by Bruce Wagner
Chess shivered with delight.
Almost unbelievably, Ramesh looked straight at him and said, “Are you a seeker?”
Laxmi smiled and Chester smiled and said yes, he thought so. “A jetlagged seeker.” People laughed and the guru did too.
He asked for Chester’s name.
Then: “And what is it you are seeking?”
“What is it I am seeking?”
“Yes—Chester. What is it you are seeking?”
The visitor smiled, but was silent.
He didn’t want to fail the test.
“You see?” said Ramesh. “No one is ever able to tell me! Some say ‘love,’ but to me love is merely the other side of hate. Yesterday someone asked why the Source manifested itself in the forms that it did: trees, people, objects. Well, I cannot answer that, all I can say is it is energy, the Source contains no creations, nor can it contain dissolution. Without the movement of energy, you are left with ‘dead matter.’ Similarly, without the assertion of the ego in daily life, there can be no world as we know it! We believe that we have free will. Some have the sense their ‘free will’ is counterfeit. In other words, it has been proven that once one makes a decision, or takes action—which one must, each day! try not to, and see what happens!—one has no control over the results. Only 3 things can happen after one chooses an action: you get what you want, you don’t get what you want, or you get something that was completely unexpected—whether that be terrible or wonderful. That’s exactly what happened with Maurie. What I wanted was for him to get hard, then embarrassed; what I didn’t want was for him to walk out of the room the minute he saw the black guy; the completely unexpected thing was the fucking stroke. Hence, free will isn’t free, it’s nonexistent. But if one wishes to believe one has free will, without the awareness of a counterfeit quality, then by all means that is one’s destiny! (To believe that.) If one is to be frustrated, not recognizing that the nature of life contains opposites, beginning with male and female, and extending to good health and disease—if this frustrates one and one falls into self-pity, then that is one’s destiny according to the Cosmic Law! One may understand all of this intellectually, but to have the total understanding, that is a ‘happening,’ just like the monsoon, or the tsunami, or Katrina. Like drought or the Holocaust. There is no meaning to those events, they are merely ‘happenings.’ When one feels sorry for how much one suffers, all one has to do is think of the millions upon millions who would gladly change places with you: then you will thank God for the suffering He has allotted you! All is energy, manifesting itself: without such a manifestation, it would be dead matter—eventually that energy burns out and the cycle begins again. What we are seeking is harmoniousness with our fellow man: with the Other. We have been conditioned to be ‘god-fearing.’ I choose to be ‘god-loving.’
“So tell me, Chester: What is it that
her father choked and said that his roommate and baby would not be—coming home—Joan quashed and muted her own horror and said she wanted to come see him but Ray said best not to, not just now, better to speak over the phone (Oh! she would honor that) and yes, he still wanted their Dining Car dinner—even now, he was thinking of it!—so pleased when she told him—one more lie, forgive me, Lord, just one more—that his son would love to come and so looking forward to meeting him. To meeting his
“Dad,” she said, voice clenched from unending desolation visited upon her family, cruciation and glory as well, now the money didn’t seem such a laurel, it was dirty, a dirty balm, neck and neck with wretchedness, instead of slingshotting everyone far ahead, but her mood was foul and soon she would again feel soothed by it, enveloped, enwrapped and ensorcelled by and through Money. “Dad, listen: I am a rich woman! I am a very rich woman and I am asking you to please come live with me. There is so much time to make up. I am going to buy a house in Malibu, by the water. You always loved the water. Please come live with me. With us”—she didn’t care if she sounded like an abject little girl, didn’t care a witless whit—“I need my family! I’m going to have a baby—you are—going to—you and mom are going to be grandparents! Please. You can help me raise this child as you would have raised the one you lost”—should she have said it, that word, lost, both now choking because they were lost, now and always, all of them children, no matter their age, everyone was and had been lost, but they’d been found, just like the gospel song, they’d been found as well—“Daddy, please come. I’ll help close up your apartment and we’ll move everything to the new house. We’ll have a compound, a family compound, like the Kennedys! Remember the Kennedy compound?” (She knew that was a touchstone.) “I have lots of money, Father, millions and millions of dollars. Will you please come? Will you promise to—will you please say that you’ll come? I am asking you for myself not just because of what happened, but I think you shouldn’t be alone now—I don’t want to be alone, I don’t believe in it, not anymore. I used to think that being alone was everything. But not anymore…”
He agreed.
