by Bruce Wagner
I told you this part was blurry. Starting the next morning, everything sharpens.
We had breakfast at a corner table in the coffee shop off the lobby. We’d slept well and allowed ourselves the exquisite luxury of enjoying each other’s company in the moment, unencumbered by the odd circumstances of our reunion. We were brighter than the day that was about to enfold us, we threw off sparks and made spunky prayers of thanks to the gods of Whatever for arranging things thus. Kura had gained a bit of weight but not too much—some whiteness and thinning of hair—a slight tremor when he lifted his glass. Yes, he still had the hôtel particulier in the Marais on the Rue Vieille-du-Temple. (Glory be!) Yes, he was single. (Hmm.) His father was dead coming up on twenty years but his mother had just celebrated her 100th. When British citizens reach their centennial, the Queen mails them a congratulatory card; an anti-royalist all her life, Mum secretly ate it up. As for his current line of work, he knew I’d be curious and threw me a bone—“I am in the recycling business.” I almost laughed, because it sounded so mafia.
We spoke in shallow generalities, packaging the broader strokes of our lives and exchanging them as gifts. At the end of the preliminaries, something shifted in him. He looked positively ancient—more battered pharaoh than beleaguered king.
“I remember everything about the day you left Bombay . . . a horrible, terrible day. A day that hurt me—as they say—more than it hurt you. I flogged myself for treating you so shabbily. Please accept my belated amends. ‘It’s been a long time coming, it’s going to be a long time gone.’ Do you remember how we used to sing that song?
“After you departed, I realized something I had been unable to voice or admit, even to myself. I was in love with you. There! I said it. O, how I suffered, Queenie! How I grieved. And all the while, I told myself such torment was unavoidable, that it was the anguish of the old, attached Self, an unhealthy aspect of the ‘me’ I was struggling to snuff out for good. After all, I had just begun my love affair with the renunciate’s way, my foolhardy fling with enlightenment. Ah, but enlightenment turned out to be a bigger tease than you ever were!
“As soon as you returned to Paris, I became very, very ill. Do you remember how sick I was when we first arrived, the night before going to Mogul Lane? That was merely a foreshadowing, the appetizer if you will. The entree came after you’d gone. Looking back, it’s clear I’d acquired that sickness unto death diagnosed by a certain melancholy Dane, the fear and trembling that accompany the realization the Self must die—this walking, talking collection of vanities, addictions and absurdities calling itself ‘Kura’ must die. As you may well know, my love, one has never been truly ill unless one has been ill in India! You lay in your sweaty bed of nails, riveted by the ceiling stains, scanning them like tea leaves for meaning—and none of the outcomes are good. One’s mood becomes quite dire. The American sent two ladies of a certain age to take care of me. The fever raged for two weeks. I hallucinated freely—mad dogs and midday sun but alas, no Englishmen. I was certain I would die, which in effect I did. Between visions I thought, What fatal idiocy to have journeyed all this way! I’d traveled thousands of miles to reach here—you traveled with me—to finally meet the Great Guru, the man I dreamed would consent to be my teacher. Astonishingly, I’d failed to give any credence to the rather ominous detail that I’d pinned the tail of my spiritual aspirations on a corpse! The aunties sponged me down with cold rags while my troubled mind wandered this way and that, like an imbecile in top hat and tails on a serious errand . . . and all of it came to nothing. In the end, I stood before pride’s funhouse mirrors and took my full measure. What reflected back was my obsession with the goal not the journey—ergo, finding my guru—and in that febrile moment, it became painfully obvious the adventure had been doomed to failure. My fate was sealed! How could I have been so blind? So you see I couldn’t very well run away and follow you, not after all the metaphysical ruckus I’d raised. I was like a mountain climber so close to summiting that he defies that inner voice telling him the weather has turned and he must descend if he is to live—the devil take it, he summits anyway! Now it was too late. I was near the summit, freezing, without oxygen . . . dying in a cheap room in Bombay, far from Paris, far from anyplace called home, far—oh so far, my Queen!—from the realm of Pure Land Rebirth. The fever raged, scorching the earth of the American, when I had no reason to fault him—not as yet. Fire and brimstone! I surmised that it was not a mountain I had tried to summit but a mountebank—and an American one, to boot! My descent would not be to the foothills but down, down, to the hell of Hungry Ghosts! And to make things worse, if that were possible, I’d chased off my lady. Whilst casting about for false gods I had excommunicated the real one, the yogini in front of my very nose! I tell you, Queenie, those were miserable times!
