The Wolf Gift (58 page)

“But wait, you’re saying the scent of evil for each of us is contextual?” Reuben asked. “That is what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

“It has to be,” said Laura.

“No, that really is not quite it,” said Margon, but then he seemed frustrated. He looked to Felix who seemed reluctant as well to continue with this same train of thought.

There’re many things they are not saying, Reuben thought. They cannot say it all. Not now. He had a strong sense suddenly of how very much they were not explaining, but he knew better than to ask.

“The Chrism—the question of individual variation, strength,” asked Stuart. “How does this work?”

“There are huge differences in receptivity and in development,” said Felix, “and in the end result. But we don’t always know why. There are certainly very strong Morphenkinder and very weak Morphenkinder, but again, we do not know why. A born Morphenkind can be quite impressive, or a shrinking and timid individual, not at all receptive to his or her fate. But then it’s the same with those who are bitten, unless they ask for the Chrism, of course.”

Margon drew himself up and gestured emphatically with his hands, palms down, as if to say he was bringing this to a close.

“What’s important now is for you to remain here,” he said, “both of you, and Laura of course as well. For you to live here with us now, with Felix, with Thibault, and with the others of our small and select company when you meet them, which you soon will. What’s important is that you learn to control the transformation, and to resist the voices when you must. And above all, for now, to withdraw from the world until all chatter about the notorious California Man Wolf finally dies away.”

Stuart nodded. “I understand that, I accept that. I want to be here. I’ll do anything you say! But there’s so much more.”

“This will be harder than you think,” said Margon. “You’ve tasted the voices. You will grow restless and miserable when you don’t hear them. You’ll want to seek them out.”

“But we are with you now, all three of you,” said Felix. “We came together a long time ago. We chose our last names in the modern age, as you guessed, from the werewolf literature of earlier decades. And we did this, not to signal our identity or common bond to anyone else, but for those names to serve as markers for ourselves and those few friends outside of our group who knew who we were. Names become a problem for people who don’t die. Just as does property and inheritance, and the matter of legality within a nation. We sought a simple and somewhat poetic solution to one of those problems with our names. And we continue to seek solutions to the other problems by a variety of means.

“But what I mean to say is, we are a group, and we are now opening our group to you.”

Stuart, Reuben, and Laura all nodded and expressed their warm acceptance. Stuart was beginning to cry. He could hardly remain seated. Finally he got up and began to pace right in back of his chair.

“This is your house and your land, Felix,” said Reuben.

“Our house and our land,” said Felix graciously, with that warm beaming smile.

Margon rose to his feet.

“Your lives, little wolves, have just begun.”

The meeting was at an end. All were scattering.

But there was one burning matter which Reuben could not leave unresolved.

There was something he had to know, and he had to know it now.

He followed Felix, to whom he felt closest, into the library and caught up with him as he was lighting the fire.

“What is it, little brother?” asked Felix. “You look troubled. I thought the meeting went well.”

“But Laura,” Reuben whispered. “What about Laura? Will you give the Chrism to Laura? Must I ask you, or ask Margon or—.”

“She’s worthy,” said Felix. “That was decided immediately. I didn’t know there was the slightest doubt. She knows this. There have been no secrets kept from Laura. When she’s ready, she has but to ask.”

Reuben’s heart had started to skip. He couldn’t meet Felix’s gaze. He felt Felix clasp his shoulder. He felt the strong fingers on his arm.

“And if she wants it,” asked Reuben, “you will do it? You?”

“Yes. If she wants it. Margon or I. We will.”

Why was this so painful? Wasn’t this exactly what he’d wanted to know?

He saw her again in his mind’s eye, as he’d first seen her that night on the edge of Muir Woods, when he’d come singing into the grassy clearing behind her house, and she had appeared to him, as if out of nowhere, standing on the back porch of her little house, in her long white flannel gown.

“I must be the most selfish man in all creation,” he whispered.

“No, you’re not,” said Felix. “But it is her decision.”

“I don’t understand myself,” he said.

