S.

by John Updike

  [Breathlessly] O.K., Midge, here we go. [Noise. Amplified cloth and finger friction. Underlying rustling that may be heartbeat. Much ensuing silence and some unintelligibility. Female voices, difficult to distinguish. One male voice, indicated below by italics.] Shanti, guru.

  Namaste, Master.

  Namaste, my nayikas.

  Come on, let's get the shit rolling.

  Durga, don't be so rude. Just because you're uptight—

  Oh listen to her now. Listen to the corn-fed princess. Easy for you to say don't do this or that. For you this is all one more space shot. I wouldn't be uptight either if I were you. When it all goes down the drain you'll go back to Cedar Rapids and have Daddy finance six weeks in Guadeloupe at an all-girl Club Med.

  Oh dear, one of those days. Darling Durga. That's quite unfairr I'm as committed as you are.

  "Why would it all go down the drain? How could it, when it's so basically splendid?

  Committed to your own artha is what you are. Committed to your own kama and your little roommate's padma. Could you ask her possibly to keep her mouth shut where she doesn't know a bloody thing? She just got here, for sweet Jesus' sake.

  She is not little. She is stately.

  She knows plenty. She's been facing up to the mess Nitya left in the books, while you've been off with your great gift of gab telling that talk show in Phoenix what a shit every official in the state is.

  I didn't say the state, I just said Dorado County. And I restrained myself from saying a blessed word about all the shits in the FBI and the INS.

  I thought it was truly delicious. The lady hostess, the talk-show lady with her enamelled face and little microphone in her lapel, quite forgot her smooth talk. She suffered the shock of enlightenment before the eyes of her million viewers.

  And while you've been off playing Ma Barker to those freckle-faced security kids up in the canyon, Satya and Prapti and I have been trying to cope with all these old wheezy guys from the county that keep showing up.

  The building inspector says the whole septic system is illegal and must be dug up before it bubbles up. He says we're sitting on a volcano, so to speak, and obviously can't have outdoor plumbing on the A-frames, and that on the original application they were called "winterized tents." This other man, from the medical licensing board, says our so-called clinic'is simply a drug distribution center.

  That must be libel. That must be legal slander. I have my licenses, everything is licensed and they know it.

  It's the bloody nuisance value, that's all they care about. That's all any of them care about. They're shits. They're ignoramus cowboy fascist shits.

  Well, you can see how it must all look to them. They're under pressure—

  Shut up, you. Alinga, can't you shut your sweetheart up? Just because she's twice as old as you—

  Why should Sarah shut up? She's been digging into facts while you just keep dealing in fantasies.

  Let Kundalint speak.

  I was just going to say, the county is under pressure from the state officials, who are under pressure from the ecology lobby and the newspapers and the nationwide media. The way they see it, we've made Arizona into a laughingstock. If we could just have fewer stories for a while, and be less confrontational with the other people in the county, who after all were here first—

  You know nothing about these rotten shits. They carry shotguns. They're fanatic ruthless Protestants. You come here from some prettified Eastern suburb and you think making a Buddha Realm in the teeth of all this fascism is like throwing a tea party for the fucking hired help.

  Maybe if we didn't keep calling them fascists. They're just Americans—

  I can't listen to her any longer. Master, I can't. I can't stand her voice, that simpering Lady Bountiful voice. Look at the way she keeps patting herself on the chest, as if to say, "Oh, dearie me." I abhorred her emanations the day she showed up here—I knew she didn't understand us and never would, how we're trying to make something new here, and the new always has to destroy the old. The old ego has to be destroyed. She doesn't understand that. She hasn't listened to your wisdom. She's full of phalatrishna, full to her blooming eyeballs. I dare say she doesn't even know what phalatrishna is. It hurts me to listen to her, and that's God's honest fact. Physically hurts. Her smug voice goes on and on in my head like a buggering dentist's drill.

  Honestly, Durga. You're the one who's going on and on. Maybe you should take a rest in the clinic along with Nitya.

  There are no beds.-We are almost out of tranquillizers.

  It means "thirst for fruits." Phalatrishna means the thirst for results satisfying to the ego. I am not that. I thirst only for the greater glory of the Arhat, that the peace we enjoy within his love may be extended to everybody.

  Begob, listen to her! Like a bloody parrot!

  I have said, Let Kundalini speak. What does she find in Nitya's books of accounting?

  There are assets, still. But not what there should be, in view of the tremendous expenditures here. And not what they were. The sale of books, tapes, posters, and T-shirts are all off. The perfumed soaps and bath oils and incense cones are "holding up, but I'm afraid they were always a minor item. The worst thing is that a lot of the regional meditation-and-massage centers have simply gone out of business rather than conform with the centralization policies that have been handed down.

  Those little centers were pits. They were cesspools. Some hadn't the foggiest idea what massage therapy was, or bioenergetics. They were plain and simple whorehouses.

