The Empty Chair (22 page)

In crept the American . . . to darkness, much darker than he imagined. His eyes stung from the inchoate virus. Immediately, he saw the furry outline of his Master's chair.

That's odd. Did I leave it there?
Could
I have?

A wave of nausea. He closed his eyes and steadied himself. He thought harder—
no way
would he have left it. The chair was his responsibility and his alone. At conclusion of satsang,
there wasn't any question he'd have moved it back behind the case, where it normally lived. But at this moment, the American was unwell and lacked the clarity to be certain. The easy, confident relationship to reality that we take for granted, the ability to observe and process simple sensory data, to parse memory, had begun to decay. His mind whirred. Was it possible that at the end of Q&A, distracted by a rush of book and tape sales, he'd somehow forgotten to return the chair to its recess? And that the Great Guru, amused by his student's rare show of absent-mindedness, puckishly ordered it to remain in its derelict locale? The thought did seem a bit convoluted, farfetched . . .
all that
, just for another little something to laugh about at their gassy morning kitchen klatches. Strange hijinks . . . to keep the chair there—more
peculiar
, than funny—

He tried to recall yesterday's events. He'd been at the track taking care of some bookie business . . . but
had
he returned to Mogul Lane? Had he come back at all? Because surely
then
he would have seen the chair and moved it—though he wouldn't have left it there in the first place so what difference would it have made if he'd come back? Suddenly he questioned which came first, satsang or the visit to the track. Well, satsang, of course . . . but
had
he? Come back? (Now it was more about the sheer, arduous remembering.) Perhaps not—perhaps he'd gone straight home. Maybe he still
was
home! This morning, he dreamt he overslept; it would make things so much easier if he could still be dreaming. Still in bed, and deathly ill . . .

Something superseded his tumbling thoughts—

What's this?

A pile of blankets on the chair—
no!
He startled and retreated, his wobbly investigations literally coming to a head. He skittered to flip the light switch, then heard a woman's shriek: his own. The Great Guru sat upright in his chair, eyes closed in mid-sip of the elixir of Eternity, illuminated from within as if by a swallowed ceiling bulb. How bizarre! The
chela
drew closer to regard the face. Its dentureless mouth bore the inviolable smile of those who die in peace and struggle no more. (Of course, the Great Guru stopped struggling long ago.) The American grew calm. He listened—it occurred that no one heard him cry out. Strange . . . He sat in meditation with the body until the first rays of dawn penetrated the shop's window. He lit incense and candles and draped a blanket across his teacher's lap. Upstairs, bodies and voices began to shift.

Bedlam ensued, and wild disarray.

Everyone went out of their minds. The inner circle was confounded by anguish, waylaid by grief. The widow was the first to stabilize and the others raggedly followed suit. In misery, it remained vital to eat. Hence, engines were stoked—the Kitchen Cabinet was in full throttle, adhering to an ancient tradition mandating all mouths be fed from the ovens of the house of the holy man who had merged with the Godhead. Vast amounts of foods delivered round the clock were ceremonially recycled, simmering long enough on the stove to be stirred by the Great Guru's ladle; the neighborhood's potluck and covered plates revolved with speedy, solemn ritual through the upper apartments' quarters, their turnaround point being the den, the room said to be the most heavily imbued with the perfumed breath of the departed. (Even his bathroom was mined for hairs he'd shed, nails he'd clipped, for ambergris of earwax.) A host of activities, sacred and banal, carried forth amidst unthinkable, unmendable loss. When agonies reached a fatal pitch the brain intervened, reflexively enforcing time-outs, moratoriums on weeping and wailing, impromptu cease-fires—after all, tears needed to be replenished—caesuras in the song of suffering that allowed shattered devotees time to sleep, to eat, to bathe. The grief-stricken looked forward to such stupefaction the way workers do a holiday.

The stone of such a catastrophic loss makes ripples in the water like rings in the trunk of a mighty redwood. (Sorry for the fucked-up simile.) Mortality's clock ticks so slowly—then so quickly—that every hour of each successive day circling the ground zero of his death seemed to form a generation; so that within the week, when the body was burned on the Ganga, decades had already passed since the event. By the time Kura and I were finally informed, whole epochs had come and gone, civilizations fallen and risen again.

