Amriika (15 page)

“Oh, there he is,” spoke Ginnie excitedly from her bed as they entered her room. “The rest of you, out, give me a few minutes with my lover boy. Pat, see you later, John, honey …”

Ramji looked helplessly at John as the relatives all filed out, with good-natured, indulgent looks on their faces.

“See you later,” said John chirpily, and gently closed the door behind him.

“Oh, come here,” she said, and he went and bent over her and gave her a long long hug.

She looked devastated. Oh yes, the face was still full from the medication, but now plain and puffy, all the glow was gone from it, and the suppleness too, the flesh was dying and pale and the eyes were sunken, the skin on the neck and arms was mottled. He smelt makeup and perfume on her.

“Come lie down beside me,” she said, making room, and he stretched out uncomfortably next to her, on the edge of the bed, one arm around her.

“I’m all hollow, they’ve scooped out my insides, there’s nothing left, only my connections —”

“But you’re not connected now,” he said, pointing to the
IV
, which was idle. “You’re getting better.”

“You’re nice. Now tell me about what you’ve been up to, how was Washington?”

“Well, I was one among a quarter or half a million people, all peaceful, just walked, while the President watched football …”

“I envy you. I’ve always envied you, you know. You’re just starting out — at the beginning of a great discovery … like … like Columbus!”

Gone, gone the life and the loveliness; the voice, the bubbly cheerfulness now coming at him all seemed disembodied. He wanted to sit down and weep. She felt weak, too, on his arm, perhaps they really had scooped out her insides — what else can you do with a cancer? She had been a big woman, beautiful and sensual … all that a long time ago, she was now a helpless, hopeless patient in this cruelly heartless room with white paint and a stainless steel trolley and uneaten hospital food you discreetly turned away from.

He sat up on the bed, holding one fragile hand in his. He asked, “You don’t think, for instance … that I’ve been ungrateful —”

“Ungrateful? How?”

“Demonstrating against American policies —”

“Don’t be silly. We are not policies. The government is not the people —”

“Come again?” he teased, catching her eye.

“Well, not always — Ramji, you were always too clever for me. In fact, John and I have taken great satisfaction in watching you grow, find your space — don’t get spaced out though, isn’t that what you kids say?”

“Yes.” I have to make my confession, he thought. I have to say it, if it’s true, which I think it is, I’m going to say it, or I’ll forget it and not believe it.…“You know, I’ve loved you since … since that day …” Night, actually, but that sounds inappropriate.

“Yes, I know — though love is a complex thing, isn’t it? And I’ve loved you too, in my own way.”

What way is that? A mystery for me always.

The family was let in, and Ramji stayed a little while longer, then said to John, “I have to make classes tomorrow, I think I should go.”

John drove him all the way to the Port Authority Terminal in Manhattan, and Chris came along and was quite chatty. He was still a Buddhist and had finally left the military academy for the public school in Runymede, so he could be close to his mother.

C
arnal desire, pure and simple, thighs touching in a Greyhound bus — accident or deliberate, does it matter, can one tell? — brown corduroy against blue denim.

The girl he sat with was reading
Siddhartha
, the bible of the mooney-eyed liberation-seeker following the Eastern way, and she caught him trying to take surreptitious peeks at it.

“Great book … read it?”

“Yes …”

She smiled at him, waited for his endorsement, and he hesitated.

“And? …”

“I found it too thin. It was all right, I suppose …”

“It’s allegorical, you see.”

“I
know
.…I prefer Dostoevsky, there’s more stuff in it, it’s heavier —”

“You would.”

He stared at her. “Tell me, why do you say that?”

What do you know about me, why this smugness? Have you found Nirvana already?

“Never mind.”

He leaned away, closed his eyes. The first time he read the Grand Inquisitor’s indictment of the Saviour in Dostoevsky’s
Karamazov
, he’d called up Sona in the middle of the night to tell him, Hey, you won’t believe what I’ve just read, it goes straight to my heart, it reads my mind, and it’s scary. And Sona said, It sure is powerful, but d’you know what time it is, for Chrissakes! And Ramji put down the phone, sensing Sona was not alone, probably was with that Amy girl he was seen with nowadays … what a development …

Her name was Lyris Unger, his bus companion said; their thighs were touching intermittently, they were smiling at each other, talking college-student lingo — You know? …

A slim girl, not very tall, with a long face, brown wavy hair combed back, wearing high, dark brown leather boots into which she’d tucked the legs of her corduroy jeans. She had a button pinned on her sweater, showing a white lotus inside a sky-blue circle, with the inscription “
ONNE
 …” printed in orange inside the flower.

He pointed at the button. “Are you …?” He had seen posters of the Divine Anand Mission around campus, offering “One-ness” with the entire universe.

“Yes, I am a disciple.”

“What’s he like, this guru? I mean —”

“He’s called Satguru. He’s far out, really good.” She sounded almost wistful. “He’s not like those Indian gurus, who’re only after your money —”

“He’s not Indian?”

“He is … and he isn’t. He has divine birth,” she said mysteriously.

