Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

“So I locked the door and sat down on the carpet and began meditating. I sat there for about two hours, first going through various exercises and then just waiting. Everything was really quiet. I’d lost consciousness of the street outside, of the room, my body; I was concentrating on a smooth blank field, a field of whiteness, expanding infinitely in time and space.

“Then something loud and violent crossed this field, very close to me. I opened my eyes without meaning to and saw it was a big housefly. It buzzed around the room four or five times while I tried to pay no attention to it, and then it flew straight for the window behind me.

“I was very glad of that, because I thought it would get out. But it was too stupid. If it had climbed up a few inches it would have been free; but instead it stayed between the glass and the screen, buzzing. I knew I had to forget about it. I thought of all I had read about enlightenment, all I had learned. I told myself that the fly represented everything I had to get clear of—that its pain and stupid confusion were unreal, part of the world of false appearances. I told myself it was a demon sent to test me. I regulated my breathing and began counting backward from three hundred, trying to turn all external sensory awareness off, to see nothing and hear nothing. I concentrated on whiteness, smoothness, extension, infinity ...And finally—I don’t know how soon, maybe it was only ten minutes, maybe half an hour—something began to happen. There was a kind of focusing, a closing in—

“But then I heard my fly again. It was still there, buzzing and bumping against the glass, and against the screen. Only a tiny sound now, but I felt it here in my stomach: thud, thud. Ow, ow, ow. I was licked. I had to unfold my legs and get up and let the fly out. I raised the screen, and it flew away unevenly into the sun, dizzy with fatigue and surprise and relief, and I said to myself, ‘There go your spiritual ambitions, Sandy.’” He smiles wanly. “And I was right.”

“Didn’t you try again after the fly was gone?”

“Oh sure; I tried. For the next forty-eight hours, day and night. And for months afterward. But it wasn’t any good. I couldn’t get within five miles of where I was that afternoon.”

“But you still meditate,” Erica says, recalling past conversations.

“Yes.” Zed has turned his head away and is speaking to a spot on the green tweed rug. “Only it doesn’t work. I can detach myself from the world all right, but I can’t get to God. I’m stuck in the middle. I’m like that fly, only there’s nobody to open the screen.”

“But Sandy, I don’t see—” Erica frowns. “Why shouldn’t you have let the fly out?” Zed does not answer. “It was kind of you, if it was suffering.” She looks at the window, rises, then sits down again. “Oh. That’s funny. I thought there was a fly here too, behind the glass. But it’s only part of the tree outside.”

“You’re starting to get high.”

“I don’t feel high. The room looks just the same.”

“That’s because you haven’t noticed. See that yellow ashtray there, that’s like a flower?”

“I—Well yes, sort of.” Erica gazes at a shallow clay bowl with round notches in the rim for cigarette butts, which at the same time, without ceasing for a moment to be a small ashtray, is a large golden flower. “You’re right. That’s nice: it’s a primrose, I think. Or maybe a marigold, with those square petals.” She puts out her hand and touches one petal of the ashtray; it feels warm and soft, cold and hard, simultaneously—or rather in rapid alternation.

“And look at Krishna dancing.” Zed gestures at the poster above the day bed.

“Where? Yes, I see—No. He’s not dancing; but he’s waving his arms at us. The blue ones. Only they’re not moving. Well, of course they’re not moving; it’s just a picture.” With a sense of effort, Erica sits up. “I don’t see it now ...Yes, there, again, for a moment. Now, it’s stopped. What’s happening? Why does he do that?”

“It’s the gift of the drug. The world is what you say it is.” Zed’s voice seems to come from nearer than the other end of the day bed.

“I do feel sort of peculiar. When I move my head, the room goes all sideways. Do you feel strange, Sandy? Can you see the poster moving and things like that?”

“Not now. I might see them if I wanted to.”

“Why not? Aren’t you affected at all?”

“Yes. But I’ve had more experience with this sort of thing than you. And I’m not such a visual type.” He shuts his eyes, opens them. “I’m more likely to hear things. I don’t now; but last time I got high here, toward dawn, Ralph and I both heard the pigeons on the roof outside speaking in tongues.” He laughs. “They were crying out to the Lord in artificial foreign languages, like a revival meeting.”

“I don’t hear anything outside at all,” Erica says, glancing toward the window. “It’s all muffled and far away ...But the design of the curtains is weaving,” she adds. “The plaid—Those green stripes like loose basket-work. They’re weaving and woving over and under each other, very quietly and neatly. Do you see that? It’s really lovely.” She does not wait for or hear Zed’s answer; she is watching the rug now: all its different tweed greens. Moss, and grass, and lichen.

“It’s growing together in jigsaw puzzles,” she exclaims, laughing. She doesn’t actually see “grass” or “puzzles”—only an ordinary rug; but one which is silently alive, motionlessly moving, constantly and gloriously renewing itself in existence. The world is alive, she thinks. I must remember that. Everything is alive in every detail. And it comes to her that she is having the experience she wanted to give Sandy, of the goodness and truth of the real world.

“You must look at the rug, Sandy!” she cries. It’s so beautiful, because it’s really there, and it’s a rug.”

“That’s nice.” But he doesn’t even glance at the rug; he looks at her, with his usual abstract smile.

“You’re not looking. But it’s true. Everything in the room is real, and in the right place, and that’s why it’s beautiful. Everything in this room is beautiful.”

“Everything?” Zed says finally, making a gesture that includes himself. Erica does not see it, but she hears him and unfixes her gaze from the contemplation of a very nice green lampshade which has perched on the lamp to her left and is holding the bulb neatly and politely with its circular wire claw.

“Yes.” She looks around. “No. That’s ugly, there.” She points at the jelly glass from which they had drunk their ginger ale. “It’s all lumpy and snotty, with loud smudges. Ugh. It’s horrid. I’m going to hide it.” She leans forward and takes the glass fastidiously by its extreme rim.

“Wait—watch out,” he cautions.

The floor rises with Erica as she rises, and tilts slightly toward her; the walls flutter and circle. “Oh! It’s okay. I just want to get rid of. This thing. Put it where it can’t see us—Golly, the whole room’s dizzy.”

Slowly, holding the glass at arm’s length (it grows uglier every second), Erica negotiates her way across the jigsaw carpet, which is becoming semiliquid, and around a stuffed chair (it supports her in a kindly bearlike way). “Thank you. There.” Reaching the bathroom, she sets the nasty object down, turns. A face is looking at her through a peeling yellow window frame only a foot away: an old woman’s face, blank, white, creased—Recognizing it, she groans. She tries to turn her head away. Cannot. Groans louder.

“Erica?” Zed stands, with difficulty. “Are you all right in there?” He lurches across the room, catches her arm. “Come back and sit down. Christ, the floor’s full of waves ...Here. You all right?”