constants, but that must be one of them. You’re absolutely right.”
She maintained the small talk for several minutes, and to Adrienne it was apparent that she was attempting to set them all at ease, especially Clay. Had they slept soundly? Where were they staying? Some fierce weather they must have come through farther north. Obviously their situation deviated from the norm she would be used to, with no time to work leisurely around to a protracted session. Now and again, to Clay alone she would direct a question or two, fairly innocuous, subtle in its probing; gaining a feel for the way he answered, how he responded to her.
Adrienne focused primarily on Clay during such exchanges, her first occasion to watch him relating to another therapist. She began to wonder if she’d not been too hard on herself, too preoccupied with her failure to deliver grand miracles to see evidence of the smaller ones that had been wrought over their months of effort. For this was not the same Clay she had first encountered, who tested his therapist as an adversary. This was not the Clay who had suggested she compensate for his inability to masturbate.
This was a Clay Palmer who was open to trust.
And if he could trust, he had hope.
Kendra requested they follow her down a hall to her office, and what a far cry it was from those Adrienne was used to. Sarah had grown wide-eyed and loose-necked, shuffling a slow pirouette, staring with a naked and grasping wonder at the masks that lined the walls. Here were faces of ritual that, Kendra told them, predated all texts, all histories, faces dipped from wellsprings of myth. Masks from the Old World and the New, from both hemispheres; from Mexican village to Borneo rain forest, from Inuit ice field to African bush. Faces for death and for life, faces for healing, for the supplication of implacable nature, faces for the appeasement of gods whose names she would never hear. And while Adrienne rationally knew that behind those empty eye sockets lay nothing but walls, she still felt watched.
The eyes of the world were on them, and the eyes of time, as well.
“Let’s sit down,” Kendra said.
There were just enough chairs. Her attention now fell squarely on Clay. She asked if he had ever been hypnotized before. He had, a few years ago, by a psychologist in Minneapolis, and had gone under with ease. This was no surprise — highly intelligent people usually did.
She explained the underlying principles of what they would be doing throughout the day, the procedures used. Some of the background he’d already heard from Adrienne and Sarah — the notion of the collective unconscious, a deep pool of archetypal images and fundamental human knowledge, transcendent of culture and unfathomably ancient, that resided in the evolved mind the same as a history of function resided in other organs. A fellow Jungian, Kendra could not believe that the human psyche was blank at birth.
Clay listened without impatience, as if he had heard none of it before. Just a sharp crease of expectation across his contoured face, the face of someone poised on a windswept brink, awaiting signs and sigils that would mean something to him at last.
And if at times it sounded ludicrous, that the collective unconscious could be tapped by hypnosis, even conversed with, there was no doubt that Kendra Madigan passionately believed in what she was doing, to the extent that she was willing to risk arrest. She had no license to possess or dispense psychoactives.
It was this willingness to put her neck on the line that made Adrienne’s reservations harder to voice. Still, she could not remain compliantly silent. Someone
“If you’ve already accessed the collective unconscious,” Adrienne said, “and it’s what it’s theorized to be — an aggregate species knowledge — then what’s the point of putting anyone else through the process? Aren’t you going to get the same basic results every time?”
Kendra smiled as if enjoying the challenge — ah, a worthy opponent. “I did, at first, until I started to refine techniques. Regardless of the commonalities we carry around inside us, each of us is still an individual. We can relate to universals through an individual perspective. I’ve found that, by the time subjects can speak of what’s being confronted, by the time the information is routed through the verbal areas of the brain, they’re usually imprinting it with their own uniqueness. Their deepest self-knowledge that most are never even aware of.”
“They can see their purpose in an overall scheme, then?” concluded Sarah.
Kendra nodded. “I believe many can, yes.”
“And suppose a subject is in a fragile state of mind,” said Adrienne, “and may not be equipped to handle the knowledge. Do you bear the responsibility for what happens to him?”
“Yes,” she said, quite firm. “But just so we know where each of us stands… what kind of responsibility do you have in mind?”
“I know your methods. They can’t be free of danger.” Adrienne drew her composure and fingertips together in one calm movement. “If you harm him in any way… I’ll have you up for review.”
Kendra nodded once more, and Adrienne had to give her this: You could not ruffle this woman. “You’ll do what you must.”
Clay stirred in his chair. “Adrienne, how old am I?”
She started, not expecting this. “Twenty-five.”
“An adult, right? Now let me get this straight: Back in Tempe, you told a group of researchers that I was sane, that I was competent to make my own decisions, and that you’d testify to it in court, if it came to that. Is that right?”
Her mouth was going dry. “Yes.”
“Then butt out.”
It was so brusque, Adrienne wasn’t even sure she’d heard him correctly, until Kendra spoke up, an unlikely ally.
“Clay,” she said sharply, sternly, eyes piqued with a hint of what must have been a fierce demeanor underlying her calm grace. “This woman is concerned enough about you to accompany you more than halfway across the country. If she and I have a professional disagreement, that’s fine, I’m accustomed to them. But I would appreciate your respect for her concern. She’s earned that.”
“Sorry,” he said softly. “But this is important to me. So trust me. I want to do this. I have to.”
Adrienne nodded, resigned. It did not imply her blessings.
Kendra had him swallow a pair of tablets — psilocybin derived from
She sent him to the bathroom to sheathe his penis in a Texas catheter. The tube coiled out of his jeans, down to a urine bag that he hung from a special hook on the chair. This would be no brief hypnosis, she cautioned, and subjects often voided their bladders — sometimes from simple prolonged need, other times from loss of sphincter control while plunging deep into more turbulent regions.
Blinds drawn, the room was dimmed until the masks seemed to float around them like ancient nobles peering through the dusk. Clay sat in his chair, a voyager breathing deeply to calm himself. Kendra set before him a small portable table, on which stood a pyramid of black plastic and metal, as tall as a hardback book tented spine- up. When she toggled a switch recessed into its back, a socket in front began to pulse with soft light. Adrienne could not see the bulb itself — probably a good thing — only the languid strobing across Clay’s face, shadow/light/shadow/light, his impassive features in continual alternation.
“I want you to stare into the light, Clay, the center of the light.' Kendra’s voice was cultivated and practiced, as smooth as a perfect lullaby. “There’s only the light… and the sound of my voice…”
For minutes she lulled him onward, the set of Clay’s eyes — frequently so hard and wary — softening with glazed surrender.
Kendra gradually took him through his life in reverse, leapfrogging a year or two at a time. “Where are you now?” she would ask, and he would answer in small, soft syllables: at home… at school… looking at my baby sister who forgot how to breathe. Days of pain and sorrow, yet they rarely disturbed the serenity of his countenance. He knew peace in this inner realm.
