The Empty Chair (33 page)

“If you've read this far, I assume you shall read the rest, and with great care. For the love of God, I urge you with every fiber of my being to continue!

“The
jnani
conjured an in-depth précis of your histories together—such was his art (and his heart) that within the shortest while I knew more than was possible and felt too like I'd been along on your journeys! Then he told me something which really shocked me to Hell. Guruji said that only
two weeks prior
to your appearance at the cave, he had been ready to depart this Earth. And
please
, sir,
do
understand God saw fit that the village idiot—myself!—was at least blesséd with the awareness that before him stood a saint of all saints! I am certain that such a man as you—who sat vigil at the foot of this precious being for so many years—cannot be incognisant of the fact that an enlightened man has the ability to choose the date of his liberation from the Great Wheel . . . and just as he may summon death, so are the most powerful
rishis
able to
postpone
their departures as well. The Hermit averred that on the very morning he was poised to merge with that essence
which is Silence—two weeks before you came to our village—a mystical Voice bade him delay. Now, the Hermit was always faithful to the commands of that Voice, as it belonged to his teacher, the Great Guru himself, and refused to manifest excepting upon occasions of categorical importance. Most charmingly, he added how there were many things he did not understand (this, I very much doubted), and what a privilege it was to still delight in the inscrutable.

“We sat in the cave not long after you had gone and he told me that when he saw you enter the glen, all was suddenly understood. ‘The final veil had lifted.' Perhaps it seemed to you as if he'd been expecting your arrival, for in a sense he was. The Hermit said he went back to raking the leaves of destiny and gratefully rejoiced, praising anew the wondrous Universe and everything unimaginable Mother dared conceive. He told me his life had come full circle and the beautiful dance was nothing more nor less than
doings
choreographed by the Source. He said that years ago you freed him from that awful business of being a false sage—though I can never believe he could be such a thing!—that
you alone
were the catalyst of his enlightenment . . . and now you had come to free him one last time! Do you remember what his feet looked like? When you saw him raking? The edema? Did you know they swelled up just hours before you arrived? Guruji said it happened
spontaneously
, in ‘energetic' memory of your ashram touch . . .

“In our tête-à-tête, the Hermit spoke of that fateful day he recoiled whilst you pressed his feet in tribute, each finger like the sting of ‘10,000 hornets.' He told me it was
your touch
that raised the curtain—then lowered the boom! And how it took seven anguished years after that to leave the damnable chair behind . . . Guruji instructed me to recount these words to you at once, upon your anticipated return,
so you too could be set free.
He said it pained him to see you suffer needlessly and that he would have waited for you but could no longer delay his journey. I repeat myself when I say I was prepared to share with you over dinner all that he had commanded me to, but you'd already
vamoosed
—again!—and one thing led to another . . . over weeks and months . . . the flooding and all . . . not that I'm looking to make excuses for my own dereliction . . . even though it might be most charitably understood, as I have written so very few letters in my lifetime . . . in fact, have
never
put pen to pencil without my Guruji making the gentlest of hints and corrections over my shoulder so to speak, for he used to guide my hand in the occasional personal missive or official proclamation . . . such are the reasons—not excuses nor defence! (Nor not meant to be, really) . . . as to my paralysis for more than half a year. I was in abject misery at the impossibility of distilling the words of a
jnani
and panicked that his message would be so garbled as to lose its irrelevance
entirely
. My hesitation only worked to compound my dread. Now, I feel only shame at my careless delinquency, and pray you forgive!

“Do you know how the body of the saintly Hermit was discovered? In the cave, on its knees before the chair, in eternal obeisance. My grandson was thus honored to discover the Beloved One poised in the bardo between this life and the Pure Land, and came running in a lather. We went back together; and that was where I saw him, his elegant, attenuated fingers frozen in a caress upon the approximate metatarsals of his unseen master! For Ramana Maharshi did say, ‘The real feet of Bhagavan exist only in the heart of the devotee' . . . During the extraordinary conference I keep referring to, the Hermit poignantly avouched—it was the first time I ever saw the tears of a saint!—that he had been the first to descry the body of
his
teacher, in Bombay, the difference being that unlike the posture of the American in death, the Great Guru had taken full possession of the chair, like the pilot of a ‘great vehicle' come home. Twas the Great Guru's fate to launch himself into the Unknowable from the chair, that prosaic cynosure whose indifferent ‘thereness' (the exacting word used by the Hermit), analogous to Infinity itself, had been polished by thousands of satsang sittings as a stone smoothed by the sea, transformed into psalm and song. The Hermit was unbashful to inform that while it was his
teacher's destiny to be carried to Silence
in a golden throne, it was his own to be liberated by traveling
alongside
the Great Guru in the guise of supplicant, a pilgrim forever ‘at his feet' in service and surrender. He said that in the end, whether one sat in the chair or kneeled before it, was a thing governed by stars and individual temperament, and one was not better than the other.

