L'Engle, Madeleine - A Ring of Endless Light (12 page)

of course I'm upset." "You're more upset than just of course.Why?" "It's just-it's just-there's death everywhere-Commander Rodney-and watching Grandfather, and now Ynid's baby for no reason-it's just everywhere." "Always has been. It's part of the price of being born." "It just seems that lately . . ." My voice trembled and I leaned forward and carefully scratched Rochester behind the ears. "Is the price too high?" Adam asked. I shrugged, in the way that Mother hates. "Are you afraid?" he asked softly. Yes. I didn't say it aloud. I didn't need to. "Of what, Vicky?" He picked up another handful of sand, and started trickling it through his fingers. "Dying?" 161 His voice wasn't loud, but the word seemed to explode into the night. Mr. Rochester shifted position and I continued absent- mindedly to scratch behind his ears, his short fur rough under my fingers. "Not so much of dying, if-I'm afraid of annihilation. Of not being." Adam let all the sand fall. "I guess we all are, if it comes to that." "Is that what you think it comes to? That Commander Rodney was just snuffed out? And Ynid's baby? And that Grandfather will be? And all of us?" There was a long silence against which the waves moving into shore and the light wind in the grasses and Rochester's breathing sounded in counterpoint. At last Adam spoke. "I'm not a churchgoer, Vicky. I hadn't darkened the doors of a church since I sang in choir at school till--till Commander Rodney's funeral. So maybe what I think is kind of heretical," "What doyou think?" I desperately wanted to know. Maybe because of Basil, I trusted Adam. The breeze lifted and blew across us, pushing my hair back from my forehead. I must have shivered, because Adam put one arm lightly across my shoulders. "When are you most completely you, Vicky?" It wasn't at all what I had expected him to say. I was looking for answers, not more questions. "When?" he repeated. Maybe because I was feeling extraordinarily tired I was thinking in scenes, rather than logical sequences, and across my mind's eye flashed a picture of the loft, with the old camp cots, and the windows overlooking the ocean, 162 and the lighthouse at night with its friendly beam, and on the far wall the lines of the poem Grandfather had painted there, if thou could'st empty all thyself of self . . . I was notreally myself when I was all replete with very me. So when was I? "When you first took me to meet Basil," I said slowly, "and when I was petting him and scratching his chest . . ." "Who were you thinking about?" "Basil." "Were you thinking about you?" "No." "But you were really being you?" "Yes." "So that's contradiction, isn't it? You weren't thinking about yourself at all. You were completely thrown outof yourself in concentration on Basil. And yet you were really being really you." I leaned my head against Adam's shoulder. "Much more than when I'm all replete with very me." His right hand drew my head more comfortably against his shoulder. "So, when we're thinking consciously about ourselves, we're less ourselves than when we're not being self-centered." "I suppose ..." "Okay, here's another analogy. Where are you when you write poetry?" "This summer I'm usually up in the loft." "You know that's not what I mean. When you're actually writing a poem, when you're in the middle of it, where are you?" "I'm not sure. I'm more in the poem than I am in me. 163 I'm using my mind, really using it, and yet I'm not directing the poem or telling it where to go. It's telling me." His strong fingers moved gently across my hair. "That's the way it is with science, too. All the great scientists, like Newton, like Einstein, repeat the same thing-that the discoveries don't come when you're consciously looking for them. They come when for some reason you've let go conscious control. They come in a sudden flash, and you can receive that flash, or you can refuse to. But if you're willing to receive it, then for that instantaneous moment of time you're really you, but you're not conscious in the same way you have to be later on when you look at what you saw in the flash, and then have to work out the equations to prove it." I heard every word he said. And I think I understood. At the same time my entire body was conscious of the feel of his fingers stroking my hair. I wondered if he felt it as strongly as I did. But I asked, "Has that happened to you, that knowing in a flash?" "Not in the way it did to Einstein, with his theory of relativity. Or to Dr. O'Keefe, with his work on limb regeneration. But in little ways with Basil, yes. He's taught me more about himself than I could have learned with just my thinking self. And Basil-Basil has taught you, hasn't he?" "Yes. Oh, yes." He lifted his hand and stopped stroking. "And you saw Jeb with Ynid." Yes, I had seen Dr. Nutteley with Ynid. In the midst of his pain, Jeb had been wholly real. "What I think"-Adam's hand began caressing my hair 164 again-"is that if we're still around after we die, it will be more like those moments when we let go, than the way we are most of the time. It'll be-it'll be the self beyond the self we know." At that moment there was a rip in the clouds and an island of star-sparkled sky