"Wilhelm,_Kate_-_Somerset_Dreams(1)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

"No." He starts to turn back toward the door and I stop him again.
"What is your doctorate, Dr. Staunton?"
I can almost hear the gasp from Dorothea, although no sound issues.
"Psychology," he says, and clearly he is in a bad temper now. He doesn't wait for any more questions, or the answer to his question to Dorothea.
I go back to shelling the peas and Annie rolls out her piecrust and Dorothea turns her attention back to the Newburg sauce that she hasn't stopped stirring once. A giggle comes from Annie, and we all ignore it. Presently the peas are finished and I leave to continue my walk through the town, gradually making my way home, stopping to visit several other people on the way. Decay and death are spreading in Somerset, like a disease that starts very slowly, in a hidden place, and emerges only when it is assured of absolute success in the destruction of the host.
The afternoon is very hot and still, and I try to sleep, but give it up after fifteen minutes. I think of the canoe that we used to keep in the garage, and I think of the lake that is a mile away, and presently I am wrestling with the car carriers, and then getting the canoe hoisted up, scratching the finish on the car.
I float down the river in silence, surprising a beaver and three or four frolicking otters; I see a covey of quail rise with an absurd noise like a herd of horses. A fish jumps, almost landing in the canoe. I have sneaked out alone, determined this time to take the rapids, with no audience, no one to applaud my success, or to stand in fearful silence and watch me fail. The current becomes swifter and I can hear the muted roar, still far ahead, but it seems that any chances to change my mind are flashing by too fast to be seized now, and I know that I am afraid, terribly afraid of the white water and the rocks and sharp pitches and deceptive pools that suck and suck in a never ending circle of death. I want to shoot the rapids, and I am so afraid. The roar grows and it is all there is, and now the current is an express belt, carrying me along on its surface with no side eddies or curves. It goes straight to the rocks. I can't turn the canoe. At the last minute I jump out and swim desperately away from the band of swift water, and I am crying and blinded by my tears and I find my way to shore by the feel of the current. I scrape my knees on a rock and stand up and walk from the river to fall face down in the weeds that line the banks. The canoe is lost, and I won't tell anyone what has happened. The following summer he buys another canoe, but I never try the rapids again.
And now there are no more rapids. Only a placid lake with muddy shores and thick water at this end, dark with algae and water hyacinths. I am so hot after getting the canoe on the car, and the air is so heavy that it feels ominous. A storm will come up, I decide. It excites me and I know that I want to be at home when the wind blows. I want to watch the ash tree in the wind, and following the thought, I realize that I want to see the ash tree blown down. This shocks me. It is so childish. Have I ever admitted to anyone, to myself even, why I come back each summer? I can't help myself. I am fascinated by death, I suppose. Daily at the hospital I administer death in small doses, controlled death, temporary death. I am compelled to come home because here too is death. It is like being drawn to the bedside of a loved one that you know is dying, and being at once awed and frightened, and curious about what death is like ultimately. We try so hard to hide the curiosity from the others, the strangers. And that is why I hate the Harvard doctor so much: he is intruding in a family matter. This is our death, not his, to watch and to weep over and mourn. I know that somehow he has learned of this death and it is that which has drawn him, just as it draws me, and I refuse him the right to partake of our sorrow, to test our grief, to measure our loss.
The storm hangs over the horizon out of sight. The change in air pressure depresses me, and the sullen heat, and the unkempt yard, and the empty house that nevertheless rustles with unseen life. Finally I take the letter from Father from my pocket and open it. I don't weep over his letters any longer, but the memory of the paroxysms of the past fills me with the aftertaste of tears as I stare at the childish scrawl: large, ungraceful letters, carefully traced and shaky, formed with too much pressure so that the paper is pierced here and there, the back of the sheet like Braille.
It is brief and inane, as I have known it would be; a cry for release from Them, a prayer to an unhearing child who has become a god, or at least a parent, for forgiveness. Statistics: every year fifty thousand are killed, and she was one of them, and 1.9 million are disabled, and he was one of them. Do all the disabled bear this load of guilt that consumes him daily? He is Prometheus, his bed the rock, his guilt the devouring eagles. The gods wear white coats, and carry magic wands with which they renew him nightly so that he may die by day.
