Jacob Atabet (18 page)

I asked him if the rumors were true about his paintings moving on the canvas. “Maybe,” he said, wiggling his fingers in front of his glass. “Come tell me, little crystal, who will buy it from the gallery? Someone from China? A mysterious man from Hong Kong?”” And then the answer came. “They will study it in a basement. They will give it acupuncture. And then
it will spill all over the floor
.”

“So your paintings
are
alive,” I said.

“It’s good that you whisper,” he replied. “The answer is yes . . . but what a treat for the customer! But I tell them it’s all in their mind. In the retina. Like Op Art.” As he said it Corinne started to shimmer against the darkening vista of the Bay. She was so beautiful I started to ache.

“C’est la vie!”
he said gaily. “Art for art’s sake!”

Then Richard, the waiter, came up with a bottle of wine to celebrate the sale. We got him to take a drink, and he started to flirt with Corinne! In the state I was in, he looked like something from the wall of an ancient church. Changed shape and size—
I
could have been on peyote.

And then another surprise. A. is a longtime fan of
the
San Francisco 49ers, has been going to their games since ’48! It is hard to believe. What frustration, I said, rooting for a team that has been such a chronic disappointment. He answered that Kezar Stadium is a power spot, and drank a toast to a winning season—and to the coming World-View foreshadowed in the 1,700 pages of my book! We then drank to Hegel, Teilhard, Aurobindo, F. W. H. Myers, Frankie Albert (the former 49er quarterback), John Brodie, and Abner Doubleday for inventing baseball. Corinne drank one to Wilhelm Reich. Richard, the waiter, came over and suggested we drink one to Charles McCabe, the columnist, who was sitting at another table. McCabe came over, his silver hair glowing in the candlelight, and drank one to Gladstone for his efforts on behalf of the London whores.

Then came crepes and cognac. A’s black eyes were gleaming. “On the gullible public!” he said, and traded looks with Corinne that could only mean they were spending the night together.

My friend Jacob Atabet—I could see him so clearly now: the earthy Basque with sunlight flowing in his veins, his nature fostered by genes through which the winds of the Pyrenees had blown for thousands of years—this funloving figure was a messenger from worlds that would fill us with glory.

I write this to remember. Last night I could see that a marriage of heaven and earth is intended. All our falls and defeats and struggles have a meaning deeper than we’ve guessed.

I
T HAD BEEN COMING
out gradually, though I had trouble believing it: he was a 49er football fan more committed than most. For ten years he had been a season ticket holder! As the 1970 season developed and it became apparent that the 49ers might win the first division championship in their entire history, the fate of the team became a regular theme of our talks. In October we started to go to the games, and by November we were waiting outside the locker rooms for glimpses of the 49er stars. There was always a crowd there, mainly children and teenage boys, with a few defective-looking adults around the edges, waiting to follow the players as they muscled their way to the cars.

“Hey Brodie, I want to see you about a book,” I yelled one Sunday afternoon, and the quarterback looked slightly bewildered. “Yeah,” he drawled, his features sagging into an expression of weary self-restraint. “You a writer?”

A dozen children were staring up at me as I shouldered my way through the crowd. “I’m a publisher,” I gasped. “Here’s my card.” He gave me a skeptical look. “What kind of books do you publish?” he asked.

I glanced at Atabet. He was smiling encouragement. “Philosophy and religion,” I said. “You could do one on the mystical side of football.”

“Wha’?” He looked startled. “The what side?” The kids around him were jostling for position, and one of them was elbowing past me. “The
mystical
side,” I shouted. “The spiritual, uncanny . . . .” but my voice was drowned in the shouts.

“Write the 49er office,” he yelled and disappeared.

Atabet was shaking his head with approval. “Did you get an autograph?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “But I almost touched him.”

