A Nation of Mystics_Book II_The Tribe

by Pamela Johnson

  The boys found a quiet road on the outskirts of the city, eyed a shaded field, and scattering a number of goats in their haste to climb an embankment, reached a large, branching tree. In its shade, Omar produced a pipe, a chillum, broke off a small chunk of the hash, and spent some time trying to light the resin. As the pipe passed from boy to boy, there was much coughing and spitting and eye wiping.

  Finally, lying on the grass, Christian felt his body references change, a sense of floating. The fire-breathing dragons never came. Instead, there were diamond and flower petal shapes in rich color, slow movements of arms and legs and tongue, and a very hard penis. Outbreaks of rich, deep laughter bonded them, but none could tell the other the cause of their hilarity. Only much later, as the sun started to slide toward the horizon, did they consider the seriousness of their actions. Hurrying back to school, they snuck into their rooms, famished, and anxiously awaiting the dinner bell.

  That one experience with the pipe was the first and last time Christian had smoked hash until he’d come to Berkeley.

  After graduating, Heinrich had left India to study merchandising at a university in Zurich. He and Christian had corresponded with some frequency. Then, just before Christian’s own graduation, he’d received an invitation by the Müllers to vacation in Sri Lanka.

  Could I really have been so naive at seventeen? Christian wondered.

  Both Christian and Nareesh had accepted that invitation. The trip was to be a final winter recess before graduation, a time to reunite with old friends. Although there were plans for both himself and Nareesh to attend university in Oberlin, no one truly knew where life would take them or when they would have the opportunity to meet again.

  The weather on the southern coast of Sri Lanka was hot, the food hotter, and the water at the beach somewhere in between. When Herr and Frau Müller packed to leave after ten days, a twenty-one-year old Heinrich asked both Christian and Nareesh to stay on with him until the end of the week.

  But Nareesh had already arranged to travel with the elder Müllers. His father, Ram Seva, a teacher of some renown, was moving to a new ashram in New Delhi. The ashram’s more centralized location would make the journey easier for foreign students. Although the donated two-story mansion was surrounded with gardens, fountains, and balconies, it was also in need of some repair. Nareesh planned to meet with the contractor to ensure a smooth transformation of the building. At the ashram’s new location, Ram Seva and Daya Nanda would meet their many devotees seeking teachings—among them, a growing number of Westerners. The building needed newly painted rooms for meditation and yoga and teachings, but also comfortable, if spare, sleeping accommodations.

  With several days still remaining before returning to school, Christian decided to stay on.

  During their first day on their own at the shore, Heinrich loosened up. Christian observed his familiarity with girls, his taste for good wine, and his use of fresh charas. Offering Christian all three luxuries, he spoke French easily, pointing to the girls on the beach with his chin and asking Christian which of the girls interested him.

  “I would choose that one,” Heinrich answered for him, eyeing a young European girl. “My guess is she’s a secretary on holiday.”

  When Christian said nothing, Heinrich opened a bottle of dark, malted beer and poured two glasses.

  “I don’t drink alcohol,” Christian answered with what he believed to be polite dignity. “I’m going to be a minister, you know.”

  “In which case, perhaps you would prefer a bit of charas.” Heinrich sipped from the glass. “Yes, I do know you, Christian. You try to hide it, but I know your love of competition. Your school grades. Football. Cricket. Mastery in what you attempt is important to you. So now it’s religion, eh? And you must be the best at that, too?”

  Irritated, Christian turned to him. “What do you mean?”

  “You know. You must be the holy minister. Or … will it be monk?”

  Christian eyed him sharply.

  “But, tell me,” Heinrich continued, “how will you be human? If you set yourself above others, how will you be able to explain when you err? Or give anyone hope of achieving your standards?”

  “Err? Like you?” Christian asked testily, disconcerted to be read so easily. “The way you disappear at night with a bottle of wine, whispering into a girl’s ear.”

  “Does that make you jealous, little brother?”

  Christian shifted his chair in the sand, closed his eyes against the conversation, and placed his hands in a mudra to begin a meditation.

