Odd John (17 page)

I looked at John with misgiving. "Oh yes," he said, "I know you think I'm mad, and that all I did was to hypnotize them. Well, put it that I hypnotized myself too, for I
saw
the whole thing as clearly as they did. But, believe me, to say I hypnotized us all is no more true and no less true than to say I actually shifted the rock and the blizzard. The truth of the matter was something much more subtle and tremendous than any plain little physical miracle could ever be. But never mind that. The important thing was that, when I did see the stars (riotously darting in all directions according to the caprice of their own wild natures, yet in every movement confirming the law), the whole tangled horror that had tormented me finally presented itself to me in its true and beautiful shape. And I knew that the first, blind stage of my childhood had ended."

I had indeed sensed a change in John. Even physically he had altered strikingly during his six months' absence. He was harder, more close-knit; and there were lines on his face suggestive of ordeals triumphantly passed. Mentally, though still capable of a most disconcerting impishness, he had also acquired that indefinable peacefulness and strength which is quite impossible to the adolescent of the normal species, and is very seldom acquired even by the mature. He himself said that his "discovery of sheer evil" had fortified him. When I asked, "how fortified?" he said, "My dear, it is a great strength to have faced the worst and to have
felt
it a feature of beauty. Nothing ever after can shake one."

He was right. By what magic he did it I do not know, but in all his future, and in the final destruction of all that he most cherished, he accepted the worst not with resignation, merely, but with a strange joy that must remain to the rest of us incomprehensible.

I will mention one other point that emerged in my long talk with John. It will be remembered that after performing his "miracle" he apologized for it. I questioned him on this matter, and he said something like this: "To enjoy exercising one's powers is healthy. Children enjoy learning to walk. Artists enjoy painting pictures. As a baby I exulted in the tricks I could do with numbers, and later in my inventions, and recently in killing my stag. And of course the full exercise of one's powers really is part of the life of the spirit. But it is only a part, and sometimes we are inclined to take it as the whole purpose of our existence, especially when we discover new powers. Well, in Scotland, when I began to come into all those queer powers that I mentioned just now, I was tempted to regard the exercise of them as the true end of my life. I said to myself, 'Now at last, in these wonderful ways, I shall indeed advance the spirit.' But after the momentary exaltation of lifting the rock I saw clearly that such acts were in no sense the goal of the spirit, but just a by-play of its true life, amusing, and sometimes useful, and often dangerous, but never themselves the goal."

"Then tell me," I said, perhaps rather excitedly, "what
is
the goal, the true life of the spirit?" John suddenly grinned like a boy of ten, and laughed that damnably disturbing laugh of his, "I'm afraid I can't tell you, Mr. Journalist," he said, "It is time your interview was concluded. Even if I
knew
what the true life of the spirit was. I couldn't put it into English, or any 'sapient' language. And if I could, you wouldn't understand." After a pause he added, "Perhaps we might safely say this much about it anyhow. It's not doing any one particular kind of thing, like miracles, or even good deeds. It's doing everything that comes along to be done, and doing it not only with all one's might but with—spiritual taste, discrimination,
full
consciousness of what one is doing. Yes, it's that. And it's more. It's—praise of life, and of all things in their true setting." Once more he laughed, and said, "What stuff! To describe the spiritual life, we should have to remake language from the foundations upwards."

FOR many weeks after his return from the wilderness John spent a good deal of his time at home, or in the neighbouring city. Apparently he was content to sink back into the interests of the normal adolescent. He resumed his friendship with Stephen, and with Judy. Often he took the child to a picture show, a circus, or any entertainment suited to her years. He acquired a motor-bicycle, on which, upon the very day of the purchase, Judy was treated to a wild ride. The neighbours said that John's holiday had done him good. He was much more normal now. With his brother and sister too, on the rare occasions when he met them, John became more fraternal. Anne was now married, Tom was a successful young architect. The two brothers had generally maintained a relation of restrained hostility to one another, but now hostility seemed to have mellowed into mutual tolerance. After a family reunion Tom remarked, "Our infant prodigy's positively growing up." Doc was delighted by John's new companionableness, and often talked to him at great length. Their main topic was John's future, Doc was anxious to persuade him to take to medicine and become "a greater Lister." John used to attend to these exhortations thoughtfully, seeming to be almost persuaded, once Pax was present. She shook her head, smilingly but reprovingly at John. "Don't believe him, Doc," she said, "he's pulling your leg." In this period, by the way, John and Pax often went together to a theatre or concert. Indeed, mother and son were now seeing a great deal of each other. Pax's interest in the drama, and in "persons," seemed to afford him an unfailing common platform. Occasionally they even went up to London together for a week-end, "to see the shows."

