Disturbances in the Field (20 page)

“Well, and what of it? I got the job done when no other teacher would risk it. Here.” He gave the pipe and matches to Nina. “Would you do this for me, please?”

“Incidentally, Clyde Powers is not his real name,” Nina said with the pipe between her teeth. “His real name is Barry, or Barney, maybe, Weingrad.”

Victor raised his eyebrow at me in the leering manner. “What did I tell you?”

“Oh, all right. Did you try to talk her out of it?” I asked Nina.

“Of course not. She seemed very happy. I didn’t think I had any right to interfere. Aren’t we a little old to tell each other whom to marry?” She lit the pipe and gave it to Don.

“In the case of Esther, I don’t know. ... I wonder if she’ll change her name too. Remember Esther was the only one of us with the patience to get through
Being and Nothingness?
To go from that to SAVE!”

“It may be because of
Being and Nothingness,
not despite it.” Don smiled appreciatively, as he always did at his own jokes.

“Bad faith. Remember how for a whole month she lectured us on bad faith? The forms bad faith may take are infinite. Denial of your own identity. Denial of the motives for your actions. Denial of your true situation in the—”

“Oh shit, Lydia, I just missed what might have been our turnoff.” Don pulled over to the side and got out his map of New York State. “We are lost on our way to being saved. Hey, do you know, this must be skiing country. There are pictures of skiers all over the map. I bet in January this road is crammed with buses.”

We arrived, eventually. A half-hidden sign led to a winding, branching dirt road, and from there on, the invitation was spiked to trees like blazes along a forest trail. We left the car in a pasture designated as a parking lot and walked through bristly grass towards an adjacent meadow where a group was gathered. George was doubtful about the scattered cows gazing at us with dusky, somnolent eyes, but Nina, who had grown up in farm country, assured him cows were not predatory. “Just leave them alone and watch out underfoot.” One black and white cow accompanied us all the way to the wedding.

It was a set from
Oklahoma.
The women wore long skirts and bright, frilled, high-necked blouses—hybrid offspring of pioneers and European peasants. The men were dressed as cowboys, in fringed vests, plaid shirts, and boots, except for one man in a shiny black suit and black string tie, who was carrying a Bible. Victor, ignoring my advice, had perversely chosen to wear one of his two suits, the one that made him look like a stockbroker, even with the beard.

Esther rushed to greet us with hugs and kisses, rosy and aglow in billowy organdy, a wreath of daisies in her hair. She looked wonderful.

“I feel wonderful too. I have all my energies going for me, finally. Do you like the dress? Lillian made it for me, by hand.” She pointed to an obese red-haired woman with a naked infant in a sling on her back. “Lillian went to Barnard too, but a few years after us. She was a math major but she wasn’t happy with computers. She does all our clothes, so we can avoid the whole consumer trip.” Her father would have been pleased: she was not being seduced by the offerings of capitalism. “Wait right here. I want you to meet Clyde.” She brought us Clyde, who was exactly like his photo, except that his hair was clean today and tied back in a rubber band. Clyde looked long and steadily at each of us in turn, clasping our hands in both of his. This took a while. The SAVE emblem, that abstract design of a possible bird with a superfluity of wings, was tattooed on his right forearm in blue. “It is a real pleasure to know you,” he said in an easy, midwestern accent. “Esther has spoken so much about you.” He wore a red cowboy shirt with a small charging bull embroidered on the front pocket, perhaps by Lillian; as his chest rose and fell with conscientious deep breaths before each sentence, the little bull appeared to be charging off the shirt, at us. “I hope you’ll all get into our reality while you’re here, and allow yourselves to experience the ethos of SAVE, which is something real unique. We try to dig out and bring forth our root feelings of caring and sharing without blocking—”

“Clyde,” Esther interrupted, “why don’t we introduce them to some of the others.”

“That’s a good idea, Esther.” He led us around to various members of SAVE, who greeted us with pats and strokes. Nina was generally taken to be paired with Victor, which was understandable: she was dressed in a white linen suit and silk scarf, as befitted the consort of a stockbroker. One graying man slipped his arms around their waists and patted their hips. “Have you people attended our SAVE gatherings or are you just friends?”

