Professional Documents
Culture Documents
PEACEABLE
KINGDOM
BY RICHARD BOROVSKY
All rights reserved
Richard Borovsky, 2005
Copyright 2007 by Richard Borovsky
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I hardly noticed the humans in the house where I was born, since
my attention was focused exclusively on my mother and my several
siblings. The first three months of my life were spent in a period of
feline nurturing and education in which I learned, among other
things, that we felines are called cats, whereas humans, dogs,
squirrels, birds, insects, etc (with a few notable exceptions) are
called animals, and further, that as cats, we are able to see the
subtle planes of existence that permeate the physical plane, and
participate in the activities of those inner realms. This, as all felines
know, is one of the three qualities that distinguish us from the
animals. Along with this vision, we have evolved past the lower
creatures in our natural gift of multiple mortality (something you
have sensed in a childish way), and above all, the power to purr, a
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This trip to the Humane Society was not my last. I lived with two
other families after the Fricklys. My stays with these humans were
longer than my first, but the quality of the experience was
unimproved, and after each adoption, I eventually found myself
back at the same place.
Both families had children, each of whom was uniquely
disagreeable. The male child of the first family that claimed me at
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was annoying, her parents were far worse. They treated their
daughter with an intentional cruelty that any non-human animal
would find abhorrent. It was for this reason that one evening after
these brutes had verbally abused their daughter, I escaped from her
room and managed to urinate liberally on every upholstered chair in
the parents living room, on their white sofa, several carpets, the
entire contents of their linen closet, and finally, on their own bed
with them in it. Then I ran away.
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ORLANDO
On some days Orlando didnt want to get out of bed. It wasnt that
he hadnt had enough sleephed been going to bed early recently
and rarely had trouble falling asleepit was that he preferred his
dream world to his waking one, which had become less fulfilling as
the years went by. His dream world was no picnic, of course: it was
capricious and unpredictable, but it had none of the drudgery of his
daily life, and though his dreams could be troubling, he often woke
wishing he could return to themthe possibilities seemed endless.
When Orlando woke and felt pressed to embark on his daily routine,
he often wondered if there was anything inherently more important
about getting up, taking a shower, drinking coffee and going to
work, than there was in dreaming. He had no family and no real
responsibilities beyond his own, and he sometimes reasoned, while
still in bed, that if he were to move to a warmer climate and become
a homeless man, eating at food pantries and sleeping under a palm
tree somewhere, he could still enjoy his dreams and even prolong
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his apartment with his coffee and his crumbled muffin wrapped in a
paper napkin. Then he walked across to the little neighborhood
park where he sat on a bench under one of the maple trees caught in
the act but hardly embarrassed to be only half dressed in autumn
orange. This was September.
Orlando did have a knack for deriving enjoyment from the
little niceties of life. When he unscrewed the cap from his coffee
mug, he enjoyed watching the billows of steam rise and dissipate
into the cool air. This rising steam, he also noticed, resembled the
streaks of cloud that surrounded the pale, daytime moon, low in the
sky, and it pleased him to notice this. He lingered as he put the cup
to his lips to fully inhale the aroma of the freshly brewed coffee, an
aroma so pungent that it that cleared his mind and induced serenity.
And as Orlando enjoyed these simple things, he remembered
reading that appreciation of the moment was the key to happiness in
life. This seemed reasonable enough to him. He also recalled his
problem with this principle: hed never been able to string more
than a few such appreciative moments together, and that being the
case, he put it away along with other pithy but impractical spiritual
precepts in his mental file labeled To hell with it. Then he noticed
the crow.
His bench was set back from an old, buckled sidewalk that
ran the length of the little park and showed tufts of grass in the
seams and cracks that stretched along and across it. The crow stood
just across the sidewalk from him. It was a large bird, blue-black
and glossy in the muted morning light. Orlando was not particularly
attracted to city crows, noisy and aggressive as they often are. But
this crow was alone, and Orlando felt that its proximity boded well,
though he realized that the bird had most likely approached hoping
to be fed. He hadnt heard of feeding crows, however; pigeons, of
course, but never crows. As he sipped his hot, fresh brewed coffee
(making good coffee was one of his few culinary skills), and
watched the bird edge onto the sidewalk across from him, he felt
surprisingly benevolent toward the beady-eyed animal. He also
noticed that the bird had a slight limp, that its right foot showed
signs of an injury. He knew it was popular wisdom that animals can
sense fear, but he wondered if they could sense affection as well.
The crow stepped closer. Orlando hadnt touched his muffin yet, so
after another sip of coffee, he unwrapped it, put a piece in his mouth
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BUBBLES
In the beginning there were bubbles. How big? Bigger than his
`head, but not big enough to engulf him completely, not quite. Most
often there were two or three, always in motion, like luminous,
overlapping moons, containing his little body and permeating it
there in his crib. These were his awareness, these bubbles, and they
were filled with a brighter, richer and more cogent immediacy than
we can think or imagine. They were charged with resonances of a
most profound sort, with wordless wonder, with the simplicity of
infinity. If we were to attempt to name them, the names would be to
the reality of the bubbles like maps of an unknown and unknowable
world. We might look at them and draw certain conclusions, but to
what end? We might call one bubble comfort, or another
surprise, another joy; but the comfort that luminous bubble
contained might be the serenity of endlessness; the surprise the
miracle of transfiguration, the joy the ecstasy the suns lovebut
only in name, like the tracing of a shoreline on a planet galaxies
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away. It would make as much sense to say that the bubbles were
full of radiant blue meaning, or a great vibrancy G major, or a
confluence of sweetnesses. Yet that was where he lived for months
and months, there in the uncharted world before names or language
of any kind.
It wasnt a world without pain, for when the luminous
bubbles first touched, when they first overlapped, or just as they
separated, he knew pain and unhappiness. It felt to him as if the
sharpness of the initial collision and breaking apart cut into his
otherwise immaculate awareness: the dagger points and razor edges
of vanishing interstices were for him what wed call hunger or pain
or want. But most often the laws of spatial geometry were kind to
him as they are to us all: just as the moon appears more often softly
rounded than razor-sharp. The space in which he lived, however,
and indeed in which we all once lived, is unlike the space we
currently occupy, crowded and clogged with the brickwork and
residue of language. His nursery, for instance, may as well have
been thousands of feet high and across, because the things in the
roomthe baubles that swung above him, the bars of his crib beside
him, the stuffed duck next to himwere things in themselves with
nothing attached: no names, no purpose, no history, and therefore
inhabited a vast uncluttered space, an immensity through which the
luminous bubbles of his consciousness drifted in upon him.
Around him, of course, and coloring and colored by these
luminous bubbles, were his parents; connected to him directly
through the plasma of love and that alone. They lived in a dream
world of their own, and their views neither enriched nor deluded the
infant: their world did not exist for him. Love, howevertheirs and
the love of the sun, perhaps, and the planetswas palpable to him;
it was the medium in which he operated, and in which his parents
also moved, to their own limited extent. Thus his needs were met,
and, correspondingly, theirs as well. For their part, they lavished
affection on him and often referred to him as a miracle. They
understood this only marginally, however, and looked down on him
as if through the wrong end of a telescope. But of course they did
their best, struggling as they were with the human condition.
His parents encountered no struggles with one aspect of the
human condition, however: they were both unusually attractive
people, and they passed their good looks on to their infant son.
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least in the suburbs of) the Kingdom of Heaven, like all parents,
theyd have wanted him to exit those premises without delay and
begin to cope with the world in terms they themselves could
understand. Once that time arrived, of course, they began to long
for the days when little Toby still lay in his crib and slept for hours
like a uncooked sausage, plump, pink and ready to please.
Five years later, the previously harmless little Toby stood in front of
the toilet in his bathroom and twisted the head of one of his turtles
around for the third, fourth and fifth time, until eventually the
creature stopped waving its little feet. Toby then gave the head one
more twist, dropped the dead turtle into the toilet, flushed it, and ran
out of the bathroom, through his bedroom and into the long hall that
led to the kitchen, suddenly in tears.
Mommy! Mommy! he cried. Freddy Greenback died!
at which he flung his arms around his mothers aproned waist and
continued to sob.
Oh, no! said Angela. Thats awful, dear! Let me see.
But Toby wouldnt let go. He was floating on his back, so
I flushed him down the toilet like Daddy did before, he said before
he was willing to release his grip and lead his mother back to his
room. An earlier pet turtle of Tobys had (apparently) died a natural
death, and Tobias had extracted it from its tank and flushed it down
the toilet as Toby watched, enthralled.
Are you sure he was dead, dear? Angela asked as they
stood in the boys room looking into the tank where his second
turtle sat silently on a rock.
He was floating like this, Mommy, he said, picking up the
other turtle and placing it in the shallow water on its back. It
immediately righted itself and crawled back onto its rock. Angela
put her arm around her little boy. Im sorry Mr. Freddy died
Freddy Greenback! Toby interrupted, annoyed at his
mothers ignorance.
Yes, Angela answered, sweetly. Im sorry Freddy
Greenback died. But you know turtles dont live long like people
do...
Of course I know that, Toby thought. Im not stupid.
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Just before Toby first twisted the turtles head around, he had an
old, familiar feeling. It was like something hed felt in his earliest
days. Hed felt it at times when the luminous bubbles first touched
and first broke apart: that sharp, precision that he felt as pain lying
in his criba wracking stomach ache or a sharp, hollow hunger
but this old, familiar feeling wasnt quite that; it was something else.
It was a special pain Toby felt in his jaw, just below his right ear,
and at other times behind his right shoulder blade. It wasnt like a
stomach ache, not exactly, because this pain, well Toby liked it.
Clearly it was painful; if it went too far he cried, but even as an
infant hed learned to prolong this sensation before it became
overwhelming. It became a great source of pleasure for him, though
pleasure isnt quite the right worda great source of intensity,
perhaps. He hadnt felt this pleasant ache since he was two,
however, even though hed tried to bring it on. But there was
something in that dagger-sharp, satisfying feeling that arose again
when Toby thought of harming his pet turtle, something that made
the idea seductive to him, irresistible.
But that wasnt the only thing that little Toby couldnt
resist; something else was equally alluring to him. It hadnt
happened the first time he picked up a crayon, however. The first
time he picked up a crayon, his mother had put a coloring book on
the dining-room table in front of hima coloring book filled with
pictures of zoo animals. Being so young, he wasnt particularly
adept at staying within the lines. And he didnt improve much the
second time, or the third, or the twelfth, for that matter. But one day
(just prior to the Freddy Greenback incident) his mother couldnt
find the coloring book and tried to draw an elephant for her son to
color. She made her drawing on a piece of her linen-textured, light
blue Angela Wellington stationery. Toby took only a moment to
look at his mothers crude attempt at drawing before he picked up
an ultramarine blue crayon, another piece of stationery, and swiftly
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didnt look twice at the water colors and temperas she bought for
him. Nor the pastels, nor the box of sixty-four crayons, nor the box
of thirty-six colored pencils. It was only the blackest of pencils he
took up, but only until Angela presented him with a pen and a bottle
of India ink, which was to be the medium for his entire artistic
career.
But you cant erase it, dear, his mother warned him after
he completed his first drawing in ink, a picture of her own face.
Toby looked down at the drawing, and then up at his mother,
quizzically. It occurred to her than that he might not know what
erase meant, so she took a pencil and made a line on a scrap of
paper and instructively erased it.
I know about that, he said, feeling much the same
annoyance he felt when she explained to him that turtles dont live
as long as people do.
But erasers are there in case you make a mistake, dear,
she went on. When you do a drawing with a pencil you can fix
your mistakes. You cant do that with inkat least I dont think
you can I suppose you can blot out But she trailed off as she
noticed Toby looking intently at his portrait.
Wheres the mistake? he asked.
The drawing hed made of Angela wasnt an exact
rendering of her face, but it certainly wasnt a childish attempt at
that. It was a realistic drawing with an expressionistic flair, and
where the lines did not conform to the contours of Angelas eyes,
chin, cheekbones, ears or hair, they were unique, intriguing, elegant.
Oh, I think thats lovely, Toby, she said. Well show
Daddy as soon as he gets home. I dont see any mistakes. I was
just And she trailed off again.
Toby didnt say a thing. He didnt believe he made
mistakes; he never would. There followed a series of remarkable
drawings of animals, all created in memory from the line drawings
in his coloring book. Each was not only expertly and uniquely
rendered, but also artfully placed on the page. It was apparent to
both Angela and Tobias that they had a prodigy in the house. There
was no explanation of the boys talent. It wasnt apparent to them,
however, that they also had a problem in the house. When the
second turtle died soon after the first, they believed that there must
have been something in the water or that little creatures had fallen
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should have been enrolled in the beginners class, one Orlando didnt
teach, and when the child began to show signs of an impending
tantrum, Orlando was ready to send him out into the hall where the
his mother was waiting. But Mr. Floyd had found Angela
Wellington disarmingly attractive; in fact, much about her reminded
him of a former lover whod left him, and it was the prospect of
incurring the disapproval of one so similar in appearance that
dissuaded Mr. Floyd from summarily expelling the child and
granting him his unreasonable wish.
Some might conclude that a karmic resonance of some
sort had come into play here on Tobys behalf and some might not,
but by whatever operative mechanism, it was time for little Toby to
show his stuff, and show it he did. The class had been told to do a
drawing from memory, and Toby drew a portrait of a lion hed seen
photographed in a copy of the National Geographic at home. The
male lion had his teeth bared in an aggressive posture. This picture,
like all the others hed done, had an expressionistic flair to it and it
captured enough of the lions menace to have frightened many
children his age. The lion was unforgettable. Its lines themselves
were the signature of genius. And beyond that, Toby added
something new to this picture: hed added several jagged horizontal
lines which captured the essence of a mountainous horizon, along
with what seemed a perfect circle of a Sun. When Mr. Floyd saw it,
he was so suddenly and deeply moved that he couldnt restrain his
tears. He wanted to ask the child if he could have the picture, but
did not. He sensed something in the boys demeanor that was at
odds with his pretty fair-haired looks, something that made him
believe the child would react aggressively to that request, not unlike
the lion he so dramatically portrayed.
Do you sign your work, Toby? Mr. Floyd asked.
I dont know how to write yet, the boy said.
You can just use your initials. A very great draughtsman
named Albrecht Durer often did that.
Toby looked interested. Here, Ill show you, his
instructor went on, and on a separate piece of paper he wrote TW
and the year, careful to form the letters and numbers without any
discernable style or idiosyncrasy. You can copy that, if you like.
Here, he said, indicating the lower right corner of the 9 x 12 inch
piece of paper on which Toby had inked his lion.
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Somethings wrong with Mr. Zootie, Toby said to Mrs. Star, his
kindergarten teacher.
Indeed, something was wrong with the classs pet hamster,
Mr. Zootie. Mr. Zootie, apparently, was dead. He lay motionless
next to his wheel in the wood shavings at the bottom of his cage.
Oh, my! said Mrs. Star, after prodding Mr. Zootie with a
pencil a few times to confirm her suspicions. Children, she called
out then, Please put away your things and come and sit in our
circle. And then aside to Toby, whom shed enclosed in her puffy
arm: Let me tell them, dear.
Disappointed, Toby wriggled away and sat down on the
carpet, a little distance from the others. Something very sad
happened, Mrs. Star began. Toby just discovered that our little
friend, Mr. Zootie, has died.
My grandpa died, said Katie Klausmeyer. He thought I
was my mother.
Oh, Im sorry about that, Katie, said Mrs. Star. I
remember how sad I was when my grandpa died. But just as she
was about to go on, Toby broke in. Hamsters dont live as long as
people do, he said smugly.
Mrs. Star paused for a moment. Thats right, Toby, but we
didnt expect Mr. Zootie to die so soon, and its right that we all feel
sad about it.
Toby scowled at this, but that was nothing new. A number
of questions followed. Yes, they could look at Mr. Zootie, Mrs. Star
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explained, but no, they could not touch him. And no, she did not
know why hed died. Someone suggested they take the little animal
to a vet to discover the cause of death, and Mrs. Star said that was
an excellent idea, but shed have to see if it would be possible.
Instructive as it might be, she suspected it wasnt; the school was
under budget constraints and she didnt know if she could find a vet
to volunteer his services. Which from a certain point of view
Tobyswas just as well, because had a necropsy been performed,
it would have been discovered that little Mr. Zootie not only
suffocated but had also suffered a broken neck. Its doubtful,
though, that anyone other than an animal pathologist would have
taken the trouble to discover that the hamsters neck had been
broken by the pressure it took to close off its airway, but it that
seemed to be the way it happened. Later that day, the class laid Mr.
Zootie to rest in a hole they dug in a far, grassy corner of the
playground. Several of the children cried.
Toby did not. Toby didnt like kindergarten. He didnt like
the children, he didnt like Mrs. Star, but what he disliked most of
all was that he was not permitted to draw with pen and ink there. So
Toby refused to draw at all. When the other children did, when they
drew with crayons and painted with temperas at their easels, Toby
looked at picture books and imagined Mrs. Star punishing him for
being able to draw as well as he did. You didnt draw that picture!
she shouted at him. Your mother drew that! You are a cheater! A
dirty little cheater! And her cruel accusations continued on as she
took him into the bathroom where she pinched him black and blue.
At times the little boy got so carried away with his fantasy that he
shed tears of indignation and rage.
If I let him use a pen and India ink, the teacher explained
to Tobys mother, Id have to let all the children use it. And even
with smocks she shook her head. Thered be ink stains on
clothing and complaints. And frankly, Mrs. Wellington, I dont
quite why this is so important to Toby. He does have a reluctance to
participate in class activities
Angela had no wish to listen to anything resembling
criticism of her son, and before Mrs. Star had gone any further,
shed heard enough. It wasnt that she blamed Mrs. Star; the
woman simply didnt understand what a gifted boy her Toby was.
But matters were soon clarified for Mrs. Star, because the day after
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Mr. Zooties demise, Toby brought one of his pen and ink drawings
to school. It was a portrait of Mr. Zootie, and it was clearly the
work of a remarkable young talent. With an alternation of inked-in
and empty areas, the animals coat shown with an anatomic
precision; the wood chips around it were rendered with apparently
effortless curling flicks of the pen. There was something about the
way the animal was portrayed that gave the sense of an exact
representation, though many of the lines were free from constraint,
almost abstract. As was becoming evident in more and more of
young Tobys drawings, there was an uncanny sense of inevitability
to the inked lines. No mistakes.
Like everyone who first saw the five-and-a half-year-olds
extraordinary drawings, Mrs. Star was astonished. She didnt know
a line drawing could have such presence. She felt like she was
hearing young Mozart play the piano. When the class was gathered
in their circle on the floor, she presented the drawing to them,
adding that Toby had made a beautiful drawing of Mr. Zootie
sleeping in his cage.
Hes not sleeping. Toby said, sounding offended. Hes
dead. Its a drawing of a dead animal.
Marietta Star had been teaching kindergarten for thirty-five
years, and at that moment she realized that Toby had killed Mr.
Zootie. She didnt say anything, of course; she couldnt, really, she
had no proof. But shed never known a child like Toby, and as it
turned out, she was one among the very few who ever guessed the
extent of the young geniuss eccentricities.
