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Gurus
Come In Many Guises
by Wendy Freebourne
'I've found my own house, Kumar. I'm moving out,' I tell him. I'm
finally breaking away. He doesn't like that.
He comes to visit on a Saturday morning, unannounced. I'm wearing
the embroidered cheesecloth dress I wore for my birthday party, the
debut he made for me in his London flat, when he invited his famous
friends. Now I'm wearing it as a nightdress.
'It won't be the same between us, Sanchia.' He likes to have his lovers
living in. I ignore his warning. I feel his eyes caressing the curves
of my body. Twice my age, Buddha shaped, grey bearded, magnetic, he
feels uncomfortable on my territory. 'My car is known in the area.
People will see it parked outside.' There are people about, shopping
in town. My humble abode is a semi on a new estate. He's ashamed of
me now. Kumar's house is architect-designed; it sits in acres of parkland.
I go back to collect my
things, fall down a hole on the way and wrench my ankle. He hauls
me back, puts a curry poultice on it, lures me into his bed for comfort.
He winches me in, makes love to me, 'You need to stay with me. It
will take a week to heal.' It's not broken. I hobble home next morning.
The next week we go to our
favourite French restaurant for dinner after work, as we often do;
Rowena's there, a new disciple from London. She has long black hair
and round, innocent eyes that dilate as she gazes into his. She's
even younger than me. Kumar sits next to her. He hasn't said she was
coming. She doesn't know she's my replacement, but it's obvious to
me he's been training her up.
Rowena is driving his Mercedes, already familiar with it. He's in
the passenger seat. I'm on the back burner. 'I thought I was spending
the night with you.' I whisper out of her earshot, demeaning myself,
a hopeless protest. They drop me off and go home together.
I am too abandoned to be alone. I go to Michael and Heather's. They
make me a bed on their couch. 'The old man's dumped me.' We call him
that, we who work with him, his inner circle. 'He's found someone
else.' They've already seen him with Rowena. They hadn't told me.
Now they let me cry. Betrayal is the most excruciating pain I know.
By morning, grief becomes
sweet and releasing, leaving me liberated. I am free.
'I don't know what to do now?' I tell Kumar – my guru.
'You need to experience emptiness.'
'How?'
'A great Lama is coming.'
'When?'
'Twenty-ninth of
July.'
He won't say where.
'If you're meant to meet him, you will find him.'
I try to find out more. Michael gives me the number of a friend of
a friend of his who's a Buddhist. They give me another number. I have
to wait a week. There's no one there. It's the twenty-first of July
when finally someone answers the 'phone.
'He's coming tomorrow,' they tell me. Kumar gave me the wrong date.
I go to London straight
away, to meeting rooms in Euston Road. The Lama talks to us in Tibetan.
An interpreter translates. I only listen to the Lama. I am empty of
thoughts in his presence. I am shining. I want to be his pupil. Kumar
is there with Rowena, but it doesn't bother me.
You're looking at me across the room, blond, not tall, but compact,
wiry, self-contained. You approach me in the crush of milling bodies.
You meet me with warm brown eyes, a shy smile. I don't know you.
'I've been watching you.'
While I was being empty?
'Aren't you . . .?'
I've not seen you around the old man. I can't put you into context.
Which group of people do you belong to? Where do I file you?
'It's Sanchia, isn't it?'
'Yes, but . . .' I'm searching
your face for clues.
'Your
grandmother . . .'
'My grandmother
. . .' The penny drops. I know who you are now.
'Alan Carter?'
Your ears
don't stick out any more. My lisp has limped away - long ago. You
belong to another lifetime, a different time warp, a precedent chapter.
'Used to live . . .'
'In your parents' house.'
'When we were five,' in unison.
We go for a drink in a bar.
Then you take me back to your place and play Leonard Cohen for me.
Later that night we are in unison again.
We make love the next night too. This time orgasm brings visions of
empty streets, concrete buildings shining on steamy pavements, streetlights
haloed by yellow fog; it could be New York – a symmbol of power
for me. You moan softly and curl into sleep. I'm glad I've found you.
'Alan,' I whisper, checking.
You are snoring gently. Another snoring judders my memory, vibrating
walls and floorboards in the old school we hired for his last conference.
"The Guru" some call him. We, forming his aura, sometimes refer to
the old man as "the boss".
'Are you fucking her now, Kumar? You like your women young. Bees round
a honey pot.'
'Sanchia,
Sanchia!' I hear him calling me. 'Sanchia!' No, really calling me.
He wants to come between us, split us up. I can feel it.
'Go away.' I turn on my side. 'I'm with Alan now.'
'Sanchia!'
I leave your
warm body, your soft bed, the scent of our love. I go into another
room. I have to be alone to sort out my head. Your octagonal lounge
is the corner of a redbrick mansion block, high up, above the Finchley
Road, in Hampstead; Hampstead, not Hampshire. But Kumar is in Hampshire
. . .
'Sanchia!' he calls
again. 'I need you.' He does need me. I falter, struggle; nearly fall
over.
