9

‘Now listen up!’ said Martha Goldenstein, resting on her crutches.

‘The way you language it up really matters, so part of our letting go and moving on process is to let go of some of the labels we put on things. The way of the warrior is a path of the heart, and this week we’re hopefully going to be trying to open up that chakra,’ she leant heavily on her left crutch, and spread her right hand over her chest, ‘and live from this part of ourselves.’

A frenzied smile broke out on her glazed face as if a cord had been tweaked behind the swagged draperies of her cheeks.

She was really pleased that they had five days together in what would hopefully be a very dynamic situation. She did weekends too, which could be very transformational, but a week gave them that much longer to get into the group process.

In the dimness of the large white room, thirty seminarians formed a rough circle. Sleepy after dinner and relaxed by the introductory nature of the meeting, they slouched, stretched or leant on huge cushions; some sat in a half-lotus position; others rested their chins on their clutched knees. Occupying the noonday point on this human clock, Martha and her assistant were languaging up the aims of their workshop. Outside, the sea let go and moved on with a fluency which even Martha must have regarded as an unobtainable ideal.

‘My name is Carlos,’ said Martha’s assistant in a Brazilian accent. ‘You may not be familiar with this name. Perhaps it will help you to think of C. G. Jung. The C stands for Carl, which is the same name.’

‘And Carlos Castaneda,’ said Karen helpfully.

‘Yes,’ beamed Carlos, pleased to find another famous person who had the same first name as himself.

‘He thinks he’s bloody Carl Jung,’ Jason whispered to Haley.

She narrowed her eyes at him to express contempt for his facetious tone.

‘My name’s Jason,’ Jason whispered. ‘It might help you to think of Jason and the Argonauts pursuing the Golden Fleece across the ancient world.’

Haley glared at him with renewed hostility, and Jason conjured up a chastened expression which competed unsuccessfully with his enormous grin.

Karen just could not get over the fact that Martha, like herself, had broken her ankle. It was another one of those unique little signs confirming that she was in the right place, and was meant to be doing this workshop. Stan had fallen asleep on the cushion next to her, but Karen was serene about that because she had heard somewhere that we absorb information even better subliminally than we do consciously. It was an amazing thought but Stan might be benefiting more than anyone else.

Peter was too happy to mind, but he couldn’t help feeling that the comparison with Jung was a bit pretentious. On the way over to the Big House, where this workshop was taking place, he had noticed Carlos struggling to get Martha’s new car off a rock on which he had driven it by mistake. Martha stood beside the stuck car on her crutches, and Peter wondered if these were the best-qualified instructors in the art of letting go and moving on.

When he was about to make this mildly irreverent observation to his neighbour, he saw Flavia on her other side and fell silent.

‘Doesn’t he look pleased?’ said Martha, indicating Carlos with her chin. ‘He loves it that you compared him to Carlos Castaneda,’ she said, nodding at Karen. ‘You know, one time I was here at Esalen, and I was out running along Route One, and there was a thick fog rolling in off of the sea, and suddenly, I don’t know why, I shouted out, “What are men?” And this voice came out of the fog, and it said, “They’re little boys. They’re little boys.”’

There was a murmur of appreciation for this anecdote. Many of the women nodded their heads resignedly, while many of the men shook theirs guiltily. Stan slept. Peter, absorbed in the excitement of meeting Crystal, withdrew from the room by concentrating on the sound of the sea.

‘And that voice,’ confessed Carlos, ‘I have to tell you, it was me!’

Mild laughter broke out among the seminarians, and Martha’s face convulsed with pleasure. Her eyes, astonished by surgery, looked as if they’d just seen a tiger leap through the window.

‘They’re little boys,’ she whispered.

Blue-Eyes looked towards Martha with an earnest desire to confess his part in the crime of his gender’s immaturity, but frowned from an equally genuine feeling that he was a whole and wonderful human being.

The African Queen wondered if she had been a man in a previous lifetime, and if this might explain the sticky patches in her own personality. Perhaps she had to grow up as a man in order to grow up as a woman. How was she going to integrate that awesome task with being a white African? God, life was complicated when you started to think about it.

