Why, for heaven’s sake, had she not asked more, insisted in fact on being informed about what was going on? She had allowed herself to be dressed according to the new status imposed on her and to be seen on various occasions, presenting a picture of a happy young wife of a successful businessman! Who was Jurij after all, and what was he dealing with, really? Her contribution to the welfare of the business was to look beautiful. That was all.
From the very beginning, Solveig didn’t like A’s bloodless and, what’s more, complacent talking, which smelled of things dead. His learned lexicon, which he threw out as if it were a runner to walk on. The length of this track was not to be estimated in terms of time. It could fill a whole evening. Then, in a colourful mix-up with Latin and other foreign-language tirades, he resurrected figures who would probably turn in their graves if they found themselves in those connections into which A continuously, as it seemed, interwove them.
In this way, he put a spell on his listeners, and Jurij had been taken in by him. He was enslaved. Solveig saw all this as if on a screen, whilst she sat in front of it helplessly. Jurij lived only in A’s shadow, or on A’s mischievous light. He was no longer himself. Nevertheless, he was happy, as happy as she had never seen him before. Could anyone understand this? Could she understand it? He was as though in a state of ecstasy. On top of all this, he declared again and again that he loved her and that he couldn’t imagine a life without her. Life…? Was that life? Whatever it was, it also held her captive. It robbed her of the impulse to undertake something against this state of affairs. The poison which flowed through his veins, this blessedness, had its remarkable side-effects on her, too. It was as if her spirit had been paralysed. She lived as though in front of a screen upon which things in which she was involved occurred. But over which she had no control.
Remote-controlled. That was it. How did A do that? How can one gain control over a person’s will without him noticing it? To bring him so far that he gives it away of his own accord. She herself was only a piece of scenery, of no further importance. As long as she obediently played along with it, everything was all right. With her innocent air, she was pretty, but not dangerous. Until it dawned on her, the knowing…And she woke up as if from a sleep of a thousand years. Solveig shivered at the memory.
One day Barb was again in town, as Jurij announced, and would be coming to dine with them. To dine with them was not the main part of their meeting, although Solveig, as usual, had to produce something exquisite for the occasion, which kept her busy in the kitchen. There it happened, at the cooker, so prosaic! With the wooden spoon in her hand, lifting the lid of a saucepan, getting the aromatic steam full in her face as she bent…it happened…the awakening.
That smells delicious! Barb, standing next to her, her perfume mixing with the steam, an impossible combination, but it blew the veil off Solveig’s eyes. For a moment, she had to hold herself to the wall so as not to scream it out and aware of a silent warning at the same time: Be quiet, show it to nobody, play the game further as if nothing has happened. She understood. All at once, she was fully awake, with all her senses attuned to the happening. She forced a smile, said something meaningless to Barb and busied herself further at the cooker.
Barb went to the toilet. Jurij came into the kitchen, put an arm around her shoulder and kissed her neck, saying:
“What would I do without you?”
Yes. What would he really do without her? Good, that he couldn’t see her eyes at that moment…they were filled with moisture…and not only from the steam escaping from the pan.
From that day onwards Solveig did everything as before, except that now she acted consciously. Fully aware of a role which she obediently had assumed when her mind was under influence, now she used the same role as a strategy, playing it for a purpose. Gradually, she became even more of the pretty doll which they had designed her to be. Jurij showed pleasure in finding her looking through fashion magazines, clearly interested in buying more clothes and expensive accessories. She no longer just endured the social events but seemed to enjoy them. Including champagne, which she had hardly tasted before. Now, she allowed her glass to be refilled, displaying visible signs of its effects now and again. Nobody knew of course that all this was played and that she had something with her, which she took secretly, to prevent the alcohol from going to her head. Something which she kept in a little cosmetic bottle in her handbag. In this way, she could merrily accept a drink or two without getting drunk whilst playing being a bit affected. In order to come closer to things she wanted to know.
One evening, she had almost rested her head on A’s shoulder, something which obviously did not displease him. If they had a plot to keep her out of their business, she had one too!
Her integration into that part of society was complete when Jurij broke his latest news to her: they would be given a yacht. Yes, a yacht! And the idea was that they would spend a good part of the year on it. This was something new.
“Doing what?” she ventured to ask.
“Just living, darling, enjoying the good things of life! And in between…” he paused, “there would be of course some work to do but that…”
That was no problem, he gave her to understand. It could be done from wherever they happened to be.
She was, of course, a beauty, their yacht. From the point of view of luxury, certainly. Solveig was truly impressed, as she wondered what next had been planned to take place on such premises. Soon she knew that it was not just for them to enjoy the good things in life, as she had been told. A and his people, the three sisters included, appeared from nowhere from time to time for a meeting. Mag, especially, was delighted to be on the water, when she first came to join such a meeting.