But we weren’t the only ones who were driven in this strange kind of way. Toward the end of the season, after a crucial game with Atlanta, the crowd near the dressing room entrance was bigger than ever. In the very middle of it stood a group I recognized. They were pushing in close to the heroes with just as much ardor as we ever did. John Levy, our mutual friend, Mike Murphy of Esalen, George Leonard, the West Coast editor for
Look
magazine, John Clancy, a San Francisco attorney, and David Meggyesey, the former Cardinal linebacker who had written a scathing attack on pro football, were all shouldering their way toward the players. Leonard seemed to be leading them. At six foot five, he towered over the children and newsboys. Now all five of them seemed desperate for a place near the quarterback.

“Hey George,” I yelled. “What’re you doing?” But before I could reach him, the entire group was crowding toward Brodie. Meggyesey looked guilty, and I could understand why: his book had contained an indictment of fan behavior like this. When he saw me he blushed. Clancy was shouting some strange incantation and Levy provided protection, it seemed, from the police and stadium guards. Suddenly Leonard was next to the quarterback, peering over his shoulder. Was he whispering into his ear?

“Hey George,” I yelled, but it was clear that he was totally distracted. What a strange addiction, I thought, first Atabet and now this unlikely group.

Brodie was striding toward his car with three or four boys at his elbows. The group of five kept pace, then crowded in toward the bumpers. Leonard, it appeared, was studying Brodie’s handwriting or his method of signing cards. He cocked his head from side to side to get a better view. I thought back to our first game that year, to that look in Atabet’s eyes. Now Leonard and the rest were caught in it too. Even Meggyesey, with his widely publicized criticism of behavior like this, was watching the quarterback with rapt attention.

As Brodie pulled away, the entire group stared after him, five abandoned figures at the edge of the empty lot, looking just a little forlorn. I rejoined Atabet and we followed them to a bar across the street. It was a dark and dingy place, full of beefy red-faced types who must have been drunk before the game was over. At first I couldn’t see the group, but then I heard Leonard. He was standing on a chair, towering some three or four feet above the crowd, his silver hair alive in the light of the beer signs. He was shouting something I couldn’t hear from the door, it might’ve been a 49er cheer. When I got closer I could finally make it out.
“The Superbowl is the Supermind!”
he shouted. His group yelled it back, drawing belligerent looks from the people around them. One red-faced, bullnecked man asked them what it meant and Clancy told him the meaning of it would soon become clear. I could see that the crowd around them was hostile and curious at once, as if there might be some truth in the strange incantation.

It was said that the Indian saint Ramakrishna could see the lineaments of God through every event in his life. That is the way I had to understand Atabet’s love of professional football. During that same Atlanta game, with the 49ers trailing in the final quarter, he had seen “a kind of angel” appear above the field. It was an entity, he said, about the size of “a two-story house.”

I asked him where to look.

“There,” he jabbed his hand past the ear of the person in front of me. “Just above the Atlanta line.” Sunlight was slanting in above the rim of the stadium, and there was a luminous haze on the field. It had to be the diffraction of light. “No. No. Not that,” he shook my arm. “I mean right in the middle of it there!”

“In the middle of that haze?” I whispered. The rough-looking man sitting next to me was eyeing us suspiciously. He had worn a yellow hard hat all through the game as if he expected a fight. Atabet was getting excited. “Right in the middle of it!” he shook me. “Now see the flames?”

By squinting, I could see jets of golden light shooting up my eyelashes, but nothing that looked like an angel. I shook my head as the teams lined up. “It’s moving down the field,” he murmured. “Something’s going to happen . . .” and as he said it, Brodie threw a pass to a back who began a run toward the goal. Atabet grabbed my shoulder. “See it!” he cried and stood up with the crowd. “See the thing moving?” The back made a beautiful move past the last Atlanta defender and crossed the goal untouched. “I saw it,” he cried. “I saw it!”

“We all did,” growled the man in the hard hat. “You think you’re so hot because you saw it?”

But Atabet didn’t hear him. “It’s moving up fast,” he whispered. “Look up there.”

By leaning back I could see something all right. Was it a strand of sunlight and mist? Then a fogbank appeared and suddenly the stadium turned gray. “If it’s an angel, would it move around in space?” I whispered, turning my back on the glowering face beside me. “Doesn’t it go back to some other plane?”

