by Bob Leman
Barley found his first of these at the tennis club. She played as badly as he did, with the graceless doggedness of those who have come too late to the game, and within a very short time they found themselves commiserating with each other over their admitted incapacities and the inexcusable rudeness of the other players who took critical notice of their faults. This compatibility led to a drink, which led to an invitation to dinner, which was accepted. Both knew what the invitation and acceptance meant, and he brought her to bed after giving her a dinner of sublime excellence at a superior restaurant and then gritting his teeth through a couple of hours of head- shattering noise at a discotheque.
It was entirely satisfactory. For a little while they fumbled at each other with almost virginal shyness, but that was a stage that passed swiftly, and then they were at each other with the greed of the starved, and the task was competently carried to completion. And at the moment of climax, as Barley gave himself up to the mountainous wave of relief and mindless sensation, a door whose existence he had not even imagined flicked open for a millisecond, and a revelation came to Willis Barley.
Thinking about it later, after he had begun to tire of Fido's hymns to the glories of sexual gratification, Barley believed that he understood what had happened: Fido had been caught by surprise. The enormous flood of sensation must have engulfed him with such suddenness and power that even that great cool mind was, for a tiny fraction of a second, not wholly in control of itself, and during that instant Barley was vouchsafed his vision of catastrophe.
Something was going to die unless Fido succeeded. Barley did not understand what it was, but he knew with absolute certainty that death would be the inevitable result of failure. And no small death, either; although the thing as a whole was entirely beyond his grasp, Barley had understood great matters for an infinistesimal moment, and he could remember what his emotions had been, if not the details of their cause. He knew he would retain the memory forever: his cringing awe in the presence of something incomprehensibly vast, that had nevertheless been, for a tick of time, within his comprehension; the unspeakable dread of an imminent horror; and a sense that somewhere in wait was a death beyond death and an eternal desolation.
*
Barley was appalled, shaken, and unmanned. There was no question of further dalliance that night, despite the lady's touching importunities and the enthusiastic urging of Fido, who was apparently unaware that he had given Barley access to a hitherto-concealed part of himself. "What is the matter with you, Barley?" he said. "I cannot fathom your attitude. This surely is the ultimate gift visited upon those lucky enough to have senses. I had thought that perhaps the taste of the '60 Niersteiner Trockenbeerenauslese was the supreme sensation, or else listening to Don Giovanni. I was ignorant, grossly ignorant. Still, how could I have known? Now you say it is finished for tonight, and I am disappointed. I suppose there is nothing to do but wait for the next time, if that is your decision. But it seems to me to be absolutely necessary that you arrange for us to have this experience at least daily."
Barley was able to arrange it. It was, in fact, quite easy, so easy that after a time the chase began to pall. He continued to enjoy his catch with undiminshed appetite, but he found that he was bored with the hunt itself. He took to seeking rarer and more exotic game, and thereby he entered, without quite being aware that he was doing so, the otiose game of Social Climbing. At the beginning he was not even close to the ladder, but he met at his broker's a sprig of a consequential old banking family, and he endeared himself to the young man by sharing with him, on a couple of occasions, Fido's tip-of-the- day. This new friendship resulted in some introductions and invitations, and Barley found himself moving in new circles, where the game of seduction was played under different and — to the outsider — more difficult rules. The whole language was new. He took a keen pleasure in it. The game had come to be almost as important as the prize.
Fido did not agree. "I see no point in this, Barley," he said. "You are wasting a good deal of time. I must tell you that I find these interminable seductions of yours to be uncommonly boring. My initial suggestion that you hire professionals still seems to me to have been a good one. The sensations would be exactly the same — indeed, probably better — and the wasted time might be more pleasurably devoted to eating and drinking and looking at pictures and listening to music. Even to getting drunk, which is a most pleasant sensation."
"Speaking of wasted time," Barley said, "how's your mission coming?" The revelation of catastrophe nagged at him.
"According to plan, Barley, according to plan. It is not a matter that you need concern yourself about. Your function in our partnership is simply to enjoy yourself, to savor the life of the senses. You can be sure that your activities, whatever they may be, will help me toward my goal. Yes, indeed. Now, Barley, I have been thinking: what would you say to a bottle of the '47 Lafite Rothschild this evening? I have been remembering the '50 Margaux, and I would like to make a comparison. The Margaux struck me as being an ideal Bordeaux, but the other seems to be regarded very highly. You'd better lay on a bottle of something less grand for the lady. No use wasting the good stuff. We have only a dozen, and it was sheer luck that we found those. And now it is time, I believe, that we select the menu for dinner."
Barley had a staff, now: a cook of vaguely Balkan provenance and eclectic skills, who could produce surpassing meals from the kitchens of a dozen countries; a chauffeur-bodygard, who handled with casual expertise Barley's great Mercedes and variety of firearms; and a butler-valet-majordomo personage, a competent, dishonest Cockney, who ran the household efficiently and at ludicrous cost, skimming off, Barley calculated, at least twenty percent of the total expenses. Barley did not mind; it was only money, and the man's efficiency left him entirely free to pursue his own (or, more properly, Fido's) pleasure.