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It was only after approximately an hour that I crept out from under
the sofa in the living room of the Wellingtons eight-room
apartment. The female had thrust a dish of high quality tuna in my
direction and I could not resist it. She then coerced me into the
apartments kitchen where she put the dish down next to a bowl of
clear water.
Dont bother him while he eats, the female instructed the
child, who was hovering nearby. Animals can turn vicious if you
disturb them while theyre eating. Of course, the balefully
uninformed woman was referring of dogs, not cats, and much as I
despise such comparisons, I appreciate being undisturbed while
eating, so I hissed at the child, as much to see his reaction as to
insure my own tranquility. But without hesitation, the child hissed
back. This impressed me. I wont go so far as to say that the child
won my heart at this moment, but there was something akin to feline
contempt in his hiss, something Id never seen in a human before, so
I left my meal momentarily, approached the boy and rubbed the
densely furred side of my head against his ankle. Then I returned to
my dinner.
Later that evening, I discovered there was yet another child
in the house, older than the first one I met. At first this was
alarming, but I soon found that he was as disinterested in me as I
was in him. I was relieved to find no more surprises awaiting me,
and over the next several days I observed life in the Wellingtons
home and came to the following conclusions.
First, that the male and female parents were typically
human, though superior to some regarding their children: which is
to say, though shortsighted, they werent cruel to them. They
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Yes, dear. The people who he used to live with named him
Shawn, but I think we can do better, dont you?
At this point I crawled out.
Didnt they like him? Toby asked, looking down at me.
Oh, Im sure they loved him, dear, but sometimes people
cant keep pets. Sometimes pets do smelly things.
Isnt that what that box is for? The boy asked.
Yes, yes it is. I didnt mean that he did anything like that,
but
As I later learned, this woman had a habit of talking herself
into corners, but it hardly mattered since the boy rarely paid
attention to her. Freddy Black-tail, he announced. Thatll be his
name.
It merits mentioning here that despite this childs apparent
streak of genius and his agreeably aloof nature, he was, with typical
human consistency, a stupid boy. Having been called Fluffy, Mr.
Fluffmuffin, and Shawn, I was not about to let myself be subjected
to Freddy Black-tail or anything like it, so just as Toby finished
uttering his asinine suggestion, I not only hissed sharply at him, but
reared up as I did so. I felt this would drive my point home.
All three Wellingtons fell silent.
I think the kitty understands, the mother ventured after a
moment, moving her chair back a little. Maybe he doesnt like that
name, dear. Do you have any other ideas?
Andr the Alligator? the boy said tentatively.
Now it should be evident that felines are wise enough to
know the importance of hiding their intelligence from humans, who
would no doubt try to use it for their advantage were they to suspect
it. But there are times when feline dignity must assert itself, so
again I hissed at the child. I later learned, by the way, that Andre
the Alligator was the name of an ill-tempered puppet playing the
part of the villain in a story that Toby watched on television.
Television, by the way, like art, is understood but of no interest to
cats.
The hiss brought looks of surprise and concern to the
parents faces. I think we may have brought a nasty animal home,
the father suggested, his brow furrowed.
No, said Toby, showing uncharacteristic insight. Maybe
he doesnt want to be called an alligator.
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The mother smiled and patted her sons sandy brown head.
See, dear? she said to her husband. Toby understands. What
about just Andr? she asked the boy.
Andr? Toby said. And then again to me. Andr? And
I couldnt resist; theyd already seen more than they deserved, but
I ventured one more gesture. I purred loudly, walked over and
rubbed myself against the boys ankle.
Now that cant be a coincidence, the mother said to her
husband. But he shook his head, told his wife not to be silly, and
suggested now that that was settled it was time for Toby to go to
bed.
Here, Andr, Toby said as he walked off toward his
bedroom; and feeling a taste of triumph myself, I followed him
away, wondering if a child, even one who had it in him to hiss,
had any hope to grow into anything beyond mediocrity living in a
house with a man like that.
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After his intermediate drawing class was over, Orlando Floyd, his
heart racing, escorted his youngest student out into the hall where
Angela Wellington was eagerly waiting. Orlandos heart was racing
for two reasons. First, hed just seen the work of an exceptional
young artist; and second, in the course of an hour, hed managed to
fall in love with the artists mother. The fact that Mrs. Wellington
was lovely and looked so much like his dear Emily might have
fueled a serious case of the hots, but to have met a beautiful woman
whose son might be the next Albrecht Durer was enough to enflame
Orlando not only below the belt, but above the collar and in all areas
between.
Angela was smiling an I-told-you-so smile as her sons
teacher approached.
Mrs. Wellington, I think we should talk, Orlando began in
the most professional tone as he could muster. This felt artificial to
him, and all mustering aside, he felt like an actor, and not a
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After Tobys class that afternoon, Angela asked him to wait in the
student exhibition gallery while she talked to his teacher for a few
minutes.
Ive always hoped to teach him to love art as I do, Angela
said in Orlandos office, intending to make her sympathies clear.
(Her presence, of course, had obliterated all memory of Orlandos
early morning encounter with the murder of crows.) I mean to
appreciate the world of art, she continued. Hes got no problem
with his own. But every time Ive tried to walk with him through
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Despite the mixed message, when Orlando took the bus home that
day, he was grinning like a cat at a canary convention, concerned
that if he didnt restrain his smile other passengers might clear the
seats around him. There is hardly a time more thrilling than when
the first promise of love is confirmed, even if the confirmation is
less than resounding. Orlando disembarked from the bus with a
spring in his step, and after changing clothes at home, continued
springing around the corner to The Jade Dragon, his usual dinner
spot on Friday evenings.
Ignoring the smile still plastered on Orlandos face, Mr. Lee
greeted him with a look of concern. Mr. Froyd, he said. You are
arright?
Orlando couldnt guess at the source of his concern. (But as
always, in the invisible dialogue bubble above his head, he said,
Thats DOCTOR Freud, Mr. Lee, DOCTOR Freud.) Im fine,
Orlando answered out loud. Dont I look all right?
Now, Mr. Lee said. Not this morning. I saw what
happened to you.
Now Orlandos look darkened. You saw those crows? he
asked.
Portentous, Mr. Lee replied, nodding. Says my
grandfather. Crows always omens.
By this time Mr. Lee had escorted Orlando to his customary
table by the window, a spot from which he could see the bench
across the street in the park. What sort of omens? Orlando asked.
Sometimes good omens, sometimes bad, Mr. Froyd.
(Thats DOCTOR!) Ha ha! Grandfather a mysterious man,
maybe a little crazy.
So? So what am I to think?
Crows always portentous, he repeated. Symbols of
divinity for Chinese. You got a mess of divinity in your face! Ha
ha! You okay?
They didnt hurt me, if thats what youre asking. They
frightened me, though. I didnt realize you saw me.
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RICHARD BOROVSKY
Its fair to say that at that stage of his artistic life, Toby had nothing
to learn. He continued to draw with the same exceptional skill; his
strain of creativity was rare in that his mode of expression was
wholly spontaneous. There was no planning involved; Toby
transferred the crystalline image he had in his mind onto the page,
much the way certain composers simply write down the music
theyve heard rather than sculpt it out of an unrefined, rough
musical idea. In Orlandos drawing classes, of course, Toby drew
from life as well as from memory, but in his life drawings he
worked the same way: he hardly looked at his subject more than
oncebe it still life or human form before he had internalized it,
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and from that repository, his hand simply transferred the image to
paper, using those exclusively elegant lines he had memorized in his
bubble days. The sense that Toby had of himself as he drew was as
much like that of an athlete as an artist: it was imperative that the
thought was not allowed to interfere with the childs flawless
instincts. And it never did. First, because there was no room: when
he was drawing, the boys consciousness was brimming full of
attention and observation, and perhaps most intently, full of delight;
and second, because Orlando Floyd wouldnt let anything intrude.
His mother had made good on her promise to convert the
spare bedroom into a studio. Not much conversion was necessary.
The rooms two high windows faced north, so once the curtains
were removed, the light was excellent. All the furniture was
removed to basement storage, with the exception of Tobys drawing
table, a utility table, his chair, and a loveseat that folded out into a
single bed. Angela also purchased a large cabinet with long, wide,
shallow drawers to store completed drawings. Toby worked under
ideal conditions at home; when he closed his studio door, he wasnt
interrupted.
Whether Toby drew things hed seen in the past or things
before his eyes, his early drawings had a sameness of excellence
about them. Toby always drew in ink on 9 x 12 inch white paper,
and he always limited his compositions to one subject: one animal,
one figure (or two if they were posed together), one still life alone,
or a landscape with one focal point. He always added backgrounds
to his subjects, and at times, like with his early drawing of the lion,
these were integral to the composition, but at this time in his life he
was a one trick ponybut quite a trick for a pony still in single
digits.
At first, Orlando simply stood back and observed, but it
wasnt long before he felt hed seen the child demonstrate his full
range of skills, and once he determined what the boy was capable of
at this early age, he didnt suggest that he undertake more complex
compositions or challenge him with new mediums of expression..
He had the insight to see that the work Toby was creating was
perfect within its own parameters, that it followed its own rules
without mistakes. Orlando knew that and also that the young artist
needed to be protected to ensure his natural development, and he
made sure that Angela did too; he made it clear that he wished to
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RICHARD BOROVSKY
help her nurture and protect her sons gift. Angela wasnt aware
that it needed protecting, but she was delighted. Orlandos sincere
interest pleased her greatly, as did the regular conversations she now
had with him most Monday afternoons, conversations ranging in
subject from Toby himself, to the history of art, the education of
children, to subjects more personal and closer to home.
In one such exchange, the two discovered that theyd been
brought up in the same neighborhood in Chicago. This, along with
other personal revelations and observations, eventually compounded
the middle-aged art teachers initial case of the hots into a sustained,
everlasting burn. First it was her cheekbones and wide set brown
eyes, then nape of her neck, then the glimpse of cleavage over a
scoop-necked blouse, then the very fact of her hips, then her
perfume, then the moist secret he knew she was preserving there
under her skirt, then it was the wisps of hair that came undone about
her neck, then that she was such a sweet-little-bit plump, that she
seemed never quite contained by her stylish, expensive clothes, but
more and more frequently it was that darkness beneath her skirt that
enflamed Orlando, and it is a credit to his integrity that he
maintained a clear perspective on Tobys talents while drooling so
persistently over his mother.
Hell be fine here until summer, Orlando said to Angela once the
end of the first term came around, a week before Christmas.
Angela, wearing a pale blue silk dress, was sitting in a red directors
chair across from a table that served Orlando as both desk and
drawing board. Orlando had just poured her a cup of coffee and sat
down with one of his own.
It doesnt matter what Toby draws, he said, just that he
doesand the materials not that different in the advanced class.
Thats fine, Angela answered, a little distractedly. Why
do you think artists are such peculiar people?
Are they?
Well, so Ive heard. I suppose I havent known any,
except for my sonand you.
And Im?
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RICHARD BOROVSKY
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Though Orlando and Angela were never to remember it, the two of
them had met once, many years before. Whether this was a karmic
footnote in their lives, the play of irony across their marginally
aware existences, or the kind of foreshadowing that naturally and
frequently falls across all of us unnoticed, may deserve some
consideration. In any case, Orlando was twelve years old. He was
in Lincoln Park with three of his friends. It was spring vacation
from school, and the first truly warm and sunny morning of the year
that hadnt fallen on a school day. The boys had covered a lot of
territory in the large lakefront park. They had bicycled for miles,
crossed bridges, climbed fences and trees, hit golf balls, harassed a
few elderly people, lay in the grass and laughed, and finally,
laughed out, arrived at a small playground where they let their bikes
fall on the grass and ran to one of the climbing structures. The
playground wasnt crowded, but even as the boys first climbed up,
they sensed that during the winter they had somehow grown too old
for playgrounds. Not too big, really, just too old. All the other
children there were with their mothers or nannies. The oldest
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RICHARD BOROVSKY
looked about ten, and a few toddled around showing obvious signs
of diapers.
It was when the boys leapt off the climbing structure and
ran over spiral slide, that Orlando met Angela, four at the time and
named Angela Wyrth. The little girl was at the park with her
mother, a vain woman who wished she had a nanny of her own like
many of the other families in the neighborhood. She couldnt afford
a nanny; she was speaking to a one, however, a young German
woman there at the park with her own charges, a three and five-
year-old. As the two women sat on their bench, in fact, Mrs. Wyrth
was far more interested in her conversation with the German girl
than chasing her daughter around the playground to help her up on
this or off of that. But little Angela was calling her again. Seeing
the older womans exasperation, the young nanny offered to go over
and help the four-year-old, and Mrs. Wyrth gladly accepted the
offer. Her feet and back ached, and she had never expected
motherhood to be so so annoying.
It turned out the reason little Angela was calling for her
mother was because she was scared of the big boys and wanted to
go on the circular slide. But when the nanny with the foreign accent
approached Angela and offered to help her, the little girl made a
slightly different frightened face and backed away from her directly
into twelve-year-old Orlando Floyd.
She vants to go on for a slide, the nanny said to Orlando,
who hardly noticed the little girl behind him. Mistaking the
womans words for a request, Orlando shouted to his friends, who
were all on the spiral slide at once and way too big for it.
Hey! Get down. This little kid wants to use the slide.
And at this, he picked up little Angela from behind, his hands under
her arms, carried her the few steps over to the slide and planted her
squarely on the plastic covered ladder, only a few steps from the
top. Then he looked back at the nanny for her approval, which he
received by means of a nod and a smile, and ran off, following his
friends to retrieve their bikes and find a more age appropriate
activity.
Little Angela, meanwhile, took the last two steps to the top
of the ladder herself, plopped her bottom down on the slide and slid
merrily down, landing bottom-side-down in the soft but scratchy
bed of wood chips provided. But suddenly little Angela wasnt
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RICHARD BOROVSKY
I believe that I have lived with the Wellingtons long enough now to
be in a position to judge them each fairly as individuals. But first,
let the fallacy of cat years as opposed to human years be
permanently put to rest. The passage of time is wholly dependent
upon awareness, not the movements of celestial spheres; and since
cats are more aware than all but a few humans, time passes not only
more slowly, but more significantly for us than for the rest of you.
That an average cats lifetime is chronologically one quarter of an
average humans does not play into the formula at all. Considering
the intensity and size of a cats moment to moment experience, as a
race we live far longer than you. This is not to say that all of you
experience time in the same superficial way. It recently came to my
attention that as a race you are not a homogeneous but multilayered
one consisting mostly of assorted simple creatures intermixed with a
very few who have, with few observable signs, risen to a far greater
level of awareness and understanding. Being politically correct,
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own, which not only reminded me that the wise are always humble,
but reinforced my belief that among the pure of heart, differences in
species hardly merits noticing and certainly not mentioning. And
indeed, each time I spoke with my venerable friend (he was years
my senior), I made it a point to never return directly to the
Wellington home, but to sit on a structural member above the back
stairs, where I purred deeply and devoutly enough to light the inner
planes about me for as far as I could see.
As Toby grew older, his relationship with his cat matured as well.
At first, the boy had simply been proud that Andr responded nicely
to him and only to him, and he was smug when the animal hissed at
others. Though Toby had the support of his parents and Orlando
Floyd, as we know, his response to others was muted, perhaps
because he was so sensitive his own source of inspiration. In any
case, since Andr the Cat rarely displayed affection or anything else
clearly discernable to humans, he made a perfect companion for
Toby, who saw himself in the animals aloofness. By allowing the
cat in the room with him when he drew, Toby shared his most
private moments with him and came closer to intimacy than with
any person hed known. And gradually, as time passed, Toby began
to appreciate his closeness to the cat in an ever greater way.
After hed lived with Andr for about a year, the boy
noticed that sometimes when the cat purred, a feeling of well-being
came over him. He didnt think of it as well-being of course, such
assessments are not the business of children, even prodigies: Toby
thought of it as catness. And this feeling was unlike any that had
naturally arisen in him. It was trance-like and utterly quieting. At
first, Toby had no control over when this feeling came to him.
Sometimes when Andr purred, Toby was uplifted by catness, but
most often he was not. It never happened while he was drawing; it
was then, when directly in touch with his vision that he was most
impermeable. But after Toby finished a picture, he began to find
that if he turned his attention to the cats purring, he could slip into
the state without much difficulty. The cat didnt seem to noticeor
care. The animal always sat on the loveseat in Tobys studio when
the boy was at work, and sometimes when Toby sat down next to
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him and was touched with catness, the animal remained there and
at other times he jumped down and walked away or went to the door
to be let out. It wasnt long before Toby became proficient at
slipping into this state, and practiced this secret discipline on the
completion of every drawing done in his studio at home.
But as Toby grew older and his art more became complex,
he began to work less frequently but with greater intensity, and
more often than not in his downtown classroom rather than at home.
Soon the boy began to exhibit his work. His drawings won
immediate acclaim. He was written about, sought after. This caused
quite a stir but did not deter him from giving up his sessions with
Andr, which, by the time Toby entered fourth grade at age nine,
had become a regular occurrence, several times a week. Whether in
his studio or in his room with the door closed, hed set Andr down,
pet him until he turned his motor on, and then by a simple turn of
mind align himself with the vibratory resonance of the cats purr.
Within moments he achieved catness.
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ANTON
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basement, because the next day when Toby told her he was going
out to play, she acted as if nothing had changed. This was
summertime. He had gone to camp the summer before but hadnt
liked the children. The children at his private school had already
learned to warily accept him, and given Tobys force of character,
they acquiesced to any friendly gestures. But hed made no such
inroads at camp, and this summer he chose to stay home. When he
went out, he played in the empty lot close to his building, in the
narrow walkway beside it, and the sidewalk in front. All these,
including the courtyard at the bottom of the stairs and the basement,
were permissible. Sometimes he played with one or two of the
neighborhood children, but ordinarily played alone. His fear of the
janitor, however, not only prevented him from playing in the
basement but cast a chill over the back courtyard and even the
narrow walkway next to the building where he might accidentally
meet the brusque, stocky man.
For the first week after his run-in with Anton, he stopped
using the back stairs altogether. This further diminished the
possibility of encountering him, since the door to his basement
apartment was under the back stairs, and Toby had never seen a
janitor on the front stairs or in the front hall of the building. He
didnt think janitors were allowed there. Using the front stairs was
an inconvenience, however, since he had to ring the buzzer to be let
back in the house, and sometimes his mother was so busy talking on
the phone or taking one of her long baths that she didnt answer at
all. But after the first week of using the buzzer though, his mother
began to wonder, and still unwilling to admit that hed been
forbidden to play in the basement, Toby summoned up the courage
to use the back way again.
Once back to his usual routine, he was fortunate to avoid
seeing the janitor. On a few occasions he did hear sounds from the
basement as he walked by the open door, but never saw Anton
himself. His life, however, had been interrupted. He began to take
his small set of cars over to the empty lot to play with them there,
but these were private cars, and more than once one of the
neighborhood boys found him there and insisted on playing too. He
wasnt someone Toby liked. He was crude, and as far as Tony was
concerned, inadequate when it came to playing with carsand just
about anything else. He was the boy who, when shot dead in a
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Tobys older brother, Adam, was fourteen the summer Toby was
nine, and the younger boy, despite his own artistic success, resented
the fact that everyone always talked about how smart Adam was.