‘OK,’ said Martha. ‘Do you wanna hear the good news or the bad news first?’

‘The bad news,’ groaned some stoical voices.

‘OK, this is the bad news: nobody is going to save you. And what’s the good news?’ She looked tantalizingly at the group.

‘We can save ourselves.’

‘That’s right,’ beamed Martha. ‘What’s life? It’s relationships,’ she answered, before anyone could advance a rival theory. ‘And what’s the most important relationship of all? Your relationship with yourself.’

She paused so that the full horror of this truth could blossom before the group.

‘The way you behave here is the way you behave in life…’

‘No it isn’t,’ whispered Jason.

‘You’re right,’ said Haley. ‘You’re even more of a git here than you are normally.’

‘Do you two have an issue you wanna share with us?’ asked Martha.

‘Oh, no,’ said Haley, embarrassed.

‘Like I say, the way you behave here is the way you behave in life. Perhaps the two of you can’t stop arguing at home and so you can’t stop arguing here,’ said Martha shrewdly. ‘You don’t listen to me, and so maybe the problem is that you don’t listen to each other. We’re all so busy talking, we forget that half the art of communicating is listening. When you’re a child, you’re full of “shoulds”. I should do this and I should do that,’ explained Martha, holding up one hand and then the other. ‘Being an adult is this,’ she said, leaning precariously forward on her crutches and mingling the frantically outstretched fingers of both hands.

‘In the office they said to me, “Martha, when are you going to give another workshop? You’re always doing this moving on and letting go,” and I said, “Moving on and letting go, what else is there in life?”’

‘Keeping still,’ someone suggested.

‘That’s part of the process,’ said Martha possessively.

‘Making out and running away,’ said a wag in the audience. Ostentatiously virile, his black T-shirt and tight jeans seemed unlikely to contain his rippling musculature for much longer.

Martha’s mouth shot open in a silent scream of laughter.

‘What’s your name?’

‘John.’

‘Well, we’ve all found out something about John,’ she cooed. ‘We’re going to have to move that kundalini life force past your diaphragm, which is a very big muscle, and into the heart space, which is the middle way, and then upward to your throat, so you can express it. I mean, someone like Hitler, he had a lot of fire down here,’ she pointed to her belly, ‘and he expressed it,’ she clasped her throat. ‘But he didn’t have anything here,’ she said, patting her heart.

Karen was very struck by the idea that Hitler hadn’t developed his heart space. What a world of suffering might have been avoided if only he’d had the privilege of attending one of Martha’s workshops.

‘Now listen up,’ Martha went on, ‘we’re going to play a game. You all like to play games, right?’

Compulsory games, thought Peter, please don’t make me play compulsory games. He didn’t want to be interrupted, he was thinking about Crystal and thinking about his perfect moment by the sea. If he concentrated, he could still feel the breeze sharpening his blood. The beauty and the terror of that self-annihilation had cooled with reflection and he imagined walking away calmly from his discarded personality like a woman stepping out of the crumpled circle of the skirt which has slipped to her feet. This vision merged with the thought of Crystal performing the same action, the ruby on her navel ring shining in the phosphorescent light of the churning ocean.

Get a grip, he urged himself.

‘Do you wanna pair up?’ asked the man to his left.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘We’re meant to get into pairs.’

‘Oh, right, yes.’

‘I’m Frank, by the way.’

‘Peter…’

‘Now, listen up,’ said Martha. ‘You’re four years old and you’ve just found some treasure on the beach, and you wanna take it home and hide it in your treasure box – you remember what it’s like to be four?’ she gushed.

Peter could remember loading caps into his toy pistol and being told by his father not to point guns; and breaking into a run and being told by his mother not to run; and trying to build a house out of pieces of toast and being told not to play with his food.

‘Who wants to be four again?’ he said to Frank. ‘You can’t even get a credit card in your own name.’

‘The shorter person in the pair is your best friend,’ said Martha. ‘They wanna see your treasure, but you don’t wanna let them see it,’ she lisped, stamping her good foot. ‘So, I want the best friend to do everything to try to persuade you to let her see the treasure, but you’re not going to give in and you won’t let her see it. OK? Has everybody got that? When I say “change” you swap roles and the taller person plays the best friend.’

