The Empty Chair

by Bruce Wagner

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Kura, solemnly. “But before we go any further, I need your assurance.”

  “I am at your service, Sir Moncrieff, sir!”

  “My man told you not to speak with anyone in the village about my pending arrival. Can you assure me that yo—”

  “Quasimodo! Hell of a guy! Gave me a Macintosh computer! And Frito-Lays! And Sir Alfred Dunhill cigarettes!”

  “You were warned, weren’t you? Not to let the man in the cave know he might be having visitors? Did he tell you that?”

  “It’s true! But I can assure it is was a warning most easily ignored.”

  The remark got Kura’s attention. “I don’t follow you.”

  “If for a single moment I believed there was one nefarious thing behind the whole gambit that might possibly result in harm to the Hermit, I would not have hesitated to warn him, i.e., sound the alarum throughout the entire village. He is after all an irreproachable member of our community—the Hermit has quite a special status, to say the least! The village feeds and clothes him, and thanks God for the privilege. I shall reserve to make further explanations regarding my meaning at a different time, for I know you are in a very big rush. As said: I would certainly not have hung fire to tip off the jnani of any goings-on should I have suspected something shady. In fact, it would have been my distinct pleasure and honor! But when Quasimodo—one hell of a guy, I assure!—informed me the Hermit was your guru, whom you wished to make reunion after so many years and planned to come such a great distance to worship . . . my heart became full and it was a facile thing for me to then agree. So may I say: I rejoice with you, and for you!”

  “Just tell me. Have you kept your word? Or broken it?”

  To which the elder replied, “Sir! All that I have—apart from this village and its souls, who are my consummate children—is my word. I gave it to your hell of a man in complete and utter seriousness . . . and now give it to you in the very same spirit. Sir! Mister Bela Moncrieff! I will now settle it again so that each and every one of us are free to go about the pressing duties of our individual day. You have my solemn assurance that I breached nothing. The only personage who knows of your agenda other than myself is my dear wife.”

  He threw her a glance. After meeting it she flirtily averted her gaze, turning back to look after the soup on the stove.

  “Only my wife was—is—aware that certain guests may or may not be—are—dropping in. Have. I hasten to add that in telling this woman I did not break my word. Not at all! For after half a century of matrimony, we are no longer separate people! We are one and the same.”

  I applauded the elder, who’d managed to put my old friend at ease, which was no mean feat. Kura rested his hands on his thighs in a posture of relaxed, fraternal fidelity. His face got ruddy and his eyes were bright.

  “Your village shall receive a handsome dowry in addition to that which my man has already seen to. Such endowment is to be dispersed solely at your discretion. Now, does that meet with your approval?”

  “O, eminently, sir! Eminently so!”

  “Good.”

  The wife motioned for us to sit on two ottomans covered in ornately woven patterns. We did as she commanded. There were smiles all around. This time Kura sampled the confections. After a swallow, he faced the elder and said, “Tell me what you know.”

  “The Hermit arrived in the autumn of ’87,” he began. “He came to us as a mendicant, a sannyasi, a wandering monk. It is the ancient tradition of our village, as it is in all villages, to be most hospitable to visitors. With a holy man, such largess takes on a new dimension . . . He spoke our dialect to perfection. We provided him food and shelter—twas our honor and duty before God! His looks, of course, were striking; tall and blue-eyed. The sun had baked him but it was obvious he was fair-skinned. We knew not where he hailed from nor was it our business to ask. After a few months, he said he was American—a testimonial to the linguistic prowess of the man, for when he spoke to us in our mother tongue there simply was no accent at all. An American rishi—this really threw us for a loop! The very idea of it . . . but I’ve taken too much of your time. I presume you’ll stay for supper? We’ll catch up on everything later . . . My wife, as you can see, has been hard at work. Her soup is among the jnani’s favorites! Delicacies will be served tonight: American-style chips and ‘dip’! Ha ha! I shall now suspend any more talk of the life that your guru has spent not among us but within our hearts, divinely so. For I am a poor biographer and hew closely to the maxim ‘Wise is the man who knows that the line between tidings and gossip is thin.’”

  “But you have an accent,” said Kura. “I can’t place it. Where is it from?”

