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Chapter 10--The I Ching
Charlie had been working on the coast for most of the past six months,
in film and TV work, and had been doing well and enjoying it--Randall even
had plans for him for a major role in another western. Meanwhile,
Charlie had rented Jack's house in North Hollywood, and, when he did, Marcella
moved in (as, she remarked, Laura had done with Jack in Nebraska).
Then he got a call from Laura indicating that Christine was talking to
Jack again about doing The Scarlet Letter, and would like
him to be her Dimmesdale.
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Henry said, "The I Ching is one of the Confucian Classics,
five books that became the Liberal Arts curriculum in Chinese studies for
centuries--with a practical purpose. Their careers as government
bureaucrats were determined by how well these students did in the examination
on these classics. The Chinese used a system for centuries something
like the one Plato suggests in the Republic, giving the best
qualified the best education, then the best educated the highest government
positions. Of course only upper class children were likely to compete,
as they were the only ones that had the time to learn to read and write
in the difficult classical Chinese these books were written in."
"Making the wisest man philosopher king?" Charlie asked. "And how did that system work out for them?" "Not too well as a test of the system--there was a lot of corruption in China through those many centuries. With a hereditary emperor, or one who got the position by military conquest, and had the power of life or death over all of these administrators, it wasn't exactly Plato's philosopher king in charge. But some say that made the I Ching particularly useful to these scholars," Henry said. "In one sense it is a system for predicting the future, and they became pretty sophisticated at interpreting the predictions to their own advantage--whether they were predicting things for the emperor himself or for a problem of their own." "And Confucius invented the system?" asked Charlie. "No, not at all. Perhaps it was one of the mythological founders of the Chou Dynasty, Fu Hsi or King Wen--or the Duke of Chou--who would have lived centuries before Confucius, but more likely it evolved over hundreds of years and they just got credit for it. In any case, Confucius had nothing to do with writing the I Ching himself, but I believe he codified it as one of the classics, and there is a tradition 110
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| that he said, shortly before he died that, 'If I had
another ten years to study the I Ching I might become a wise
man.'"
"And it uses these hexagrams to predict the future?" "More than that. In terms a modern psychologist can respect, the system provides a framework for bringing everything your subconscious, and the suggestions of others, may provide to bear on the problem--so it's important to present the problem right. When I was a student at Colgate, I was first introduced to the I Ching by one of my professors. He was deeply into the study of the Chinese classics, and much admired Carl Jung's famous introduction to the Wilhelm translation of the I Ching into German, which argues that the profundity of this classic, and Chinese thought in general, depends on the basic difference between Western logic, with its emphasis on cause and effect, as reflected in Aristotle's plot, character, and theme in the Poetics, and Eastern logic, with its emphasis on synchronicity--the relationship of things happening at the same time, or in regular cyclical repetition--what the I Ching is analyzing. For years I carried three Chinese coins my professor had given me in my coin purse to cast an I Ching." Henry laughed. "On how I was doing in his course, for example." "So it's like flipping a coin to determine a future action?" "Not exactly, but that simpler method of determining the hexagram that is to apply is pretty close. I carried those three Chinese coins for years after I'd first been exposed to the method in the early '50s. Then, one by one, over the years, I lost them--and, for a time, lost all interest in the I Ching." "That's likely to be the way with many of our college enthusiasms," said Marcella. "But what is a hexagram?" "It's one of 64 figures determined by the mathematics of 2 raised to the 6th power--or the square of 8--as I think I told Charlie when we were discussing the mathematics of the chess board. In this case the two options are not 0 and 1, as in 111
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| the binary system of the modern computer, or black and
white, as with the chess board, but a solid and broken line, probably related,
in the early days, to lines created by heat on a tortoise shell, which
was still the favorite method used in predicting the future. They
are related to the yin/yang of the famous symbol you see of the
polar opposites, with each containing the seed of the other--an important
principle, as Jung understood in positing his animus and anima
theory--to explain the female component in each man, the male component
in each woman. I like to say that Shirley Chisholm, the little black
woman in congress who ran for president five years ago, is my anima,
completes that side of my being--but like night and day, black and white
. . . they are opposing values fundamental to our experience."
