Sacha—The Way Back

by Stan I. S. Law

  Soon they were home. Alec was still at work but a car was parked in their visitor’s spot. Sacha recognized it as Grandma’s. He was a little nervous. He had to face Deborah not on his own ground. Recently his ground consisted of back alleys of the red light district.

  They didn’t bother with the elevator. After a three-hour sleep on the airplane, Sacha ran up two at a time, with Suzy taking a more leisurely tempo. On the third floor the entrance door was open. He hardly had time to say anything before Deborah planted a king-size kiss on his lips. Only then did she step back to look at him.

  “Where is your crown?” she asked, her eyes as large as a newborn baby’s.

  “I lost it on the way.” It was almost true.

  But she didn’t really care. Sacha was back. Her savior, her deliverer, her... her...

  “Your friend, most of all,” he finished her thoughts for her. He got into the habit of doing that with her. Her subliminal innocence made it easy.

  “Will you be staying?”

  She didn’t pull any punches. Somehow she already knew that any relationship with Sacha wouldn’t be a normal one. She was prepared to take whatever she could get; even if it lasted a week or a day.

  “A while, kitten. A little while,” he said slowly.

  He couldn’t lie to her. She was, well, she was too pure to lie to. One peek at her inner being and her consciousness attested to that. And now she’d even discarded the old dust jacket. What remained...

  As absurd as it may sound, he thought she was, now, too innocent. Especially after his last few weeks in Montreal. She didn’t act. She seemed to have discarded any and all masks we all wear on occasion. That very honesty made her vulnerable. Very vulnerable. Despite the many years of hardship, she’d dropped her guard. She would be easy to hurt. And that might mean the end of her. But she was truly innocent. Innocent off all crimes. And innocence put all men, young and old, at a disadvantage. The world was like that.

  He didn’t know how long he would stay. He was rapidly loosing control of his life. Recently, greater and greater currents were taking over, and he felt he was little more than a pawn caught in their interplay. He had no complaints—he’d chosen this route. But she hadn’t. He felt responsible for her.

  “I’ll stay as long as I possible can,” he added.

  Just as Suzy emerged from the staircase, while Alicia appeared in the doorway. There was the usual exchange of hugs and kisses. They were family. Families are like that. Sacha wondered if Deborah was family or his lover. In spite of his habit, he didn’t dare to probe her mind on this subject. There were matters in which she had a right to privacy.

  Before they had a chance to enter the condo, the elevator door opened and Alec came out with outstretched arms.

  “Son!” he shouted on the top of his voice. Then his tone changed. “You are my son, aren’t you?” He ran his hand over the top of Sacha’s head. “I am so glad you are home, my boy.”

  And then they all talked at once.

  Sacha managed to slip out of the lobby, into the hall, drop his bag on the table and lead the way into the living room. There were fresh flowers on the table, more on the window shelf. Suzy had already laid out the dining table for five. Everyone was expected. Everyone was to share in each other’s joy. This was the time for celebration. Her son had come home. At last.

  PART FOUR

  The Way Back

  “We are all visitors to this time, this place.

  We are just passing through.

  Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love... and then we return home.”

  Australian Aboriginal Proverb

  Chapter 19

  Jail

  The joyful reunion lasted till the wee hours. Finally, Alec told Sacha that he’d taken the liberty of changing some furniture in his old room. He took Sacha by the arm and led him to the old jungle. The walls were still painted (and repeatedly repainted) all over by Suzy from the time he’d slept there as a baby. The room looked smaller somehow, and the exuberant flora took on a new, almost menacing mystery. Even though Sacha stopped there now and then for a night or two, the lianas and exorbitant exotic foliage that covered the walls and ceiling seemed to constrict the room as though cutting off any escape. For just a moment he felt trapped. The feeling passed almost as quickly.

  In the middle of the room, headboard against the far wall, stood a brand knew king-size bed.

  “I don’t know what ah… your plans are, son. But your mother and I...”

