He was rewarded with short, colourful flashes. Images as though painted on glass, which constantly changed shapes. The pictures were accompanied by fragments of knowledge. Of understanding.
He saw a tall, gaunt man working in a different parts of the East End of London. The man was a physician who had forsaken his fashionable practice and catered only to the poor. He never asked for money. He’d been attacked a few more times. It did not dissuade him. He kept telling himself that if he hadn’t been there, in that tavern that night, Maxine would still be alive. He couldn’t save her. He was trying to save everybody else.
Sacha shook his head. It all became very clear. He knew exactly what he had to do.
After all was said and done, Sacha returned once again to the stock market on the Internet. Let’s face it, he reasoned, no one lost in this game. For every buyer there had to be a seller. And vice versa. It wasn’t as though he had insider information about Initial Public Offerings. He played fair and square. It took a little longer but nothing would make his mother happier if it took him a whole year. It very nearly did. In a way, it was his first holiday in twenty-two years.
Chapter 15
Mother’s Town
What now? Every man, woman and child must translate their own, individual insights into a plan of action. He or she may be wrong. But a time comes when fear of making a mistake must be overcome. Sacha had reached this stage.
He had to act.
There were preliminaries that had to be done. In the Far East, it was an accepted practice, even for Buddhist monks, to sustain themselves with a begging bowl. In the West, while one might emulate this method to barely stay alive, it hardly sufficed if one’s field of endeavour covered a larger area. Sacha had to prepare himself for all contingencies.
By the following June, he finally reached the state known as financial independence. It meant that the income from his investments was equal to his projected expenses. He transferred all his assets to his father’s account in exchange for Alec keeping it alive, and wiring him money as needed. After some objections presumably for form’s sake, Alec overcame his reticence and agreed. It could have been just a bit embarrassing for Alec to receive a large sum of money from his son who was just twenty-three years old. A mere stripling compared to the years of effort he’d put in himself to develop his own position. In spite of Dr. Alexander Baldwin’s stature in the academic circles, and his undeniably successful career, Sacha’s father had not ‘put aside’ anything substantial for old age. It seemed that Sacha, unwittingly, took care of that.
“Dad,” Sacha argued over Alec’s objections, “what you have given me already cannot possibly be translated into money.”
What Sacha had in mind was that any ‘normal’ parent would have sent his delinquent son to a psychiatrist, or had him certified and committed for the rest of his ineffectual life. If it hadn’t been for his father’s own youthful ‘fancies’, as he’d occasionally called them, Sacha would not have been afforded the freedom to develop in his own particular, curiously eccentric, way.
What Sacha did not tell his father was that the investment account he’d opened initially had been registered in the name of Alexander Baldwin, a name he legally shared with his father, with the power of attorney reserved for himself. That way Sacha had the wisdom to avoid any transfer duties on which the menials of the various governmental agencies would gladly lay their greedy fingers. Legally, the capital was his father’s already. As for Sacha’s projected expenses, the amount was relatively modest. As modest as his needs.
Alicia’s needs were quite different. Just before Sacha left for another of his quests, she wanted to learn his ‘trick’ as she called it. The trick of staying at home, playing with the computer and ending up a millionaire.
“You are a millionaire, darling, aren’t you?”
“Hardly, Grandma. I don’t need much money,” he said with a mischievous smile, as though he had the world by the horns. But then he got serious and tried to explain the system he’d used on the Internet. He tried hard.
“It’s just work, Grandma. Anyone can do it,” Sacha insisted. He’d spent hours trying to explain his method to his grandmother––to no avail. Either he was an inept teacher, or Alicia an inept student. And then he reminded himself, again, that each one of us serves a different purpose. We are endowed with different talents. We shouldn’t venture into other fields until our mission is fulfilled. Unfortunately when it is, we... die. A vicious circle. That’s why they call it the Wheel of Awagawan—the Wheel of Life, Death, and Rebirth.
But there must have been a reason for Alicia’s apparent need. Sacha prodded his Grandma gently until she confessed that she felt guilty that throughout her life she lived like a sponge off other people.
“First your grandfather kept me. Then Desmond. It doesn’t seem fair,” she concluded.
“I can’t speak for your first husband, Grandma, but from what I hear from Dad, you made his father a very happy man. What was the going rate for happiness in those days? As for Desmond, you gave him more than you could possibly imagine,” Sacha assured her.
“Perhaps, but not in financial terms,” she insisted.
“Did Desmond ever ask you to contribute?”
“Don’t be silly. He would have been too proud for that.”
“Then...?” Sacha prodded, but Alicia was driving at something that she didn’t want to readily admit. Actually Sacha knew that Grandma had inherited her first husband’s estate that made her virtually independent.
“You wouldn’t understand,” she stated categorically.
“Try me,” he gave her his best boyish grin.
She remained silent for some minutes. Then the words came out in a flood. The crux of it was that she wanted Desmond’s son to have some tangible memory of his father. She wanted exactly the same for Alec and Suzy.
“He never really knew his father. He only saw his anger, then his agony, and finally his sorrow. But that wasn’t Des at all. It’s so unfair...”
