A Book of Dreams Read online

  ‘Yes!’

  The hat was squashed down over my eyes. I raised the magic wand and everybody laughed. Somebody clapped.

  I waved the wand back and forth and turned around in a circle. ‘And now, folks, the show is about to begin!’ I waved the wand over all of them. ‘The greatest show on earth is about to begin!’

  Everybody laughed and I laughed too. It made me feel good and happy. But then Mummy walked down the side of the benches next to the wall and whispered, ‘Peter, stop it at once. Don’t be a silly fool. Stop it or I shall tell Daddy.’

  But I just remembered the thing that Bill taught me so I said it, waving the wand: ‘Yessir, folks, he walks he talks he eats ice cream and he crawls on his belly like a reptile. Step right up, folks, only one thin dime!’

  Waving the wand up and down I danced back and forth in front of the benches and everyone was laughing.

  Mummy came over to me and held my arm. She took the wand away and said, ‘All right. Go outside. I warned you.’ I looked at her and she was mad. Some of the people had stopped laughing so I waved goodbye, feeling funny and empty inside.

  I went outside and sat on the lab porch. When my eyes got used to the dark I could see the stars. Then I heard the projector start up again and looking through the windows all I could see was the blobs moving around on the screen and I was terribly, terribly scared that Mummy was going to tell Daddy.

  The lights went out and the movie came on. It wasn’t a very good print; the faded garish colours added to the intensity of this 1950s science-fiction spine-tingler, The Fly.

  Halfway through the movie, just when the monster appears, a freak walks into the theatre. He staggers down the aisle, stoned out of his skull, freaking on the fly monster. ‘Aaaaaargh!’ he shrieks, pressing his hands to his temples. ‘Shit! What is this!?’

  The movie is about a scientist who has discovered how to send matter through space. He has developed a special kind of box. When he puts an object in the box and pulls the lever, presto, the object disappears in a puff of smoke and reappears in a similar box at the other end of the lab.

  After repeated success sending objects back and forth through space, the scientist decides to send himself. Alas, unnoticed, a common housefly buzzes into the sending box. When the scientist emerges from the other box, molecules have shifted in transmigration. The scientist now has the fly’s head and one of his arms. Somewhere, the fly has his.

  The film continues after the freak walks in, screams and takes his seat, building tension around whether or not the scientist will get changed back to a human being before his fly brain takes over his body. The fly, however, manages to escape, and as time passes, the fly’s brain begins to rule the scientist’s body. Finally, afraid of his own animal instincts, the noble scientist has his wife do him in.

  In the last scene, a benevolent uncle comforts the scientist’s widow and son. He tells the son that his father had ‘touched on knowledge of the future,’ and, ‘Maybe someday, in many years, the world will understand his contribution,’ and, ‘He was ahead of his time.’

  Slowly the scene dissolves. Music up. Lights up. People begin getting out of their seats and walking out of the movie but I sit there dazed and numb. Right there in the movie, people were laughing at how incredible The Fly was when sitting right there in the middle of the crowd was someone who had been through something like that and it was real. It was just more believable in a movie.

  What was believable? I still had the magic wand, only now it was a typewriter. It happened. All those things happened but no one believed them. Reich was insane, they said.

  But who was to judge? Did flying saucers actually chase Apollo, our astronaut-heroes, streaking towards the moon?

  Why are people who live in communities in the Southwest, near former bomb test areas, having epidemics of leukaemia and cancer?

  When will people understand?

  I think what hurts me most, in the most personal way, is that I feel mankind is groping blindly towards some understanding of the great forces at play in the universe and that my father was one of a very few men in history who understood the rhythm, the first to understand the function of the orgasm, things that glow in the dark spontaneously.

  But that is still my good soldierly loyalty showing through. I want him to get credit. Does anyone understand?

  That was always my trump card: Nobody understood.