They sailed. Oh yes! The yacht had sails too. En route they stopped at different ports, the length of the stay often depending on meeting somebody there, or A just happening to be around. A happened to move around quite a lot. Getting used to navigating the yacht was certainly a part of Jurij’s training at that time, and he mastered it perfectly. The yacht was their home now.
For a short period of time there was nothing new on the horizon. Then Mag appeared one day with a big surprise. For her.
“A special present, from A personally,” she said. It was a week’s beauty treatment at a certain wellness hotel. “An absolutely exquisite place, Mag added, and the programme…You’ll love it!”
She had to love it, of course. There was no way out. They obviously needed the place to be free of her presence on the boat during that week. She agreed, delighted, of course. The wellness hotel site was a dream of a place. Solveig decided to make the best of it. It turned out to be a welcome time off for her to mentally review the material she had been collecting. Her researches, as she had called them, were not yet completed, though the amount of material, the evidence collected, was enough to make some important connections.
The enterprise in which Jurij had become involved, his subliminal brainwash, in the name of an ongoing training, to which he had periodically submit himself and which took him to destinations never revealed to her…The regular meetings behind closed doors with A and the girls, later with other members of the staff, who arrived and departed in the middle of the night sometimes…All this would be the very theme for a psychological detective storywriter, uncovering what was going on behind the walls of a respectable branch of industry.
This knowing, in the meantime confirmed to her, Solveig felt, was no longer the main issue. What to do with it and how to get out of this field? That was the question. The field itself would not lose its power, since it had established multiple connections of the same service all around the world. At the service of the world, as it was propagated, and who would like to put this to the test? She had seen and heard enough. Now she had to get out without raising suspicion.
Walking with these thoughts through the marvellous gardens, needing some time to be alone to plan the next move, she decided not to join others for lunch that day. She would have
something simple to eat right there. The garden catering service was well organised and very inviting. There were little flags on sticks to be found near to comfortable sitting arrangements, placed at strategic spots in the gardens, which could be seen from the restaurant. Waving one of them, one could be sure that a waiter would appear to take the order. Choosing a sheltered place with one easy chair and a small table, she waved. A waitress appeared, and she ordered a plate of mixed fruit and a cranberry juice.
It was the closing day of the week’s programme, and there would be a festive dinner with a fashion show, music and lots of healthy words surely to be spoken in favour of cosmetics and other products to be taken home. She would buy some, of course, and a new dress from the fashion show. To please Jurij and A…Before that, however, she needed to be alone and at one with her real self, as she used to put it. Withdrawing into that personal reality, she did not hear him coming when he appeared in front of her with a tray in his hand; a young waiter with a bright smile on his face.
“Your fruit, madam,” he said, placing the tray on the small table, carefully moving it closer to her.
The plate was artistically arranged with a variety of fruit. Next to it was a tea-rose.
“How nice…” Solveig took it with a smile, “it’s my favourite!”
“I know…” said the waiter, made a flourishing bow and turned to go.
Solveig was left with astonishment. I know…he had said…How could he know? She felt the impulse to call him back but he was no longer to be seen. Later, in her room, still puzzling about the strange remark, she put the rose in a glass of water, to find it, when she returned to her room after her afternoon treatment, put into a narrow crystal vase. Somebody had obviously been in her room in her absence…
For this purpose? A small piece of paper, folded in two, was peeping from under the vase. ‘Some things you have to keep for yourself,’ it read.
Solveig read the note again and again, trying to make sense of its message. Walking up and down the room, she was thinking about ringing the bell, to call the chambermaid and ask her, but her finger almost touching the bell would not obey her. The words on the piece of paper echoed in her mind: ‘Some things you have to keep for yourself!’ These things included? Somebody was sending her a warning. Who could this be? The waiter, of course, who produced the rose, it occurred to her, but who was he?
This was her last night at the hotel. Tomorrow she would be returning to the yacht. But tonight, at the farewell dinner preceded by a fashion-show and musical entertainment accompanying the culinary highlights, a surprise-menu as it was announced, she was likely to see him again! Perhaps talk to him and come to know what this was all about…She dressed carefully for the event, and she ordered a dress from the fashion show, as she had intended, a strategic buy to please Jurij and the rest. Seated at her table, sharing it with two other ladies, regular customers of this Garden of Eden, an absolutely magical place, as they kept on telling her, Solveig maintained a cool calmness, unobtrusively observing the coming and going of the waiters with their trays. No sign, however, of the one she was looking for. That was peculiar, she thought, and tomorrow she would be gone.
Something else felt unusual when she finally found herself back in her room late that night. This knowledge which she had collected, the whole amount of evidence carefully reviewed in her mind now, was no longer the issue. It had lost its priority and was no longer important.
This was the end of a period, a phase…Solveig felt, and now she was stepping out of it. Just like that, opening the door of her bedroom which gave access to her private balcony and stepping out into the moonlight.