appeared, its light so brilliant it seemed to reach down beyond the horizon and encircle the earth, a ring of pure and endless light. I wasn't sure that Adam's words were comforting. But his arm about me was. He made me feel very real, not replete with me at all, only real, and hopeful. He turned toward me and I thought he was going to kiss me and I wanted him to kiss me. But he just looked at me for a long time without smiling, and I wondered how much he could see in the island of starlight. His face was shadowed, and maybe it was just that more clouds opened, but it was as though his light had come on, and he smiled. "I knew we were going to be able to talk, Vicky. I knew it when I first met you. I don't talk this way to many people." I murmured, "I don't either." Only, maybe, to people like Grandfather. But this was different. As different as being with Basil. And I knew that if Adam kissed me it was going to be different from Zachary, with all his experience, or Leo, with all his naivete. Adam did not kiss me. Yet I felt as close to him as though he had. 7 �*� I woke up early the next morning, with the summer sun pouring across my bed and my eyes. I looked at my watch. Not yet six. Nobody'd be stirring for another hour. I pulled my writing things from under the bed, dressed, and slipped quietly down the ladder. The house was silent. No sound from the big four-poster bed where my parents were sleeping. No sound from the hospital bed in Grandfather's study. If he was awake he would be either reading or meditating. Rochester rose from his battered red rug at the foot of the ladder, stretched, and followed me. Sunlight streamed across the kitchen. I wanted to write something for Ynid. I stared across the porch to the blinding early-morning light bursting across the sea. A sonnet. A sonnet for Ynid and her baby. Ynid couldn't read. But Jeb Nutteley could, and Adam, if I wrote something I dared give them. I stopped thinking about Dr. Nutteley and Adam and focused on the poem. It came swiftly, with lots of quick crossings-out, as new words, new lines pushed aside what I had first written down. 166 The earth will never be the same again. Rock, water, tree, iron, share this grief As distant stars participate in pain. A candle snuffed, a falling star or leaf, A dolphin death, O this particular loss Is Heaven-mourned; for if no angel cried, If this small one was tossed away as dross, The very galaxies then would have lied. How shall we sing our love's song now In this strange land where all are born to die? Each tree and leaf and star show how The universe is part of this one cry, That every life is noted and is cherished, And nothing loved is ever lost or perished. Did I believe that? I didn't know, but I had not, as it were, dictated the words, I had simply followed them where they wanted to lead. And whether or not it was a passable sonnet I didn't know, nor whether or not I'd presume to show it to Dr. Nutteley or Adam. But I felt the good kind of emptiness that comes when I've finished writing something. The emptiness quickly translated itself into plain, ordinary hunger. I'd just put a saucepan of milk on the stove to warm when the phone rang. "Vicky, I'm glad it's you. This is Adam." "Yes. Hi!" "I hope I didn't wake anybody. Listen, can you come over this morning first thing?" His voice sounded eager. "I want to try something new in my dolphin experiment, and I need you." 167 "Sure I'll come." I didn't even try to keep the rush of gladness out of my voice. "Can you come right now? I mean, don't wait for John. Have you had breakfast?" "Not yet." "How about meeting me at the cafeteria and we'll have coffee and an English or something while I clue you in to what I hope to do this morning." "Okay. Be there as soon as my bike'll get me there." I turned off the heat under my milk and left a note: "Hope somebody wants cafe au lait.I'm off to the lab. See you when." As I got my bike out of the shed I heard someone else stirring about the house, so I pedaled off quickly to avoid conversation or explanation. I'd grabbed my bathing suit and a towel from the line and stuffed them, still damp, into my bike basket. The early morning was cool and misty, but I sniffed the salty air and felt the warmth of sun above the mist and decided that it was going to be a fine day, and we'd be back in summer heat. It takes nearly half an hour to get from the stable to the labs and I worked up an appetite. Adam was waiting for me at the entrance to the cafeteria, and we got trays and joined the line of early breakfasters. The line moved quickly. Adam led me to a table in the corner. He ate impatiently. "Jeb has spent years learning dolphin language. He has a whole library of tapes, and he can slow them down so you can hear most of the sounds they make, the supersonic ones. You mentioned birds the other day, and a lot of dolphin conversation sounds somewhat like birds chirping." He paused. "Jeb figures they have a 168 pretty sophisticated vocabulary. The real problem in audible conversation between dolphins and human beings, as I see it, is that we have vocal cords and they don't. Our whole mechanism of vocalizing is completely different. To some extent they can make sounds which are recognizable as words, and