Howard Hughes

by Clifford Irving

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘In the years left to you, if you knew beyond doubt that you wouldn’t fail, what is the one thing that you would do?’

  I was stunned into silence. I knew right away he had asked me the most intelligent question that you could ask any human being beyond the age of puberty. All the inessentials fell away. TWA, the various lawsuits, the default judgment, the SST, Las Vegas as the port of entry, Hughes Aircraft, Toolco – none of them rose to the mark. Not even life with Helga.

  ‘You don’t have to answer now,’ Sai Baba said. He rose to his feet – not all that easily, I realized, because he was a bit overweight. I got up too. He made the sign of farewell by placing his palms together. I did the same. He had never asked me my name. He’d never asked who I was or what I did. He’d only asked that one question. At the door to the temple, as I was about to step outside into the hot evening, he placed a sweaty hand on my shoulder, and he said softly, ‘Don’t forget.’

  I went to one more darshan before I left Puttaparti, but I realized that for the moment there was little more I could gain by being there. I also realized I didn’t have to say goodbye to Sai Baba. He didn’t expect it.

  I hired another porter, waded across the Chittravati River in the other direction, found someone to drive me to Bangalore, and flew to New Delhi. There was a message from Helga waiting for me at my hotel. She said she was coming to India to spend a week with me, and if I left New Delhi I should leave a message for her where I’d be. She was due to arrive on Swissair from Geneva the following day.

  I took a long hot bath to wash off the dirt of southern India, then a long cool shower to refresh myself, and then I sent for the maid to pick up my dirty clothes. Just before I handed my things to her I remembered what I had in the pocket of my old pants. I had all that vibhuti Sai Baba had ‘manifested’ and given to me. I poured it out into an ash tray before I stuffed the pants into the plastic laundry bag.

  I decided to meditate for a while. By then I’d learned that meditation was a process to clear your mind, not to analyze what you thought were your problems, and you accomplished this by sitting still and silently saying a meaningless short word, which they called a mantra, over and over again. That way your mind became a blank receptacle, and if you were ready, good things entered in it. In the least, you were refreshed. It was like a fast, where you eat nothing and cleanse your guts – in meditation you cleansed your mind.

  Then I remembered the vibhuti. What was I going to do with it? I could throw it out, but that troubled me, because he’d given it to me just before he’d asked me that big question. I could take it back with me to Nevada, but what was I supposed to do with it there? Put it in an urn and worship it? That seemed ridiculous. Or I could use it. How should I use it? I wasn’t going to eat it; it was ash, and I might choke to death. The other thing I’d seen people do was rub it all over their bodies. I hesitated, because if I did that, I’d be dirty again. But what the hell, I thought, I could take another bath when I finished meditating. I had nothing else to do until Helga arrived.

  I smeared the vibhuti all over my chest and forehead. It had a soft, powdery texture, not harsh at all. It smelled slightly of spice. Then I sat down in a chair to meditate.

  What happened next is hard to explain. You probably won’t believe it. Part of this is clear to me, but part is vague. Kind of shadowy.

  I dimly remember leaving the hotel. I remember renting a chauffeured car. I hardly remember the journey at all. I must have slept on the way. I remember arriving again in Benares, where I spent the night, what was left of the night, I’m not sure. I had no luggage – I found that out later. I don’t remember going down to the river, but it’s clear that I must have done so, probably under my own steam – the car and driver definitely didn’t take me – because I remember arriving there, by the Ganges, probably before dawn. I remember the darkness and the smells of incense, mud, and burning wood.

  I sat down in the dirt by the river. Before that, as I told you, I couldn’t get into the lotus position, but now I did it, or at least a fair approximation of it. My legs were crossed in front of me, and my hands were in what I’d have to describe as a cupped position, also in front of me.

  I wore only my undershorts. They were white Jockey shorts. I didn’t have another blessed thing on my body. No shirt, no socks and shoes, no pants, no hat. Just my white undershorts.