A gentle yet ever so resolute force was moving her to do so.
The lights in the main building were turned off and all was silence, when she felt and understood that the knowledge was always there, all in one piece, indivisible, and that only the present limits of the mind’s capacity prevented her from realising the extent to which she was involved in something much larger than her personal life. This kind of knowledge was not mere information. Knowledge was not a collection of anything. Therefore, it could not be put into generally accepted meanings of words. It was an indescribable state, yet of a most poignant and moving reality. As though it were a soundless earthquake, turning everything upside down…
There was no way of registering this revelation. Not being sequential in ordinary time, it was beyond the mind’s habitual observational system. It was, rather, an experience of intense clarity. Clarity and calmness, in which she felt being held in place by some invisible force. It was awareness of all things at once, and yet a coherent order beyond normal logical thinking, impossible to report. These were the things, the whole thing, which she must keep to herself. This occurred to her when, at dawn already, she lay down on her bed, not so much to go to sleep as to disturb the sheets, so that they looked used and nothing appeared unusual, when they came to help her with her luggage. Her ordinary mind was working again, dictating this procedure, leaving no reason for suspicion that something extraordinary had happened that night. Knowledge, which could not be misused…
The other branches of knowledge, of the kind which A and his company were using for their undercover purposes, all knowledge in fact which was recordable, could be misused. There was no way of preventing it. Jurij had slipped into temptation, without realising what was happening. He could not step out of this trap by himself now. Not even if he wanted to. And to reveal to him what she had discovered about the organisation would be no good, even dangerous. Her protection was her natural naivety in the very beginning and lately, a well-maintained disguise as the fashionable wife, a sort of a dummy really, but a very useful one for public appearances from time to time.
Now it was time to leave. Not because of this history, and not because of that of her marriage. That was no longer the main concern, though it had been for quite some time before and particularly after their stumbling on that wrecked boat on the beach; the time when relation-ship as a metaphor and their living together as a couple stood in the centre of her life. His, too, as it seemed. But this was before A and his cause had taken full possession of Jurij’s soul. Their actual marriage had become a blinking non-reality from that time onwards.
She would leave soon, at the next opportunity, Solveig decided, when they anchored near a bigger city. Before that, she would play her role. There was nothing she could do for Jurij in the present state of affairs. He needed a different help. Therefore, she had to leave. For the sake of both of them.
She fell asleep after all, waking up with the telephone ringing. It was Jurij asking how she was.
“Oh…it was a lovely evening yesterday…” She yawned audibly into the phone. “I must have slept longer, what time is it?”
He laughed, obviously pleased.
“Getting towards twelve, I’m afraid! Syl is coming to collect you, will that be all right?”
“Sure,” she said, “Syl is nice, when do I see you?”
“I’ll be home early evening, happy to have you back!”
That was it then, all in good order, on this side. Putting the phone down, her mind switched back to the memory of the other side, where all separate things melted into an all-encompassing beingness, a world undivided by split facts, written or otherwise recorded history.
To know is to be inside all things. Being all of them…
Incomplete sentences jumped at random into her awareness, breaking out of her usual mental frames. Events, recorded in time, numbers of years passed, all this put together was no more than just a frame. Take it away. Imagine all these contents fading away and your senses cleared of associations created by culture, all teachings received…Impossible as it was to picture such a state, it did not feel unreal. She had to get ready to leave. Syl was underway, Jurij said. Thoughts, however, were pouring into her mind as she was packing her things.
People find themselves in what they call relationships, thinking that they have chosen each other, made decisions and
are in charge. They don’t realise how much they are moved by forces which are in control of them, creating circumstances under which they cannot do other than obey them…
The notion of an individual’s sovereignty, identity and personality, with a free will? What is it worth if one is not capable of using it?
This supposed separate identity of the personified I. Who could claim to be acting on his own free will, choosing what he chooses, creating what he creates? Everything happens as a product of the company of many…and it needs just a wind to blow a curtain open to disclose this plot of continuous co-creation. For good and for bad.
But, what were these: good and bad? Were they not interconnected, the one within the other, co-existing on all levels of life? Whatever was intended to be perfect, or at least good, a thing or a state…had to break. To show that it was unlikely to last. Because…
To comprehend was equal to letting something decompose itself, in order to reveal what was there, inside, to be received as a new insight or information. Usually, one just tries to adjust it to the current frame of reference.
And evolution…? How could further stages be reached without decomposition of the existing order, the falling apart of the elements maintaining it…? A big crash (or bang?)
At that moment, a knock on the door put an end to this stream of thoughts. Syl was there, coming in with a bright smile and a motherly embrace too. Solveig had to switch very quickly into her role of a very pleased woman who had had a grand time at this, indeed, fantastic place.
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