  I’m not sure my father thought that nobody would ever understand, although he knew it would take a long time. The war, the great misunderstanding, the conspiracy, was on all levels. As long as man’s character structure blocked him from life and he acted out that character structure in wars and bureaucracies, he couldn’t understand. Understanding – really understanding, about the eyes and the energy –meant more than agreeing and nodding and being a cosmic captain. It meant going through deep emotional changes and incorporating them into one’s character.

  I understood that, but how could I go about living a regular life when a flying saucer might come down any day and pick me up? I don’t know what happened in the skies of Arizona in 1954 … does anybody? When the argument breaks down, people say, ‘Well, he was crazy,’ making insanity the only way to deal with those far-out issues. Hitting below the belt is good American sport. They attacked him, not his ideas. ‘They want my penis,’ he said. Was he wrong?

  And here I am with my magic wand, dancing around in that other movie, feeling guilty now for being that silly clown, the fool, for showing off to the audience. Once at a lecture, he used me to demonstrate a therapeutic technique.

  Aaaaaaa.

  A tall glass of warm water still milky from the tap. Swallow quickly and then with the forefinger of my left hand, probing down around my tonsils until it comes up and sprays out and twists my mouth. Sometimes when I do it, it makes my face feel like the faces in the mental hospitals, twisted, leering, barfing. Again and again until my chest throbs and tingles from the spasms.

  Or screaming on a couch, yelling, gagging, vomiting, letting all the muscles run and twist until it breaks loose through my whole body … keeping my belly soft.

  Isn’t that just another authoritarian order, a command I obey too willingly? Is there nothing I can do for my own reasons?

  The last thing Makavejev did before he left Rangeley was to tape an interview with me. We went out to the back porch of the motel and sat quietly, waiting for the sound man to come. He had to get the tape recorder out of the car that was already packed. When I drove up, they were all packing quickly. Makavejev said there was tension and they decided to get moving. Looking out over Haley Pond, Rangeley’s back yard, it seemed a very peaceful June afternoon, a good place to relax. But Makavejev insisted they had to leave.

  When the sound man finally came and sat down behind us, with the microphone protruding between us, I got nervous.

  It was as if Makavejev were calling my bluff. Sitting there on the back porch of a motel in Rangeley, Makavejev was going to ask me questions and I was – for the first time, really – going to put myself ‘on record’ about … about me? My father?

  Thousands of moviegoers were going to hear my voice as they watched any number of scenes, depending on Makavejev’s whim. What would it be? Was it wrong for me to be in his movie at all?

  I waited. Makavejev nodded to the sound man, who pressed a lever on the recorder. Silently, the spools began revolving.

  Makavejev leaned forward in his chair, fiddling with his hands as if there were invisible knobs on them and he was tuning me in.

  ‘Could you tell me,’ he asked, ‘who you are?’

  Driving up to the observatory after the movie to get Daddy, Mummy didn’t say a word to me.

  I ran up the steps to the study ahead of her and walked into the room quietly, walking around by the bookshelves, running my fingers over the books that went all the way to the ceiling. The room was warm and quiet because the wooden walls and the ceiling had soft lights on them and made Daddy’s hair all silvery.


  He was sitting at his big desk writing and when he heard me padding on the rug he looked over the tops of his glasses.

  ‘Hi, Peeps,’ he said. ‘Where is Mummy?’

  ‘She’s coming.’ I looked down at the floor. If she told him he would get really mad. It was so scary when he got mad. I walked into the library where there was a couch and said, ‘I guess I’ll go to sleep for a while.’

  Mummy came in and started talking to Daddy. I pretended to be asleep but all of a sudden his footsteps came across the room. My heart pounded all the way into my head.

  ‘Peter!’ he yelled. I sat up and tried to look sleepy.

  ‘What?’

  His face was red and I felt his eyes burning. Mummy was standing in the study next to the light.

  ‘Look at me!’

  The carpet in the library was red. If I was sitting in the red chair that we sat in to listen to the Lone Ranger on the radio instead of the couch he wouldn’t be mad at me.

  ‘Look at me! You play clown in front of everyone?’

