The Man In The High Castle

The Abendsen house was lit up and she could hear music and voices. It was a single-story stucco house with many shrubs and a good deal of garden made up mostly of climbing roses. As she started up the flagstone path she thought, Can I actually be there? Is this the High Castle? What about the rumors and stories? The house was ordinary, well maintained and the grounds tended. There was even a child’s tricycle parked in the long cement driveway.

Could it be the wrong Abendsen? She had gotten the address from the Cheyenne phone book, but it matched the number she had called the night before from Greeley.

She stepped up onto the porch with its wronght-iron railings and pressed the buzzer. Through the half-open door she could make out the living room, a number of persons standing about, Venetian blinds on the windows, a piano, fireplace, bookcases…nicely furnished, she thought. A party going on? But they were not formally dressed.

A boy, tousled, about thirteen, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, flung the door wide. “Yes?”

She said, “Is—Mr. Abendsen home? Is he busy?”

Speaking to someone behind him in the house, the boy called, “Mom, she wants to see Dad.”

Beside the boy appeared a woman with reddish-brown hair, possibly thirty-five, with strong, unwinking gray eyes and a smile so thoroughly competent and remorseless that Juliana knew she was facing Caroline Abendsen.

“I called last night,” Juliana said.

“Oh yes of course.” Her smile increased. She had perfect white regular teeth; Irish, Juliana decided. Only Irish blood could give that jawline such femininity. “Let me take your purse and coat. This is a very good time for you; these are a few friends. What a lovely dress…it’s House of Cherubini, isn’t it?” She led Juliana across the living room, to a bedroom where she laid Juliana’s things with the others on the bed. “My husband is around somewhere. Look for a tall man with glasses, drinking an old-fashioned.” The intelligent light in her eyes poured out to Juliana; her lips quivered—there is so much understood between us, Juliana realized. Isn’t that amazing?

“I drove a long way,” Juliana said.

“Yes, you did. Now I see him.” Caroline Abendsen guided her back into the living room, toward a group of men. “Dear,” she called, “come over here. This is one of your readers who is very anxious to say a few words to you.”

One man of the group moved, detached and approached carrying his drink. Juliana saw an immensely tall man with black curly hair; his skin, too, was dark, and his eyes seemed purple or brown, very softly colored behind his glasses. He wore a hand-tailored, expensive, natural fiber suit, perhaps English wool; the suit augmented his wide robust shoulders with no lines of its own. In all her life she had never seen a suit quite like it; she found herself staring in fascination.

Caroline said, “Mrs. Frink drove all the way up from Canon City, Colorado, just to talk to you about Grasshopper.”

“I thought you lived in a fortress,” Juliana said.

Bending to regard her, Hawthorne Abendsen smiled a meditative smile. “Yes, we did. But we had to get up to it in an elevator and I developed a phobia. I was pretty drunk when I got the phobia but as I recall it, and they tell it, I refused to stand up in it because I said that the elevator cable was being hauled up by Jesus Christ, and we were going all the way. And I was determined not to stand.”

She did not understand.

Caroline explained, “Hawth has said as long as I’ve known him that when he finally sees Christ he is going to sit down; he’s not going to stand.”

The hymn, Juliana remembered. “So you gave up the High Castle and moved back into town,” she said.

“I’d like to pour you a drink,” Hawthorne said.

“All right,” she said. “But not an old-fashioned.” She had already got a glimpse of the sideboard with several bottles of whiskey on it, hors d’oeuvres, glasses, ice, mixer, cherries and orange slices. She walked toward it, Abendsen accompanying her. “Just I. W. Harper over ice,” she said. “I always enjoy that. Do you know the oracle?”

“No,” Hawthorne said, as he fixed her drink for her.

Astounded, she said, “The Book of Changes?”

“I don’t, no,” he repeated. He handed her her drink.

Caroline Abendsen said, “Don’t tease her.”

“I read your book,” Juliana said. “In fact I finished it this evening. How did you know all that, about the other world you wrote about?”

Hawthorne said nothing; he rubbed his knuckle against his upper lip, staring past her and frowning.

“Did you use the oracle?” Juliana said.

Hawthorne glanced at her.

“I don’t want you to kid or joke,” Juliana said. “Tell me without making something witty out of it.”

Chewing his lip, Hawthorne gazed down at the floor; he wrapped his arms about himself, rocked back and forth on his heels. The others in the room nearby had become silent, and Juliana noticed that their manner had changed. They were not happy, now, because of what she had said. But she did not try to take it back or disguise it; she did not pretend. It was too important. And she had come too far and done too much to accept anything less than the truth from him.

“That’s—a hard question to answer,” Abendsen said finally.

“No it isn’t,” Juliana said.

Now everyone in the room had become silent; they all watched Juliana standing with Caroline and Hawthorne Abendsen.

“I’m sorry,” Abendsen said, “I can’t answer right away. You’ll have to accept that.”

“Then why did you write the book?” Juliana said.

Indicating with his drink glass, Abendsen said, “What’s that pin on your dress do? Ward off dangerous anima-spirits of the immutable world? Or does it just hold everything together?”