Sacha gathered that Alicia deemed it unfair to both, Desmond and his son.
“And you too, Sacha,” she continued. “I want you also to have something to remember Desmond by, and…”
Sacha listened patiently. Grandma had to get all those pent up emotions out of her system. She must have been stewing on them for some time now. Finally she stopped, sighed deeply, and looked up at Sacha like a wounded cocker spaniel. Sacha tried hard to keep a straight face.
“I wish you would leave me out of the equation, Grandma. My memories of Desmond are as fresh today as they ever were. I don’t need material reinforcement. As for my parents, surely they are fully independent and they reserve a special spot in their heart for Des. I’m confident that they will treasure their memories for as long as they live… a lot longer, than you can possibly imagine…” Sacha grinned at his thoughts. “Now Desmond’s son, that’s another story. But why do you want to give him material memories?”
“What else can I give him?”
This time Sacha sighed. Why do people always think that the transient, material things are those that last? The very reverse is true. Even emotions last longer. Ideas last longer still. But love lasts longest of all. When you leave this Earth, you take it with you, yet it lingers on, and on, often for ages. Some say it never dies.
“You will think of something, Grandma. You always do.”
The next day Alicia set about painting Desmond’s portrait. Months later, Suzy told him that Alicia was on her eleventh painting. Each one depicted a different facet of Desmond’s personality. She must have known her husband inside out. She must have loved him even more. Suzy told him that she’d never seen such diversity in the face of a single person. There was the stringent intellectual, the prolific ideas man, the devoted father/protector of all his students, the man of a great sense of humor, a practical joker, a devoted husband, a loyal friend and family man.
“Why do you paint so many of them,” Suzy had asked.
“Because none of them show
the true Desmond,” Alicia replied. “They are like flashes of nearby objects seen through a window of a moving train. Fragments. And Desmond was so much more than a series of flashes. I must capture them all at the same time.”
Sacha had a good idea what she would do with her paintings in her own good time. Dear Grandma…
Recently Sacha was growing more aware of his power over the elements, over physical reality, yet he was very hesitant to use it. It seemed wrong. He felt that his power belonged to another realm—that its efficacy might too easily be abused here. He felt he had learned the iniquities, the dark side, perhaps even the boundaries of human nature, but refused to take advantage on his knowledge. This, too, was a vicious circle. He continued to regard people as globes of light. For him their aura was more important than their facial features. Their external appearance was no more than a dust cover on a book. It gave you a first impression, but it told you little or nothing about the quality within. The difference was that Sacha knew their true nature, whereas people themselves made little effort to discover it on their own.
In many of them, the light within was very dim. So many protective layers covered it, making it almost indiscernible. The aura they displayed was of a dirty dark shade of brown. There was no joy in it. Not even hope.
Sacha felt lost.
Escaping into the higher realms brought him temporary relief. Seemingly, he would spend hours suspended in the vastness of space, inhaling the beauty of stars being born, new universes spewing from the mysterious entrails of gigantic black holes which countless ages ago swallowed innumerable galaxies. In the fullness of time, new life would evolve on new planets, seeded with the complex atoms born in the fiery hearts of countless stars. He collapsed time and witnessed new ornaments of God coming into being. Far Country was his only real solace. The only realm where he felt all-powerful, confident; where he didn’t look for solutions, but acted on impulse. His individual thoughts crossed millennia of time, traversing light-years in the blink of an eye.
Such was his playground.
Such was the glory of the Far Country.
And then, for a timeless moment he would cleanse his mind of all thought and rise to the Undiscovered Realm. Here no one created, no one thought of great universes. Here he felt oneness with all of them. He was light within light. He was life, consciousness itself. He was eternity encapsulated in a single sphere of light.
Yet no matter how long he remained in those august realms, how wonderful his experiences within those wondrous states of consciousness, he always returned to physical reality, to Earth, in exactly the same place, at the precise moment of his departure. To his mother’s delight, he no longer suffered from the peek-a-boo syndrome. He’d left that to her cats, purring happily on the terrace rail of Solana Beach villa. But he couldn’t escape his destiny, any more than other creatures walking this valley of tears. No matter how hard he tried. After all, it was his own dream he was living.
“But what happens when I don’t know what my particular dream is?” he mused sadly.
There were moments when Sacha envied his own parents. They were happy, contented with the niche they’d created for themselves. He could choose to live their innocuous life of contentment. Only, about then, he was beginning to experience a deep sense of frustration. It was time to embark on his own journey. Not as a youth, with little or no responsibility, but as an adult. He had to understand as a man.
He wasn’t sure why he’d picked Montreal. He knew he had to be on his own. Montreal offered at least a tenuous link with the past. It was his mother’s town. Long ago, his father has adopted a cosmopolitan frame of mind. But for mother Montreal was a city where she’d been carefree; where she had spent the innocent years of her life. It might give me a crutch, Sacha thought, something to lean on, in an hour of need.
In the hour of decision.