She didn’t know if he meant it, or his compliance was just to get her off him.
She didn’t care—the weight of the world was lifting.
She would do anything for this man.
He asked if Chesterfield would live with them too and she said Yes, forgive me my lies, but who knew, maybe he would, he was traveling now, location scouting, but Yes—the important thing being they would make a home together, she had no husband, she did not want to raise this baby alone—quickly adding that Marjorie would of course be there. Do you mean you told your mother and she agreed? That she—Yes. Forgive me Lord the bewilderness of lies but I cannot care anymore—yet it was true, Marjorie would live in the compound with nurses, gardeners, and upkeepers, the professional hunters and gatherers, there’d be the loveliest symmetry to it, their marriage come full circle, maypole circle of life and death, what did a little senescence matter, sense and insensibility, Joan not yet wanting to spring it on Ray that his ex was an invalid, traveler in the land of nod and derangement, not wishing to dispense more bad news than she had to, not now, whether right or wrong There is no right or wrong not even wanting to fudge the truth, but rather, to lie by omission. Is your mother still in India, he wanted to know. Yes, there it came, the quick efficient lie again, she was nothing but fabric woven from strands of lying DNA, so be it, that is who I am, I do my best, so be it that the carpet upon which we raise our tent is one of untruths, truth is sandy, truth is nomadic, like Freiberg’s temporary sultany digs, truth is a memorial, what is so wrong about a permanent nomadic structure for her (un)broken family. Joan said that Marjorie was still in Agra, at the Taj Mahal, and Ray said, Isn’t that wonderful, I always told Ghulpa I wanted to see the place then he choked again and she choked on her lies and his dreams, the lies of truth, then Ray asked his daughter if she knew the legend of it, the legend (he read in Reader’s Digest waiting rooms) of the Taj Mahal, and Joan said no, even though she did, fudging again because maybe he had something new to add and besides she had no strength in her head or her body and that it was good for him to talk. Ray said it was built by a king she could still see the childhood book and typeface: exalted Majesty, dweller of Paradise, the 2nd lord of constellations, the King Shah Jahan whose wife died giving birth, she was young, only 39, Reader’s Digest (or some other waiting room) said ½ a million women a year die that way, 10,000,000 more get some kind of injury during delivery, hard to believe anyone makes it through, old man choking and tragichuckling, adding he didn’t know if the king’s baby survived, he only knew the wife had died, he choked up again and Joan did too, she thought he was going to go on, about the black marble version of the Taj the king planned for his own crypt, the one that remained unbuilt across the river, dark dream of reflected eternal love, but her father said he had a favor to ask.
“You’re—an architect?”
“Yes.”
“I would like you to help with the stone, for my dearest, and the baby. There is a Forest Lawn on a hill t
hat Ghulpa always thought was so pretty. I bought a little plot. They got there before me! Would you help with the stone? Would you help, Joanie? I don’t know much about that. All of her cousins, I don’t think they—I haven’t really talked to them…I don’t know what they…I would—would—”
He was choking again and she said of course (her passion rubbing out all the lies she had told) and the old man said he would call her back, he had to get off the phone, yes, I would be honored, Joan said, we’ll do something simple and beautiful, I’ll start work on it right now, you just let me know when you—I’ll call tomorrow and check in. How about if I call tomorrow?
She almost said please Dad let me come now.
Then he said:
“The shah was arrested by one of his sons. Can’t remember why. Your mother Marj would probably know. Poor fellow spent his last days in prison. But they say he could see his wife’s crypt—the Taj Mahal that we know today—from his cell. He sounded like a disembodied docent. I think that’s why they call it ‘a tear of sorrow on the face of time.’ You see, it was his tear. But I’m just an old man and maybe everyone knows that.”
