The Empty Chair

by Bruce Wagner

  “That horrible woman! No matter that she was his earliest champion, urging him to take the chair. Something hardened her toward him those last few years. She was getting on in age, and became careless in dress and tongue. A few days after ‘the American’ went missing, she invited me into the very den that my guru—and his—once used as a sanctuary to meditate and sing psalms. I thought surely she was going to ask me to step into his shoes! She talked my ear off for the better part of an hour, anxious to promote the theory he’d been ‘done in’ by an enigmatic consortium of power-hungry thuggees, the same men, she said, who once plotted to kidnap and murder her husband. Another possibility lay in the realm of the supernatural. She spoke of flying yogins, skilled in the dark art of ‘translating’ themselves through the ether . . . then went in for the kill. ‘Have you considered what I believe to be the very real probability that your American guru may simply have had enough? That he decided to return home, to find fame and fortune? He would not be the first of his countrymen to capitalize on the Source!’ O, she cast her meretricious net far and wide, tarnishing all the fishies in the sea! So base, and thoroughly contagious as well—the same cheap, haughty mannerisms and grating inflection cropped up in those dastardly aunties who were under her stern sponsorship.

  “It came to me in a sickening flash: No one had understood a single word of my guru’s teachings! And Queenie, let me tell you, that terrifying insight gave me comfort. I sat with the damnable conclusion a while until I swear I caught a glimpse of the form of mankind’s ignorance itself. Diabolical! Could it possibly be true that I was the only one who understood that a saint had walked among us? I’ll admit he had many strikes against him. After all, he was American, which cost him the lion’s share of his followers from the git-go. I watched him assiduously win that share back, not through contrivance or campaign but sheer valence. The naysayers came to deeply respect him. Still, there were many, shall we say, opposing camps—it would have been naïve not to have noticed. I’m convinced the widow kept the conspirators’ fires burning . . . the Janus-faced ones who clambered to press his feet had for a while now worked most avidly against him, whispering that his seat was a fraud and a heresy. A blasphemy . . .

  “The colder went the trail, the more determined, the more invigorated was I to solve the invidious riddle. And I had considerable resources—don’t forget those numbered accounts in Switzerland. I set up shop in a building a few miles from Tobacco Road. I employed a crew of ten—half a dozen locals with the rest flown in, individuals I absolutely trusted and had worked with before. Gaetano did a brilliant job of organizing the entire operation. I’ll spare you the innovative details . . . you already know how creative I can be when an important project is at hand, no? Suffice to say I went to great lengths, some not entirely legal, to find him.

  “Weeks went by and my team made no progress. I grew distant from Mogul Lane. A strange time, to say the least . . . My guru, a bright sun that once shone down on me, underwent a disturbing eclipse. Something began to gnaw. I felt like a private investigator in one of those European novels that reviewers call ‘philosophical detective stories.’ A portrait of him over my desk seemed to leer. I wondered if the widow was right—she so often was!—and considered expanding my search to the States.

  “Approximately eight weeks after the nightmare began, I awakened from a nap to find the screw had completed its turn. Try as I may—and try I did, my Queen!—I could do nothing to alter the belief that I’d been ‘had.’ This new poison burned my throat, seared my eyes and became a wildfire in my soul . . . Dear heart, the fickleness of the human race is a wonder to behold. One by one my troops returned empty-handed, and one by one I relieved them of their services until finally I was alone in a suite of empty rooms, with only his photograph’s sinister eyes following me ’round. I shambled about, trying to stave off what was coming—the heartbreaking realization I’d been administered a coup de grâce. His final teaching! O Lord. Lord . . . I’m ashamed to say I declared to myself and the world that the feet I’d washed, worshipped and worried over were made of clay. The doubts and paranoia I harbored while ill no longer seemed the stuff of fever dreams. I set fire to the portrait, burning in effigy he who once held an unimpeachable place in my heart, whose insights, energy and brilliance had sustained and transformed me. I stripped him of all laurels and medals, tarred, feathered and court-martialed him, pissed on his counterfeit spirit for eternity! I was in the grips of a kind of mania . . . deranged. A bucket of delighted, perverse fantasies watered the petals of my resentments that opened like a corpse flower in bloom: perhaps he had been abducted—kidnapped, tortured, killed! O be careful, my Queen, when the beast inside is unleashed! I hasten to add that a small part of me still remained true and watched the torch-bearing mob of Self with helpless amazement.