  “It’s all right, Dad. But it’s not up to me, you know.”

  “Tell me about it. It never is!” Alec smiled remembering his younger, much younger days. He’d always proposed, Suzy had disposed. Actually that wasn’t quite true. Suzy had her moments of quite unabashed spontaneity.

  That was not quite what Sacha had meant. Knowing that he was no longer a master of his destiny, not in the strictly physical and thus predictable sense, he worried what effect being with Deborah might have on her emotional life. Surely she must still be in a relatively delicate mental state. Alicia seemed to have done wonders, but... well, only time would tell.

  “Thanks, Dad. Your blessing is appreciated.”

  And he meant it. He’d learned some time ago that his parents’ early days did not follow the established course of their own parents. They did not go through the accepted procedures associated with mating. On the other hand, hardly anyone did these days. There were the usual spring and other rites, of course, but they had little to do with the previously established mores. In fact, the mores were no longer established.

  Around two a.m. Alicia got up, kissed Deborah on both cheeks and wished her a good night. The two women must have spoken before. Suzy and Alec saw Grandma to the elevator, while Deborah and Sacha lingered at the table.

  “You don’t mind do you?” she asked a little nervously.

  Sacha did not answer immediately. He was again reticent to peek into her mind. He had no idea how he ought to act.

  “You don’t have to make love to me,” she said when the others seemed to dally in the hall. “I just hoped to have you to myself. Just for a little while...”

  “You sure?” It wasn’t a very bright question. He wondered why with Deborah around he became tongue tied and mentally disjointed.

  “It is the only thing I am really sure about, Sacha. This, and that Alicia and your parents are the most wonderful people I’ve ever met.”

  But instead of a smile of joy two great tears made their slow descent down her cheeks. She didn’t wipe them off. She looked down at her hands resting in her lap and waited as though for the judge to pass sentence.

  “I told you that we shall do whatever you want, remember?”

  “Actually, it was I who had said that,” she corrected.

  That did it. They both looked at each other and suddenly they were standing, Deborah nestled in Sacha’s arms, Sacha kissing her moist cheeks. Someone had been clearing his throat in the hall for quite a while, before either of them heard it. Reluctantly they pulled apart. “So this is what being in love is about...” Sacha marveled. He’d read about it, but this was different. Quite different. It was as close to the Home Planet as anyone on Earth could get. And then some...

  They both ran out to the hall to wave Grandma good-bye. Sacha offered to drive Alice home but she refused.

  “I know someone who’s been waiting for you a long time. I am not going to be the one who makes that someone wait even a second longer.”

  And this promise was accompanied by the biggest, dirtiest, possibly the sexiest wink Sacha had ever seen. Alec hid his face in his hands in order not to laugh. He remembered his mother from way back in Montreal. She was indeed quite an actress in those days. Even if she never walked the boards.

  It has been said that, when you are looking at a piece of great art, time stops. There are degrees of beauty that defy time and reject any and all constrains imposed on them by the precepts of modern science. They absorb your attention to such
a degree that you are no longer able to share the reality of mere mortals. You are swept into a state that ordinary people tread with great caution. It is the nearest thing to being in heaven.

  Sacha was in such a state for the rest of the night.

  Tiredness, longing, constant vigilance of the past year or so were gone; swept as one sweeps the autumn leaves. They were part of a different time, a different season. His mundane preoccupations had been relegated to the inanimate past. They belonged in illusion.

  There was another realization that came to him that same night. Sacha finally understood that being on Earth is not just a “necessary evil”. Once past his boyhood, he never really believed it. He felt extremely human at the helm of The Princess; he enjoyed using his body when swimming, running, performing all sorts of sports at Oxford, yet all that had nothing to do with this. This experience was more sublime than its forerunner in Montreal. There it had been a moment of discovery. This was more like fulfillment. It was in the domain of the gods.

  Or else, it was the human version of bliss.

