Green Eyes

  Watching Verret and Harrison, observing the relaxed attitude they had adopted with each other, their reponses increasingly warm and genuine, I felt I was witnessing the emergence of some integral shape from the chaotic sphere of Shadows: a sweet, frail truth which - despite its frailty - underlies our humanity. Always a beautiful woman, Verret grew ever more beautiful; her skin glowed, her hair shone and her walk - previously somnolent, head down, arms barely aswing - grew sprightly and girlish. I often pointed out to her during our sessions that she -every bit as much as the residual RNA - was a determining factor in Harrison’s personality, that just as the mama loi identifies the possessing spirit in a voodoo rite, so she was ‘identifying’ Harrison, evoking the particular complex of his behaviors to conform with her own needs. He was, after all, trying to please her, molding himself to suit her requirements as a man. Given Harrison’s perceptual abilities, his concentrated focus upon her, it is likely he was being influenced by her on levels we can only begin to guess at, and the extent of her influence is equally unfathomable. She preferred, however, to downplay her role of creatrix, insisting he was something more mysterious and self-determining. I am certain she did not know what was happening, not at first, hiding her feelings behind the pose of duty.

  Although I had detected this potential in Verret at our initial meeting, still it dazzled me that love could arise between two such ill-matched individuals and under such intimidating circumstances. Their relationship provided a breath of normalcy amidst the abnormal atmosphere of Shadows, one which I inhaled deeply, rising to it as a miner trapped in a gas-filled tunnel would lift his head at the scent of fresh air. I became more and more interested to learn how far this affair might progress, interested to the point of adding my own thread to the tapestry they were weaving.

  Manipulate? Yes, I manipulated. And despite the ensuing events, I would do so again, for it is the function of psychiatry to encourage the living to live, and thus did I encourage Harrison and Verret.

  One day, while lunching in the commissary, I was joined by Laura Petit and Audrey Beamon. Petit had with her a Tarot deck and proceeded to tell Beamon’s fortune, and, thereafter, insisted on telling mine. I chose the Hierophant as my significator, cut the cards and listened as Laura interpreted their meanings. I could see the cards were ordinary, showing no pattern; I had not concentrated during the shuffle or the cut. Laura was not aware of my familiarity with the Tarot and therefore did not realize I learned more of her character from the reading than of my fate. Punctuating her delivery with ‘Oh dears’ and ‘Now, wait a minutes,’ she twisted the meanings of the cards, telling me a glittering tale of my future - fame after struggle - and told me also by the flattering, insinuating nature of her interpretation that here was a clever ally whom I could entrust with any mission, no matter how underhanded. Afterwards, she laid a card face up on the table: the Devil, a great, shaggy, horned figure crouched on a black stone to which a naked man and woman were chained. ‘I really think you should have chosen this as your significator, Dr Edman,’ she said, fluttering her lashes and giggling. Despite the apparent triviality of the comment, her identification of me with this awesome masculine figure, this cruel master, signaled her willingness to enlist in my cause, to submit, and, as well, displayed her sly delight in what she presumed we were really doing: all the subterfuge and nastiness of the project. All right, I thought, if I am to be Satan, then Laura will be my imp. I would put her simpering guile to use. And I did, though I am certain my manipulation was not the sole casual agent of the affair.