Why doesn't the storm come?
I wait for the storm and don't go down to the lake after all. Another day, I tell myself, and leave the canoe on the car top.
I mix a gin and tonic and wander with it to the back yard where nothing moves now. I stare up at the ash tree; it has grown so high and straight in the twenty years since we planted it. I remember the lightning that shredded the cherry tree that once stood there, the splinters of white wood that I picked up all over the yard afterward. The following week Father brought home the tiny ash stick and very solemnly we planted it in the same spot. I cried because it wasn't another cherry tree. I smile, recalling my tears and the tantrum, and the near ritual of the tree planting. At eight I was too old for the tears and the tantrum, but neither Father nor Mother objected. I sit in the yard, letting the past glide in and out of my mind without trying to stop the flow.
At six I dress for dinner with Dr. Warren and Norma. This is our new ritual. My first evening home I dine with the doctor and his wife. They are very lonely, I suspect, although neither says so. I walk through the quiet town as it dozes in the evening, the few occupied houses tightly shaded and closed against the heat. Norma had air-conditioning installed years ago and her house chills me when I first enter. She ushers me to the far side, to a glassed porch that is walled with vines and coleus plants with yellow, red, white leaves, and a funny little fountain that has blue-tinted water splashing over large enameled clam shells. I hesitate at the doorway to the porch. Dr. Staunton is there, holding a glass of Norma's special summer drink which contains lime juice, rum, honey, soda water, and God knows what else. He is speaking very earnestly to Dr. Warren, and both rise when they see me.
"Miss Matthews, how nice to see you again." Dr. Staunton bows slightly, and Dr. Warren pulls a wicker chair closer to his own for me. He hands me a glass.
"Edgar has been telling me about the research he's doing up here with the boys," Dr. Warren says.
Edgar? I nod, and sip the drink.
"I really was asking Blair for his assistance," Edgar Staunton says, smiling, but not on the inside. I wonder if he ever smiles on the inside.
Blair. I glance at Dr. Warren, who will forever be Dr. Warren to me, and wonder at the easy familiarity. Has he been so lonesome that he succumbed to the first outsider who came in and treated him like a doctor and asked for help?
"What is your research, Dr. Staunton?" I ask.
He doesn't tell me to use his first name. He says, "I brought some of my graduate students who are interested in the study of dreams, and we are using your town as a more or less controlled environment. I was wondering if some of the local people might like to participate, also."
Vampire, I thought. Sleeping by day, manning the electroencephalograph by night, guarding the electrodes, reading the pen tracings, sucking out the inner life of the volunteers, feeding on the wishes and fears ...
"How exactly does one go about doing dream research?" I ask.
"What we would like from your townspeople is a simple record of the dreams they recall on awakening. Before they even get up, or stir much at all, we'd like for them to jot down what they remember of the dreams they've had during the night. We don't want them to sign them, or indicate in any way whose dreams they are, you understand. We aren't trying to analyze anyone, just sample the dreams."
I nod, and turn my attention to the splashing water in the fountain. "I thought they used machines, or something...."
I can hear the slight edge in his voice again as he says, "On the student volunteers only, or others who volunteer for that kind of experimentation. Would you be interested in participating, Miss Matthews?"
"I don't know. I might be. Just what do you mean by controlled environment?"
"The stimuli are extremely limited by the conditions of the town, its lack of sensory variety, the absence of television or movies, its isolation from any of the influences of a metropolitan cultural center. The stimuli presented to the volunteers will be almost exactly the same as those experienced by the inhabitants of the town. . . ."
"Why, Dr. Staunton, we have television here, and there are movie houses in Hawley, and even summer concerts." Norma stands in the doorway holding a tray of thumbnail-sized biscuits filled with savory sausage, and her blue eyes snap indignantly as she turns from the psychologist to her husband, who is quietly regarding the Harvard doctor.
"Yes, but I understand that the reception is very poor and you are limited to two channels, which few bother to watch."
"When there's something on worthwhile to watch, we tune in, but we haven't allowed ourselves to become addicted to it," Norma says.