Frank, who was slightly smaller than Peter, played the best friend.

‘Can I see your treasure?’

‘No.’

‘Please.’

‘No.’

‘I’ll pay you.’

‘How much?’

‘A million dollars.’

‘No,’ said Peter reluctantly.

‘But I love you and I’m your best friend.’

It was really absurd, thought Peter, if this chap was his best friend, not to show him the treasure. Why had Martha told them to say no? He was going to defy the rules, he was going to run if he felt like running.

‘You’re absolutely right,’ he said, ‘since you’re my best friend, I think you should see the treasure.’

‘Great.’

The two of them smiled vaguely at each other and relaxed. All around them two-stroke engines of pleading and refusal whirred on tirelessly.

‘It was love that brought you round.’

‘Love and boredom,’ admitted Peter.

‘I didn’t know what unconditional love was until I met my wife,’ said Frank.

‘Is she here?’

‘No, I came here for me and, also, she needed her own space this week. When we found each other, we just sat around at home for a long time and cried about our unmet needs.’

‘Are you still…’

‘No, we’re over that phase.’

‘Oh, good, it’s nice to get out occasionally.’

‘Change!’ shouted Martha.

‘Can I see your treasure?’ asked Peter.

‘No,’ said Frank.

‘But I showed you mine.’

‘Sucker.’

‘Well, I don’t think that’s very fair.’

‘You’re four years old and you don’t know the world’s unfair yet? Wise up,’ said Frank.

‘You little bastard, I thought we were supposed to be best friends.’

‘We are, but this is my treasure.’

‘I love you,’ said Peter disgustedly.

‘You do?’ said Frank, suddenly wide-eyed and vulnerable.

‘Yes.’

‘OK,’ said Frank, opening his cupped hands with histrionic tenderness.

The two men subsided into idleness. Peter was annoyed at having deployed the word ‘love’ like a password in a computer game. Frank was looking round to see if they were the only ones to have found this exit from the loop Martha had condemned them to. Only one other couple seemed to be in repose.

‘I have to admit, I’ve done this workshop before,’ said Frank. ‘I knew we were really meant to show our treasure.’

‘You’ve moved on and let go before?’

‘Yes, but Martha says that you can always come back because you can always go deeper,’ said Frank.

‘Ah-ha.’

‘OK,’ shouted Martha. ‘Time’s up! Which one of you showed the treasure?’

Peter and Frank, Karen and Blue-Eyes put up their hands.

‘Only four of you,’ said Martha.

‘But you told us not to,’ said some protesters.

‘And who told you to obey the rules?’ said Martha. ‘Your parents? Your teachers?’

‘I wanted to,’ a number of people cried out in self-defence.

‘No,’ said a woman’s voice over the hubbub of excuses. ‘I’m pleased I didn’t show my treasure.’

Peter looked at her carefully: she was in her sixties with a kind, maternal face.

‘And what’s your name?’ asked Martha.

‘Carol.’

‘Why are you pleased you didn’t show your treasure, Carol?’

‘It was my gift to myself; I’ve had to learn a lot about my boundaries,’ said Carol. ‘I was giving it away until two years ago,’ she groaned.

Everyone laughed, not least Martha and Carlos.

‘I read Women Who Love Too Much and it really changed my life,’ said Carol.

‘Well, we’ve certainly learned something about Carol, haven’t we?’ said Martha with relish. ‘She’s been “giving it away” until two years ago. But don’t you feel you may be overcompensating, dear, by not showing your treasure to your best friend? You “give it away” to a stranger, but you share with a best friend. The Middle Way is the path of the heart. We don’t want to be a spendthrift or a miser.’

‘No,’ said Carol firmly. ‘I feel really good about not showing it. I wasn’t just giving it away to strangers, I was giving it away to my children and my husband. I don’t blame him, we were just playing the roles we’d been taught, but when he passed away two years ago I was completely lost because I had no way of living except through serving others.’