Adam was smart. In school, he was already on an academic track
for a fine institution of higher learning. Because of his purported
intelligence, Adam was allowed to handle dangerous chemicals. He
had an advanced chemistry set open in his room, which was where
he conducted what he called, his experiments. Toby was
resentful: hed been told he wasnt old enough to play with a
chemistry set, and certainly not his brothers, since Adam was
allowed to order extra chemicals from the scientific supply house.
His mother allowed this, but not gladly, since she said that many of
the chemicals were poisonous. But Tobys brother laughed at this,
saying that no one was going to eat anything from those bottles
not even Toby. Angela wasnt satisfied, however; not until Adam
promised to wash his hands very carefully after conducting his
experiments.
Toby didnt know anything about chemistry. The names on
the little bottles meant nothing to him; they may as well have been
interchangeable. He did know by the color and printing on the
labels which bottles were original parts of the chemistry set and
which his brother had ordered, and he deduced that the ones Adam
ordered were probably the poisonous ones. Since Tobys brother
was gone during the weekdays with his job as a junior counselor at
a day camp, Toby had access to his room whenever his mother was
busytalking on the phone or on the back porch talking to their
neighbor, Mrs. Baum, a woman Toby detested.
Toby didnt think his mother was very smart. Whenever he
wanted to do something he wasnt supposed to do, he went ahead
and did it, and she never suspected a thing. Which is what
happened the next day; instead of spying on Anton one more time as
hed resolved, Toby snuck into his brothers room when his mother
was talking on the phone and put two bottles of possibly poisonous
chemicals in his pocket. Just to be safe, he waited for her to get off,
and then told her he was going out to play. If hed told her while
she was talking, he reasoned, she might not have remembered and
come looking for him.
He went out the back door and when he got downstairs, he
looked in the basement and saw the light was on in Antons
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Fifteen minutes later, he was lying on his bed thinking about Anton
shouting at him for stealing salt again, when Angela rushed into his
room. Her face didnt look right; it looked like his grandmothers
face; that scared him. She told Toby to follow her outside because
there was a fire in the building, and he started to cry.
Its not in our apartment, she said, squeezing his hand.
Its in the basement. But we have to hurry. The Fire Departments
on the way. Then she said, Here, and handed him his leather
portfolio. Your drawings.
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The next day he was playing alone in front of the building. There
was an old green truck packed with furniture parked close by. Toby
thought the truck had something to do with the fire. Then he saw a
man hed never seen before coming out of the narrow walkway
beside the building. The man was carrying a chair. It was wooden
with shiny yellow cloth and black stripes, and he walked right past
Toby and added the chair to the pile in the truck. Then he just stood
there staring at the building. Thats when Toby got frightened
again. Hed been frightened more in the last ten days than he could
ever remember being before. And then Anton came out from the
walkway. He had a hard look on his face. As soon as he noticed
Toby, he frowned and pointed at him and said something in a
foreign language. Then he turned back to someone who was
following him: it was a woman who came out carrying a chair, just
like the other one. She was even shorter than Anton, but with that
same look. Anton said something to her too, and she looked at
Toby and frowned. Toby wanted to run.
Then something unthinkable happened, something deeply
disturbing, something impossible. Two children appeared; they
emerged from the walkway, a boy and a girl, and they both had
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Antons face! His face without the bluish cheeks and chin. The boy
was carrying a suitcase, and the girl was carrying a wrinkled brown
paper bag! Toby was aghast. Why hadnt he seen them before?
Had they been hiding in that basement apartment?
How could they? How could they have been hiding in there
all that time without his finding out? Had they been imprisoned
there? What else was in that apartment? Why was the girl carrying
her things in an old paper bag? A wrinkled brown paper bag!
Toby could see that they were nearly his age but they had
that same look on their faces, that same look hed seen in the
pictures of the people from the war, and he started to cry out loud.
They were all looking at him now. Anton. The short woman. The
boy and girl with Antons face. That same hard look. He wanted to
run away, to run all the way to the park without stopping. He
couldnt move. Those chairs were piled on the truck behind him,
and there were tables there too, and a sewing machine! He didnt
even like children, so why was he crying? What did he care? But
hot tears were burning his face. Everyone was looking at him, yet
he couldnt move. He couldnt take a single stepnot one. He
stared back at the children. He was waist deep in sand.
In the year 888 AD, Odo, the count of Paris was elected king of the
West Franks to succeed the former Emperor, Charles the Fat.
Charles the Simple, meanwhile, son of the late Louis the Stammerer,
also ruled at the time, but since Charles wasnt just Simple but
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only ten, not much was expected of him. He reigned in the city of
Laon, and it was there that there lived a simple carpenter named
Anthral. On one particular Monday, Anthral the Carpenter was
returning from the forest laden with a bundle of wrist-thick tree
limbs on his back and the remains of an oiled, leather bag of goats
milk (his lunch) around his neck. As Anthral entered the city and
passed a certain house, the lad Tobalthred, son of a bandit, was
perched upon a thatched roof and flung a partly spoiled cabbage at
the burdened carpenter, striking him on the head, knocking him to
the ground, and not only breaking open his bundle of sticks, but
causing his bag of milk to split under the carpenters considerable
weight. Anthral was then set upon by a number of village dogs,
who, intent upon the goats milk, separated Anthral from part of
one of his ears.
Tobalthreds motives were never clear, but unfortunately
for the youth, an old crone and potential candidate for village idiot
(if women were allowed that position, which they were not)
witnessed the entire debacle, and spitefully informed on the boy.
The injured and indignant carpenter wasted no time in retaliation,
beating Tobalthred about the head with a stout stick, causing such
excessive damage that henceforth the lad was known as Tobalthred
the Drooler, and without need of appointment or election, filled the
empty position of Idiot for the next thirty-two years.
In the year 1160, when Frances Louis VII and Englands Henry II
made a tentative settlement after Louis had driven the English off a
year before, minor skirmishing continued between the armies of the
two rulers. After an aborted raid on a phalanx of Henrys infantry
in a meadow outside Paris, a small group of English soldiers
approached the French camp after midnight. Finding the sentries
asleep after a night of drinking, the Englishmen were able to
penetrate the camp, but only as far as the mess tent. There,
determined to inflict at least some damage, the young officer
leading the raid, one Tobalthred of Kent, doused seven legs of
mutton with lamp oil and set a slow fuse to them. By the time the
British troops had retreated across the meadow and into the cover
of a wood, the lamb had gone up in spectacular flames that not only
singed it black but left what remained with a slightly acrid taste.
The French camps soldier-cook, Anthral le Blaireau (Anthral the
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AN INFINITE RESOURCE
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RICHARD BOROVSKY
When Toby was six, just after his father had left, the boy
began his private lessons with Orlando Floyd. For the next three
years, Toby was delivered to Orlandos well-lit studio-classroom
once a week, where for ninety minutes, he drew whatever his
teacher put in front of him or suggested. Yet during all that time, as
much as Orlando became intimate with Tobys drawings and his
mother, he felt he learned nothing more about the boy than what
impressed him on the very first day: that Toby Wellington was
arrogant and impenetrable. He never told this to Angela, however;
hed hardly hinted at it.
Orlando squeezed Angelas hand. He happens to have one
very adult gift, he said. But hes still a boy. And besides, I think
hes just ready for something new. Ever since the show, Ive been
seeing signs of boredom, maybe, or dissatisfaction.
Toby? Angela said, incredulous. My Toby? Dissatisfied
with himself? She laughed. After all thatthat? She screwed
up her face. Orlando found the expression endearing.
Angela was referring to the reviews, grandiose plaudits and
invitations that came in response to the showing of Tobys drawings
at the fashionable Cimino Gallery in New York City. The forty
drawings, selected from over four years of the childs artistic
production, were clearly the work of a young genius. As Orlando
had foreseen and the drawings demonstrated, the boys work did not
evolve during this period; there was little difference between his
most recent compositions and the original ones, but the drawings
had a startling power altogether their own. The very fact that a set
of 9 x 12 inch ink drawings of animals (several of the childs cat),
still lifes with various settings of vases of flowers, fruit, open books,
ink pots and pens; landscapes (mostly of Lincoln Park near his
home), and a few portraits of the boys mother could command such
a unanimously awed response speaks to the genius of the work.
One of the most striking of the set depicted a grouping of a dozen
crows, some in the branches of a maple tree and some on the ground
below it. The draftsmanship was immaculate and expressive as
usual, but in this picture the birds were arranged and poised with
such acute compositional tension as to convey the impression no,
to convey the certainty that they were about take flight, a certainty
that Orlando found disturbing, even though hed had no ominous
interaction with crows since the day they swarmed around him in
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the bus shelter, four years earlier. But it was another drawing that
attracted the greatest attention: this of a vase of roses amidst a pile
of several open books. The books were open to pictures, drawings,
Tobys drawings, each displayed in the gallery show, one of which
was that same vase of roses and open books, so the overall
composition not only included three other Toby Wellington
compositions in partial or foreshortened views, but distinguished
itself with an intriguing picture within picture, M.C. Escher-like
complexity unseen in any of the other drawings. The drawing was
titled simply: Books and Roses. The following is an excerpt from
one of the more restrained reviews:
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Thirty drawings in the group had been up for sale, and these sold in
two days at prices high enough that after the gallery owner took her
large cut, an impressive amount was deposited in Tobys own trust
account.
Yet Angela wished she had restrained her response to the
over-blown reviews, the requests for interviews with the young
Leonardo, and invitations for the New Picasso to appear on
television talk shows. If the phone in the Wellington apartment had
a say in the matter, it would have pulled its own plug during the
three week span of the show, so constant was the clatter. At first,
Angela answered all the calls, showed Toby every review, and even
discussed the possibility of an appearance on the David Letterman
show with him; but then, at Orlandos prompting, she settled back
down to earth and did her best to haul her self-satisfied son back
down with her. It was then that she first had an inkling that
something may have been a little out of kilter with the boy. The fire
that burned in his eyes had never seemed sinister beforebut
Angela wasnt sure. She didnt feel he needed any extra praise piled
on, however. And she took care of that by herself very well, she
thought, making it clear to her son that having a great gift didnt
excuse him from making his bed, cleaning the litter box, and
minding his mother.
Years earlier, when Tobias Wellington was first investigated for his
questionable interpretation of the Federal tax code, he maintained
the smiling faade he had always presented to his family. Tobias
lied very well. His wife and children proved easier to fool than the
federal agents, however, particularly the one he attempted to seduce,
and once his fraudulent practices came to light, the prosecutors
called the case a slam dunk. It was only when his insubstantial
defense was thus jammed through the judicial hoop that Tobias
Wellingtons emotional defenses collapsed as well. The slick,
handsome tax attorney with the pasted-on smile was reduced to the
blubbering little boy whod been steeped in fear of the unrelenting
fires of Hell in his early years at Our Lady of Perpetual Culpability
Catholic School. In his last meeting with his wife before his
sentencing, he fully confessed his sins; and had these only included
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line out of place, and it captured a charm and innocence never seen
before in his work. It was a composition of such ingenious
complexity that it stunned the viewer. The interplay of the folds of
the girls robe and the folds of the tablecloth created a kind of visual
fugue that served as the foundation for the interplay of the girls
arms, hands and fingers with the stems of the irises and the way the
blossoms themselves mirrored her facial features. And all this in a
style of classic realism tempered by a unique, lyric expressionism.
It was Orlandos turn to gasp when he saw this drawing, and
he couldnt keep himself from feeling that a higher intelligence had
lent a hand in this work, and not necessarily an angelic one. The
fact that this boy, just turned ten, could create such masterful work
without preparation and without a false move was stupefying in
itself, but that he never permitted anyone to witness the creation
itself bordered on the spooky.
Orlando was so stunned by Girl Arranging Flowers that
he wished for a moment that Toby would never draw again, that this
would be his crowning work. But a number of spectacular
compositions followed. On subsequent Saturdays, Orlando
presented other dual subjects for Toby. First was a seated model
and a small set of shelves stacked with books, sea shells, small
figurines of Greek Gods and candlesticks. Then a table set with a
loaf of bread, bottles, jars and fruit; and a moveable section of wall
with an open window. Then, two models, one seated and reading,
the other standing. Tobys results combining these subjects were no
less spectacular than Girl Arranging Flowers; all these
compositions had one unique quality. In each, elements from one
part of the picture were reflected in others.
As in Girl Arranging Flowers, where the completed
picture looked like a puzzle cleverly fit together, in the next picture,
Toby altered each small figurine on the shelf to reflect one aspect of
the models posture, so as a whole she was mirrored in the Greek
Gods, and though this may not have immediately been apparent to
all viewers, the effect was bewitching. Then in his next
composition, he arranged the moveable wall section so that the still
life on the table was reflected on the window, providing a view of
the backs of each object in a stirring perspective that seemed to
create a holographic effect. In his composition with the two models,
the one reading and the other standing, he arranged the flowing
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SPOTS
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The crow stopped, looked at his troupe and then back to me.
And you have observed correctly, he continued. There are
twelve in the group, just as there are twelve signs in the zodiac,
twelve constellations that transmit the mind and spirit of the cosmos
to our vantage point here on earth. And here is something
interesting for you, Andr; something you may find pertinent in the
future. Though the planets in this solar system blend their own
emanations with those of the twelve constellations as they circle
through the arc of the zodiac, it is the Moon that most immediately
reflects the twelve notes of this cosmic scale for all on earth to
receive. Because of its proximity and the speed of its revolution,
the Moon acts as a lens through which all life on earth is nourished.
The Moon feeds the full range of will and love of the cosmos to
every human being by forming every angle with every planet once
every month, and this for the entire span of every human livfe.
Many birds have access to information gathered from far
and wide, but one evening when Akbar stood apart from his
followers, I spoke to them and learned that his sagacity was
renowned and unparalled. No one spoke of his age, or how he
acquired his numerous scars or the injury to his foot that left him
partially lame. I was told that he was widely traveled and in contact
with a network of others creatures with whom he shared secret
knowledge. Much of this he imparted to me in return for my
insights into human psychology, a favorite topic of his.
One cool, windy evening when the clouds raced across the
moon, Akbar disclosed the following: Its important for you to
understand, he explained, that human beings are a unique species
in that as individuals they have the capacity to evolve, to grow and
change. This evolution isnt the physical sort that all species
undergo over vast stretches of time, but a psychological or spiritual
evolution, unknown to other creatures. Fundamental to this, and
also unknown to other creatures, are the great differences of
awareness and understanding that separates members of the human
species. Whereas all cats have vision that penetrates the inner
realms of existence and the understandings and abilities
corresponding to that perception, and the keen emotional sensitivity
of all dogs is approximately the same, humans differ greatly in their
levels of awareness and capacity for understanding. Some, those on
the leading edge, consciously or even systematically aspire to higher
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their birthright. You may have noticed that in their sleep they
occasionally succeed in their quest: they fly. Whether they
remember it or not, without this promising taste of illumination,
many wouldnt have the will to go on.
I told him what he said made sense but he was very
generous. Even if what you say is true, I said, To me, the
differences among them simply separate the dull from the dense.
They seem like slackers: poor students and very slow learners.
Slackers! Yes! he said, apparently finding my remark
amusing. He didnt laugh, of course. Crows dont laugh; cats
dont. We express amusement in more subtly.
Expressed dissatisfaction is a spur that drives the cosmos
on, you know, he went on. Its a form of love, Andr. Everything
done in life by humans, by beings like us and others as well has the
same intent. The nature of every act is to create a greater harmony
than already exists. Few humans realize that. They are fond of
classifying things: good and evil, right and wrong, moral and
immoral. They fail to see that in everything they do is a wish for a
more harmonious whole, even if their means are seemingly
misdirected, destructive or even murderous. So it might be said that
every act is an act of love Or then again, it might not.
At this, Akbar told me he was tired, thanked me for my
company, excused himself and joined his followers in an oak tree
that shaded the front windows of the Wellingtons apartment. I left
the roof then and went to my perch above the buildings back stairs
feeling revitalized and certain that this could be attributed to
Akbars influence on me. Even though some of what he told me
surprised me, these things seemed somehow familiar, somehow
close, as if Id once known and forgotten. My sense of well-being
and connectedness to the world swelled. Again my purr illuminated
the air around me, and though the feeling rarely abandons me, I
reasserted my joy and pride at being a cat.
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It was a Sunday morning, and the boys were making breakfast for
their mother. It had been Adams idea; Toby was helping. Angela
was delighted by the show of filial cooperation. It wasnt a
complicated breakfast: orange juice, scrambled eggs, bacon, and
toast. Adam was planning to let Angela make her own coffee since
he didnt feel equal to the task. He was also planning to let Toby
rinse the dishes for the dishwasher since he really wasnt helping
much with the cooking. Toby was in one of his moods.
Hed been having twinges of that old feeling again; strong
ones, strong enough to overpower his urge to attain catness, at least
for the time being. Uncharacteristically, he mentioned this to his
mother. The day before, when shed seen him sitting in an odd way
in one of the big, blue velvet wingback chairs in the living room,
shed asked him if anything was wrong. Thats when he told her he
had a funny feeling in his back, under his shoulder blade. After
questioning him briefly and prodding him a little, she told him he
must be having growing pains. He had, after all, grown quickly into
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a tall boy for his age. Then Angela lovingly stroked his hair, a
gesture Toby more and more dislikednearly to the point of recoil.
Whats wrong, dear? she asked, sensing his reaction to
her touch.
Nothing, the boy answered.
But something was brewing. Toby had been harboring a
simmering anger toward his brother. There had been no particular
incident to bring this on. Of course, in fulfilling his role as older
brother, Adam had teased and taken advantage of Toby over the
years and continued to do so, but only on occasion and never
egregiously. But Toby hardly registered these offenses; he had
other things on his mind. He couldnt understand how it was that
Adam hadnt noticed certain things. How was it that Adam failed to
notice that Tobys friend Damien so often ended up crying when
visiting their house, crying because of accidents that had befallen
him while playing with Toby? How could Adam not have noticed
that in the years since the turtles perished before living any sort of
life worthy of an amphibian, several other small pets had died
mysteriously: a gerbil and a guinea pig? Tobys mother had
assumed that Andr the Cat was the culprit, but that was ridiculous.
After both sudden deaths, the top was still securely attached to the
rodents cage. Now, it wasnt that Toby wanted to be caught; he
was too clever to be caught, but it angered him that Adam was too
dense to be suspicious.
That was it. Toby was angry with Adam because he
thought Adam was stupid.
As anyone who has seriously attempted to cook breakfast
for others knows, the difference between success and failure
depends on timing; and Adam Wellingtons instincts were good that
morning. The toast popped up just as the eggs were finished and the
bacon had cooked to the familys crispy preference. Adam expected
Toby to put the cooking pans in the sink, but when Angela saw
Toby about to pour the bacon grease down the sink drain, she told
him to stop.
Thats bad for the pipes, dear. Theres a can to pour that
in, and when it solidifies we can throw it out with the trash. Adam,
show Toby where the can is.
Wanting to please his mother, but resenting his little dweeb
of a brother for needing help with such a simple thing, Adam took
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the can from its place under the sink and set it down on the counter
where Toby was standing.