  Durga dear, you've become such a prude. You used to be fun.

  Aye, your kind of fun.

  Still, the staff were donating their services and shared their profits with the Treasury of Enlightenment, in exchange for using the Arhat's image. ' And his inspiration, Polly. Don't forget to parrot that. The example of his love.

  Quite so. Work was their worship and they were happy, as we all are. Why turn them off? You went around terrifying everybody, demanding more and more, a bigger and bigger cut, saying they should rob their parents, pretend to illnesses they didn't have, smuggle dope—

  I never told them to smuggle dope.

  You told them to gather sweets where they could. The two sannyasins who were caught with cocaine down in Nogales said it was on divine orders and they had been brainwashed.

  Of course the little twats would say that. Anything to save their little skins.

  I am disturbed about the T-shirts.

  Durga, I've beard you tell the sannyasins at darshan that on their visits home if they steal their mother's jewelry it would be doing her a favor.

  We perhaps need another scandal to increase the sale of T-shirts. Always in America there is the danger of being forgotten. Fashion moves with a shameless speed.

  I said it would help their parents spiritually, and in God's truth it would. What's happened to you, Alinga? This person has reinfected you with bourgeois values. This whole squabble is bourgeois. Am I the only man, woman, or creature here still trying to create the future?

  That sounds like rather a bourgeois thing to be doing, if I may say so.

  You looked as smug and sassy as she does, saying that. That same little cock of the head, the little complacent tucks in the corners of the mouth. Maybe you're the parrot.

  Dear Durga, if you'd ever listen to our Master, instead of trying to become Master yourself—

  Oh! That's too vile. That's too easy. That's shit and you know it.

  I don't know it. How would I know it? Everybody in the ashram, everybody down to the flakiest sannyasin, knows you're trying to take over but don't have the touch. The touch has to be light, my dear. Light. You're heavy-handed. You're the fascist, not those poor cowboys and Indians and plumbing inspectors out there.

  Ma Prapti. You heard this butch bitch. You heard what these harridans are saying to me. Say something.

  What can I say? The spirit of our enterprise is changing. You might say it has been poisoned. Many of those who come to th
e clinic are unhappy. Formerly they were happy, even when they were very disturbed.

  Order must be.allowed to emerge from disorder. To impose order is to create another layer of disorder.

  You. Don't you start in on me now. Your foolish limousines. All those ostentatious jewels. No honest jivan-mukta needs tons of useless jewels.

  Amitabba goes drenched in jewels through the Buddha Realms in the West. Millions of jewel flowers tremble wherever be walks, through the towering jewel forests.

  Oh sweet Christ. Come off it, Art.

  Art?

  That's what she calls him.

  She does?

  Look, all of you. There's a conspiracy to destroy us out there. The state is suing us, the county, the Keep Arizona Clean crazies, the parents of that sannyasin who died of hypothermia coming back from the Kali Club—

  And why are they suing, dear Durga? Because you're constantly provocative. Because you've turned this charming dream of a Buddha Field into Gestapo headquarters.

  To maintain order. To maintain our privacy. So female leeches like you can go around with your wide smirk of a mouth and suck hold of the next new body.

  Perhaps, were it to be announced that I have attained yet another level of enlightenment—

  The press is bored with your enlightenment. They never believed it anyway. They want dirt now. Dirt and blood. That's what they always want, actually.

  They want rajas. They want action. Ha.

  Uh, not to be compulsive about detail, but there were some practical things I noticed, going over the account books. There's a great deal of long-distance telephoning from the Uma Room and the hacienda. Australia, Thailand, Scandinavia: It adds up terribly, even with direct dialling.

  What's Polly saying now? We should all take vows of silence? We should give up being international and confine ourselves to converting the fascist shits of Dorado County?

  And the travel expenses—

  I have to make appearances. I have to solicit support. I have to contact these filthy regional centers you're so enamored of.

  But the hotels you stay in, and the number of people you take with you on these jaunts—

  They're not jaunts. They're raids into enemy territory. I need every soldier. Vikshipta makes a spellbinding presentation, and if people don't hear about the Way from a man they think it's just hysterical meno-pausal voodoo. Satya has a cunning head for details and contacts everywhere—without her, I'd have no visibility. Nagga is learning the ropes and enchants people; everybody adores her, even the most cynical. And who are^yoH that I have to justify myself? Alinga, Ma Prapti: why am I being challenged by this, this novice, this interloper? Were_yotf with the Master in Ellora? D'idyou have to suffer three years of dysentery and sixteen grill-ings by the Indian police? They'd never seen a redhead before, they couldn't get enough of me.

  I'm" sure they couldn't.

