have your little chill."

  I smiled at him, "You're radiating, you know."

  He laughed and squeezed my arm, "Let me take a moment to finish up the mess in the office -

  I've got things scattered all over the place. Would you mind if I left you on your own for just a couple of minutes?"

  I told him I wouldn't mind at all, "As a matter of fact, I'd rather like to be by myself for a little while and pay
attention to what's happening."

  I sat comfortably on the couch with a glass of juice in front of me on the tiled table. There was soft light from a lamp on the bookcase to my left, and the sound system had been turned on from the back room so that I could hear the music; it was Brahm's Piano Concerto No. 2, which I knew by heart. Through the windows at the far end of the room I was able to see the two tiny lights, red and white, that marked the top of Mount Diablo, and I felt both peaceful and excited, waiting for the world to change.

  I picked up one of the art books I had put out on the table earlier in the day, and settled back to look through it. The book was large and satisfyingly heavy, a collection of Goya's paintings and sketches, and I was aware, holding it on my lap, that I had slipped suddenly into one of those states which are among the most treasured gifts of the psychedelics, a moment which is endless, a sense of being in what has been described most simply and accurately as the Now.

  There is no time, there is only the quiet aliveness of existing here, holding this book, sitting cross-legged on this couch, being the person who is myself, with the other person who is Shura - the complex and extraordinary human being to whom I have chosen to be tied, for however long or short a time - a few rooms away, but not separated from me.

  I looked up from the book and saw a room totally transformed. I was sitting to the side of two rooms divided by what I knew to be the bookcase, but which now appeared as an ordinary wall separating the two halves of a native hut of some kind. Familiar objects which would identify this place as Shura's living room had been swallowed by the shadows. To the left of the dividing wall there was a chair which I had left there earlier, and thrown across it was a Guatemalan woven scarf, gleaming vividly in the soft light. I stared open-mouthed at the stripes of yellow and pale green, the panels of red and black, and wondered if the scarf had triggered the associations to a native hut in a strange land. I looked around me, locating the Chinese vase on its shelf, almost lost in the dark at the back of the room. I saw the bulk of the piano on the other side of the dividing wall and recognized the bookcases under the windows; everything was there, yet I couldn't shake the impression that I was in a native hut with a dirt floor, somewhere in Central or South America. I half expected to see an iron soup pot suspended over the logs in the little fireplace and strings of peppers drying in the corners of the room.