“The Hermit insisted your arrival was an omen that his Earthly cycle had ended. I'm afraid I'm being clumsy . . . he said it so much simpler! But hear me out
—
for this next is of
ultimate importance
. When Guruji told you his
cave chair
was the ‘second guru,' it was naught but an impish lie that he couldn't resist in the moment, because you were so incensed—like a charging bull! He knew you weren't ready to hear the Truth. So he made that impish remark to defuse, but (as things turned out) had no time to rectify it—until now—through me. What he did not have the chance to impart was . . .
the second guru was you!
You
were that teacher who comes along (if one is so blesséd) to make sense of the first—
you
were the one who illuminated all that the Great Guru had tried to show him, which he never fully understood. This knowledge only came to him in the final weeks of his life . . .

“How magnificent, he said, is God and his workings!

“He asked me to convey his words as best I could and to thank you by proxy. I hope to Krishna you will deign to send a reply through Mister Quasimodo, one hell of a guy, so at least I may know the letter found its mark! All of my life I have adapted to failure but could not go quietly to my grave knowing this memo had never been delivered . . .”

Shit
—
I'm getting a headache! Probably not a good idea to read by candlelight, huh?

Queenie set the pages down and closed her eyes, looking within. She rubbed the bridge of her nose then used both hands to rub her temples. Someone brought a pill and she swallowed it with a gulp of wine. She
lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, closing her eyes again.

Can I paraphrase the rest? The letter closed with a heartfelt apology to “Sri Bela” for not having treated him as justly deserved. The elder regretted he'd been unable to comprehend earlier that Kura was “also a saint who walked amongst us. For who else but a saint might have the power to mean so much—
everything!
—to one as glorious as the
jnani
? To have been the
catalyst
to freedom . . . and to top it off, to meet him at journey's end so he might properly return to Mother's arms! Who else but a fellow traveler could effect this?” He even asked (in the diffident way one asks of a soothsayer) if there was any meaning to his grandson finding the body in the cave—was it a sign the boy himself might become a saint? He proclaimed he'd been twice-blessed by God for arranging the divine intersection of his meager life with that of Kura and the Hermit's, then wrapped things up by extending a “standing room invitation.” “The Dashir Cave shall be up to snuff within the month, jewel-hearted one! It awaits you, as do we all! We are forever in your debt and at your service!”

O—I almost forgot. And this is pretty good. He wrote that the theft of the chair—he didn't quite use that word but something thereabouts—ah yes, “purloined”! He used
purloined
—he said, “After my talk with the Hermit, your action made eminent sense.” Or something like that. I'll read it to you tomorrow when I can see straight . . . the
gist
of it being, he drew enormous comfort knowing the chair was back in Kura's possession, “restored to its rightful place in the lineage of Kings.” What he couldn't have imagined was that having that chair felt like a curse; that's how Kura described it in his diary. So he set about what was to become a final chore.

He retrieved the curiosity from the closet, unpacked it, and set it opposite his desk, as if awaiting a visitor. He decided that the only way to make things right—to lift the curse, I suppose—was to return that which did not belong to him. The sole person fit for the assignment was Quasimodo, who not only was well familiar with the village and its obscure location but more importantly had a warm relationship with the elder. His wishes were to be taped to the chair in the form of two notes; one addressed to “Mr. Q,” and a second to Justine, Kura's secretary, informing her that the courier was to receive a $25,000 bonus upon verification the deed was done.

After outlining the plan in his journal, Kura collapsed and died.

I make it a habit never to go to funerals.

