The Devil Tree (8 page)

So much for the work ethic of our success-oriented business elite. Equally revealing were the findings of other polls. Even though hypertension affects millions of Americans and heart disease is the nation’s number-one killer, only one percent of the public is aware that the control of high blood pressure is a necessary step in combating heart disease.

I was tempted to ask my lawyers what they thought
about the state of this nation, but all I said was “Well now, gentlemen, let’s talk about something that’s a real high.” I paused and glanced at their well-cut suits, and they all froze, fearing I was about to mention opium. “My income,” I blurted, and they all chuckled, those six clean-shaven college kids put at ease by their unpredictable master.

•   •   •

Glancing through an illustrated magazine, I ran across a picture of Karen posing naked in a full-page advertisement for some hygienic preparation; her arms were crossed in front of her breasts, and her hands were folded between her thighs.

When I voiced annoyance to Karen about the ad’s demeaning nature—” Antibacterial” was written next to her face, “Antipruritic” next to her neck, “Anti-inflammatory” next to her breasts, and “Antifungal” next to her belly—she angrily told me that her job was to model for the advertisers, not to question their taste. I countered by pointing out that although she often censored what she considered to be my antifeminist attitude, yet she found no fault with this ad, even though it used only a woman as the host of various body pollutants which, after all, affect both sexes equally. The incident made me aware of how proud and determined Karen is. She insists on working even though, if she would agree to share my income, she wouldn’t have to. Ironically, her independence is one gift I cannot buy her.

Maybe because she insists so on her independence, I don’t feel overly sympathetic when Karen claims to be exhausted from her work, or when she says she doesn’t feel well. Several times when I’ve been at the bank settling my
estate, surrounded by people who were obviously eavesdropping, she’s called to break our date for the evening. In such circumstances I haven’t been able to express my indignation freely. On two occasions I had been looking forward to spending a couple of days with her, and both times she called it off only a few hours beforehand. This erratic behavior I know to be habit with her, but still it suggests that other people and events are more important to her than I am. Is our being together so exhausting that we can see each other only when we are both well rested? Must we assume that after each meeting we have to go back into our private lives to recuperate? Yesterday when she called to cancel another date, I was unresponsive once again. Karen’s rejection sets off torments within me. Instinctively I retreat instead of exploding, however, lest I obliterate my chances for whatever may happen next.

•   •   •

“I was vacationing with my family in the Adirondacks, Mr. Whalen, when Dr. Frederick, your mother’s physician, telephoned me. He asked if I could interrupt my holiday and join Mrs. Whalen in Spain right away. Apparently your mother had radioed him from the yacht during the night, and the doctor could tell by her tone that an attack was imminent. As your mother’s nurse, I was qualified to be with her during such an emergency, so I promptly flew to Madrid. From there your family’s company arranged for a private helicopter to ferry me to the yacht, which was anchored near the island of Formentera.

“Your mother was in a bad state: incoherent, flushed, possibly drugged. Apparently, just before I arrived, one of her guests, a middle-aged American art gallery owner, had
invited one of the sailors—a teenager—to his cabin, where he had given him a powerful narcotic. While the boy was under the influence of the drug, the guest repeatedly assaulted him sexually. The boy was then moved to another cabin, where crew members found him hallucinating from the drug and bleeding badly. The whole crew had taken the boy’s side, and they were threatening to radio for the police unless your mother, as well as the gallery owner, immediately paid substantial damages to the boy. Fearing an international scandal, the captain sided with the crew. Your mother, feeling threatened, became a bit paranoiac and difficult to handle. She was furious that I had come, and she wanted the helicopter to take me back. When I refused, she ordered the crew to detain me in a cabin. I showed the Spanish captain Dr. Frederick’s instructions, as well as the medications I’d brought with me, but the captain refused to cooperate with me. Most of her guests, too, even though they realized how sick she was, took her side. Finally she became hysterical and locked herself in her cabin. From outside we could hear her throwing herself around the room, and only then was I allowed to intervene. I tried to talk her into coming out, but she wouldn’t.

