Dancing in the Light (30 page)

In the meantime, Vassy was working with an English writer on his screenplay about whales, which he had outlined to me during our first dinner together. It was a fascinating romantic and metaphysical adventure story, and he had financing to develop it.

While I played Tahoe and Vegas his co-writer, Marc Peplow, would come with us and work with him so we could all be together.

We all piled into the performers’ house in Tahoe, a set and a setting straight out of an old Betty Grable movie.

It wasn’t long before Vassy and I both complained bitterly about the night hours we had to adjust to because of my schedule. He was a man who liked to rise just after the sun. He felt turned around and “out of order with nature” when he
went to bed when most people get up. He tried to sleep before I got home, but said that that wasn’t possible for him, either, because he couldn’t really relax unless he knew I was there. I understood completely. I would have had the same trouble.

Perhaps the day-night reversal was responsible for some of what began to happen. But I think perhaps it had more to do with his own emotional work habits.

Whatever the reason, as Vassy began to work on his script with Marc, I noticed that he became more and more tortured. They would decide on a scene and read me the outline of it, happily sure that they were working in the right direction. Then Vassy would begin to emotionally writhe around in agony. He really suffered the pangs of insecurity to an extent greater than anything I had observed in the American writers I knew. He stared at the ceiling, and instead of analyzing the scene he was involved with, he verbalized about how much he was suffering … how difficult and painful the creative process was. I knew something about that, but I somehow just accepted it as part of the process. He went into long detail about how excruciating it was. We tried to discuss the problems of creative work where original ideas were concerned, but he really didn’t want to acknowledge that creativity could also be joyful. He simply
could
not countenance such a concept, claiming instead that in order to be creative one
needed
to suffer. I had been having that discussion for years with artists I knew. It was a favorite topic among creative artists who were good and knew it. Some came down on the side of creative happiness, some came down on the side of creative torture. Did one need internal emotional conflict, pressure, in order to produce great work, or was greater work forthcoming when neurosis was unlocked? To Vassy, though, there was no discussion. Creativity that flamed easily was suspect, and whenever he felt it in himself, he was certain his creative
expression was faulty. I saw his theory in action. Marc seemed able to roll with the tortured punches of creative pain, yet I could see an aspect of him wonder also if all the pain was actually necessary. But Vassy had institutionalized his suffering and without it he felt he was literally incapable of creating.

I remembered my years in film, working under all kinds of circumstances. Every time I was happy, I was better. When I was miserable or blocked, nothing worked. That seemed to apply to those I had worked with, as well, or maybe that had been because I usually walked away from self-imposed suffering, figuring it just wasn’t worth it. With an artist like Vassy, though, it wasn’t possible to walk away because, first, he was brilliant, and second, he
needed
everyone involved with him to be involved also with his
grande torture
in order to plumb the depths of
their
potential.

I watched and observed as the weeks bumped by. Great shouts of gut-wrenching excitement followed by sinking silences emanated from the room where Vassy and Marc worked. During the day I brought them coffee and mounds of cheeses and salads prepared by the cook hired to take care of the entertainers. Then around six o’clock every afternoon, we would all sit down to a family meal of rice and vegetables, homemade bread, and a lusty meat dish which Vassy usually had had a hand in preparing. He loved to preside at the head of the table, where he would pour glasses of chilled vodka flavored with raspberry leaves he had plucked from the bushes surrounding the house. He could identify each flower, bush, and tree on the property and told us just where the corresponding flora grew in Russia. He stuffed the raspberry leaves into the vodka and let it marinate until it was permeated with the fruit flavor.

While presiding over the head of the table, Vassy held forth on many subjects. He loved to hear himself talk as much as we did. But it wasn’t so
much
what
he was saying as much as it was the
fact
that he was. I felt that he needed to be the commanding head of the household, the master orator, the initiator of conversations. It was a charming need because he took such pleasure in our being there. It was clear he missed the family environment of his country house in Russia. He would lift his chilled raspberry vodka glass, look into it, and while watching its contents gradually disappear, he would launch into one of his favorite topics—Love versus Respect. Vassy had the conviction that one could not love and respect another human being at the same time.

“When one loves another,” he would say, “one is so involved with that emotion that it is impossible to respect the integrity of another.”

“But Honeybear,” I would counter, “you can’t have real love without respect.”

“That is not true in Russia. You either love or you respect. You cannot do both.”

“How do you mean?”

“With love you have jealousy, possessiveness, and many other emotions and passions which make respect impossible. We know that in Russia, therefore we accept it.”

I had heard him espouse this theory many times, usually profoundly shocking everyone within earshot. It was a theory which we in America might have subscribed to in the nineteenth century, but since the evolution of human rights—civil, female, and otherwise—we had come to comprehend that it was not only possible to have both, but actually necessary, otherwise democracy couldn’t work. But then it was becoming clear to me that Vassy, in his “Russianness,” wanted his own freedom, yet didn’t understand the democratic principle of respecting the freedom of others
while
you loved them.

“Sometimes I think that Russians don’t know respect,” he would say. “They know only love. Therefore their actions are motivated by feelings when they love. In Russia my neighbor can knock at my
door at 3:00 a.m. and ask for five rubles, or a cup of hot tea. And if I don’t help him, he is surprised. And I expect the same from him. Here, you respect privacy. You Americans know only respect. You don’t understand love. You don’t know how to love. You know only how to respect. You think you are doing both, but you’re not.”

His was a one-sided theory that nevertheless bore examination. It seemed outrageously judgmental on the surface. But the more I observed the outrage he precipitated, the more I began to wonder if he didn’t have a point.

“For example,” he would say, “you have your muggings and your crime on the streets. People complain. But we in Russia do not have such crime. Because the people would lynch muggers. Your people here prefer not to be involved. They permit others to be hurt. We have community love. We don’t permit.”