“When the fever receded, I lay seared in my bed, a shell-shocked soldier after furious battle. Weak but clear-headed. I don’t think I’ve ever been that lucid in my life—I no longer pined, nor did I mourn you, but celebrated your existence without remorse. I thanked the Heavens that our lives had intersected for the brief and beautiful time that they did. Upadana8 left my body. Like dye entering water, my gratitude extended to everyone I’d ever loved and to everyone I’d ever hated too. My anger, fear and consternation, my seizures of longing became those of the world and the world gave them back; and somewhere in that process, gold was spun. My guru—‘the American’ as you like to call him—later said I’d experienced metta, an instantaneous if temporary bodhicitta.9
“After a week of convalescence, I attended my guru’s satsang and—how to convey—he smiled at me from his chair and all seemed right with the world. A simple smile that encompassed everything! O, Queenie, I had the strongest feeling—quickly ratified by my guru himself—that he knew, knew exactly what had transpired. He saw the change that had taken place within. That was when he spoke to me so tenderly of bodhicitta and the Six Perfections. He said how humbled and grateful I should be for having had the experience and not to let pride carry me away.
“I never looked back. It took some doing but with the help of a blood-brother—the Samoan who watched over you at the clinic, you knew him as ‘Gaetano’—with Gaetano’s long-distance help, I pulled off the trick of disengaging from various undertakings (there’s a deliberate play on words there), both legitimate and illegitimate. He saw to it that final debts were paid and collected too. A large sum of money accrued to a Swiss account for ready access should the need arise.
“I applied myself to the concepts of ‘the American’ with indefatigable resolve and rigorous intent. I kept a close eye on him, my Queen, to be sure! There was still a touch of the cynic in me, vigilant in its search for a chink in the armor, a flaw in his assertions, a sophistry in thought and action. But I failed at finding one. The harder I looked, the more convinced I was that the Great Guru’s reluctant successor was also a reluctant saint. I repledged my fealty and devotion. The truth being, each day this blond enigma loomed larger and more difficult to parse. I suppose it didn’t hurt that there was an ease, a ‘naturalness’ between us—at least I imagined there was!—as if we shared an agreement of some sort, one that transcended Mind. ‘The Fifth Column’—that’s what he called Mind. O, he didn’t think very highly of it at all, which was mildly ironic, in that one needed a very fine mind in order to have had such a thought in the first place. But he thought it a saboteur of the first rank . . .
“I craved being near him and gladly paid the price. For my guru was exhausting to be around . . . it wasn’t that he was ‘intense,’ which of course he was though not in the way we define the word. No, there was something about his energy, a heaviness, but an openness and lightness too. Like an inverted bell . . . I know I’m not explaining it too well. Perhaps you’ve met such beings in your own travels on the path? Anyway, it’s my understanding that such a characteristic—this heavy, dominating energy—is shared by any muni worth his salt. These men are not sweethea
rts! Another consequence was more personal. The more time I spent with my guru, the more likely it was that he’d pounce, cudgeling me for an idiotic or glib remark, some inanity he’d found worthy of teasing me about for months! Which was actually of great benefit though it never felt that way in the moment. He was a wonderful mimic—it’s not easy to watch oneself be eerily caricatured, especially in front of a large group. But always instructive . . . With public shaming, he dissembled your ego and pride, forcing you to examine your behavior, actions and beliefs. One had to be very much on one’s toes. When he focused on you, look out! He saw right through me. Do you remember my fear? That the Great Guru was sure to have my number? Well, that worst fear came true after all! In spades. The best teacher, they say, is the one who tells you what you don’t wish to hear. Unpleasant truths . . . ‘The American’ was no pushover. In the beginning, his admonishments sent me to bed for a week. He never raised his voice but the sting could be felt for days, like a scorpion’s. Yet he was capable of unutterable tenderness. If one despaired, he poured nectar on the wound. At the same time, he was completely without pity.