‘But maybe now,’ said Carlos, ‘you look at the situation with the eyes of someone who realizes that she has given away too much. Abraham Maslow used to say that if you only have a hammer, every problem in the world looks like a nail. One reason why we asked you to imagine you were four years old is so that you could come to the problem freshly.’

‘Ya,’ said Carol, ‘I see what you’re saying, but we’re all individuals, right?’

‘Yes,’ said Carlos, without sparing a thought for what the other Carl might have said on the subject.

‘And maybe what I did wasn’t what you and Martha wanted to show, but maybe it was right for me.’

‘We’ll see how you feel about it at the end of the week, dear,’ said Martha, cutting short this rebellion. ‘Now, the ones that showed your treasure, why did you do that? What’s your name?’ she asked Blue-Eyes.

‘Paul.’

‘And why did you show your treasure, Paul?’

‘Well, you know,’ said Paul, rubbing Karen’s back, ‘Karen reminds me of my mom, and she was such a great lady I couldn’t refuse her anything.’

‘Oh-oh-oh,’ wailed Karen, ‘I think I’m going to cry.’

‘Plus,’ said Paul, ‘I’m pretty active in my local Zen centre in LA and I’ve taken vows of generosity…’

‘Well, it’s great when we can act from principles,’ said Martha, ‘but when we can do what’s right spontaneously, that’s even better.’

Her fingers meshed again, but this time on a vertical axis, the right hand swooping down to meet the rising spread of her left hand.

‘How about you?’ she asked Jason. ‘The great communicator.’ She turned to the group and wrinkled her nose humorously.

‘You’re the great communicator,’ said Jason. ‘Forget women who love too much. What about women who talk too much?’

A simmering disapproval passed through the group.

‘What about arrogant British men who shoot their mouths off?’ shouted Flavia.

‘This is typical Jason,’ said Haley, sensing the opportunity to graft her grievances onto the group’s burgeoning hostility. ‘I give up, I really do.’

‘You know,’ said Martha to Jason, ‘there’s a lot of aggression in what you’re saying.’

‘God, they didn’t give you that psychology degree for nothing,’ said Jason. ‘You do have a psychology degree, don’t you?’

‘My background is in Gestalt and EST,’ said Martha proudly. ‘I also trained as a chiropractor.’

‘Oh, well, we’re going to be all right from the neck down,’ said Jason. ‘It’s just from the neck up that I’m worried.’

‘What are you worried about in particular?’

‘Well, for a start, we were meant to end at ten o’clock and it’s already ten-thirty…’

‘Big deal,’ said Flavia. ‘Jesus, you should be grateful that Martha and Carlos are giving us so much of their time.’

‘No, no,’ said Martha, ‘I want to thank Jason for pointing that out. I’m not very good with time and anybody who wants to leave at the advertised time can do so. If I get excited and I see that things are cooking, I just like to stay with it as long as anybody needs me.

‘But tell me, Jason,’ Martha went on, ‘what are ya really mad at? Remember, the way you behave here is the way you behave in life, so what are ya getting in touch with here? Is it your relationship?’ she said, pointing to Haley. ‘Is it your parents? Is it your work?’

‘No,’ said Jason breezily. ‘As Haley’ll tell you, I’m a very superficial person, and I’m angry with what’s happening right now.’

‘Well, that’s great. You know, a lot of people have a problem with living in the present. But as I like to say, it’s a real gift, and that’s why it’s called “the present”.’

Several people expressed their wonder at the insight afforded by this pun. The African Queen strained to catch Paul’s eye, hoping for acknowledgement that she had already quoted Martha’s self-quotation to him in the hot tub, but Paul was still pondering whether Martha had been rebuking him for lack of spontaneity. He felt that he was a pretty go-with-the-flow, spontaneous type of guy, and he didn’t want the group to think that he was some kind of Zen robot.

Failing to connect with Paul, the African Queen sank back into the exasperation of realizing that if she hadn’t been a man in a previous lifetime, the flow of sacred feminine energy would have been strong enough to free her from the patriarchal cringe which had made her obey Martha’s deceptive authority instead of following her own perfect instincts.

