Barbara Michaels - The Dark on the Other Side

“Bright,” Kwame said. The blonde giggled appreciatively.

“You were here when Gordon Randolph was teaching here.”

“Right…”

The response wasn’t quite so prompt.

“I’m doing a biography of him.”

“Groovy,” Kwame said.

Michael persisted.

“I’ve been interviewing people who knew him because I have a weird notion that personality, or character, or whatever, isn’t an objective, coherent whole. It’s a composite, a patchwork of reflections of the man as he appeared to others.”

That interested them. The blond girl nodded, smoothing her hair, and Kwame’s dreamy eyes narrowed.

“Personality, maybe,” he said. “But not character. Two different things.”

“How do you mean?”

“Character, you call it-soul, inner essence-not a patchwork. One integrated essence.”

“All part of the Infinite Consciousness?”

Kwame shook his head. The beard swayed.

“I don’t dig that Zen stuff. All part of an infinite something. Names don’t name, words don’t define. You’ve gotta feel it, not talk about it.”

“Hmmm.” The collegiate atmosphere must be getting him, Michael thought; he had to resist the temptation to plunge down that fascinating side track. “But that inner core, the integrated essence-that’s beyond the grasp of a finite worm like myself. All I’m trying to get is the personality. I’m hung up on words.”

“All hung up on words,” Kwame murmured.

“So you can’t tell me anything about Randolph?”

“Man, I can’t tell you anything about anything.”

This was evidently one of the proverbs of the Master. The blonde looked beatific, and her escort exhaled deeply through his nostrils, fixing his eyes on Kwame. Michael turned to them with the feeling that he was fighting his way through a web of gauze.

“Neither of you knew him, I suppose?”

“My sister was here then,” the blonde said. She sighed. “She said he was the sexiest man she ever saw.”

“Great,” Michael muttered. “Haven’t any of you read his book? It’s a study of one of the problems that concern you-decadence, decay, the collapse of a society’s moral fiber.”

Even as he spoke, he knew he was dropping words into a vacuum. They professed concern about certain issues, but the only opinions they allowed were the opinions of their contemporaries and those of a few selected “in” writers. Many of them rejected the very idea that any generation but their own had searched for universal truths. Unaccountably irritated, Michael turned to Kwame, who was nodding dreamily in rhythm to a tune only he could hear.

“If you’re not hung up on words, why do you use them? You use them well. A couple of those songs were-remarkable. You wrote them, didn’t you? Words as well as music?”

Kwame stopped swaying, but he didn’t answer for several seconds. When he turned dark, dilated eyes on Michael, the latter felt an uneasy shock run through him. He had reached Kwame, all right; he felt, illogically, as if he had said something deeply insulting or obscene.

“Only two,” Kwame said. “I only wrote two of them.”

“They were the best,” Michael said. “You ought to perform more of your compositions.”

A spasm contorted Kwame’s face.

“I don’t write songs now. Not for a long time.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t anymore.”

Kwame put his head down on the table and began to cry.

The other two were staring at Michael with naked hostility, but he hardly noticed. The fact that he did not understand Kwame’s distress did not lessen his feeling of guilt at having somehow provoked it. He felt as if he had struck out blindly with a club and maimed something small and helpless, something that responded with a shriek of pain.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean-”

Kwame raised his head. The top fringes of his beard were damp, and tears still filled his eyes; but he made no move to wipe them away.

“You don’t know what you mean,” he whispered. “You see the shadows on the wall of the cave and you think they’re real. Man, you don’t know what’s out there, in the dark, on the other side of the fire.”

So they still read the old-fashioned philosophers. Michael recognized the allusion, it was one of the few images that remained from his enforced study of Plato. Humanity squatting in the cave, compelled to view the shadows cast on the wall by a flickering fire as the real world, never seeing the Reality that cast the shadows… But his original reading had not evoked the chill horror that gripped him at Kwame’s words. What Beings, indeed, might stalk the darkness outside the world, and cast distorted shadows? Whatever They were, Kwame knew about them. Michael had the irrational feeling that if he looked long enough into the boy’s wide, liquid eyes, he would begin to see what Kwame had seen…

Drugs, he told himself. Drug-induced hallucinations…His incantation of the conventional dispelled the shadows, and he said gently, “It’s all right. I’m sorry. Forget the whole thing.”

Kwame shook his head.

“Can’t forget…anything. I need something. Need…” His eyes turned toward the others, silent, defensive, watching. “You got anything? Grass? Acid?”

The blonde gulped, glancing at Michael. The boy, who seemed to have better control of himself, said calmly, “Nobody carries the stuff, Kwame, you know that. Not in here, anyhow.”

“Then let’s go someplace.” Kwame shoved futilely at the table and tried to stand. “Let’s go-”

The flutter of agitation had spread out beyond their table; other patrons were staring.

Michael sat perfectly still. Kwame’s agitation was beyond reassurance; all he could do was refrain from any move or comment that might seem to threaten or condemn. In fact he felt no sense of condemnation, only a profound pity. After a moment, Kwame relaxed. There was perspiration on his forehead.

“Sorry,” he said, giving Michael another of those sweet smiles. “We’ve gotta go now.”

“I’ve enjoyed talking to you,” Michael said. “And I enjoyed your performance. You’re really good.”

“Sorry I couldn’t help you.”

“That’s all right.”

“And thanks for the food.”

“It was a pleasure.”

The other two were standing, looking nervous as singed cats. But Kwame seemed to be bogged down in a mass of conventionalities.

“Sorry I couldn’t-”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Kwame brooded.

“I knew her,” he said suddenly.

“Who? Oh…” Michael knew how a policeman must feel when confronting, single-handed, a hopped-up addict with a gun. He didn’t know what was safe to say. Kwame spared him the trouble.

“Linda. She’s his wife now.”

“I know.”

“Beautiful,” Kwame said; Michael knew he was not referring to Linda’s face or figure. “A beautiful human being. We tripped together.”

Balanced between caution and curiosity, Michael still hesitated to speak. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Drugs might help to explain…Kwame seemed to sense what he was thinking.

“Not pot, nothing like that. She didn’t need it. She was on a perpetual trip.” He sighed. “Beautiful human being.”

“Yes,” Michael ventured. “Did Randolph take-”

Kwame shook his head.

“Oh, no,” he said gravely. “Not him. He didn’t need it either.”

He started to walk away, his companions falling in behind him like a guard of honor. Then he turned back to Michael.

“He always knew about it.”

“About what?”

“The dark,” Kwame said impatiently. “The dark on the other side.”

MICHAEL SHOVED AT THE TYPEWRITER. GLUED TO the table top by a two-year accumulation of dirt, spilled coffee, and other debris, it did not move; but the movement jarred the table, which proceeded to tip half a dozen books, an empty coffee cup, and a box of paper clips onto the floor.