“The years fell away. I didn’t miss my old life. Isn’t that something? Did not miss being a player. I did miss you, my Queen—well . . . a little, anyway! The Mogul Lane clan felt like family though I was careful never to make the mistake of being familial with ‘the American’ . . . Slowly, I assumed the same tasks he’d performed for his guru—book publishing, distribution of audiotapes, all the sundry financial affairs. As you know, I was uniquely qualified to take the reins, by virtue of the profession I’d given up. It seemed the only activity I didn’t inherit was making book on the ponies! You see, dear Queenie, my challenge was to be thoroughly engaged, to take on as many responsibilities as I could handle without becoming self-important or feeling like the ‘linchpin.’ My guru would have picked up on that in an instant—then out on my ass I’d go! Not really . . . I doubt he’d have been so merciful as to send me packing. No, he’d rather see me twist at the end of my own rope. I avoided such a pitfall by keeping busy (a glorious way to quiet the mind), doing service, immersing myself in the river of my guru and the tributaries of all the workaday apparatuses that kept Mogul Lane afloat. No time to ruminate! That was my samasti sadhana.10
“I tell you, Madame Q, I became unrecognizable to myself in the best sense! I channeled my sexual energies into the yogas11 and yearning for God. There were no rules against sex—‘the American’ didn’t give a rat’s ass—but I wanted to see what might arise after subtracting—then transmuting—the predatory obsessions of the flesh. I hadn’t anything to lose; in a word, I’d already fucked myself to death. The game had gotten very old. Nothing to prove anymore on that particular front. It was difficult at first but in time became second nature.
“After four years, I disclosed to him the atrocities I’d committed in my long career . . . the wanton breaking of spirits, the taking of human life. Twas a high number of murders, my Queen, as you would have guessed. To this day my confession remains the most onerous and courageous of all my acts. I shall never forget the kindness, the elegance of my guru’s response, and that’s all I have to say about it. I’m committed to being honest about everything—at this stage, secrets would be pointless, even harmful—but in this one area, I’m afraid the books are forever closed. I know you’ll understand.
“As the years went by, I had a stunning revelation. My previous life—life before Bombay—suddenly made sense! It presented itself as nothing more than the preparation for a crime, the crime of all crimes: I was in the thick of planning my own murder. My guru said there are many vehicles to take us to where we’re going but human weakness is such that we imagine we’ll know what such a vehicle looks like. And yet more than not, one finds oneself in a car bearing no resemblance to that which was imagined—no power steering, too fast or too slow, uglier or prettier than we had dreamed. ‘The American’ said that if one is very fortunate, the vehicle is pointed in the direction of one’s destination. But that is the exception, not the rule. The Self makes terrible decisions! Its relentless drone of me, me, me can run a man right off the road or advise him to ditch the thing entirely when it doesn’t drive to his expectations. The hegira, he said, took guts of steel—‘All roads most assuredly do not lead to Mecca!’ O, he scared the hell out of us when he talked that way . . . twas my worst fear to reach the end of the road and realize I had taken a wrong turn in my youth or middle age, and now it was too late.
“And so, my dearest darling, I came to see that it was my destiny to jump ship—like Ben-Hur!—to leap from one chariot to another—from the Great Guru’s vehicle to that of ‘the American’—nothing short of an audacious cosmic stunt was required to keep me pointed toward the finish line. I was with him seven long years, seven years of such incomprehensible grace and mystery that even now, knowing all that I do, I wonder if I could ever be convinced to trade them away . . . But at the end of my sojourn, something happened that undid all the splendor, undid everything I’d learned or thought I had, plunging me into suicidal despair. I used to fear my guru would see through me, but such a fear was child’s play beside what happened.
Only the flutter of an eyelid betrayed his emotions. “I arrived at a dead-end. A wrong turn had been taken, and it was too late to go back.”
After a dramatic pause, Kura said:
“My guru vanished into thin air.”