“No,” I’d say, “you have drunks.”

“Perhaps, but no drunkard would freeze to death in the snow. Everyone protects drunkards. That is love. You respect the rights of someone to die if he is not your problem. You see?”

I could see his point. But to me his logic was faulty. It was neither respectful nor loving to let a drunk freeze to death. Far more likely, it was apathy or worse … a desire not to be “involved.” Yet the stories I had heard of Russians who, overnight, turned their backs on any individual attacked by the state were truly terrible examples of “not becoming involved,” even though involvement might put one at real risk. I had to conclude it was much too easy to be simplistic about such matters.

But the subject that haunted Vassy most of all was the issue of good and evil. He saw it as a black and white dilemma. And he saw both good and evil as forces outside of man—as God and Satan. Sometimes when we argued and his intractability versus my stubborn analysis became frustratingly heated, I
would scream and shout at him, and he would feign calmness, which enraged me even further. During such times, he would grasp my shoulders and say, “Don’t allow yourself this. It is Satan getting the better hand.” He spoke with genuine belief and conviction. It wasn’t pious or self-righteous. An anguished expression reflecting his unhappiness at my inability to cope with my “evil” would flood his eyes. He actually seemed to fear that I had been overtaken by Satan during my more explosively frustrated moments.

I remembered how, upon entering my Malibu place from Paris, his first act was to unpack the beautiful Bible and place it in an honored position on the bureau in the bedroom. “Where we will always be aware of it,” he said.

I used to walk by that Bible, open its leather-bound cover, and wish I could read the Russian writing. Maybe somewhere in its contents lay the keys to understanding Vassy’s fundamental values, which were sometimes so foreign to me.

He would often talk about how spiritually in tune we were, that I always could feel everything he was feeling, physically and mentally. He said it would be impossible to lie to me because not only would I know it immediately, but he would be lying to himself. I said I felt him the way one sees colors, clearly, very sure and always right about his innermost moods and fears.

As his work process became more and more tortured for him, I tried to help alleviate the emotional conflict by talking about it. He didn’t like that approach. He never believed anything could be solved by talking—only by feeling. Wouldn’t open discussion help alleviate the problem and help open the lines of communication again? “No,” he said, “Russians don’t talk. They
feel
their passion. You Americans analyze your passion until there is no passion left.”

“But how do you resolve your differences that way?” I asked.

“We don’t. We accept them until we cannot accept them anymore.”

“Then what?”

“Then change happens. All things have their time. Nothing should be permanent except struggle with the dark side within ourselves.”

There it was again. The concept that happiness and resolution were not possible because it was one’s destiny to suffer was beginning to seriously get me down. It wasn’t an ever-present emotional cloud, exactly, but it certainly lurked under the surface of every projected idea Vassy and I contemplated in working together. Yet he really did enjoy being happy—unlike many people I knew who felt they didn’t deserve happiness. No, he
loved
happiness. He brought explosive passion to joy, to sex, to laughter, but always I was conscious now that our relationship was tinged with an anticipation that the happiness not only would end, but
should
end in order to make room for predestined struggle.

So Vassy and I launched into a permanent argument about good and evil. Neither of us questioned the concept of reincarnation. Neither of us questioned the existence of God or that God was total love. Neither of us questioned the struggle toward the realization of God. Where we came apart at the seams was in the
process
of the realization of God. I wished, if possible, to come to a resolution of this difference.

When we left Tahoe and returned to Los Angeles, I called Kevin Ryerson, the medium through whom I had had my first personal encounter with channeling. Vassy was accustomed to consulting with “seers,” so one more would just add to his knowledge. He had full respect for spiritual entities who spoke through human channels.

Chapter 12

I
had long since shared with Vassy my experiences with John and McPherson. Indeed, one of the ties that bound me to Vassy was the knowledge that I could freely discuss my new awareness and beliefs with him. Vassy had had an acquaintance with trance mediums in Russia. He said many people there visited psychics and mediums these days, because most of the personal information gleaned from them eventually checked out.

So Vassy, well acquainted with trance medium-ship, accepted Kevin as an individual who simply had a talent for acting as an instrument of communication with spiritual entities, who only differed from us because they were not physically incarnate. That spiritual entities existed in the spiritual realm was not a question for Vassy. That they had lived before on the earth plane was not a question either. Vassy’s problem was whether or not some of them might be evil. So the thrust of Vassy’s interest and inquiry on this particular evening was the dichotomy between good and evil. It was an issue that plagued him and he was genuinely attempting to resolve it in some way.

When Kevin arrived at the house, Vassy and I were eating Russian kasha (a kind of roasted buckwheat) with garlic and onions. Kevin was wearing one of his immaculate, all-beige outfits, but was not
deterred in the least by the prospect of spotting or staining it. He joined in the consumption of the kasha with verve and enthusiasm and Vassy didn’t wait for Kevin to trance out and bring through John and McPherson. He engaged Kevin immediately in a discussion of his favorite value-confusing topic—the forces of evil.

Between mouthfuls of food Vassy, the Russian Christian, questioned Kevin, the nonreligious but God-loving American trance medium, about what he thought of the whole matter of good and evil, and as I watched and listened I was impressed by how well thought out the specifics of Vassy’s point of view were.

“Don’t you think,” asked Vassy of Kevin, “that if humans, and the earth plane itself, are the result of having fallen from the grace of God, then evil is a part of the supernatural Divine Force? Therefore evil itself is a part of God?”

Kevin calmly chewed his kasha. This was clearly not the first heavyweight “good and evil” discussion that he had ever encountered.

“I don’t believe,” said Kevin, “that there is any such thing as evil.”