The Golden Fleece (6 page)

The true measure of Jason Jarndyke, Adrian thought, was that he really didn’t seem to be jealous. He really did seem genuinely pleased, once he’d got over the initial shock, to know that his wife really hadn’t been bullshitting him throughout their married life—and genuinely pleased, too, that she had now found someone who could see what she was doing, someone who could understand, and prove to her that she wasn’t alone, and wasn’t mad.

Adrian’s eyes drifted back to the painting, though. It was amateurish. It was cartoonish. But it was good. In its own way, it was brilliant.

It was also a vision of Hellfire, full of wrath, complete with the souls of the damned, in agonizing torment.

All in all, Adrian, thought, what he’d just learned would have been far less intimidating if the image had been flowers or puppies: something that one could put on the lid of a biscuit tin; the sort of thing that trophy wives, within the scope of his admittedly limited imagination, might be expected to paint.

He knew, for sure, that he was not only out of his social depth now, but out of his psychological depth—which troubled him far more.

~ * ~

It wasn’t late when Adrian got back home. That was one advantage, he supposed, to eating “dinner” at lunch-time, Yorkshire-fashion. The evening was still young. He could do some work. He could relax for a while.

Or, as things turned out, he couldn’t. His head was spinning inside. He couldn’t settle to work or relax. He had too much on his mind, too much to work through.

He kept going back to the analogies that he had cited while trying to persuade Angelica Jarndyke to put him to the test. He had, of course, been putting himself in the shoes of the man who could see the beautiful suit, or the Wellsian sighted man in the country of the blind. Like Wells’s sighted man, he had always been aware that he was sighted, not mad—not because he came from a country of the sighted, but because he had always been a scientist, at heart and in method. He had been able to subject his unusual sight to experiment and analysis, had been able to prove it to himself, and to explain it to himself. He had never doubted himself, and he had always understood himself.

Now, though, the glimpse he had caught of Angelica Jarndyke—and the sight he had had of her fabulous painting— made him see that it could have be otherwise. All the decisions he had made, with regard to handling his own predicament, seemed logical, even in retrospect. He had known when making them that there had been alternatives, but he had simply made the decisions and concentrated on managing their consequences. He had never wasted time trying to calculate the possible consequences of the decisions he had not taken. Now, he felt compelled to think about that a little more deeply, and to extend his analysis. He didn’t suppose that he could work out how Angelica Jarndyke had seen her situation, and how she had tried to cope with it, but at least he could ask himself what might have happened to
him
if he had tried to go in a different direction.

Suppose that he
had
doubted himself. Suppose that the fact that other people couldn’t see what he saw had made him doubt that he saw it, rather than providing the stimulus to prove it. Suppose that he had been able to reproduce what he saw, with the aid of artificial pigments, at least to the extent that available artificial pigments would allow—but that people still couldn’t see what he saw, or even that there’re was anything there to see? Might he have actually stopped seeing it? Might he have adapted and amended his consciousness to what other people could see, psychosomatically rendering himself partially blind?

Yes, he decided, he might. And perhaps some people did. Perhaps it wasn’t simply an accident of fate or physiology that so many people who were affected by color weren’t conscious of the effects or discriminations they were making. Perhaps it was a psychosomatic compulsion, driven by the need that so many people had to fit in, to be normal...a need by which Adrian had never been unduly afflicted, having always thought it better to be a scientist, a man of logic rather than emotion, and having long ago given up on the possibility of ever
fitting in.

On the other hand, might he have been able to cling to the conviction that he really could see, and really could reproduce what he saw, even though other people couldn’t see the reality or the reproduction—but without the scientific understanding that would inform him as to how it came about?

Yes, he decided, he might. And perhaps people had, long before Angelica Jarndyke. Maybe only a few, maybe more than a few. And might they not, given the conviction without the scientific understanding, have construed what they possessed and could do in consequence as a kind of magic, a kind of witchcraft? Might they not have come to believe that their difference from other people really a kind of superpower: something in defiance of normality, a boon and a curse?

Watch out for Medea,
Adrian thought.
Okay. I watched out. I met her. But what now? What now?

What he meant by that, of course, was what might Angelica Jarndyke want of him, now that she had found him? And what might Jason Jarndyke want of him now, not as a reverse engineer charged with the job of coloring his fabrics, but as a “member of the family” who shared his wife’s peculiar vision? But even those two questions, difficult as they were, were only half the problem.

The other half was the question of what he might want himself, given the sudden change in his circumstances, and whether it would undermine all the sterling work he had put into shaping his attitude, planning his career and delineating his goals.

What if Angelica Jarndyke’s paintings really did work magic on him, and show him something new, something disturbing? What if his extraordinary sight, which had already given him a privileged glimpse of hell, were to show him something even more unsettling, which he would be better of not seeing?

The possibilities seemed too confusing for there to be any hope of formulating a strategy in advance.

Of one thing, however, he was certain. He would not be able to resist the temptation to look. Whatever Angelica Jarndyke had to show him, if she consented to show him anything at all,
he would have to look
....and see.

~ * ~

The immediate answer to the question of “what now?” seemed to be
nothing.
A good night’s sleep restored Adrian’s ability to work, and routine did the rest. He didn’t forget what had happened at Bleak House, but he was able to compartmentalize it. He did put “Jason” and “Medea” into a search engine, and was glad to find that their mythological relationship didn’t seem to lend any other analogies to his situation. He also fed in
Bleak House,
and was grateful to find a similar lack of analogy in Jarndyce versus Jarndyce, with cs instead of
ks
—which meant, he concluded, that he need have no fear of ironic fate, and would be free to work things out for himself, on strictly scientific principles. All in good time. For the time being, he shelved the issue. He had work to do.

