“She reveres our guru, Swami Devananda, and has fallen into a state of trance. Undoubtedly she struck a rapport with him. Of course she does not take nourishment.”
“Is she drinking?” he asked mechanically, as he would have done at the clinic.
“No.”
“How long has it been?”
“It is the fourth day, as far as we know. She does not eat, drink, or sleep. She is broken all contact with the outside world. She is in rapport only with the Swami-ji. In all probability she now approaches the state of liberation.”
He smiled at his guest with the sincere smile of a wily boy, like those who had run alongside the train, hands outstretched, and kept smiling even when they were given nothing.
“And how can I help you?”
“We would be grateful if you would examine her. If you would tell us, as a doctor, to what extent her health is at risk,” the Indian answered cautiously. So he knew. That four days without taking liquids, especially in this oppressive heat, could start an irreversible process. The Serb was most probably a wild psychotic. He could not count on psychopharmaceuticals being available here.
“We will await your opinion before deciding,” Garudananda said. “You are a psychiatrist, after all, true?”
The door at the end of the hallway opened. A psychiatrist — that he was.
He found himself in a darkened chamber filled with furniture he could as of yet only sense. His sight slowly adjusted to the darkness. Then, in the corner of the room, he spotted a bulky female form on rumpled blankets.
He approached her with the natural shyness of a newcomer, but he immediately realized she was not aware of him at all. She was sitting bent forward, her corpulent back limp and rounded, slowly swaying. Between their swollen lids, her eyes stared fixedly at the wall, pinned to which was a picture of Devananda in a wreath of wilting flowers. It was probably the same one as on the flyer, but a technologically better reproduction. The Serb had fastened the unmoving pupils of her eyes on him, mumbling monotonously without rest.
He was aware that they were expecting something from him. Three steps behind him stood the small swami and another man in an orange robe, who had appeared out of nowhere.
“Hello!” he said softly in Czech, although he knew full well that the woman was not tuned in. Both men probably thought he had said something in Serbian. It made absolutely no difference. He had seen people in this state before and even a hammer blow wouldn’t have brought the Serb out of it.
“Ma’am,” he continued in Czech, “I’m a doctor and I want to help you.”
He felt like a charlatan, but he had no idea what else to do. He took the woman’s wrist and checked her pulse. This merely transferred his deception from word to deed, because at this point what could her pulse possibly tell him?
The Serb was not a durga, quite the opposite. She was a fat, ordinary woman with home-dyed hair, whose gray roots gave the impression that she was close to sixty and had been here over two months. She was the sort who in villages gets called “auntie” or, somewhat disparagingly, “mother.” Only that deliriously happy expression lifted her above the most everyday everydayness.
The hand he had been holding for too long seemed not to belong to the rest of the Serb woman’s body, nor to her soul. When he carefully let it go, it slipped back gently along her side and then rose ethereally, as if it were weightless, landing back on her lap.
“Has anyone tried giving her fluids?” he said aloud.
“They were offered to her, of course, but as you can see, she doesn’t show the least interest,” the second man responded in noticeably cleaner English. In fact, a glass of water was standing in front of the Serb. Suddenly he felt a sharp thirst. His last drink had been that morning at the train station: the dregs of tea in his thermos.
“Is there another doctor around, for a consultation?” he asked, playing for time.
“There’s an Australian, a veterinarian, but he’s away from the ashram at the moment.”
A veterinarian? Might as well be back in Australia.
“There is one nurse here, if you need help. What’s your opinion of the situation?”
Four days, he thought to himself. The immediate risk is small, but in two or three days it could be too late, and then her exit was almost certain.
“I’ll decide this evening,” he said in the tone he used with the nurses in Prague.
They led him into the room he was to share for the next quarter of a year with the absent veterinarian. He fell onto the hard, narrow cot like a stone into a lake, and in five seconds he was asleep.
He woke at dusk, irritated, with the feeling that someone through the wall had thoughtlessly turned up the radio. Waves of wailing voices rose, broke against a gong stroke, and then with the same wails descended. Evening prayers, he realized. I must have overslept, I’m not where I ought to be.
A respectful cough came from the gloom, almost like in a play. The man who had visited the Serb with him (the realization slowly surfaced in his warm, befogged mind) was sitting on the floor at the foot of his bed.
“Are you awake, doctor? I’ve been waiting here for you. I thought I’d explain to you what’s going on.” He spoke fluently and his pronunciation was clear. “Let me introduce myself. My name here is Kumar. I’m from Britain, but this is my ninth year in the ashram and I’m never going back to Europe.”
He sat up in bed, somewhat ashamed of his condition. At home he bathed twice a day: mornings at the clinic, evenings after exercising at home. The man gave him a slight smile.
“Just so you know, you’re in a rather awkward situation. This case has provoked sharp debate right from the start. Whichever way you decide, you’ll meet opposition from one side or another. It’s quite a delicate matter, you see.”
Still tangled in the spider’s web of sleep, he felt his heavy, sour tongue sticking to his palate. He did not want to decide or discuss anything. He wanted to take a bath, brush his teeth, and roll back up in the blankets. Instead he stood up, so at least he could comb his hair.
