XIII
Student: Master Law, is friendship possible?
Master Law: What is friendship?
Second Student: We propose it's a sharing of realities.
Master Law: Do you also propose to step into the same river in the same instant and in the same place?
Student: Perhaps . . . friendship is equivalency of realities.
Master Law: How do you establish that equivalency?
Student: If we were equal.
Master Law: In all respects?
Student: In the important ones. In the ones we consider
important. Is that possible, sir?
Master Law: Have you not equally defined rivalry?
Second Student: If we agreed.
Master Law: If common reality is your reality, it exists, within that referent. If either of you exists, which is by no means certain.
He betook himself to bed in the studio, having a cot there for occasions of late work; it was his own familiar clutter and he had had a great many beers. He reckoned that the best cure for his troubles.
Overwork. He had overstrained himself, and his agitated brain was seeking occupation even when it reasonably had none, simply burning off adrenalin; that was the source of his bizarre fancies.
But when he sat on his cot and reviewed the sketches he had made in his sketchbook, he stopped on the last one he had done of Waden, knowing that another turn of the page was going to bring the nightmare back again.
He turned it, because he could not refrain. The image of Camden McWilliams was there, black and broad-shouldered and solid, refuting invisibility. He had sketched an invisible, and brought it home with him. And on his collar was another thing, which he had forgotten, until he saw the outsider again.
He pulled off the ahnit brooch and it lay chill in his palm. He was numbed by his evening's drinking. He sat there unsure what he ought to do with the thing, which was . . . fine. It was no-color, lapis, nothing very precious, but . . . fine. There was no destroying such a thing. It went against all his sensibilities.
He laid it atop the portrait of Camden McWilliams, who had spat on priceless art, canceling him from his thoughts. He lay down on his cot, with the light on, and stared about him at what had been real and solid and true for so many years, and finally the Reality reasserted itself. He reasserted it, and snugged into the warmth and slept a drunken sleep.
His head hurt in the morning, as expected; he had a bewildered recollection of himself and his wanderings, and with light pouring in the studio window and peace everywhere the series of encounters seemed entirely surreal and his fear somewhat amusing.
He shaved, washed, dressed, in spirits as ebullient as an aching head and slight embarrassment would allow.
Keye, he decided. The fact was that he missed Keye and therefore he indulged himself in such nonsense. If he had had Keye's apartment to go to he should never have been doing such incredible things—the market, the port market at night, of all things!—and making a spectacle of himself. He had fallen quite seriously. He had let Keye disturb him, that was it; she had gotten to him and he had wobbled from the blow. There was nothing for it but to reestablish himself with her, move back in on his own terms, ignore her attempts to manipulate him. It could only make him stronger. He had to school himself to withstand her undermining effects, and on the contrary to affect her. He was the superior, and anything else was unthinkable.
He dressed, and clipped the ahnit brooch to his collar, which no citizen of Kierkegaard would dare do, adorning himself with invisible jewelry made by invisibles and Others. It smacked of madness.
But so did dancing in the main square of Kierkegaard, and he had done that. And laughed there. And as for dread of what others might think, he was too powerful for that. If they thought they saw him wearing something which invisibles had made, then let them say so; it was a dilemma for them, a discomfort for all about him, a challenge. He wanted challenges this morning; he was, perhaps because of the headache, in an aggressive mood, and the humor of it vastly appealed to him.
He swung out the door of his studio, headed for the square, with a lightness in his step, skipping down the stairs.
He had met all there was to fear; had bested it; had come out of a bad dream, and headed for his work with enthusiasm.
XIV
Waden Jenks: Ah, Herrin, respect me.
Master Law: Fear me, if I'm your outlet to the world. Your substance flows through my hands.
Waden Jenks: I've told you what I fear. What do you fear, Artist?
"I'm back," he announced that evening at Keye's door. The servant let him in and Keye herself, about to sit down to a solitary supper, betrayed herself with a slight lifting of the brows.
"Oh. Should I be happy?"
"Be what you choose. I trust there's something in the pantry."
"See to it," Keye told the servant, waving her hand, and indicated the other chair. "So you're back. And how much else do you assume?"
"Oh, be yourself. I'd never interfere."
She dropped the smile, sat there looking as if something had gone down the wrong way, and stared at him a moment. He kept smiling, because if she threw him out he would have won, and if she let him stay he would have won.
He stayed.
If Keye noticed the brooch she said nothing, nor touched it, nor commented on the rift which had been between them. Keye was either on the retreat or, falsely self-assured, thought that she had won. He did not think the latter. "Have you," she asked, "moved to the Residency yet?"
He shrugged. "I'm waiting a moment of convenience. I've been too busy lately to consider an interruption."
"The work out there is going much faster than I would have believed."
"What, do I surprise you?"
"If you like."
"I'm satisfied with it."
He wondered for a moment about Keye. Meekness was not her style, but possibly she was lonely, as he was. He admitted that much, having also admitted to himself that he could live in solitude if he chose. And Keye, who was superior to all but him and Waden, had to have come to similar decisions.
His reality, he concluded, was flexible enough to tolerate Keye. And to laugh at her pretensions.
XV
Master Law: How fine shall I dice it?
Master Lynn: Until you smell the air and know you are political.
Master Law: I confess to it then; but I'm politically unconsenting. I live in large scope than Waden Jenks; our arenas are different.
Master Lynn: Yours embraces his. As you embrace that monument, shells within shells. He won't laugh when he perceives that Reality.
He looked out Keye's window at a night somewhat removed from that night, when the whole apartment was dark and the only light was coming in from the glaring floods outside. The noise went on, the grinding of cranes, the voices of workmen and the voices of apprentices giving orders, the occasional ring of hammer and chisel. The twelfth course was laid. What had been three rings from above, with the thick central pillar and the apparent random placement of additional touch-points to act as supports . . . began to show other curves. The inward curve of the dome began to be apparent, and the curve of the pillar which was headed to meet it in three levels. That slamming of pipe . . . the scaffolding Was going into place, the supports which would hold the developing dome until the last courses could be laid, and their keystones settled. During the next several days, the cranes would work nonstop. The whole shell would be put up; lighting was being arranged interior to the shell as well as exterior. Apprentices with their computer printouts and their cutters would sit at the base of a surface completing their tasks in sculpture, while cranes swung the vast stones into place above them. The major perforations would be made only when the whole structure stood solid. Minor texturing proceeded.