"Like the two sets of chess pieces," Charlie said. "Yes, or any dichotomy--men and women, hot and cold--you get a lot on this in Plato. But then you start to combine, 2 x 2 = 4, the number of seasons, but not of particular concern in the I Ching. Then 4 x 2 = 8, however, is the number of trigrams. Each hexagram has two trigrams, the upper and lower, as you will see, and their distinction is important in interpreting the hexagram. The trigram is determined by how many different combinations of the solid and broken lines are possible in groups of three. There are eight, which is easiest to show you in the book. Shoko do you have that copy of the I Ching you were looking at handy?" Shoko had been listening, and brought the copy of the book to the table to show Charlie and Marcella what Henry was talking about. "See, you just go through the set. Those are all the possibilities. The mathematics is relatively simple. Those trigrams are represented on the Korean flag, suggesting how deep in the Confucian tradition this system (and Korea) are. And the 64 hexagrams complete the square of 8, of 112
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| course, and the number of ways you can combine the solid
and broken lines when you put six of them together--which, again, is simple
mathematics, one of those universal verities, in ancient China, classical
Greece, or modern America--still a small enough set to be relatively
comprehensible."
Shoko said, "But the traditional Chinese method of determining the hexagram in response to your question was more complicated, and introduced a kind of subtlety not there in throwing coins--which is more the American way--and that was determining the hexagram with yarrow sticks." "Yes," Henry said, "and, as a psychologist I can agree that Shoko was right in insisting we use that method. The yarrow plant is common in nature, even here in America. Shoko gathered us a set in Thomas's garden at Shangri La. It is a flowering plant with a long stem, so you can have fairly straight yarrow sticks of a foot long or longer, when cleaned off and let dry. We have made ours a foot long, roughly, and the instructions call for the use a set of 50 yarrow sticks. As the first move, you discard one--then have 49." "Henry insisted we have about ten spares in case we lose or break any. But we haven't," Shoko said. "And aren't likely to, since they're wrapped in this little bag, held together with two rubber bands." She laid the bag on the table. "In any case, this is the traditional method in China, which goes back for about 3000 years, and depends upon a random sorting of these yarrow sticks, to affirm the chance element as we define a particular hexagram." Henry dropped the yarrow sticks at random on the table, shuffled them, and, dividing them into two piles, put one stick from one pile in the discard pile, then counted through each pile by fours, discarding the eventual remainders of one through four from each pile. "This is a very good system for a blind man, for it can be done entirely with the hands," he said, "but you can all help me count, and Marcella can keep the record." 113
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Shoko passed the piece of paper to Marcella.
"Then I combine the two piles and repeat the process twice more, until there are 6, 7, 8, or 9 groups of four stalks remaining, to determine the bottom line of the hexagram as a solid line (7), a broken line (8), a solid changing to a broken (9), or a broken changing to a solid (6)"--which he did. Then he said, "Working up from the bottom, you determine each of the six lines this way. One of the virtues of this system is that it requires time and concentration--which gives a seriousness to the process. It may turn out that all six lines are stable, 7s or 8s; then that is our chosen hexagram. If there is only one changing line, a 6 or 9, that line is the answer, focuses attention on the important changing element. If more than one line is changing, a new hexagram is formed by those changes, and the interpretation must be based on both hexagrams, and the direction of change from the one to the other is significant. Does all that make sense to you?" "Not too much," said Charlie, "but this is my first exposure to the method. Still, by thumbing through this book, I think I can see what a hexagram is." "You start with the bottom line and work up, the sense of building on a base, and different lines are interpreted differently, have traditional identifications," Shoko said. "As I told you," Henry said, "six months after Jack had signed his contract for the publication of 2500 copies of his novel, The Bridge of Dreams, and sent the full manuscript--without that publishing company having done anything at all--we cast an I Ching, and got hexagram 33, 'The Piglet,' with the lines in order from the bottom determined as 8, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7. If all the lines had been 7s and 8s they would be solid or broken lines and determine the hexagram, but the 6 in the second position is a broken line changing to a solid line, as a 9 would be a solid line changing to a broken line--which 114
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| means you are in the process of changing from this hexagram
to another--in this case 44, 'Subjugated.' The only line seen to
be moving, however, is the second, and when there is only one line moving
that line is taken as the most important, the one to focus on, since that
is where the change is occurring."