HE said he had to hang up. He felt nauseous, a searing pain in his arm and chest, he collapsed, just missing the table I am glad I missed the table on that one though nausea and pain didn’t abet. He grabbed the phone to call back his daughter but couldn’t read the numbers on the piece of paper with her name so dialed 911 and said he was having some kind of heart attack and they asked a few questions, why would they ask anything, why not just come, maybe they were already on their way while the woman was asking whatever she was, if he remembered correctly they knew where you were calling from even if you didn’t give your address, she finally did say they were sending someone out but kept talking and after a while Ray just listened thinking about what Joan had said, how she’d take care of everything, not such a bad deal, he wondered how she’d gotten so rich, maybe she was exaggerating to impress her old man, that kinda ran in the family, he was thinking he was rich too but didn’t have millions, didn’t have so much but was happy to have a daughter back in his life who could help with the place on the hill for his Gulper and Lionel, he hadn’t mentioned “Lionel” to Joan yet, that wasn’t so respectful, not telling her the child’s name, even a dead child should have a name and be referred to by it, he just couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud, Ray was thinking they should engrave Lionel with maybe a lion on the top and a little train on the bottom even though BG hadn’t exactly agreed to it, to Lionel, but he thought she was well on her way, she had never said no, he definitely didn’t want the child unnamed on the stone, you know, “Baby Rausch” or something like that, and as he waited for help he thought about the beach—did she say Malibu? how nice it would be to sit in the sand, the feel of it through your toes, been a long time, he always loved to plant himself in the sand, he particularly enjoyed those hidden covelike beaches north of Pepperdine though couldn’t help but wonder about Joan and the “millions,” she probably said it to please him in his hour of need so to speak, he knew enough to know that architects don’t get that rich or maybe they did but those were the ones with big companies and lots of people working for them and as far as he knew his Joanie wasn’t in that category, Ray thought maybe she had told him that because she pitied him, he could understand that, still, all that talk of a compound, she didn’t seem like the kind to lie so brazenly, she seemed sincere, genuine—he hadn’t the chance to tell her he was a modestly wealthy man himself, he had planned to, at the Dining Car, but wasn’t sure when that would even happen (they still needed to coordinate with Chesterfield), maybe that wasn’t really necessary, not now, just his pride talking, but he wanted her to know that her Daddy made good, had almost $500,000 in the bank and could pay his own way, wanted to, didn’t need his son or his daughter taking care of him, it was time for their father to take care of them, and he could, now that Ghulpa and the little one were gone, they were his own, his blood, it was his fault he had lost them, but now they were found, they were retrievable, maybe Big Gulp and the baby boy were still retrievable, he saw that report on television about the coast of India, now those were poor people, a 3rd of the folks in India survived on less than a dollar a day, that meant the whole population of the US surviving on less than a dollar a day, the government sterilized them, once a woman had a few kids, especially if she’d had a son, the government came along and offered to sterilize them for free and after the tsunami a lot of parents lost their kids, all their kids, and the government was doing sterilization reversals, reconnecting fallopian tubes, recanalizing so the poor women could conceive again, but it only worked 50% of the time, maybe it would work with Ghulpa, maybe they hadn’t fallen through the manholes of Hell into the flood and could still be found, Joanie and Chesterfield had been found, had not drowned, hell there would always be secrets, he could never tell those kids why he left, that was something he didn’t fully comprehend himself, how a grown man could leave his kids like that, he could understand leaving the wife but not the kids, what would it be like to see Marjorie again, he was happy that she agreed to the family being reunited, still what would that be like, maybe he wouldn’t be able to do it, didn’t have the courage, he didn’t need to think about it so much now, leave it alone pain crackling through his arm ohhh it was good enough she agreed, then the thought came that he had no will, left no provisions other than the monies would go to Ghulpa and their Lionel, now he wanted the estate to revert to his son and daughter but would need to hold on long enough to make those changes, though maybe not, maybe Joan could just go to whomever and say they had reunited, and the courts would be able to prove kinship by reverse patrimonial DNA, just like in the Cold Case Files, don’t think about that, just listen for the sirens, hold on he threw up, not too much, then tried to cover it with newspaper, like a dog would, the Friar squealing and licking his face, he tried to tell him not to worry but Ray couldn’t speak, so many secrets, how could he have left them he didn’t know himself, something that would remain sub-rosa, a mystery more than a secret, there were other secrets, things he could never reveal: he never wanted Joanie to know how only a few hours earlier he found something Ghulpa printed out from the Internet months before: How to Plan an 800 dollar Funeral, he knew it was meant for him, for Ray, nothing malicious, merely the Indian in her pragmatically researching the inevitable—the next heart attack that one day would floor him, with or without SWAT-flattened doors:
Plan Ahead, Know your rights, Shop around, Avoid a big-ticket urn and columbarium, Create your own memorial, Donate to Science, Saying goodbye
God bless! The 800 dollar funeral, why not?—she was saving everything for the kid, the Lionelhearted boy, and knew he would want the very same—
now he was at the door, he’d crawled to it, a blond man on the other side said, “Sir? Sir? Are you there? Are you in there?” Through thin curtains, Ray saw the group in uniform, huddling amongst themselves with fish and tackle boxes, peering in. He vomited. “He’s there! On the floor!” the door broke and they rushed him with all kinds of gear and IV wetbags and needles and thread: he thought of that day when he first met Ghulpa at pier’s end: water stretching out, infinitesimal expanse, fishing rods buckets and smell of bait.
