Time and the Riddle: Thirty-One Zen Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

understand now why I commute from Washington each day to see a psychiatrist?”
    â€œWhat was the outcome of the meeting?”
    â€œYou know that. Atomic weapons are not firecrackers. We squashed the whole notion.”
    On his next visit, Dr. Blausman returned to the night-time incident, asking the General whether he had been awakened from sleep at other times.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHow many times?”
    Hardy thought for a while. “Fourteen—or thirteen.”
    â€œAlways the same time?”
    â€œNo. Sometimes earlier, sometimes later.”
    â€œDoes one occasion stand out more than any other?”
    â€œYes.” Then the General clamped his square jaw shut, and his pale blue eyes avoided the doctor’s. The doctor waited.
    â€œBut you don’t want to talk about it,” Blausman said at last. “Why?”
    â€œGod damn you to hell, must you know everything?”
    â€œNot everything. I. don’t ask you who you are sleeping with, or for the secret plans of the War Board, or what your golf score is,” Blausman said gently. “If you had a piece of shrapnel in your left arm, I would not be fussing over your right foot. By the way, were you ever wounded?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAmazing luck, with your experience. Now let’s go back to this waking up at night. That one occasion you don’t want to talk about. It is nothing you are afraid of.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œYou get disturbed but not frightened. There’s a difference. What happened that night, General?”
    â€œI woke up, and I was someone else.”
    â€œYou were someone else. What makes that night stand out?”
    â€œYou won’t let go, will you?”
    â€œOtherwise I am taking your money under false pretenses,” Blausman said gently. “So you might as well tell me about that night.”
    â€œAll right. I woke up. It was last May, and I was still in Vietnam. It was almost dawn. I was myself—not Hardy—and God almighty, I felt good. I felt like I had swallowed ten grains of Dexedrine and put down a pint of bourbon without getting drunk. Christ, what power, what sheer physical strength and joy! I wanted to run, to leap, to use my strength, as if I had been in a straitjacket for years. I felt that I was complete.”
    â€œFor how long?”
    â€œTwo or three minutes.”
    â€œYou went outside?”
    â€œHow did you know?” the General asked curiously. “Yes, I went outside in my robe. It was like walking on air, the sun just coming up, the kind of clean, cool, wonderful morning you get sometimes in that part of Vietnam. There was an iron fence in front of my quarters. Pointed bars, like a row of spears, an inch thick. I reached out and bent one of them, like I might bend rubber.”
    â€œYou’re a strong man.”
    â€œNot that strong. Well—then it was gone. I was Franklin Hardy again.”
    â€œWhy hesitate to tell me?” Blausman asked.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œDo you remember what you said a moment ago? You said that when you woke up, you were yourself, not General Hardy. That’s rather odd, isn’t it?”
    â€œDid I say that?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIt is odd,” Hardy admitted, frowning. “I always said I was someone else, didn’t I?”
    â€œUntil now.”
    â€œWhat do you make of it?”
    â€œWhat do you make of it, General? That’s the important thing.”
    When the General had left, Dr. Blausman asked Miss Kanter whether Alexander the Great had ever been wounded.
    â€œI was a history dropout. They let me substitute sociology. Does the General think he’s Alexander the Great?”
    â€œHow about Napoleon?”
    â€œWas he wounded? Or does the General think he’s Napoleon?”
    â€œI want you to hire a researcher,” Dr. Blausman said. “Let him pick up the three hundred most important military leaders in