“These are old friends of mine, Phineas,” Esther explained, gently withdrawing his hands. “And you remember Nina Dalton.”

“Ah, yes. You were shy about your hostilities. Well, that’s all right. Have no anxiety. We’ll help you all get in touch with the deeper participation levels.”

“Thank you,” said Victor. “We’re a little thirsty after the trip, actually ...”

“Oh, of course. I’m sorry,” Esther said. “There’s homemade apple cider over there on that table, and some rum punch too.”

A man with a very long, wide white beard like Walt Whitman’s came up to Nina and took both her hands in his. “I believe I’ve seen you here before. I am interested in you. I am interested in the kinds of feelings that must be straining to emerge, since you appear so put together. What’s your trip?”

“My trip?”

Victor was tugging at me. “Let’s go over there. I want a drink.” We left George hovering protectively near Nina and the Whitmanesque man. Don, already at the bar, handed us each a glass. Victor examined his suspiciously. “What is this stuff? I want a real drink. Especially if I have to get in touch with myself at the roots.”

“It’s not too bad.”

Victor sniffed it, drank it in one gulp, took another, and placed a hand flat on my breast. “I am interested in you. In the root feelings that are straining, I mean, all those vital saps and so forth. Your deepest participation levels.”

I brushed his hand away. “Look, as long as we’re here, would you please ...”

“Well, if you don’t want to get in touch with your vital energies, I’m going off to, uh, relate to others who do.”

I stayed with Don. I was hearing, as I often did, the soothing voice of Professor Boles. Empedocles, reconciler, doctor as well as mystical poet ... He too sought the roots—fire, air, water, and earth—from which the earth proliferated like a wondrous plant. He did not need to dig up the roots, though, in order to appreciate the plant in its infinite variety. Poking at the roots destroys the living plant; Mr. Wilson, back in the garden at the brown house, warned Evelyn and me about that.

“Do you think there’ll be anything to eat, Lydia?”

Don sounded so plaintive that I laughed. “Of course there will. Do you see those women with the checked aprons, carrying buckets and pots? Their role is to prepare the feast. It will contain lots of home-baked bread, plus there will be sprouts. Every kind of sprout you can think of. Cheese, vegetables, lots of salads. It will be very good, as well as good for you.”

“But I feel like oysters. This kind of thing makes me feel like eating oysters.”

I nodded, and we stood companionably silent. Don was not an exhilarating person, but he had many placid, Nordic virtues: He could keep his feelings to himself; he would never behave in an embarrassing manner; if any of the Saviors wandered over to talk he would listen politely. I realized I had grown very fond of him over the fourteen years. Maybe Gaby hadn’t been mistaken after all.

“It also brings out my worst impulses,” he said. “Reminds me of what I did to Mr. Dooley when I was in college.”

“What did you do to Mr. Dooley?”

But he had no chance to tell me. “Please assemble, please assemble for the ceremony.” The tenor voice of the minister in the black string tie. With the Bible tucked under his arm, he clapped his hands for order like a dancing master. Nina and George and Victor drifted back.

“That guy with the Bible is Derek Holbrook, the other leader,” Victor whispered to me, “but that’s not his real name. He changed it from Joe Rossino.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me. They don’t believe in books. The Bible is just for show, because some members aren’t emotionally ready to give it up at weddings. It’s called a transitional object, like a baby’s blanket.”

“Come on, you’re making this up.”

“No art, either. Music is okay, but they prefer to compose their own. Like in
The Republic,
you remember. Artists from the past inhibit the flow of vital energies. The past does not exist. Dead. Life begins anew each day. If you’re hung up on memory it means you’re into death, which is of course not good.”

Gradually the guests formed a large circle around Derek, Esther, and Clyde.

“Sex is not more than twice a week,” he breathed hotly in my ear. “The vital energies, you know. Once is even better, if you can manage it.” He put his arm around me. “We could kidnap her. They wouldn’t prosecute. Law is repression of individual vital energies. Not that they’re anarchists; they just don’t relate to government.”

The black and white cow that had ambled through the festivities mooed loudly, which silenced the crowd.