They put a spike in him, so kind and methodical, the blond bent over and said
No engulfment. No tearing asunder. What you feared would come like an explosion is a whisper. Have you seen that episode too? Ray asked.
relax. Relax oldtimer. You’re gonna be fine. Clean him up. Clean his chin. Can you breathe? Got a good airway. Nothing in there. OK oldtimer Clean him up All around there were holes in the ceiling of the tenement with light pouring in
because there is no sin. The guru said we suffer needlessly from shame and guilt that stem from bad actions but we also suffer pride and arrogance from good actions. Likewise, what happens to us is not personal, but the result of Cosmic Law. We are as sandcastles, elaborately carved yet destroyed by children at the end
of a summer’s day—swallowed up whence we came.
The root of guru was Sanskrit: Gu meant darkness, Ru meant light. Pain being from the Latin poena: punishment.
The more he listened, the more Chess felt at ease. Ramesh said events happen, deeds are done, but there is no individual doer of the deed. These are the words of the Buddha. Enlightenment is nothing but the removal of suffering, not of pain—we live in a world of pain and pleasure. We live in a world of duality but must not rest in dualism. To be enlightened is like climbing a ladder or racing up the spiral staircase to get to these rooms: until one reached the final step, one was not there, one did not know how much longer it would take, or what the rooms would look like once one arrived. The strange thing is that enlightenment looks much the same; the only change is perception.
They ended satsang with a prayer.
Give me only one boon, my Lord: May I never forget that Your will alone prevails. I will joyfully sing of Your glorious deeds. Give me the association of people who have total trust in You. I don’t care for Liberation, fame, or fortune. Tukaram says: If you don’t want Enlightenment to happen in this body, let it not happen, my Lord—I don’t care.
THEY stayed with Ramesh for 10 days.
They ate boondi laddoos and coconut burfi to celebrate Lord Ganesha and his sister Laxmi, washing down pumpkin-colored jalebi with cups of chai.
Laxmi (the mortal one) wanted to remain in Bombay, she didn’t know for how long, and Chess was fine with that but said he was going to move on. He gave her some money. 90% of the settlement was in a bank in the States. When he had a little more energy, he was determined to remove the entire sum and open an account here in India, if legally possible; he hadn’t looked into it yet. He should have done that before they left but it was too much of a megillah. Maybe he would open an account in Canada or the UK or Frankfurt or Switzerland. Anywhere but the States. (Plus, he didn’t like the idea of being traced through financial records.) America was dead to him. America was a country where people went on eBay to buy vintage Hot Wheels for a hundred-thousand dollars, and performed cunnilingus on 7 month old babies in private, peer-to-peer file-sharing chatrooms. America was a place that spent $35,000,000,000 a year to lock up one out of every 138 citizens. The guru’s concepts and words made him less paranoid but there still existed a part of him that worried his friend might awaken and snitch him off. He would then be sought after by authorities, and the IRS would garnish his accounts, whether related to the student loan, Maurie Levin, or some other specious investigation/prosecution. Maybe he’d renounce his citizenship, but Chess needed to make certain such an act wouldn’t send up any flags. He would have to get his money out of there first. (Renouncing was probably a little dramatic.) For now, he considered himself retired. Gone fishin. The Scout is out!