“Yes? How?” Curiouser and curiouser … but I’m after one thing only and —

I don’t believe myself. What about Ginnie, whom you held a few hours ago, scooped out as she put it … and dying? Yes. But she’d hardly deny me this irresistible heat flowing through denim and corduroy, in fact she’d encouraged it, perhaps it’s all I need, to be normal, and free at last … not that I’ll ever not love her … or forget that golden face full of laughter. Go on, she’d say, go on.…But is it real, this up-close invitation, these intermittent, almost casual nudgings? Dammit I should take a risk and find out, girls don’t feel your thighs just to frisk you. All that warmth touching and boiling me up …

“Why don’t you come to the ashram for a darshana and see for yourself? You should really try his teachings. Some people just come for his Rama-naam-bhakti — that’s what the chanting is called — it releases all their pent-up tension from the rat race of the world. Satguru likens it to a bath in the Ganges.”

“Naah,” he said, too flippantly. “I don’t need that bhakti and meditation. You see, my people have always believed in meditation, to escape from the illusion of the world, which we call maya. And we have a mantra, and also a guru who comes from a long line of gurus, but they are called pir — sometimes also called guru, and would you believe it, also satguru and swami and so on —”

Fool, you Ramji; you blew it there, you egotistical navel-gazing nerd; do you think she cares about your spiritual life and your traditions? No wonder she sized you up the first instance; Dostoevsky indeed, all words and no action. You should have said, “Fine”; better still, “All right — I’ll come, but you’ll have to be my guide there and show me the ropes.…” Instead, she’s turned away, disgusted, to look out the window — better the concrete of the I-95
than you — and her leg has moved away. Free at last — to do what? Jerk off in your room? Tough.

The bus entered Arlington Street Station. Welcome to Boston, check your belongings, watch your step, check for connections, et cetera. He recovered his carry-on from the overhead rack, allowed himself to be nudged up the aisle to the door, got off the bus; and waited for her. She came down, went to pick up her bag, and as she began to leave the unloading bay, she ran straight into him.

“Sorry,” he said. “Let me get that —”

“It’s all right, I’ll manage.”

But the bag was heavy and she let him take it through the station and outside to the curb. She smiled her thanks as he put it down.

“I’m taking a cab …” she said and began looking for one.

It’s no use, he thought hopelessly. Failure stared him in the face. “I might drop by,” he said to her back in desperation. “Listen. This Satguru — is he really what you say he is? …” She turned around to face him. “… He sounded like a far-out guy.”

“You should really try him out,” she said firmly. “You should come to the ashram and see for yourself.”

“I guess I should.” He watched her expectantly. Then he took the dive. “Is now a good time … I mean, I guess it’s late?”

“It is, a little. Lights are out at ten. Let’s go and see anyway. There is an early morning darshana, too. You could spend the night there and be in time for that.”

Right on.

The Satguru Divine Anand Mission was housed in a large grey stone mansion in nearby Newton, that arcadian hideout and bastion of the gentry. In one of the upper wings of the house were Satguru’s apartments. His close staff occupied adjacent quarters. The remaining part of the upstairs, accessible through separate stairs and looking out upon the garden, the driveway, and Beacon Street, were the devotees’ rooms, fifteen in all, partitioned from the original large bedrooms. Downstairs were three more guest rooms, the kitchen and dining hall at the back, and a library, a devotion room and a meditation room.

The foyer and the main hall that they entered were hushed, suffused with yellow light from antique wall lamps. The walls had a textured brown wainscotting below a wood trim, the rest covered by wallpaper of intricate curvilinear designs in shades of purple and blue. On the floor was a red oriental carpet. Three other doors led out from the hall, and a majestic gleaming wood staircase went up, curving around itself once, before terminating at a balcony that led off on one side to Satguru’s quarters.

“It’s a palace,” Ramji said, gazing up at the ceiling, at the chandelier, not quite managing to adjust his voice to the silence, and so it echoed loudly.

“Shh,” Lyris whispered, putting a finger to her lips, and they both giggled.

“It was a gift to Satguru’s father, who was also a great spiritual teacher,” she said.

There was a whiff of incense in the air, and soft music was playing that he thought was strangely familiar. She watched him as he paused in his tracks to listen.

“I know it,” he said excitedly, not quite managing the whisper, and again she put a finger to her lips, and they smiled.

It was a song to Krishna the sweet lord, currently on the charts. He said the name out loud and she pulled him along by the arm and said, “It happens to be one of his favourites.”

She showed him a guest room with three beds, in one of which someone slept huddled inside a blanket.

Ramji hesitated as she made a move to depart. “I might wake him up, perhaps tonight I could spend in your room — I’ll sleep on the floor …”

“Yeah, sure you will,” she said sarcastically. Then: “All right, come along.”

She was as hot as he, as he’d known all along.

“Aren’t you supposed to be celibate,” he said, “or is this” — he was ensconced snugly between her legs — “supposed to symbolize mystical union?” Careful, Ramji, with that cynicism.

But she was relaxed, and warm and wet. “Among the inner circle, yes, perhaps.”

She was of the outer circle, consisting of newer, or less committed, members, those who had careers, or families, and who were not ready to abandon all.

“But this is forbidden, I’m sure,” she said. “Screwing in these rooms.”

And so a relationship formed, based purely on fucking, a convenience, and the convention that if you fucked, then you formed somehow a unit; and based of course also on growing acquaintance and friendship. But a chasm existed between them, bridged only in those couplings.

A chasm of what? Of foreignness: We’re foreign to each other and don’t really matter to each other, we need not even bother
trying to come close. After all, her mother and father were doctors in New York City, her grandfather and an uncle lived in Brookline, she went to Brandeis, and she had a brother in private school in Vermont.