“I understand you,” said Felix.

Moments passed.

Felix struck the long fireplace match and ignited the kindling. There came that familiar roar as the kindling caught and the flames danced up the bricks.

Felix stood there patiently, waiting. Then he said softly, “You are such remarkable children. I envy you your brand-new world. I don’t know that I would have the courage for it if you were not here with me.”

I
T WAS THE FORTNIGHT
of many things.

Margon drove Stuart down to pick up his car in Santa Rosa, an old Jaguar convertible that had once belonged to his father. And they visited Stuart’s mother who was in a psychiatric facility but “bored to death” and “sick of all the crummy magazines” and ready to get a whole new wardrobe to help her cope. Her agent had called from Hollywood to say she was hot again. Well, that was an overstatement. But they had work for her if she could get herself on a plane. Maybe she’d go shopping on Rodeo Drive.

Grace, anointed as the most articulate and significant of the witnesses to the Man Wolf’s latest attack in Mendocino County, made the rounds of the talk shows, convincing the world in reasonable terms of her theory that this unfortunate creature was the victim of a congenital condition or a subsequent illness that had left it physically deformed and mentally challenged, but that it would soon blunder into the hands of authorities and get the confinement and treatment which it required.

Over and over again the investigators from the attorney general’s office, and from the FBI, and from the San Francisco Police Department came back to interview Stuart and Reuben, as they had been the mysterious focus of more than one Man Wolf attack.

This was difficult for Stuart and for Reuben, as neither was a skilled liar, but they soon learned the trick of minimal answers, murmurs, and mumbles as they went the distance and were finally left alone.

Reuben wrote a long comprehensive piece for the
San Francisco Observer
which essentially synthesized his earlier pieces, spiked with his own vivid descriptions of the Man Wolf attack, “the first” he’d seen with his own eyes. His conclusions were predictable. It was no superhero, and the adulation and fan worship should come to an end. Yet it had left us with many questions. Why had it been so easy for so many to embrace a
creature so uncompromisingly cruel? Was the Man Wolf a throwback to a time when we had all been cruel and happy to be so?

Meanwhile the beast had made one last spectacular appearance deep in Mexico, slaying a murderer in Acapulco, and passed for the moment into oblivion.

Frank Vandover, tall, black-haired, with very fair skin and his handsome Cupid’s-bow mouth, had returned with the Nordic giant Sergei Gorlagon—filling the house with quasi-humorous tales as to how they had baited police and witnesses alike in their journey south. Frank was certainly the most contemporary of the distinguished gentlemen, a wisecracking American with a Hollywood sheen, and a penchant for teasing Reuben mercilessly about his early exploits and tousling Stuart’s hair. He called them the Wonder Puppies, and would have baited them into a race in the forest if Margon had not laid down the law.

Sergei was a brilliant scholar, with white hair, bushy white eyebrows, and clever, amused blue eyes. He had a voice somewhat like Thibault’s, deep and resonant, and even a bit crackling. And he went into a delightful tirade about the brilliant and prophetic Teilhard de Chardin with Laura and Reuben, having a love of abstract theology and philosophy that surpassed theirs.

It was impossible to guess the age of any of these men, really, Reuben felt; and it was clearly not polite to ask. “How long have you been roaming the planet?” just did not seem an acceptable question, especially from what Frank persisted in calling a pup or a cub.

Any number of times, over lunch or dinner, or whilst gathered just for talking at the breakfast room table, two or more of these men would lapse into another tongue, apparently forgetting themselves, and it was always exciting to Reuben to hear those rapid confidential riffs that Reuben couldn’t relate to any language he’d ever heard.

Margon and Felix frequently spoke a different tongue when they were alone. He’d overheard them without meaning to. And he had been tempted to ask if they all shared a common language, but that seemed—like asking their ages, or places of birth, or asking about the secret writing in Felix’s diaries and letters—to be intrusive, something that was not done.

Stuart and Reuben both wanted to know who had introduced the term “Morphenkinder,” or “Morphengift,” and what other terms there
had been, or might be now. But they figured this information and a great deal more would come in time.

