The Empty Chair

by Bruce Wagner

  Anyway, we’ll see. We shall see, said the blind man. To the deaf girl . . .

  The Roller arrived at 7:30 with yours truly toddling out half-an-hour later, just as the sage predicted. Following Kura’s script, a chauffeur in full livery smoked a morning cigarette whilst leaning against that fleshy part between bonnet and withers. Once I came into view, he flicked his butt to the curb and snapped to attention. We barreled down 110th Street and the sheer movement coupled with the ineffable mystery of wholly unexpected adventure shot little sunbeams through the clouds of my depression. Travel has always been my drug. The stubborn gloominess shifted, like items in an overhead bin. In my experience, moroseness grows in direct correlation with the time spent gazing at one’s own navel—and shrinks upon fixing one’s gaze on another’s. I was already thinking about Kura and our imminent reunion, which further brought me out of myself.

  We drove straight onto the field. It was a big plane, maybe too big. (I know my doctors and I know my jets.) Not gauche, but gosh!—pure Kura. Two pilots and a “hostess” waved from the top of the stairs. I felt like I was entering an old photograph of some starlet having her moment; I got butterflies climbing the airway.

  I retired to my cocoon-ready cashmere bed straightaway, the cabin ringed with orchids. (I never did see that elusive doctor, until we landed.) She brought tea then left me alone. I nestled in to ruminate. Taking off, I thumbed the nubs of my two fingers and something about the whole situation made me laugh out loud . . . I never thought about the cause or effect of my mutilation anymore—I’d been running from those memories for 30 years. The ruined hand of a cowardly witch. I was closing in on my fiftieth year: twitchy, witchy, barren and bitchy, out of season and out of swords. I wondered how many flatfoots he put on my tail, anyway. They call that “intel,” don’t they? “Show intel” . . . show ’n’ tell. Well now I’m just getting silly. (I should cut back on the wine during these sessions.) Do you remember? That he said he knew something no one else did? That my heart had been broken by a woman? O Bruce, my heart has been breaking for 11 years! She thought I’d betrayed her—then vanished. But I didn’t. Betray her. Not even for a minute. Though I do believe I know how she got that deadly idea . . . a horrible, terrible misunderstanding. If I can just tell her the truth of what happened, maybe all can be forgiven. I’ve been searching for her ever since.5 I told you I was getting close. Every day, a little closer. I’m not on this bus for my health. I told you what I’m doing, you know what I’m searching for. I’m searching for her—

  To be honest, I thought he died a long time ago.

  It was obvious that Kura had done well for himself though I doubted he was still in the drug trade. At his level, careers lasted about as long as a star athlete’s. Someone younger, hungrier, crazier—someone luckier—always came along.

  He was 62 now. The enormity of it—of everything—struck me like lightning as I hurtled toward him, an arrow shot through Time itself. Something he used to say popped into my head. “With your bow and my arrow, we could really go places.” I remember that I said that out loud and started to laugh. And before long I was bawling, keening, blubbering, exhorting the gods to do I don’t know what. I didn’t want the stewards to hear (there were three of them), even though I knew they’d been trained to ignore the random, spectacularly uncensored outbursts of the very rich and their hangerson. I didn’t want that doctor rushing in with a hypo, either.

  I needed to get a grip . . .

  I wasn’t hungry.

  I didn’t feel like listening to music. That might make me cry even more. So I took a ferocious shit, crawled back to bed and swallowed a hundred milligrams of Seroquel.

  Awaiting its effect, I tried to visualize what the contemporary Kura might look like. Softer, probably, like the best cotton gets. Maybe thirty pounds heavier. 20? 50? Twenty pounds lighter? Thinned down from a rare blood cancer or some sort of nonsense . . . Variations on a (Kura) Theme floated past in the jiggly aspic of my mind—still charismatic, that would be without question, in the Savile Row suits that gave him a rakish, pioneeringly shabby look. Being the equal opportunity masochist that I am, I climbed into his fantasy of how I would look, before realizing he must have already known. I’d always been camera-shy but whomever he sent on my trail would have provided him with a portfolio of telephoto headshots, surreptitiously taken in the streets by hired men. Not fair. Yet none of that mattered, of course, not really, because any current or even not-so-current images would be overruled by the nubile iconography of my 16-year-old self tenderly entombed in his own private amber. The Darwinian default—oy! Still, I prayed he wouldn’t find me too repellant. A depressed, childless, perimenopausal woman, unlucky in love, with a shelf life of self-esteem long past its expiration date, I presumed I would throw off a medley of scents: a potpourri of moribund pheromones, burnt adrenals and brokenheartedness.