  Over a real, eggs-and-toast and unlimited-coffee breakfast, Sacha and Alec discussed the mail Sacha had received during the last three months. Alec was still trying to avoid straight answers regarding Sacha’s possible involvement with the religious organizations, but Sacha’s views had crystallized somewhat over the last few weeks.

  “Though I am not going to enjoy it, Dad, it seems to me that, if I have something to say yet keep it to myself, then I would be short-changing those who want to hear it. Don’t you agree?”

  Alec recalled his first lecture tour. South America, Machu Picchu, the relatively youthful Desmond looking after him like a mother hen. Sacha had no one to look after him. No one was even close to his son’s competency in the field that Sacha had apparently chosen—the field of the intangible, of the ineffable, the transcendent. Yet, after talking to Deborah, Alec had learned that somehow his son translated that knowledge, that most peculiar expertise, into a physical, or at least a down to earth, science, which he, again according to Deborah, practiced with an inerrant hand. In his own early days, Alec had, on occasion, escaped into the inner worlds in search of adventure. Sacha seemingly brought those same worlds down to Earth.

  Lately, Alec’s own escapes into the esoteric remained limited to periodic ventures into the realm of imagination, the Home Planet. Less often he was swept into the realm of pure mind, the Far Country, where not only all was possible to imagine, but there were no limits set on his stream of thoughts. The phenomenal realm where pure thought was the creative impulse. But after those moments of near-ecstasy, he’d returned to the ‘real world’, where he reverted to being a hard-nosed scientist, where whatever he couldn’t measure by some means or other, did not really exist. After all these years, Alec still felt that living on Earth, in the tangible, tactile, solid universe was his lot. He continued to ‘just live’, and he’d learned to like it.

  His son was different. Sacha visited the Earth most people recognized as real only occasionally. Most of the time he seemed to roam realties as inaccessible to Alec as to any other man or woman he’d ever met.

  Sacha was very different.

  It just so happened that Sacha was not actually asking dad for permission. Not even for advice. His path was clear to him. What Sacha was doing was preparing his father and mother, and in a way all his family, for the days to come. He knew that once he went into the open, new events would unfold at a very accelerated pace. His father was a very clever man. He would not only suspect what might well happen but he would look after his mother and Alicia. And, Sacha hoped––he hoped dearly––after Deborah.

  The still pure, still childlike, yet so mature Debbie.

  So very guileless... so very mature.

  “I suppose you are right. In any other field I would be sure,” Alec still wavered. “But, as I am sure you know, the field you have chosen is responsible for more death and mayhem in the world than any other.”

  Did dad actually suspect something? He was an accomplished traveler of the inner worlds. Did he have a premonition?

  “No, son. I am not that good.” This was the first time Alec actually read Sacha’s thoughts since his son’s return. It might have been that Sacha was becoming ever more proficient at broadcasting them. Consciously or not. “Be careful,” Alec said quietly. “Be very careful.”

  Alec did not sound happy. He was young enough to remember his own youthful vigour. When you’re young you always think you are indestructible. That there is nothing you cannot do. And then Alec smiled at his own thoughts: in Sacha’s case, this just might be true.

  “Thank you, Dad.” Sacha sounded as if he needed a vote of confidence. “I certainly hope you are right.”

  The rest of the day Sacha spent with Suzy and Deborah. They, too, seemed to have hit it off. He was glad. Very glad. Whatever has been gathering on his own horizon did not offer a country cottage with a white picket fence. And Deborah deserved so much more than he had to offer. Yet he was too committed to his destiny to waver now. And destiny called on him that very night.

  Sacha knew what he had to do. There were a number of preliminary steps necessary to achieve his purpose. Also, there were reasons why he had to accelerate his schedule.