“Finally I persuaded the captain to force the cabin door open, and when we entered your mother attacked us with hairbrushes, gin and vodka bottles, vials of drugs, books, even her brooches and necklaces. Screaming obscenities at the captain and me, she threatened us with a marble letter opener, and she would not allow me to get close enough to give her an injection.

“Even though I was accustomed to dealing with Mrs. Whalen’s violent outbursts, I began to think that I would need assistance. But eventually your mother weakened. Pale and bruised from falling, she began to tremble and vomit. Like a sick child, she asked for help, and when I went to her with the injection she no longer fought me.
Worried by her condition, the captain radioed your family’s company for help, and the helicopter soon returned to pick us up. I packed some of your mother’s belongings—among them a photograph of you standing next to your father—and we flew to Madrid, where a chartered jet was waiting to take us to Pittsburgh. A private ambulance took us from the airport to the hospital, and a day later I returned to the Adirondacks to continue my vacation. I was quite exhausted.”

•   •   •

“It’s no different from operating any other large gadget, Mr. Whalen, and for a young well-to-do man like yourself flying a glider could be a lot of fun—or, as they say today, good therapy. Gliders are just big fiberglass ballast tanks equipped with all kinds of easy-to-read instruments. It takes no time to learn which levers are for flaps, which for gear retraction, tow release, and landing parachute. Then there is an altimeter, a compass, oxygen gauge, and so forth. It’s not as complicated as it looks.

“When you first get going behind the tow, you feel like a heavy bird that can’t quite make it into the air. Then, when you are only a few feet off the ground, the wings bend up at the ends like a bow and lift the fuselage into the air. Finally, you pull the tow release and retract the landing gear. Now all you hear is the wind, and all you see are clouds puffed up around you like cotton balls.

“You swoop up and down, and clouds swirl as you rush toward them. The glider, as it gets up to a hundred and forty miles an hour, begins to tremble—but you do not; you nose up and everything’s peaceful again. The best part of all is that perfect mixture of feeling safe yet knowing that just one little thing going wrong can shake you apart.”

•   •   •

Having realized that to practice a sport is to turn ordinary experience into personal drama, I once became a sponsor in an international sand-yacht race in East Africa. I watched the dozen yachts take off as if catapulted from a single slingshot. Slender kayak-shaped plywood bodies with tall masts and bright sails, they moved on three wheels that were fitted with treadless tires, the front wheel linked to a tiller that fell neatly between the racer’s knees. As the yachts sped along the strip of hard-packed Ukunda beach, the flutter of their sails stirred up birds and monkeys that were hidden in the dense bush. Reaching the far end of the beach one after another like pale dots of color dissolving in the heat, the yachts turned back, into the wind now, askew to the ground, one side wheel skidding over the shallows, the other high up in the air. Sails close-hauled, the yachts tacked diagonally, rushing at the wall of the jungle, making the monkeys shriek with fear and dive deep into the bush and the frightened birds fly off. Then the yachts turned again toward the ocean, side wheels going up over the shriveled roots of the bush, then touching the sand, and once more the monkeys returned to their watching posts.

Just before the finish, the racer I sponsored lost control. During a sharp jibe his yacht overturned and one wheel broke off, rolling into the bush and striking a snake that was wrapped around a tree trunk. The thin ribs of the smashed cockpit pierced the man’s chest; his blood seeped into the sand and onto the yellow sail. The snake slithered across the beach, circled the wreck, then coiled itself around the broken mast.

After the race, a European racer on his way overland to Zanzibar agreed to let me join him. We took off in his old safari-rigged jeep for Dar es Salaam, but at dusk we left the roadway and drove along narrow jungle trails toward the ocean. In the rapidly descending darkness our headlights picked up the glowing eyes of jungle cats. While the sand was still warm, we stopped on the beach and spread out our blankets beside the car.