  But what if—what if he was attracted? What if when he saw me, what if we both—O!

  And what if he’d already arranged a grand wedding in Jaipur at the Palace of the Winds?

  Team Morpheus warmly invaded, with molecule-soldiers of Seroquel and that other (non-FDA-approved) drug called love . . . I pinched myself with a rhythmic no no no because I couldn’t afford to carry over the feelings I had for her—even in paler disguise—to my dear Kura, whose devotions I was in the midst of rediscovering. She was my cold case, not Kura, and nothing in me wanted to solve him. My love for her was real; my love for him was as one might feel toward a childhood curio found against staggering odds, at a yard sale. Perhaps it best remain in memory . . . I needed to convince myself this latest fantasia involving Kura, whatever its form, this so-called “romantic” (heavy quotes around that!) development was nothing more than the heart’s and body’s response to the fear, loneliness and isolation of depression—a trinity whose siren song banished all reason. I mustn’t surrender, because to decide to love another risked losing all I had left, the tattered, star-dusted remnants of that real love I still carried, would carry, forever—one I still fully expected—expect—still—to end in happy-ever-after. Yes it was fun to flirt with rekindling what Kura and I once had or at least some version of it. And yes, he’d lifted me up—saved me from myself—with the perfectly timed request to accompany him in the solving of an ancient riddle . . . but so what? Was I so weak that a call from a man I hadn’t seen in decades was all it took to set off a chain of fantasies ending in marriage? I admit that when I allowed myself to go down that road there was something about becoming Kura’s wife that was inexorable, almost too perfect. Another part of me knew, at least hoped, that this old-fashioned foolishness of mine would end at first hug—in Delhi.

  I remember thinking: “Well, it better.”

  Still, I loved him. God it felt wonderful to love. And feel loved again!

  I can’t remember how long after Kura’s confession it was—when he confided his fear that the Great Guru would peer into his cupboards and find them bare—or how long it was after he’d raged and scared the bejesus out of me—but one day we were in Barcelona when he announced, “We’re going.”

  “Going where?”

  “To Bombay.”

  I was thrilled.

  Could not wait. See, I had a mission—to seduce the old swami and reveal him for the fraud he was. [sings] “He’s just a man . . . and I’ve had so many men before, in oh so many ways . . . he’s just one more!” I was determined to smash the false idol and destroy my lover’s illusions once and for all. Thus, Kura would be forced to admit that I was the Great Guru, I was his teacher—and nothing could compete with what I had between my legs. O, I am telling you, Bruce, I was the most awful girl!

  I’m still awful. At least, I hope I am!

  The hegira began as a straight-ish shot but our course kept deviating, for reasons unrecalled and unknown. I think we came in through Karachi—don’t ask. We arrived in Bombay about a month after leaving Spain. This was 1970. F
rom the moment we landed, Kura was quite ill. I thought he’d acquired some legendary Indian malady but since we’d only been in the place a half-hour or so it wasn’t too likely. I forgot to add an important detail: for the first time, we were traveling alone. That was how Kura wanted it and his posse reluctantly agreed. Not that they had a choice.

  No arrangements had been made for a car to pick us up at the airport. So there I was, plunged headlong into the middle of that amazing LSD trip called India—thank God I was acid-free at the moment!—with the padrone fading fast. My 17-year-old Great Mother instincts kicked in; finally, I got to take care of him. I have no memory of how we got to the Taj—our hotel. All I know is that for a few days I was a pint-sized Patton. A real rite of passage. Man. We were up half the night. Kura’s temperature was crowding 105° but he refused to see a doctor. I fell back on junkie survival skills and rang for ice. The bellboys brought up bucketsful—they were all in love with me. O Jesus, by the time I left Dodge, I had that hotel wired. I whined and wheedled and finally shoved Kura into the bath. He whinged and whinnied and threw mini-tantrums, fought me all the way. That did the trick though. His fever broke at last.

