S.

by John Updike

  .For even you, Master?

  Very heavy, I think, in my vasanas. All these operations—the agricultural workings, these therapies, the publishing bouses that make my image over and over, the bookstores selling these images and my darsbans with many typographical errors, the boutiques selling all clothes in the sunset colors that are also the colors of love, the natural-food stores and the massage parlors in these many places here and abroad that Durga must visit with such great expense—all these things run from my spiritual energy. You smile, why is that?

  They stem from your'spiritual energy, they run on it—either would be correct.

  So. These things run on me, as you say. English is strange in its little words. In German there is the same thing, the strange floating little words only the natives can dispose properly. I have often considered that language is stranger than it seems. It conveys meaning, we perceive that, yes, but also it makes a tribal code, a way to keep out others. It is of that intricacy which in paper currency is meant to defeat counterfeiters. The religion of the Hindus and even more of the Jains has this repellent intricacy, which to be ideal must be endless, which piles upon the mind until the mind goes blank and may receive enlightenment. I forgive you for smiling at your Master.

  Also, I love the way you say "love." Lufff.

  Kundalini is a cruel tease of her poor overworked Master. Even she runs on me. The beelike sannyasins in their long lines come in from their ten or twelve sunny hours of work as worship and imagine they are now saints entitled to dance all night at the Kali Club and sneak their drugs and have their bigbs, but why are they permitted to do this, bow have all these structures to ease their cbittavrittis arisen? They are running on me, my spiritual energy, my lack of ego. It is false to say all things have a material explanation. All things material have a spiritual explanation. What do you think, Kundalini, is the essence of the world, ofprakriti?

  Its essence is illusion.

  No. That would be too jolly. The essence of the world is pain. Is dubkba. Dubkba, and fear.

  Oh dear.

  Truly. "Ob dear" if the truth. You do not feel dubkba and bbaya because I am with you. But the pain and fear that is suppressed in you pushes over onto me, I have sucked it out of you, it comes into me as if into a vacuum. Dreadful terror. Only men and gods can bold such terror. With animals, death is over in an instant. With men, too, in actual misfortune, it is over in an instant—the animal numbness mercifully comes. But a man in repose, be can bang forever over this abyss of bbaya, this steep invisible terror that being alive brings. It is the clamoring of the million demons of death unleashed by Mara on the night of our Lord Buddha's enlightenment.

  You mean—there is no release? There is no salvation?

  There is for the disciple. Not for the Master. There is for the bees, but not for the queen bee. For by consenting to be a guru, I am permittingprakriti to contaminate my purusba, to make it heavy. I am trading on my atman. For this sin I have this horrible heaviness. Perhaps my energy is no longer fuelling our enterprise. Perhaps my oil filter is dirty. Can you smell it, my fear, my dirtiness? Come closer.

  [Rustle.]

  And you, do you not ever feel this dirty?

  Oh yes. My mother—

  Your sari fits you very pleasantly. You look Indian. You need only the pearl above the nostril, and the tikka, the third eye, between your brows. You have the eyes of an Indian woman. The beautiful dark eyes of ressentiment. In India women are worshipped and degraded. It is a good combination.

  I would not think a jivan-mukta could feel'fear. In achieving samadhi he has put away kama and krodha, lobha and bhaya.

  He is mukta, yes, saved, but also be isjivan, living. That is bis tension. That is bis duplicity.

  Could you not withdraw deeper into purusha, to lighten and cleanse yourself?

  Ab, Kundalini, I cannot. I am always, as they say, in play. I must inspirit the ashram. I thought to bide behind a screen of women, but as you see they quarrel, they make very bad vibes.

  Women feel fear, too.

  No. When they do, it is the man within them who is fearful. There is no fear in the woman herself. She is a goddess. To touch her is to feel fear vanish. Your hips are solid. Your husband, did be admire your hips? Did be seize them in the night, for comfort?

  He—

  Your feet look comely in sandals. Such long straight toes. So many American women, I thought when upon arriving in this continent, have ugly toes, from being squeezed inside the pointed shoes.