‘Yeah,’ said Jason, ‘but sometimes “the present” is the spiritual equivalent of the archetypal pair of socks your granny gives you for Christmas.’

‘Have you got an issue with your grandmother?’ said Martha.

‘No,’ said Jason, temporarily thrown.

‘Ya see,’ said Martha, ‘I don’t believe it when you say that your anger isn’t rooted in the past.’

‘You sort of win the argument in advance by using the word “rooted”, don’t you?’ said Jason. ‘Where else can anything be rooted?’

‘According to Terence McKenna,’ said Flavia, ‘who happens to be a genius, instead of an arrogant British jerk, history is rooted in the future.’

‘What’s your fucking problem?’ said Jason. ‘Your English boyfriend walk out on you? He must be a happy man.’

‘You bastard,’ said Flavia.

‘Children!’ said Martha.

‘All I’m saying—’ shouted Jason.

‘Go, go, go, Jason,’ said Martha, ‘get in touch with that anger.’

‘All I was saying,’ Jason resumed, ‘is that I was in a perfectly good mood until I had to listen to you and Carlos Jung here blathering on past my bedtime.’

‘You have a bedtime at your age?’ asked Martha. ‘Or is it Little Jason who has a bedtime, and Little Jason who’s mad at us?’

‘I was interested that you use the word “archetypal” about your grandmother’s socks,’ said Carlos.

‘I wasn’t talking about my grandmother’s socks,’ protested Jason.

‘Sometimes we are correct to resist the idea of a personal crisis,’ explained Carlos, ‘because what we are in fact experiencing is a transpersonal crisis.’

‘Listen, Yungos,’ said Jason, ‘I’m not experiencing any sort of crisis, except that I’m about to gag from listening to the two of you.’

‘Why is Little Jason being such a bad boy?’ said Martha. ‘Does he wanna be spanked?’

‘Not by you, darling,’ said Jason with a curt laugh.

‘This is real dynamic,’ said Martha excitedly. ‘We don’t normally get the energy moving this much on the first session. I wanna thank Jason for getting us all stirred up.’

‘Any time,’ mumbled Jason.

‘Now is it past everybody’s bedtime,’ asked Martha ironically, ‘or do we wanna play one more game?’

‘Let’s play,’ replied a number of voices, now united against Jason.

‘You know,’ said Martha, ‘when we’re children we know how to play but we need to learn how to work. Now we know how to work but we need to learn how to play.’

‘But this play,’ said Carlos, ‘is work.’

‘Don’t tell them that,’ said Martha in mock consternation.

In the next game they paired up again and the shorter person had to start as many sentences as possible with the phrase ‘One thing I don’t want you to know about me is…’ Then they would swap again.

People milled about the room looking for new combinations. Carol, seeing Jason shunned, went over to his side and offered to play with him.

Haley, furious with Jason, attached herself to Paul, who she thought was attractive in a sincere sort of American way.

Peter couldn’t help agreeing with Jason that the session should end at ten o’clock, but he also found himself embarrassed by Jason’s manners and more conscious, because he had been mercifully free of this consideration for some time, of how much he was conditioned to react to other English accents. If he couldn’t throw off this habit, the most superficial layer of opacity, how could he hope to see clearly? Perhaps all he could hope to do was to see clearly why he couldn’t see clearly – was that the limit to freedom? He refused to believe it, but then why had his wild mind-annihilating passage on the massage table left this sociological tic untouched?

He was suddenly revolted by the idea of England, like an impacted tooth collapsed on itself and rotting. The prospect of returning there filled him with depression and impatience. Leaving Martha’s workshop was an incentive, but he could do that by stepping outside and standing on the edge of that mysterious ocean whose other shore was China, under the named and the unnamed stars, the pulse of Crystal’s presence as unmistakable as spring in the branches of a cherry tree.

There was only a sleepy old man in a tracksuit left to play with, and so Peter went over to Stan’s side and smiled at him weakly.

