INTERVENTION (10 page)

"To the soul!" chorused the banqueting villagers, lifting their glasses. But then Dariya Abshili, who was Tamara's great-great-aunt and the chief organizer of the feast, exclaimed: "Hold! The children must also drink this time."

"Yes, yes, the children!" everybody shouted. The young ones, who had been segregated at their own table in the outdoor dining pavilion, where they bounced up and down and celebrated in their own fashion during the long meal, now left their seats and filed solemnly up to stand on either side of Seliac. Grand-Uncle Valeryan Abshili, a stalwart of seventy years, poured a small portion of rich Buket Abkhaziy wine into each child's glass, coming finally to Tamara, who had the place of honor closest to Seliac. The old man bent and kissed the girl's brow, then let his electric gaze sweep over the assembly.

"Let us drink now to the soul ... and to this little one, the daughter of our poor lost Vera, who is destined to announce our ancient secret to the world and open the door to peace."

This time the villagers responded without words. Pyotr, befuddled with a surfeit of wine and food, was surprised to find that he had no difficulty at all hearing them:

To
the soul. To Tamara. To the secret. To peace.

They drank, and there was much cheering and clapping, and a few of the oldest women wiped their eyes. Then the indefatigable Dariya began to direct the clearing of the table. Younger men drifted off to attend to certain necessary chores before the next phase of the celebration, which would include dancing and singing. Old folks ambled out of the open-air shelter to take their ease, the men replenishing their pipes and the women gossiping softly, like pigeons. When Pyotr thought to look about in search of Tamara, he discovered that she had run off into the golden sunshine together with the other youngsters. A pang of loss touched his heart as he realized that she belonged to the village now. She was part of the soul.

Seliac arose from the table and beckoned Pyotr to come for a stroll. "There are still some questions of yours that I must answer, grandson. And a few that I would ask you."

They followed a path among the houses that led into a grove of venerable walnut trees, their branches heavy with green-husked fruit. Pyotr said, "I will have to begin my return journey soon. The thought of negotiating that road in darkness freezes my balls."

"But you must stay the night! I offer you my own bed."

"You are very kind," Pyotr said with distant formality. "But I must return to my duties in Sochi. There are patients at the Institute for Mental Health requiring my urgent attention. I bear heavy responsibilities and the—the loss of Vera will make my workload that much greater until adjustments can be made."

"She was your comrade as well as your wife." The old man nodded slowly. "I understand. You were well suited to each other both in temperament and in the blood. Instinctively, Vera chose well even as she defied us. The ways of God are ingenious."

The two walked in silence for a few minutes. Somewhere a horse whinnied and children let out squeals of laughter. Then the old man asked, "Are you of Georgian heritage entirely, grandson? Your flame-colored hair and fair complexion suggest the Cherkess."

"I am descended from both races," Pyotr said stiffly. His spectacular hair, now mercifully graying, had been somewhat of an embarrassment to him throughout his professional life. He had passed it on to Tamara, who gloried in it.

"The Caucasian peoples are all rich in soul," Seliac observed, "even though some of the tribes scanted its nurturing as modern ways overcame the ancient customs ... And is it not true that one of your ancestors belonged to a group even more brilliantly ensouled than the folk of Apsny? I am speaking of the Rom. The Wanderers."

Pyotr looked startled. "There was an old scandal whispered about my maternal grandmother, that she had been impregnated by a gypsy lover before her marriage. But how
you
should know that—"

"Oh, grandson," laughed the 123-year-old patriarch of Verkhnyaya Bzyb. "Surely you have guessed by now why I know it, just as you know what kind of special human being your late wife was, and what your daughter is, and why you were commanded to bring her to us."

Pyotr stopped dead, turning away from the old man in a fury, willing himself to be sober again, free of the thrall of this bewitched village Vera had rebelled against so many years earlier, when she had run away to the Black Sea Coast and civilization...

