“ Dinner was ready at seven fifteen. Afterwards Kinderman soaked in the bathtub, trying to make his mind a blank. As usual he found himself unable to do it. Ryan does it so easily, he reflected. I must ask him his secret. I will wait until he's done something right and feels expansive. His mind went from the concept of a secret to Amfortas. The man is so mysterious, so dark. There was something he was hiding, he knew. What was it? Kinderman reached for a plastic bottle and poured some more bubble fluid into the tub. He could barely keep from dozing off.
The bath over, Kinderman put on a robe and carried the Gemini file to his den. Its walls were covered with movie posters, black-and-white classics from the thirties and forties. The dark wooden desk was strewn with books. Kinderman winced. He was barefoot and had stepped on a sharp-edged copy of Teilhard de Chaidin's The Phenomenon of Man. He bent down and picked it up and then placed it on the desk. He turned on the desk lamp.
The light caught tinfoil candy wrappers lurking in the rubble like gleaming felons. Kinderman cleared a space for the file, scratched his nose, sat down and tried to focus. He searched among the books and found a pair of reading glasses. He cleaned them with the sleeve of his robe and then put them on. He still couldn't see. He shut one eye and then the other, then he took off the glasses and did it again. He decided he saw better without the left lens. He wrapped his sleeve around the lens and banged it sharply on a corner of the desk. The lens fell out in two pieces. Occam's Razor, Kinderman thought. He put the glasses back on and tried again.
It was no use. The problem was fatigue. He took off the glasses, left the den and went straight to bed.
Kinderman dreamed. He was sitting in a theater watching a film with the inmates of the open ward. He thought he was watching Lost Horizon, although what he saw on the screen was Casablanca. He felt no discrepancy about this. In Rick's Cafe the piano player was Amfortas. He was singing "As Time Goes By'' when the Ingrid Bergman character entered. In Kinderman's dream she was Martina Lazlo and her husband was played by Doctor Temple. Lazlo and Temple approached the piano and Amfortas said, "Leave him alone, Miss Ilse." Then Temple said, "Shoot him," and Lazlo took a scalpel from her purse and stabbed Amfortas in the heart.
Suddenly Kinderman was in the movie. He was sitting at a table with Humphrey Bogart. "The letters of transit are forged," said Bogart. "Yes, I know," said Kinderman. He asked Bogart whether Max, his brother, was involved, and Bogart shrugged his shoulders and said, "This is Rick's."
"Yes, everyone comes here," said Kinderman, nodding; "I've seen this picture twenty times."
"Couldn't hurt," said Bogart. Then Kinderman experienced a feeling of panic because he had forgotten the rest of his lines, and he began a discussion of the problem of evil and gave Bogart a summary of his theory.
In the dream it took a fraction of a second. "Yes, Ugarte," said Bogart, "I do have more respect for you now."
Then Bogart began a discussion of Christ. "You left him out of your theory," he said; "the German couriers will find out about that."
"No, no, I include him," said Kinderman quickly.
Abruptly Bogart became Father Dyer and Amfortas and Miss Lazlo were sitting at the table, although now she was young and extremely beautiful. Dyer was hearing the neurologist's confession, and when he gave the absolution Lazlo gave Amfortas a single white rose.
"And I said I'd never leave you," she told him. "Go and live no more," said Dyer.
Instantaneously, Kinderman was back in the audience and he knew that he was dreaming.
The screen had grown larger, filling his vision, and in place of Casablanca he saw two lights against a pale green wash of endless void.
The light at the left was large and coruscating, flashing with a bluish radiance.
Far to its right was a small white sphere that glowed with the brilliance and power of suns, yet did not blind or flare; it was serene. Kinderman experienced a sense of transcendence.
In his mind he heard the light on the left begin to speak. "I cannot help loving you," it said.
The other light made no answer. There was a pause.
"That is what I am," the first light continued. "Pure love. I want to give my love freely," it said.
Again there was no answer from the brilliant sphere.
Then at last the first light spoke again. "I want to create myself," it said.
The sphere then spoke. "There will be pain," it said.
"I know."
"You do not understand what it is."
"I choose it," said the bluish light.
Then it waited, quietly flickering.
Many more moments passed before the white light spoke again. "I will send Someone to you," it said.
"No, you mustn't. You must not interfere."
"He will be a part of you," said the sphere.
The bluish light drew inward upon itself. Its flarings were muted and minute.
Then at last it expanded again. "So be it."
Now the silence was longer, much stiller than before. There was a heaviness about it.
At last the white light spoke quietly. "Let time begin," it said.
The bluish light flared up and danced in colors, and then slowly it steadied to its former state.
For a time there was silence.
Then the bluish light spoke softly and sadly. "Goodbye. I will return to you.''
"Hasten the day."
The bluish light began to coruscate wildly now. It grew larger and more radiant and beautiful than ever. Then it slowly compacted, until it was almost the size of the sphere. There it seemed to linger for a moment. "I love you," it said.
The next instant it exploded into far-flinging brilliance, hurtling outward from itself with unthinkable force in a trillion shards of staggering energies of light and shattering sound.
Kinderman bolted awake. He sat upright in bed and felt at his forehead. It was bathed in perspiration. He could still feel the light of the explosion on his retinas. He sat there and thought for a while. Was it real? The dream had seemed so. Not even the dream about Max had had this texture. He didn't think about the portion of the dream in the cinema. The other segment had blotted it out.
He got out of bed and went down to the kitchen where he put on the light and squinted at the pendulum clock on the wall. Ten after four? This is craziness, he thought. Frank Sinatra is just now going to sleep. Yet he felt awake and extremely refreshed. He turned the flame on under the tea kettle and then stood waiting by the stove. He had to watch it and catch it before it whistled. Shirley might come down.
While he waited, he thought about his dream of the lights. It had affected him deeply. What was this emotion he was feeling? he wondered. It was something like poignance and unbearable loss. He had felt it at the ending of Brief Encounter. He reflected on the book about Satan that he'd read, the one written by Catholic theologians.
Satan's beauty and perfection were described as breathtaking. "Bearer of Light." "The Morning Star.'' God must have loved him very much. Then how could he have damned him for all of eternity?
So Point The Finger,
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