History of a Pleasure Seeker by Richard Mason Read Free Book Online

he had seen the man who was to be his new tutor. He was desperate not to embarrass himself before such an enviable figure.
    He sat up and put his right foot onto the carpet, then his left, then he withdrew them both and repeated the procedure six times. He went into his little bathroom and ran an ice-cold bath, which he submerged himself in seven times. He brushed his teeth seven times, until the iron taste of blood filled his mouth, then, aware of passing time, he got dressed. By a great effort of will—the kind only the fear of shame can inspire—he disobeyed the impulse to get undressed and dressed again a further six times. Spurred by this small but meaningful achievement, he opened his bedroom door.
    The house was silent and dark. He preferred to move through it unobserved, in case he should make an error that required correction. This morning he was unusually alert and made no mistakes. He went down the stairs, treading with equal weight on a blessedly even number of red steps. The marble floor of his own entrance hall, with its chaotic darts of black on gray, could be a violent sea; but this morning it was calm and he crossed it with ease. He went through the dining room and opened the door cut into the wall. The grandfather clock struck the hour. It was five a.m.
    Egbert never knew how the Number came to him. He did not choose it. He had no idea Who was responsible for its emphatic selection, but every morning as the door to his great-aunt’s house closed behind him, he heard it loud and clear. This morning it was 495. He was relieved. On days when it was above 1,200, he could not get to his piano before lunch. Sometimes he was not able to reach it at all. On these days he had to plead illness and return to bed. But 495 was manageable in three hours, even if he stumbled.
    The forces to which Egbert Vermeulen-Sickerts paid his obeisance every day were expressed in the tangible world chiefly through the colors white and black, though they lived in shades of light and darkness too. He called them the Shadowers and they hated one another hysterically. If he did not divide his attention equally between them, a viciousmob-whispering broke out in his head and pronounced terrible punishments.
    The Number governed the number of steps in the abasement he was obliged to perform each morning. The precise order of the colors derived from long memorized runs in the preludes and fugues of J. S. Bach, as played on his great-aunt’s piano. They found literal expression in the black and white tiles of her entrance hall floor.
    Egbert stepped across the tiles, swiftly touching four white ones in succession, then a black one, then another six whites. He moved rhythmically, backwards and forwards, up and down the entrance hall, his face tense with concentration. He heard the clock chime the quarter hour, then the half hour; then it was six a.m., and he heard unmistakable sounds of life coming from his own house.
    On the 211th element of the sequence, he misjudged a leap and grazed a black tile when he had been aiming for a white one. Sweat broke out on his forehead. His mother had told him that Mr. Barol would be down at eight, and now he’d have to start all over again. He did so. This time he got to the 420th without error, but again he made a mistake and had to start at the beginning. By seven-thirty he was exhausted, going slowly for fear of a final error from which there would be no time to recover, but by a quarter to eight he had only reached the 193rd tile and was beginning to despair. A crazy recklessness seized him. He did not want to spend the day in bed, feigning illness, and couldn’t possibly be found by his new tutor in this compromising position.
    Like his father, Egbert was deeply private about his interior afflictions. He had never told anyone of the tyranny of the Shadowers and did his best to disguise his state of bondage from those who loved him. The infinite shades of light on the leafy street outside were so