  “Ah ha! You can’t see the forest through the trees. It is nothing more nor less than an American accent! I wished after one since I was a boy . . . and though he lacked one himself, I owe it all to the Hermit, a patient tutor, and as gifted a linguist as he is a Master of soham, the self-realized knowledge ‘That, I Am.’”

  His wife approached with plates of appetizers, to hold us over until dinner. Kura declined. Weeks of anticipation had bollixed him up; his stomach was sour. No matter—a food basket had already been prepared. When she handed me a small canvas bag with two bottled waters, the woman forever won my heart.

  The hour of reckoning was upon us and Kura was coming apart at the seams. “Is he—is he there?” asked Kura. “At home? Now? Is he in his cave?”

  “Most certainly! A hermit wouldn’t be a hermit if he wasn’t at home in his cave, true? The muni has no desires—no need to seek out that which was never lost. And whatever his body needs for sustenance, the village provides . . . believe me, it is the barest of essentials!”

  A young boy tumbled in from outside, pantomiming guffaws while pretending to outrun the delicious torment of a phantom tickler. Then, with theatrical flourish, he stopped abruptly, stood ramrod straight and dusted himself off before extending a hand in welcome.

  “Ah,” said the elder, beaming with love. “You must end your foolishness long enough to carry out a very important errand.” He turned to us and said, “My grandson!” Back to the boy: “You are to escort our guests to Dashir Cave without delay.” To us: “My grandson also took lessons from you know who!” To the boy: “Now, without any nonsense! And if, while on your way, a busybody should inquire after where you are going, you are simply to tell them, ‘Grandpa has asked me to show his guests the Tamarisk tree.’ Now go. Vamoose!”

  He went to his grandmother instead and clung to her waist. She dispensed a handful of wrapped toffees; he undressed one and placed it in her hand before leaning over to nibble as a horse would its sugar cube. A most expressive, talented boy.

  “Vamoose,” said the elder. “Funny word, don’t you think? It is my understanding it also has the meaning of ‘skedaddle’—and perhaps, scram.” He erupted in peals of laughter as his grandson grandly bade us to follow.

  And off we went.

  After only a few minutes, he shouted at the boy to shorten his stride.

  “Far? How far? Is it far?” Kura asked, out of breath.

  Our mischievous guide turned and stared past us like a dullard, his mouth gone lax and cretinous. He briskly “came to,” flashing a smile that was positively debonair. “Not far,” he said, self-amused. He resumed the hike before pulling himself short with a staccato burst of unprovoked hilarity. Each crazed uproar sent him closer to the ground, like a cartoon mallet was pounding on his head—Sammy Davis Jr. by way of Wile E. Coyote. We followed along at his mercy.

  “Do you know what surprised me?” I thought a little conversation might provide a distraction. “That Quasimodo apparently blew the mission’s cover—I mean, by telling the gentleman what you were up to. I found that rather strange, no?”

  “Not at all! He went strictly by the playbook. You see, as outsiders we knew the locals might be somewhat chary. Indeed, the vil
lage at first disavowed any knowledge of ‘the American’ though evidence strongly suggested he was in their midst. So we fell back upon Plan B—that I was searching for a long-lost teacher, which happened to be the truth. It was a scenario they could understand and respect.”

  In no time at all we found ourselves on a steady incline, a winding trail that left any reminders of the village far behind. As usual I brought up the rear, affording yet another opportunity to brood over my darling’s health. It was chilly but he’d removed his coat; while he compulsively swabbed his head with a handkerchief, I watched the vertical ellipse of perspiration between his shoulder blades ruthlessly colonize the shirt’s remaining dry land. We kept stopping—rather, I kept stopping and calling out to the boy, under pretext of having to catch my breath—so Mr. Moncrieff could catch his. My entreaties had no effect. Kura whistled at him to slow the pace but our guide grew fond of the reedy warnings and played a game of speeding up, just to trigger the alert.