  “But it gets worse, Queenie—far worse!

  “In madness, I saw only monsters. Years of rigorous tutelage reared up like diseased horses running wild through remorseful, desolate fields. Remarks my guru had made during intimate conversation—moments I treasured, his words forming a garland I’d hoped to wear around my neck whilst crossing the final threshold of Silence—became nothing more than dirty jokes, the larcenous pitch of an obscene grifter. My guru knew the mystery of the pyramids . . . Ponzi’s! O, how foolish I felt! I mention Mr. Ponzi only in a figurative sense, as no fiscal malfeasance ever came to light. Just hours after ‘the American’ took a powder, I knew that embezzlement needed to be ruled out. A thorough forensic examination of house finances found them intact (if anything, there was more in the treasure chest than I initially thought). My first hope—of course, this was before I renounced him as my guru—was to discover a theft then ‘follow the money,’ a process that might lead me to a suspect or suspects, the working theory being ‘the American’ had stumbled across irregularities that certain parties feared he might soon reveal. I’d be lying if I didn’t say the widow was at the top of my list . . . Did I tell you about the ransoms? O my! The notes came fast and furious. Some claimed he was being held hostage, and demanded all manner of absurdities. Some were thrown right over the transom . . . All were deemed inauthentic.

  “I paced those empty rented rooms, plotting my revenge. I would find ‘the American’ and dispatch him to nirvana myself! My Queen, I assure you I was back to true form. I gathered my wits and my Dopp kit and took a train north, the direction my very best detective said our quarry had been last seen heading. I started out as John Wayne but ended like Shelley Winters—pushy and hysterical, all over the place. I ransacked my memory for clues the impostor may have provided, anything to impossibly, magically pull it all together. Looking for a needle in a haystack is one thing, looking for a guru in India quite another; I grew to covet those who sought only needles. I was proud. My anger had nowhere to express but inward. I became depressed. I concluded I’d wasted seven years of my life and could never win them back. Not only was the time gone but the potentialities it held, the way energy hides in a bomb . . . my bomb turned out to be a dud. A special agony, my Queen, awaits those who treat the Source like currency on the exchange! Regret spread like cancer. Its skeletal hands clutched at many things—even you—yet held on to nothing.

  “I wadded up that whole continent, vanishing guru included, and tossed it in the dustbin. I returned to Paris to lick my wounds. Took up a few long-forgotten habits and felt better for a while, reacquainted myself with old habitués and cultivated new ones. But the thrill was gone—that’s what a wrong turn’ll get you! I threw myself into business . . . not the enterprise you think. No, I’d lost the stomach for that kind of risk. I wanted ‘stress-free,’ so everything was aboveboard. Assembled most of the old team and did extremely well. I always did extremely well, except in the business of gurus! Ha! And I must say that I rarely thought of ‘the American.’

  “I said ‘dustbin’ but if I’m to expand the metaphor, I’d say I stuffed the whole experience into a trunk that was promptly seale
d and stored away. It lay in the attic a long, long time, Queenie—about 15 years, in fact. Then one day I found myself wandering up to the belfry. Went in and paced a while. Sat and stared at the trunk. Eventually walked over and broke the seal. Took two steps back. Warily circled. Lifted the lid to let some air out and left, closing the door behind me. A year later, I went up again. Paced, circled, sat. It felt familiar to spend time there. Opened the trunk and poked around with a stick. Walked out, shut the door.

  “I had a heart attack in ’92 that changed my lifestyle. I hired a vegan chef and started exercising. Though I must tell you, Queenie, the whole time I lay in hospital I was sorely preoccupied. I would close my eyes and roam around that attic . . . For you see, I opened that trunk for the same reason the surgeons opened my chest: to heal. And to my surprise, I found it held things of great beauty . . . books—I helped publish—smelling of incense, cigars and tuberoses . . . raiments of gold-threaded silk . . . glittering gems. Even the ‘necklace’ was there, the garland of my guru’s words! The drought of rage and heartbreak lifted at last and in its place was a bright green stem coursing with life that broke through the skylight and reached for the sun.

