A Book of Dreams (20 page)

Sloppy in our fatigues, heads shorn, faces pale, we mumbled, ‘Yes.’

‘Yes what?!’ he roared.

‘Yes, Sergeant.’

‘I can’t hear you!’

‘
YES, SERGEANT
!’ we bleated.

So there we were, five platoons strung out across the company area single-file, waiting to go in and say good morning to the lieutenant.

As the line inched closer and closer to the ominous door,
people got more and more nervous. The whole right side of the line was a-twitch as we tried out salutes, mumbling, ‘Sir, Private Connor reports.’ ‘Sir, Private Giordani reports.’ ‘Sir, Private Marble reports.’ ‘Sir, Private Reich reports.’ ‘Private Tompkins reports, sir…. Oh shit no. Sir, Private Tompkins reports.’

‘Hey,’ someone yelled. ‘Hey, you guys, where the hell is the right angle supposed to be, under your armpit or next to your head?’

By the time the first Ms were going in I had started to sweat, repeating over and over again, ‘Sir, Private Reich reports, Sir, Private Reich reports.’

The first Ms walked out of the orderly room door with huge sweat stains spreading out from beneath their arms, all pale, washed out, shaking their heads.

Sir, Private Reich reports. Sir, Private Reich reports. Sir, Private Reich reports. Over and over I said it, my arm joining the Ps and the rest of the alphabet twitching towards the door.

Suddenly I was inside. The lieutenant scowled as Plotkin stumbled out into the orderly room.

He sat in his chair, stony-faced, and looked at me. I looked at him for a few seconds and then drew myself up to attention. Heels together, toes at a forty-five degree angle, thumb and fingers extending straight out from my forearm, which was the hypotenuse of the right angle at my neck and shoulder, I looked over his head and saluted smartly.

‘Sir, Captain Reich reports.’

After I woke up I ran up the road to meet Tom and go to town for the mail. The rocks on the road hurt my bare feet all the way up the road.

When we got back I rode up to the observatory, waving as we went past the lab. Tom said I couldn’t go upstairs because Daddy was talking to some of the doctors so I waited downstairs and played with the ring.

I went into the wing and opened the door to the cellar. The cellar smells like dirt because it is the very bottom of the observatory and the top of the hill. You can see it because there is a big rock right next to the furnace where the hill comes right up out of the ground. When I closed the door it was dark and scary but I wasn’t too scared because I could just reach up and open the door. The pommel slipped back easily and the secret compartment began to glow. It was exciting. I could get rings for everybody and write messages. It glowed soft green at me. I wished I knew how to really write messages on it, instead of pretend.

The door opened and Tom looked in.

‘Hey. What you doin’ down there?’

I held up the ring for Tom to see. ‘I’m working with my glow-in-the-dark ring. Except I don’t know how to write on it. Look.’

He turned it over and over in his hand.

‘Gee whiz. I don’t know either. Maybe it is just supposed to glow.’ He handed it back. ‘Why don’t you ask your dad? Anyhow, I got to work on the furnace some.’

The ring rode my finger up into the hallway and partway up the stairs. The voices of the doctors talking floated down the stairs so the saddle rode down into the big room to wait.

I called it the ballroom because it was so big I thought there should be dances in it. The saddle rode over the tops of the chairs to the fireplace and then around to the big picture window. Next to the window was the walkie-talkie that Daddy used when he wanted to talk to people downstairs.

The saddle rode around to the organ and galloped across the keys to the windows that looked over the pond. The lake was all silvery blue.

Voices came down the stairs loudly and then there were hands on the banister. Dr Baker, Dr Duval and Dr Raphael came down the stairs. They waved to me and went out the door.

The saddle rode across the ballroom and slowly glided up the wooden banister. Extra quiet like a scout we got to the top of the landing and inched up the last couple of steps to watch Daddy working at his desk. After a while he looked over the tops of his glasses and saw me. He smiled. He wasn’t mad any more and I ran across the carpet to him.

‘Daddy Daddy! Look! I got this cowboy ring with a secret compartment just like the Lone Ranger! Look!’ I came around the side of the desk and showed him the ring.

He took it from me and looked at it. He frowned.

‘Where is the secret compartment?’ he said, putting his pen back in the penholder.

I leaned over and slid the pommel back.

‘See, it is supposed to glow in the dark and you can write messages on it. Here, cup your hands and you can see it. I want to send messages on it. Could you figure out how to write on it?’

He looked at it for a minute, sliding the pommel back and
forth. Then he cupped his hand around it to make it glow, but it wasn’t dark enough.

‘Have you seen it glow in the dark?’

‘Sure. I was just down in the cellar and it glowed real bright. Come on down.’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘Don’t you remember? A long time ago it was on the back of a Cheerios box and Mummy gave me fifty cents to send away with the box top. It came back in the mail yesterday only … only I didn’t get to show it to you.’

He looked at me seriously, holding onto it so his fingers were right over the pretend stirrups. It was really nice. ‘Let’s just go over to the closet,’ I said. ‘You’ll see, it really works.’

‘Peeps, I’m sorry but you cannot keep it.’

‘What?’ He dropped it into his palm. ‘But I just got it. I’m going to use it with the cavalry to send messages about the Indians!’

‘I’m sorry. You can’t keep it and that is final.’

‘But Daddy, I’m sorry about last night. I didn’t mean to be silly and make you mad.’

