Sounded more like vegetation in my opinion. Mental masturbation posing as philosophy. Still, that’s who he was, so that was
who I had to be—to all intents and purposes.
He was more interesting on the subject he’d been working on just before his death, though maybe I felt that because the subject
of coincidence had begun to interest me for my own personal reasons. Without coincidence, in fact quite a few coincidences,
I wouldn’t have been where I was by then, sitting very pretty, comfortably ensconced in my new—and George’s old—life.
All the same, I still couldn’t bring myself to believe that a coincidence was anything more than just a coincidence, no matter
how amazing. There was no more to it than that. There couldn’t be. No more than met the eye.
Not to George, though. Back to his notebooks:
What is this thing “synchronicity”? What does it
mean?
Jung tells a story that suggests an answer.
“A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling
me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned
round and saw a flying insect knocking against the windowpane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in
the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle,
the common rose-chafer (
Cetonia aurata
), which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment.”
Up till that time, Jung writes, the woman had refused to believe that her dreams could be important in resolving her psychological
problems. She could not see the connection. Now she understood how all kinds of connections might exist, and how they would
explain a great many things if they did. She recovered quickly.
But what does synchronicity itself explain? Koestler writes in
Janus
:
“An essential feature of modern physics is its increasingly
holistic
trend, based on the insight that the whole is as necessary for the understanding of its parts as the parts are necessary
for understanding the whole. An early expression of this trend, dating from the turn of the century, was ‘Mach’s Principle,’
endorsed by Einstein. It states that the inertial properties of terrestrial matter are determined by the total mass of the
universe around us.”
Like the Chinese proverb: “If you cut a blade of grass, you shake the universe.”
But what is this shakeable universe and the blade of grass
made
of? What is the
stuff
of reality? On the cutting edge of theoretical physics now we have
String Theory
, which suggests that the ultimate building block of everything, including space, is a kind of minute string or loop that
vibrates at different speeds according to whether it’s going to become part of an oxygen molecule, a rose petal, Einstein’s
brain—or whatever. These so far purely theoretical strings are supposed to be so small as to be not only undetectable but
virtually unimaginable. I read somewhere that if you blew up a single atom to the size of the known universe, one of these
superstrings that made it up would still be only the size of a tree. In the end, this sort of thing strikes me as being uncomfortably
close to the farcical notion of medieval scholars arguing in all seriousness about how many angels could dance on the head
of a pin.
The point is, every time you get “reality” down to one thing, it has a habit of turning into something else.
Physicist F. David Peat writes: “Science may, in the end, have to look in new directions if its understanding of nature is
to continue. Already many scientists are dissatisfied by the ‘reductionist’ nature of some branches of science and with the
claim that an ultimate level of reality is shortly to be reached as a result of research on elementary particles.… The idea
that reality may unfold into a complex, and potentially endless, series of levels changes the whole meaning of reductionism.…
Any level of scientific explanation depends on, and is conditioned by, concepts and meanings that arise in other levels.”
Jung wrote: “We delude ourselves with the thought that we know much more about matter than about a ‘metaphysical’ mind or
spirit, and so we overestimate material causation and believe that it alone affords us a true explanation of life. But
matter is just as inscrutable as mind.
“
In other words, mind and matter are one. Back in the twenties and thirties, when the quantum revolution was getting under
way, mathematicians and cosmologists like Jeans and Eddington were saying things like, “The stuff of the world is mind stuff,”
and, “The universe looks less and less like a great machine and more and more like a great thought.”
It is a fact that the deeper you look into matter, the less “material” it becomes. Cells are made of atoms and atoms are mostly
space, then down below that we’re into quantum indeterminacy, “quarks” and “gluons” and now these damn “strings.” Matter has
no more physical substance than a thought.
How much substance has a thought?
The absence of anything—no life, no universe, nothing—is unthinkable. Try it. You cannot imagine that nothing exists. But
if, as seems increasingly likely, all that exists is a thought, whose thought is it?
And why does it seem to take two forms, matter and mind? Is that just a misperception on our part, whatever we are, and however
we fit in?
Or is all this speculation simply missing the point? Is something quite different going on?
Is it all about something else?
Those were the last words George ever wrote.
I wondered if he found the answer.
S
teve Coleman’s lawyers put up a great fight in his defense. I decided that if ever I had a problem, I’d want those guys in
my corner. But the verdict was never in question given the weight of evidence against him, which meant that the handing down
of a thirty-year sentence came to Sara not so much as a shock as a final line drawn under the whole sorry episode in her life.
It had been traumatic, but I had been there throughout to soften the blow, to hold her hand and stop her dwelling too much
on what might have been. She readjusted to reality beneath my unobtrusive guidance. The night of the verdict we slept together,
but didn’t have sex till the next morning. Though neither of us put it into words, it was symbolic of the start of a new life—together.
I was ready to play my part now. I had absorbed the role. You could not tell me from the real thing.
“Do that thing you used to do,” she said suddenly, softly, through her sighs of pleasure.
I felt a prickle of panic. Various refinements and embellishments of our current not unconventional position ran through my
mind. I would have to bluff.
“What was that?” I whispered back, kissing her, hoping I was not admitting to an ignorance of some dramatic eccentricity that
nothing in his notebooks or the detritus of his life had prepared me for.
I need not have worried. Gently taking my hand, she guided it, and placed the tip of my finger precisely where she wanted
it.
“You know…”
She even began the movement at the rhythm she remembered.
I was home.
I was home.