The American was well equipped to deal with postmortem concerns. He knew his logistics but more importantly was able to mask his turmoil of emotions with an assuaging air of almost sunny indifference. In his years with Baba, he'd become deeply enmeshed in the ashram's business and the widow trusted him implicitly. Normally, details of the funeral and other attendant decisions would redound to her; those responsibilities were summarily dropped in his lap. To the larger community, a number of arguments supported this wisdom. Many believed the unseen forces that awakened the American from his fever (and cleared his cupboard of tea) were the same ones that had guided him with invisible hand to Mogul Lane—in essence, he had been “summoned.” How otherwise to explain his teacher's baffling behavior? Why else would he have been downstairs at 4 a.m., instead of singing supplications in the den? Why would he have pulled out his chair and sat
waiting, on
this
morning, if it was not because he had chosen to die? It was obvious: the Great Guru carefully set the stage before invoking his favorite student to see him off.
A final satsang for an audience of one!
Any way you cut it, to discover the body of a saint is a fateful honor of inescapable import. And that he chose to meditate beside his beloved teacher was universally thought of as a magnificent gesture, which undoubtedly eased the Great Guru's passage through the bardo of death. To say the American's status rose higher each day would be an understatement.

But the most “auspicious” sign of all was the nightmare he had of the
rishi
pursued by demons yet lightheartedly impervious to assault. He'd instantly regretted recounting his dream to the widow, an indiscretion he blamed on fatigue and the vulnerability of the moment. Too late . . . she took it as a further sign of providence.

The guru was out of the bottle and would soon be hell-bent on granting a wish—whether it be the American's or not.

After the cremation, after the flowers and feasts and gutted candles, after the bitter herbs of death metamorphosized into the nectar of gratitude to God for having graced all of them with the privilege of having known and loved such a saint,
after the frozen river of tears thawed enough to restore hearts and minds to the modest homes they'd decamped, after everything, came The Question, that hung in the air like a fiery harvest moon obscured by clouds. A storm of a question, whose distant rhetorical rumblings would soon be exchanged for lightning, hail and thundered demands:
Who would sit in the Great Guru's chair?

The American slept little in the weeks following the death.

He no longer went home at night, preferring to lie on a straw mat on the floor of the shop. He felt beyond exhaustion.

And what about the chair? The widow ordered it to be left exactly where it was found. The American would stare at it before drifting off, almost against his will, his imagination at play in the shifting chiaroscuro. If he squinted just right, he could trick himself into seeing a seated figure; with another sleight of eye, the chair vanished altogether . . .

Though sometimes a chair was just a chair—the saddest realization of all.

During this in-between time he thought about the future but the farthest he got was trying to envision a life without his teacher. The prospect took the wind out of him.

Not long after, the widow invited him into the den where her husband used to meditate and sing morning devotionals. She got right down to troubling business.

“
You must take the chair!
7
It is your
time.
God
willed
it—even
you
cannot challenge the events of that morning. They were
preordained.
And who is there better than you for the job? If you know,
do
tell. You must
listen.
Twas
you
who sat at Baba's feet for years. Twas
you
who helped spread his teachings wide and far—you know them cold! Your
body
is knowing them too, not just your mind. This you cannot challenge! What I am saying, you have an
obligation.
You have a
duty.
That is what I am saying. He that is immortal
loved
you. He invited you to the far corners of his heart, and
other
places, where
no one
has traveled, not even
myself!
I beg you to consider! There are many good reasons to take the chair other than those I enumerated. The ones I am giving you now are the
best
reasons, the most
obvious
,
for they are rooted in
simplicity
and
common sense.
But I contest there are
many others
,
and some among them which are
more
than quite pressing.
Surely, you are naïve to what I'm referring? I am telling you first to
consider
—then
reconsider.
You must take the chair! Now,
good.
Go! We shall talk again.”

That night the American slept at home.

You must take the chair!

He wanted to talk back, but what could he say?

You must take the chair!

It was like being warned by a gypsy or getting advice from a consigliere in a cheap mob drama . . . she made him feel like a hoodlum. And in
that
room, no less, that room of prayer, his
father's
room! He found himself fantasizing about leaving Bombay, something that never crossed his mind until now. He hadn't yet visited Benares; it was said all men must go
to Benares at least once in their lives. To die in Benares meant to escape the cycle of suffering and rebirth and gain direct admittance to nirvana. A vision
of himself in that ancient city grabbed hold.