  My mother believed in sensible shoes for children. We went barefoot all summer, especially in Maine, and when we used to rent a cottage on Martha's Vineyard.

  A woman is flame. A woman is smoke. A woman is Radba, sweaty with love. Sweaty with rasa. Your breasts—

  [Rustling. Louder heartbeat.] No. Not my breasts. Not today.

  [Laughs,] Neti neti? Is there something wrong with your breasts?

  No, people—I mean Charles—

  Ab, this Charles. lie is in my path. I think you have not yet burned him away.

  I'm sorry. I'm not inwardly prepared for—for thts step up. I must go and think. I must meditate.

  Meditate well, Kundalini. You can help me.

  How? Never mind. I suppose I see how.

  Perhaps you do not see all. My desire, my kama, is to turn your body into spirit. I have this power. The adept man has this power. I promise what is called Paramahasukba—instant purusba.

  It sounds like just the thing. Master, I must go.

  Go, then. May you rise to Sabasrara. May your Sbakti merge with Shiva. OM mani padme HUM.

  Oh Midge, I can hardly think, I can hardly talk, I never dreamed—I was so terrified he'd touch it, between my boobs. Now what do I do? I shouldn't even send the tape to you, but I can't have it around here—suppose Durga got ahold of it, or Vikshipta, they both hate me so much anyway. But it seems a blasphemy to erase it—I mean, when all is said and done, he is a kind of god, at least the closest we're apt to come to it. He didn't really strong-arm me, he seemed sort of fumbling, even, and rather pleased when I turned him down. It was sad. And the worst thing was—oh God, I could cry, I feel like crying suddenly, just to be away from them all, the relief—the worst thing was, I'm not attracted to him, I don't think, not in that way. I mean, I love him, the way you and Irving do—I adore him more than ever, now that I've seen him up close instead of on some fuzzy videotape or out-of-date poster and actually seen him breathe, and felt his personal energy-field. I've never felt anything like it, all other men by comparison are brutes or wimps. Though he's not especially handsome, not as handsome as the posters. He's really quite short—he keeps talking about my tallness when as you know I'm not especially tall for an American woman—Gloria's taller, and so for that matter are you—and he has a potbelly, and his front teeth have this cute space between—maybe it's something they do to Indian children when they're little, you know there's this story about his having been maimed to make him a beggar child—and I have the feeling beneath that twisted-wool turban he wears he's probably pretty bald, men with hair of that wiry type—you can see it beside his ears, where the turban doesn't cover, and his beard of course—tend to have that happen. But, my God, the gentleness of the force that comes off of him, it's like an oil bath, it's like the shot of whiskey we used to take working its way into our blood, all churned up, those first few minutes. And once he slipped out of—what can I call it?—his Masterhood, his cosmic distance, and perched forward on that big silver-threaded armchair he uses as a sort of throne to grab my ass, I had this incredible wave of pity, of wanting to open myself the way I used to to little Pearl, to become this brainless fountain of life. I mean, the vibe I got was not so much that he needed to fuck me as feed on me, the way he says we all feed on him. With Vikshipta there really was this sensation of his wanting to sock it to the whole world and I was there under him as a kind of delegate, and the joy of it all for me was my ability to "take it," to absorb the fury and make it into something positiv
e—but with the Arhat there was just an utterly unaggressive neediness, when I thought the whole idea of being a jivan-mukta was that you needed nothing.