  If I squeeze my eyes shut sometimes there is a yellow wave or sparks. I squeezed them shut but it was only a glowing square. It was wrong to play magician at the movies.

  ‘Look at me! You disrupt my movie?’

  It was wrong because I laughed too hard and Mummy always said if you laugh too hard you’ll cry.

  I looked up. His face was swimming in my tears and his eyes reached out and hit me.

  ‘Oh, Daddy.’

  I stood up and ran over to him and cried with my arms around him. He was warm and the smell of his skin oil came through the roughness of his shirt. Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy

  He stood there in the middle of the library while I cried and then he reached down and picked me up and held me in his big arms.

  After I got into bed Mummy came in to say goodnight. I took the ring off and tucked it under my pillow.

  ‘Mummy, I forgot to show Daddy my new ring.’

  ‘It’s all right. You can show it to him-tomorrow.’ She sat down on the bed and smiled.

  ‘Is he still mad at me?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ She pulled the covers up to my neck and smoothed my hair back. ‘But you should remember not to be silly when there are a lot of doctors around. Daddy doesn’t like it and you get in the way.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I won’t do it any more. Are you going to send me away to Jerry Lewis?’

  She laughed. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you sing me the cowboy song?’

  She turned off the light and started to sing.

  Here come the cowboys

  riding on their ponies

  They go out to the prairies

  to round up all the cattle

  Then they come back to the ranch house

  and put away their ponies

  Then they go into the bunkhouse

  and then they go to sleep

  heyup heyup heyup

  Waking up, at Annecy, at Orgonon, at the dump, was not the way it was supposed to be. At the end it was supposed to be smooth and quiet, with faint ripples of water spreading out across the lake as the bust of my father moved majestically over the surface of the water. But instead of being smooth and silky, the wake of the bust was like a long undulating zipper, opening the lake, showing me dreams that were nightmares.

  It is only a few inches from my face to the water in the toilet. Muscles pull in my jaws and neck, retching. I roll my eyes until the rolling makes my whole face move like a fish groping for water, like a baby, contorted, screaming, vomiting, letting it out as my body shakes in waves and currents, all by itself breathing deeper and deeper. It is easier in a toilet. You can kneel down, breathe more deeply. Aaaaaaaaaaa. Finally, my chest hums.

  When I went to an Orgone therapist for help I cried for many reasons. The first reason was that when he put his hand on my chest it wasn’t my father’s. I miss his hands on my chest. And then after that hand had burned into my lungs, I cried even harder, knowing that when the session was over I would have to get up, leave the office and walk out into the street, alone.

  I was afraid. That is why I went; I was afraid of my anger.

  I didn’t trust myself; there must be anger and bitterness somewhere hidden inside me. But how can I be angry when I am still afraid?

  Afraid of flying saucers. Afraid of what it would mean to simply say: My father was right about everything and no one is qualified to say he was wrong.

  Because nobody knows.

  Why not think that? Why? Am I so politically naive to think he died of a simple heart attack? He said he was going to be murdered. He said they were going to kill him in prison. He told us he had proof of the conspiracy. Why not think that? Either way, I feel guilty and helpless, afraid of letting him down, afraid of not being faithful enough.

  Aaaaaaaa.

  Standing up from the toilet, fingers slimy, face smeared, throat chafed and sore from stomach acids … what now?

  How can such a good faithful soldier walk out the door and be free? You see, I was a real soldier. I really believed all that stuff. I was even in the real army, the United States Army. SP4 Ernest P. Reich, US 51522192. I played the game all the way. Yes, sir. No, sir. There was real security in knowing I had to obey orders.

  In a way, I guess, it was my own conspiracy. There were other, secret things going on, and I only let the truth slip out once, during the first week of basic training at Fort Jackson. It was the day when all the new recruits line up to meet the company commander. Our sergeants briefed us over and over on what to do when we went to see the CO.

