The Eternal Wonder

  His grandfather shook his head doubtfully. Silence fell and neither of them broke it for several minutes. Then he spoke, his curiosity overwhelming him.

  “Grandfather, do you mean she—Serena, your wife—really comes back to you … now?”

  His grandfather, placidly eating an ice dessert, wiped his lips with his huge old-fashioned linen napkin before he spoke.

  “Oh yes, indeed, dear boy,” he said cheerfully. “I never know when, of course, any more than I knew when she’d come into my room at night when she was alive. And she didn’t come at all for nearly four years after she died. I suppose it takes a certain length of time to become accustomed after the shock of death. It must be a shock to die, just as it is to be born. It takes time—it takes time. That’s a very delicious sweet, Sung. I’ll have a bit more.”

  His grandfather ate heartily and with enjoyment. He appeared so sane, so healthy, so alive in spite of his age, that Rann could not believe his mind was deranged. Indeed, he was sure it was not. Then, his grandfather must have experiences not common to ordinary folk. But he himself was not ordinary either, and his sense of wonder would not let him rest.

  “What I am trying now to discover,” his grandfather continued, “strictly through the science of parapsychology, is just how she does it, or how I do it. It is probably a combination, which as yet with me is accidental. But in time, as I do more study, I shall discover the proper technique. I am a scientist, Randolph. I learned that in China. I don’t know how much you know of my work. It began with my interest in the heart as the center of life.”

  “Nothing, I’m afraid, Grandfather.”

  “Ah well, that doesn’t surprise me. My first wife was a dear, good woman, as your mother is, but she had an ordinary, though intelligent mind. I never knew your mother, my daughter, well enough to discuss my work with her. But you have an extraordinary mind. I can see that—indeed, I saw it the moment you walked in the door.”

  He was infused, inspired, impelled by his sense of wonder, his insatiable curiosity. “How did you know, Grandfather?”

  His grandfather pushed away the plate from which he had been eating with such enjoyment, and Sung removed it and disappeared. They were alone.

  “I will tell you what I have told no one since Serena died,” his grandfather replied. “I was born with a rare ability. Serena had it to some degree, and I was able to discuss it with her frankly, as I did everything else. It may be you have some of the same ability, though possibly expressed in a different way. You may want to tell me. With me it is expressed in color.”

  “Color, Grandfather?”

  “Yes, I don’t like to use the word ‘aura,’ for that is the jargon of mediums and fraudulent people who make their living through a false mysticism and suchlike nonsense. I am a scientist, trained first in medicine then in electronics. I understand—to some extent—the interplay of electrical waves. We are all a part of such interplay. Given the right combination of forces, a human being is the result—a crystallization, if you like. Or a dog or fish or insect, or any manifestation. When we ‘die,’ as we call it, the combination is merely moving from that form to make another. Change is the word. There is constant movement in the universe, and we are part of that change. Nothing is destroyed, only changed. What the change is, which we call death, interests me very much at my age, naturally. I doubt I can find the real explanation until I undergo the change myself, which will not be soon, because I inherit longevity and health—as you do, too, through me.”

  Oh, his persistent mind! He was half-ashamed of it. “But color, Grandfather?”

  “Ah yes,” his grandfather said. “But I hadn’t forgotten, dear boy! I never forget anything, any more than you do. I had to give the preliminary explanation. Well, all my life I have seen color about living creatures and most strongly, of course, about the concentrations we call human beings.”

  “Do you see color about me?”

  “Oh, very strongly.”

  “What color, Grandfather?”

  “More than one.”

  His grandfather studied his head, and was silent for a minute. “Green is predominant—in what I see in your emanation—a living, vital green, signifying that the life force in you is very strong. This shades off into a rich blue—nothing pallid about you! And the blue fringes off into yellow. Yellow denotes intelligence, and blue denotes integrity. You won’t have an easy life. Everything in you—your feelings, your determination, your idealism—all very strong. You’ll suffer on all counts. But you know that, you’re a creator.”

  “Of what, Grandfather? I feel the pressure in myself to create—but what?”

  He spoke intensely, his elbows leaning on the white tablecloth, silver and china pushed aside, everything forgotten except what his grandfather was saying.

  “It’s too soon, boy!” his grandfather said gravely. “Much, much too soon! You’ve talents—but talent is a means, a tool to use. You must find your material, and that can only come out of knowing, learning and knowing. When you’ve learned enough, when you know enough, your own talent will guide you—no, force you, push you, compel you. So be at ease, dear boy! Wander the Earth, look and listen. But never waste yourself. Use your body as well as mind. Put it better—your body is the valuable container for the precious talent. Keep your body clean and free of disease.”

  Their eyes met, his grandfather’s electric blue, his own dark and vividly penetrating in their gaze. His grandfather gave a deep, shaking sigh.

  “Serena!” he murmured. “Do you see who has come to our house?”

  They rose in silence then and went into the library and he sat, still silent and absorbed in thought while his grandfather played a small pipe organ at one end of the room. It was Bach—ordered, coordinated, scientifically beautiful music, a whole made up of controlled parts. Control, he thought. That was the key to life—control of self, of time, of will.