“There are some very orthodox old Indians here, although it’s not a matter of age or race. One extreme faction simply believes that this lady has spiritually overtaken all of us. No one has the right to meddle in processes of this sort. If she dies in the next few days, it will be the highest blessing. She will free herself from the torment of cause and effect. Of course … of course …” — the Briton made a dance-like, roundabout gesture with his finger — “… in the eyes of your government we are responsible for her life, isn’t that so?”
The same mistake again, but he couldn’t face correcting anyone.
“You can see our predicament.”
“Yes … and what do you think about it?”
A shrug. “Me? I’m just letting you know the score. Our swami-ji has put his complete trust in you, and whatever you decide will be accepted without question. But be prepared for the fact that there will be disagreement, possibly hostility. There are many, many …” — once again that gesture as he searched for the exact word — “… many different forces in this ashram.”
The rising and falling of the evening prayer behind the wall continued unchanged.
“Swami Garudananda,” the Briton said in a hushed, fervent tone, “is one of the greatest spiritual beings of our age, if not the very greatest. But his time is yet to come.”
There was a sudden imperative in his eyes, as if he were expecting assent. What was there to say?
“I’d like to see the lady again.”
Kumar stood up, nodded, and added with British courtesy:
“I’m quite sure you’ll take the right decision. If you don’t mind, I’ll accompany you.”
He was aware of being watched. A small group paused in their conversation as the two of them passed, and somewhere a door opened a crack and then closed again. It was only now he realized that he didn’t know the number of his own room. How would he find it in that anonymous corridor? But he put it out of
his head. Later.
The Serb was sitting on her blanket; nothing had moved, although a table lamp had been lit in a corner. The singing, now somewhat dampened by distance, spun round in a circle like the cycle of seasons.
The Briton discreetly vanished. For the first time, he was alone with the woman. She had the same expression of all-engulfing bliss in her eyes, which glittered like lifeless fish. Occasionally she would twitch, like a patient under light anesthesia. Her quiet muttering seemed to escape rather than issue from her mouth. It could have been fragments of Serbian or just a stream of random sounds her mind had already stopped monitoring. Or the “gift of the Holy Spirit,” fiery tongues raining down on the apostles’ heads. This was the question, and he was to fill in the answer.
He sat on the floor next to the Serb. For a moment he fancied that she was aware of his presence. She watched him slyly from beneath half-closed lids. She had that same intense yet absent glance often seen in self-portraits.
In the dark outside, an invisible bird shrieked and fell silent. A rivulet of sweat trickled down the woman’s face. Her body gave off a vigorous, carnal odor.
She should lose at least twenty-five pounds; this thought suddenly came to him from somewhere off in a corner of his brain. It’s a terrible strain on the coronary system. His glance slid to her legs — did she have varicose veins? — but the legs were not visible beneath the swathe of material. A few days of fasting would only do her good.
There was a time, one particular time not too long ago in Prague, when he was at the bank, signing a check, conscious of the fact that he was drawing his savings down to nothing. A sneaking thought said to him: Why not? I’m never coming back, anyway.
He had honorably waited out the whole false period of his youth, now slowly but surely drawing to a close. He had lived without question, with the discipline of a parachutist, crouched over, calf muscles tense, waiting for permission to jump. Somewhere in the depths of his dreams he longed to shed his European lab coat with no regrets and become his true self: but even he did not know what he meant by this, and it is the way of such things that he would not know until he had crossed that threshold.
The glass of water was still standing in front of the Serb, as it had been earlier that day; half-dead mosquitoes now floated on its surface. Who has the right to snip the golden thread of her blessedness? And if there were no golden thread, if the path were a false one, if there were no Lotuses or Lights, white gurus or karma, if — alas! — there were no escape from the suffering of this world, then who truly had the right to deprive her of such a happy death?
But if he let her die without help, now, here, before his very eyes, he would have nowhere to go back to. Then, in all honesty, he would have to set aside his medical diploma, and his faith in the Lotuses and Lights would have to surpass all reasonable bounds.
A sudden, unaccustomed rage surged through him. He was furious at that phony guru, that assistant master, that lying little monkey substitute. That’s who was responsible! He had no right to treacherously fob it off on someone else, on a defenseless novice! And Swami Devananda? Why wasn’t he here? Couldn’t he hear how urgently he was being called? Where had he put his holy hearing aid? Why didn’t he perform another of his “multiples miracles”?
Beneath his wrath lay an anxiety far more severe: what if it were all a test? A magnificent tableau for an initiation ceremony. It was an experiment with one black ball and one white one — he would either win, or lose.
He was oppressed by the feeling that someone was pacing impatiently outside the door. When he had awakened today to find Kumar peering into his face, he had lost his sense of security. Perhaps they were watching his every step. The one-way mirror of clairvoyance allowed the gurus to observe him, even through closed doors. The building held its breath and waited — a building, as Kumar had said, full of different forces.
He turned to face the Serb again. As the room darkened, her eyes opened. The woman licked her chapped lips slowly and languidly.