  Do you see the picture I’m painting for you? I was thin, almost scrawny. I had long hair, even longer than it is now. It fell almost to my shoulders. I had a beard. And all my hair, of course, was gray, a pale shade of gray. I was not a thing of beauty.

  I looked like a beggar. I was sitting there by the Ganges, in a trance, in beggar’s clothes and in a beggar’s position.

  Now, as I may have told you, the riverside was full of beggars. They didn’t do very well except when an occasional tourist gave them a dollar – they could eat for a day or two on a dollar – in the hope that they’d go away. I, on the other hand, was sitting there cross-legged in my Jockey shorts, with my hands forming a little cup in front of me. I didn’t importune anyone, I didn’t clutch at them, I didn’t even ask. I just sat there, meditating. And I was deluged with money. With dollars, with rupees, with English pounds, with yen, with marks and francs. People couldn’t pass by without giving me something. Indians, Asians, Europeans – everyone gave.

  You see, money just gravitates to some people, whether they’re accumulating TWA stock or sitting by the side of a muddy river in India. They’re money magnets, and money is like metal shavings. I’m one of those people. I can’t help it.

  The coins and bills spilled over my cupped hands into a pile in the dust of the street. No one, not even the other beggars, dared take it from me. They must have thought I was a holy man come from afar, God knows where. I was thin enough, my hair was scraggly enough, my undershorts could have been taken for a loincloth, and I had the vibhuti rubbed into my chest and forehead. Anyone who stole from me would come back in the next life as a cockroach with backache.

  I don’t know how much time passed. I only know I was there and doing very well indeed.

  I know this because suddenly Helga said, ‘Howard! My God! Are you all right? What are you doing?’

  She stood there in front of me wearing a lovely white silk dress from Chanel.

  She had flown into New Delhi, gone to the hotel, found out I wasn’t there, checked around and quickly learned that a car and driver had taken me to Benares. She hired another car.

  I wasn’t in any of the good hotels in Benares, but someone – she never knew who it was – said, ‘Madam, I have seen the man you describe. He is down by the river near such-and-such a temple.’

  So she came down with a guide and found me. She helped me to my feet and took me back to the hotel. I had tears in my eyes. I don’t know why.

  We took all the money with us in a sack. And outside of town, on the drive back to New Delhi, we passed a hospital for the poor. Helga took the sack inside and gave it one of the nursing nuns at the desk. It was a considerable amount of money – the driver had to help Helga carry it. I had done really well.

  32

  Howard flees Las Vegas for Paradise Island, claims he’s the richest man in the world, reveals how he wrote his will, and admits his greatest ambition.

  A GREAT PART of my experience in India – that last part, I mean, when I visited Sai Baba and ended up by the Ganges as a beggar – is of course difficult to explain. Most people wouldn’t believe it, and so I haven’t told it to anybody. They’d think I was cracked. They probably think it anyway, but if I told them about the vibhuti and the rest of it, they’d be absolutely certain.

  Helga and I flew down to Rajastan: saw some temples, rode an elephant who tried to pickpocket me with his trunk, stayed in some palaces – played at being tourists.

  While we were in Jaipur she said, ‘Howard, my husband knows about us. He doesn’t know it’s you, but he knows it’s someone. He begged me not t
o leave him for you.’

  That made me nervous. I had never asked her to leave her husband.

  She knew that. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I told him I wouldn’t. Then he asked me to give up seeing you so that he and I could try to make our marriage work again. I thought about it for a few days and then I agreed to do that, after this trip to India. He and I have a history, you see. History counts.’

  ‘You and I have a history too,’ I said.

  ‘I know. Well, maybe we’ll see each other again. Just give me time.’

  I told her I understood. We flew back to California, I said goodbye to her at LAX, and then I took off for Las Vegas.

  I didn’t feel good about that parting, but nevertheless, in a way, I felt liberated. I didn’t own her. I had fine memories. I still do. We talk now and then, but I haven’t seen her since. Sometimes that saddens me. But I’ve learned to accept it. What can I do? She made a choice. It was the right choice for her and the wrong choice for me. The Mexicans say, ‘Ni modo’ – so it goes. It implies the acceptance of suffering as part of life.