  “Have you told your father about Rinpoche?”

  “No.” Christian quickly opened his eyes. “It’s a private matter.”

  “But surely a man of God will understand.”

  Heinrich had a most irritating way of phrasing his arguments. Christian was certain that Heinrich believed, as he did, that Reverend Brooks would certainly not understand the relationship he’d pursued with Lama Loden Rinpoche for the past three years. His meditations would be extremely uncomfortable, if not impossible, to explain.

  “Look, why don’t we play a game of chess?” Christian started setting up pieces on the board. “Black or white?”

  From the shoreline, new laughter reached them. Both men turned to see a group of sari-clad women running across the sand to splash in the ocean. One of the women picked up the shoe of another and threw it over her head. It landed with a thud near the chess game, spraying sand over the board. The girl ran to retrieve it, laughing, embarrassed, shaking her head and apologizing in Tamil, the language of southern India.

  “Tea pickers,” Heinrich murmured, watching. “Come from the mainland for the harvest.”

  But Christian could not answer. Instead, he was held in the spell of the girl’s nearness. She was seventeen or eighteen, with rich brown skin browned further by the sun, dark almond eyes ablaze with the fire of her laughter, white teeth, braided hair unkempt from the sea breeze. She picked up the shoe and was gone, her erotically disheveled innocence gone with her. Heinrich watched Christian’s eyes follow her departure, his face stunned, his mouth still open.

  That evening, Heinrich excused himself early, and once again, Christian planned an evening of reading in the beach cottage. But instead of retiring to his room, he lingered on the beach in a wooden chair watching the last colors of sunset, restless. A thin moon appeared, rising over the water. Sounds distracted him—the waves breaking along the beach, scatterings of laughter from a nearby nightclub, the rustle of palm leaves, shuffling sand. In the growing darkness, he felt the undisputed presence of someone nearby, and, startled, he looked up. A figure was approaching from the direction of the hotel lobby.

  Heinrich?

  “Don’t get up,” a voice spoke softly in Hindi, and a girl dropped quietly beside him.

  “You …,” Christian stammered, regarding her in the dim moonlight. It was the same girl from the beach this afternoon, wasn’t it? The same dark skin, eyes of fire, long lashes, braided hair.

  “I saw you sitting here alone and thought it was a good time to apologize for interrupting your game today. How does a foreigner speak Hindi?” she asked.

  “I was born in India. This morning you spoke Tamil.”

  “As I do this evening,” she laughed. “My name is Maya.”

  “Illusion,” he murmured in English.

  “Do you mind if I sit? The evening is so peaceful. See how still the water is.” Then, looking around and seeing they were alone, she asked, “Do you want to go for a swim?”

  Looking back, Christian knew now what he should have known then—the girl was much too practiced to be a tea harvester. The breath had caught in his throat as the sari fell to the sand and she stood only in her underclothing. In the moonlight, she had glided on the sparkling surface of the ocean as they swam, her skin bejeweled by light on water, a treasure hitherto unknown. “Your room,” she had whispered.

  When Christian awoke just after dawn, Maya was gone.

  “Heinrich
, have you seen the girl who was on the beach yesterday?” He remembered her hard nipples, light touch, the shocking wetness and heat when she’d guided him into her.

  “All the women from the plantations left early this morning by boat.”

  “But she can’t have gone! Last night … we …” He miserably searched for words.

  “Ah!” Heinrich smiled, putting an arm around him. “Love, is it? Don’t worry. You’ll love many times.”

  Christian looked away. “But Heinrich … premarital sex? What about my ministerial duties? I have an obligation …”

  “Listen to me.” Suddenly Heinrich was serious, talking earnestly. “When I was sixteen, my father told me something. You must choose, he said, to be of this world or the next. Do you want to be human or saint? If you choose to be a man, then live as a man. Do not be afraid to love, to eat, to drink. To work hard and pray hard. For, as a man, you will certainly need both food and prayers. But never have regrets, for regrets take away the dignity of life.”