  IT WAS PERHAPS A WEEK LATER. During the week he had seen very little of his grandfather. Each morning after breakfast his grandfather had told him briskly that he had work to do, and so he could wander about as he liked until dinnertime.

  “Wandering is never waste, dear boy,” he said. “While you wander you will find much to wonder about, and wonder is the first step to creation.”

  On this evening, upon finishing dinner they had as usual gone to the library, to talk, to read, to listen to music, or even to play chess. Upon a chess table made in Korea, his grandfather kept set in position a great set of chessmen carved in white and black marble. His grandfather was a superb chess player, and though his own father had taught him the game, he had yet to win over his grandfather.

  “I could let you win, in order to avoid your possible discouragement, dear boy,” his grandfather had said, “but out of respect for your intellect, I will not do so. In time you will surpass me, for you learn, I observe, from your mistakes, each time. You teach yourself, and that is true learning.”

  Tonight, however, there was to be no chess, it appeared. The evening was cold, the sky overcast and the first snowflakes were floating past the windows. Sung came in and drew the long velvet curtains over the windows, lit the fire, and went away again. His grandfather opened a small leather case and drew forth a magnifying glass—“a very fine one that I picked up in Paris, years ago,” he observed. Then he opened a silver box.

  “To prove to you, if you need proof, of Serena’s visits,” his grandfather said, “I’ve made these photographs of her. I’ve taken them regularly over the visits she has made. I rigged up a camera in my room and took a series of pictures while she was in the process of materializing. These are the photographs. Study each one carefully, please. You will see me seated in a chair in Serena’s room. If my face seems strange to you it is because I am concentrating upon nothingness. Ordinarily this might be called trance. I learned in India how to enter into nothingness. I dislike the condition, for I lose myse
lf. But I know that Serena cannot communicate with me otherwise. I daresay that others might communicate with me also if I cared to have them do so. But I do not care. In due time I shall be where they are. Serena, however, I need from time to time.”

  He took the photographs one by one from his grandfather’s fine old hand. The first one showed only the aged man, sitting at ease in an armchair. The next showed a faint suggestion of mist descending behind the chair. In each picture the mist grew stronger and more defined, until in its center there appeared clearly and more clearly the lively face of a beautiful woman.

  Her body remained mist, but the eyes, the features, were illuminated.

  “You see her,” his grandfather exclaimed triumphantly. “It is as she was when she was at her most beautiful, in health and maturity, before illness and age attacked.”

  “Does she speak to you, Grandfather?” he asked.

  “I do not hear as I hear you,” his grandfather replied, “but I am aware of communication—yes. I cannot explain it to you. It is an awareness. Whether you could hear a voice, were she to appear now, I cannot tell you. I do not know whether she would appear in that case. I rather imagine that it requires some effort on her part, just as it does on mine, for us to cross the barriers.”

  His grandfather spoke so naturally, with such acceptance and faith, that he asked no more questions.

  “Thank you, Grandfather,” he said.

  His grandfather put the pictures carefully in their sequence and into the box. Then in a gentle voice, infused with love, he said quietly, “Dear boy, it is time for you to continue your travels. I have no right to hold you here in this old house, inhabited by an old man and the spirit of a woman who lives beyond. It has been joy to have you here. You must return many times. If I die, too soon, before your return, I have arranged that Sung will keep the house in order for you. If we both die, the house will still be kept. In each of the capital cities of countries you visit, money will be held for you. You must set forth and find the center of your interest. You are a creator, but you must find your interest and then dedicate yourself to that interest—not to the act of creativity. Merely to want to create will make it impossible for you to do so. You must find an interest greater than yourself—a love, perhaps—and then the power to create will set you on fire.”

  “I understand, Grandfather,” he said quietly. “Thank you for sending me away. You set me free, even from myself.”

  HE WAS ON A SHIP, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, on his way eastward—a wandering, meandering way—to China, as once his grandfather had gone. He might have flown and been there in a few hours, but he wanted to know more, see more, much more, before he reached the ancient country that had meant and still meant so much to his grandfather. And so he chose the slow approach, hoping to see the old countries of the West, in order that he might have the contrast of Asia, and also because he wanted time in which to know the sea. His life had been spent inland, in a landlocked state, until he came to New York, and though he had often gone there to the harbor and watched the great ships draw anchor, he stood firm upon the land. Now he was upon a ship, the sea was rough, the sky gray. He had a small cabin to himself, and there were few passengers, for it was out of season.

  Perhaps because it was out of season and the passengers so few, he came to know the captain and the first mate and some of the men. These seamen were different from land men. He wondered and watched them; he listened to their simple tales, simple in language but sometimes telling of fearful experiences of being lost at sea. Lost at sea! His imagination, always too quick, saw the piteously small lifeboats tossing upon the illimitable ocean, the beautiful, cruel ocean. And yet he came to love the sea, his favorite spot upon the ship the prow, where he stood hour after hour, leaning his elbows on the stout mahogany top rail, polished by the captain’s command every day. There he stood, like a carved figurehead of youth, watching the ship’s pointed bow divide the green waters into two huge white-topped waves. He watched and he felt, storing away the sights of the vivid changing sea, the purple sky, the white waves, remembering forever the clean cut of the ship, the feel of the fresh salt wind upon his face and in his hair, watching and feeling. He ate prodigious meals of simple, hearty food, he slept dreamlessly at night, soothed by the rise and fall of the ship, and woke again to another day, wishing the voyage would never end and then longing for it to end because there was so much to see beyond.