For the next few days, the American went about his business on Mogul Lane. Millions of rupees had rained down since the Great Guru's death. All
dana
needed to be carefully logged and accounted for; such scrupulousness seemed more important now than ever. He was glad the “books” were in order, no small thanks to his past efforts. The Kitchen Cabinet toadies continued to unnerve, sneakily lobbying for his surrender to promotion to
chairman
—though he knew they were simply doing the widow's bidding. The American cauterized the wounds in his heart with his contempt for her sleazy proposition. He knew it was only a matter of time before she cornered him again yet whenever he mentally composed a vicious response to her entreaties, he pulled up short. “What am I doing? After all, this is the woman my beloved teacher chose to marry. The union the Source smiled upon!”

Soon he was back in the den. And this time, the widow wasn't fucking around.

“The situation grows
very dire
. I think you do not have a full understanding of what is at stake! As you Americans say,
let me lay it out for you.
Through
intermediaries
,
the member of a very powerful
family
has expressed keen interest in buying the shop—
lock, stock and kaboom
—for a sum even
you
would not believe if I told it to you straight to your face. It seems this
family
member,
who shall remain
nameless
, was a
devotee
who did not
emerge
from the closet
as
a devotee until
after
Baba's death . . . for this, I was given no reason. So be it. This
family
member is, at the current moment, working through the
most
arcane
of municipal channels—apparently, the
family
to which he belongs has a
raft
of local politicians firmly in
pocket.
The
intermediaries
of whom I speak have
roundly expressed
this family member's
wish
, should he succeed in his efforts to become said property's owner, to transform the
entire block
into a
spiritual amusement park
—your guru's
tobacco shop
being the tour's crowning terminus! But I was told by the
intermediary
not to
worry.
You see, the intermediary has
virtually guaranteed
that the
family
member has given his word: my husband's
‘boutique'
shall be
strictly maintained up to
‘current museum standards.'
Why, the
intermediary
even suggested the
siddha
's
chair be placed on
display
behind
bulletproof glass
!

“My American friend, I won't say the money isn't
tempting.
No. I am not so foolish to make such a proclamation. As you know, Baba did not care a
whit
about it, money's merely a
tool.
The princely sum—
kingly!
—offered by this
intermediary person
would allow me to set up house very nicely, in a neighborhood even
more
pleasant than this. Because here there are no trees and I have been missing them since I was a girl. I am no martyr. I refuse to cling to appearances!—‘Guru Ma, widow of the Great Guru,' and so forth.
If
I accept his monies, quite a
bit
would be left over to service the impoverished.
More
than quite a bit, so
more's the pity.
Make no mistake: I
am
your guru's widow but rest insured I have no qualms standing upon the neck of ceremony! Because when I am naughty, it does occur that an ‘Advaita Museum' might even cause Baba a few grand
guffaws
!
But herein lies the
problem
,
my American friend:
this arguably
grotesque
proposal only stands up for limited engagement—I am hearing the political bosses are already working
hard
for the intermediary's
money.
And
if
they succeed, there is a
distinct chance
I shall have but
no choice
in the matter. The offer shall expire . . . and I shall be forced to sell for a song!

“An interesting
alternative
reared its hind legs not just
three hours ago
—I tell you, things are flying fast and furious! It seems a man of
shady origin
expressed the desire to
buy us out
for the sole purpose of providing a place for his harlot daughter to bed down. The pair came to see me. The air is not yet clear of their stink; not even the fattest of Baba's cigars could conceal the rank smell of flesh and greed left in their trail. This
seedy
character
had the amazing gall to say he was not merely an
acolyte
of Baba but an Advaita scholar
to boot! He took me aside to confess it was his sincere hope that whichever ‘essences' of the venerable saint remained—the hissing pronunciation of the word was revolting!—that whichever
essences
were left behind
might have a
‘salutary
effect'
upon the disease-ridden prostitute he calls his daughter.
‘Dear sir, spend your money in buying a clinic instead! One with a good supply of penicillin!' I held my tongue. Meanwhile, the mini-skirted
rodent
paced the room as we spoke, looking this way and that, like a decorator who stepped in shite.
To put an end to our whispering, which she didn't like at all, the strumpet sashayed over—hardly dressed at all, my friend!—and began prattling on about Oxford and Cambridge! Sheer lunacy! She spoke more nonsense than her father. And how she turned on the slutty
charm
. As if
I
was her next conquest!