“Not if it gets into action here,” he said with total conviction. “It’s amazing. I’ve never seen such a big one.”

Had the game gotten to him? The 49ers had to win it to win the division championship, something they had never done before. Everyone in the stadium had their own way of dealing with the terrible suspense. “If it’s an angel, it must be a big one,” I said.

“That’s right,” he muttered. “It’s a big one.”

“The Supramental descent has begun!” Leonard said to the crowd. I glanced back at Jacob. Would he see that Leonard was making a joke?

He was standing near the bar, with a look of jaunty
savoir faire.
The manly, handsome Basque had appeared. A look of irony had replaced the idiot sense of wonder.

“Hey Jake!” I yelled. “Tell them about the angel.” A beer had prompted the remark, along with Leonard’s infectious spirit. But he only gave me a hooded look of mischief and turned in the other direction. “What’s that you’re saying?” I yelled up to Leonard. “What’s that about the Superbowl?”

“If the 49ers win this year,” he said with a voice that everyone in the place could hear, “the Superbowl becomes the
Supermind!
” Then he stepped down from the chair and our conversation was lost in the confusion around us. Several faces followed him dumbly, as if he had spoken a truth they dimly sensed. I never got a chance to explore the possible connections, however, for the next time I saw him he wasn’t sure what had led to his proclamation. But Atabet had no doubts. “One of them saw it,” he said as we left. “Even though they’re joking.” He turned and looked at me gravely. “Second sight,” he said. “It had to be Murphy or Clancy.”

Was he serious? By now I had come to believe that angels were calling for names, even in places like this. But an angel descending onto the field? I could only comprehend it by seeing that his passion for transfiguration had overwhelmed him in the heat of the game. I had seen other hints of madness like this among people who were usually pillars of reason. Who could forget the bank president who ran out on the field to tackle a Chicago running back in 1968? Or the physics professor at Stanford who called a press conference to present his reasons for the 49ers’ lack of defensive ability? So I decided to humor him. That diffracted light was a field in the sky for projection. You could see anything in it you wanted.

But on Monday the
Chronicle
reported three or four UFO sightings in the Bay Area. UFOs could be some peoples’ way of fitting their visions into an acceptable framework, he said. The thing above the stadium had been “a cone of light with flames at the top,” a form that might resemble a flying saucer.

“Need-determined perception?” I asked. It was a phrase he had used against me.

“All right,” he said glumly. “See if I tell you about them any more. I’ve been to hundreds of games and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“But the fact that you’re not painting, and all that stuff building up inside you.”

“What stuff!” he said. “You mean to say I don’t know the difference?”

“Well, do you?”

Instead of getting angry, he smiled and started to swear. “Well, you smart-assed, over-educated son-of-a-bitch. After all we’ve been through.”

“I think it was inevitable that you’d see something like that at a game,” I said. “You’re as crazy out there as any fan I’ve ever seen.”

He smiled in spite of himself. “Crazy?” he said. “You think I’m crazy?”

“I’ve wondered why you don’t try out for the team.”

“All right,” he sighed. “I won’t talk about it anymore. At least to you. Ah well.” He tossed back his head. “Let them have their simple world. But angel, we know, we know.” He spread his arms wide. “Angel, speak!”

Just as he said it, a foghorn sounded. It was the lowest, most flatulent one I’d heard in years.

“Jesus!” I said. “Is that the kind of thing it is?” It sounded again, even lower than before, as if it were blowing out gas that had gathered for centuries.

“Angel!” he cried. “Now I know that you care!”

(June and July 1971)

Through the unknown, remembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning...

T.S. Eliot

Little Gidding

J
UNE 3

Almost twelve months have passed since our first meeting, but it seems that I have gone through a lifetime of changes. There is no place closed to this new life. Disabling symptoms have become openings to adventure.

The world around me reflects this grace. The Greenwich Press has become a solid support
. Evolutionary Relationships
is more exact and truer, thanks to a year of readings from my newfound friends, and it promises an intellectual opening to this life for others. These have been twelve months of springtime.