Masha said she had come up with something sophisticated, subtle and symbolic that would integrate perfectly with their psychedelic experiences. (‘Never afraid to blow her own trumpet, is she?’ Delilah had said to Yao. Yao had put it down to jealousy. What woman wouldn’t be jealous of Masha?)
Yao had worried that it was perhaps too subtle, but what did it matter? The code-breaking wasn’t integral to their transformations. If the guests couldn’t break the code within the hour, they would let them out and lead them straight to the dining room for platters of fresh fruit and organic, sugar-free hot chocolate for breakfast. Yao had been looking forward to that part, imagining how everyone’s faces would light up as he, Masha and Delilah triumphantly entered the dining room, plates aloft. People would clap, he’d thought.
Yao had eaten a nectarine after his own psychedelic therapy session, and he could still remember the sensation of his teeth sinking into that sweet flesh.
Once they’d eaten, the group was to share what they’d learned through their experiences. After that, beautiful hardbound journals would be handed out, so that everyone could write down how they planned to integrate what they’d learned about themselves into their lives back home.
But nothing was going according to plan.
It felt like it had first gone off track with Heather’s unexpected question, ‘Have you been medicating us?’, which meant that Masha’s presentation of the treatment had begun on a defensive note, although she’d responded brilliantly, even under attack. People had got so angry, as if they truly believed something sinister was going on, when this was all for their benefit.
Yao had checked and rechecked the dosages, the possible side effects, the guests’ medical histories, their daily blood tests. There should have been only positive outcomes. He had checked everyone’s vital signs throughout the night. Nothing had gone wrong. There had been no unexpected side effects. Napoleon had become agitated, but Yao had given him a dose of lorazepam and he’d calmed down.
It was true that the therapy side of it, from Yao’s perspective at least, had been a little clunky. There was a disappointing banality to some of the insights the guests experienced, especially when compared to his own transcendent revelations. But Masha had been thrilled. After all the guests had fallen asleep, she’d locked the door of the meditation studio, flushed with success.
They had not imagined this.
As the time had passed, both Yao and Delilah had begun to say, ‘I think we should let them out. Or give them a clue.’
But Masha was convinced that they would work it out. ‘This is essential to their rebirthing,’ she’d said. ‘They need to fight their way out like a baby squeezes its way out of the birth canal.’
Delilah had made a small sound like a cough or a snort.
‘We have given them so many hints,’ Masha kept saying. ‘Surely they are not so stupid.’
The problem was that the longer they left them locked up, the hungrier and angrier and stupider they got.
‘Even if they do work it out,’ said Yao now, ‘I think their primary emotion will still be anger.’
‘You may be right,’ said Masha. She shrugged. ‘We may need to be more creative going forward. Let us see what happens.’
Yao saw himself on that chair, his small, pudgy hand reaching for the pot of boiling water.
‘Look!’ said Masha. She pointed at the screen. ‘Finally. We have progress.’
chapter fifty-five Frances
Frances and Tony sat next to each other in companionable silence. Most people were sitting now, except for Napoleon, who paced constantly. No-one was attempting to decode the security lock of the cellar door.
Someone hummed ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’. Frances thought it was Napoleon. She sang the words in her head along with him: Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky.
She thought of the night of the starlight meditation and her sleigh ride across the starry sky with Gillian. Lars had been singing ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ before. That was the song that had been playing when she first lay down on the stretcher.
She mentally listed the other songs that had played through the headphones.
‘Vincent’.
‘When You Wish Upon a Star’.
Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’.
They all related to stars or the sky or the moon.
What had Masha said last night? Something like: All your life, you’ve been looking down. You have to look up.
‘I think we’re meant to look up,’ she said. She got to her feet.
‘What?’ Lars propped himself up on his elbows. ‘Look up where?’
‘All the songs were about stars and the moon and the sky,’ she said. ‘And Masha said that we have to look up.’
The younger ones caught on first. Zoe, Ben and Jessica leaped to their feet and began to walk around the room, craning their necks to study the vaulted stone ceiling with curved wooden rafters. The older ones followed more slowly and warily.
‘What do you think we’re looking for?’ asked Napoleon.
‘I don’t know,’ said Frances.
After a moment, she said sadly, ‘Maybe I’m wrong.’
‘There!’ Heather pointed. ‘See? Do you see?’
‘I see it!’ said Jessica.
Frances followed her gaze. ‘I don’t actually see anything,’ she said. ‘My eyesight is terrible.’
‘It’s a sticker,’ said Tony. ‘A sticker of a gold star.’
‘What good is a sticker?’ asked Carmel.
‘There’s something above the sticker on the rafter there,’ said Zoe.
‘It’s a package,’ said Napoleon.
‘I still can’t see it,’ said Frances.
‘It’s wrapped up in brown paper.’ Heather took Frances’s hand and pointed it up to the ceiling, trying to get her to look in the right direction. ‘It’s jammed into the little triangle where the two rafters meet, camouflaged against the wood.’
‘Oh yes, I see it,’ said Frances, although she didn’t.
‘Okay, so let’s get it down,’ said Jessica to Ben. ‘Lift me up onto your shoulders.’
‘I’m not lifting you up, you’re pregnant,’ said Ben. ‘You’re possibly pregnant.’
‘Lift me up, Dad,’ said Zoe to her father. ‘You’re the tallest.’
‘I don’t think we’d get enough height.’ Napoleon tilted his head back, considering the distance. ‘Even if you stood on my shoulders you wouldn’t reach it.’
‘The obvious thing to do is throw something up to knock it down,’ said Lars.
‘I’ll jump up and knock it down,’ said Tony. He looked up at the rafter with a gleam in his eye. ‘I just need a couple of you guys to give me leverage.’
‘You cannot possibly jump that high,’ said Frances.
‘I got the mark of the year three times in a row,’ said Tony.
‘I don’t know what “the mark of the year” means, but that’s impossible,’ said Frances. It was like a joke to think of someone jumping that high. ‘You’ll injure yourself.’
Tony looked at her. ‘Have you ever watched a game of Aussie Rules in your life, Frances?’
‘I understand that you leap about energetically –’
‘Seriously,’ said Lars. ‘We just need to throw something up there, dislodge it from the rafters.’
‘We leap about,’ repeated Tony as if to himself. ‘We leap about energetically.’
‘It’s very impressive leaping,’ said Frances. She remembered how she’d made the mistake of scoffing when Henry had started talking about how he wanted to learn to hang-glide at the age of fifty. All her friends had shaken their heads. Oh, Frances, you never tell a man in the middle of a midlife crisis that he can’t do something. Henry did three months of hang-gliding lessons and suffered a chronic hip injury before he felt he’d proved his point.
‘My highest mark ever was close to twelve feet.’ Tony looked up at the rafter. ‘I can reach that, no problem.’
‘Off the back of that Collingwood player, right?’ said Heather. ‘Jimmy Moyes? Napoleon and I were at that game.’
Napoleon recited, ‘. . . the leap into heaven, into fame, into legend – then the fall back to earth (guernseyed Icarus) to the whistle’s shrill tweet.’
‘Is that a poem about football?’ asked Frances.
‘It is, Frances,’ said Napoleon in a teacherly way. ‘It’s called “The High Mark” by Bruce Dawe. It’s about how the mark is the manifestation of the human aspiration to fly.’