  As soon as I reached Nevada, I thought, my time here is up. I’m leaving. This is not how I want to live. Let them take their treble damages, I no longer cared. My health was failing, and I had the feeling that there were greener pastures elsewhere, in the Bahamas, where the government was friendly to me, and malleable.

  Did you try to buy the Bahamian government?

  I didn’t have to go that far. I could just rent it, so to speak, for as long as it was convenient.

  I flew out to the Bahamas on Thanksgiving Day of 1970. But that wasn’t a snap decision. In fact it was a decision I had made at least a year before that. I contacted the people I know on Paradise Island and they set it up within two weeks. I took over the top floor of the Britannia Beach Hotel.

  Do you like the view better than the one from the ninth floor of the Desert Inn in Las Vegas?

  There is no view. I had light-proof curtains put up before I moved in. I don’t need a view. The view is in my mind.

  Regarding my getaway from Las Vegas, the newspaper accounts, as always, were partly cockeyed and partly accurate. I did contact the people I knew at Lockheed and borrowed one of their Jetstars to fly out of Nevada. But I never got carried down nine flights of stairs and put on any stretcher, and I never will – unless they’re carrying me out feet first to the graveyard, or I’m too sick to walk, or they’ve drugged me and are taking me away to dump me down an abandoned mine shaft. That last carries the highest probability rating, and if you ever hear that I’ve been carried away flat on my back you can tell the world that it undoubtedly wasn’t of my own free will.

  I left the hotel in the back of a panel truck and drove out to the airport and flew down to Nassau. I had done that twenty times in the previous five years, although not to Nassau. Only this time the newspapers found out because my people moved out too. And they made a fuss beyond belief.

  You wonder why I’ve cut myself off from people? Why I live the way I live? There’s your answer. I fear people because they’re empty-headed and therefore dangerous. How is it possible that I’ve become like a specimen in the zoo when I’m deliberately not living in the zoo? That intrigues me. What an age we live in. I can tell you, I wouldn’t mind getting out of it for awhile, and I’m not talking about using the cryogenic process to deep-freeze my body. With all the fine research facilities I’ve had at my command I should have stolen a page from H.G. Wells and had my people develop a time machine, a time traveler. I suppose if I sunk my entire fortune into it they’d be bound to come up with something that worked.

  Where would you go if you had your choice?

  I’d go back to China when they were building the Great Wall, and I’d be an engineer and help to build it, and I’d live a quiet life and die in my sleep. Have my Chinese sons bury me. Or out of curiosity I’d go back to America in 1870, to Texas, to see what the real West was like. That would fascinate me. Two-gun Howard, the Yoakum Kid.

  But if I had just one choice, one trip, I’d go forward to the year 3000 and see what was going on then. See if there’s anything left.

  You don’t regret your life, do you?

  No, that would be a useless emotion. All that I really regret is that I was orphaned young, that I was rich much too soon to be able to deal with it properly, and that I couldn’t have lived a more simple life among simpler people.

  And what does it mean to you now to be one of the three richest men in the world?

  I’ll bet you or anyone else, including Paul Getty, that I’m not one of the three richest men in the world – I’m the richest. Every one of those Nevada properties which everyone thinks are such a bust is going to pay – and what do you think is going to happen when the United States, as it absolutely must, within the next five years, devalues the dollar by letting the price of gold float to its proper level? Do you know how much gold I’ve got, in the ground and out of it?

  You have no idea. Well, plenty. And nobody knows how much real estate I’ve got. Not even me. But I can tell you it’s worth a fortune. I have other investments where nobody knows I’ve got them. I put money into Indonesian oil a few years ago. I’m riding that one out, but it’s a handsome profit so far. Getty’s got an oil company and a collection of paintings. Big deal. The Sultan of Brunei is an out-and-out liar about what he owns. I can tell you, the most conservative estimate I can make of what I own – right now, this minute – is two billion nine hundred million dollars. That’s conservative, that’s on the shallow side.

