John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

“I don’t believe so,” Clumly said.

The door swung open. The office was very small, comfortable. On the wall there was a picture of a Coast Guard ship, with the number W738.

“You were in the Coast Guard?” Clumly said.

“P.H.S.,” he said. “Public Health Service.” He glanced at the picture. “Spent six weeks on her. Beautiful.”

Clumly nodded.

“Adam?” the doctor called. There was obviously no one in the room. The window was open. The doctor went over to it and looked out. He frowned, then thought better of it and smiled. “Climbed out the window,” he said. “He’s a devil, that’s the truth. Sharp as a tack though. His mother is also a psychiatrist. Gets it on both sides, poor little fellow. We’ll go this way.” He led them back into the hall and toward the glass doors at the end. With his hand on the doorknob he paused, reached up rather suddenly and once again pinched his cheek. “The stages of life,” he said. “Yes. Right. According to Jung life is like the daily course of the sun. He says—” The doctor closed his eyes a moment, thinking, then quoted carefully, shaking his finger as if at an imaginary class, “ ‘In the morning it arises from the sea … ’ no, ‘the nocturnal sea of unconsciousness and looks upon the wide, bright world … ’ something, something ‘ … expanse that steadily widens the higher it climbs in the firmament.’ Ah, I forget the exact words. Anyway, point is, sun rises in the morning, the world expands before it, and it’s in the expanding world that the sun discovers its own significance. It imagines that reaching the greatest possible height, where it can disseminate its blessings most fully, is its life goal. But at noon the descent begins, and the descent means the reversal of all the ideals and values that were cherished in the morning. The sun falls into contradiction with itself. It’s as if it should draw in its rays, instead of emitting them. Now, it’s the same with life, Jung says. You rise out of the unconsciousness of babyhood — he’d go farther back than that, in fact — and you learn who and what you are in youth, reacting with the world, and you build more and more consciousness, you think you can judge everything, meet all demands. But at a certain point you learn that the more you learn the more you’ll never know! You begin to shrink back from thought-life has bombed you, and you flee forward to the unconsciousness of senility. You understand all this?”

Clumly tipped his head, lips pursed, hand on his chin. Kozlowski stood looking through the glass.

“Well now this is my belief,” the doctor said — excitedly. “I believe one does not regress in neurosis. I believe one progresses too rapidly through life. Bombed by experience, one hurtles through life —snap!” He snapped his fingers as he said it. “What is the doctor’s job, then? Not to move him back to childhood, make him live through his traumas over again, this time with understanding. The doctor’s job is to rejuvenate! Turn back the years!” He was leaning far forward now, snapping his fingers again and again, eyes narrowed to slits.

“But how?” Clumly said.

The doctor straightened up, became absolutely calm. Then he smiled. “Hypnosis,” he said. He beamed. Then: “Come meet my son.” He threw open the door. Chief Clumly scratched his head.

It was a small, enclosed yard with a dark-leafed mapletree in the center, around it long soft grass. The boy sat in a swing, looking sadly at his knees. He had long, dark hair, pale skin, blue eyes as colorless as glass. “Adam,” the doctor said. The boy turned his head just a little. “Child,” the doctor said. He stood with his fingertips together, his head thrown forward, on the peaked face a look of anguish. “Come and meet our guests,” he said.

The boy did not stir.

“What am I to do?” the doctor whispered. “Do you think I don’t know what damage I can do him by punishing him? Do you think I don’t know what damage I can do by not punishing him? His mother, now. We are separated. We cannot live together — a grotesque mismatch of slightly paranoid personalities. So we should stick together for the sake of the child, and our arguments eating him alive? We should break up, then, and deprive him of love?” He stretched out his hands to Clumly. “Advise me! What should I do?”

Clumly studied the doctor in alarm.

“Adam!” the doctor called suddenly. “I said to get over here!” His fists closed.

“We have to go,” Clumly said timidly. “We really can’t—”

“Is that your solution? To go!” He stopped himself. “Yes of course. Fair is fair. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’ve been no help. As for the boy — it’s not as bad as it seems, not at all. He loves me as much as he hates me, and he’s young, flexible. As for his mother—” He stopped abruptly and mopped his forehead. Then, like a child, he smiled. “You must think we’re all mad here. And me the maddest of all. My dear sir, life—” He shook his head. For no apparent reason, the boy dropped from the swing and came over to take the man’s hand. “Full of surprises, isn’t it,” said the doctor. “That, if I may say so, is my professional opinion.” He patted the boy’s head.

“Good luck,” Clumly said humbly. They turned back toward the door.

“You haven’t asked about the husband.”

Clumly waited.

“He came by, once, you know. A strange-looking man — I think mad, in fact, or very close to it. You know him?”

Clumly stole a glance at Kozlowski. He had not exactly wanted it to come out in Kozlowski’s presence, for reasons of his own.

“Taggert Hodge. A kind of magician — very good. Very. I suspect if the truth were known he might be directly responsible for … the patient’s condition.”

“He comes here?” Clumly faltered.

“He’s been here twice. You want my diagnosis?”

“We thought he was still in Phoenix,” Clumly said. Kozlowski did not seem fooled by it. Clumly wiped the sweat from the back of his neck.

“He’s here all right. My opinion is, he’s right on the edge of violence. Whether it will be directed outward or inward … But this is just guesswork. I have only watched him. To tell the truth, I believed he was going to kill me. We’ve hardly spoken.”

“Thank you,” Clumly said. He turned away.

For a moment the doctor said nothing. Then: “Good luck. As you say. To all of us. God give the world good luck.”

Abruptly, the boy jerked away from him and returned to his swing. They went back inside, leaving the doctor to brood on his difficulties, and walked hurriedly down the long hallway to the entryroom and front door. It was locked. They rang for the nurse, not meeting each other’s eyes.

At last, in the car, Kozlowski said, “How come you keep pretending, Chief? You knew who this Sunlight Man was from the beginning.”

“Not from the beginning,” Clumly said.

“The others?”

“The other whats?”

“The rest of the Hodges know?”

“I don’t know. Be strange if they didn’t.”

They were approaching the iron gates now.

“You think Will Hodge knew, that night he found the corpse in his apartment?”

“People are strange, Kozlowski. Full of surprises.” He turned in the seat to look back, and Kozlowski, at the same moment, glanced into the rear-view mirror. Will Hodge Sr’s car pulled onto the road.

“Still with us,” Kozlowski said. It was the first either of them had said about it. “What’s he after, you think?”

Clumly lit a cigar and scrooched down in the seat to meditate. At last he said, “It comes to this. If he knows, he’s following us to watch after his brother. And if he doesn’t know—” He let it finish itself, but Kozlowski looked at him, waiting. “All right, Kozlowski,” Clumly said, “say you’re in the woods and you see somebody tracking something. What’s he up to?”