CHAPTER 13

Meeting the Wizard

October 1972

The next day the kids and I walked down the street to a balloon stand.  The vendor was thrilled when we bought him out of his entire inventory of large and small multicolored balloons.  As the amber winter sun touched white mountain snowfields, we piled kids, balloons, and ourselves into the car and headed for Luzerne.
           
The Kunsterhalle was a huge, boisterous beer hall located in an area of Luzerne where I had never been.  At eight in the evening it was packed with large, jolly Swiss-Germans drinking beer from huge grey stone mugs like medieval relics.  They gobbled bratwurst as they swapped stories and unwound from a long day of work at one of the banks or pharmaceutical companies for which the land was famous.  The scene was brash and jarring, a sports event under the glaring lights of an operating room, yet the ambience was festive -- appropriate for the moment to come.
           
The four of us sat at a round table and tied our dozen multicolored balloons to the backs of our chairs.  When the waiter came, we ordered schnapps and beer for ourselves, Coca Cola for the children.  The drive had taken about three hours, during which we had smoked quite a lot of dope, so my head was swimming pleasantly.  Looking around, I imagined we were in a strange game preserve full of animals snorting, spatting, and feeding.  The Swiss-Germans were the rhinoceroses, hulking but harmless, while we within our stockade of balloons were a small pride of lions.
           
Tommy and I weren't talking.  We were trying to avoid the tension that had been building between us all day.  I kept my eyes riveted on the entrance, but there was no sign of Leary.  Suddenly, it hit me that we had not agreed upon any way to recognize each other.  At the moment I was panicking, a lithe, jaunty figure appeared in the doorway.  My pulse jumped a couple of octaves as I registered the flashing grin and caught his eyes, then he was heading straight for us.  He was wearing a blue shirt and beige cashmere sweater under a white parka, grey slacks, and dazzling white Adidas with blue stripes.  He did not walk, really, but bounced from one footfall to the next, lifting off of the ground for what seemed seconds at a time.  His hair was straight and fine, a silver-grey mix, cut rather short.  The thin-rimmed glasses he wore made him look vulnerable.  There was something indefinably comforting, relieving, about his appearance.
           
He was not merely coming toward us, but directly into my eyes.
           
When he reached the table, Tommy and I stood up, teetering a little, and introduced ourselves.  Leary smiled radiantly and sat down so close to me that we were almost touching shoulders.
           
"I love the balloons," he laughed, "a great touch, though I would have found you, anyway.  I feel like this is a celebration of a long-awaited reunion, even though we've never met before.  You and I have a lot in common, Joanna.  We're both  personae non grata in several countries, for one thing."  I assumed he was referring to my adventures with The Little Green Book, which had earned me a bit of notariety here and there, though not exactly the kind I wanted.  Michel must have told him about it.  His blue-grey eyes twinkled at me.  "I have great admiration for a woman who can make a scandal and a statement at the same time."
           
"It comes naturally," I said.
           
"It sounds like what you've done most of your life, doesn't it?" Tommy asked Leary.  Tommy's face looked subdued and on edge at the same time.  I threw him a reassuring glance.
           
Leary smiled wistfully and nodded.  "Yes, but not always by intention."
           
We ordered more schnapps and beer.  I noticed that Timothy was a little restless, or perhaps simply vigilant.  He kept glancing furtively around the room, but would immediately relax when he talked, even though his words betrayed the urgent tone of someone who had a lot to confide and no one to confide in.  What he had to say, however, was, to my surprise, not about himself but about me.
           
"Michel talked a lot about you.  All the time, in fact.  He said your life has been full of adventures.  I can relate to that.  Things have a way of happening around me, and not always to my advantage.  You carry the same kind of energy.  It comes with being a catalyst."  He sipped his beer and fell silent for a moment.  We watched the kids sip their cokes, hunkered down in their chairs and unnaturally hushed.
           