Before retiring, the racer turned on a bright carbide lamp, opened a small plastic bag, and removed a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, a thin glass vial, a tiny disposable syringe, and some cotton pads. I watched him disinfect his left forearm and fill the syringe with white fluid from the vial. Running the short needle carefully up under the skin’s surface, he slowly injected the fluid into his arm. He explained that he was using a vaccine to counteract a rare virus that was damaging the optic nerves in both of his eyes. The virus could cause blindness, so a vaccine was required to counteract it, and since there was no commercially prepared remedy effective enough to kill the virus without severely damaging the eye itself, the doctors had recommended a vaccine made of his own virus.

The vaccine was prepared for him by a researcher in the laboratory of a well-known New York hospital. When I asked if there was a risk in taking such an untested vaccine, he answered casually that if for any reason his organism failed to develop defenses against the virus, the same virus might also attack other organs; suddenly stricken, left without prompt medical attention, he could die. Nevertheless, each week he increased the vaccine dosage, hoping his body would combat the virus and thus save his eyesight.

“How many of these injections have you already given yourself?” I asked.

He watched the growing redness on his arm. “Eleven. I’m increasing the dosage significantly again now.”

“Don’t you think,” I said, horrified by the prospect of seeing him incapacitated there in the jungle hundreds of miles from any human settlement, “that you should be somewhere near a hospital, or at least near a doctor?”

“I do,” he replied, looking at his watch. “Fifteen minutes,” he said calmly, replacing the vial in the bag, “and I feel fine. I guess I won’t get sick from it this week. And don’t you worry about my vaccine; while we’re asleep, you or I could be bitten by a venomous snake. Now, that can really be lethal: your jaws lock, your eyelids refuse to blink, your lungs stop taking in oxygen.” With that he extinguished the lamp. I lay for some time listening to the jungle noises, thinking of the snake looped around the mast.

The next day, as we drove through the dense underbrush, he pointed to a couple of native children wandering alone far from their village compound. “Children are often kidnapped here,” he said. “Child poachers come from all over in rented safari vehicles. They take solitary trails off the main roads where they can grab an unsuspecting girl or boy. Sometimes they violate the child on the spot, even kill it and leave the body in the bush to be devoured by jungle animals.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked.

“I like children,” he answered, laughing.

•   •   •

“You may recall, Mr. Whalen, that these debentures became part of your holdings when the trustees decided to sell your interest in Tinplate to S.F.I. Would you be willing to tender all or part of them for common stock? The income would be less, but the stock would represent a more attractive growth investment. The offer would be three point
two shares of S.F.I, common for each hundred dollars of debentures. That would represent about seventy-five dollars’ worth of common stock for debentures that sold recently at sixty-eight dollars and earlier this year for as little as fifty-three dollars. Of course, whether the other debenture holders will accept such an offer depends on their opinion of S.F.I.’s market strength. As you may know, its shares have moved extremely well lately, and that means there is a risk of profit taking by the common stock shareholders. If all the debentures were to be tendered, S.F.I.’s balance sheet would certainly look a good deal better, with its debt decreased and its equity increased. Additionally, the number of S.F.I. shares outstanding would increase almost three times, and much of the leverage, which made the stock so attractive to begin with, would be lost. It is a question of balancing the gains against the risks—”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Whalen. “When do you need my answer?”

“The advantage of your situation is that there is no pressure on you to decide. However, since you are the majority stockholder, your eventual position will have to be determined—”

“I understand,” said Whalen. “Let me find out about it.”

“Certainly. Certainly. Our financial and legal departments will gladly assist you at any time. Of course, you’re free to seek advice from the outside. Just call my office and let me know.”

“There’s something I
would
like to know.”

“Yes?”

“At present, who is the company’s second-largest individual shareholder?”

“It is Walter Howmet, sir. He was a close friend of your father’s and is now chairman of the board of the company. Would you like to meet the Howmets?”

“I already have. They’re my godparents.”

•   •   •

Whenever in my thoughts I reach back to the time of my disintoxication, I recall the surroundings and the people around me but not my state of mind. Was I in pain? Did I long for a pipe? Did I drift from hour to hour and day to day, oblivious to what I thought or felt? And since I don’t recall my feelings or my pains, how am I to know what I have inherited from my ordeal? What if it has given me nothing but the memory of the events? If that is all I have, I would rather invent my past than recall it.