  “Over the next few months of convalescence, I revisited where it all began: The Book of Satsang. The Great Guru still spoke to me yet within its pages I saw the genius of his favorite student, ‘the American,’ writ large. I had not been mistaken! Still, I knew it was important to remain cautious. My conduct needed to be measured. I waited to see if my jubilance was artificial, manufactured—‘post-cardiac.’ I wished to do nothing on impulse; I recalled with disgust how quickly I had turned on the one who was so precious to me. I needed to be absolutely certain this latest turning toward him wasn’t arbitrary as well.

  “I was still in possession of all the books I midwifed during my time as editor and putative translator of Mogul Lane Press. Some were collections of my guru’s morning Q&As; others slim, elegant hardbacks filled with apothegms and parables reflecting his simple abstractions and direct truths. I unpacked the boxes and leafed through them at leisure. I had a nagging fear they’d be nothing more than ‘cosmic candy’ though I needn’t have worried—they were awfully compelling. The beautiful little volumes held many epiphanies for the careful reader . . . there did seem to be a lot of them out there (careful readers). Even after he skedaddled—my guru taught me that word!—his book sales grew steadily each year. The unsolved mystery of his leave-taking certainly didn’t hurt; hagiographies sprung up like mushrooms after a rain. Scoundrels debunked, seekers martyred, and scholars wangled over who should be authorized to be custodian of his legacy. Controversies notwithstanding, the radical breadth of my guru’s concepts proved he was more than just a shooting star in the cosmology of Advaita. His place in the firmament was secure.

  “A year passed. I was distracted by the profitability of my business enterprises. But at the end of each day, my fancies drifted to the missing saint . . . Along with the health of my heart, my affections had returned. Very quietly I began to lay the groundwork for a project as subterranean as it was quixotic. I carefully tricked my mind into believing the adventure I was about to embark upon was mere sport. I couldn’t afford to be emotionally invested, which wasn’t too difficult in that the chance of success was practically nil. We are speaking of a muni who disappeared from Bombay 15 years prior without a trace! He could be anywhere in the world, if indeed he was still alive. But you know how I am, Queenie, when I get a bee in my bonnet. The dream team assembled this time bore no resemblance to the farm club cobbled together in that frantic time after we lost him. The uniqueness of his features—tall, Caucasian—might help our cause, but only if he’d remained in India. So you see, I couldn’t really get too excited about the little numbers game I was running on the side and that was a good thing. With nearly a billion souls walking the Continent, the whole treasure hunt notion was really a joke, a folly.

  “I set a ceiling on this hobby of mine at five years and three million euros. (A portion went toward baksheesh, from “man on the street” beggars and shopkeepers to the highest in government.) I gave my people free rein, never asking for reports on their progress. The lot were grossly overpaid yet did not lack for further incentive: a seven-figure bonus awaited whoever cracked the code, dead or alive. (Irrefutable proof was required in order to collect.) I left them to their own vices, while stupidly pursuing mine. It’s embarrassing to admit but during this period I reverted yet again to my dissolute ways. I exchanged veggies for red meat, took up pot smoking again, and used ‘medicinal’ amounts of pharmaceutical cocaine—which as you can guess, did wonders for my bypassed heart—and spent a fortune on my beloved ladies of the night. Do not judge me, my Queen. How far I had fallen from a romance with the Spirit! I hated what I’d become: an old roué, a fallen ‘spiritualist’ with a bad ticker and a Viagra-dependent schmeckel.

  “It was 4 a.m. I was in Morocco. I’d been asleep just half-an-hour when the phone rang off its hook. Aside from Gaetano and Justine (my secretary), the gumshoes were the only ones who could reach me. They had explicit instructions to phone immediately if in receipt of important news—damn the torpedoes and perish the time zone. A man called Quasimodo was on the other end. Funnily, he was the only one whose skill I had doubted. I was this close to firing him.