"Vera left us," Seliac said, "because she did not love the man we chose to be her husband. And she took seriously the tenets of dialectical materialism presented in the schoolbooks, with their naive, romantic view of the perfectability of human nature through a mere socialist revolution. Vera came to believe that our ancient soul-way was superstition, reactionary and elitist, contravening the basic socialist philosophy. And so she denied her birthright and went to Sochi just before the Great Patriotic War. She threw herself into hospital work and studies, remained a valiant maiden, and seemed wed to Party loyalty and her profession of healing. She almost managed to forget what she had been, as others have done when distracted by the turmoil of modern times. Over the years we called out to her, but there was never an answer. We mourned her as lost. But all unknown to us, quite late in life she had found you, her ideal mate, and when she was forty-two your marvelous child was born."

"Tamara..."

Pyotr still refused to face the village elder. He stood on the stony bank of a brook at the edge of the walnut grove, looking over the countryside. The steep little fields and pastures were a green and golden patchwork on the slopes. Crowded against their low rock walls were hundreds of white-painted hives, piled high like miniature apartment complexes, the homes of mild-tempered Caucasian bees that flew about everywhere gathering late-season nectar for the aromatic honey that provided the village with its principal income. Thyme was still blooming, and hogweed and melilot and red clover, filling the crisp air with fragrance. Grasshoppers sang their last song of doom before the frost, which had already whitened the highest northern ridges below the spine of the Bokovoi Range. It was here in these mountains that Jason had sought the Golden Fleece; and here that Prometheus stole the divine fire; and here that defiant tribes guided by sturdy centenarians withstood wave after wave of conquering outlanders: Apsny, Land of the Soul, a place of legends, where human minds were said to accomplish wonders that conventional science deemed impossible! But not all scientists scoffed, Pyotr recalled. There were other believers besides the egregious Vasi-liev. The great Nikolai Nikolayevich Semyonov, who had won the 1956 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, had spoken in favor of psychic research, and it was studied seriously in Britain and America. But even if such things as telepathy and psychokinesis did exist, did they have
pragmatic
value?

Seliac Eshba bent and picked up a green walnut fruit from the ground. "Does this?" he inquired, his dark eyes twinkling. "It is a thing with a tough husk; and if you break into it, it stains the fingers badly, and then there is a second inner shell that must be cracked before the meat is reached. But the walnut is sweet and nourishing, and if a man is patient and long-sighted he may even plant it in the ground and someday reap a thousandfold." Seliac scrutinized the green ball and frowned. "Ouff! A weevil has been at this one." Cocking his arm, he flung the useless thing over the brook into the pasture. "Perhaps the goats will eat it ... but for the finest trees, one must choose the best possible seed."

"As you have?" Pyotr's laugh was bitter. "You draw a striking analogy. But even if it's a valid one ... Tamara is only one little girl."

"But a mental titan. And there are others—not many yet, but increasing in numbers—all over the world."

Pyotr whirled about to lock eyes with the village elder. "You can't possibly know that!"

"We do know."

"I suppose you claim some kind of telepathy—"

"Only a little of that, and not over great distances. The real knowledge comes because of our close rapport with the earth, with her seasons and rhythms, those of the year and those of the aeon. This land round about you with its hidden fertile valleys and secret caves is the place where humanity first learned to dream. Yes! It happened here, in the Caucasus, as the great winter ebbed and flowed and primitive people honed their minds yearning for the glories of spring. The hardships they endured forced them toward the long fruition. Do you know that walnut trees will not bear fruit in the tropics? They need the winter. In the old days, they needed it twice! Once to stimulate the fruit to form, and again to rot the thick husks so that the inner nut would be set free to germinate. Our human cycle is much longer, but we, too, have passed through our first great winter and attained the power of self-reflection. Over the ages our minds have ripened slowly, giving us greater and greater mastery over the physical world, and over our lower nature."

"Oh, very good! And now I suppose the superior nuts are ready to fall! The winter of nuclear war that threatens—is this what will bring about your mental revolution? Are we to look forward to supermen levitating over glowing ashes, singing telepathic dirges?"