'It's over,' I tell
him. 'Kumar, it's over,' sitting cross-legged on a floor cushion in
the lotus position he taught me. 'I have a new lover. You have no
right to me now.' It is so freshly over. It's the new lover that's
doing it. Kumar saw us together. But he dumped me. Or did he? If I
hadn't found out, would he have told me? But maybe he wanted me to
know? Seeing me with Alan has given him ammunition.
'I need you.' How will he cope without me?
'You have Rowena now.' Her name sounds like a bird of prey. 'You chose
her.' She's a slightly younger model, but I think he wants us, both,
one dark, one fair, diversity – or perversity. He's capable
of anything.
I go back to
your bed, curl round your sleeping back and kiss the pale curls on
your neck. I inhale the hypnotic blush of your skin. Soporific, it
sends me back to sleep.
In the morning, I say nothing. You don't come to the train with me.
I do not ask it of you. I speed back to Hampshire, to my own home
now. Even though the old man has a new woman-in-residence, it doesn't
stop him meddling.
He wants
to see me, at the Institute. I check his office. Papers are waiting
– transcripts of his weekend's seminars. There are students
in the grounds. Fresh from teaching yoga, Michael brings me coffee.
He is wearing a saffron lungi, an embroidered shirt. He smells of
patchouli. We walk in the vegetable garden, sit down beneath the lime
tree where others will later gather for lunch.
'What was wrong with the old man last night?'
'I am supposed to know?' – But I do know.
'We were having a glass of wine in his room, late, after the evening
session. In the middle of our conversation, for a while, his eyes
were empty. He wasn't there.'
'No, he was in London, with me.'
'Then he came back again.'
'I know. I sent him.'
Then Heather the Earth Mother meets Chris Antoniou on a spiritual
healing retreat. He says he's a Kabbalist.
'I've got this problem with the boss.' I tell her. 'He won't let me
go. It feels like I'm being possessed. I've told him, "Kumar, I'm
over you. I'm moving on." I think he wants us both.' She promises
to send me healing. It's what Kumar has trained her for. Heather is
a carer and healer by nature. She takes me under her wing.
'Sanchia, I was dreaming about you.' Heather is ringing me at three
in the morning. 'I just met someone I think may help you. He's Greek.'
Next day I ring the number she's given me.
'Down the alley, behind the shops. There's a flight of wooden stairs
up the back. Bang on the door twice.' I write down his instructions.
'There is no charge for
this kind of work. Just bring a photo of him – sealed.' I secure
a photo of Kumar in an envelope, take the train to Waterloo and head
for the tube. I change at Holborn and watch the stations pass, aiming
for North London. I see "Green Park" through the window and realise
I'm going the wrong way. I've done that journey enough times. How
did I get my East mixed up with my West? I will be late. Maybe I don't
really want to go.
'I've
been expecting you.' He knows me. 'Yes, I saw you – small and
fair – when Heather rang me. Nice woman.' He's tall, dark –
naturally, well fed, curly-haired, with a face like a schoolboy with
a chemistry set. His English is plumb-in-the-mouth Turnpike Lane.
He leads me through an untidy kitchen, down a narrow, dusty hall,
into the front room over the shop. I can hear traffic and smell incense.
There is a divan and a table, covered with a cloth to make an altar.
Dark blue curtains hang at the windows. They have silver cutout moons
and stars pinned to them. They are drawn closed.
Chris nurses the envelope; he describes the boss. 'Grey beard. Late
fifties. Dark skinned. Indian. Charismatic.' That's him. 'What's his
name?'
'Kumar.'
'Yes. Take your clothes off, please.' What! 'Leave your knickers on.'
I soon see why he needs those.
While I'm taking off my flares and smock, (I don't wear a bra anyway),
he assumes a shapeless robe made out of old curtains, tied at the
waist with a leather thong. He puts on a homemade hat. Then he sticks
the photo of the old man, now free of its envelope, in the elastic
of my bikinis and takes up a sword I haven't noticed. He outlines
my body in air and moves behind me, waving his weapon. What am I doing
here? I glance over my shoulder, doubling my chin, not moving my head.
'He doesn't want to go,'
Chris pronounces from above.
I'm having trouble with the old man too. He's clinging to me. I feel
sorry for him. 'Sanchia, please don't make me.' It's not easy. I struggle,
feel sick, but determine to make him go. It's pathetic.
Chris is in front of me, brandishing the sword across my face now.
I steel myself. I dare not flinch as he slices upwards through the
hiatus between my right eye and infinity. He mops his Hellenic brow
with the hem of his garment. 'Whew! That was hard work. Had to use
the sword. I don't like doing that.'
He takes oil in a jam jar from the altar. 'I will protect you now.'
He anoints me with greasy crosses, on my forehead, my throat, the
space above my pubic mound. 'Stand still.' I'm squirming. 'Don't wipe
them off.' He lets me put my clothes on. Then he tries to chat me
up. It feels like an afterthought, a by-the-way, a back-to-the-real-world.
I'm not interested. I thank him and go back to Hampshire.
The old man has been camping in France, with Crowena. He calls me
into his office. There is a wound on the right side of his face, just
below the temple.
'What
happened?'
'I tripped over
a guy rope. Hit a tent peg. Lucky, just missed my eye.'
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