  “‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I believe I found him.’

  “I saw stars. I asked him to go on, slowly.

  “‘A village 400 kilometers from Delhi. He’s tall, white. 82 years old. He lives in a cave.’

  “‘A cave?’

  “‘I spoke to the elder—the village chief. A very friendly fellow. He said “the Hermit” showed up about 10 years ago. That’s what he calls him, “the Hermit.” Or “Guruji” or jnani . . .’

  “‘And?’

  “‘I hiked up to the cave. Very nice set-up! I had both sets of pictures with me—from the ashram in the ’70s, and the ones generated from the forensic model. He didn’t seem to look like either but I’m not very good at that, you know. I’m face-blind.’

  “‘Now you tell me. You took a photo?’

  “‘No, and I’m sorry about it. He wasn’t too keen on having his picture taken.’

  “‘Jesus! Well, if he didn’t look—and you say he showed up ten years ago, but he’s been gone for twenty . . . What makes you think—’

  “‘I didn’t want to tip him—I said I was looking for a shrine. I thought he’d be standoffish but the old guy had a sense of humor. He said he didn’t know of any shrines in that area, which just went to show that all roads don’t lead to Mecca.’”

  After too many hours and too few stops, we reached the foot of the village fingered by the hunchback with a hunch. A pair of armed men stood waiting beside a train of burros. Apparently, it was the end of the line for anything with an engine. As we mounted our steeds, one of the guards suggested he accompany us on the trail or at least partly up the hill, but was politely refused.

  It felt good to have an ass massage after such a long ride. A thousand trivial things flitted through my logy, travel-loopy head. I wondered if my gargoyles missed me, and even wondered what happened to Quasimodo. Fat and sassy no doubt, shacked up somewhere on Easy Street with his seven figures (though I doubt he’d collected just yet) . . . We loped along uphill—six sherpas in front, four in back—and not a one spoke the King’s (or the Queenie’s) English. Kura rode ahead in a trance of monomania, eyes fixated on the dubious prize before him. I became rather fixated myself, abruptly seized by the hair-raising fear that a massive coronary would topple him from his burro before we reached the finish line. (Why couldn’t we have brought the elusive doctor along?) I think what spurred that particular fantasy was a general agita about the man, a turmoil, a nervosity. Anyone would have been excited about the prospect of reuniting with a person who had played such an important role in one’s life, that was understood, but I think Kura was fundamentally vexed, and not in a good way
. One thing I noticed was that his reminiscences toggled back and forth between the warm, intimate “my guru” and the cooler, detached “the American,” the latter even further removed by an ironic inflection of quote marks, as if borrowing not just my but the Great Guru’s widow’s description. What I mean to say is, his conflicted feelings were so obvious. I believe that the closer we got—he got—to that damnable cave, the more unresolved and bewildered he became.

  I had no idea how much time had passed. We dipped then rose up the side of yet another barren ravine, crossing a cool meadow the size of a soccer field before beginning the perilous ascent of Hillock Number 17 (or so it seemed). There was no comfort to be drawn from the dearth of hints that any of these traversals were bringing us closer to our destination—then suddenly, we were there.

  The sherpas helped us dismount. A few ran off, returning a few minutes later with a smartly dressed, silver-haired chap in tow. The village elder wore a silvery Groucho moustache above a crazy rack of ultra-whitened teeth.

  “Mr. Bela Moncrieff!” he shouted. The elusive Quasimodo had no doubt provided the gentleman with one of Kura’s aliases. At least he hadn’t called him Lucky Pierre. “Please! Come.”

  We were led to a modest home, where a lovely middle-aged woman with a bindi and a delicate ring through her nostril greeted us with a tray bearing cups of tea. She was the elder’s wife. A handful of sweet morsels had been laid out as well and I wolfed two down without ceremony—I was famished. When offered, Kura waved them away.

  Our host spoke perfect English. After a few rounds of social niceties, he got down to brass tacks.

  “Ah . . . the Hermit!” he said with a grin. “You are his friend?”