Shoko turned to the page presenting that hexagram. "In Jack's case the reading for that second line was 'He is held with brown oxhide that no one can loose.'" "We took the 'brown oxhide' to mean the contract, suggesting that the publisher was playing a delaying game, in terms of that contract, and Jack would have to demonstrate 'breach of contract' even to get free," Henry said. “But the reading of Hexagram 33 is . . . see here.” Shoko pointed. ‘“The piglet stays in his pen, eating and growing fat. Someone small stays where he is and grows stronger. This is auspicious, even if he is held there against his will.’” "So reading the 'piglet' as his novel, Jack saw that as auspicious, indicating he'd just have to bide his time. Then, when the publisher informed him that he intended to declare bankruptcy, Jack got his release from the contract and his manuscript back--having lost what he had paid for his half of the cost of publication, but otherwise only the worse for loss of time. He still hasn't published the novel, however." "But when Jack's contract for publishing his novel was broken," Shoko said, "he decided to adapt the novel as four full-length plays, based on the four dominant women (not counting me), considered chronologically: Betty; Laura; the countess; Christine. He has also been working on a film script based on the Hostages on Horseback chapter which he says he is writing with Charlie in mind as Marvin. "And, by the time he's finishing it, I hope he'll be thinking of Marcella as Charlene," Charlie added. Shoko asked, "But what do you have as a first line for your investigation on the shooting of Ben? Seven isn't it?" 115
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"Yes, a solid line for the first one at the bottom. Good."
"How do you know it's good?" asked Marcella. "Because we start with a strong foundation. Now please help us keep track of whether we discard one when we should, and the results we get on each of the six lines." "The second line is another seven," said Marcella. "So it would seem that that would give us a very good foundation, wouldn't it?" Charlie commented. Henry smiled. "Yes, I like to see that," he said. When they engaged in counting for the third line, Charlie thought they'd already done it the three times, but Marcella said, "No, one more," and then, "see, an eight not a nine." "Now we have completed the bottom trigram, two solid lines and one broken line. So which one is it?" "That trigram is 'Tui,'" said Shoko, looking in another book, "'the youngest daughter, who spreads gaiety. Her symbol is the quite lake . . . still, deep water.' Are you a youngest daughter?" she asked Marcella. Marcella laughed. "Well, yes I am, as a matter of fact." "We're only half done," said Henry, "on to line four. We'll get to the interpretation of the whole hexagram." The fourth line was another seven. "I think that's particularly good in that position," Henry said. "It often involves movement after a delay on the part of the agent." But the fifth line was a nine. "Our first moving line--a solid moving to a broken. Very interesting," Shoko said. And the last line was another eight. Henry said, "That completes our hexagram--so which one is it?" "It's 58, 'Stand Straight,'" said Shoko. "As advice in this kind of thing, that should be good. Particularly if it goes to trial, where you must tell the truth and nothing but the truth." "But we have line five moving, so that makes the hexagram moving toward which one?" Henry asked. 116
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"Toward 54, 'A Maiden Marries.' This, if you're the maiden,
should be good news." She smiled at Marcella.
"That depends on who she marries. And, if it refers to Christine, since she was here at the lake when Ben was shot, it probably means good luck to the one she marries, I would think," Marcella said. Looking at Charlie, she asked, "Does it say anything about who that is likely to be?" "When you only have one moving line, the reading on that line is the one to consider, and it changes that top trigram. The whole interpretation depends on that," Henry said. "And that reads 'Allegiance is destroyed.' This is not a good place to stand up, for it would be standing up against the ruler when you should be submissive," Shoko said. "Particularly if the ruler is Miss Julie, I suppose." Charlie said, almost to himself. "Thomas's 'princess' become 'queen.' And you really have faith in this method?" "Yes, as a psychologist, I do. As Jung did. Give yourself a chance and your subconscious will give hexagram 58, moving to hexagram 54 a reading that will illuminate the problem. We do still have to engage in interpretation, and that takes a little time. But there are four of us here to begin to do that, and we have already made a start. Keep in mind this is not only about solving the crime of Ben's shooting, but the future of my writing a book about it." Henry laughed. "Have you begun writing that book?" Marcellus asked. "I've had Shoko making notes as we've considered . . . the clues. For the first part of that problem, and with this guidance," Henry said, "we should be able to determine what happened as a detective would. This should be a method for bringing to bear upon the question what the collective unconscious of all four of us has to offer. The method a detective uses in solving a crime often has a lot in common with Freud's method of dream interpretation as well." 117
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"Suppose we start with this maiden, who seems to be central, and
take that to be Christine. She was certainly the first suspect in
this case, since she admitted to having been here at the time," Charlie
said. "Her first response, that no one living could confirm, unless
hidden there in the cabin with them, was that Ben had fired the first shot."