  Satsang was at 9:30 in the morning. It was already dawn and neither of us had slept a wink. When I suggested we put it off till tomorrow, Kura had a hissy fit. I argued my point: the Great Guru did his “questions and answers” seven days a week, year-round. What was the rush? But he was adamant.

  Our car never showed. (Of course it didn’t.) We hung around the lobby like resentful drunks, half-hypnotized by the remorseful staff’s honeyed apologies and assurances this grievous error would soon be rectified. The longer we waited, the deeper we sunk in the comic quicksand of penitent, sacred hospitality. To save us from being swallowed up completely, I demanded a cab.

  I know madcap taxi rides through India are an awful cliché but that one I’ll never forget. On the other side of my window there was some kind of full-tilt Halloween/Carnaval goin’ on: a blurry burlesque of the undead, hands outstretched for flesh and candy. Whenever we stopped to make our way around some road-blocking cow—the latter apparently being the only living thing the municipality gave a shit about—the zombies pressed against the glass anew like bacteria multiplying in a Petri dish. Kura compulsively checked his Patek, the perfect way to remain oblivious to our motorized rampage. I’ll admit my mordant fascination with the hairs-breadth escapes of those on the street whom the driver seemed determined to kill caused me to drop the ball on consulting the map the concierge had painstakingly notated. In a short time, we were lost. Kura sat as if frozen to his seat, his forehead too-warm to the touch. Soon we ground to a complete halt, with nary a cow in sight. I couldn’t help but ask the driver why, knowing his answer would be as meaningless as my question.

  “Accident,” he said, through a jubilant slash of a mouth. A chorus of bobble-headed Ganeshas on the dash shook in exuberant affirmation.

  Without warning, Kura bolted out the door, through the protozoa and into the festive ooze. I threw sodden rupees at the driver and gave chase.

  I yelled after him but the padrone didn’t respond. When by some small miracle I finally caught up, I shepherded him into a grimy cafe. The return of his fever rendered Kura somewhat docile. I begged him to stay put while I went for directions. I paid the harpy who ran the place for a Coke twenty times over, for which she expressed time-sensitive gratitude. It was like some fucked-up hockey game—I’d probably bought about 15 minutes of bench time for Kura before heading back to the ice to get my nose broken.

  I lurched into the street. I had no intention to seek help from pedestrians (if that’s what one could call them) and decided my best chance was a soldier standing in the middle of the street. He wasn’t directing traffic; his main function, it seemed, was to sweat and scowl. He had a machine gun slung over his shoulder. I got in his face and pronounced the name of the Great Guru. His response wasn’t so much cantankerous as outright hostile, with the implicit threat of pending violence to my person. I wondered if he harbored ill feelings toward the siddha but concluded it more likely that I’d violated a cultural code with my pretty young Western thing’s pushiness. I wound up back on the sidewalk, where pleas for money crashed against me like insects on a windshield.

  Hangdog and defeated, I rejoined my man. Kura was nursing a cup of tea our hostess had thoughtfully prepared—and why shouldn’t she have? She smelled a tip that might conceivably cover a few months’ rent. I was glad to see Kura hydrating and my only hope was she’d kept the kettle on long enough to evict the tap water’s microbial tenants. (Though I figured what Kura already had was probably enough to kill whatever was in the water anyway.) I was about to announce the plan: to call it a day and return to the Taj for a much needed rest. Tomorrow, we’d have a proper car and driver and bring a porter along to make sure we reached our destination.

  Then he spoke, for the first time all morning.

  “The proprietress knows how to find him.”

  He looked at her and smiled. She smiled back, like they’d become engaged while I was gone.

  “Apparently,” he said, “his shop is just round the corner.”