‘It is not that, Peeps. This glow-in-the-dark substance may harm you. It may be very dangerous. Right now we are preparing an experiment to help us understand it. I’m sorry. I know you like it as a toy, but we must get rid of it. I shall ask Mr Ross to bury it.’

He reached out and pressed the button on the intercom. ‘Mr Ross? Mr Ross. Please come to the study.’

‘Bury it? But Daddy, wait. Maybe we can take the glow-in-the-dark stuff out and save the ring. I don’t care if it doesn’t glow in the dark!’ Tears started to blur him and I wiped my arm across my face.

He shook his head. ‘I’m very sorry, son, but I am afraid the whole ring may be contaminated.’

‘No fair. I just got it. It was fifty cents. I didn’t even get to write a message. Please, Daddy, can’t I please keep it?’

‘Peter, I am sorry. I have much work to do, preparing lectures, writing articles, and I don’t have time to explain it all to you. The substance in that ring is dangerous. Especially when we are making our own experiments. I don’t know how this material reacts with Orgone. Now you must understand and go with Mr Ross…. Ah, Mr Ross.’

Tom came in and walked over to the desk. ‘Yes, Doctor.’

‘Mr Ross, please take Peter and help him bury this ring. It may have very dangerous material in it and I don’t want him to play with it. Perhaps you can bury it where we have buried some of our other equipment.’

He handed the ring to Tom and looked at me.

‘All right, Peter. Now I have work to do. Please go with Mr Ross.’

I tried to look angry at him but I couldn’t even see him because my eyes were so blurry and mad. He didn’t even want to let me play with it a little bit. All he thought about was his energy.

After we buried the ring Tom said I could help him saw wood in the barn but I didn’t want to. He walked around the side of the observatory with his shovel and I made the special call.

Toreano came out of the trees on his pony leading mine and we rode down the hill slowly.

I came down the hill running, still running away.

I had been at the tomb, talking to my father. Sitting next to the bust on the huge granite slab, looking out over the fields and forests, I talked to the bust for a long time. It was hard to say some of the things I felt. Makavejev was gone. My father was gone. For the first time I felt really alone, at
tabula rasa
, ready for a new reality, a reality that would be better than fantasies. And yet I was still surrounded by my own dreams. The military dream that had been my armour for so long was cracking and softening and I was afraid because I had only reached the surface of things that had been too long buried.

As I talked I examined the bust, running my fingers along the lines that were his hair; long on top, cropped short at the sides and in back. He had a set of hand clippers and liked to clip his own hair, pausing to run his fingers through it in a way that left it standing out at the back as if the wind was always blowing through it.

There had been a thunderstorm during the night and some rainwater was still caught in the rim of one eye. It looked as if the eye was crying. My father was terrified of thunder and lightning. He used to run around and make me hide under tables. Once lightning hit a cloudbuster next to the cabin. Streaks of electricity shot through the house spinning sparks off the wire we used for a radio aerial. My father paced back and forth, afraid. I thought he was afraid that the thunder was directed at him, for understanding it, for being able to play with it. And I
guess I have never totally believed that it wasn’t, just as I will never be totally sure that a flying saucer won’t come and take me away. I just don’t know. Perhaps it is the easy way out, keeping one foot in the dream – but it is deeper than that. My childhood is the dream. It is all there, and real.

I brushed the tear away. I didn’t like it that the iris and pupil of the eyeball were hollow. In the middle of the eyeball it suddenly fell away and there was a concave hollow. His head is hollow too. Except once some hornets built a huge nest inside his head. I think Tom removed it because the hornets came zooming out and buzzed people who came to look at the tomb. A hero’s tomb.

Is it wrong to have heroes? Aren’t heroes part of the authoritarian misunderstanding? Or is there a separate, tragic, category? He was plagued all his life for saying things that are gradually being accepted. No one dared to stay with him to discover what lay at the end of his thoughts. Nothing he said has ever been disproved, only dismissed. People attack him for personal reasons … me too.

I’m sorry he gave me an attitude towards military authority that was consistent with his paternity (and his century, because in many ways he was a man of the nineteenth century) but inconsistent with his philosophy. I resent it in him that at the end he sought approval and aid from the higher-ups and institutionalized authorities who killed him.

But that is my personal grudge. Perhaps he had no choice at the end. And as Eva said, in a hundred years those personal things won’t matter; the important thing is the process, the scientific principles. And until I learn more about what science does not know about Life Energy I have no choice but to
believe in everything I experienced as a child. I think my father understood more about the life process than most people are emotionally prepared to accept. And that includes myself. I have a lot of catching up to do and I’m still running. Running away, away from the tomb and down the hill. Running hard, through the hard, new blueberry buds on the side of the hill, across Tom’s lawns, down the road to the cabin and past the cabin, Indian paintbrushes and daisies whipping against my legs all the way down to the dock.

Breathing hard and sweating, I stripped and sat on the wooden planks facing out over the water, rising and falling slowly. Way out across the tops of the trees on the other side of the lake Saddleback held the late afternoon sun on its flanks. Clouds reflected in the water were broken up by the bobbing waves and every time it looked as if the reflection of a cloud would reach the dock a wave bobbed up and broke it. I felt confused about how freedom worked – every time I thought I was free of one thing, another popped up.

Splinters of clouds dissolving in the late afternoon sun disappeared and returned. Naked in this silent movement I still felt trapped, afraid of lake monsters beneath the water and terrified of flying saucers from the sky; trapped in the real world.