There came a time when I began to feel a certain curiosity as to the meaning of this prolonged period of relaxation. John's behaviour seemed now almost completely normal. There was, indeed, one unusual but unobstrusive feature about it. In the midst of conversation or any other activity he would sometimes give a noticeable start of surprise. He would then perhaps repeat the immediately preceding remark, whether his own or the other person's; and then he would look around him with amused interest. I fancied that for some time after such an incident he was more alert than before it. Not that in the earlier stage he had seemed at all absent-minded. He was at all times thoroughly adjusted to his surroundings. But after these curious jerks the current of his life seemed to reach a higher tension.

One evening I accompanied the three Wainwrights to the local Repertory Theatre. During an interval, while we were drinking coffee in the foyer and discussing the play, John gave a more violent start than usual, spilling his coffee into the saucer. He laughed, and looked about him with surprised interest. After a moment's awkward silence, in which Pax regarded her boy with veiled solicitude, John continued his comments on the play, but (as it seemed to me) with new penetration. "My point is just this," he said. "The thing's too lifelike to be really alive. It's not a portrait but a death-mask."

Next day I asked him what had happened when he spilt his coffee. We were in my flat. John had come to inquire if the post had brought information about some patent or other. I was at my writing-table. He was standing at the window, looking out across the deserted promenade to the wintry sea. He was chewing an apple that he had picked up from a dish on my table. "Yes," he said, "it's time you were told, even if you can't believe. At present I am looking for other people more or less like me, and to do it I become a sort of divided personality. Part of me remains where my body is, and behaves quite correctly, but the other, the essential I, goes off in search of
them
. Or if you like, I stay put all the time, but
reach out
in search of them. Anyhow, when I come back, or stop the search, I get a bit of a jolt, taking up the threads of ordinary life again."

"You never seem to
lose
the threads," I said.

"No," he answered, "The incoming 'I' comes slick into possession of all the past experiences of the residential one, so to speak. But the sudden jump from God knows where to here gives a bit of a jar, all the same."

"And when you're away," I asked, "where do you go, what do you find?"

"Well," he said, "I had better begin at the beginning. I told you before that when I was in Scotland I used to find myself in telepathic touch with people, and that some of the people seemed queer people, or people in a significant way more like me than you. Since I came home I've been working up the technique for tuning in to the people I want. Unfortunately it's much easier to pick up the thoughts of folk one knows well than of strangers. So much depends on the general form of the mind, the matrix in which the thoughts occur, so to speak. To get you or Pax I have only to think of you. I can get your actual consciousness, and if I want to, I can get a good bit of the deeper layers of you too."

I was seized with horror, but I comforted myself with incredulity.

"Oh, yes, I can," said John. "While I've been talking, half your mind was listening and the other half was thinking about a quarrel you had last night with —" I cut him short with an expostulation.

"Righto, don't get excited," said John. "
You
haven't much to be ashamed of. And anyhow I don't want to pry. But just now,—well, you kept fairly shouting the stuff at roe, because while you were attending to me you were thinking about it. You'll probably soon learn how to shut me out at will."