"Michel has been around in my life for a while," I began hesitantly, "but he doesn't really understand my style.  He never appreciated -- I mean, he could never really see what I wanted."
           
"What does woman want?" Tim asked with a soft chuckle.  "It's a question Freud asked, the best question he ever asked, I think, though he wasn't able to answer it.  I see it as a great title for a book I'll write someday.  Perhaps you can write it with me?"
           
"First, I'll get what I want, then I'll write about it," I replied.  I lit a Gitane and placed the pack on the table.  Timothy, who had been smoking Camels, took a Gitane out and lit it as well.
           
"Fair enough.  I know something about how to do that.  The real trick is not giving away too much in the process.  You know . . . settling for a bad tradeoff?  That's where love comes in, the love the alchemists called the universal solvent.  It's the highest biochemical state.  All the other chemicals, the sacramental drugs especially, the psychedelics and neurotransmittors, are just ways of accessing it.  I can tell you're ready for that ultimate state.  There's a way people look when they're ready."
           
I felt awkward using the word "love" with Tommy present, but I wanted to acknowledge what Timothy was saying.  "Love is what it's about, all right," I said weakly, "it must be powerful because it seems to be more forbidden than drugs."
           
"Yes, you would know about that, wouldn't you?" Timothy said, reaching out and touching my arm.  "Michel said you gave your virginity for a love in Egypt, to the son of the Egyptian Minister of Culture in Cairo; that it happened beside the pyramids on your fourteenth birthday.  You were ready then, but the world wasn't.  This often happens and I can explain it to you some time . . .  Then soldiers with machine guns came, acting on orders from the young man's father.  They escorted you to the airport and put you on a plane."  He finished quietly.  "They separated you forever from your first love."
           
It was mesmerizing to hear him tell my story, yet I shook inside with rage -- rage that I was allowed no secrets in this damned world and yet was expected to keep them all.  The old, excruciating confusion.  But I also felt consoled because it was Timothy Leary talking to me now, describing my past as if it deeply mattered to him, as if my suffering counted in a way he and he alone could appreciate.
           
"I heard that . . . Mahmoud later became a psychologist," I faltered, trying to shift the focus, "because he was so fascinated by the workings of the mind."
           
It was as if only Leary and I were talking, now.  Tommy had eased back from the table and assumed a distracted air, nursing a schnapps, leaning over occasionally to whisper to his kids.
           
"I don't dabble in psychology, anymore," Timothy informed me, nodding to Tommy as if to make sure he'd also heard.  "It's too literal, too limiting.  For me psychology is obsolete, since I discovered that it's possible to re-imprint the mind by deleting old experiences and taking on new information while on LSD."
           
"I would love to know about that," I said.  "I've taken LSD a lot and can see the possibility of what you're saying.  If it's possible to change what we think and feel, then there must be another world out there, a whole other universe to discover."
           
"Universes," Timothy responded, pronouncing the word with a stunning grin, "like Giordano Bruno said -- and they burned him at the stake for it.  We just seem to be confined to this one because this is where we have to start looking."
           
"Fabulous, let's start looking, then."  I looked at Tommy, grinning, then back at Timothy, meaning I was eager to leave the Kunsterhalle.
           
Timothy shrugged.  "Why wait?  I couldn't agree more."  He dug in his pocket for money.  "If there's anything I've learned from sitting it out in a few prison cells, it's that there's nothing to wait for.  Come on, let's go to my house, it's just a few kilometers away on the lake."
           
We paid and left.  For me, accustomed to moving fast, things couldn't happen fast enough now.  I wanted the next level of our encounter to start unfolding and never stop.
           
The boys hopped into Timothy's 911 Porsche Targa, taking their balloons with them, while Tommy, Lara and I followed in our rented car.  I could see their blond heads bobbing up and down through the back window as Timothy drove ahead with careless ease. 

Balloons played out on their long strings on both sides of the little car, thrashing in the slipstream.