"There was, however, another school of healing at that time, those who
honored the daughter of Asklepios. She was Hygeia, their goddess of
health. The Hygeians believed that wellness originated from properly
governing your own body. For them, the greatest service of the
physician was to learn how we can work with our bodies. Their ideal was
healing from within rather than intervention from without."
Again he was studying me, as though trying to determine whether I was
going along with what he was saying.
"Unfortunately," he continued, "the Hygeian school more or less died
out in the West. However, it lives on in other places. For example,
primitive peoples have no manufactured, synthetic drugs, so they use
natural herbs to enhance their own immune system and stay healthy."
He turned to study the river, dropping into silence.
"Maybe I'm missing something," I declared finally. His hypnotic voice
had drawn me in, in spite of myself. "How does this relate to
infertility?"
He turned back and caught me with his shining eyes. They seemed to be
giving off heat of their own. "Just as the body is intended to heal
itself, so is a woman's womb meant to create life. If she's childless,
the reason more often than not is that her body is out of harmony with
itself. What I do here is seek out each woman's unique energy flows and
attempt to restore them, using Eastern practices and Hygeian herbal
therapies."
"Does it always succeed?" I abruptly wondered if his techniques might
work for me. Face it, Western medicine had completely struck out. The
problem was, the guy was just a little too smooth.
"Not always. Some women's bodies are naturally unresponsive, just as
all organisms are subject to random . . . irregularities. In those
cases, I try to provide her a child by other means."
"You mean adoption," I suggested.
"By whatever means seems appropriate," he replied cryptically
"Well, there's something I'd like to understand. Last week I met a
woman who had adopted a baby boy through Children of Light. She got him
in three months. Such a thing is, according to what I can find out,
totally unheard of. So how did you manage that?"
He stared down at the river. "I thought I'd explained that adoptions
are not what we primarily do here. They're provided only as a last
resort, in the few cases where my regimen of Hygeian therapies fails."
"But in those cases, where do you find--?"
"As I've said before we talk about adoption, first we need to satisfy
ourselves that no other options are possible." Then his eyes clicked
into me. "If you could come back next Saturday to begin your tests and
receive an orientation, I could give you an opinion about your chances
of bearing a child. It will require a thorough examination, but I can
usually tell with a good degree of certainty whether my program can
help someone or not. It's really important, though, that you stay at
least . . ." He was staring at me. "Mind if I do something that might
relieve some of the symptoms of that cold?"
He reached out and touched my temples with his long, lean fingers. Then
he placed his thumbs just above my eyebrows and pressed very hard.
After a long moment, he slowly moved the pressure down to the bridge of
my nose, then across under my eyes. Finally he put the heel of his
hands just above my ears and pressed again. After a couple of seconds
he stepped away and continued talking as though nothing had happened.
"After I give you a full examination, we can discuss our next step."
With that he turned, ready to head back. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've
got a lot of research data to organize."
I guess he assumed his juggernaut of arcane medical theory had rolled
over me sufficiently that he could move on to other matters. I sensed
he really wanted me to come back, but he was careful to wind down our
mutual interview with a take-it-or-leave-it air. All the same, I felt
intrigued as we moved back through the gardens and then into the
courtyard. A baby. Maybe he could make it happen for Steve and me. In
spite of myself, I felt a moment of hope.
"Thank you for coming," he said by way of farewell, just brushing my
hand, then turned and disappeared through one of the ancient wooden
doors along the veranda, leaving me alone.
Well, I thought, the calm voice and casual outfit are probably just
part of his bedside manner, but you can't be near Alex Goddard and not
feel a definite sense of carefully controlled power. But is his power
being used for good?
This was the man whose staff was trying to deny me interviews with
mothers who'd adopted through Children of Light. And what about the
Hispanic hood with the gun? Did Alex Goddard send him? If not, his
appearance at Paula's building was one hell of a coincidence. So why
should I trust . . .