Oh, this looks just beautiful, boys! Angela exclaimed as
she looked at the serving plates Adam had put on the kitchen
tablebut by then it was too late. Toby knew what he was going to
do. Adam was the target. Adams face was the target, but Toby
knew that he too deserved to be hurt; and he knew that when he
was, everyone would pity and coddle him.
So with his brother still standing next to him, Toby slid his
hand down the handle of the frying pan until it touched the hot edge.
This caused a more searing pain than he expected: clearly enough to
cause anyone to drop the pan on the counter, causing the hot bacon
grease splash volcanically upward. He protected himself with his
extended left hand; he did this instinctively, and with the expected
result. It was a pain like hed never known, but probably not as
severe as Adams. Adam had turned away, but looked back as Toby
screamed: just in time for the flying grease to meet his face.
Angela didnt become hysterical until after she cleaned off
Adams face and then Tobys hand, knocking the plate of freshly
scrambled eggs and one glass of orange juice off the kitchen table
and onto the floor as shed lunged to the boys aid. Then she called
911 and became hysterical on the phone, doing her best to follow
the simple instructions she was given regarding the thorough, gentle
washing of the wounds. After that, and after slipping on the
scrambled eggs shed spilled and sprawling on the floor, she sat and
cried with her arms around her crying boys.
But things hadnt worked out quite as Toby planned. Adam
wasnt disfigured as Toby wished. The damage to Tobys left palm
was more extensive than that to Adams face. In fact, Adam had
ducked. His face was barely touched: the hot grease had hit the
front of his scalp. He lost some hair and suffered some burns just
above his forehead, but the facial scaring would be minimal. The
burn on Tobys palmhis left one, not his drawing handwasnt
readily visible, but caused considerable pain during his recovery and
periodically after that. He was reluctant to show it to anyone, but
his mother noticed that the scar resembled a flying bird.
Typically, Angela Wellington blamed herself. Adam
blamed Toby, and Toby, of course, blamed Adam. Thus, the
somewhat illusory balance that had existed in the Wellington
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household since Tobias had been sent away was upset. One can
imagine Andr the Cat seeing dark, murky billows of toxic emotion
emanating from the mother and her two sons in the weeks and
months after the breakfast accident. Toby didnt miss a drawing
session with Orlando Floyd, however; and only four days after he
was burned, he created a drawing of a mother comforting a child so
moving that the director of the School of Fine Arts, a normally
reserved man, commented that it looked like it came from the hand
of God himself. Toby only missed a week of school; furthermore,
he showed no signs of remorse for hurting his brother and a steely
lack of self-regard in dealing with his own pain. Adam, on the other
hand, a fifteen-year-old adolescent, was sorely embarrassed by his
burns and temporary loss of hair, and since hed been taught by his
parents, his school and the culture as a whole that intellectual
development was sufficient to qualify for an inner life, he had
nothing substantial to fall back on and so was temporarily bereft.
To make matters worse, Angela was too busy with self-
incrimination to address her boys needs: Adams anger and
humiliation, and Tobys apparent disdain. Thus disabled, Angela
leaned ever more completely on Orlando Floyd; or, more precisely,
she invited Orlando Floyd into her home so she could lean on him
there as well.
At this point, we shouldnt be surprised that Toby was more
than willing to suffer in the cause of hurting his brother, if even
slightly. All too soon, a far greater opportunity for his destructive
powers would present itself.
In his fantasies following the accident, however, he
imagined that he was on trial, once for blinding his brother, and
once for killing him by cracking open his head and throwing him off
a cliff. In defense he held up his injured palm, insisting that he, too,
was hurt. But this ploy elicited no sympathy from the cruel judge,
who in Tobys mind, resembled an older, hardened version of
Orlando Floyd, and inevitably Toby was sentenced to death. This,
the boy who drew with the hand of God himself.
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Toby. As the boy grew, so did his fathers flock, and as soon as
young Toby could climb hills, he joined his father with the sheep.
Competent shepherd though he was, Tobys father had other
interests: he had heard tales of magical powers ascribed to certain
flowers and roots, and believed that if he could locate these and
concoct them according to ancient tradition, he might grow wealthy
as a king. Before long, however, he grew tired of searching across
the hillsides and woods and began to send his son on these
gathering forays with instructions to bring back a certain blue
flower, a red root and a barbed leaf.
Toby did not care for these errands or for his fathers
impatience and ill temper when he ordered the boy mash these
flowers, roots and leaves with crude homemade implements. It
wasnt long, in fact, before Tobys days were filled entirely with
gathering and mashing plant life. But the findings were few, and
soon Adam began to neglect the sheep and join his son in the herbal
treasure hunt. Adams wife began to notice that the flock was
diminishing in number; untended sheep had been lost to foxes and
wolves, but as much as she tried to talk sense into her eccentric
husbands head, he would not relent in his search for botanical
charms. He assured her that as soon as hed combined the correct
ingredients, theyd move to town and live in a house with servants.
Toby was not a boy given to contemplation. He had grown
into a fiery, impetuous youth. He loved his mother but saw his
father, Adam, squandering their meager resources. This being the
case, theres little more to say about this particular constellation of
human souls than that one afternoon, after crouching next to his
father for hours in the laborious collection of weaselwort, a
yellow flower whose purple roots when boiled with the bark of a
certain elm made a bitter tea that purportedly attracted silver, Toby
finally rose to his feet, selected a stout stick and bashed his father
over the head until he gave up the ghost, after which the youth
dragged the amateur sorcerers corpse to the edge of a nearby
ravine and pushed it over. The little heaps of weaselwort and elm
bark were left to rot on the groundwhich may have been
unfortunate, since the tea that was never brewed from these
ingredients had powers curative enough to correct the imbalance of
humors that was to soon thicken the blood and cut short the life of
Tobys dear mother, Angelina.
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HOUSE RULES
For five years, Angela and Orlando had restricted all outward
displays of affection to Orlandos apartment and office; Grant Park,
the city park surrounding the Art Institute and School of Fine Arts;
the Bohemian Caf, and room 1233 at the Hilton across the avenue
from the Museum. It had been for Tobys sake that they had thus
restrained themselves. Both were sensitive to the delicacy of
nurturing his great gift, and both wanted to protect him from any
confusion between his private teacher and his mothers new love.
But with Angela as insecure and needy as she was, it finally seemed
that enough was enough.
Toby needs to face reality, Angela said to Orlando in their
hotel room as they sat back in bed, leaning against pillows one
Tuesday afternoon.
Orlando laughed.
What? Angela asked, sounding fragile.
I know what you mean, sweetheart, but I think Tobys
reality may be a far cry from ours.
Meaning?
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Dinner that night went splendidly. Before they sat down to eat,
Toby took Orlando into his studio and introduced him to his cat, but
the cat submitted to Orlandos fondling for only a moment before
squirming away.
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Ive been lying in this bed imagining you with me here for years
now, Angela said, on all fours above Orlando, her hands on his
shoulders and her hair cascading down onto his face. It was May,
the bedroom windows were open, a warm breeze wafted across
them. Then she sat back upright, beaming. What Orlando saw
above him there was the most glorious image he knew: her creamy
skin, apple-blossom-pink nipples, curling brown hair and eyes that
looked like candy from eternity, set him melting. The fact that he
was deep inside her now gave a paradisiacal ecstasy to his favorite
vision, of course, and soon the two were dissolving into love itself,
energetically, and as usual, making a good deal of rapturous noise
about it.
Enough noise to say, prevent them from hearing the front
door open? Enough noise maybe to prevent them from hearing the
approaching footsteps of a child who was home from school early,
as announced in the monthly school bulletin a self-absorbed mother
failed to read thoroughly, and to whom the love racket sounded like
calls of distress from his mother? Enough noise to prevent two butt-
naked people on top of the sheets from noticing a soon to be eleven-
year-old standing in the doorway gaping at them, a soon to be
eleven-year-old who, not having any friends and not on friendly
terms with his older brother, had no idea how it looked when
humans made love? Yes, that much noise. And so Toby once again
learned there was more to life than hed ever imagined.
Despite his mothers beseeching, he didnt come out of his
studio until the next morning, at which time he shrugged off her
apologies and awkward attempts at an explanation. She remained
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entered sixth grade with an expression on his face that could have
fooled anyone into believing he was just a big, reserved but friendly
kid.
Toby wasnt the only boy whod changed coming into sixth grade.
His friend Damien Sharp had spent the summer in Philadelphia with
his older cousins who were well practiced in getting into trouble.
Damien came back with tales of shoplifting, bullying, vandalism
and other assorted acts of malicious mischief, which surprised Toby
but excited him in an all too familiar way. In the past, Toby had
treated Damien as a kind of toy: hed take advantage of his company
only so long as it pleased him; and when it did not, Damien suffered
abuse. But just as something had clicked in the mysterious
workings of Tobys psyche, Damien had returned from his summer
vacation armed with a cocky new style of his own; and though
nothing was said, the two boys now recognized something in each
other. Then a third boy, Marcus Freeling, son of a faculty member
at Tobys small, private school, seemed attracted to the two as if by
magnetism. He too had matured over the summer, and he too was
good looking, so he formed the final, though subservient part of the
new trio as if a natural part of the team. Within weeks of the
beginning of the new term, these three boys were at the top of the
pecking order among of the eleven and twelve-year-old males in the
class and had begun to stir the wakening hormones of the most
popular girls. None of the three, however, had matured past the
cootie stage in regard to the opposite sex.
The school that Toby attended was among the best in the
Chicago, and it was only because of Tobias canny management of
money before his onset of criminality that Angela could afford such
a high priced education for her son. Tobias had become a very
wealthy man before he tried to defraud the Federal government, and
Angelas lawyer saw to it that Tobias was separated from his
fortune as well as his freedom when he stepped on the bus for the
slammer. Without any income other than the interest earned on her
ex-husbands investments, Angela could not lead a lavish existence,
but while putting her childrens education first, she still managed to
maintain her apartment and her expensive tastes in clothes. Her
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club membership and travel abroad were things of the past, but she
had Orlando, whose tastes tended toward the aesthetic rather than
the material, something that pleased her as well, as long as she
could dress as she wished. And if Toby continued to produce and
sell his art, he was well on his way to financial security of his own.
The administration of Tobys school was acutely aware of
the childs exceptional gift, which was considered a windfall to
institutions already good reputation. Being a school that nurtured
individuality and creativity among its students, Tobys indifference
toward his academic pursuits was tolerated, particularly since at this
time, with Orlandos approval, he began to join the rest of the sixth
graders on art class.
In the past, Toby had been excused from art. Ever since
Mrs. Stars refusal to let him draw in ink and the subsequent
revelation of his great talent as expressed in the portrait of Mr.
Zootie, deceased, there had been an arrangement between the
schools administration and Angela Wellington that the boys art
education would be conducted privately. Any suggestions that
Toby even go into the art room at school, were met with his cold,
unequivocal refusal. Until that September. Whether this concession
on his part was motivated by his desire to demonstrate his sense of
superiority over his peers, a desire to join completely into the social
currents of his classmates, by astrological forces (Toby was
approaching his Jupiter return, the first time the giant planet with
a twelve year period of revolution crosses over its original position
in the natal horoscope, a return which generally corresponds with
the onset of adolescence,) by karmic forces or reasons unknown,
made no difference at all to the schools delighted and
administrators and facultyexcept the art teacher, of course, a Ms.
Pincil, who was terrified.
In any case, Toby walked through the halls of the schools
venerable old building with a look of self-confidence no longer
founded in disdain alone but in something that resembled
congeniality. We shouldnt be surprised that he and Damien, with
Marcus following along behind, were often up to no good, but the
mischief they plotted was more often than not undertaken off school
grounds.
The results in art class were not only spectacular artistically
but socially as well. Toby began to create portraits. Hed drawn
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models in the course of his work with Orlando Floyd, and had never
neglected to render their faces with skill equal to his compositional
gifts, but the only portraits hed drawn had been of his mother in his
earliest years of work. Now, in the quaint little art room at his
school, one of his classmates sat for him each week, and in the fifty
minutes allotted, he precisely captured his or her features and
essence in ink, and set it so on a 9 by 12 piece of drawing paper
supplied by the school, with such regard for the weight and balance
and negative space around it that it looked as if the image of the
person and the rectangle on which it was set were a spontaneous
blossoming of the world of nature.
Tobys friends, Damien and Marcus each reacted in his own
way to this reaching out on Tobys part. Damien, the more
hardboiled of the two, had little affection for art, refused to have his
portrait drawn, and looked upon the great fuss made about it all as
effeminate. It seemed he was threatened by Tobys display of
genius among their classmates, and belittled it defensively behind
Tobys back. Marcus, on the other hand, had been brought up in an
atmosphere saturated with the fine arts, but showed his admiration
for his friend with such fawning reverence that Toby rebuffed his
compliments with distaste, something that wounded Marcus more
deeply than Toby realized.
As far as the other children were concerned, Toby was
indifferent. His look was distant when they thanked him profusely
and marveled at what hed done. His portraits were neither
flattering nor unbecoming. Those children with facial blemishes,
however, were spared. Tobys motivation for this is unclear. When
they asked (as they inevitably did) if they could have the picture,
Toby told them they could not, but when Ms. Pincil suggested that
they use the schools copying machine, Toby said hed ask his
teacher, Mr. Floyd. Orlando, whod stopped surreptitiously copying
Tobys work since his love affair with Angela began, told Toby that
he was his teacher, not his agent, and that he could do whatever he
liked. He added that it would be very generous of him to make
copies of the portraits for his classmates, and that generosity won
friends. Though Toby only stared at Orlando at this comment about
winning friends, he did agree to let Ms. Pincil copy his drawings.
Each drawing was signed, of course, but when the children asked
Toby if hed personalize them with phrases such as For my friend
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ACTS OF LOVE
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behind the chief bird. Though Orlando had not planned to make
another sound or even move if he could help it, he heard himself say
something that seemed so ridiculous that his voice cracked as he
said it: Good Birdie, he said to the malevolent looking crow, at
which the crow flapped its wings, lifted up off the ground, and
hanging in midair before Orlando, gave out a rasping caw that
would chill the blood of a vacationing rattlesnake taking the sun in
Death Valley.
Then as the crow settled back down onto the sidewalk,
Orlando heard something that, in fact, changed his life, to the extent
to which lives can actually change. It was a voice. A voice that
seemed to come from the air just above the crow. It was thin and
reedybut sharp.
So far so good, said the voice. So far so good. That
was all. And it was the crows voice. The lame black bird had
spoken to forty-five-year-old Orlando Floyd. And then it turned,
flapped its wings and took off, soon to be joined by the dozen other
crows that had apparently been watching. Together then, brazenly
cawing and jeering all the while, they flew away and disappeared
behind the trees on the other side of the park.
Of course, Orlandos rational mind immediately set in to
repair the damage done by the intrusion of the paranormal, and did
its best to convince him that he had suffered an hallucination. But
he felt blurred, disoriented, light-headed. He began to sweat. So far
so good?
He took off his glasses and put them back on. Try as it
might, his rational mind could only succeed in its debunking tactics
superficially. Emotionally, Orlando wasnt at all convinced. Not at
all. If he were, he wouldnt have walked away repeatedly asking
himself exactly what the infernal crow had meant. So far so good?
So far what was so good? Orlando was angry, because if he truly
believed hed been imagining things, he wouldnt have had the
nagging inclination that the crows supernatural message had
something to do with his prize student.
But animals dont speak, he told himself again and again.
And thats that. Animals dont speak! Except for this one, perhaps.
This one did. And it chose to speak to him.
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The drawings Toby Wellington created in the next year were to win
him a permanent place in the history of Western Art. The
development in his work during this period was one of both
complexity and scale. Again, Orlando Floyds suggestions
triggered Toby on to a new plateau, though Orlando could not have
foreseen the scope of the results.
Two years earlier, Toby had had a very successful second
show at the same New York Gallery that had sold his original,
simpler compositions. Of the thirty drawings displayed (all these
with two conjoined subjects rather than one), Toby, Angela and
Orlando had selected six to retain for the Wellingtons private
collection, and all the rest sold at high prices within a week of the
shows opening. The unanimous critical acclaim was not
surprising; it was clear by now to anyone with a seasoned eye that
this child had been born a masterful artist and was simply showing
what he knew. But whereas his mother had been overwhelmed by
the buzz created by his first exhibition, she took the attention
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directed toward her son in stride this time, and protected him as she
saw fit. Another invitation did arrive for an appearance on the
David Letterman show, and the only way Angela could dissuade her
son from his threat to run away to New York was to promise him
that by the time he had his third exhibition hed be old enough to
appear on late night television
Now Toby was a twelve-year-old seventh-grader, and
though Orlandos promptings to Toby at this time were simple, they
were carefully thought out as the next natural step in the boys
development. Orlando suggested that since Toby had already
composed hundreds of drawings of varied subjects, he might be
ready to begin drawing solely from memory; and furthermore, that
he might challenge himself with an even larger scale than the 14 by
17 format he was already comfortable with. It surprised some in
the School of Fine Arts and others following Tobys progress that
Orlando did not introduce the boy to printmaking at this point,
etching and lithography in particular, in which the drawing was not
done in pen but with a stylus on metal and grease pencil on stone
respectively. Drawing on metal and stone was still drawing, after
all, and for one whod proved he could draw without making
mistakes, it seemed the transition would be simple. But Orlando
didnt feel the boy had yet plumbed the depths of his skills with pen
and ink.
And Toby didnt hesitate to prove him correct. When he
told his teacher what he wanted to do, Orlando used the schools
facilities to supply Toby with what he needed: a three by three-and-
a-half foot white drawing board of the highest quality mounted a
braced wooden board to ensure permanent rigidity. When Orlando
suggested a larger scale he had nothing this big in mind. This was a
size appropriate for a painting, not a pen and ink drawing. The
challenges presented by such a large format for a line drawing
would be vast even if the work were carefully planned and executed
in stages. To vary the textures in the composition enough to create
depth and avoid a distracting black-and-white sameness alone
presented such challenges as to make it clear why there was not a
rich history of oversized drawings in ink. To create a work of this
size in this medium even posed problems for the artist in finding a
spot to place his hand while workingand given Tobys style in
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which he had completed every drawing hed done in one sitting, the
prospects for success in this venture seemed remote.
As far as Orlando knew, nothing like this had been done
before in quite this way. Once the composition had been conceived,
Orlando reasonedif thats the correct word to describe whatever it
was that the child did to begin creating his artthousands upon
thousands of lines would be required to describe it, thousands upon
thousands of lines that needed not only to be correct since erasure
was impossible, but stylistically correct as well, or to put it another
way: beautifully and uniquely Tobys own.
Toby chose to work in the schools large studio, empty as it
was of other students on Saturdays. This had been his preference
for years. His first drawing was of the studio-classroom itself, but
filled with students, including Toby, who was seated at his drawing
board like the others, in the act of drawing a still life set up in front
of them all. In the immediate foreground of Tobys composition
was his own drawing board, his rendition of the still life the class
was working on and his own hand in the process of drawing it. But
also included in the picture within the drawing were several of the
other students and their drawings of the still life as well. Beyond
this mini-composition, in the mid-ground of the composition, was
the full compliment of students busy at work drawing; and in the
background, the still life, consisting of a vase of flowers, a bowl of
fruit, a stack of books, a table cloth and the moveable window frame
behind it. Also in the background but off to the right, stood Orlando
Floyd looking on with what seemed keen interest.
