Turning, Hawthorne started off. She and Caroline followed, through the room of people, toward a closed door. At the door he left them. When he re-emerged, they all saw the black-backed twin volumes.
“I don’t use the yarrow stalks,” he said to Juliana. “I can’t get the hang of them; I keep dropping them.”
Juliana seated herself at a coffee table in the corner. “I have to have paper to write on and a pencil.”
One of the guests brought her paper and pencil. The people in the room moved in to form a ring around her and the Abendsens, listening and watching.
“You may say the question aloud,” Hawthorne said. “We have no secrets here.” –
Juliana said, “Oracle, why did you write The Grasshopper Lies Heavy? What are we supposed to learn?”
“You have a disconcertingly superstitious way of phrasing your question,” Hawthorne said. But he had squatted down to witness the coin throwing. “Go ahead,” he said; he handed her three Chinese brass coins with holes in the center. “I generally use these.”
She began throwing the coins; she felt calm and very much herself. Hawthorne wrote down her lines for her. When she had thrown the coins six times, he gazed down and said:
“Sun at the top. Tui at the bottom. Empty in the center.”
“Do you know what hexagram that is?” she said. “Without using the chart?”
“Yes,” Hawthorne said.
“It’s Chung Fu,” Juliana said. “Inner Truth. I know without using the chart, too. And I know what it means.”
Raising his head, Hawthorne scrutinized her. He had now an almost savage expression. “It means, does it, that my book is true?”
“Yes,” she said.
With anger he said, “Germany and Japan lost the war?”
“Yes.”
Hawthorne, then, closed the two volumes and rose to his feet; he said nothing.
“Even you don’t face it,” Juliana said.
For a time he considered. His gaze had become empty, Juliana saw. Turned inward, she realized. Preoccupied, by himself . . . and then his eyes became clear again; he grunted, started.
“I’m not sure of anything,” he said. –
“Believe,” Juliana said.
He shook his head no.
“Can’t you?” she said. “Are you sure?”
Hawthorne Abendsen said, “Do you want me to autograph a copy of The Grasshopper for you?” –
She, too, rose to her feet. “I think I’ll go,” she said. “Thank you very much. I’m sorry if I disrupted your evening. It was kind of you to let me in.” Going past him and CarolIne, she made her way through the ring of people, from the living room and into the bedroom where her coat and purse were.
As she was putting her coat on, Hawthorne appeared behind her. “Do you know what you are?” He turned to Caroline, who stood beside him. “This girl is a dathnon. A little chthonic spirit that—“ He lifted his hand and rubbed his eyebrow, partially dislodginghis glasses in doing so. “That roams tirelessly over the face of the earth.” He restored his glasses in place. “She’s doing what’s instinctive to her, simply. expressing her being. She didn’t mean to show up here and do harm; it simply happened to her, just as the weather happens to us. I’m glad she came. I’m not sorry to find this out, this revelation she’s had through the book. She didn’t know what she was going to do here or find out. I think we’re all of us lucky. So let’s not be angry about it; okay?”
Caroline said, “She’s terribly, terribly disruptive.”
“So is reality,” Hawthorne said. He held out his hand to Juliana. “Thank you for what you did in Denver,” he said.
She shook hands with him. “Good night,” she said. “Do as your wife says. Carry a hand weapon, at least.”
“No,” he said. “I decided that a long time ago. I’m not going to let it bother me. I can lean on the oracle now and then, if I do get edgy, late at night in particular. It’s not bad in such a situation.” He smiled a little. “Actually, the only thing that bothers me any more is knowing that all these bums standing around here listening and taking in everything are drinking up all the liquor in the house, while we’re talking.” Turning, he strode away, back to the sideboard to find fresh ice for his drink.
“Where are you going now that you’ve finished here?” Caroline said.
“I don’t know.” The problem did not bother her. I must be a little like him, she thought; I won’t let certain things worry me no matter how important they are. “Maybe I’ll go back to my husband, Frank. I tried to phone him tonight; I might try again. I’ll see how I feel later on.”
“Despite what you did for us, or what you say you did—“
“You wish I had never come into this house,” Juliana said.
“If you saved Hawthorne’s life it’s dreadful of me, but I’m so upset; I can’t take it all in, what you’ve said and Hawthorne has said.”
“How strange,” Juliana said. “I never would have thought the truth would make you angry.” Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find. I’m lucky. “I thought you’d be as pleased and excited as I am. It’s a misunderstanding, isn’t it?” She smiled, and after a pause Mrs. Abendsen managed to smile back. “Well, good night anyhow.”
A moment later, Juliana was retracing her steps back down the flagstone path, into the patches of light from the living room and then into the shadows beyond the lawn of the house, onto the black sidewalk.
She walked on without looking again at the Abendsen house and, as she walked, searching up and down the streets for a cab or a car, moving and bright and living, to take her back to her motel.