It was also the naked truth.
Rudi’s eyes flickered open, and he looked at the vacuous face masking the keen mind. Last night, when they first met, he had ignored the conventional reaction to Howson’s small stature, deformity, unprepossessing appearance — but because on principle he ignored the conventions which demanded the reactions. He was half-Israeli; perhaps his people had a legacy of conventional prejudices enough to last them for eternity—all directed against them. So, by analogy, he would have leaned over backwards to avoid offending a negro. So would millions of people; only most of them, if they failed to learn the logic of prejudice, learned the logic of self-interest and therefore conformed. Rudi would not.
He yielded now to the pressure of pain; it was easy to slip back into the fog of despair. For Howson, it was very hard to follow him, but it had to be done — and he had done it often in the past.
Why did you do it, Rudi?
A complex picture of dissatisfaction with the work he had set himself to do; with the reception it had had; with the inability of other people to understand what he was doing. Add to that: money troubles, because of the stopping of his grant; emotional problems on a personal level — he needed the affection and acceptance of a woman, any woman who could understand his needs — he was good-looking and pleasant, but that was not enough to secure the right partner. He had tried many, and the last had been cruel. And the mask he had put up to protect himself against the scrutiny of the world had proved his undoing — people who could not penetrate it, and therefore had no idea of the turmoil of sorrow boiling in his brain, had been tactless, unkind, reopening old sores without realizing.
So he had picked up a knife, and thought how much he would like oblivion.
But Howson could see behind the mask, and therefore would not be tactless and unkind; he understood Rudi’s needs, and could help and advise him. He dismissed the superficialities, such as money trouble, with an impatient mental gesture, and went straight ahead to the factor which all through Rudi’s bitter survey of his reasons for suicide had taken the foremost place: his work.
What work is this?
Chaos, mingled with striving. Behind it all, very deep, was a need to create and bring forth — Howson found it amazingly feminine, much reminiscent of certain urges he had known in the deep unconscious of frustrated single women. From this sprang several consequences; he saw them presented all at once, but had to verbalize them in succession.
Though feminine, this impulse was also general-human. It had by-products which he merely noted and filed for reference — such as the reason why Rudi’s creativity gave him agony (his deep unconscious saw it as parturition, and that brings pain), and the reason why he chose to attempt suicide by hara-kiri (it represented a Caesarean delivery on the cross-identity level of his mind).
But Rudi’s deep unconscious could only inform the probing inquisitorial mind why he needed to create; it did not explain the nature of the creative activity, and the way in which the conscious was tackling it. Howson drew back, dizzying for a moment as he discovered his own body to be cramped and stiff. Small wonder; this chair was a poor substitute for the special bed from which he usually worked. Still, no matter.
“There’s too much pain,” he told the surgeon shortly. “Would it be safe for him to get a local in the stomach wall ?”
Then he focused his physical vision, and found that the nurse had already lifted up the bedclothes and was preparing to give an injection. He looked blankly at her. Then, struck by a sudden realization, he turned to Clara, who stood white-faced with her hands on the bar at the foot of the bed.
She read the question before he could utter it, and nodded. “You told me about therapy watchdogs. So I — uh — already asked for him to be given the anaesthetic.”
Howson felt a deep wave of appreciation and gratitude; he did not check it, but projected it as it stood, and Clara flushed with embarrassment.
How do you feel?
Oh, Gerry — it’s magnificent, but it’s somehow absolutely terrifying, too!
Howson hesitated. Then, as if confessing a serious error of judgement, he said in words, “You know, I might have been wrong this morning. Maybe you won’t have to ask anyone to teach you how to use your gift properly.”
The nurse and the surgeon exchanged puzzled glances at this unforeshadowed remark.
“But” — Clara seemed just as astonished — “but you’re teaching me! You’re teaching me all the time !”
28
Howson was still pondering that when the nurse gently touched Rudi’s bandaged abdomen. He did not wince. “The local’s taken effect, Dr. Howson,” she said quietly.
“Fine.” With an effort Howson returned to the work in hand.
Rudi!
Yes… ? A pure conscious note of interrogation, blended with assent and willingness to co-operate now he had sensed the telepathist’s power.
And Howson settled down to find clarity and order in something that was not clear to Rudi himself.
Springing from this fundamental creative urge were the reasons why it could not find an outlet in writing, painting, sculpture, or anything else where the creator was divorced from his audience. Rudi could never be satisfied to devise something and leave other people, elsewhere, to appreciate it. Appreciation fed and renewed his desire to create, as an actor feeds on a “good audience” and rises to new interpretative heights.
And yet acting, again, would be inadequate for Rudi because it was interpretative. So was ballet; so was almost every other form of art in which there was the direct audience contact Rudi craved — although he had been a first-class debater, conjuring up splendid impromptu orations. (Howson had to sift through a dozen such qualifications and explanations before he arrived at a clear picture of what Rudi was actually trying to do.)
Essentially, though, it was music which attracted him most. And-
And Howson found himself on the top of a dizzying slide, lost his grip, and went headlong skidding and slipping into a vast uncharted jungle of interlocked sensory experiences.
Rudi Allef’s mind was almost as far from the ordinary as was Howson’s own, but in a different direction. Somehow, Rudi’s sense-data cross-referred interchangeably. Howson had experience of minds with limited audio-vision — those of people to whom musical sounds called up associated colours or pictures — but compared to what went on in Rudi’s mind that was puerile.
(Once, long before, he had seen a tattered print of Disney’s Fantasia; he had enjoyed it, and had wished there had been more attempts to combine sound and vision in a similar way. Now he was finding out what the combination could be like on the highest level.)
Like a swimmer struggling in a torrential river, Howson sought wildly for solidity in this roaring stream of memory. Images presented themselves: a voice/velvet/a kitten’s claws scratching/purple/ripe fruit — a ship’s siren/fog/steel/yellowish-grey/cold/insecurity/sense of loss and emptiness — a common chord of C major struck on a piano/childhood/wood/ black and white overlaid with bright gold/hate/something burning/tightness about the forehead/shame/stiffness in the wrists/liquidity/roundness…