He found a B&B near the center of town. It guaranteed at least one meal a day. He seldom used public transport, preferring to walk. The Centre Ville location was necessary for his purpose. He spent the next few days walking the streets, watching, absorbing, determined to familiarize himself with the soul of Ville de Montréal. It was principally a French city, although the language spoken was far from the French he’d enjoyed at the Sorbonne. It was a parody of a language, a nasal goulash of mostly French, but a great many English words thrown in to add spice. Only the result was not very tasty.
No matter. He didn’t have to talk; he mostly listened.
The city had a distinct flavour of its own—and not just the language. People seemed to display a lighter demeanour. They got wholeheartedly involved in local political squabbles as though their life depended on them. The next moment they would share a Molson or a Labatte, and transfer their allegiance from politics to Les Canadiens, or another hockey team; all with the same intense, overtly shallow yet deeply emotional passion. Finally, they would agree to meet for another bout of verbal abuse... in great equanimity. Sacha recalled that Italians were also like that. They didn’t take life all that seriously, either.
In late afternoon he took a stroll to the top of Mount Royal: a lush verdant bouquet, smack in the middle of the city. Here, one could get lost in the richness of trees and foliage––a veritable jungle. By contrast, from some of the lookouts, on a clear day one could see the distant mountains of Vermont, in the USA he’d left behind.
He spent his first few evenings in a small terraced cafe on Rue Saint-Denis. He ordered eau mineral au citron and tried to eavesdrop on the conversations taking place at the adjoining tables. The local vernacular really wasn’t easy to grasp, but after a few hours and four more bottles of mineral water, he began to pick up its rhythms. They tended to tilt their sentences upwards as if asking a question. And the pronunciation wasn’t that impossible once you got used to it. Sacha was a very fast learner. It was fun to pick up, what to him was virtually, a new language. But he wouldn’t dare express this sentiment aloud. Both his parents had warned him that the Quebecois and Quebequoises were very touchy about their culture.
Very touchy, indeed.
On the third day he took a train to Kingston, a smallish town in the adjoining Province. He’d promised mother to see the JJs, at first opportunity. Grandma Joan was overjoyed. But only after he’d introduced himself.
“If it weren’t for your hair, Sacha, I would never have suspected it was you!” she assured him.
And then she took him in her frail arms, stood up on her toes, and insisted on kissing both his cheeks, stroking his hair, patting him on the back, feeling his muscles and generally making a thorough inspection of his physical condition.
“Will I pass?” he asked finally.
“Oh, I am sorry!” she smiled, evidently quite unaware of her detailed scrutiny. “It’s just that you were a boy. A lad. We loved you so much. Of course we still love you... Oh, come in, do come in…” And she led him by the arm to the living room.
“Can I say hello to Grandpa John?”
Her face lost some of its luster. “You don’t know? Suzy didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what, Grandma?”
“John had a stroke last week. Since he already suffered from Alzheimer’s, they kept him at the Lakeshore General. They said it was for observation, but… I couldn’t possibly cope anymore.”
As she talked, her eyes left his face and drifted towards the far horizon beyond the Lake Ontario. Her eyes seemed to be probing somewhere, out there, where the sky met the earth, or water. Sacha felt she longed for release. Release from fear? The last few years with John must have been very trying. As joyful as she was a minute or two ago, now she looked drained. Sacha suspected she would rather die than go through those years again. Yet it was not her death, she feared. It was John’s. With her next breath, she said as much. Consciously or not, it was a cry for help.
Sacha did not respond immediately. It never crossed his mind that people could be afraid to die. He suspected that fear of death was almost exclusively a fear of the unknown. That,
and the ensuing loneliness for those left behind. If only they knew that we are never alone…
Perhaps when he would eventually come face to face with the end of his journey, he would also experience fear. But he was too young to even think about that. In both cases he’d witnessed so far, he’d experienced death as a fait accompli. Desmond was already on his way, and Maxine... well, in that reality he hadn’t had the power to influence her mind. Maxine’s death prayed heavily on his own conscience. Even now.
As he’d done before with Maria, he held Joan at arm’s length and focused her attention with his eyes. He showed her fragments of his own reality. Of his own perception of the universal reality. Of the actuality of Home Planet. Joan wouldn’t have learned how to realign her understanding in an instant. Usually, it took a lifetime. But for some time she would wonder why she would experience successive waves of inexplicable inner peace. Waves of an unconditional sense of acceptance––not to be confused with resignation.
Sacha could only heal the symptoms, not the disease. The disease was a state of mind we all create, painstakingly, over successive embodiments.
Yet in the days to come, Joan imagined she saw a strange light within John. It was not really a light but a warmth, a luminescence that was at odds with his physical condition. She became convinced that whatever John presented to the outside world, to the doctors and nurses, even to her, was not the real John. It was just, well... it was just his shadow. She rediscovered the John she’d known and loved. The real John.
Arjuna would call it his Atma.
The next day Joan asked Sacha if he could take a look at Princess III, the 36-foot Bayfield yacht moored at the Kingston Municipal Marina. He’d sailed the yacht before, as a youngster.
“I suppose we’ll have to sell her. It’s been years since we... since John and I put a foot on her deck. We kept her in case you or Suzy and Alec would want to come up.”
Sacha—The Way Back (Alexander Trilogy Book III) Page 20