  It was on the third day that he saw the woman. She had not appeared before, her place at the captain’s table always empty. He had not known of her existence. She had perhaps been seasick and stayed in her cabin. The sea had been rough until this third day, a high wind in spite of sunshine and a clear sky, the wind perhaps the fringe of a distant storm. But the ship rolled easily, built narrow for its length for speed, perhaps? At any rate, the woman’s place had been empty at the captain’s table. Suddenly she appeared at the wide door of the dining saloon and there she stood, gazing somewhat uncertainly about her. She had dressed for dinner in a green gown, long-sleeved but low-necked and, fitting her slender figure, it fell straight and narrow to her feet. Even her shoes were green. Above her straightness her hair was swept back into a great knot at the back of her head, bright-red hair, shining in the lamplight like a casque of gold. He had never seen so beautiful a human being and he stared at her. But so did they all. A silence fell on the passengers. And she looked at them unsmiling, out of dark eyes, so brown they were almost black.

  The captain got to his feet and pulled out her chair. “Come in, Lady Mary. It’s good to see you at last. We’ve been waitin’ these three days.”

  He was a Scotsman, the burr heavy on his tongue. She gave him a glint of a smile then and walked slowly toward his table. And suddenly, as she passed Rann’s table, the ship gave a great lurch, hit by a huge wave, the seventh wave of a seventh wave, the second mate had told him, and she would have fallen had he not leaped to his feet to catch her in his arms and keep her steady.

  “Thank you,” she said in a clear soft voice.

  She clung to his arm nevertheless until she reached her seat. Then he returned to his own place, aware only of the softness of her slender body under the green satin dress. Yet she was not very young, he thought, trying not to look at her though glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. Her profile was turned to him, a lovely profile, too strong perhaps for strict beauty, but somehow very beautiful. And if she was not young, neither was she old—perhaps thirty or thirty-five? But that was twice as old as he, though not old enough, not really, to be his mother. He could not imagine her being a mother. Lady Mary, the captain had called her, and that meant she was English and perhaps even lived in a castle somewhere. But it was not likely that she would notice a boy. Nor did he indeed wish for her notice. He was too young, too young except to see, as he saw everything, the vividness of her coloring and her supple grace. She was listening to something the captain was saying, a half smile on her lips. She was eating, too, with a frank appetite that somehow surprised him because she was so slender.

  People were talking again, accustomed now to her presence, but he scarcely listened, except as he always listened, saying little himself but storing away unconsciously the sound of these voices, the changing expressions of their faces, their postures, their ways of eating, all details of life while though useless, it seemed, in themselves, he could not help accumulating because it was how he lived.

  He would have forgotten Lady Mary, perhaps, as no more than part of the ship’s life, this small contained world, confined between sea and sky, except that the next day, a windy bright morning, when he stood at his usual place at the ship’s prow, he felt a hand on his arm, and turning saw her there, buttoned from neck to knees in a silver gray mackintosh.

  “You have my place, boy,” she said at his ear. “Whenever I’m on a ship, my place is here at the prow.”

  He was so startled that he stepped back and trod on her foot.
She grimaced and then laughed.

  “What a heavy-footed lad you are,” she cried against the wind.

  “I’m sorry—so sorry,” he stammered, but she only laughed and, tucking her hand in his elbow, she drew him with her.

  “There’s room for the two of us, surely,” she said, and held him there, her hand still in his arm and her bright hair flying back from her face.

  He stood there then, linked to her, the strong west wind pressing her against him, and together and yet completely separate and in total silence they gazed across the sea. It might have been an hour before either of them moved or spoke, but he was conscious of her in a strange new way, shy and not shy together. Then she stepped back, releasing her hold on his arm.

  “I’m going below,” she said. “I’ve letters to write. I hate writing letters, don’t you?”

  “I have only my mother and my grandfather, and I haven’t written them,” he said.

  “Ah, but you should and you must,” she told him. “Put your letters in the ship’s post and they’ll be mailed as soon as we land. I’ll give you some English stamps.”

  She nodded and turned away and left him standing there and feeling strangely alone and somehow restless. He did not want to stay there alone. It had not really occurred to him to write his mother or his grandfather until he reached England. There would then be so much more to tell—London, for example. But now he felt she was right—he should write them. The letters could be mailed that much earlier. He went below and found a quiet corner in the dining saloon and wrote two letters, each surprisingly long. There was something pleasurable in trying to put into written language some of the sights of the sea and sky and ship. Of Lady Mary he wrote not a word, not knowing, indeed, what to say. If he singled her out, what would they think? And for that matter, why should he single her out, a woman nearly old enough to be his mother? But not quite—