Disturbances in the Field Read online

  We arrived, eventually. A half-hidden sign led to a winding, branching dirt road, and from there on, the invitation was spiked to trees like blazes along a forest trail. We left the car in a pasture designated as a parking lot and walked through bristly grass towards an adjacent meadow where a group was gathered. George was doubtful about the scattered cows gazing at us with dusky, somnolent eyes, but Nina, who had grown up in farm country, assured him cows were not predatory. “Just leave them alone and watch out underfoot.” One black and white cow accompanied us all the way to the wedding.

  It was a set from Oklahoma. The women wore long skirts and bright, frilled, high-necked blouses—hybrid offspring of pioneers and European peasants. The men were dressed as cowboys, in fringed vests, plaid shirts, and boots, except for one man in a shiny black suit and black string tie, who was carrying a Bible. Victor, ignoring my advice, had perversely chosen to wear one of his two suits, the one that made him look like a stockbroker, even with the beard.

  Esther rushed to greet us with hugs and kisses, rosy and aglow in billowy organdy, a wreath of daisies in her hair. She looked wonderful.

  “I feel wonderful too. I have all my energies going for me, finally. Do you like the dress? Lillian made it for me, by hand.” She pointed to an obese red-haired woman with a naked infant in a sling on her back. “Lillian went to Barnard too, but a few years after us. She was a math major but she wasn’t happy with computers. She does all our clothes, so we can avoid the whole consumer trip.” Her father would have been pleased: she was not being seduced by the offerings of capitalism. “Wait right here. I want you to meet Clyde.” She brought us Clyde, who was exactly like his photo, except that his hair was clean today and tied back in a rubber band. Clyde looked long and steadily at each of us in turn, clasping our hands in both of his. This took a while. The SAVE emblem, that abstract design of a possible bird with a superfluity of wings, was tattooed on his right forearm in blue. “It is a real pleasure to know you,” he said in an easy, midwestern accent. “Esther has spoken so much about you.” He wore a red cowboy shirt with a small charging bull embroidered on the front pocket, perhaps by Lillian; as his chest rose and fell with conscientious deep breaths before each sentence, the little bull appeared to be charging off the shirt, at us. “I hope you’ll all get into our reality while you’re here, and allow yourselves to experience the ethos of SAVE, which is something real unique. We try to dig out and bring forth our root feelings of caring and sharing without blocking—”

  “Clyde,” Esther interrupted, “why don’t we introduce them to some of the others.”

  “That’s a good idea, Esther.” He led us around to various members of SAVE, who greeted us with pats and strokes. Nina was generally taken to be paired with Victor, which was understandable: she was dressed in a white linen suit and silk scarf, as befitted the consort of a stockbroker. One graying man slipped his arms around their waists and patted their hips. “Have you people attended our SAVE gatherings or are you just friends?”

  “These are old friends of mine, Phineas,” Esther explained, gently withdrawing his hands. “And you remember Nina Dalton.”

  “Ah, yes. You were shy about your hostilities. Well, that’s all right. Have no anxiety. We’ll help you all get in touch with the deeper participation levels.”

  “Thank you,” said Victor. “We’re a little thirsty after the trip, actually …”

  “Oh, of course. I’m sorry,” Esther said. “There’s homemade apple cider over there on that table, and some rum punch too.”

  A man with a very long, wide white beard like Walt Whitman’s came up to Nina and took both her hands in his. “I believe I’ve seen you here before. I am interested in you. I am interested in the kinds of feelings that must be straining to emerge, since you appear so put together. What’s your trip?”

  “My trip?”

  Victor was tugging at me. “Let’s go over there. I want a drink.” We left George hovering protectively near Nina and the Whitmanesque man. Don, already at the bar, handed us each a glass. Victor examined his suspiciously. “What is this stuff? I want a real drink. Especially if I have to get in touch with myself at the roots.”

  “It’s not too bad.”

  Victor sniffed it, drank it in one gulp, took another, and placed a hand flat on my breast. “I am interested in you. In the root feelings that are straining, I mean, all those vital saps and so forth. Your deepest participation levels.”