  ‘Mens. You guys is going in to see the old man. Now first of all, don’t say nothing to him. Just walk into his office and say, “Sir, Private Jones reports.” Then salute in a military manner and wait for him to salute back. DON’T SAY NOTHIN’. Let him talk to you. Got that? When he’s through askin’ you questions, he’ll salute you and that’s your signal. You salute him back in a military manner, Melendez, and make a right face. A right face, Plotkins, and exit through the orderly room walkin’ in a military manner. Don’t try to see who is comin’ behind you and how he’s doin, just get the hell out and report back to the barracks for a GI party. We got a inspection tomorrow.

  ‘Now listen up. Don’t say, “Private Jones reports, sir,” the way they do in the movies. You ain’t John Wayne and you ain’t no heroes. That’s for sure. You just walk in there and stand at attention lookin’ right over his head and say, “SIR, Private Jones reports.” You got that?’

  Sloppy in our fatigues, heads shorn, faces pale, we mumbled, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes what?!’ he roared.

  ‘Yes, Sergeant.’

  ‘I can’t hear you!’

  ‘YES, SERGEANT!’ we bleated.

  So there we were, five platoons strung out across the company area single-file, waiting to go in and say good morning to the lieutenant.

  As the line inched closer and closer to the ominous door, people got more and more nervous. The whole right side of the line was a-twitch as we tried out salutes, mumbling, ‘Sir, Private Connor reports.’ ‘Sir, Private Giordani reports.’ ‘Sir, Private Marble reports.’ ‘Sir, Private Reich reports.’ ‘Private Tompkins reports, sir…. Oh shit no. Sir, Private Tompkins reports.’

  ‘Hey,’ someone yelled. ‘Hey, you guys, where the hell is the right angle supposed to be, under your armpit or next to your head?’

  By the time the first Ms were going in I had started to sweat, repeating over and over again, ‘Sir, Private Reich reports, Sir, Private Reich reports.’

  The first Ms walked out of the orderly room door with huge sweat stains spreading out from beneath their arms, all pale, washed out, shaking their heads.

  Sir, Private Reich reports. Sir, Private Reich reports. Sir, Private Reich reports. Over and over I said it, my arm joining the Ps and the rest of the alphabet twitching towards the door.

  Suddenly I was inside. The lieutenant scowled as Plotkin stumbled out into the orderly room.

/>   He sat in his chair, stony-faced, and looked at me. I looked at him for a few seconds and then drew myself up to attention. Heels together, toes at a forty-five degree angle, thumb and fingers extending straight out from my forearm, which was the hypotenuse of the right angle at my neck and shoulder, I looked over his head and saluted smartly.

  ‘Sir, Captain Reich reports.’

  After I woke up I ran up the road to meet Tom and go to town for the mail. The rocks on the road hurt my bare feet all the way up the road.

  When we got back I rode up to the observatory, waving as we went past the lab. Tom said I couldn’t go upstairs because Daddy was talking to some of the doctors so I waited downstairs and played with the ring.

  I went into the wing and opened the door to the cellar. The cellar smells like dirt because it is the very bottom of the observatory and the top of the hill. You can see it because there is a big rock right next to the furnace where the hill comes right up out of the ground. When I closed the door it was dark and scary but I wasn’t too scared because I could just reach up and open the door. The pommel slipped back easily and the secret compartment began to glow. It was exciting. I could get rings for everybody and write messages. It glowed soft green at me. I wished I knew how to really write messages on it, instead of pretend.

  The door opened and Tom looked in.

  ‘Hey. What you doin’ down there?’

  I held up the ring for Tom to see. ‘I’m working with my glow-in-the-dark ring. Except I don’t know how to write on it. Look.’

  He turned it over and over in his hand.

  ‘Gee whiz. I don’t know either. Maybe it is just supposed to glow.’ He handed it back. ‘Why don’t you ask your dad? Anyhow, I got to work on the furnace some.’

  The ring rode my finger up into the hallway and partway up the stairs. The voices of the doctors talking floated down the stairs so the saddle rode down into the big room to wait.