  Then he smiled, and the easy, good nature was back in his voice, “Let’s have a bottle of wine. If any man needs a drink, you do.”

  For the rest of that day, Christian explored the grape—first one bottle, then another, until neither he nor Heinrich could count any longer. Finally, Heinrich pulled Christian from the table. Both stumbling drunkenly, they fell together on the beach at sunset, where Christian began to retch away the afternoon into the sand. Some time later, they managed to weave their way back to the beds of the small cottage.

  The next morning, when Heinrich brought in a tray of breads, fruit, and coffee, the room still spun, Christian’s head ached, and waves of nausea still swept over him.

  “I don’t think I can eat,” Christian said slowly. “My head …”

  “Try throwing up again,” Heinrich offered.

  Later, as they lay under a palm tree on the beach, Christian muttered, “I don’t ever want to feel this way again.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “I was out of control last night,” Christian said softly, fearing the noise of his own voice. “Without discipline. Remember what Ram Seva says about discipline?”

  “My God, Christian, must you always be so serious!”

  “Heinrich,” Christian rested his head in his hands as if the strain of the thought was too much for him. “Last night I lost control. I need to learn to discriminate. To control my choices.”

  With some disgust, Heinrich grumbled, “Only you would get that from a hangover, little brother.”

  Four days later, they left the sand, Heinrich to Switzerland, Christian to New Delhi, then to meet Nareesh at school in Dehradun.

  That was five years ago and the last time Christian had spent time with Heinrich. He had not written to him in almost three years, not since his first days at the theological college. But he knew Heinrich worked for a Swiss pharmaceutical company with an office in Amsterdam.

  Holland. The name brought images of tulips, windmills, dikes, and wooden shoes. Exiting the plane, Christian followed the other passengers along the clean, modern corridor of the airport. Everything he needed for this trip was in a small pack on his arm. He avoided those waiting for luggage and walked quickly through the customs lane for those with nothing to declare.

  Ahead, Heinrich waited. Five years had changed him little, although now, his thin brown hair was modishly long, and his face was pale from the northern European winter. A dark blue suit with a light blue shirt picked up the color of his eyes; the neat tie had streaks of red. Heinrich was obviously searching for him.

  “Heinrich!” Christian waved to get his attention.

  Standing in the midst of the awaiting crowd, Heinrich slowly stepped forward, staring, trying to be sure. He opened his mouth to speak, then appeared to think again. Finally, his grin was one of recognition. “Christian?”

  Suddenly, Christian understood. He’d changed since his seventeenth year. His hair was no longer neatly cut but tied back and reaching down his back, his face covered by a beard and mustache. He wore a tailored leather jacket and a T-shirt that read The Who, beige corduroy bell-bottoms, and leather boots. Only the blue eyes were the same.

  “I expected to see a dark suit and white pastoral collar,” Heinrich told him. “What happened?”

  Christian laughed and slung his pack onto his shoulder. “I ran into a good dose of acid.”

  Heinrich’s own laughter threw his arms into motion, embracing this little brother of his. “Let’s go back to my apartment so that I can change. I’m just coming from work. Are you tired? Hungry?”

  “I slept on the plane. What I really need is a smoke.”

  “We can take care of all of that. If smoking is what you want to do, you’ll feel right at home here in Amsterdam.”

  Heinrich’s small Mercedes compact drove into the city, following lights along a canal. “Wait until you see our club,” he told Christian, turning down the car radio. “You like hashish, you say? The club’s a neutral zone. You can buy anything you want. And in any quantity you want.”

  “What about the police?”

  “That’s one of the reasons the club exists. The government feels it’s better to confine dealing and smoking to one place where it’s safe. They don’t want nineteen-year-olds shot in some back alley. The Netherlands has always had a history of tolerance. Even your Pilgrims once came here to live.”

  “So Amsterdam is the home of your heart now?”

  “I love every cobble and brick and canal. Its restaurants. Museums. The tulip gardens in the spring. Even my work. See that long canal. I have a houseboat there.”