it's a game with them, but it doesn't go all the way because they simply don't have the vocal equipment. And to some extent we can imitate their clickings and chirpings and blowings, but only to some extent." "So what you're really saying"-I leaned on my elbows in my eagerness-"is that talking with dolphins doesn't really work, but maybe we should be trying to communicate with them in another way?" "Exactly. Good girl. So-what way?" I thought for a moment. "Two things come to my mind." "Okay. What?" "Deaf people-people who are completely deaf-can feel vibrations. They can hear music by putting their hands against the wood of a violin, for instance. But-" He leaned across the table toward me. "But what?" "Dolphins aren't deaf. But they douse sonar, don't they?" "In a most sophisticated way. Go on." "So vibrations, maybe a sort of Morse code, could take us a lot further than words." "Who said you weren't a scientist?" he demanded. "I'm not. Ask John or Suzy." "You're a poet." I thought of the sonnet in my jeans pocket. "And so are most great scientists. Okay, Jeb's been working on the vibration question, and with numbers, because numbers cut across language barriers-though I've 169 sometimes wondered about number concepts with creatures with no fingers or toes. But you're thinking about something else, aren't you?" I was. "You won't think I'm dumb?" Adam sounded impatient. "Come on, Vicky. I know you're not dumb." "It sounds way out-" "Dolphins are way out. Come on." "Knowing," I said slowly. "Knowing without having to speak. Sort of ESP, but more-knowing, maybe even across time and space. Basil knew you were upset about Ynid yesterday. You didn't tell him. He knew. From way out at sea." "Yes . .." "Basil knew you were upset because Ynid lost her baby, so he brought a friend to comfort you and take your mind off things." "Okay. Go on." "And she-" He interrupted me. "How'd you know it was a female? You're right, but how'd you know?" "I don't know how I knew. It just came to me. As though Basil had told me, in the language of knowing, not the language of words." Adam sighed. "Yah, I'll bet Basil probably did tell you. It's a known fact that when a wild dolphin makes friends it's usually with a child." "I'm not a child," I said sharply. "I'm almost sixteen." He didn't even notice that I objected to being referred to as a child. "Probably one reason that Basil and his pod were so slow in coming to me is that I'm too old." "You're not that much older than I am." 170 "I'm nearly nineteen and I'm in college. It makes a difference. The fact is that Basil was much easier with you than he was with John, or even with me at first. He came to you right away, without fear or hesitation. And I think you're right. He didlet you know that his companion is a female. I don't know how he did it, but he did. What shall we call her?" "What about Norberta?" I suggested. "We named Suzy's science-project guppy that. It means brightness of Njord,and Njord was the Norse god of the sea, so it seems appropriate." "Appropriate indeed. Norberta she shall be. Okay, go on. Basil knew something I had no way of telling him. What else?" "Ynid. She stopped beating herself against the side of the tank when Jeb got in with her." "Why?" "Because she loves Jeb and Jeb loves her." I felt slightly odd calling Dr. Nutteley Jeb, but since Adam did, I did, too. "Go on." "You told me Jeb lost his wife and baby ..." "Yes." "Ynid knew. She knew Jeb was grieving and needed help even more than she did." I did not look at Adam as I said this. I gazed down at the table and the unattractive remains of English muffin and pallid marmalade. "Vicky." His voice drew my eyes away from the plate, to meet his luminous sea-grey ones. "This summer project is very important to me." "Sure ..." 171 "John thought you might be useful to me and he was right, more than right. You've hit on exactly my thesis. Communication between human being and dolphin is going to come about through the kind of intuitive flash of knowing we were talking about last night. I'm convinced of it. Maybe you're a-a receiver,because you're a poet, but also because you're still a child." "I'm not-" I started. He seemed determined to emphasize it. "Many children have this ability, which is, as you say, way beyond ESP, but it usually gets lost with maturity." He asked, "Want anything more to eat?" "No, thanks." "Let's walk off breakfast. Then we'll swim out and see what happens." "What do you think's going to
