“Whenever you want me I will be ready. I will teach you, Peter-if you want to learn. Do you know what I will teach you?” “If you will teach me about the grey thing on the wall,” I said, “I will listen. And if you will teach me about real things and unreal things I will listen.” “These things,” he said thoughtfully, “very few wish to learn. And there are some things that nobody ever wished to learn. And there are some things that I will not teach.” Then I said: “The things nobody has ever wished to learn I will learn. And I will even learn the things you do not wish to teach.” He smiled mockingly. “A master has come,” he said, half-laughing. “A master of Guru.” That was how I learned his name. And that night he taught me a word which would do little things, like spoiling food. From that day to the time I saw him last night he has not changed at all, though now I am as tall as he is. His skin is still as dry and shiny as ever it was, and his face is still bony, crowned by a head of very coarse, black hair. ” When I was ten years old I went to bed one night only long enough to make Joe and Clara suppose I was fast asleep. I left in my place something which appears when you say one of the words of Guru and went down the drainpipe outside my window. It always was easy to climb down and up, ever since I was eight years old. I met Guru in Inwood Hill Park. “You’re late,” he said. “Not too late,” I answered. “I know it’s never too late for one of these things.” “How do you know?” he asked sharply. “This is your first.” “And maybe my last,” I replied. “I don’t like the idea of it. If I have nothing more to learn from my second than my first I shan’t go to another.” “You don’t know,” he said. “You don’t know what it’s like-the voices, and the bodies slick with unguent, leaping flames; mind-filling ritual! You can have no idea at all until you’ve taken part.” “We’ll see,” I said. “Can we leave from here?” “Yes,” he said. Then he taught me the word I would need to know, and we both said it together. The place we were in next was lit with red lights, and I think that the walls were of rock. Though of course there was no real seeing
there, and so the lights only seemed to be red, and it was not real rock. As we were going to the fire one of them stopped us. “Who’s with you?” she asked, calling Guru by another name. I did not know that he was also the person bearing that name, for it was a very powerful one. He cast a hasty, sidewise glance at me and then said: “This is Peter of whom I have often told you.” She looked at me then and smiled, stretching out her oily arms. “Ah,” she said, softly, like the cats when they talk at night to me. “Ah, this is Peter. Will you come to me when I call you, Peter? And sometimes call for me-in the dark-when you are alone?” “Don’t do that!” said Guru, angrily pushing past her. “He’s very young-you might spoil him for his work.” She screeched at our backs: “Guru and his pupil-fine pair! Boy, he’s no more real than I am-you’re the only real thing here!” “Don’t listen to her,” said Guru. “She’s wild and raving. They’re always tight-strung when this time* comes around.” We came near the fires then, and sat down on rocks. They were killing animals and birds and doing things with their bodies. The blood was being collected hi a basin of stone, which passed through the crowd. The one to my left handed it to me. “Drink,” she said, grinning to show me her fine, white teeth. I swallowed twice from it and passed it to Guru. When the bowl had passed all around we took off our clothes. Some, like Guru, did not wear them, but many did. The one to my left sat closer to me, breathing heavily at my face. I moved away. “Tell her to stop, Guru,” I said. “This isn’t part of it, I know.” Guru spoke to her sharply in their own language, and she changed her seat, snarling. Then we all began to chant, clapping our hands and beating our thighs. One of them rose slowly and circled about the fires in a slow pace, her eyes rolling wildly. She worked her jaws and flung her arms about so sharply that I could hear the elbows crack. Still shuffling her feet against the rock floor she bent her body backwards down to her feet. Her belly muscles were bands nearly standing out from her skin, and the oil rolled down her body and legs. As the palms of her hands touched the ground, she collapsed in a twitching heap and began to set up a thin wailing noise against the steady chant and hand beat