“What should I do?” he asked her suddenly, impulsively. “What would you like me to do?”
She mumbled something, still running her dry tongue along her dry lips.
“I don’t want to hurt you. Please believe me. I only want what’s right for you.”
No one, not even his patients, had ever depended on him so terribly, so completely. If his faith were correct, if there were Lotuses and Lights, this relationship would cross even the boundary of death. He would be engaged, karmically Forever, to this woman, whose existence he had been unaware of before this morning.
He breathed deeply and then said out loud, fully conscious of his words: “Oh God! Help me!”
The Serb fastened her empty eyes on him. Had she seen him? Maybe yes, maybe no. In her mumbling there was a short cascade of sounds that rolled like a small wave of laughter: but it might have been his imagination. Emptiness filled the hollow just behind his breastbone. Suddenly he made his decision.
He averted his eyes from the woman and strode quickly across the room. He threw open the door. To his surprise there was no one behind it. The long, deserted hallway stretched out before him in the flickering light. He realized that he could no longer hear the prayers.
“I want to speak with Swami Garudananda,” he said to an Indian receptionist in jeans.
“I cannot call him now; he is in meditation.”
“It’s urgent.”
“I am sorry, but it is not possible to disturb the swami.”
“It’s a matter of life and death for your communicant.”
The Indian had already said all she intended to. He saw no reason to restrain himself. The wrinkles above his nose deepened and he slammed his fist down on the table:
“I am a doctor, I am responsible for her. I’m warning you! Her vital functions could break down. Delay is a crime on both humanitarian and legal grounds!”
The Indian gave a slight shrug.
Garudananda did in fact come, about two hours later. When he heard the verdict (the woman must be treated without delay and her body’s fluids rapidly replenished), his shrewd, dark eyes betrayed a certain relief.
It turned out that this spiritual hotel had a surprisingly serviceable clinic. Someone sent for three of the “novices.” Two men showed up, and one Canadian woman, middle-aged and dressed in a sari: forlorn, skinny, with all the glamour of a swamp flower, the unmistakable mark of the durga on her forehead.
There were no introductions; they immediately fell into working mode. He gave practical instructions, leaving the physical side to them. Almost indifferently, he watched as they capably lifted the Serb under her arms and beneath her knees, and strapped her to a bed. She offered surprisingly little resistance, as if she were not even present in that fat, sweaty body. There was merely a brief increase in her mumbling as they carried her through the door.
From there on in it was a matter of routine. The Canadian was, as it turned out, a competent nurse, and under his supervision she put a drip into the Serb’s forearm. The Serb did not even flinch as the needle slipped smoothly into her vein.
He suddenly wondered which faction these three belonged to. Were they judging him? Did they approve of his decision? Were they future friends or enemies in this night-enfolded house, where he had arrived less than a day ago and still had three months to spend?
The mumbling gradually grew weaker. Soon the body slackened, and the glistening whites of her eyes disappeared behind their swollen lids. From the outside it seemed the Serb was sleeping peacefully.
He sent his assistants away, telling them he would monitor the woman himself. They nodded and impassively said good-bye. There was no commentary on what had transpired. He sat down by the Serb’s bed and suddenly felt the whole weight of his journey. He realized vaguely that he would have to stay here tonight, since he would not be able to find his room.
The Canadian suddenly turned around in the doorway. She was the last of the three to leave, and for the first time she looke
d him straight in the eyes. There was such contempt in her thin, foxlike face that his fingertips went cold. Of course, he could have been wrong; the contact was too brief, and durgas always look contemptuous. Still, in that moment he lost his last shred of hope.
The durga closed the door behind her; the Serb slept on. It was quiet in the building. He must have briefly fallen asleep in the chair, because suddenly he opened a drawer and his watch was lying in it.
He had received the watch from his mother as a Christmas present when he was eight. Soon thereafter he was at a children’s carnival and a magician did a trick that charmed it off his wrist. Before the boy’s very eyes, in full sight of everyone in the hall, the man threw it into a mortar bigger than a bucket and ground it to a powder. For a few horrible minutes he thought he would never be able to go home. Then the magician twirled a handkerchief over the mortar and pulled out the watch, whole and unharmed. The boy was relieved that at least he could go home now, but he did not put the watch back on, and he no longer wanted to wear it. He had lost his trust in it: he could not be sure that it was in fact the same one, and at night he would shut it up in the bottom of his drawer.
He woke to find his leg had fallen asleep. It prickled unpleasantly. He stood up to stretch a bit, and realized it was almost one in the morning. Yesterday was the third time, since the day he had needlessly shaved his head, that he had failed to get even a single point.
O durga, mother of disillusion,
drinking blood, devouring raw meat,
mother of all gods and goddesses,
ruler of the earth,
staring blankly, dancing without rest,
fearsome in your greatness,
honor be to you,
dhum!
The Thirty-Sixth Chicken of Master Wu
à V. L.
“Your nephew is here, Master,” the serving boy announced in a funereal voice, supposing that it made him sound educated. “He would gladly undergo a hundred more incarnations for the privilege of greeting you.”
Fingers Pointing Somewhere Else Page 10