  What’s the top?

  Three billion one. And if I wanted to use an optimum figure, including my Indonesian oil, it’s pushing three and a half billion. That makes me nearly twice as rich as Getty. The others, Hunt and the Mellons and Bob Smith, don’t even come close. The one who’s creeping up is Ludwig, the shipping guy. And of course one day someone’s going to invent a computer that the average citizen can use in his home, and a way to write and pay your bills with it and communicate with other computers, and that man or woman will automatically make $10 billion and be on top of the heap. And it will be some twenty-five-year old whiz kid, because the computer industry is a young man’s game.

  I’ll change my question. What does it mean to you to be the richest man in the world?

  Not a damned thing. Money is of no interest to me anymore. All I care about is that I have a little peace in the rest of my days, and freedom from the seven internal foes of humankind. You remember?

  Not offhand, but I’ll look it up. Who are you leaving all that money to that doesn’t interest you anymore?

  That’s in my will. Of course I won’t have it published before I die. Nobody knows the contents of my will but me, not even the people who helped me draw it up.

  I worked out all the variations, the ways in which I planned to divide my property on my death, and had a dozen typists type them up. I’ve done this several times. I had different sets of different bequests, all sorts of possibilities – I threw in a batch of red herrings. I had each of the secretaries type up a different version of the will, with each clause on a separate page. It was like taking a deck of cards and shuffling them. They couldn’t possibly know the eventual outcome. In one paragraph I’d leave Toolco to the Hughes Medical Institute. In another I’d leave Hughes Aircraft to the United States government, ha ha ha. And in another to my cousins in Houston, or a dog pound in Las Vegas, or a guy who once gave me a lift in the desert when I ran out of gas. When I got all these pages back I threw out what I didn’t want and arranged the right ones in the correct final order, and I had the last page, with my signature, witnessed by people in my organization. They saw only the last page.

  The secretaries couldn’t figure it out by seeing which pages were discarded, because I personally burned them and flushed the ashes down the toilet. You can reconstruct the writing on paper that’s been burned, you know. But I doubted that anyone was going to climb down into the cesspools under Los Angeles or Las Vegas to fi
nd the ashes.

  And I have one more question, if you don’t mind. A naive one.

  I know your naive questions pretty well by now. What’s this one: how many people have I murdered in my lifetime?

  I just wanted to ask you, after all you’ve gone through, in a long life with many achievements and many sorrows, what you believe in. Do you have a philosophy of life now? A guiding principle?

  That certainly is a naive question, but I’ll answer it. I can put it in one sentence. Live and let live. Privacy is all we’ve got – you, me, anybody. You can take any road in this world and if there are other people on it, no matter how crooked that road is, no one will pay serious attention to you except to flatter you and get things they want from you. But people will think you’re ‘normal.’

  If you cut your own road, go your own way without inviting anyone along, then everyone in the world will say you’re crazy, you took the wrong road. Because it is your own. You made it. People can’t stand that, unless of course you invite them along – in which case it’s not yours anymore and you might as well cut your losses and start all over again.

  Did it ever occur to you that it doesn’t make any difference what road you take, even if there are other people on it, as long as you’re independent? ‘If you are alone, you are your own man’ – according to Leonardo da Vinci.

  I like that. It could serve as a motto on my nonexistent family crest. You’ve said something intelligent. Now, why don’t you ask me an intelligent question instead of things like, ‘What’s your philosophy of life?’ and ‘How does it feel to be the richest man in the world?’

  What would you consider an intelligent question?

  Why don’t you ask, ‘Did you enjoy your breakfast today?’ That’s a question that makes sense.

  Did you enjoy your breakfast?

  Yes, I did. Fresh fruit is a gift from the planet. And since I’ve reached what’s undoubtedly the final decade of my life, you could also ask me what is my greatest ambition at this point.