I didn’t mind being left with a cliffhanger. I knew more would be revealed, and soon. (And I should probably add that I already knew a little about the American’s disappearance through gossip I’d heard over the dharma grapevine, and from the New Age rags too. But I never had the desire to do follow-up.) As we set upon our journey, I felt like a character in a story being written in real time. I could smell the pages we nestled in—tea-stained, dog-eared, bloody as his maiden copy of The Book of Satsang, and redolent of cigar smoke too. The passing landscape seemed like a dusty, petrified forest of Words. I was glad Kura had brought me up to speed before we left because now I was free to enter that delicious contemplative state evoked by Wanderjahre into unknown regions.
The convoy motored past the ecstatic, messy diorama of India while our knees jostled against each other; sometimes he took my hand in his. In close quarters, the tinted windows were defenseless against a world shot through by a midday cruelty of winter light. Kura looked frail, mortal. The sky was cloudless, its cupboards looted by katabatic winds . . . the profoundly unprofound thought occurred that even one day he would vanish, for good, as would the memory of all loves, old and new, as surely as “the American” had, never to be found nor perhaps meant to be. What’s that poem of Dickinson? “Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me. The Carriage held but just Ourselves”—while Kura looked out from our carriage, I studied him with involuntary vulture’s eye. The purple blossoms on the back of a hand that bespoke a recent hospital stay he’d chosen not to divulge . . . the contrived, carefree tom-tom of the carotid, a Trojan Horse that one day would betray him. It seemed to know I was watching and threw everything it had into its palpitations. There was something vulgar about the skin-deep show it put on—vein-glorious!—as if too eager to throw me off the scent that she was coming, Mother Death, gunning for this 62-year-old and whatever trombones he could offer. A few more floats and the parade would be over, the majorette could lay down her arterial drum . . . An overwhelming sadness fell upon me, far and away beyond the variety to which I was accustomed. I was used to being slowly pinned in the ring, a ragtag-team of tricyclic antidepressants and MAO inhibitors in my corner—but this sadness was out of reach of my tricked-out, penthouse-sized, suicidal splendor. When our backseat gaze met, Kura graced me with a sweet, plaintive smile. I had the queerest sensation he was reading my mind. I know it sounds corny but that was when I had a newsflash: I swore for the life of me the missing guru was him. I fought the urge to tell him to call off the dogs and turn the frickin’ car around. Everyone’
s always saying, “Find the guru within”—well ain’t it the truth. But to each his own Easter hunt.
Driving deeper into the hinterland, the road grew more challenging. One of the cars in the motorcade peeled away as planned, dropping off like ballast. The subtraction felt organic, as if part of the logic of the expedition—to keep shedding our skin until we were newborns at the lost guru’s door.
We ate sandwiches from little coolers. Having a meal loosened his tongue.
“When ‘the American’ disappeared, Mogul Lane went wild . . . an ant hill stirred by the stick of a small boy. But this time the community reaction bore no relation to the period of mourning that followed the Great Guru’s death seven years earlier. The police brought their limited expertise to bear; the investigation was blasé, desultory, laissez-faire. They hung around the shop with long faces, laboriously filling out paperwork before moving on to the precinct where gendarmes lazily auditioned the raft of crackpots, ascetics and prognosticators who had come forward with visions of my guru’s fate—he drowned in the Ganga or repatriated to the U.S. or went up in a blaze of self-immolation, leaving only crystalline relics of the rainbow body behind, albeit in red, white and blue! As the spectacle wore on, my contempt for that conniving widow and her pack of jackals went off the charts. I never liked her but now I did nothing to conceal it; she unabashedly returned the favor. At odd moments I caught her japing, as if to gloat that ‘the American’ (she called him that too, but always with a sarcastic twist) had finally gotten his comeuppance. In a matter of hours, my guru was purged from history, having evanesced under a lurid cloud of suspicion. Within days, his portraits were removed from the walls and burned; the books of his satsang I helped publish were no longer available. Even pages of the Great Guru’s classic that bore the American’s name under ‘translated by’ were torn out and replaced.