  And though this will shock you—you mustn't let Irving or any of the others except maybe Donna, if it will distract her from her mourning, listen to this—I don't want him to come between me and Alinga. Between her and me there has been giving and taking both, and what he said about her being a wilted flower wasn't exactly the way I would have put it, though there is a way in which I, though I'm older, am younger in spirit—all that bourgeois repression and watered-down Puritanism has kept me fresh, you could say, in a way a lot of the very charming and gifted and committed people here aren't, quite—they give the impression even when they're just in their thirties of having run everything through already once and knowing that nothing is going to work, really, that all these therapies, the Rolf-ing and massage and dynamic meditation and rasaman-dalis and Primal Scream—though here they don't scream, they just say "Hoo!" over and over until they feel empty—are just a way of turning a sick person over in bed, of changing position, of having a "trip" though you're going to have to have another in a few hours, just like a meal or a nap or a crap (my language! I know) and the beauty of what the Arhat says he wants is to take us beyond all that, out of the cycles, and with Alinga, I guess is the point of what I'm trying to say—my heart is still racing, my thoughts are tumbling all over themselves, and they're doing something noisy with the vinyl panels out at Joy-Six-Oh so I can hardly hear' myself think—I had peace, I felt complete, completed, just watching her move around the A-frame lazily with the sunlight slanting in on her long hair and making the top of her brushed head shine and then, the way the A-frame is built, with not too many windows, just the few thin skylights high up, the next moment vanishing, Alinga this still is, all but swallowed in the shadows like some lanky drifting plant that grows in utter quiet under the water. A peace like no man can give. Men stir you up. They give you a poke. They always come on too strong or not strong enough, and emphasize the wrong things. They're always trying to find out, they don't just take things in. Maybe that's why I loved our group so much, nobody had to say anything except silly things and giggle when Irving tried to bend us all into pretzels.

  Tell Irving you can't share this tape with him but it's nothing against him personally and I hope the insurance has covered all the losses in the shop. The good thing is he wasn't there, they might have killed him—just boys usually, stoned and scared out of their minds. It's the frightened people that do the damage in the world. In your next tape do let me know if you see Charles around town ever. I don't have the slightest emotional curiosity about him but I'm beginning to get these legal letters from his hired thug Gilman that make me, honestly, worry for his sanity. How can you share a man's bed for twenty-two years, picking his socks up every morning and trying to make them match when they come out of the dryer, and then find him so full of sheer malice and hatred? It's like these things in those newspapers you can buy in the supermarkets, I Married a Monster or Hubby Reveah'He Came From UFO. And you must let me know how the August boat races went. I'll never forget the year Pearl came in second in the junior division, the Rhodes 19s, with all these brave puffed-out sails thick as snowflakes flecking the horizon out by the far nun, and the biggest darkest most terrifying thun-derheads I've ever seen building up in the northeast, beyond the lighthouse on Ferry's Point, and my heart

  [end of tape]

  August 4

  Dear Mr. Gilman:

  I've been puzzling over your several letters for some days here in the desert. The ashram's spiritual routines make it difficult to focus upon the nasty worldliness that, evidently, still goes on. In my view, I removed from the accessible joint holdings of Dr. Worth and myself merely my proper wife's share—rather less, indeed, since most of our property could not be carried away or divided. I am confident that a divorce court, were we to come to it, would grant me no less and probably more. I would gladly consent to divorce proceedings whenever you can persuade your client to forgo such hurtful and inappropriate terms as "desertion," "adultery," and "theft," and to approach me not in a spirit of bitter adversary but one of sober, saddened mutuality as we lay to rest a partnership long shared, one to whose virtues and fatal defects we no doubt contributed equally.

  Equal division of blame and assets does not seem to me a very radical principle. In fact, as of course all males know, and male lawyers doubly know, the'divi-sion can never be truly equal, since the man retains the professional skills and status to whose acquisition and consolidation the subservient wife sacrificed her prime years; he can rapidly earn his way out of any momentary financial setback, whereas the wife is forever financially maimed, and unless she leaves the marriage with enough capital to support her—which is rare and growing rarer in this day and age of misogynistic judges and shameless lawyers—will be thrown back upon the job market like a load of old laundry, fit for nothing but the rags and odd buttons of employment.

  It saddens me, Mr. Gilman, to receive your blustering missives, on such nice creamy stationery, engraved with all those names of younger partners no doubt looking to you for some sort of moral example, and to read, amid all these physical signs of pomp and prosperity—engraving, watermark, dear little etching of your office building on Devonshire Street—these squalid threats of "prosecution" and "extradition" and "deposition" and "restitution." I scarcely know what the words mean; I feel I am being sent back to Latin class.