But I didn’t realize how true that was until we sat together at breakfast, facing each other across the kitchen table. Although
this was a new experience for me, it felt somehow right—strangely right in a way I couldn’t quite explain or, for that matter,
understand.
Sara looked at me over the rim of her coffee mug with a smile in her eyes that I had never seen before. There was such a wealth
of feeling in that smile, so many curious contradictions, that for a moment I felt strangely unnerved. I was used to simple
emotions like fear and greed. My motives were simple and clear-cut: I wanted, so I went out and got. I had no time for uncertainty
or doubt. Ambiguity of all kinds had long been banished from my life; it hindered my effectiveness. Yet there I found myself
looking down into its spiral depths and feeling dizzy, afraid almost that I might fall.
Quite suddenly and impulsively, she reached across the table and placed her hand on mine. “Thank you,” she said softly.
I did not know what to reply, yet felt I should say something. “For what?”
“For everything. I’ve been very foolish, haven’t I?”
Her eyes had still not left mine, and I too felt unable to look away. I shook my head. “Foolish people never take risks,”
I said. “You do. That’s good.”
I watched as she got up from her chair and came around the table to where I sat. She put her arms around my shoulders and
rested her face gently on the top of my head.
“Thank you,” she said after a while. “Thank you for loving me.”
My voice cracked oddly when I tried to speak, probably because I had no idea what to say. I was rapidly becoming lost in a
complex and confusing situation. I cleared my throat and tried again, at the same time hesitantly raising my hand and letting
it rest lightly on her forearm where it lay across my chest.
“That’s what I’m here for,” I said.
She brought her lips down to mine and kissed me. I responded by swiveling on my chair and slipping my arms beneath the light
robe she wore and feeling the smoothness of her skin. She lowered herself onto my lap and sat astride me, our mouths still
locked together and our mutual desire suddenly requiring urgent satisfaction. I carried her like that back to the bedroom,
from which we emerged a half-hour later, flushed and perspiring, to take a shower together.
It was almost eleven by the time she was dressed and ready to go to the gallery. It was a Saturday and she wouldn’t normally
have gone in over the weekend, but they had an opening coming up on Tuesday and there was a lot to get ready. She kissed me
goodbye at the door and reminded me that we had a party in the Village that evening. I watched her walk along the corridor
to the elevator. She turned and waved as it opened, then she was gone.
Back in the apartment I found myself in a strange limbo. I knew that I was slipping into the role that I was playing as though
it were my life, which it was not and never could be. Nor did I want it to be. I had about as much ambition to be George Daly
as I had to work in some dry goods store in Cleveland. And yet I was beginning to feel at home in his life, and comfortable.
And dangerously attracted to his wife. I had always been aware that she was a good-looking woman, but I had not expected this
degree of feeling between us. For God’s sake, I had planned to murder her. And that plan was still there, at the back of my
mind, awaiting only the right opportunity.
And yet… suppose Sara were to have an accident, now, after Steve’s trial? Wouldn’t that risk opening up the whole can of worms?
After all, Steve would have nothing to lose now by admitting his affair with Sara. If she died in even faintly questionable
circumstances, and I was left, as I would be, far better off under the terms of her will than under the terms of a divorce,
he might well think it his civic duty to reveal my motive by telling of their affair and the fact that I had known about it.
What it had been in his interests to keep quiet during his trial might now provide grounds for an appeal, a further investigation,
a retrial even. I was in a tricky position. I had to think carefully.
Couldn’t I just carry on as I was? The more I thought about it, the more I could see no reason why not. I could simply live
as George Daly. It was a comfortable and easy life, and the night that I’d just spent with Sara held out the prospect of its
being a very agreeable one. There was something in her sexuality that excited me in ways I did not know how to describe. Nadia
had been sensual and uninhibited, but somehow obvious. What you saw was what you got, and that was pretty good. But with Sara
what you got was so much more than what you saw. True, what you saw was great. But what you got, what I now got, was somehow
special, exclusive, mine and mine alone. At least that was how it felt. And it was a nice feeling. The first time I’d ever
had it.
So, all right, I said to myself, suppose I go on as I am, living as George Daly. Of course I had no intention of writing any
books, because for one thing I saw now what an empty fraud George’s writing career had been. It was not something he earned
a living at, just something he was being indulged in—a kept man.
For a while I allowed myself the fantasy that my future was settled, that I had found the role I would play for the rest of
my life. But then the doubts set in again. It was true that I could decide to stay with Sara, but suppose she got tired of
me—of George, that is—as she had before? If it happened once, it could happen again, and surely would in time. What would
I do then? I would be back at square one. Why should I wait around passively for that?
I felt the need for guidance, but I didn’t know from where. It wasn’t in my nature to ask people for advice. Plus the things
I needed advice on weren’t the kind of things you talked about.
Then I remembered something I’d read about in George’s notes a while back. His “library angel.”
Did I believe it? I decided it couldn’t hurt to try. I turned my head away from the bookshelves, reached out, and picked a
book at random.
It was the
I Ching
.
I knew what it was, or was supposed to be—another of those mysterious reflections of the supposed fact that the universe is
a whole. I had read George on the subject—not that it was clear he entirely believed it himself. The theory was that any single
set of phenomena, however small or large, is connected to everything else. Thus, if you have the knack for it, you can read
a person’s future and possibly that of the whole human race from the leaves left in the bottom of a tea cup. Or you can figure
out from the movements of the stars whether or not you should buy that new car this week, or take a trip to Vegas. The / Ching
was another variation on the reading of omens. And, I had to admit it, an omen was what I needed at that moment.