happen?" I asked tentatively. He had made me feel unsure and insecure. "I don't know. I'm hoping Basil will come with Nor- berta, but we'll just have to wait and see." He took our trays out, and we left the cafeteria and went to the dolphin pens. During the night they'd been opened to each other, and the five dolphins, Una, Nini, Ynid, and her two mid- wives, were swimming from pen to pen. There was, I thought, something sad and subdued about Ynid's swimming. Jeb Nutteley was there with a bucket of fresh fish. He nodded at us, and tossed a fish to Ynid. "She's eating. Not with much appetite, but she's eating." "That's a relief." Adam watched Ynid swim to the end of the pen, holding the fish in her mouth. "Eat it, Ynid, there's a love," Jeb pleaded. 172 Ynid smiled and swallowed the fish. She loved Jeb Nutteley and he certainly was not a child. I did not want Adam to think of me as a child. Not after last night. "I'd hand the feeding over to you," Jeb said, "but Ynid might not eat." "She needs you today," Adam agreed. "What're you kids up to?" Jeb sounded calm, a little drained maybe, from his storm of grief the day before, but quiet now, relaxed. "Off to work with Basil, if that's okay." "Make sure you report to me as soon as you come in." Jeb threw several fish rapidly, one after the other, into the pen, and the great grey bodies flashed toward their breakfast. I'd forgotten to ask Adam what his boss had thought of his taking me to meet Basil. "Was Jeb cross when you told him about Basil and me?" Adam made a wry face. "Cross is not the word. He was furious, even when I told him I'd checked with John first. Then he was furious with John, too." "But he's okay about it now?" "I'm supposed to check in with him before we leave the lab and after we get back. I didn't check in yesterday because of Ynid's baby. But I did, after, and I told him about it all, partly to get his mind off Ynid. He does see that you're a valuable part of my experiment." Maybe up to the night before I'd have been satisfied with being a valuable part of Adam's experiment. He'd walked on and was heading toward the beach. I ran to catch up. "Why were the pens opened up?" He paused, looking back at me and waiting. "They often are. Jeb wanted Ynid more enclosed for her delivery. 173 Then he thought she might recover better if she had all her friends with her." That made sense. "Jeb knows all about your theory?" "Non-verbal communication? Yes. Jeb's a great guy. He's really encouraging me." "Why did you drag it out of me at breakfast instead of just telling me?" "If I'd just told you, I wouldn't have known how much you, yourself, understand. Having you tell me is a necessary part of my experiment, you must see that." "Oh. Sure." "And I had a hunch-maybe a knowing,as you called it-that your poet's mind had already leaped to what it's taken me all summer to arrive at." My poet's mind. That sounded really nice. Then he ruined it. "And you're still young enough." I said, stiffly, "If you wanted a child, why didn't you ask Suzy?" "I told you, Vicky. I didn't need another scientist, another pragmatist. Suzy's about as pragmatic as anyone can be. I thought I'd made it clear: scientists need poets, mystics, people who can escape our logical, linear, thinking." At first he had sounded chiding, adult to child, and I hated it. Then he was talking to me, Adam to Vicky. I didn't understand Adam at all this morning, one moment treating me like a child, the next like a reasonable human being, a peer. He was being as unpredictable as Zachary, and while I was prepared for it in Zachary, I wasn't in Adam. "Grandfather says-" I started, and stopped in mid- sentence. I'd simply run off when Adam called, not thinking about Grandfather, or helping Mother, not think- 174 ing about anything except that Adam had called and I was going to him as quickly as I could get there. I'd left the note, but that wasn't really enough. "Adam, is there any way I could phone home before we go to meet Basil? I went off before anybody else was up this morning." "Sure. There're phone booths outside the lab." We retraced our steps. Fortunately, Mother answered. "Did you get my note?" "Yes. What's up?" "It's Adam's experiment." "With starfish?" "No, dolphins. Is it all right if I stay here this morning?" If I could tell her about Basil and non-verbal communication, it would be easier. "Sure." "How's Grandfather?" "About the same. Nancy Rodney's here to help him bathe and shave." Mother's voice was matter-of-fact, but I knew that Grandfather's increasing weakness had to be getting to her even more than it did to me, and that Mrs. Rodney's coming in the morning wasn't just happenstance, for one day; it was going to be part of the slowly shifting pattern of our days. "Are you sure you don't need me?" "Positive. Everything's fine. You stay with Adam and have fun." I stopped myself from trying to explain that it wasn't just fun, but what was the point? No one would take it seriously. I knew that my family would find it hard to believe that dreamy Vicky, full of cobwebs, could be in- 175 175 volved in even the smallest way in any kind of scientific project. People were still straggling into the cafeteria for breakfast as we headed for the beach. My damp towel and bathing suit felt chilly where I was clutching them against my shirt, but the mist had completely burned away and the sun was climbing high and hot in the sky. It was hard to realize that the night before I'd been huddled into a sweater. The night before: Adam had certainly been talking to me as Adam to Vicky the night before, not as scientist to useful child. I changed to my bathing suit behind the big rock. It felt clammy as I shimmied into it. I spread my damp towel over the rock to dry. As for my bathing suit, it would shortly be all the way wet. "What I want you to do," Adam said as I came up to him, "is to call Basil." "But I can't-" I thought of Adam's balloon and clucking noises. "Not the way I've been calling to him. Call him the way you knewabout Norberta."