  Leaving Kura’s physical concerns by the wayside, I focused on his mental health. It suddenly occurred to me that my dear companion might not be right in the head—that the whole business, this obsession with the American might be part of a bigger picture, you know, an encroaching madness, even something hereditary finally come home to roost. Maybe he was losing his mind due to some fixable but as yet undetected anomaly such as Lyme disease or scurvy . . . early dementia? I knew I was being a little dramatic but only as a way of throwing light on what deep down seemed to have a ring of truth. Let’s say Kura had found the American (evidence to the contrary, I was beginning to have my doubts) and was about to come face-to-face. Well, what then? What was the point? Was he still trying to get back those seven freakin’ years? The last twenty? Or was it simply revenge he was seeking? Could it be that the blow to his pride inflicted by the Hermit of the Cave—the Missing Link, the Grand Poobah, the whomever—had been fatal to the ego, poisoning and distorting it over the years as surely as by lead or mercury?

  I was tired. When I get tired I tend to go to that “Hello darkness, my old friend” place. It took everything I had to put one foot in front of the other, trudging along in a fog of mutant hormones and garage sale neurochemistry. In that moment, I thought how wonderful it would be to transform into a burro, a sari, a rock, an ottoman, even smoke from one of the hundred trash fires burning just over the horizon. Because in the end, self-awareness has spectacularly diminishing returns (in fact, it’s downright masochistic). All I knew was the responsibility had fallen squarely on my shoulders . . . after the aneurysm I’d be the one in charge of medevacing him out of some Himalayan fuckzone. And oh my God, Bruce, I so did not give a shit about the American! I kicked my ass with every step, not only for accepting Kura’s invitation to this sucky toad ride but for ever having gone to Bombay with him in the first place.

  Now it was the boy who was whistling. He pointed to a clearing, then without further ado dashed back down the mountain as if carried by the wind.

  The moment was nigh.

  Kura put on his coat and ran his fingers through sticky hair like a bum about to step into church. Standing a bit straighter, he walked to his destiny as I followed—the dutiful wife I never was. After a few minutes here’s what we saw:

  An old man in a bright white kurta, raking grass. Tall, wiry, stooped, baked by the sun. As we drew closer, he looked up and smiled before returning to his chore. He was so poised it could easily be believed someone had tipped him off (which wasn’t the case). If it’s possible for a human being to “grind to a halt,” that’s what Kura did. The shock of recognition gummed up his machinery.

  A nervous clearing of the throat. Then, “It is I—Kura!”

  The stilted delivery was heartrendingly comic.

  “Of course,” he said informally. “I know who you are.”

  I recognized the voice but not much else. Scarred, ravished and beatified by nomadic years of exodus, the American was still intensely charismatic. His bearing was light yet commanding. The few teeth he possessed were jagged and betel-stained. Some sort of chronic affliction—ringworm?—swelled his ankles. His hair was mostly white and gray with inexplicably random sunspots of too-bright blond.

  Kura gestured toward me. “This is Cassiopeia . . .”

  (I was touched by the introduction.)

  “Lovely!” exclaimed the old man.

  “She came from New York to be with me.”

  The American stared into my eyes and I shivered at the enormity of what was taking place—for the first time, I understood.12 Without looking away, the guru said, “That’s a wonderful friend.” I knew he didn’t remember me, and was glad. I was freer to sit back and enjoy the play from my front-row seat.

  “I’ve brewed some tea,” he said. “You must be thirsty.” With that, he turned toward home, its “front door” the congenial mouth of a most welcoming cave.

  “No, we are not,” said Kura, blood up. “We are not thirsty, and we’ve brought water of our own!”

  The old man bore a look of unsurprised surprise. “As you wish.”

  I thought Kura had been rude, then called myself out for being prim. The occasion hardly demanded politesse. Besides, I had a funny feeling the guru was pleased by his ex-student’s brio—the manifestation of ch’i was always welcome.

  “Since you are a man,” began the siddha, “who enjoys cutting to the heart of things—a quality about you that I always admired—I shall do the same. It has been a long while since our paths crossed, but the Source has magnanimously collapsed time to arrange our rendezvous . . . twas predetermined, my dear old friend. Wowee zowee, this is no joking matter!

  “I am one who long ago forsook living in the past or future, which seem to me vastly overrated. Even the ‘now’ is overrated!” He laughed at the small quip—really very charming. “I never bothered to consider the consequences of my sudden departure on those who called me teacher, and I’ll tell you why: I was fighting for my life. When a mortal man, a man without knowledge, already burned to the third degree, is in the midst of escaping an inferno, can he be forgiven for being oblivious to others left behind?