Jason Jarndyke seemed to respect that. It was Thursday before he dropped by, casually, to tell Adrian what a pleasure it had been to see him on Sunday, even though things had gone “a bit wrong.”

“Wrong?” Adrian queried.

“Well, yes. To tell you the truth, I didn’t really believe that you would see anything in Angie’s picture, and I wasn’t immediately convinced that what you thought you saw was what she thought she had put into it. But I
had
expected that if you did see something, which she thought was there, that she’d be pleased. I thought she’d be over the moon at being able to prove to me—or at least put up a good argument to the effect—that she really hadn’t been bullshitting me all these years. I thought she’d be grateful.”

“But she’s not?” Adrian inferred.

“Well, yes and no. Underneath, I think she is—but on top, she’s confused. She hadn’t expected it, you see—she thought at first that I’d somehow found out what she thought and tipped you off. She knows now, I think, that you really could see it— and I think she’s convinced that you’d be able to see what’s in her other pictures too, both the ones I’ve seen and the ones she won’t let me see. But I think that scares her, a little. She’d got used to it, you see—people not being able to see, only praising her work, if and when they did, purely for bullshitting reasons. Now, the thought that someone
can see...will
see...has taken her aback a bit, given her pause for thought. I’m sure she’ll come round, though.”

“I don’t want to cause any difficulty.”

“Difficulty? No, Son, there’s no difficulty. In my book, you’re a godsend. You have no idea how much she needs you...needs an audience, who can see what she’s doing. It’ll complete her.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Adrian, warily.

“Neither does she, at present—but she’ll come round. It’s what she needs—what she’s always needed. You must understand that.”

Must I?
Adrian thought. What he said was: “I’ll be glad to help, if I can.”

“Don’t get any ideas, mind,” said Jason Jarndyke, putting on his humorous expression again. “You’re a nice looking lad and she’s beautiful, but she’s damn near old enough to be your mother. You might think she’s only with me for my money, but even if you were right...oh, don’t blush like that. I’m not entirely color blind, and I know what some red splodges mean. What I’m trying to say is that she’s only ever going to be interested in your eyes, and you need to understand that, and not get confused, the way youngsters sometimes do. Because I want this to work, Son—I really do. I adore Angie, and I want her to have what I’ve never been able to give her: your eyes. That’s worth more to me than the Golden Fleece itself. In fact, if we’re being metaphorical, that
is
my authentic Golden Fleece. If you can give me genes to produce colors that can live up to your promises, that might well complete my material fortune...but if you can give Angie faith in her work, and faith in herself, and set her free from the disappointment and anguish that’s been dogging her for years....well, Son, you’ll have worked a real miracle.”

Adrian thought that he could feel his heart sinking. He had thought, a week before, that he could justify all the hopes that Jason Jarndyke had invested in him—but the game had changed now. Now, the Yorkshireman was expecting miracles. Adrian was a scientist; he didn’t do miracles. He couldn’t even bring himself to say that he would do his best. He would, but he knew that it wouldn’t be enough.

“You’re still blushing, you silly sod,” Jarndyke observed. “But you see what I’m getting at, don’t you? She hasn’t got used to the idea yet, but she will. Bound to. I can’t ask you to dinner again Sunday—I’ll have to wait for her to ask me to invite you. She will. Sooner or later, she’ll want to show you more of her work...and eventually, even if it takes months, she’ll want to take you into the barn to see her latest work. Just your eyes, mind, and your consciousness behind them. No daft ideas—but she’ll want you to see...and
I
want you to see. Need to be clear about that.” He hesitated, apparently wondering whether he might have gone too far—but self-doubt wasn’t in his emotional repertoire. “Not saying that you
can
work a miracle, mind,” the industrialist added, cautiously, “and I won’t hold it against you if you can’t—but the mere possibility justifies the price of your hire...metaphorically speaking, of course. You up to date now?”

Adrian blinked several times, then nodded.

“We’re on the same page?” Jarndyke added, wanting to be sure.

Adrian nodded again.

“Good—now get on with making me trillions. Concentrate on your own colors, until you get the call. Okay.”

“Okay,” said Adrian, feeing that the nodding was becoming too repetitive, and not wanting to be mistaken for an automaton.

“Champion “ said Jarndyke, and passed on.

Word that the conversation in question had taken place went round the labs and offices like wildfire, although no one knew
exactly
what had been said or why. Rumor inevitably took wing.

“Made quite an impression on Mrs. Jarndyke, I hear,” Chester Hu said to him, when an opportunity arose. “I told you to be careful, didn’t I? Don’t be fooled by Jayjay’s easygoing manner. If he gets jealous, he won’t settle for firing you. He’s a Yorkshireman. Next worst thing to a Singaporean, when it comes to matters of the heart.”

The Koreans, Taiwanese, and even the Scots, made similar comparisons, causing Adrian to realize that every nation on Earth thought that it had a privileged relationship with jealousy and pride. He brushed it all off—which didn’t fan the rumors, but didn’t extinguish them either. He now felt that it wasn’t just Jayjay’s beady eyes that were on him, but those of the entire organization.