“Why do you change the subject?” Juliana said. “Evading what I asked you, and making a pointless remark like that? It’s childish.”

Hawthorne Abendsen said, “Everyone has—technical secrets. You have yours; I have mine. You should read my book and accept it on face value, just as I accept what I see—” Again he pointed at her with his glass. “Without inquiring if it’s genuine underneath, there, or done with wires and staves and foam-rubber padding. Isn’t that part of trusting in the nature of people and what you see in general?” He seemed, she thought, irritable and flustered now, no longer polite, no longer a host. And Caroline, she noticed out of the corner of her eye, had an expression of tense exasperation; her lips were pressed together and she had stopped smiling entirely.

“In your book,” Juliana said, “you showed that there’s a way out. Isn’t that what you meant?”

“ ‘Out,’ ” he echoed ironically.

Juliana said, “You’ve done a lot for me; now I can see there’s nothing to be afraid of, nothing to want or hate or avoid, here, or run from. Or pursue.”

He faced her, jiggling his glass, studying her. “There’s a great deal in this world worth the candle, in my opinion.”

“I understand what’s going on in your mind,” Juliana said. To her it was the old and familiar expression on a man’s face, but it did not upset her to see it here. She no longer felt as she once had. “The Gestapo file said you’re attracted to women like me.”

Abendsen, with only the slightest change of expression, said, “There hasn’t been a Gestapo since 1947.”

“The SD, then, or whatever it is.”

“Would you explain?” Caroline said in a brisk voice.

“I want to,” Juliana said. “I drove up to Denver with one of them. They’re going to show up here eventually. You should go some place they can’t find you, instead of holding open house here like this, letting anyone walk in, the way I did. The next one who rides up here—there won’t be anyone like me to put a stop to him.”

“You say ‘the next one,’ ” Abendsen said, after a pause. “What became of the one you rode up to Denver with? Why won’t he show up here?”

She said, “I cut his throat.”

“That’s quite something,” Hawthorne said. “To have a girl tell you that, a girl you never saw before in your life.”

“Don’t you believe me?”

He nodded. “Sure.” He smiled at her in a shy, gentle, forlorn way. Apparently it did not even occur to him not to believe her. “Thanks,” he said.

“Please hide from them,” she said.

“Well,” he said, “we did try that, as you know. As you read on the cover of the book…about all the weapons and charged wire. And we had it written so it would seem we’re still taking great precautions.” His voice had a weary, dry tone.

“You could at least carry a weapon,” his wife said. “I know someday someone you invite in and converse with will shoot you down, some Nazi expert paying you back; and you’ll be philosophizing just this way. I foresee it.”

“They can get you,” Hawthorne said, “if they want to. Charged wire and High Castle or not.”

You’re so fatalistic, Juliana thought. Resigned to your own destruction. Do you know that, too, the way you knew the world in your book?

Juliana said, “The oracle wrote your book. Didn’t it?”

Hawthorne said, “Do you want the truth?”

“I want it and I’m entitled to it,” she answered, “for what I’ve done. Isn’t that so? You know it’s so.”

“The oracle,” Abendsen said, “was sound asleep all through the writing of the book. Sound asleep in the corner of the office.” His eyes showed no merriment; instead, his face seemed longer, more somber than ever.

“Tell her,” Caroline said. “She’s right; she’s entitled to know, for what she did on your behalf.” To Juliana she said, “I’ll tell you, then, Mrs. Frink. One by one Hawth made the choices. Thousands of them. By means of the lines. Historic period. Subject. Characters. Plot. It took years. Hawth even asked the oracle what sort of success it would be. It told him that it would be a very great success, the first real one of his career. So you were right. You must use the oracle quite a lot yourself, to have known.”

Juliana said, “I wonder why the oracle would write a novel. Did you ever think of asking it that? And why one about the Germans and the Japanese losing the war? Why that particular story and no other one? What is there it can’t tell us directly, like it always has before? This must be different, don’t you think?”

Neither Hawthorne nor Caroline said anything.

“It and I,” Hawthorne said at last, “long ago arrived at an agreement regarding royalties. If I ask it why it wrote Grasshopper, I’ll wind up turning my share over to it. The question implies I did nothing but the typing, and that’s neither true nor decent.”

“I’ll ask it,” Caroline said. “If you won’t.”

“It’s not your question to ask,” Hawthorne said. “Let her ask.” To Juliana he said, “You have an—unnatural mind. Are you aware of that?”

Juliana said, “Where’s your copy? Mine’s in my car, back at the motel. I’ll get it, if you won’t let me use yours.”

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 daemon. A little chthonic spirit that—” He lifted his hand and rubbed his eyebrow, partially dislodging his 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.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928 and lived most of his life in California. He briefly attended the University of California, but dropped out before completing any classes. In 1952 he began writing professionally and proceeded to write thirty-six novels and five short story collections. He won the Hugo Award for best novel in 1962 for The Man in the High Castle and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year in 1974 for Flow My Tears the Policeman Said. Philip K. Dick died of heart failure following a stroke on March 2, 1982, in Santa Ana, California.