So as it was arranged, the still life was portrayed in varying
stages of completion, from varying perspectives and angles and
finally in the background as the actual subject of all the students
drawings. The overall effect was astonishing. The composition was
replete with harmony, congruency and reflection. It was not only
prismatic, even holographic, but somehow kinetic, as if animated.
The still life was everywhere, and each version of it spoke to the
others with musical resonance; and so it was with the borders of the
paper on which each student was drawing and the borders of their
drawing boards: these rectilinear shapes resonated with each other,
with the frame and panes of the window in the still life, with those
as rendered in the other drawings, and with the large rectangular
windows of the studio-classroom itself shown on the far-right-
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Sharp had gone to visit Ellens sister in the northern suburbs, and
one on which Toby had told Orlando and his mother that he needed
a break from his Saturday lessons. At thirteen, Damiens parents
didnt know as much more about his secret life as Angela
Wellington knew about Tobys, so they not only trusted their boy to
stay home alone, but to invite his friend over to visit as wellas
long as he promised they would stay out of mischief.
In the three short weeks he had lived in the twenty-four-
story building, Damien had learned a thing or two about hi-rise
mischief. He had already experienced the glee of pushing all the
buttons in the two automatic elevators that served his wing of the
building, and then doing the same in the service elevator, thus
crippling elevator service for at least fifteen minutes and causing
mass consternation among the well-to-do residents. He also learned
to press the entire bank of intercom buttons in the buildings lobby
when the doorman wasnt present, and listen to the tinny chorus of
dozens of Hellos sounding like something from a bewitched
poultry barn.
When Tobys mother dropped him off at Damiens at ten in
the morning that Saturday, Damien already had the days strategy
planned. Once Toby arrived, he and Damien took one of the front
elevators downstairs and left the building in clear sight of the
doorman on duty. Then they walked three blocks down toward the
underpass across Lake Shore Drive to the park, but once out of the
doormans sight, rather than crossing under to the park, they took
the long way around and circled back to the backdoor of Damiens
building, where they took one of the service elevators up to the
eighteenth floor and entered the Sharps apartment through the back
door. In the three weeks Damien had lived at 3443 Lake Shore
Drive, he had noticed that many of the tenants there had children,
and many of those were close to his age and of his ilk; thus he felt
that he and Toby were doubly safe from detection when they went
to the twenty-fourth floor with a bottle of maple syrup and poured
the contents down the mail chute, and then, once back on the
eighteenth floor, pressed all the buttons in the elevators. Damiens
mother was a disorganized but avid grocery shopper and thus their
pantry shelves were stocked with many random redundancies. The
maple syrup would never be missed. Damien even thought to wipe
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enough, or if Damien simply didnt see where it landed, but the first
throw was inconclusive. Toby watched then as Damien stood back
and flung the second egg. The light changed just before Damien let
his egg go, and Toby told Damien he saw the egg hit the windshield
of a car, that he even saw the car swerve on impact. This did not
happen; he saw nothing of the sort, but had made sure that he
blocked access to the window with his shoulders so Damien
couldnt look out until after the traffic had moved along. Toby
didnt want to report another miss. He feared that if he did, Damien
would want to give up. But the effect of his lie was not what he
expected. Damien believed Tobys story, but seemed satisfied that
theyd finally hit something. He said he wanted to stop. This was
unacceptable.
At Damiens bidding, they went back into his room and
began to play video games again, but Toby was disgusted with
Damien because he was so easy to beat. He felt he could foresee
Damiens every move and could outmaneuver him regardless. He
could only play for a few minutes before he couldnt stand it any
more. He stopped mid-game, stood up and walked back in the
direction of the living room. The sweet ache under his shoulder
blade throbbed for fulfillment. Lets do some more, he said. We
didnt even hit that car. I just made that up.
What do you mean?
I just said that because I thought thats what you wanted to
hear. Get it? Now I want to do some more.
Like what? Damien asked.
Like more eggs. Or maybe something bigger.
No way, nothing bigger. I dont even want to do eggs.
Why not?
I just dont want to. We might get caught.
Thats stupid, Toby said walking into the kitchen and
looking around. There was a large bowl of fruit on the kitchen
table. Shes wont miss one of these, he said, touching one of the
pears in the bowl. I can rearrange it so shell never know its
gone. And anyway, the way the fruit was arranged in the bowl
disturbed Toby. It was common. It was artless. It was no still life
hed ever draw.
No-o! Damien insisted. It doesnt matter if shell miss
it or not.
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wanted to see it crack open, but that was not going to happen. Toby
would see no such thing.
What happened was this. Once Toby felt the full power of
Damiens rage build up and nearly break through the force of own
his rigidly extended left arm, he dropped the candlestick he was
holding out the window, and as it plummeted silently down, he
released his grip on Damiens head, and simply stepped aside.
Thats what he did. He stepped aside. Damien lunged forward. It
felt like a choreographed dance. It happened in silence. A simple
stepwith no feeling attached, none at all. Toby used his left hand
to push Damien out the window. He glancingly touched the bare
skin under Damiens shirt where it had come out of his pants. The
index finger of Tobys left hand caught for just an instant in one of
his friends belt loops, so just for a moment, Damien was suspended
there, half in-half out the window, like a huge wriggling fish.
Tobys fingernail split in half, all the way down the middle,
but he didnt feel a thing. He heard the noise that Damien made as
he fell eighteen stories to the pavement below. It wasnt a scream; it
was a moan.
By the time Toby got downstairs he was hysterical. Hed
had to wait for the elevator so long that he thought someone else
had pushed all the buttons. Then once it came, it stopped on
seventeen and a man got on. Toby shrunk back into a corner and
but couldnt restrain his sobbing. The man was embarrassed and
didnt say a thing. Then the elevator stopped on twelve and two
women got on. They saw that Tobys finger was bleeding and
thought he was crying because of that. One of them tried to touch
him but he swatted her away. Then the other woman started
weeping. By then Toby was sobbing and gasping so violently he
had to squat down. He held his bloody finger under his right ear
and quaked. As the elevator descended toward the lobby, it shrunk
in size. The one woman tried to calm the other as they looked at
Toby in horror, but nothing could contain the other womans tears.
She wept convulsively, as if bereaved.
Then Toby was outside. And so was Damien. There wasnt
much blood, just something that looked to Toby like Jello and a lot
of skin, and Damiens legs werent right and his face was on the
wrong side of his head. The tiny red stub of a candle had somehow
ended up between Damiens limp fingers. And there were
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cantaloupe seeds all around him. It felt like a very long time before
Toby could get any words out. He had crossed beyond the block of
time that hed seen from all sides at once.
I was trying to stop him. That was what Toby gasped
through his wracking sobs. Those words: I was trying to stop
him. Again and again. I was trying to stop him, he pleaded as
heads of people were bobbing and bending around him. Ugly
heads, with distorted features, dirty hair and coarse, oily skin. And
then his knees buckled and he was sitting on the sidewalk next to
what was once Damien. And then, as if reciting his lines on stage,
lines hed recited countless times in performance after performance,
he said Damien had been doing it. Damien had been throwing
things out of the window, and that he tried to stop him. Damien had
been doing it. And Damien was still there. No one had covered
him: he looked at Toby from the face on the back of his head with
gaping eyes.
Hed tried to stop him from throwing a candlestick down,
Toby said to the ugly heads of all the people who were putting their
heavy hands on his shoulders and on the skin of his neck and trying
to comfort him; he said theyd been fighting by the window and
Damien had lunged to throw the candlestick out and he couldnt
hold him when he lost his balance and fell out. How many times
did he have to say it? And once he couldnt talk anymore and the
hands came off his neck, he fell into a black pit that was the source
of all tears where he also found the essence of himself that flowed
out as well in searing drops. It was as if the bubbles had finally
burst and Tobys soul leaked out.
NOTE # 3
Murder, of course, is the gravest business. Some say taking the life
of any sentient being is the most ungodly act and should be strictly
avoided. Does pushing a thirteen-year-old boy out of an eighteenth
story window offend the cosmos (or the great ones who have
attained unity with it) more so than clubbing a superstitious,
neglectful, fifteenth-century shepherd to death and pushing him
down an eighteen story ravine? Is neither an offense to the cosmos?
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Toby to throw water balloons with him, Toby told them just how it
had all transpiredwith only one twist; and when Damiens broken
parents began to speak to him imploringly and said that it just didnt
add up, Toby only continued to cry. Perhaps his lies were effortless
because he so firmly believed it was not his destiny to be caught.
He had never been caught in the past.
Once the detectives were satisfied that the heartbroken boy
could provide no further information at the time, his mother took
him home. The forensic unit was still working the scene, but the
body of Tobys friend, Damien, had been taken away to the medical
examiners office. What remained on the ground was the starburst
of cantaloupe, shattered crystal, and a gelatinous splatter, which was
soaking into the porous sidewalk in front of 3443 Lake Shore Drive.
The red stub of the candle must have been removed. The doorman
who had been on the scene had feinted and was being ministered to
by the paramedics. His replacement had been called but had not
arrived.
Nothing was said on the slow, short ride back to the
Wellingtons apartment, but to Angela, it no longer resembled the
home she and her son had left that Saturday morning in August.
Nothing was quite the same there, and she believed it never would
be. The shadows, in particular, seemed just a shade deeper in light
of Damiens death; and the way the light fell through the windows
on the tables, the chairs, the floor, carried a palpable weight to it, as
if the light itself were a dire consequence. And the walls felt closer,
millimeters only, but enough to make Angela feel as if shed taken
on a few grains of mournful weight herself. When she looked at her
son as he walked away from her toward his room, he seemed to
move cautiously, as if through strange rooms in utter darkness.
Andr was nowhere to be seen.
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story. Even the blood from Tobys broken fingernail on the belt
loop of Damiens jeans looked as if it might have been shed in
trying to hold the falling boy back, and the configuration of the split
nail suggested the same.
Once the questions finally ceased, Toby fell ill. He lost his
appetite, grew weak, ran a low fever and slept eighteen hours a day.
His complexion was pallid; his pulse rate low. His mother feared he
was going to die. After the consultation of learned specialists
resulted in no medical diagnosis, his pediatrician prescribed drugs
for depression, but to no avail. Toby was sinking away.
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must believe so until they see the interconnectedness of all acts and
times and understand that it is the ignition of opposites that
maintains the pulse of creation.
But Akbar had not quite finished with me that cloudless
night of the Autumnal Equinox.
So, my feline friend, he said in conclusion. Rather than
answer your question this evening, Ill tell you something far more
useful, more widely applicable. To your concerns regarding the
boys crime I will say this: Yes, he is to blame, and no, he is not; but
best of all, I will tell you both are true, together at once. For only
when you understand that, will you know the unmistakable savor
and sound of truth. You reconcile the irreconcilable. You wed the
opposites within yourself. You carry it in your heart. Only then will
you become the mystery. You will feel it in your eyes, in the tip of
your tail, in your whiskers. Then you will be among the fortunate.
You wont speak of it; you will burn with it; you will emanate it as a
blessing for all to receive, as do the trees and wind and the rivers
and rocks. As one day, once we have all fulfilled our mission, all
humans will as well. Every last one of them.
A purr arose from every cell in my body when Akbar told
me this, and if Id had any question as to why Id felt drawn to the
Wellington child and felt it my duty to remain close to him, that
question was dismissed. As I expected, once Akbar stopped talking,
he wished me well, excused himself and joined the ranks of his
followers, who still seemed particularly reverent and hushed in his
presence that night.
It was only after it seemed Toby had been sinking away for ten days
that his decline leveled off. His mother noticed it first, but it was
only the next day she discovered the source, which seemed to be the
presence of his cat, Andr, whod begun to sit by the sick boys
pillow and purr. These visits by the cat began to bring a hint of
color back to Tobys pale cheeks, and when the cat was with him,
the boy was willing to say a few words, sip a little broth and even
have a taste of solid food. Noting this new development, his doctor
commented on the reputed therapeutic effects of petsa remark no
doubt overheard by Andr, and perhaps appreciated, but only to an
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otherworldly gift and God knows what else, probably had an inner
landscape for which no map existed. And Orlando was correct in
his concern which hed vehemently expressed to Angela, for any
brightness regained after the first full week of high dosage purr
therapy was extinguished in an hour of Dr. Putzniks psychiatric
intervention.
It took days for Toby to rebound. Dr. Putznik was an
individual Toby would have gladly pushed out a window, down a
ravine, or down the mail shoot in shreds, had not the boys
psychological coherence been shattered. But it was. Simply put,
though Tobys genius emerged complete at birth, his character had
not. The boy had broken his own rules, commandments hed never
read, written perhaps in his bones or his cells or genes, and in a
language he didnt yet understand; and the question remained
whether the kings horses and men or whomever it was that had the
task of reassembly could locate Tobys operating manual and make
any sense of it.
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paid his way. I cant say for sure, Angela, but Ive had my
suspicions.
Suspicions? Why didnt you tell me? How could you
keep that from me?
Orlando sat back. What do you think, Angela?
She didnt say a thing. Shed stopped crying and looked up
at the sky with a determined expression on her face, not unlike
Orlandos own resolute look. You think hes so upset now because
he had some part in what happened to Damien?
I dont know, Orlando said, his resolve giving way. I
really dont.
Angela didnt seem to have listened to him. But Orlando,
she said, I dont want to know about anything that will make me
feel worse. Her hands were folded in her lap now, her eyes closed
and her head bowed.
Maybe you wont. Maybe youll feel stronger.
Im not a strong person, Angela said, looking up,
sounding almost defiant.
You may not be the best judge of that, Orlando answered,
reaching over and taking her folded hands in his, as racing clouds
covered the sun again and the air cooled. But Im not going to try
to convince you. I think youre as strong as you need to be.
So what do you propose?
I dont know. Just that we keep together in this. Thats a
start. Thats when Orlando heard the chorus of crows, cawing,
circling and finally settling down in the maple tree across the
buckled sidewalk from them. He felt a little sick. Just as he finally
had tried be open with Angela, and succeeded, here was something
else he felt he couldnt speak to her about. A talking crow. So far
so good? What nonsense! He fixed his gaze on her face. He
didnt want to look around at the park.
How long have you been keeping this from me? Angela
asked.
Not too long, Orlando lied.
Its probably my fault, she said. I mean I probably
wouldnt have been very receptive. She was looking down at the
weeds and grass growing up through the cracks in the sidewalk.
You were brave to bring it up, Orlando.
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One morning after hed been in bed for six weeks, Toby got up.
Hed been eating lightly for ten days, so he had the strength to stand
and walk, but not for long and not far. His appearance was
Hollywood zombie-like. His cheeks and eyes were sunken; he
moved as if in a trance. It had been only the day before when
Angela and Orlando had sat by his bedside and told him that if there
was anything about Damiens accident that hed been keeping to
himself, they would stand behind him and support him no matter
what the future held. Toby was thirteen years old, and though the
approach had been oblique, he had never before been so directly
challenged with the truth about himself. He showed no outward
signs of recognition, however, neither in denial nor regret. He
remained impassive; no surprise to either his mother or Orlando,
since hed responded to no one but his cat since he took to his bed.
But finally he was up, and looking frighteningly thin, he
walked into the living room, plopped down on the couch and looked
out the window. He stayed there with his black cat by his side for
the rest of the day, and by evening, he was responding to simple
questions, even politely.
Are you hungry, dear? Would you like some soup?
No. No thanks, mom.
Would you like to see whats on T.V.?
I dont think so. Not right now, mom.
Would you like me to bring you your cat?
Thatd be great.
But Tobys tone was as flat as a squirrel to eager to cross
the interstate. If the boy had been reassembled, some pieces had
been left out. Angela fed him, howeveranything he wanted
whenever he wanted itand in time he put on weight and gained
strength, but not the color in his cheeks or dangerous look in his
eye; and though he wasnt yet ready to start eighth grade in
September, by mid-October he was back in school.
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NOTE # 4 Techno-incarnation
According to this reporters historical source, one brimming with
information incarnational, a certain cloudiness obscures the facts
concerning the possible rebirth of animal souls. According to
Buddhist sources, human souls may be reborn in animals if an
animal incarnation will provide the lessons needed for further
development. On the other hand, the Theosophists contend that
human souls incarnate only in human form and never in animals
bodies. The Theosophists, a distinguished movement born in the
late 19th century and still flourishing today, have made current
many ancient Hindu and other esoteric beliefs. Animals, the
Theosophists say, are on a different evolutionary chain than
humans, and currently the door to human evolution is closed to
them. Any animals developed enough to be prepared for the human
experience wait (comfortably) in etheric realms until a vast epochal
change takes place and the door reopens to the human
incarnational chain. Or so they say. They go on to say that your
highly evolved dog, for example, may linger for ages in the
equivalent to Doggy Heaven, until some day in the vastly distant
future when he incarnates as your good hearted but very simple
servant, who may have a fondness for playing catch. Perhaps the
Theosophists are getting sold a little short here; they are a high-
minded bunch. In any case, its likely that Andr the Cat would
have an opinion on this particular example.
The historical source quoted earlier (known as a maverick
and not sanctioned by Akbar the Crow or any other esteemed
individual or tradition) insists on quite a different story regarding
the incarnation of animals. According to his information, three
species of animal life have already successfully bridged the gap to
human incarnation. Rodents, certain water foul, and mammals of
the family Leporidae. And this, in historical terms, is a relatively
recent development. It was among the Rodents, in particular the
Mus Musculus that the breakthrough first occurred. Certain
members of this species demonstrated such tenacity of spirit, such
apparent good will and common sense that by the power of
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ANDR ASPIRES
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Orlando saw this headline, the accompanying article and others like
it posted on a bulletin board at the School of Fine Arts. No one was
sure who was posting these, but Orlando took them down
immediately, as did most of his colleagues if they saw them first.
This headline infuriated Orlando. The case was closed. There were
no questions. Since Toby hadnt been at the art school for months,
he didnt see these inflammatory articles, but Orlando and Angela
assumed he must have encountered similar material since it was so
prevalent. When asked if hed read such reports, however, Toby
said he hadnt.
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apartment by the park, but whenever Toby was invited to join her,
he refused. All that changed, however, and a good deal else as well,
one Saturday in mid-November.