“Dearly beloved.” The ceremony began.

Derek explained that weddings at SAVE did not follow the traditional format, which had originated in a long-dead age and thus had no relevance to the needs of Clyde and Esther. Weddings at SAVE were a celebration of openness and awareness, which meant going around the circle asking the guests to state their feelings on this occasion. In that way good feelings could be exposed and maximized and bad feelings evacuated, leaving the vital energies to flow creatively from their roots, without hindrance. He would begin with the bride.

Esther must have been prepared. With just the proper degree of warmth and reserve she announced that she was very happy, she loved Clyde very much, she was grateful to all the friends who had come to the wedding, and she hoped she and Clyde would continue for a long time to be good to and for each other.

I turned reflexively to Nina and found her clever, doleful eyes waiting for mine. We exchanged a glance of pride and relief, as when an unruly child performs well in public. Women’s colleges do foster a certain adaptability. Esther could also pour tea admirably, which might win her praise in SAVE’s kitchen, where she would no doubt be spending a good deal of time. But her composure made me shiver. In college when she read Descartes she vowed to believe only what she had proven for herself. “Nothing on faith!” And we had laughed at her.

It was Clyde’s turn. He disengaged his arm from Esther’s and rubbed his hands together, the gesture of a man about to dive into a feast. “As I look around me on this wonderful day,” he said, looking around him, “I see old faces and new ones, faces from the past and faces from the present. And yet they are all sharing in the one reality that is right now, which is all we have. That and our own energies, our needs and gratifications.” Esther’s face was beginning to show the signs of heat and weariness. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and cleared her throat softly. “I want to say that on this occasion of my wedding I feel I am getting in touch with and reaching into a deep part of myself I have never reached before, and which will yield more and more awareness and energy.” With each deliberate breath the little bull on Clyde’s shirt lurched. “I’m glad to have Esther to share this exciting awareness with me.” He grabbed Esther’s hand and raised it high above his head like a prizefighter accepting the championship title. People applauded. Behind me George moaned.

A wispy girl of about nineteen with hair like straw said a wedding out in the pastures with the cows made her feel close to nature. A dark man in mirrored sunglasses and overalls said he felt happy for Clyde since Clyde was his friend and he loved him, but at the same time he had to acknowledge he was sexually attracted to Esther and therefore experiencing some envy; he hoped he would be able to overcome those feelings but if not he hoped they could all get together sometime and talk about it. Esther turned pink while Clyde nodded judiciously like someone making a mental note. The next speaker was convinced from his own experience that marriage could be a trap; he advised Esther and Clyde not to become emotionally dependent but always to preserve their own spaces. Esther’s face was all earnest attention (perhaps what SAVE called “openness”), so unlike the morning Professor Mansfield asked her to adopt the sensibility of another age and suspend her judgment. “I will never suspend my judgment!” I could still hear the fierceness in her voice.

“We’re not getting any sharing from the people in back,” said Derek. “How about you, Vic? You were just telling me you needed to learn the language of feeling.”

“God, you didn’t!” I jabbed him.

He nodded. “You don’t get all that information for nothing. I’m afraid I’ll have to pass,” he said out loud. “I can’t learn that fast.”

“There’s no passing at SAVE. We share whatever is in us.”

“Well, then, on this unusual occasion I feel ...” He paused and his silence felt ominous, especially with all the rum punch he had drunk.

I took his arm. “Please don’t. Just wish them good luck or something. As a favor to me.”

“I wish you both a long and happy life together,” said Victor. “And may your hopes in each other be fulfilled.”

I breathed. George volunteered that he felt hunger and thirst and sexual desire and he wished they would move along with the ceremony so he could at least get something to eat. The SAVE members tittered. That propitious
savoirfaire
doubtless came from the numerous marathons George had attended, studying experimental therapies.

Derek called on me. I said that Esther was one of my oldest and dearest friends, and since she seemed so happy, I was happy for her. Neat, honest, more or less—I congratulated myself. Then I remembered her mother—“If you’re happy, then I’m happy”—and I wanted to die of shame and remorse. Esther did not give any outward sign, though. She went on smiling the same modest, composed smile. Her liberal education served her well.