PARTISAN REVIEW
587
The slow percussive rhythms continue. Jekyll (who is taking a weekend
refresher at the Institute) is in a pantomime-play that Utterson has devised
called "The Struggle of the Magicians," whose story calls for the ten partici–
pants to be divided into five Bad Magicians and five Good Magicians. Everyone
works in absolute silence. The movements are not strenuous, the opposite of
the exercises Jekyll does at the gym with punching bag and barbells, of which
Utterson disapproves. At the far end of the room, Utterson sits on a folding
chair. He is wearing his tinted bifocals, which diffuse the impact of his pale blue
eyes. What kind of magician is he?
Jekyll, who was told to play one of the Good Magicians, feels Utterson is
making fun of him. Jekyll wonders how good he really is. Speaking for good–
ness are all his good deeds, his coherent dignified habits, his dedication as a
doctor, his delights as a husband and father. Speaking for at least a vicarious
unworthiness is his undeniable complicity with Hyde. Inside the citadel of
virtue that Jekyll had built for himself was a romantic, banal longing for life
untrammeled which had often brought him to the point ofcovering for Hyde's
crimes. Jekyll cursed the weakness that prevented him from loving his own
virtue, and had made him for so many years hanker after the thick-lipped
siren's call.
"That's enough," Utterson calls out quietly. He gets up, walks across to the
group, and puts his arm across Jekyll's back. "You're working too hard. Let
your feet stay with the floor." An eerie peace invades Jekyll's body.
Utterson goes to a plump solemn girl, puts his arm around her waist, and
speaks a few words against her cheek. She bursts into tears, a ra<;liant smile on
her face. As Utterson moves away, the other eight crowd around her and touch
her tentatively. Jekyll longs for Hyde to be here, so he could wrap him in some
heavy fraternal embrace. They lift the sobbing girl, carry her to the center of
the floor, lay her down, and sit around her. Someone begins to hum. Jekyll
gazes at the girl's body. He pardons Hyde, he pardons himself. Utterson stands
behind him.
Jekyll has not always felt so haunted. It was when he stopped working
regularly with Utterson that he began to lose his nerve. He could not cut
himself completely free from Utterson, either. But he has a horror of confine–
ment, and most of Utterson's pupils end up being content to linger in one
room. They come to Utterson to expand their energies, but the old man puts
some kind of spell on them. Jekyll is struggling to free himself from the
magician'S spell; but he needs help, he needs love, he needs touch.
In the stone bath-house recently constructed on the precincts of the
Oyster Bay estate, Utterson is telling dirty stories, an evening custom. And
calling for more. His embarrassed disciples are doing their best to amuse him.
their custom. In their apartment near Lincoln Center, Jekyll is gazing tenderly