Along with a small bedroom and his kitchenwhere the
view of the neighborhood park was blocked by The Jade Palaces
banquet hallOrlando had one large room which served as a living
room/office. This room was packed full with furniture and
bookcases, and the walls were covered with prints of great art, often
stacked two or three high, in the old style. The bookcases were
filled with an extensive collection of costly art books, reference
works and a good deal of fiction and poetry. (Orlando particularly
appreciated the novels of Tom Robbins and the poetry of ee
cummings and Dylan Thomas.) Several of the dozens of prints on
the walls were from the Chicago Art Institutes own collection, but
most were from other American and European museums. There
were classics like El Grecos View of Toledo, Raphaels The
School of Athens, and Vermeers Girl with a Pearl Earring(a
framed gift from Olivia); there were Czannes apples and oranges
on tablecloths, and Van Goghs stars swirling in the night sky that
was actually his mind, and Renoirs lovely women and children
(another of Olivias gifts, whom Orlando sometimes thought may
have a crush on him); there were Kandinskys and Braques and
Chagalls; there were works by the surrealists, Dali, Tanguy and
DeChirico, and there were calligraphic Klines, DeKoonings
Marilyn Monroe, and Rothkos meditations for the induction of
peace. Also hanging on the walls of Orlandos living room were
works from the Chinese (impersonal) and Japanese (social)
traditions. A few of Orlandos own paintings from his early years
hung in his bedroom; these were recognizable, DeKooning-
influenced, abstracted figures, mostly women. Many of the pieces
of furniture in the living room were rich in character, some were
antiques, some were just old, and a fine Persian carpet covered the
floor. And here and there in Orlandos apartment were little niceties
of life for which he had such keen appreciation. There were blue jay
and parrot feathers, polished stones, things made of cobalt blue
glass, compasses, clocks without faces, a light green bowl of pink
marbles, the skulls of small animals, an exquisite and rare set of
mounted butterflies and mothsstill another gift from Oliviaand
small lightning bolts, precisely cut from stiff gold foil.
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away from the spectacle of Toby, alive again, but in a new, charged,
invigorated way, the expression on his face one of simultaneous
astonishment and recognition.
When the last Partita ended, everyone seemed stunned, and
Angela suggested they sit down for lunch. Angela had brought her
pasta salad, one of Tobys favorites. He ate hungrily, like a teen-
ager: two heaping bowls and two Cokes, but when Orlando asked
him about the effect the music had on him, he seemed shy. When
he asked Toby if hed ever hear anything by Bach before, he began
to open up.
No. Ive never heard anything like that before. Is there
more?
Orlando couldnt hide his surprise. Hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds of pieces, more than a thousand, I think.
Theyre for piano, for organ, for strings and other solo instruments,
for small groups of instruments, for larger groups, called chamber
orchestras, and vocal music toolots of vocal music, some for big
choirs and orchestras.
Symphonies? Toby asked.
No, those hadnt been invented yet.
Ill need to hear it all, Toby said, in a tone both eager and
reverent.
Orlando laughed. I dont have it all, Toby. But we can get
more, and theres always the library.
Toby stared off, a bemused expression on his face.
And then of course theres more, Orlando went on.
Theres Beethoven
Oh, thats not the same, Toby broke in. Ive heard
Beethoven, thats nothing like this. Its okay, but its not Toby
stopped, smiling, as if there were no words for what he had to say.
What, dear? Angela asked. Its not what?
Toby looked from Orlando to Angela and back again. Its
not what I draw, he said. That music I heard today is what I draw.
Its the same thing. Exactly the same thing.
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As one might expect, during the five months that Toby listened to
the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach, his mood changed
considerably. Listening to the complete works of Bach might even
change the mood of that squirrel that didnt make it across the
interstate; it would certainly have a profound effect on any living
human, particularly one with a highly strung artistic soul that was
wracked by grief and possibly guilt. Tobys mood brightened. He
lost his Hollywood zombie affect. Though hardly garrulous, when
he did speak, he became animated. He hummed, whistled and
sometimes sang. At thirteen, he was a tenor with a good voice. No
one who met him at this time would have suspected that hed just
recovered from severely psychological trauma, but for that matter,
most people wouldnt have understood much about the handsome
boy at all. His face, though masculine, looked more like his
beautiful mothers every day. His features were nothing like his
imprisoned father: he knew that, and it was fine with him. He
wanted nothing from the man.
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NOTE # 5 Ancestry
According to the aforementioned historical sourceone always
willing to provide titillating information regarding the
transmigration of soulsthe following facts pertain to the
incarnational ancestry of Tobias Wellington Jr., known to his loving
family as Toby. It should be stressed here, however, that any
facts regarding history must be considered in light of the probability
that time is not a line, or at least not only a line, and that when we,
as humans, perceive something much, much larger than ourselves
as a line, like the horizon, for example, it turns out to be only one
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The life of the great Saint Francis of Assisi came to its close in the
year 1226 at the age of 45. After a comfortable but misspent youth
as the son of a merchant, he renounced worldly life and dedicated
himself to living by the Gospel: to poverty, charity, and
brotherhood with all of Gods creation. He founded the religious
order of the Franciscans, famously preached to animals, and
eventually received the stigmata in his final years. After he
breathed his last breath, the great servant of the Cosmos was
formally escorted to one of the more rarefied planes
interpenetrating the coarser ones in which he preached, and there
in a ceremony as natural as it is mysterious and sanctified, he chose
the place and nature of his next incarnation.
The souls of the most highly evolved humans may be seen in
the form of great polyhedrons: glorious, multi-faced, symmetrical
solids, not entirely unlike the grand reflective disco-balls of the
earthly 1970s. The souls of these great individuals, too, are
mirror-like when viewed from without, but when spinning in the
midst of the starry firmament, they also focus the starlight within,
creating a microcosmic map of the universe within themselves
according to their own unique, multi-faceted nature. Simply stated,
these great souls, like all lesser ones, transform the order of the
universe at the time of their death into a map of stars for their next
birth.
Yes! said Francis of Assisi, pounding his celestial fist
into his celestial hand as he viewed the prospects for his next life.
Vinci! Yes! Close to homeand those Florentine women to boot!
Basta con gli animali! (Enough with the animals, already!) And
indeed, he saw it all there in the map he cast within himself. Hed
be reborn 226 years later in Vinci, only 75 miles from Assisi, and
take the name of Leonardo.
And so in 1452, Leonardo da Vinci, was born just outside of
Florence, the star map of his birth having turned within the celestial
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great soul: the artistry would remain in tact, but the conscious
dedication to the Glory of God alone, might be lost in the
stardust.
There are 209 existing scores of the Bach cantatas: works for choir,
soloists and groups of instruments. It was shortly after Toby
listened to the last of thesethirty minutes of listening that ended
Tobys excursion through the manifest soul of Johann Sebastian
Bachthat Orlando asked him if hed been thinking about drawing.
Aware of Tobys precarious state of mind, as his teacher, Orlando
hadnt as much as mentioned drawing since the accident.
Ive never thought much about it, Toby answered.
It was a warm, sunny Sunday in February: first day of a
fleeting winter thaw. The two were sitting at the table in Orlandos
kitchen, Orlando with a cup of coffee, Toby with a Coke. Orlando
took this to mean that the boys conscious mind had little to do with
his artistic impulses. I mean have you been wanting to draw?
Orlando explained.
No.
No? Orlando asked. Just no?
You mean because its expected of me?
Im not sure if expected is quite what I mean. I think
people hope youll draw again because they love your work. You
can understand that. Think how you might feel if Bach had stopped
after he wrote the Brandenburg Concertos and never gone on to the
B Minor Mass.
You mean I should draw for other people? Toby asked,
taking a drink of his Coke. It was poured over ice the way he liked
it. As he sat back with the drink in his hand, he seemed almost an
adult. He had the hands of a man now, and his sweet features had
begun to sharpen. When he put down the glass, Orlando caught a
glimpse of the scar on Tobys left palm: a dull dark red, it still
resembled a bird, even a crow, thought Orlando; but as the boy
noticed he was being observed, he flattened his hand on the kitchen
table.
I think people should create art because they love to, Toby,
or need to, Orlando said. You know thats what I believe. But at
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the same time, I dont think theres anything dishonest about doing
things for others Though he had no such intentions, the
Orlandos word dishonest had a harsh ring, a pointedness to it. If
Toby noticed, he concealed it. So let me ask you this, Toby,
Orlando went on, aware that hed become much more direct with
the boy since that day when hed admitted his suspicions to Angela.
Could you draw now? Do you have that spark that brings it out?
Though thered never been any talk about a spark or any
such thing before, Orlando felt secure in his question. But Tobys
reaction shocked him. He started to cry; and his sobbing didnt
resemble the sobs of recognition and joy that Orlando had routinely
witnessed as Toby listened to Bach. Not at all. Toby pushed his
drink aside and strode out of the kitchen. When Orlando followed
him into the living room, he saw the front door slam shut. Toby had
left the building. Hed picked up his coat and gone. Hurrying
outside, Orlando looked both directions down the street; then
rushing to the park, he saw Toby running across it the direction of
his own home, several miles away. After following only a little
way, Orlando decided not to go after him. Angela had gone to a
visit an old friend recuperating at home from surgery that day. She
had planned to pick Toby up. Orlando expected her in about a half
an hour, so he turned toward home to call her. But he didnt get far.
It was that crow again. This time it stood on the brown
winter grass between Orlando and the old sidewalk he had to cross
on his way home. And again the crow was moving from foot to foot
in what now seemed a forbidding ritual. Orlando was so taken by
surprise that self-consciousness hadnt had a chance to set in before
he spoke to the crow.
Why are you doing this? he asked, imploringly. In the
second-and-a-half it took him to utter these words, however, self-
consciousness had plenty of time to curb his spontaneity and rob
him of the clarity of mind that accompanied it. He glanced around.
Two people were looking at him. One, a man approaching on the
sidewalk path through the park, turned away when Orlando noticed
him. He may have turned away for any number of reasons, but
Orlando assumed the man thought he was deranged. The other
observer was Mr. Lee, who once again was standing behind the
glass front door of the Jade Palace, as if a sentinel monitoring
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SO FAR SO GOOD
Several days before Toby Wellington went running off across the
park in tears, two hitherto unconnected forces came together and
made a noticeable stir in the ethers.
Ellen and Alex Sharp had been so emotionally debilitated
by the appalling death of their son that they could not bear to remain
in the apartment from which he plunged to his death. After
spending only one tearful, sleepless night there, they left for Ellens
sisters home in the northern suburbs. There they stayed for a full
month, during which time a funeral and memorial service for the
thirteen-year-old was held, neither of which Ellen Sharp was able to
attend: she had collapsed on the way out of the house to the funereal
limousine, and her doctor had recommended she spare herself any
further stress. It was when the Sharps felt they had begun to wear
out their welcome at Ellens sisters (which they had not) that they
decided to take a long vacation in hopes of refreshing their outlook
on life. Fortunately, Alexander Sharp was a prosperous
businessman and Ellen had inherited a tidy sum of her own, so a
prolonged European vacation was not beyond their means. They
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first said. His parents, Chase and Hope Freeling, tried to convince
Marcus to wait for Ellen to return to the dining room, but the boy
was apparently more upset than he looked and went on anyway.
Im sure Toby was lying, he said as Ellen Sharp rushed
back into the room. Ive done things with them before and Toby
was always the instigator. One time we threw water bombs out of
the living room window where you used to live on Barry, you know,
and it was all Tobys idea. He gave me a hard time because I didnt
want to, and he wanted to throw heavier things out. Damien told
him not to because someone might get hurt and it was his house, but
Toby said so what and was going to do it anyway. He always acted
that way. But thats when you came home, remember?
Ellen sharp didnt remember until Marcus told her it was a
day she had to drive him home because his parents were busy and
couldnt pick him up.
Ellen looked pale. I do remember, Marcus, she said.
And I also remember broken baloons and water all over the street.
I didnt say anything though. I think I forgot when you asked me
for a ride
But Marcus, Alex Sharp said to the boy, who was trying
to be brave but was trembling a little. I dont think we can
conclude that Toby was lying about about what happened that
day, just because of that one incident. And then he stopped and
glanced at Ellen. Hope Freeling looked worried; her husband put
his hand on Marcus shoulder, and the boy began again.
But it wasnt just that once! Marcus insisted. Every time
we did stuff, Toby was pushing us to do more. As he said this, he
looked over at Ellen Sharp with a troubled look on his face.
Apparently he regretted his choice of the word pushing.
What kind of stuff, Marcus? Ellen asked the boy
sympathetically.
Marcus squirmed a little and shrugged his shoulders. Its
okay, his father said to him, his hand still on the boys shoulder.
Just tell the truth.
Making phone calls and stuff, Marcus replied. We used
to call up Here he gave his father, a teacher at their school, a
worried look. We used to disguise our voices with an electronic
mike and call teachers and say gross things to them. He was
now looking directly at the maple dining table between his elbows;
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his hands were on his forehead. And we used to make other calls
too, and almost every time Toby said hed do stuff to us if we
wimped out. I mean, Toby was our friend, but when we did stuff
like that he got weird. He never wanted to stop, and he always said
wed never get in trouble. And we didnt.
Marcus father squeezed his sons shoulder. Its okay, he
said. I used to make crank calls to teachers too. Lots of kids do
that. There were affirmative murmurs from the other three adults
at the table.
You want to tell them the other things you told us?
Marcus mother asked. You dont have to if you dont want to.
Sure I want to, Marcus answered, sounding angry for the
first time. Toby knew I didnt like throwing things out of
windows, so sometimes he talked about it to me I dont know,
maybe to tease me. Hes never really mean to me, he just teases
sometimes. But he and Damien were talking about it and Toby said
how cool it would be they lived in a tall building so they could drop
eggs down or maybe tomatoes.
What did Damien say? Ellen Sharp asked.
He said it would be cool, Marcus answered. But then
Toby said if I didnt watch myself hed throw me out. Then he
punched me in the shoulder.
That was before we lived here? Alex sharp asked the
boy.
Yeah, and the next time I was there with them, and his
parents I mean you, he explained, looking at the Sharps,
werent home and we threw balloons down, Toby grabbled me
when I was next to the open window and kind of pushed me
He tried to push you out? said Ellen Sharp, incredulous.
Maybe he was kidding. He said he wouldnt mind killing
me. I wasnt sure, but I got scared and thats when he told me I
better not come when they bombed again.
Why did he say that, Marcus? Ellen Sharp asked.
I dont know, but I thought it was because I wasnt into it.
I did make some calls with them once after that. But here again,
Marcus seemed too embarrassed or ashamed to continue.
Well, it doesnt sound to me like Toby was really serious
about pushing you, honey, Ellen said, looking at her husband and
the Freelings.
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had gone, she had wished he was there to distract her, but now with
nightfall when all fears were magnified, she cursed him for not
staying to comfort her. For a time she paced from room to room,
still calling the cat, but eventually she sat down in front of the
television, hoping she could find something so banal that it would
interrupt her flow of fatalistic imaginingslike a game show,
maybe. Wasnt there a channel devoted to those now?
The rerun she found of To Tell the Truth didnt do much
to distract her, but she felt if she turned it off or so much as got up,
shed fall to pieces, so she kept on watching. Eventually she had
herself convinced that even moving her hands and feet would bring
on a gut-wrenching attack of worry. But by the time shed seen
three half-hour segments of the show, she became interested enough
to feel some elation when she guessed who the two imposters were
among the last set of three contestants who all claimed to be ex-con
men. Then she remembered why she was watching and felt guilty
for not worrying herself sick. Thats when Orlando returned,
looking haggard and with no news at all.
By midnight, a female detective had come to the apartment
along with the electronic equipment to trace any incoming calls in
case Toby phoned home but refused to reveal his whereabouts.
Apparently she was going to stay the night. The temperature had
dropped, but only into the low forties. There were nights in
February when the mercury fell below zero. Nothing in her
experience gave Angela reason to understand why she didnt know
where Toby was. This seemed preposterous to her. Though she
was thankful for their effort, she felt the police would not go to such
lengths if they werent suspicions about Tobys part in Damiens
death. Behind the closed doors of her bedroom, she whispered this
to Orlando, but he had come to the same conclusion and could say
nothing to convince her otherwise. It was a terrible night for Angela
and Orlando. They finally fell asleep with their clothes on and
woke soon thereafter as the sun was coming up.
So did Toby. The first rays of the sun fell directly across his face.
Toby didnt know where he was. It took him a moment to regain
his bearings, and still another before he remembered why he was
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terrible racket just above him. He wanted to run, but was scared to
get too close to the edge with all those birds flapping like they were.
And remarkably, he saw that Andr showed no signs of agitation: he
just gazed up at them; and the birds were as big as he was. Then
things got even stranger, because one of the crows landed right next
to Andrwhich meant right next to Toby as wellwhile all the
others landed a little way off on the roof and looked directly at the
place where Toby, Andr and the crow were sitting. Toby had
never been close to a crow before. He hadnt realized just how big a
crow was, and how long and sharp its beak was. But Andr was
purring. And the crow was doing something weird. It was picking
up one foot and then the other, rocking back and forth and cooing.
After this went on for a few minutes, Toby felt sure the cat
and crow were speaking to one another. This didnt make sense to
him, since hed always believed that cats and birds were natural
enemies, but there was no denying it: Andr was purring, the crow
was cooing, and their heads were close enough together to touch.
Toby started to laugh, but then both the cat and crow stopped
making their respective sounds and looked directly at him. This
shook him up a little bit; the two sets of animal eyes had a fierce
intensity about them, but he reached out and stroked Andrs pure
black fur.
What are you guys talking about? he asked. There was no
response, and only a moment later the animals turned away from
him again and continued to make little noises at each other. Though
he didnt realize it at the time, it was the first time Toby had laughed
since before hed pushed Damien out the window. Hed been
overjoyed a number of times, even daily, but it took an apparent
conversation between animals to provoke laughter. But quite soon
then, a wave of that pressure to which hed grown so accustomed
swept over him again and he satisfied himself with listening to the
animals and watching the sky begin to darken. Soon he was chilly,
and when he put his coat back on, he found that the cardboard alone
was a comfortable enough cushion for him. Then he lay down on
his back with his hands clasped behind his head, and decided to try
to recollect every piece of Bach hed heard in the last five months.
This was a stimulating and very moving experience,
because waves of joy accompanied every piece he remembered.
And when it came to music, or at least Bachs music, Toby
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waves. Toby shouted out to them but his own words were blown
away with the sheets of spray that broke over his face. He could not
hear his words, but as he mouthed them he wondered at their
meaning: it was as if someone else spoke. So far so good! he
shouted out. So far so good! But he was certain the animals did
not hear him, and if they had they probably wouldnt understand,
yet they rowed on, and on, though the storm showed no signs of
abating.
When Toby first awoke the sky was clouding over. Andr
remained at his side and the crow next to Andr. Just as they had
when hed fallen asleep, the animals continued to converse, and
holding his purring cat close to his body, Toby fell into a dreamless
sleep and awakened when the light of the sun washed across his
face.
It wasnt much later when Toby swung himself out over the
edge of the porch roof, descended the back stairs to his second floor
back door and quietly went in the house. He was no longer certain
why hed run away.
You called the police on me? Toby said to his stunned mother as
he walked into the living room. Angela had been dozing in a chair
next to the officer at the phone.
My God, Toby! Where have you been? she asked,
rushing over to him.
Up on the roof.
What were you doing there?
Sleeping. Andr was with me, and some crow.
Sleeping? Oh, my God! Werent you cold? Are you all
right? A crow? She put her hands on his shoulders and shook him
a little.
Dont I look all right? he snapped.
Son, your mother was very worried about you, said the
uniformed officer, a woman named Potkowski.
Despite everything hed been through in the last half year,
Tobys cold, imperious stare remained unchanged, and he cast it
directly at the policewoman. She didnt take it well. She glanced
over at Angela to see her reaction to the boys disrespect, and seeing
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THE TRIAL
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multiple blows: she feared her child was lost, shed heard of
Marcus accusations, and now her son was charged with murder.