‘One thing I don’t want you to know about me,’ said Peter, who was slightly smaller than Stan, ‘is that I think I must be a very superficial person because I keep falling in love with different women. One thing I don’t want you to know about me is that I had the most amazing experience this afternoon and I’m already murdering it with sceptical analysis, but at the same time I want to give the irrational an intelligible place in the scheme of things. One thing I don’t want you to know about me is that although my childhood wasn’t bad it was dull, dull, dull, and sometimes I worry that I must be fundamentally dull as well. There wasn’t any cruelty but there wasn’t any magic either; perhaps that’s why the sort of thing that happened this afternoon feels like an alien invasion. One thing…’

‘Swap!’ shouted Martha.

‘One thing I don’t want you to know about me,’ said Stan eagerly, ‘is that I’m impotent. One thing I don’t want you to know about me is that I sometimes wish my wife would take it easy with some of this New Age stuff. One thing I don’t want you to know about me is that, that, well, that I don’t wanna die. I’m not allowed to say that at home ’cause I just get an audio book about being over-attached to my earth suit, but I wanna say it now: I’m real scared of dying.’

Stan swayed a little on his feet, as if he’d been punched in the face by his own honesty. Peter was pierced for a moment by compassion.

‘Time’s up,’ shouted Martha. ‘Now listen up! We haven’t got time to process this work tonight, so I want ya all ta remember what you said and how it felt to trust another person. Trust is a real big issue for most of us and we’ll be looking at that tomorrow morning. At eleven o’clock we’ve got an appointment with some of the body work staff down in the baths. For those of you who haven’t been to Esalen before, nudity might be an issue for you, so if you wanna raise it in the group tomorrow I’d encourage you to do that.’

‘And also,’ said Carlos, ‘try to write down any dreams you have tonight. Remember your unconscious is your best friend.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ muttered Jason.

‘That’s right,’ said Martha. ‘And we’ve got a storm system coming in right now, so there’s gonna be a lot of negative ions in the atmosphere which means real exciting dreams.’

‘Finally,’ said Carlos, taking out his half-moon glasses and unfolding a piece of paper, ‘I would like to read you a very short poem I wrote about old age:

“Old age is when your back goes out more often than you do.

Old age is when the little old lady you are helping across the road is your wife.”

‘Or the little old man is your husband, um, if you’re a woman, of course,’ said Carlos.

‘Isn’t that great?’ said Martha, carrying most of the group with her in bleating acquiescence.

Peter glanced at Stan. Stan smiled fixedly.

Christ, thought Peter, old age is when you smile in terror because the idea of death gets in everywhere, like sand in the desert, whispering under the door, and snaking its way into the saddlebags.

As the group filed out of the Big House, Frank stopped several men, including Peter, with the words ‘Do you have a problem with your back?’ and, if they answered no, press-ganged them into helping shift Martha’s new white Range Rover from the rock onto which Carlos had driven it. When he heard why he had been asked about his back, Jason cried, ‘I think I’ve just slipped a disc,’ and staggered groaning into the night.

Frank, Carlos, Peter and Paul stood outside in the thick drizzling darkness.

Paul crouched down and peered at the chassis with an air of calm expertise.

‘Can’t see a damn thing,’ he said, still staring.

‘I can’t believe she bought this car,’ said Frank, the perplexed disciple.

‘Why not?’ asked Carlos.

‘It’s so big and ostentatious. In LA it’s a target car.’

‘Well, eh, don’t tell her that,’ said Carlos.

‘Oh, no, God, this is just between you and me.’

‘Maybe she’s influenced by the fact that I have the same car,’ said Carlos.

Each man felt he had to have a suggestion which would establish his mastery of mechanics, physics or engineering. The car remained immobile.

Peter couldn’t think what to say. Paul had already asked if the transmission was in neutral, the one thing Peter knew somebody always said on these occasions.

‘Perhaps we should wait until tomorrow to move Martha’s car,’ he finally blurted out, and then without the slightest effort added, ‘We could show that we were all prepared to collaborate as a group to overcome our individual problems.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Frank.

‘Way to go,’ said Paul, finally getting up from his crouching position.

‘Yes,’ said Carlos, ‘tonight we learned that play can be work, tomorrow we will show that work can be play.’

Peter was amazed by the ease and success with which he had learned to manipulate the new language at his command.

He was learning, he was definitely learning.