  I brushed his hand away. “Look, as long as we’re here, would you please …”

  “Well, if you don’t want to get in touch with your vital energies, I’m going off to, uh, relate to others who do.”

  I stayed with Don. I was hearing, as I often did, the soothing voice of Professor Boles. Empedocles, reconciler, doctor as well as mystical poet … He too sought the roots—fire, air, water, and earth—from which the earth proliferated like a wondrous plant. He did not need to dig up the roots, though, in order to appreciate the plant in its infinite variety. Poking at the roots destroys the living plant; Mr. Wilson, back in the garden at the brown house, warned Evelyn and me about that.

  “Do you think there’ll be anything to eat, Lydia?”

  Don sounded so plaintive that I laughed. “Of course there will. Do you see those women with the checked aprons, carrying buckets and pots? Their role is to prepare the feast. It will contain lots of home-baked bread, plus there will be sprouts. Every kind of sprout you can think of. Cheese, vegetables, lots of salads. It will be very good, as well as good for you.”

  “But I feel like oysters. This kind of thing makes me feel like eating oysters.”

  I nodded, and we stood companionably silent. Don was not an exhilarating person, but he had many placid, Nordic virtues: He could keep his feelings to himself; he would never behave in an embarrassing manner; if any of the Saviors wandered over to talk he would listen politely. I realized I had grown very fond of him over the fourteen years. Maybe Gaby hadn’t been mistaken after all.

  “It also brings out my worst impulses,” he said. “Reminds me of what I did to Mr. Dooley when I was in college.”

  “What did you do to Mr. Dooley?”

  But he had no chance to tell me. “Please assemble, please assemble for the ceremony.” The tenor voice of the minister in the black string tie. With the Bible tucked under his arm, he clapped his hands for order like a dancing master. Nina and George and Victor drifted back.

  “That guy with the Bible is Derek Holbrook, the other leader,” Victor whispered to me, “but that’s not his real name. He changed it from Joe Rossino.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He told me. They don’t believe in books. The Bible is just for show, because some members aren’t emotionally ready to give it up at weddings. It’s called a transitional object, like a baby’s blanket.”

  “Come on, you’re making this up.”

  “No art, either. Music is okay, but they prefer to compose their own. Like in The Republic, you remember. Artists from the past inhibit the flow of vital energies. The past does not exist. Dead. Life begins anew each day. If you’re hung up on memory it means you’re into death, which is of course not good.”

  Gradually the guests formed a large circle around Derek, Esther, and Clyde.

  “Sex is not more than twice a week,” he breathed hotly in my ear. “The vital energies, you know. Once is even better, if you can manage it.” He put his arm around me. “We could kidnap her. They wouldn’t prosecute. Law is repression of individual vital energies. Not that they’re anarchists; they just don’t relate to government.”

  The black and white cow that had ambled through the festivities mooed loudly, which silenced the crowd.

  “Dearly beloved.” The ceremony began.

  Derek explained that weddings at SAVE did not follow the traditional format, which had originated in a long-dead age and thus had no relevance to the needs of Clyde and Esther. Weddings at SAVE were a celebration of openness and awareness, which meant g
oing around the circle asking the guests to state their feelings on this occasion. In that way good feelings could be exposed and maximized and bad feelings evacuated, leaving the vital energies to flow creatively from their roots, without hindrance. He would begin with the bride.

  Esther must have been prepared. With just the proper degree of warmth and reserve she announced that she was very happy, she loved Clyde very much, she was grateful to all the friends who had come to the wedding, and she hoped she and Clyde would continue for a long time to be good to and for each other.

  I turned reflexively to Nina and found her clever, doleful eyes waiting for mine. We exchanged a glance of pride and relief, as when an unruly child performs well in public. Women’s colleges do foster a certain adaptability. Esther could also pour tea admirably, which might win her praise in SAVE’s kitchen, where she would no doubt be spending a good deal of time. But her composure made me shiver. In college when she read Descartes she vowed to believe only what she had proven for herself. “Nothing on faith!” And we had laughed at her.