This effectively undermined the remains of Angela Wellingtons
unrealistically optimistic nature. On the level on which she lived
and breathed, everything was decidedly not all right. Orlando had
dared to propose this to her, and now the clock of circumstance had
struck. Angela continued to weep on Orlandos shoulder: heavy,
solemn tears, for not only had everything good about Toby and his
life been wiped away, her own self-deception had been wiped away
as well. Our expert source on information reincarnational might
have a story or two regarding this karmic culmination in her life, but
whats in question here is not the lineage of this crisis, but whether
or not Tobys mother was about to draw her curtains, both literal
and figurative, climb into bed, and remain there, heavily medicated,
as the circumstantial clock ticked on. She stood weeping on
Orlandos shoulder for longer than one might expect. Then she said
that she too was sorry, and went into her bedroom and closed the
door behind her.
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the Partitas, in which the independent musical lines stand out with
unparalleled excellence. But the lines of testimony insinuated
themselves into the music, ruining it for Toby. The words of the
prosecutions forensic expert sounded dissonant notes as he reported
that there was nothing in the crime scene to suggest that Toby had
not murdered Damien. It was a little later that he tried to bring to
mind the sweeping opening movement of the Sixth Brandenburg
Concerto, but the warm pulse of strings that first began to swell up
around him was vaporized at the words of the witness on the stand.
It was Marcus himself, and utterly incapable of drowning out the
words with music, Toby had no choice but to listen, his eyes cast
down at his hands folded in his lap.
Marcuss testimony, however, contained nothing for which
Toby had not been prepared, and Marcus voice seemed mousy and
frail. Marcus sounded like the weakling that Toby had always
suspected he was. And though Tobys expression had remained
unchanged throughout the proceedings so far, a hint of a sneer
might have been detected on his face as Marcus Freeling spoke.
It had been a long day. Toby had not eaten and he was
visibly shaking with hunger as he left the courtroom. One of the
bailiffs thought he should see a doctor. Toby reacted with scorn.
On the ride home he didnt say a word.
And a long night followed. Unlike most thirteen-year-olds,
Toby Wellington was perfectly comfortable with solitude; he
thrived on it, in fact, he sought it out. So when he couldnt sleep
that night, the feeling that gripped him came as a disturbing
surprise. Toby felt lonely, sharply and deeply lonely. Perhaps it
was what hed heard in court that day; what the Bach had not
masked out, what art could not dissuade. No tears accompanied his
loneliness, however; only a hardening of his feelings, of everything
he felt about himself and the world.
After a probing conversation with Toby, Bob Jacobson had
found the boy so poised and convincing that despite the risks
involved, he decided to let him take the stand in his own defense. It
was just before noon the next day when the time came for him to be
sworn in, and it seemed to those who knew Toby that Mr. Jacobson
had been right; that Toby might have chosen acting as a career
rather than art. His demeanor was a perfect portrayal of wronged
but clear-headed innocence. In his story, which was rehearsed at
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length with his lawyer, Toby admitted that he had been the
instigator of mischief in the past, though not to the extent that
Marcus claimed. He explained further that on the day of the
accident, Damien seemed to have snapped. He acted as Toby had
never seen him act before: more aggressive, more unreasonable,
more determined. After a series of objections from the prosecutor,
Tobys attorney reworded his question to allow Toby to tell the jury
that at the time, he believed that it was because Damien had just
moved into a high-rise building that he got carried away with
dropping things out the window from such a great height; whereas
before, from the third floor there was no way to do anything
dangerous without being caught, and just as Marcus reported,
Damien never suggested it before. But Damien was a different
person that day in August, or so Toby insisted, with a convincing
look of bewilderment. Under Mr. Jacobsons direct examination, he
admitted to telling Marcus he would throw him out a window, and
also to a few other of Marcus accusations, but he did so with such
apparent guilelessness that he was more convincing than even Mr.
Jacobson could have hoped.
But Tobys skill as an actor proved only superficial. Toby,
and indeed Mr. Jacobson, clever as he was, was unprepared for the
States strategy. Earlier, the prosecution had called a classmate of
Tobys, Erin McKean, who recounted in remarkable detail how
Toby had once bragged to her that hed thrown water balloons out a
window at passersby, and had gone on to explain even if suspected,
hed simply lie about his involvement because people, adults in
particular, were easy to fool. Lying, he told Erin, was no big deal.
Toby, still trying to lose himself in The Well Tempered Clavier at
the time, never looked at pretty little Erin, and may not have heard
what shed said. This being established, however, the prosecutor
whether through courtroom savvy or insight gained in the discovery
processlaunched her psychological attack
This Assistant District Attorney, Ms. Bristlemeyer, asked
Toby if it was true that after Damiens death, he was very upset.
Toby responded that he was, and went on to answer a series of
questions describing his reaction to what he referred to as the
accident, still playing the part of the bereaved friend with what
seemed genuine sincerity. It was when he was asked if hed stopped
drawing as a result of his grief that Toby began to lose his focus.
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to his death. The defenses case, of course, did not focus on Tobys
truthfulness or lack thereof, but on the lack of evidence directly
linking him to the commission of any crime. As compelling as Mr.
Jacobson was, however, the jurys overriding response that day may
have been their dislike of the defendant.
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church basements, and of course, call-in radio shows for the five
days of the trial. The popular verdict, as the pollsters so selflessly
announced, was a resounding condemnation of this spoiled prodigy,
this beautiful boy, who seemed to the great masses of Americans
not initiated in the fine arts, a picture of elitism, of misplaced
privilege, dubious morality, and possibly indeterminate sexuality.
The public did not like Toby Wellingtonor more aptly, the public
enjoyed disliking him
Two of the less reputable publications ran the following
headlines for the benefit of all grocery shoppers who might need
their curiosity satisfied while waiting in line to check out.
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On the evening before the trial ended, Angela and Toby sat alone at
the kitchen table after dinner. They had ordered in from The Jade
Palace, but neither had eaten much.
Do you remember when I tried to draw that elephant,
Toby? Angela asked, trying to hold back her tears.
Yes, mom. That was pretty pathetic.
Angela smiled. When you showed me how to do it, did
you have any feeling about what you did?
Toby seemed to be thinking seriously about it. I was just a
kid, mom. I dont remember that much.
You took a dark blue crayon and drew a beautiful elephant
on a piece of my stationery. It was meant for you to color in.
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I was coloring?
Yes, and you werent very good at itand youve never
done it since. Maybe you should try. You might be better.
Toby showed signs of a smile at this remark, but then grew
pensive again. I remember something about it, he said. I
remember that blue crayon and I remember how the elephant
looked. It was in another book and I remembered it.
And it didnt feel like anything special for you to just draw
what you remembered like that?
Toby looked at his mother earnestly; she couldnt remember
ever seeing such a look directed at her. She had seen that
expression on his face when he drew and when he listened to Bach,
but when it was directed at her, it felt distinctly warm, not a
sensation usually attributed to Toby. Maybe everything would be
better if I wasnt so special, he said.
Angela remembered what Orlando said when she made
comments like that.
Lifes a package deal, dear, Angela said. If you didnt
have your talent you wouldnt be Toby, you wouldnt be my son.
Maybe it seems like without that gift things wouldnt be so
complicated, but you are complicated. You have a wonderful,
complicated mind. It must be so terribly difficult for you now. Im
so sorry. Its almost too difficult for me to bear and Im just your
mother. But youre only thirteen, Toby, and youre going to have a
chance to grow into it all.
Am I really?
What do you mean? Angela pulled her chair closer to the
table. Toby sat across from her leaning forward, his chin on his
fists.
I dont feel like theres going to be any future.
The starkness with which he said that chilled his mother,
but she understood how a boy on trial for murder could feel that
way. She remembered that Orlando had told her that she had to be
the strong one. Honey, I cant get you through these next days.
But I promise you this will turn out all right
What does that mean? Toby snapped back. What do
you mean all right? Those people hate me. Toby sat up straight,
narrowing his eyes. Why dont you admit that? Why dont you
say it might not turn out all right?
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HOMELAND SECURITY
Alarm was in the air the afternoon I found Toby Wellington had
climbed onto the roof. Not only had I never seen the boy under the
sky, but his emanations were also unprecedented: he glowed with a
pulsing silver sheen with deepening scarlet hues at its core. He
seemed at once agitated and rejuvenated. No vestigial images
remained in his aura, so I couldnt determine the source of his
mood, but I approached him gladly and made myself comfortable in
my customary spot where he joined me as naturally as if he were a
frequent visitor to the rooftop.
A certain compression of the roof currents made it clear that
Akbar and his followers would arrive before long. The Wellington
boy was frightened at their approach and seemed alarmed when
Akbar settled next to me. Akbar had a good deal to report,
however, and before long, I pressed my fur against Tobys body to
stabilize him and turned all my attention to the venerable old crow.
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There was a great deal of tension in the Wellington home before the
infestation began; but when Toby arrived home late that afternoon
along with his mother and teacher, the atmosphere began to crackle
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THE VERDICT
It was just after two in the afternoon. It had been five days since the
trial had begun, and the case had been turned over to the jury. The
Wellingtons and Orlando Floyd had arrived back at the apartment
and didnt know what to do about dinner. Orlando suggested he
drive over to the Jade Palace for some take-out when there was a
knock on the front door. Angela peered out the peephole and
gasped.
Go away! she shouted through the door. You dont have
any business here! She broke down sobbing and ran to her
bedroom.
Go away! Orlando yelled toward the door then. Youve
got a lot of nerve! he added as he followed Angela away, hoping to
console her. That someone from the press would harass Angela at
home, and on this very day, nearly brought Orlando to tears as well.
But Toby, angry but fearless, flung open the door. He
didnt recognize the tall, broad-shouldered man who was his father.
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sobbing came from a deeper place than outrage and anger, it was a
deep, soul-wracked sound that had a soul-wrenching effect on her
younger son.
With the quickness of a cat, Toby flung the front door open,
and seeing his mother in tears, drove his left shoulder directly into
his fathers chest, sending him hurdling backwards down the
staircase. Toby stood for only a moment looking down
contemptuously at Tobias, a fifty-one-year-old man sprawled on the
lower landing. Then he turned on his heel and entered the
apartments foyer with a smug look of accomplishment on his face.
Angela stood there in horror before rushing down to her ex-
husbands aid. Fortunately for Tobiasif anything could be
deemed fortunate for him at this timethe staircase was thickly
carpeted and it was only eight steps from landing to landing. When
Angela got to him, his face was wracked with pain but he was
already trying to get up to see what hurt the most. Apparently it was
his back. Angela offered to take him to a hospital or call for an
ambulance if he felt he needed it, but nearly in the same breath she
pleaded with him not to report this to the authorities. Tobias
Wellington saw his ex-wife looked so broken, weak, worn down
and utterly defenseless, that despite his morass of conflicting
feelings, running from love to outrage to a broken paternal heart, he
told her not to worry about that, stood up fully, shook the wrinkles
out of his suit, and limped on down the stairs, listing slightly to the
left. (He was injured more seriously than he realized at the time,
however. Despite back surgery and countless visits to the
chiropractor, he continued to suffer lower back pain for the rest of
his life, along with a recurring dull ache from a simple fracture of
the heart.)
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her ex-husbands case, the word hardly applies people who have
actual nervous breakdowns dont think in terms either so predictable
or theatrical, and what Angela did when she walked back into the
house was look at Orlando, wipe the tears from her eyes, shake her
head and ask him if hed still go out and get some dinner.
It was only a short drive to The Jade Palace from the Wellingtons.
It had been at least a year since Orlando had dinner with Parker
Blum at Mr. Lees restaurant; his old friend seemed to have
disappeared. Orlando hadnt been in by himself since before the
trial. Mr. Lee had apologized to Orlando that he hadnt acted more
quickly. But you awright now? You call 911 yourself?
It took a moment for Orlando to realize that when Mr. Lee
was talking about.
When Mr. Lee last saw him, Orlando was fleeing in terror
from a murder of angry crows, and in answer to Mr. Lees worried
cries of Mr. Froyd! Mr. Froyd! Orlando, exhausted and
frustrated, had shouted, D-O-O-CTOR! D-O-O-CTOR! back at
him. The good gentleman, however, had thought that Orlando
needed a doctor and wanted Mr. Lee to call 911. Flustered, Mr. Lee
had not.
Orlando apologized for the mix-up when he entered the
Jade Palace that daythe day the boy accused of pushing his friend
out an eighteenth story window had just pushed his father down a
flight of the stairs.
I am sorry for you trouble, Mr. Froyd, said Mr. Lee after
Orlando had sat down by the window. Orlando smiled weakly in
acknowledgement of his friends concern, but stared out at the park
across the street, where he saw no crows. Not much later then, he
took the fragrant brown paper bag from Mr. Lee and nodded
goodbye to his friendwithout having created any dialogue bubbles
at all.
After Orlando returned with the food, Angela told him that while he
was gone, Andr had come in the back door, looked around the
living room, puffed up like hed seen a ghost and run back out
again. Toby was in his room and had asked if he could eat in there.
Adam had asked to be excused, and after giving his mother a very
considerate and seemingly sincere hug, left the house. Despite the
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madness, Angela hoped the family could all eat together (she
considered Orlando family now), but had not an ounce of strength to
try to convince anyone of anything. Wisely, as an alternative to a
breakdown, Angelas nervous system had ordered a system restart,
but in a strictly functional capacity. Angela felt as if she had been
administered a large dose of Valium; she walked, talked, and
managed her bodily functions admirably, but no more. Her numbed
state rubbed off on Orlando by the time theyd finished dinner: he
too, like Angela, felt ready for bed, no matter that it was only seven
in the evening. As Orlando lay beside Angela in her bedroom and
stared at the delicate pattern of cracks in the ceiling, the silence in
the house reminded him that since the beginning of the trial, Toby
had not listened to a note of Bach. This made him inordinately sad
at that moment, and he was thankful that Angela hadnt noticed his
tears because he didnt want to break what seemed such
heartbreaking news to her.
The following things did not take place in the Wellington household
during the next days:
They did not show slides of family vacations, laugh at the
happy memories and tease each other kindly about how much
younger they looked and how oddly they dressed. They did not tell
knock-knock jokes. They did not play Parcheesi, Sorry or
Monopoly tournaments to pass the idle hours until they were punch
drunk with drawn cards and rolled dice and unable to remember
who had won what. They did not play twenty questions. They did
not make cookies, brownies, pies or even Jello. They did not dress
up in funny hats and play charades. They did not play Pictionary or
Scrabble, or build houses of playing cards. They did not clean out
all the closets and charitably pack up all they no longer needed for
Goodwill or other worthy organizations. They did not read aloud to
one another chapters from the Harry Potter series, scary stories by
Edgar Allen Poe or the tales of Rudyard Kipling. They did not root
for the Chicago Cubs or the Chicago White Sox. They did not listen
to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. They did not enter Tobys
studio where his twelve most recent 3 x 31/2 foot drawings were
framed and prepared for his third show at the Cimino Gallery in
New York. They did not call grandparents, uncles, aunts, old
friends or roommates. They did not do any internet surfing or
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As Andr the Cat knew, it was still a while before the Wellingtons
home infestation of public negativity dwindled away. And it was
only then, about a week after the verdict, that Angela Wellington
again applied make-up to her gaunt but still beautiful face and began
to relax and even smile a little despite what shed seen and heard.
Adam was away again visiting his college roommate in Boston, and
perhaps in contact with Tobias too, wherever he may have been at
the time. Orlando had gone to New York with Tobys twelve large
drawings, since Ms. Cimino was as much a businesswoman as an
aficionado and wanted Tobys third show to open as soon after the
trial as possible. Despite the cataclysmic upset in his life, Toby
remained an artist of the most genuine sort in that he had no regard
for his completed work, and thus no desire to travel to New York
for his shows opening, despite Ms. Ciminos pleading and a
promised opening slot on the David Letterman show. One might be
surprised that Toby declined the television appearance, particularly
since he had begged to be allowed to appear in the past. But this
was no longer the same Toby Wellington. His first request after his
innocence was declared was that he be home-schooled. Though it
is unlikely that a spirit as tenacious as Tobys can be broken, the
malice of public opinion and the sensationalism of the press had
penetrated his armor, and the only place he wished to go was the
roof.
I dont think Ill make much of a teacher, dear, Angela
replied to Tobys request. The two were sitting on the kitchen
having breakfast.
Thats not really what I had in mind, Mom, he answered,
pouring himself a second glass of orange juice; a good sign, thought
Angela. We can afford a tutor cant we? And I just have to stay in
school till Im sixteen and then I can quit, right?
No, dear. That might be the letter of the law, but you dont
know what you might want to learn as you get older. This is
something youre going to have to listen to your mother about. I
can look into the possibility of a tutor, though. But it makes me sad
that youll be away from your friends. As Angela said this she felt
the corners of her mouth turn involuntarily down.
Toby looked down at his near empty plate of pancakes.
Then up at his mother. She noticed the first traces of heavier
growth on his cheeks and chin, but also saw something else in her
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Orlando returned two days after Tobys show opened in New York,
and as expected, ten of the twelve works that were for sale sold the
night of the opening for astronomical prices, and the first reviews
recognized what Orlando and Filomena Cimino already knew about
Tobys latest work: that it had qualities never before seen in
drawings of any kind, that it bordered on what one critic called the
realm of magic in art.
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mother can appreciate, would have been subdued or even stifled had
they known what Andr the Cat knew at the time.
We know that it had been painfully clear to everyone close
to Toby that the trial and the attendant publicity had taken its toll on
him. Andr, of course, unlike the humans in Tobys very limited
circle, knew exactly what form the boys problems were taking
during that period, since hed taken it upon himself to hunt down
and destroy the unrelenting psychic manifestations of those troubles.
As we also know, he was as successful as one cat could be in his
defense of Toby and his family. Cats ordinarily live in the present
and dont dilute their awareness in anticipation of the future, a
quality to which evolving humans aspire. Andr, however,
beginning to develop qualities above and beyond those of the
standard feline, became an exception to this rule and hoped that
once Toby was rid of the bottom-feeders that infested his aura, he
would be on the road to psychological recovery. The development
of such compassion in a cat may have been unprecedented in feline
history, but the assumption Andr made couldnt have been further
from the truth.
Toby remained in his studio; he even slept there as old Mr.
Janus worked through the night to prepare the drawing boards for
the brilliant young artist The smooth, lustrously white boards,
mounted and backed by braced aluminum frames were delivered
from the Museum School the next morning. Orlando had come in
one of the schools vans along with a young staff member who
carried the boards into Tobys studio; clear north light streaming
through its high windows. But once everything was in place, Toby
asked if Orlando and the young man could do one more thing for
him. He asked if they could also bring the stereo from the living
room into the studio. The boy didnt ask his mothers permission,
but he knew shed never object. Once the furniture in the studio
was rearranged and the speakers positioned on either side of Tobys
work space, he closed the door without a word. Andr was not in
the room.
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Gloria of the B Minor Mass burst through the walls of his room
with all its trumpets and glory. Gloria in excelsis Deo. Glory to
God in the highest, the words rang out with the brilliance and joy of
Bach and his most exuberant and powerful. The apartment shook
and continued to shake as the Gloria, a substantial section of the
Mass that begins and ends with a bang, was repeated again and
again and again.