It was beginning to be apparent that Fido's pleasure and his own were not always in precise coincidence; Fido was avidly bent upon experiencing repeatedly every possible pleasure of the senses, and while that attitude was no doubt forgivable in one who had spent an eternity without senses, Barley sometimes required a respite. In a modest lowbrow way he needed intellectual diversion, which, for him, meant going to the movies or the theater, or reading mysteries and spy thrillers, or playing a few rubbers of bridge Fido scorned such things, and Barley could understand. They were not sensual, and certainly they could offer Fido no intellectual diversion. "But have at it, Barley," he said, "if it is necessary for your contentment. We should be able to spare an hour or so a day."
Thus Barley for the first time in a long while found himself with an opportunity to think and reflect. He discovered that he remained considerably concerned about the progress of the search, despite Fido's airy assurances that all was going well. The vision of doomsday had, it seemed, frightened him more thoroughly than he had supposed, and he was plagued by a persistent apprehension. After a time he told Fido about it. Fido said, "Barley, I have told you that you need feel no concern. However, rather than undergo your nagging, I will undertake to explain the matter in words, since it seems you will not grasp it otherwise. Please give me your full attention. Do you remember the picture I showed you of my place of origin?"
"Yes, sure," Barley said.
"That was an analogy. It is of course nothing like that. It is — this is really not a matter for words. I will put it like this: there exists in that other universe, in my universe, a — call it a mind. If we call it a mind, we must call what it does, 'thinking.’ The universe over there is a consequence — one might almost say a product — of that thinking. Those thoughts are the fabric of reality.
"That thinking entity can in no way be described to you, Barley, even through analogy. It is outside time, to begin with; and by that I mean that it inhabits all of time simultaneously. Which is not the word, but then there is no word. This entity is separate from matter and space and time, and yet it constitutes of itself the entirety of all those things. You find this paradoxical, a
nd so it is, when put into words. There is a further paradox: this entity is perfect, it is an absolute, and in this very perfection lies a flaw. Perfection by definition can have no imperfection; if imperfection exists, then perfection does not exist. Imperfection has come to the entity we are speaking of; an infinitesimally minute and inconsequential imperfection, but an imperfection withal, and the destroyer of perfection. Which is to say, that the entity is destroyed, a universe is doomed."
"Not destroyed. Not yet," Barley said, "or you wouldn't be here."
"You are right, Bafley. Not yet destroyed. But crumbling. Strange things will have happened. As if, in this universe, the immutable laws were to become inconsistent and capricious, so that the sun suddenly became a ball of iron, and light became as viscous as oil, and time ran backward. Or spiral nebulae began to thrash their arms in tango time. The thoughts of that entity are the physical laws if its universe, and those thoughts are imperfect."
'The imperfection," Barley said. "It occurred when a portion of this entity elected to come over here."
"That is correct, Barley."
"And you are another portion, sent to bring it back."
"Yes. We are — analogy again — very small, almost ultimately small fractions of that mind. Even so, the whole is imperfect without us, and reality is dissolving. If we return to our places, perfection will be restored, and the universal laws will again be effective. And that, Barley, is the explanation you desired, as best it can be expressed in words and anology."
"But — Good Lord. Good Lord. I didn't realize — Fido, you've got to get on with it, we've got to stop this messing around. All that is going on and we're sitting here jabbering about how much pepper should be in a Perigueux sauce and whether Pachelbel ever approaches Bach. Jesus. Suns are turning into ball bearings while we hunt for better orgasms. What's the matter with you, anyhow?"
"Barley, I have acquired a number of human traits through this cotenancy, but impatience is not one of them. Our present policy, if continued, is certain to bring us, in due course, into the desired contact. Until then I see no reason not to enjoy the glorious benefits of the senses. You have a puritan streak, Barley, that I sometimes find to be less than wholly sympathetic."
Barley ignored that. He said, "You've never told me how you expect to recognize him when you've found him. As far as I can tell, there aren’t any outward indications that you're in here with me, and I don’t suppose your quarry's host will show it any more than I do. And the mind-reading bit won't work as long as you're in my brain."
"Apparently you still have not comprehended my nature, Barley. I and the one I seek are not separate creatures, we are parts of the same whole. Even though we are insulated by these human brains and bodies, we will be known to each other once we are in proximity. I must admit that I am not certain how close to each other we must be, but have no fear; I will recognize him. It is quite possible that I will recognize him at a considerable distance. We shall see. And the search must go on as before."
"Search" was by no means a precise description of their activity, as Barley saw it. His life continued to be that of a playboy, no more and no less. And an aging playboy, at that, although one with a more than commonly elevated taste in food and drink, he supposed, and music and women. It was a life that on the face of it had no aim beyond pleasure, although he was beginning to see that the pursuit of pleasure could itself become, in a way, high art.