I wish Norma could have waited another minute or two before stopping him, but there will be time, through dinner, after dinner. We will return to his research. I take one of the pastries and watch Staunton and Dr. Warren, and listen to the talk that has now turned to the value of the dam on the river, and the growth in tourism at the far end of the valley, and the stagnation at this end. Staunton knows about it all. I wonder if he has had a computer search out just the right spot for his studies, find just the right-sized town, with the correct number of people and the appropriate kind of eliciting stimuli. There are only twenty-two families in the town now, a total population of forty-one, counting me. Probably he can get five or six of them to help him, and with eight students, that would be a fair sample. For what, I don't know.
I listen again to the Harvard doctor. "I wasn't certain that your townspeople would even speak to us, from what I'd heard about the suspicions of rural villages and the like."
"How ridiculous," Norma says.
"Yes, so I am learning. I must say the reception we have received has heartened me tremendously."
I smile into my drink, and I know that he will find everyone very friendly, ready to say good morning, good afternoon, how're things, nice weather. Wait until he tries to draw them into reporting dreams, I tell myself. I know Dr. Warren is thinking this too, but neither of us says anything.
"I would like your help in particular, Blair," Edgar says, smiling very openly now. "And yours, Norma." I swallow some of the ice and watch Norma over the rim of the glass. She is terribly polite now, with such a sweet smile on her pretty face, and her eyes so calm and friendly.
"Really, Dr. Staunton? I can't imagine why. I mean, I never seem to recall anything I dream no matter how hard I try." Norma realizes that the tray is not being passed around, and she picks it up and invites Staunton to help himself.
"That's the beauty of this project," Staunton says, holding one of the tiny biscuits almost to his lips. "Most people say the same thing, and then they find out that they really do dream, quite a lot in fact, and that if they try to remember before they get out of bed, why, they can recapture most of it." He pops the biscuit into his mouth and touches his fingertips to the napkin spread on his knees.
"But, Dr. Staunton, I don't dream," Norma says, even more friendly than before, urging another of the biscuits on him, smiling at him. He really shouldn't have called her Norma.
"But everybody dreams...."
"Oh, is that what your books teach? How strange of them." Norma notices that our glasses are almost empty, and excuses herself, to return in a moment with the pitcher.
Dr. Warren has said nothing during the exchange between Norma and Staunton. I can see the crinkle lines that come and go about his eyes, but that is because I know where to look. He remains very serious when Staunton turns to him.
"You would be willing to cooperate, wouldn't you, Blair? I mean, you understand the necessity of this sort of research."
"Yes, of course, except that I'm a real ogre when I wake up. Takes an hour, two hours for me to get charged up for the day. My metabolism is so low in the hours just before and after dawn, I'm certain that I would be a washout for your purposes, and by the time I'm human again, the night has become as if it never existed for me."
Dr. Staunton is not sipping any longer. He takes a long swallow and then another. He is not scowling, but I feel that if he doesn't let it show, he will have an attack of ulcers, or at least indigestion, before the night is over. He has no more liking for me than I have for him, but he forces the smile back into place and it is my turn.
"Miss Matthews?"
"I haven't decided yet," I say. "I'm curious about it, and I do dream. I read an article somewhere, in _Time_, or _Newsweek_, or someplace, and it sounds very mysterious, but I don't like the idea of the wires in the brain, and the earphones and all."
Very patiently he explains again that only his student volunteers use the equipment, and others who specifically volunteer for that phase. I ask if I might see how they use it sometime, and he is forced to say yes. He tries to get my yes in return, but I am coy and say only that I have to think about it first. He tries to get Dr. Warren to promise to approach other people in the town, try to get their cooperation for him, and Dr. Warren sidesteps adroitly. I know the thought will occur to him to use me for that purpose, but it doesn't that evening. I decide that he isn't terribly bright. I wonder about his students, and I invite him to bring them, all of them, to my house for an outdoor barbecue the following night. That is all he gets from any of us, and dinner seems very slow, although, as usual, very good. Staunton excuses himself quickly after dinner, saying, with his off-again, on-again smile, that he must return to work, that only the fortunate are allowed their nights of rest.
No one argues with him, or urges him to linger, and when he is gone I help Norma with the dishes and Dr. Warren sits in the kitchen having black coffee, and we talk about the Harvard doctor.