  It was Clyde’s turn. He disengaged his arm from Esther’s and rubbed his hands together, the gesture of a man about to dive into a feast. “As I look around me on this wonderful day,” he said, looking around him, “I see old faces and new ones, faces from the past and faces from the present. And yet they are all sharing in the one reality that is right now, which is all we have. That and our own energies, our needs and gratifications.” Esther’s face was beginning to show the signs of heat and weariness. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and cleared her throat softly. “I want to say that on this occasion of my wedding I feel I am getting in touch with and reaching into a deep part of myself I have never reached before, and which will yield more and more awareness and energy.” With each deliberate breath the little bull on Clyde’s shirt lurched. “I’m glad to have Esther to share this exciting awareness with me.” He grabbed Esther’s hand and raised it high above his head like a prizefighter accepting the championship title. People applauded. Behind me George moaned.

  A wispy girl of about nineteen with hair like straw said a wedding out in the pastures with the cows made her feel close to nature. A dark man in mirrored sunglasses and overalls said he felt happy for Clyde since Clyde was his friend and he loved him, but at the same time he had to acknowledge he was sexually attracted to Esther and therefore experiencing some envy; he hoped he would be able to overcome those feelings but if not he hoped they could all get together sometime and talk about it. Esther turned pink while Clyde nodded judiciously like someone making a mental note. The next speaker was convinced from his own experience that marriage could be a trap; he advised Esther and Clyde not to become emotionally dependent but always to preserve their own spaces. Esther’s face was all earnest attention (perhaps what SAVE called “openness”), so unlike the morning Professor Mansfield asked her to adopt the sensibility of another age and suspend her judgment. “I will never suspend my judgment!” I could still hear the fierceness in her voice.

  “We’re not getting any sharing from the people in back,” said Derek. “How about you, Vic? You were just telling me you needed to learn the language of feeling.”

  “God, you didn’t!” I jabbed him.

  He nodded. “You don’t get all that information for nothing. I’m afraid I’ll have to pass,” he said out loud. “I can’t learn that fast.”

  “There’s no passing at SAVE. We share whatever is in us.”

  “Well, then, on this unusual occasion I feel …” He paused and his silence felt ominous, especially with all the rum punch he had drunk.

  I took his arm. “Please don’t. Just wish them good luck or something. As a favor to me.”

  “I wish you both a long and happy life together,” said Victor. “And may your hopes in each other be fulfilled.”

  I breathed. George volunteered that he felt hunger and thirst and sexual desire and he wished they would move along with the ceremony so he could at least get something to eat. The SAVE members tittered. That propitious savoirfaire doubtless came from the numerous marathons George had attended, studying experimental therapies.

  Derek called on me. I said that Esther was one of my oldest and dearest friends, and since she seemed so happy, I was happy for her. Neat, honest, more or less—I congratulated myself. Then I remembered her mother—“If you’re happy, then I’m happy”—and I wanted to die of shame and remorse. Esther did not give any outward sign, though. She went on smiling the same modest, composed smile. Her liberal education served her well.

  “I think we’ve had a pretty full expression of the ongoing feelings here,” Derek said. “Is there anyone I missed, before I go on to the mutual vows?”

  “Yeah, you missed me.” It was a pale, bedraggled young woman in baggy jeans, standing disconsolately on the outskirts of the circle, her arm around another woman. They might have been sisters.

  “Why, Floral, certainly. Please go ahead.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m glad of the chance to say what I feel on this occasion. I’m not sure why Clyde invited me—I never thought I’d see this place again after we split up—but as long as I’m here … I sincerely wish Esther luck because you’re going to need it, Esther. Clyde is a person who is only into his own need to be told how terrific he is. Anyone who doesn’t do that, he gets rid of. Also, he can’t take the slightest criticism, like if you say he hung a picture crooked he thinks you’re hostile and trying to castrate him.” Floral’s voice was extremely low and hoarse. I couldn’t imagine her as a singer. She coughed as she spoke, a curt, stifled cough that barely interrupted the flow of words. “As far as a wife, forget it. What he really needs is a slave. I know he goes around saying I walked out on him, but it was the other way around. I was the one who wound up in the hospital on lithium, and if it hadn’t been for Susan I wouldn’t be standing here right now. And believe me, I’m not saying any of this out of jealousy or because I want him back, God forbid, but I wouldn’t mind getting back some of my records that he took, especially the Janis Joplin and the—”