"That you say you heard from the road, Charlie," Shoko said, "as she had done two years ago, into the ceiling, when Betty and Jordan then died firing the two following shots. She also said that the memory of that earlier experience threw her into a kind of hysterical state, as the terrible things she had seen before had done, and she ran out of the cabin to find you running up to meet her. Is that right?" "That agrees with my memory. I met her on the path, and she was too upset to be coherent. And that is what she told me later, that the only shot fired when she was in the room with him was by Ben, who was demonstrating his 'fast draw.' I can believe that, for I have seen him do that. Then we heard a second shot, and decided we had better get out of here before he got close enough to hit one of us." "But neither one of you saw him fire that second shot, so it could have been someone else--if there was anyone else in the cabin at the time--any more than I saw who fired which of the three shots that left Betty and Jordan dead two years ago," Henry said. "I believe that Lieutenant Carlson still suspects Christine of those earlier deaths, for that involved her as a third person firing the gun in that case. Of course, I was here then, and I was sure that she had fired the gun first, as she said, fired it into the ceiling, just to get their attention." "The lieutenant questioned you at length about what you had heard happen, didn't he?" Shoko asked. "'But you're blind' he said. 'You didn't see whether anyone was hit with that first shot, and we never found a hole 118
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| in the ceiling. You didn't see whether one of the
others had taken the pistol from her before that second shot. You
say you heard her and her mother struggling over possession of the gun
when it went off, hitting Jordan Simms. Who knows with what intention
on her part, if he denied his love for her?"
"But I have another question for Charlie," Marcella said. "How many cars were still here when you and Christine left?" "When we left, in my car, that still left the other three cars that were here when we got here sitting there." "And the Ferrari was one of those cars, wasn't it?" "Yes. Definitely. Christine said that Ben had borrowed it while she was in Japan, but that she should be able to get the key from him and drive it home that evening." "But there were no cars there when Mr. Brown got there with the groceries and discovered Ben's body. Or when Lieutenant Carlson got there with Brown a little later. We know Ben didn't drive the Ferrari away. So who did?" "Christine left with you, you say. But don't you think she might have come back for the car a little later?" Marcella asked. "No. She was in no condition to drive. So I drove her all the way home to Shangri La, as I'd driven her up here." "So we assume that other people were here, and drove those other cars away," said Henry. "I think you know more than you're telling us, Charlie--at least subconsciously--something that may be a clue to what happened to those cars." "Well, it's true that we drove away. Christine was so upset I just wanted to get her home. We didn't see who drove any of those other cars away. That's Lieutenant Carlson's problem. And yours, Henry--if you're the detective." "I accept that," said Henry. "I'll have more questions for you, and others your answers suggest we should talk to, as the interpretation of this hexagram proceeds. Did you leave Christine and go on to the cabin after she met you on the path, 119
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| as she says you did, for example--and either see who
fired that second shot, or someone who might have seen it?"
Charlie refused to say any more that evening. He didn't want to spoil a situation that had worked out so well for both him and Christine, as they were living and working on the two coasts, separated by the whole country, as Jack and Betty had been for so many years. They could do things together with the Players Company, then take the plays they were working on to wherever they could find an audience--"On the road," as Henry said--or they could do as they were now, working separately on parts in plays or films produced by other people, and perhaps bring productions to their off-Broadway theatre, or go as a spectator to see one another in New York, in a local movie theatre, or on television. For almost a year it was bits and pieces like this, in which no particular off-stage romance developed between the two--and Charlie was satisfied with that. But now, Christine had convinced Jack to do his version of The Scarlet Letter again, telling him she'd like to do Hester under his direction, as her mother had done--and wanted Charlie as her Dimmesdale. He had to admit he'd rather be the hero in one of Randall's westerns. When Shoko was talking to Henry after Charlie and Marcella had left, she said, "Did you learn anything about the shooting of Ben you didn't already know?" "No," said Henry. "Marcella doesn't know anything, and Charlie isn't talking. We need someone from among those driving those other cars willing to tell us what they saw." "I think we ought to talk to Marjorie Salem, and perhaps her husband," Shoko said, "for when she was here helping to clean up the cabin after the police turned it back to us she made comments about the sandwich we found in the bedroom, and the number of shots that had been fired, that suggested that she, too, knew more than she was telling us." 120 |