People broke into sometime pairs. Reuben spent most of his time either with Laura or with Felix. And Laura loved Felix as well. Stuart adored Margon and never wanted to be separated from him. In fact, Stuart seemed to have fallen in love with Margon. Frank often went off with Sergei. And only Thibault seemed a genuine loner, or a man equally at home with any of the group. There developed a sympathy between Thibault and Laura. They all adored Laura, but Thibault enjoyed her company especially, and went walking in the woods with her, or on errands, or sometimes watched a film with her in the afternoons.

Reuben’s entire family, as well as Celeste and Mort Keller, and Dr. Cutler, came north for Thanksgiving, joining Reuben, Laura, Stuart, and the distinguished gentlemen, and it was the greatest party the house had seen so far, and the most inescapable proof of the truth of Margon’s maxim, that one must live in both worlds—the world of the human and the world of the beast—if one was to survive.

Frank surprised Reuben and his family by playing the piano with spectacular skill after dinner, making a run at the Satie compositions that Reuben so loved and moving on into Chopin and other romantic compositions of his own.

Even Jim, who had been morose and withdrawn all evening, was drawn into conversation with Frank. And finally Jim played a composition he had written long ago, before the seminary, to accompany a poem by Rilke.

This was a painful moment for Reuben, sitting there in the music room on the small gilded music chair, listening to Jim lose himself in that brief, dark, melancholy melody, so like Satie, meditative, slow, and eloquent of pain.

Only Reuben knew what Jim knew. And Jim alone of all the guests and the family knew who the distinguished gentlemen were and what had happened to Stuart, and what had become of Reuben.

They did not talk, Reuben and Jim, all during that Thanksgiving Day or evening. There was just that moment in the candle-lighted music room when Jim had played that mournful music. And Reuben felt the shame of having done a terrible cruelty to Jim with his secrets and did not know what to do. There would come a time in the future when he
would again meet with Jim to discuss all that had happened. But this was something he couldn’t face right now. It was something he did not want right now.

Grace was relaxed with the company, but something was not the same between Reuben and his mother. She no longer struggled to understand what was happening to him, no, and seemed to have found a place in her own orderly mind for the phenomenon she’d been obsessed with for so long. But there was a shadow between her and Reuben. With all his might, he sought to pierce that thin darkness, to draw her close again as she’d been before; and perhaps to all the world, this effort appeared successful. But it was not. His mother sensed something, if only a decisive change in her son, and there lived in her bright, sparkling world now a nameless dread she couldn’t confide to anyone.

Celeste and Mort Keller had a marvelous time, Celeste lecturing Reuben unendingly on the inadvisability of anyone his age “recollecting in tranquillity,” and Mort and Reuben wandered in the oak forest talking of books and poets they both loved so much. Mort left the latest draft of his dissertation for Reuben to read.

After the holiday, the piano was moved into the great room, where there was an excellent spot for it near the doors to the conservatory, and the music room became a screening room, soon furnished with comfortable white leather couches and chairs so that the entire company could enjoy films and television together when they chose.

Reuben began to write a book. But it was not an autobiography, or a novel. It was something quite pure and had to do with his own observations, his own deep suspicions that the highest truths a person could discover were rooted in the natural world.

Meantime the old dilapidated two-story cottage on the lower cliff beneath the point—the guesthouse Reuben had seen with Marchent on their walk together—was being completely restored for Phil. Felix wrote the check for this and told Galton to spare no expense. Galton was in total awe of Felix because of the extent to which he resembled his late father, and Galton seemed fired with a new zeal to please the masters of Nideck Point.

Felix also introduced himself in the town of Nideck as the son of the late Felix Nideck, and invested in the Inn so that it did not have to be sold. He bought up the shops for the asking prices, planning to offer bargain
rents to new merchants. It was important, he explained to Reuben, that the family exert some beneficent influence over the town. There was land around the town that could be subdivided and developed. Felix had thoughts on all of this.