  “That’s enough! Shut the hell up!” Clyde shouted. “You’re as crazy as ever and you’re not going to mess up—”

  “Don’t you tell me what I’m going to do! We’re not married any more, remember? I’ll talk as long as I damn—”

  Clyde lunged through the crowd. Floral’s friend Susan tried to pull her away toward the parking lot but Floral shook her off and braced herself to receive Clyde. Some of the SAVE members caught him by the arms. He struggled to get free. Everybody was shouting. “Let him get it out!” “No, keep her back!” “Hold him!” “Get the fuck off of me!” “Violence is cathartic if you really get into it!” the man with the Walt Whitman beard roared. There was a bunch holding Floral back too. “Dumb dyke!” Clyde shouted at her. He got one arm free and swung at a man restraining him. Another man swung at Clyde and missed. Factions pushed and shoved; the wedding was a brawl. But it quickly dissipated. Susan pulled the reluctant Floral off in the direction of the parking lot, and the SAVE people broke ranks and smoothed down their cowboy outfits. The next moment their smiles were back in place, and they were patting and stroking each other to maximize the good feelings. I thought again of Empedocles, prophet of Love and Strife. “Now one prevails, now the other, each in its appointed turn, as change goes incessantly on its course. … Interpenetrating one another they become men and tribes of beasts.” He called his time the Present Age of Strife, “a land without joy, where bloodshed and wrath and agents of doom are active; where plagues and corruption and floods roam in the darkness over the barren fields of Ate.” “‘I wept and mourned,’” Gaby had read to us years ago, “‘when I discovered myself in this unfamiliar land.’”

  Derek was brief; the incident that had just occurred would be evaluated later, he said, at the evening meeting. As he pronounced Clyde and Esther man and wife the group took up an unmelodic chant whose syllables refused to congeal in my ear as words. It reminded me of the early c
omputer music the professors at Columbia were experimenting with back in 1958. To this wail, Clyde took Esther in his arms for the customary kiss. He kissed her long and with a show of passion, forcing her to arch her back and neck the way Charles Boyer used to do to his heroines in the movies, a position I was sure must be hard on those muscles, delicate since the whiplash she suffered in the auto accident years ago when her first marriage broke up.

  Nina was wrong about the bread—it was excellent.

  “Do you have to go so soon?” Esther asked.

  “Yes, we’d better. It’s a long drive. The sitter … Come into the city for a weekend. We have more room now.”

  “I’ll see when I can get away. Listen, I’m really glad you all came. I appreciate it. I know it’s not your kind of thing but … It’s really okay. It’s going to be fine.”

  “Of course it will,” said George. “Congratulations.” And he kissed her sweetly good-bye. I kissed her in bad faith. Nina offered Victor the front seat in the VW bus so he could see the countryside better—it was a soft amber and rose twilight. He and Don took off their jackets and ties and speculated, in a quiet, desultory way, about what kind of deal had been made when Ford pardoned Nixon. In back we were silent. After a while Nina rested her head on George’s shoulder and they held hands. So this would be another of their sporadic nights together. To cheer them up, as she once explained. Yet now that I thought of it, those nights were not always on depressing occasions; they were really rites of passage. They made love for weddings, births of children, the time Nina got tenure at NYU, Esther’s divorce, George’s setting up a private psychotherapeutic practice, the openings of Victor’s shows every few years, some of my concerts, a party for Gabrielle when the cast was removed from her broken leg. They prolonged the good feelings, smothered the bad ones. Something like SAVE. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but Don was telling Victor the story about Mr. Dooley. It seemed Mr. Dooley was the boss of a messenger service where Don worked with a bunch of kids the summer he was eighteen.