  As Christian followed Heinrich along a dock lit intermittently by lights, the water on either side of the wooden planking already showed signs of a rising fog. The air was still and cold, and he breathed out white clouds of vapor. Ahead, a row of flat-roofed houseboats floated along the canal’s bank. Snatches of laughter, notes of music, and the yapping of a dog alerted to their presence, all carried dully across air dense and heavy with the strong smell of the sea.

  “Here we are.” Heinrich looked over his shoulder toward Christian, smiling, as he turned the handle of an unlocked front door.

  The first thing Christian noticed were dozens of green plants near the large floor-to-ceiling windows of a central living area. Comfortable-looking couches and rugs on the floor added warmth to the room, holding the cold outside. The walls were white and covered with framed rock concert posters, several oil paintings, and a few very old and precious carpets. Beyond the windows, a thread of lights on blue-black water followed the shoreline on the other side of the canal.

  “Erika!” Heinrich called. “Here is our guest!”

  A woman with flaxen hair cut short into a bob walked from the kitchen, dressed as professionally as Heinrich—black high-heeled shoes, a black dress accentuating her blondness, white pearls around her neck, dark eye makeup. Christian caught the gleam of surprise in her eyes.

  “Christian Brooks. My housemate, Erika von Laar.”

  “How do you do?” she asked, holding out her hand. She turned toward the kitchen. “Anita!”

  Anita emerged carrying a tray of drinks, and her eyes immediately came to rest on Christian.

  “Anita,” Erika offered, politely speaking in English for Christian’s benefit, “this is our houseguest, Christian Brooks. Anita Auclair. She’s also just arrived from abroad.”

  “Enchantée!” Anita said. And laughing, she cried aloud in English, “He has eyes like the sky in Morocco! May I offer you a drink? Scotch?”

  Christian graciously took a glass from the tray and watched while Anita passed drinks to the others, her long legs moving comfortably in a Moroccan caftan. Her hair was shoulder length, light brown, wavy, and held back by combs. Brown eyes. Breasts neat and small. Skin tanned by some warmer sun.

  “Erika is actually more than simply my housemate,” Heinrich told him, smiling as he looked toward Erika and sipping at his Scotch.

  “And just ho
me from work,” Erika answered. “You will have to excuse me while I change. Are you hungry? We thought we might try Indonesian food.”

  “I need to finish unpacking a few things myself,” Anita added.

  Christian followed the slow, rolling motion of their hips as they moved down the narrow hallway, one hand on their drinks, the other held to their mouths, making secret comments, a few French phrases floating back to him.

  “Let me take that drink from you.” Heinrich reached for his glass. “You look so uncomfortable. Still don’t drink, is it?”

  Christian passed his whiskey. “How about that hash you promised?”

  Heinrich pulled at his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. “How rude of me. Come. Please, sit down.” Heinrich offered him a wooden box. “Here, little brother, what do you think of this?”

  Christian took a seat on the rug, leaning comfortably against the couch. He opened the box and gave Heinrich a grateful side-glance. “Dark surfboards from Afghanistan. The black charas of India. Blonde Lebanese. Some red finger sticks from Nepal.”

  “Professional,” Heinrich nodded.

  He turned on the stereo and took a seat next to Christian, inspecting him. “No, you are not what I expected. Your father sent you to theology school. What happened to your white collar?”

  “Is that why the girls were confused? No collar?”

  “I expected someone very different. Someone who may have taken a social drink now and then. Someone a bit more, well … reserved. I was determined not to stand for it. Even prepared to seduce you with Anita.”

  “Just as you had me seduced the first time, yes?”

  “Yes, that was me,” Heinrich laughed, looking away and reaching for his lighter. “Choose the charas. They say it’s from Himachal Pradesh. Do you realize we had our first turn-on together there many years ago? Make the charas our first together as adults.”

  Christian slid to the floor, sat in lotus, and burned the tip of the black chunk, softening it until he could easily crumble enough for the pipe.

  “So, you are still practicing the teachings of Lama Loden,” Heinrich said softly, taking a seat on the floor next to him.