That was when I noticed it. My lingering cold had miraculously
vanished, inflamed sinuses and all. I was breathing normally, and even
my chest felt cleared.
My God, I thought, what did he do? Hypnotize me? It was as though a
week's healing had passed through my body.
I had an epiphany, a moment that galvanizes your resolve. I had to do a
documentary about this man, to find out what he was really up to. He'd
mentioned he had a place in Central America. Was that the source of his
special techniques, some kind of ancient Meso-American medical
practices he'd discovered?
He claimed he didn't want any publicity, but that's always just an
opening move. When somebody says that, what they really mean is they
don't want any bad publicity; they just want to have final say about
what you produce. There're ways to handle the problem.
I liberated a brochure from the hall table on my way out, thinking I
would study it soon. Very closely. I had a nose for a good story, and
this one felt right.
When I got back to the car, Lou was nowhere to be seen. He'd given me
the impression he intended merely to sit there and doze while I went
inside, but now he was gone.
Then he appeared emerging from the forest of trees. Actually, there was
another building opposite the stone drive that I hadn't noticed at
first. Hmmm, I thought, I wonder what that's all about. For some reason
Alex Goddard hadn't offered me a tour; he'd taken me for a stroll in
the opposite direction. . . .
"That was fast," Lou said settling into the car. "You get what you came
for?"
The answer to that was both yes and no. In a sense I'd gotten
considerably more than I bargained for.
"He wants me to come back," I said. "And I think I might do it. There's
a lot more going on with Alex Goddard than you'd know from just looking
at this place. The trick is to stay in control when you're around him."
I tossed the brochure into Lou's lap as I started the engine. He took
it and immediately began looking through it.
Lou, I knew, was a man always interested in facts and figures. As we
headed toward the Parkway he was pouring through the brochure with
intense interest, even as I tried to give him a brief reprise of Alex
Goddard's medical philosophy.
"It says here his patients come from all over the United States and
Europe," he noted, finally interrupting me.
I found nothing odd in that, and went back to rambling on about Quetzal
Manor. Give the place its due, it was placid and tranquil and smacked
of the benign spirituality Goddard claimed to put so much stock in.
Still, I found it unsettling.
However, Lou, as usual, chose to see matters his own way. He'd been
studying the fine print at the back of the brochure, mumbling to
himself, and then he emitted a grunt of discovery.
"Ah, here's what I was looking for," he declared. "You know, as a
registered New York State adoption agency, this outfit has got to
divulge the number of babies they placed during their last yearly
reporting period."
"According to him, he only resorts to adoption if he can't cure your
infertility with his special mind-body regimen," I reminded him. "Your
energy flows--"
"No shit," Lou observed, then went on. "Well, then I guess his
mind-body, energy flows, whatever, bullshit must fail a lot. Because
last year the number was just under two hundred. So at sixty thou a
pop, like it says here, we're talking about twelve million smackeroos
gross in a year. Not a bad way to fail, huh?"
I caught myself emitting a soft whistle as he read out the number.
There was definitely a lot more going on with Alex Goddard than met the
eye.
"So what's he do with all that dough?" Lou mused. "Better question
still, where in the hell did he find two hundred fresh, orphaned
babies, all listed here as Caucasian? And get this: The ages reported
at final processing are all just a couple of months, give or take."
Good questions, I thought. Maybe that's the reason he doesn't want
publicity; it sounds a little too commercial for a mind-body guru.
My other thought was, with so many babies somehow available, why was
Alex Goddard so reluctant to even discuss adoption with me?
The answer, I was sure, lay in the fact he already knew more about me
than I knew about him. He knew I was making a film about adoption (how
did he come by that knowledge? I kept wondering) and he was concerned
he might be mentioned in it. I kept asking myself, why?
On our drive back down the Henry Hudson Parkway, I decided I was
definitely looking at a documentary in the making. I just had to decide
whether to do it with or without his cooperation.