  A freakish serenity overtook him as we ambled onto acrid Mogul Lane, for we’d entered a world of myth that belonged as much to Kura as it did to Bombay. His eyes dilated and the color returned to his skin. We strolled along the broken spine of a vendor-choked passage already so familiar from the photographs that graced Kura’s collection of books by and about the Great Guru. He walked stealthily, almost regally, to his destiny—toward the man he hoped against hope would consent to become his teacher. The man he was certain would see through him, then see him through . . .

  In the years leading up to our sojourn, Kura spent countless hours in his library inhabiting the jostling panorama of Mogul Lane, memorizing—memorializing—all its parts, re-creating shadowy and sunlit corners, summoning smells aroused by the baked-on heat of the Indian sun, flipping back and forth from The Book of Satsang text to the tattered visual archive of the boulevard’s temples and buildings, loitering amongst the shapes and forms of his pictorial montage with enormous patience and intent, so when at last he found himself in the actuality of it (en route to the tobacconist’s) he was like an avid child dropped down to Narnia, in hot pursuit of Aslan’s lair.

  And as in a fairy tale, there came that time when the road took one no further. For today, all of Maharashtra seemed congregated in that mangy Mogul corridor and the throngs blocked our passage. Kura was undeterred. I held on to his coattails while he employed that extraordinary assassin’s energy, feinting and dodging his way to nirvana. In just a short while, we’d cut to the head of the line of the shop with the TOBACCO sign (in English) . . . but we were still outside, VIPs without backstage passes. Two weaponless military men graced the door. While their presence seemed mostly ceremonial, entering the shop didn’t look feasible. It was so crowded in there, it may not have been humanly possible—I doubt we’d have been able to squeeze in, even if the guards themselves gave us a shove.

  Something was wrong with this picture but we were just too frazzled and sick to notice. (My turn to be feverish.) The Great Guru gave satsang every day, which by anecdote and definition was a dignified, orderly affair. Then how to explain the unruly, chaotic scene that presented itself? Kura’s investigations had informed that no more than 30 to 35 devotees showed up on a given morning; the energetic integrity of a true Master saw to it there were never too few disciples, nor too many.

  But this mob was off the hook.

  I watched Kura intently. I’d seen that look of laser-like determination before. He espied a pole and sprang into action. He ascended about 10 feet before stopping short at the bottoms of the bare feet of a gaggle of men who clung at the top like monkeys on a swizzle stick. Like them, Kura could now peer over the heads of the storefront lookee-loos and straight into the shop itself. I read his lips: “His chair!” he said to hims
elf, in transport. “His chair . . .” I wondered if the fever was returning and I suppose it was, in the form of obsessive devotion. He was utterly fixated on storming the sanctum sanctorum. I saw the algorithms of egress play across his face, rippling its features . . . when he signaled, I met him at the base of the pole and we exchanged places—and thank God, because all I wanted was to get to higher ground. In that moment I remember acquiring that itchy, creepy case of nerves one can catch in a faraway place on too little sleep. I shimmied up, found my footing on some sort of electrical box, then turned my eyes to the crush of spectators. They didn’t look very spiritual—au contraire. Not like seekers and disciples, anyway. The way they were decked out, they might as well have been auditioning for a Bollywood musical. In the photo montage Kura put together in Paris, the pilgrims of Mogul Lane wore a wide array of costumes but the emphasis was decidedly on the modest, the simple, the austere. Some were “dressed,” but we’re talking Sunday best, nothing glam. You didn’t need Emily Post to tell you satsang etiquette skewed toward less is more. (Bless is more?) But these folks . . . these folks were bejeweled, bedizened egos on parade. Of course the Great Guru never wore anything but a threadbare kurta—at least he didn’t wear a nappy, which definitely would not have been okay! [laughs] Not a big fan of the Gandhi look. What I’m saying is, to sit at his feet dressed to the tits was gauche. You’re in the man’s home, for crissake, not the parliament building. And even then. At the time, the discrepancy meant nothing to me. I was just a decadent trespasser, a cultural interloper, a wannabe seductress—a pole girl!—an American expat junkie runaway with three kinds of VD by the time she was 13. But I’m sure I found the fashion show enthralling. I must have interpreted all the finery as part of just another holiday. You know, Indian Holiday #6,342.