  That evening he’d accessed the Internet and e-mailed letters to nine organizations which had offered him a platform to air his views. Next, he punched his Internet day-trader’s personal code and made some adjustments to his investments. The word ‘day-trader’ was a euphemism. Trading on the world markets never stopped. There was always ‘day’ somewhere on Earth. Day-trading referred to the speed at which one got into and out of the market. Usually a lot less than a day. Finally, after supper, he changed into his ‘working’ clothes, a blue shirt with well-worn jeans, and excused himself for ‘a while’. Deborah smiled but there was no mirth in her eyes. Her full lips formed more of a resigned grimace than her usual joyful radiance. Sacha hoped he would not be the instrument that destroyed her innate happiness.

  He walked four or five blocks before he’d found the right opportunity.

  There was a group of beggars, vagrants or just simply homeless people, who gathered under a fly-over bridge. They were neither together, nor apart. Yet, a common, invisible thread connected them. He addressed that collective link. First one, then two more, then the remainder of the group sauntered out of their hiding places. They followed him, slowly, some twenty paces behind.

  Sacha led them to the parking lot of a large food store. He opened the rear service doors and let the two-dozen beggars in. They ate their fill, took some stuff with them, and left. Sacha activated the alarms, and stayed behind to get arrested. From the police station he telephoned home that he’d been unavoidably detained. He actually laughed aloud when he’d said that. Nothing could have been closer to the truth. The following day he was given a lecture by a judge, who unwittingly helped Sacha accomplish his objective. Sacha wanted to get into the prison system to learn about its inmates.

  He was given two weeks. More, he’d read in the judge’s mind, would have placed unnecessary burden on the already overcrowded prison system.

  Sacha found the jail fascinating. So many people there were simply lost, and there was absolutely no one who offered them any help, who would even point them in the right direction. On the day of his arrival, two multi-denominational padres had visited Sacha. They called themselves chaplains. They tried hard to show Sacha the error of his ways. They were good men. They were also the proverbial blind bent on leading the blind.

  Sacha studied the minds of his inmates. He was amazed. Many of them had a greater grasp of the truth then a number of professors at Oxford. He decided to remain incarcerated for a while. He needed to really understand all facets of the human psyche. There were truly innumerable patterns. Yet most of us seemed to fit into a groove that we had traveled before. It was up to each one of us to find our own, individual path. In fact, this was, and is, the most difficult part of one’s jo
urney. Perhaps that is why people continued in the same cycle, age after age. They’d built up traditions, customs, even morality, all to protect their status quo. But most of all, the vast majority preferred to follow their leaders rather than step out on a limb.

  The prisoners filed out into the prison yard.

  Sacha looked around. With a grin, he recalled Paul of Tarsus ‘doing time’. Sacha felt he was in good company. But it didn’t last.

  The police informed Alec of Sacha’s whereabouts. Instead of sounding worried, Alec sighed and murmured under his breath: “It’s started. Heaven help Suzy and Deborah.” “And mother,” he added after some thought.

  Grandma loved his son as much as they all did. The four of them were spending the evening together. Somehow it felt easier, when Sacha was in LA, even though not actually at home. They all worried about him yet, strangely enough, not one of them would actually say so. Suzy seemed the most nervous until, to Alec’s amazement, Deborah had set her mind at peace.

  “If Sacha wanted to, he could walk out of that jail in ten seconds flat,” she assured her. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he couldn’t walk through walls!”

  Then she told Suzy of Sacha’s ability to make himself invisible. It struck a bell.

  “Of course!” Suzy let out a huge sigh of relief. “He’d been doing that since he was four or five years old. He was playing with his Strato... It drove me crazy at the time...”

  There is a reason for everything, she finally realized. There most certainly is where her Sacha is concerned.

  Deborah was becoming a very smart girl. She’d discovered Sacha’s Internet account. After all, Sacha and his father shared both first and second names. By sheer luck, she’d also discovered his password. It wasn’t that difficult. He’d chosen PEEKA. Poor Boo had been left out. She’d e-mailed his broker. The man e-mailed back providing evidence that Sacha had recently acquired a controlling interest in the Supermarket he’d broken into two nights ago. You can’t rob yourself, she thought.