I grunted, and John continued: "As I was saying, it's much harder to get in touch with people one doesn't know, and at first I didn't know any of the people I was looking for. On the other hand, I found that the people of my sort make, so to speak, a much bigger 'noise' telepathically than the rest. At least they do when they want to, or when they don't care. But when they want
not
to, they can shut themselves off completely. Well, at last I managed to single out from the general buzz of telepathic 'noise,' made by the normal species, a few outstanding streaks or themes that seemed to have about them something or other of the special quality that I was looking for."

John paused, and I interjected, "What sort of quality?"

He looked at me for some seconds in silence, Believe it or not, but that prolonged gaze had a really terrifying effect on me. I am not suggesting that there was something magical about it. The effect was of the same kind as any normal facial expression may have. But knowing John as I did, and remembering the strange events of his summer in Scotland, I was no doubt peculiarly susceptible. I can only describe what I felt by means of an image. It was as though I was confronted with a mask made of some semi-transparent substance, and illuminated from within by a different and a
spiritually luminous
face. The mask was that of a grotesque child, half monkey, half gargoyle, yet wholly urchin, with its huge cat's eyes, its flat little nose, its teasing lips. The inner face,—obviously it cannot be described, for it was
the same
in every feature, yet wholly different. I can only say that it seemed to me to combine the august and frozen smile of a Buddha with the peculiar creepy grimness that the battered Sphinx can radiate when the dawn first touches its face. No, these images fail utterly. I cannot describe the symbolical intention that John's features forced upon me in those seconds. I can only say that I longed to look away and could not, or dared not. Irrational terror welled up in me. When one is under the dentist's drill, one may endure a few moments of real torture without flinching. But as the seconds pile up, it becomes increasingly difficult not to move, not to scream. And so with me, looked at by John. With this difference, that I was bound, and could not stir, that I had passed the screaming point and could not scream. I believe my terror was largely a wild dread that John was about to laugh, and that his laugh would annihilate me. But he did not laugh.

Suddenly the spell broke, and I leapt up to put more coal on the fire. John was gazing out of the window, and saying, in his normal friendly voice, "Well, of course I can't
tell
you what that special quality is, can I? Think of it this way. It's seeing each thing, each event, on its
eternal
side, instead of
merely
as a dated thing; seeing it as a living leaf on the tree Yggdrasill, flushed with the sap of eternity, and not
merely
as a plucked and dried and dated specimen in the book of history."

There was a long silence, then he continued his report. "The first trace of mentality like my own gave me a lot of trouble. I could only catch occasional glimpses of this fellow, and I couldn't make him take any notice of me. And the stuff that did come through to me was terribly incoherent and bewildering. I wondered whether this was the fault of my technique, or whether his was a mind too highly developed for me to understand. I tried to find out where he was, so that I could go and see him. He was evidently living in a large building with lots of rooms and many other people. But he had very little to do with the others, Looking out of his window, he saw trees and houses and a long grassy hill. He heard an almost continuous noise of trains and motor traffic. At least
I
recognized it as that, but it didn't seem to mean much to him. Clearly, I thought, there's a main line and a main road quite close to where he lives. Somehow I must find that place. So I bought the motor-bike. Meanwhile I kept on studying him. I couldn't catch any of his thoughts, but only his perceptions, and the way he felt about them. One striking thing was his music. Sometimes when I found him he was outside the house in a sloping field with trees between it and the main road; and he would be playing a pipe, a sort of recorder, but with the octave very oddly divided, I discovered that each of his hands had
five
fingers and a thumb. Even so, I couldn't make out how he managed all the extra notes. The kind of music he played was extraordinarily fascinating to me. Something about it, the mental pose of it, made me quite sure the man was really my sort. I discovered, by the way, that he had the not very helpful name of James Jones. Once when I got him he was out in the grounds and near a gap in the trees, so that he could see the road. Presently a bus flashed past. It was a 'Green Line' bus, and it was labelled 'BRIGHTON.' I noticed with surprise that these words apparently meant nothing to James Jones. But they meant a lot to me, I went off on the bike to search the Green Line routes out of Brighton. It took me a couple of days to find the right spot—the big building, the grassy hill, and so on. I stopped and asked someone what the building was. It was a lunatic asylum."