  “But if I am to properly acquit myself, I’ll need to provide some history. In the weeks that followed the death of the Great Guru, I found myself in a bit of a quandary. A ‘pickle.’ The widow—a very aggressive woman, as well you may remember!—had virtually nominated me as ‘next in line.’ But why did she feel the need for ‘the lineage’ to carry on? (There was no lineage.) Certainly, it couldn’t have been for Father’s sake, to ‘honor his wishes,’ for he had none. No wishes and no desires! Why, then? The answer is simple: the ape’s need for figureheads is profound and enduring. But the trouble begins—and it always does!—when one confounds figurehead with Godhead. A symbol can never be the real thing, isn’t it true? Don’t you agree? A symbol covers Truth as a narcotic masks pain. Do you see my point?

  “I’m going to tell you something now that to this day makes me shudder.” He mimicked a swan shaking off water. “When I met the magical being who was to alter the course of my life and my death—I refer of course to my father, the Great Guru—one of the first things he did was to casually inform me of my Achilles’ heel. He said this inherent weakness had been dictated by the stars and was so powerful it would stop at nothing short of my total annihilation. That was the pithy phrase he used. He said I was fortunate to have two choices: I could face the demon in battle—or I could run. He strongly suggested the latter! I begged him to elaborate on this fatal flaw; I was on the edge of my chair. He teased and tantalized, talking in circles before coming clean. He said the hound from Hell that was on my heels was pride. Pride—and arrogance, its handmaiden. I think that because he was so queerly blithe about it (such were the sadhu’s deceptive methods of delivery), I took his warning with a grain of salt.

  “Perhaps now you’ll see more clearly the fix I was in when my guru—Guru among gurus!—left this world
. And I am speaking apart from having lost the light of my life. I spent seven years pruning the garden of Self (does that sound familiar?), watched over by that holiest of horticulturists. He stood behind me, steadfast, demonstrating how to yank the very weeds that were destined to choke me. There is no doubt I was his most careful student, which made matters worse. To my guru, I was a lamb he was shepherding home; to the others, I was the ‘golden boy’—quite literally, with my yellow hair! Which didn’t help at all!—but tarnished gold. The ugly American who like a parasite had wormed his way into Father’s heart. Because of me, there were whispers he’d gone senile. As the years passed, the rancor toward me softened and eventually, I came to be treated as Mogul Lane’s favorite son. But I knew better, for in the Great Guru’s world there can be no favorites. Mindful of his warning, I took this whole teacher’s pet business as a challenge. One more prideful weed to be pulled out by the root . . .

  “I never took the Great Guru for granted. The more I drank from his cup, the deeper came my understanding that the man was truly empty. He had achieved an optimal state of insuperable focus and discipline of purpose. In those difficult weeks that followed the cremation, a comment of his came back to haunt me. ‘The Universe always tests a man with that which he fears most.’ At the time, it was just a casual remark over breakfast; only later did I realize he spoke directly to me. For years, I’d fought to expunge all vestiges of self-importance, that labor in the garden nonsense I spoke of. And just when I thought I was ‘getting somewhere’ (a phrase of ill portent, to be sure), they offered to make me pope. I would be the ‘next’ Great Guru, no strings attached! At first, the decision was easy. Because I’d already vanquished my ego, remember? O yes! Or so I thought. My humility was a source of great pride, something to inwardly boast about. I was resolute. No amount of logic or flattery could tempt me to assume the post. In fact, my refusal was proof in the pudding of my advanced state . . . do you see my point? After a while, I gained enough awareness to view the conundrum for what it was: Father’s brilliant parting shot, a teaching that hadn’t been possible to imbue until he drew his final breath . . . and created a vacancy! Really quite wondrous, an exquisite maneuver, don’t you think? In the end, the most formidable lesson of all. The irony was that while my impulse had been to flee—hadn’t he told me to run?—an invisible force kept me tethered. Was it ego? Or was it my guru’s alternate voice, urging me ‘to face the demon in battle’? The dilemma drove me half-mad. Monday I resolved to leave, Tuesday to stay, and so forth. The Universe always tests a man with that which he fears most. My very essence was caught in a Chinese finger trap. The more I squirmed, the tighter the tourniquet!