"It might work out that way," the old man admitted. "But think: One doesn't have to wait for the walnut husks to rot naturally, not if one is determined—and not afraid of stained hands." Work with us, grandson. Help us prepare Tamara to meet her peers, to use her great gifts worthily. There will be a price you and I must pay, but we dare not wait passively for the terrible season to do our work for us ...

Seliac held out his brown-dyed hand to Pyotr, smiled, and waited.

BERLIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE, EARTH

21
OCTOBER
1966

T
HE NOTION OF
killing Don insinuated itself into his mind as he was clocking out of the paper mill that Friday afternoon, and the other office workers called out to him.

The women: "Night, Rogi! Save a pew for us at the wedding."

The men: "See you at the Blue Ox tonight. We'll give that big stud a sendoff he'll never forget!"

And the snide crack from Kelly the Purchasing Agent, Rogi's boss: "Hey—don't look so down in the mouth, fella. The best man always wins, even when he loses!"

Rogi grinned lamely and muttered something, then plunged into the stream of exiting employees with long strides.

After the bachelor party. He could do it then. Don would be so drunk that his mental defenses would be shaky and his offensive coercion and reflexes slowed. The two of them would have to cross the bridge over the Androscoggin on the way back to the rooming house.

(Am I going crazy? My God, am I seriously considering killing my own brother?)

My PK would be strong enough. It had been the last time, when the fishing boat tipped in Umbagog Lake. Only my
will
had been too weak.

(An accident! Of course it had been an accident. And unthinkable not to haul Don up from the depths, swim with him to shore, and pump life back into him...)

A car went by Rogi as he walked through the parking lot, windows down and radio playing. His throat constricted. The song was "Sunny," and that had been his private, precious name for her. But she had willingly surrendered it to Don along with all the rest.

Rogi went down to walk along the wide river. It was a fine evening, with the sun just gone behind Mount Forist and the trees touched with color from the first light frosts: the kind of evening they had loved to share, beginning with the days they had walked back from the library. There was a certain grove of trees down by the shore, on the other side of the CN tracks, and a large flat rock. The trees muffled the noise from the traffic along Main Street and gave an illusion of privacy.

He found himself coming upon the place, and she was waiting for him.

"Hello, Rogi. I hoped you'd come. I—I wished you would."

And my mind's ear heard you!

He only nodded, keeping his eyes on the ground.

"Please," she begged him. "You've avoided me for so long and now there's no more time. You must understand. I want tomorrow to be a happy day."

"I wish you every happiness, Sunny ... Marie-Madeleine. Always."

Mentally, he saw her hold out supplicating hands. "But it'll all be spoiled if you're miserable at the wedding, Rogi. If you blame Don. He couldn't help what happened any more than I could. Love is without rules. Quand le coup de foudre frappe..."

He laughed sadly. "You're even willing to use French when you talk about him. But with me, you pretended you didn't understand. It made me bold. I said things to you that I'd never dare say in English. Very casually, so the tone wouldn't give me away. Sneaking les mots d'amour into ordinary conversation and thinking what a sly devil I was."

"You were very sweet."

"And of course you really did know how I felt. From the start."

"Of course. And I learned to love you. I mean—to love being with you. No! Oh, Rogi, try to understand! With Don it was so different. The way I feel about him—"

He clenched his teeth, not trusting himself to speak. His eyes lifted and met hers, those innocent blue eyes lustrous with tears. His mind cried out to her:

You were mine! It went without saying. All we had to do was wait until we were old enough. That was sensible, wasn't it? And he had so many others to choose from, so many other girls he could have taken.
Did
take. Why did he need you, too, Sunny?

She said, "Rogi, I always want you to be my dearest friend. My brother. Please."

The temptation had been strong before but now it became overwhelming, a compulsion thundering in his brain that battered away the camouflage of abstraction he had erected to disguise it. Kill Don. Tonight.

He said, "Don't worry about me, Sunny. It'll be all right."

She was weeping, clutching the strap of her shoulder bag in both hands and shrinking away from him. "Rogi, I'm so sorry. But I love him so much."