This was a Friday morning. Not only had Toby never
worked to music before, but this was the first time in years when
hed worked in his studio at home. He had started at ten in the
morning, and by three in the afternoon, the thirty-five minute
Gloria had repeated nine times. Although there are quiet, more
serene passages for soloists within the Gloria,like et in terra
pax hominibus bonae voluntatis, and on earth peace and to men
goodwillthe overall effect at such high volume drove Angela out
of the house at one oclock. Orlando accompanied her out and to
her car. She needed to go for a drive, but Orlando felt he should
stay in the apartment, despite his headache. It was when he got
back upstairs that it occurred to him that Toby might be transcribing
the music, somehow drawing it out on paper or that something
equally extraordinary was taking place. Soon after this, the music
stopped abruptly, in mid phrase. No sound came from the studio.
After fifteen minutes of silence, Orlando began to be concerned, but
at the same time, the two Tylenols with codeine hed taken for his
throbbing head kicked in and the very idea of concern left with his
pain.
A little later, he heard Toby taking a few steps, stopping,
taking a few steps and stopping again. After only five hours of
work, Orlando assumed that only a portion or a stage of the entire
drawing which had been complete, but he knew Toby was stepping
away and assessing things. When Orlando went into the kitchen to
make himself some coffee, he heard Tobys studio door close, but
was surprised when the boy appeared in the kitchen. Orlando kept
his eyes on his coffee makingAngela bought pre-ground coffee,
but Orlando was still scrupulous in his preparation techniqueand
Toby, his parka on, walked past him without a word, went out the
back door, up the stairs and then up to the roof. No one had
observed Toby gaining access to the roof before, and when Orlando
saw that in pulling himself up, Toby hung by his hands alone three
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ANYTHINGS POSSIBLE
Eventually, all waiting comes to an end, except perhaps the wait for
the end of time. Nevertheless, in Orlandos anxious state, waiting to
see Tobys new drawing seemed endless enough, and during those
several long days, he appeared to have aged as rapidly as Angela
had during the trial. But the waiting period ended undramatically as
such things often do. It was a Thursday, a week after Toby had
begun to work with Bachs accompaniment, when Orlando noticed
that Tobys studio door was wide open and the door to his bedroom
was as well. Reluctant, even a little frightened to see what was in
the studio, Orlando went to Tobys bedroom first and looked in.
There, he saw Toby stretched out full length on his bed, face down,
dead asleep, with Andr purring away on the pillow next to his
head.
Orlando knew that whenever Toby wished to be undisturbed
he closed doors behind him, so he steeled himself as he could and
strode into the bright studio to see what the troubled young genius
had wrought. At the first sight of the dark jumble of lines on the 36
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The five other drawing boards that Toby had ordered were leaning,
pristinely white, against the wall, and Toby himself still slept
soundly in his room. Orlando and Angela left the studio several
times, both to check on Toby and to re-enter to see if their visions
evoked by Tobys drawing would change and on the chance that
theyd be able to see what the other had seen. But nothing changed.
Toby showed no signs of stirring and Orlandos head of Apollo, the
Greek God of the Sun, Music, Poetry and more, continued to gaze
out at him, just as Angelas Goddessperhaps Aphroditethe
Greek Goddess of Love and Beauty, stayed sumptuously where she
was and oversaw her own realm.
No matter how she strained and refocused her eyes, Angela
could see only the vaguest hints of the face Orlando saw; and as
much as he wished to, Orlando saw no naked Goddess with flowing
hair. But as the two of them studied the astonishing drawing, if a
drawing is what it should properly be called, a little more did
become clear to them, however. As Orlando studied the radiant face
of Apollo, the background behind itthe remainder of the massive
thumbprinttook on a sinuous, flowing pattern he had not seen at
first. This pattern, he told Angela, mirrored the lines of the face,
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which, in her husbands eyes, she believed, may have as well have
been a Playboy centerfold. Apparently, their marriage had recently
hit a rocky spot.
Phillip Brooks looked a little edgy as he waited for his wife
to return with the girls. Jennifer brought them into the studio at the
same timeDora, ten, and Dawn, sevenand there couldnt have
been more of a contrast in their reactions: Dora stared blankly at the
dark jumble of swirling lines and said, Huh?
But Doras Huh? was drowned out by her younger sisters
cryor was it that a yowl? The little girl looked like shed
mistakenly pulled open a drawer at a morgue. When her face was
finally pried away from her mothers protective embrace, she
described an apparition that many church-going seven-year-olds
would have identified as Satan; though it may not have been The
Great Adversary himself: the leering visage with horns might have
been more correctly identified as the lusty, Old World god, Pan. In
any case, whether the horned boogey was a fiend or a god, he gave
the child a substantial enough scare to cause her to dampen her little
undies. Dawn was not forthcoming with many details about what
she saw, but from what Orlando could gather, her vision among the
dark swirls of Tobys pen was located approximately if not
precisely where Orlando had seen his own glorious vision of
Apollo.
It was unfortunate that the Brooks family left in disarray
when theyd so graciously come downstairs to view a newly created
work of art. A little later, Angela brought a plate of cookies upstairs
for the girls as a peace offering, but Jennifer Brooks told her
somewhat frostily that she was trying to get Dawn to calm down
enough for a nap and that sugar turned Dona into a holy terror. She
did accept the cookies, though, but smiled a smile that made it clear
that once the plate was returned, Angela shouldnt expect to see her
soon. Uncharacteristically, or perhaps not at this point in her life,
Angela Wellington felt no remorse at all.
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was floating just above the surface of the drawing, and she thanked
the Almighty for bringing her into a room with the Mother of His
Son. She went on to tearfully thank the Virgin for her blessing.
It was a few minutes after that, when Theresa had calmed
down, that Angela and Orlando heard the back door open and close.
Then they heard Tobys footsteps lead to his bedroom, where he
closed the door, only to open it soon thereafter to let Andr in
before closing it again.
Orlando, Angela, Timothy Bacon, Theresa Gomez and the
young man from New York looked at one another in silence for a
moment then. Though each clung to his or her own tastes and
beliefs, in a rare moment of companionship, the four more
sophisticated art lovers looked to Theresa in acknowledgement, for
it seemed to all of them that it was her reaction to Tobys
extraordinary drawing that most completely expressed what they
truly felt.
It was the next day that Orlando and Angela first discussed the
diverse reactions to the drawing with Toby, who still remained
detached, reasserting that he was finished with the drawing and
didnt care what anyone thought or what became of it. As
disquieting as this was to his mother and teacher, they tried to keep
the conversation upbeat.
Actually, Toby, Orlando said, youre not quite finished
with this picture. You havent named it.
Toby shrugged. Call it anything, he said.
Angela laughed. Anything? Thats a peculiar name.
Dont you think it deserves a little better?
Though Angela was doing her best, there was such a sense
of defeat in Tobys demeanor that she could hardly keep smiling.
Anything? Orlando repeated. Why not call it
Everything or Anythings Possible? Wouldnt that be better?
What do you think, Toby? he asked, trying to refrain from sighing
as he suggested this.
Anythings Possible, Toby said flatly. Thatll be fine.
Neither Orlando nor Angela was thrilled with the title; it
seemed a little flip to them both, but they didnt want to approach
Toby about it again. He left the room without saying a thing.
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dearly wished to visit the museum, but the condition of his back
made travel next to impossible. Alex and Ellen Sharp did not attend
the showing, nor did the doorman on duty when Damien died.
Adam was in town just after the picture was installed.
Angela wanted to be with him when he saw it, and he was glad that
she accompanied him. He seemed frightened at first by what he saw
and didnt want to tell his mother what it was. Of course, hed
heard all the stories of inspiration and awe. Maybe he was
embarrassed, maybe worried about his mothers feelings, maybe
even his brothers, but Adam saw his fathers face in Anythings
Possible. He finally told Angela but made her promise not to tell
Toby. Angela was touched by this; she thought this was sweet.
She also thought it was sweet that the face Adam saw was smiling
benevolently at his son.
All three of Orlandos old friends came to the showing. All
three, as a matter of fact, asked Orlando to accompany them.
Orlando was happy to do this, particularly with Parker Blum, who
had only just returned from a year-long pilgrimage to Nepal. He
was dressed in monks robes, and did seem particularly patient,
considerate and non-judgmental under the recent Buddhist
influence. It should go without saying what great being he saw
when he looked at Anythings Possible.
Olivia Piper called Orlando and asked to have coffee with
him before viewing the drawing. She didnt bring him a gift, but
while sipping coffee at the Bohemian Caf admitted that indeed
shed had a crush on Orlando for over twenty years. This, however,
did not prepare Orlando for the shock of hearing that it was his own
face that Olivia saw in Tobys wonder-work.
Glen Steinberg, whom Orlando had reconnected with only
recently, seemed most deeply moved of the three old friends. He
wept at what he saw, explaining to Orlando that it was too personal
to reveal, but that he planned to visit the drawing often again.
Orlando knew, however, that Glens parents had recently died
within two months of each other. After he said goodbye to Glen out
on the museum steps, Orlando felt perhaps the strongest surge of
pride yet for his studentor was Toby his teacher? Or just his
friend?
The newspapers, magazines, television news magazines and
talk shows, of course, were brimming with news about the
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Among adults
36% saw uplifting images of a religious nature
26% saw uplifting images of a mythic nature
11% saw uplifting images of a sensual nature
9% saw uplifting images of a personal nature
4% saw uplifting images they considered amusing
2% saw uplifting images of themselves
12% saw disturbing images (satanic, ghoulish or warlike)
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Clearly, the results of this poll suggest that not only did the images
generated by his drawing do well in the eye of the public, but that
Tobys image had also greatly improved.. But whereas image may
be everything when it comes to art, when the life of a human psyche
is involved, image may be The Great Deceiver, perhaps even
The Great Adversary, for Toby Wellington had not improved; his
state of mind had become far more critical than anyone other than
Andr and Akbar imagined.
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ACTS OF GOD
It was one month later. The moon was full again. Except for the
few days when it had rained, Toby had been spending most of his
time on the roof. His mother had agreed to let him sleep there as
long as the weather permitted. She had been very concerned about
him; not about his choice to retreat to the roof, but about his
appearance, because Toby Wellington appeared to be getting
somewhat smaller. Orlando had noticed this as well. True, the boy
was carrying himself differently: his shoulders were slightly
hunched, his head bent forward, but beyond his slumping posture,
the thirteen-year-old seemed to have actually shrunkjust a bit.
His head, in particular, looked to occupy a little less space, as if
compressed. Angela and Orlando had discussed this with some
alarm, but reason convinced them that it was not a medical problem,
but a rather psychological malady that suggested compression.
The great reception that Tobys masterpiece had received at
the Art Institute of Chicago showed no signs of diminishing; and
though the heated flap regarding Tobys contract with Filomena
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Ciminos New York gallery had finally cooled off, the fiery Italian
woman herself would continue to burn and threaten litigation for
some time into the future. With Tobys distracted, disinterested
agreement, Angela Wellington had sold Anythings Possible to
the museum for an undisclosed sum. This arrangement fulfilled the
humanitarian need both she and Orlando felt about the drawing and
its mysterious power to inspire and uplift so many people of
divergent beliefs. But both Orlando and Angela felt with a
depressing certainty that Toby would not be drawing anything new
in the near future. Of the six prepared drawing surfaces he had
ordered, five remained untouched, and Toby had stacked these
against the wall in his studio with their bright white surfaces hidden
from view. And Toby seemed to be disappearing before their eyes.
As a loving, responsible parent, Angela felt compelled to ask her
son what was disturbing him so deeply; she did this periodically,
just as she had when his mood had first begun to decline, despite
knowing that this boy of hers simply wasnt equipped to answer
questions of that sort. She had concluded, in fact, that Toby had not
come into this world fully equipped, that he did not have the
emotional tools to live as others did. And she suspected that this
deficit was directly connected to his unworldly artistic gift.
Angela Wellington had become a very perceptive woman.
Andr the Cat was the family member who most definitively
understood Tobys psychological make up, however, since Akbar
(as crow) had taken care to clarify this for him. Akbar explained to
Andr that Toby Wellington had been born to create art, to transmit
the unique understanding he was to acquire as an infant, and thus
anchor a great vision for humanitys future evolution. But as with
the destiny of all things great and small in the flatland where we
humans are born and die, Tobys Wellingtons destiny was both
fixed and unknown at oncea paradox impossible for us to resolve,
but the likes of which has in fact created us all along with
everything we know. Or, as this reporters acquaintance, the source
of all knowledge incarnational, once put it: Any question that can
be answered isnt worthy of being asked.
So: here we have Toby Wellington, designed to create art
and nothing more. And as weve seen, Toby was one cold art-
making machine; he left some bodies behind, but hed eventually
make amends, karmically, that is, and grow from it himself. Toby
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dismember. There was only the boy at his side that he had come to
love, though as a feline, it would be a while before the idea of love,
the more personalized form of compassion, would become a part of
his psychological vocabulary. But as we know, he was doing quite
well for a cat, and he stayed pressed against Tobys body until hours
later when the boy had heard the last of Johann Sebastian Bach and
rose to his feet.
Toby stood so close to the edge that he teetered. The whole of his
monumental accomplishment and the whole of his monumental
remorse rose up in him like a last tide of torment that few if any
boys not-quite-fourteen could be expected to bearand he could
not bear it, but neither could he jump. He could not. It seemed he
had already done his part. He was finished. Perhaps the weight of a
moonbeam alone might have sent him, like Damien Sharp,
plummeting down, and in a certain sense it was a moonbeam that
tipped the balancebut in another more visceral sense, it was
hardly a moonbeam, but the furious beating of a crows wings,
inches behind his head that sent him tumbling at last to his merciful
end.
Two souls walk into a bar. One soul asks the other:
So how was your life?
It was great. The best, the second soul answers.
Really? How so?
Well, you see, it only lasted thirteen years, and I never had
a worried day. I never reflected on anything, never had any
responsibilities, never worked a day in my life, and never did
anything but play. It was a breezea little touchy for the last hour
or so, but hell, I fell eighteen stories and it was over in a flash.
Really! the first soul says. How bout that! I lived
thirteen years too! But most of it was awful, believe me. Awful
responsibility, overwhelming, way too much for a kidand work,
let me tell you, it never seemed to end. And pressure! Unbearable.
I practically never played and the last time I tried, I ended up in
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one shit-load of trouble. The soul shook his incorporeal head. But
I fell too, just like you. Only three stories, but it was over before I
knew it. I envy you, though. I wish I had a life like yours.
The second soul looks at him. It wasnt just the life, he
says. Ive had lives start like that before. No: it was that sweet,
short whole of it. And that sudden endbefore all the trouble could
even get started!
The first soul looks wistful. Ill ask for one of those, next
time around.
Good luck, says the second soul. Its something
everyone should try. Let me know if I can do anything to help. Ill
be glad to lend a hand, he says, clapping the other soul on his
etheric shoulder So. So what are you drinking?
Those little things, Toby said to the girl, sitting there with him in
the sand. What did we used to call them?
Stars?
Thats right, stars. And didnt we ascribe wondrous
qualities to them? Didnt we think they burned and that they were
so big they could swallow us whole?
The girl held up a handful of sand, and as it sifted through
her fingers, each grain came alive like a star: white, electric blue,
golden and pink. And as the constellations touched the beach, the
sounds they made were like the songs of birds, but not birds: bells.
Those, Toby said, pointing to the wisps of cirrus cloud
above them. Now those we called watersoaring water.
The girl, whod once in a dream held a wrinkled, brown
paper bag, smiled. Raising the hand from which shed sifted the
stars, she drew it across the air above her head in an arc, and there
followed wispy streamers drawn down from above, which she
swirled around herself in rings that rung out in hollow, flute-like
tones.
Bells and flutes, said the boy who looked like Toby once
looked, but had no bird-like scar on his hand.
And those, he said, pointing to the sky again where a
flock of the blackest birds swooped down toward the slate-grey
water of the lake. Did we call those puzzles? Or charms?
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PRENATAL CARE
Orlando laughed.
It was two years later, in July, on what would have been
Tobys sixteenth birthday. Angela and Orlando had moved to
another apartment, again close to Lincoln Park and the lake, high-
ceilinged and spacious like the apartment where Angela had lived
for years before Tobys death. There, in the new home shed made
for herself lived her husband, Orlando; her son Adam, on the
occasions when he was in town, and her beautiful black cat, Andr.
The child she was expecting (at the age of forty-one) was due in
October.
One can easily imagine the tremendous public stir created
by Toby Wellingtons death. But just as the world had officially
determined that Toby was innocent of murder, the world now held
the erroneous belief that he had accidentally fallen to his death.
Angela had burned Tobys note regarding being happier someplace
else, having showed it only to Orlando, and had told the detectives
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who once again visited her at home that Toby was fond of doing
reckless things on the roof. Though there was some suspicion at
police headquarters, in the interest of good taste, the chief of
detectives concluded the investigation summarily. Toby
Wellingtons reputation had greatly improved, after all, and the city
fathers wanted to be sure that the great attraction at their venerable
museum was in no way besmirched. Angela kept a few of the early
drawings that remained in Tobys studio. The others she sold for
prices that embarrassed her despite her planned philanthropic use of
much of that money. Of course, she kept Tobys final drawing. She
and Andr were now framed and hung above the fireplace in her
new living room.
In line with a suggestion made by Orlando shortly after
Tobys death, mass runs of a reproduction of Anythings Possible
were made, and these were distributed for sale around the world at
little or no expense at all to anyone who wished to have the uplifting
religious, mythic, personal, sensual, humorous or narcissistic images
in their dwellings or workplaces (which would be 88% of those who
saw images in the picture)and of course there was nothing
stopping that 12% who saw satanic, ghoulish or warlike images
from plastering their walls with those if they so chose. The
reproductions were available in full, half and one-third the original
size; and those of decreased dimensions generated no fewer visions
than the drawing on permanent display at the Museum of Fine Arts.
There was a size for ballrooms, prison cells and mud huts. That this
philanthropic effort, this world-wide dispersion of a map of human
destiny satisfied the precise intent of The League of Initiates was
of course unknown to Angela and Orlando, but when it comes to
philanthropy, the gap between what one knows and does is of little
or no significance.
The sorrows of Angela Wellington have already been
chronicled here, and her grief at Tobys death was much like one
might expect. It was a grief of the seemingly bottomless sort, and
remained acute for an appropriately little eternity. The only thing
that differentiated her misery from that any grieving parent was her
knowledge that Toby himself had been suffering unbearably, and
that being who he was, she didnt have a history of a warm, mutual
bond with him. Orlando`s sorrow did not run as deep as Angelas,
but since as weve seen, Tobys work was so bound up with
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So Andr purrs, and the baby boy gestates, and Angela and Orlando
forget what they will and remember what they must and row and
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row, and carry on with the task of drawing the line and writing the
text as all good people forever have done and will do. And
somewhere the Moon is rising and somewhere it is setting.
Somewhere the star clock turns and chimes the hour. It is the hour
of birth and death, of folly and forgiveness, and all else glorious and
true as the night is dark and the moment is forever. And so Andr
purrs, and the baby boy grows, and the Moon will not forget, nor the
stars, as visions of paradise unfurl to the sweet, dark music of the
end.
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