He was finding himself more and more in the company of people who took that view of it, who firmly believed that elegance and manners lent justification to their single-minded greed for sensation. Barley supposed he was one of them. He was able to join with perfect sincerity in their contempt for the international set that welcomed cosmopolitan swindlers whose paper empires afforded them private jets and mansions with revolving beds for a few years, and illiterate thugs and molls of dubious sex who sometimes surfaced from the grimy world of rock music and kindred popular entertainments. Barley sneered at these like the others, but he was not in his heart wholly persuaded that his friends were in fact superior to the objects of their disdain.
His new comrades were an international set as well, but their activities seldom came to the attention of the press; a considerable effort was made to keep it so. They shunned publicity as the plague. They had in common the possession of enormous wealth, the remnant of a sense of noblesse oblige, and (especially the Americans) a moderate feeling of guilt because they had opted for play instead of their responsibilities. Most of them had known each other all their lives, and, more often than not, so had their parents and grandparents. New blood was admitted grudgingly and seldom. Barley's entree had been effected only through services rendered and pressures he was able to bring to bear through Fido's prescience; he was, and to some degree always would be, an outsider. He had been granted provisional acceptance, however, and that appeared to serve Fido's purpose, which Barley guessed to be a narrowing of the focus of his search.
In due course he received an invitation to Kome. It was a triumph, in a way. Korne stood as a beacon to the Sybarites, the ne plus ultra of their world, and to be invited there was to achieve communion with the Olympians. Korne was an island, a club, and a clique; the inmost clique of a society that considered itself in its entirety to be the cream of the cream. Outside that narrow stratum even the name of Korne was almost unknown. Real society was aware of it, because the Korne group came chiefly from their number, but they faintly disapproved, when they thought of it at all. Among the members of the amorphous group whose pictures appeared in popular magazines, it was a dream, a place that might or might not exist, for which they incontinently yearned.
It was reached by an inconspicuous yacht that put to sea from an unobtrusive dock in an unimportant Greek port. The island itself was a circle of hills rising steeply from the sea, cupping a few acres that were wholly hidden from passing ships. Here stood the buildings of Korne, outwardly nondescript and ordinary, especially when viewed from the air, and inside most marvellously and ingeniously luxurious, the fruit of several generations of pleasure-seeking fertile imaginations with bottomless moneybags at hand.
Each of the thirty-odd members of Korne had a palace that from the outside resembled a hillside village of shabby attached houses; there was an equal number of smaller and similarly camouflaged houses for guests. Barley,
on his first evening on the island, left the caressing opulence of the house that was to be his for a month and strolled in the soft dusk across a velvety turf toward the mansion where he was to dine. Fido said, "I must tell you, Barley, that I believe I am approaching the end of my search. I have intimations that my quarry may be here on this island. It has, after all, not taken long to find him, not long at all. Soon now this will all be over. Soon I will never again inhale the bouquet of an old Medoc or hold a woman's breast or hear the Brandenburg concertos. I will remember these things, in a way, but only the fact that they exist, not how they feel. You understand that I will no longer be Fido.' I will not even be I.' I will be an undifferentiated part of the whole, as will be the aberrant mote that I seek. The memory of all this will be only another minuscule datum known to the whole. And what is tragic (am I not very human, Barley, to see it as tragedy?) is that I will not regret it. I will not regret no longer being "I". One might almost call it murder, to destroy an individual that way."
"I'll miss you, Fido," Barley said. "I'll miss you a good deal. It's a shame, really, that it has to be this way. But after all, you know, the end of a universe—"
"Never again the glorious gloom of Rembrandt or the homely comfort of oysters and brown bread. Never again old cognac and thick Havana, or rosy limbs impatient in a bed, or Vivaldi or Hals or cold Eiswein."
"Yes," Barley said. "Well. Let's take it as it comes, Fido. Remember, tonight we see the Goyas."
About three thousand of the most important paintings in the museums of the world are forgeries; the originals hang in the palaces of Kome. Barley's hostess for tonight had most of the
Goyas. And as the walls of Kome were covered with the loot of great museums, so were its cellars crammed with rare and ancient vintages abstracted from caves where duplicate bottles containing wine not too much inferior now lay in their stead, covered with duplicate dust. Of the things in the world that are uniquely superior, a great many belong to the masters of Kome.
He was admitted to the mansion by a stately butler whose manner suggested that while he was a most superior person, he was unquestionably far inferior to Barley. Kome's creamy luxury was in no small part a consequence of its hordes of superbly trained, highly intelligent, and (apparently) sincerely concerned servants. The butler led him up a broad flight of marble stairs, and as he followed, Barley became aware of a curious sensation; the leakage from Fido had become perceptible and almost obstrusive. What was being leaked was apprehension, reluctance, and—incredibly—a certain slyness. And even as this extraordinary evidence of emotion came seeping through, Fido continued to talk briskly in praise of the paintings along the wall.