  . It's just that the sannyasins in the fields and the kitchen, the young people making the beds and building the ring'road, doing all the dirty work, are well aware—

  Let them be aware! The snivelling shits. We're giving them the ride of their lives. No responsibilities. No guilt. Just fucking and dancing and saying Om and watching God go by in a stretch limo. And what do they contribute? Hardly enough labor to make it worth feeding them. It im't worth feeding them, in fact—the kitchen runs at a terrible loss, that's why I have to go around begging and making an impression all the time, to raise the contributions to keep these parasites in the bliss of living here. Spoiled Americans, they eat like pigs. They should be eating less. The meals are much too extravagant—sannyasins in India get by with a spoonful of rice and a raw locust or two. In Ireland they got by generation after generation on a potato a day and still wrote the greatest poetry in the world. Don't ask me to pity these greedy fat Yanks, they'd eat the world if the Russians weren't around. They're supposed to come here giving us all their worldly goods as the most basic spiritual exercise, the very bloody least they can do, and as sure as Harry's hat they've all got millions 'tucked away in bank accounts. Gob, right in this very room—

  —are well aware, is all I was going to say, of the dreadful inequalities here. Of course they want the Master to have all the jewels he wants, as an outward sign of—

  Say it! His inward grace! See! Sari and all, the bitch still thinks like a Christian! Like a stinking little Anglican!

  This is too wild. I can't go on.

  Good. Your humble servant neither. I've been humiliated and heckled enough for one day. I've absorbed enough shit from this person—this little Miss Priscilla Pilgrim here.

  But Durga darling, what shall we all do? About everything.

  Not only tranquillizers and antidepressants. We're out of antibiotics for venereal disease, the ones we can still treat, and lithium for the bipolars. . . .

  The chairman of the County Commission and-the sheriff have both written threatening to get warrants issued. . . .

  [Silence. Rustling. Heartbeat?]

  you ladies are all looking toward me.

  Not me. I've given fucking up on you, to be frank.

  You are looking toward me because you have not learned your lessons well enough. You have not practiced your asanas. You have not destroyed your egos. Therefore you feel fear and you feel uncertainty. You are still full of garbage. I cannot release you from garbage. You must release yourselves. When you are klisbta, when you experience vairagya, answers will arrive. Money will arrive, or money will not arrive. People will come, or people will go. The county commissioners will screw us, or will be screwed. It is all one. It is all ofindifference. It is all of less matter than a blink of Buddha's eye.

  Lord Jesus. And they call this a man.

  Two great notions come to me. One, I wish to be on this John Carson show, as an amusing guest. I think be reaches many people of the night and thus he will re-energize our field. Also, be is amusing. This Ed McMabon. This supposed feud with Joan Rivers, and all this Hollywood wise talk. Ha. Two, let Kundalini stay with me, as you others go. We must discuss my jewels. Perhaps I must sacrifice them to her merciless accountings.

  You do that, Art.

  Shanti, Master.

  You two be good now.

  [Unintelligible voices, fading. Silence. Heartbeat.]

  It is not so, when ugly Durga calls you little. You are tall.

  Five eight. Five eight and a half, actually.

  You are not young, but your skin is smooth. Your hair is dark and abundant. Your posture is excellent. That is why I called you Kundalini. For her to make the ascent up Susbumna, the spine must be held very straight.

  My mother was a stickler for posture. Posture and what fork to pick up and how to leave your knife so the waiter will know to clear.

  This mother. Where is she now?

  Florida.

  She must be very rich.

  Not really, Master. In truth I believe she is squandering in foolish investments the small amount that my late father did leave her.

  She would perhaps think our ashram a foolish investment.

  It would be, for her. Not for me. I love it here.

  You have a good friend in Alinga, perhaps. She is also tall, but not so stately and upright as Kundalini.

  She is very beautiful.

  In an imperilled way. The way of a flower. She has imbibed too much indifference, not the holy vairagya of the yogas but that of this country, of its flatness and muchness that drives its people to sarcasm and mass murder. I am thinking of your West. Your East is more like my India. It teems—is that the expression? One big appetite, with the energy of appetite. You have this appetite, this energy. Alinga does not. Already, she slouches. She slumps. Her hair goes unwashed. She begins to wilt. She is like a cut flower.

  She's been very kind.

  She has shown you new asanas, I think. But once you bad a husband?

  I believe I still do. He was—is—a doctor. Rather handsome. Very efficient and work-oriented. An internist with an office at Massachusett
s General Hospital.

  Yet after some years with this technological marvel, you became bored. You took up yoga. You bad flings.

  Not very many. I've always been a good girl.

  And you are a good girl here. Your letters are excellent. You can balance the books. You do not yet seem to have the madness. , The madness?

  As you notice, with Ma Prem Durga. After much valuable service to Buddha and to Vishnu, she becomes irritable. She becomes erratic and overflowing with grievance. She loses spiritual touch. It is this stress of maintaining a religious ideal, of bucking the trend. In the larger world, responsibility is remote. In our smaller world, responsibility is intimate. There is no Big Guy to which the buck passes. We are the Big Guy. It is heavy.