Our long goodbye ended in Delhi—Lordy, he looked so fine in his blue serge suit! Besides, I had no desire to be in Paris on a rainy Thursday, stranded and bereft. Do you know the Vallejo poem?

I will die in Paris, on a rainy day,

on some day I already remember
 . . .

Isn't that lovely?

And that's the end of my story.

—O! Good question. The answer is, my name and address had literally been glued to one of the diaries, along with a proviso that all volumes be forwarded to me upon his death. I suppose he must have had a presentiment. I guess there wasn't anyone in his life he felt closer to . . . and I feel really honored by that.

I've only recently begun to dip into the journals from the late '70s/early '80s, after Kura returned from Bombay to Paris. O man, he was
completely
at sea. He was using, heavily. Coke and heroin—his health was really going to shit. (He had the heart attack in '92.) As always, he had an amazing network of friends. Jodorowsky, of course. Karl Lagerfeld, Olivia de Havilland. And there was Genet . . . That surprised me—I didn't think
anyone
knew Genet. And I don't know how it happened, but he met Carlos Castaneda. In Paris. Castaneda was one of his heroes. They had lunches and dinners over a month's time. And there was this rather astonishing conversation Kura transcribed that foreshadowed the American's remarks at Dashir Cave. Evidently, Castaneda told him the same thing: that it was imperative to have a second teacher! Castaneda said that
his
second teacher was Death; that Death helped him untangle everything he'd been taught by the Yaqui Indian sorcerer Don Juan Matus. It interested me that Kura wrote about Castaneda kind of
upbraiding
him. Castaneda
admonished
that Death had been Kura's first
teacher—I'm not sure exactly what Kura had divulged about his violent past—and seemed to chastise him for never having understood “a single word Death was saying.” Can you imagine? He wrote that Castaneda said something like, “Death taught you
everything
and you understood nothing! When you find that second teacher, be sure to give him your
full attention.
The second teacher will tell you—
show
you—what was on Death's mind.” When I read the passage, I wondered if Kura had completely forgotten about it, even after the American had said as much.

Anyway, are you hungry? Did
anything
I say make sense to you, Bruce? Let's walk for just a bit—
[We did, circumnavigating the tent in ever-expanding circles in the cold night air until we were far enough away from the fire to be enveloped in the off-putting, syrupy darkness]
I've spoken in so many people's voices over the last few days that I'm hoping you'll indulge me a few remarks that are wholly my own. What a concept, huh?
[Queenie went quiet
—
I presumed to gather her thoughts. There wasn't enough moonlight to see her face let alone its expression. She walked farther away, huddling into her cape and scarves. Slowly and unobtrusively, I moved toward her to catch up. She was crying] Whoa.
O!—no—I'm okay. I am. It's just that . . . I don't know—suddenly I got so
sad.
O Jesus. It just kind of hit me! I guess I've been holding it in. I guess I've been—whoa! Sorry! I'm crying like a freakin' baby over here . . . I guess there's something so—
beautiful
about it. The whole deal . . . “The figure in the carpet.” I know
Kura
must have seen it too, I mean, the beauty.
Had
to have, in the end. At the end . . . 'cause he wasn't a dummy. He was
no dummy
,
not my Kura! It's just so . . . it's all so
compelling
,
don't you think, Bruce? No? “The gangster and the guru”—ha! Call Hollywood, somebody! But oh my god, such
anguish
in the last half of his life
.
The last
third.
Especially that last year or so . . . boy oh boy oh boy. And all because he thought his teacher had betrayed him! That's a hell of a resentment to carry . . .
thirty years
,
that's how long it took, it took
thirty years
for the mouth of the snake to clamp on its tail and complete the circle.
[looks up]
You know, I've always loved the stars. Loved, loved,
loved.
I was intrigued by the constellations early on because of my name. That's ego for ya. Learned everything about them—when they were visible, when not, what part of the sky—knew all the myths behind them. So that's what I did with those three, from the penthouse. When I got back from Delhi . . . on one of those freezing, crystal clear New York nights when the sky looks like—a painted Jesus on black velour. Looked up and figured out who would go
where.
I conjured the Great Guru— “The Teacher”—sitting on his galactic throne; the American—“The Supplicant”—kneeling at his guru's feet. And there was Kura—“The Guide”—completing the trinity. No Catholic reference intended.