  And I sadly marvel that my former (for so he already is in my mind, irrevocably) husband has the preposterous temerity to claim "damages to his mental health and professional reputation" due to my "desertion" (a tactful withdrawal, was how I felt it); and to sue for "alienation of affections" the utterly otherworldly man who passively allows his beautiful presence to shed divine light upon his disciples and who was known to me while living with Charles only as an image on a poster and a voice on a tape; and furthermore and most brazenly to list as "stolen property" flatware, a tea service, and candelabra which have been in a branch of my family since their initial purchase (and all, indisputably, monogrammed "P"; anything marked "W" Charles is welcome to) not to mention some precious old books that were the only luxuries my dear dead father allowed himself and that since my earliest girlhood I have often seen tenderly held in his hands. I cannot conceive of any judge who, however corrupt and woman-hating, would not dismiss these charges with the contempt they deserve. Honestly, Mr. Gilman, can you?

  So, why are you, presumably hitherto a reputable man, consenting to play a part in Charles's psychopathetic farce? Do you have no wife or, as they say now with such cumbersome euphemism, "relationship"? Have you never had a daughter," or perhaps sisters? Surely you have had a mother, and were not discovered under a cabbage leaf like a slug. Consider even the poor female office-slave who takes your hesitant noises grunted and mumbled into the Dictaphone and turns them into the correctly spelled and grammatical letters which I keep receiving in all their impeccable masculine effrontery.

  Think of the indispensable female presences in your life and ask yourself if you can continue to execute the commands of this crazed and vindictive client and to run, via registered mail (itself unutterably pompous), his demeaning errands. He at least has the excuse of wounded pride. He at least once shared my bed and still imagines, albeit falsely, that his abuse has some charm for me. But you have no such excuses. Come off it, Mr. Gilman. Go back to evicting the poor and defending rapists and leave good women alone.

  Sincerely,

  Sarah Price Worth

  August 6, 1986

  Dear County Commission Chairman Aldridge:

  "He who does whafshould not be done and fails to do what should be done, who forgets the true aim of life and sinks into transient pleasures—he will one day envy the man who lives in high contemplation." Thus spoke our Lord Buddha, as recorded in the sacred Dhammapada. We are in receipt of your letters, documents, and diagrams. The nature of our offenses remains
obscure. The wiring and plumbing arrangements that your inspectors discovered are inappropriate, you say, to "winterized tents," as the jargon on our initial permits had it. Then, let us call them "substantial dwellings," which more befits the condition they have grown into. When the sapling becomes a tree, or the bulb a flower, we do not cut it down because it is no longer what it was. You accuse that we applied for a permit for a "greenhouse" and that the greenhouse is now a two-acre assembly hall and an attractive vinyl-clad meditation center of fourteen soundproofed rooms. Is this not cause for rejoicing rather than official rebuke? Is this not the American way, to progress from the humble log cabin to the mighty skyscraper? And you say that our initial announced intent to form an "agricultural commune" of no more than twenty-five members has been played false by our present-day shopping mall, terraced A-frames, paved avenues, trailer parks, printing plant, fabrics factory, and population numbered in the hundreds. Our agricultural commune has prospered; shall it therefore be destroyed, as your Hebraic God destroyed with fire and brimstone cities too happy and serene to make bloody sacrifices to Him every day and twice on Sundays?

  You assert that your statewide "land-use" laws were enacted by concerned environmentalists. It is our impression, instead, that such laws are the pliable tool of fat-cat ranchers owning tens of thousands of utterly idle acres, snobbish restriction-minded "snowbirds" from the teeming Northeastern states, and Los Angeles-based real-estate developers who have already transformed Phoenix into a smaller version of their nightmare metropolis. We are the concerned environmentalists, we of the ashram, who have taken an arid, abandoned environment and made it not only habitable but paradisaical. The technicalities you raise could be settled in an hour by men of true good will.