Frank De Felitta - For Love of Audrey Rose

“I see. And is it the same in Tibet?”

The Master paused, suddenly uncomfortable. He temporized by pouring fresh hot water into their cups.

“Tibet,” he said softly, “is a very old form of Buddhism. They do things very differently in the mountains. I realize that your husband is particularly interested in these forms of religion?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it is much more elaborate. The Dalai Lama, for example, the highest of the priests, is the latest in a long line of reincarnated men, and often it takes many months of searching the caves and farms to find the infant with the proper markings. I find, quite frankly, that there is something too intense about this form. The divinations, for example, take weeks in the bitter cold, and the mandalas are extremely sexual and violent.”

“Are they really?” Janice asked, perturbed.

The Master waved a vague hand, as though to dismiss them, evil thoughts, back into the cold air.

“Copulating skeletons. Drifting among death. Fire that eats out the body and films the eyelids. You see, it goes back to a very, very ancient time. Long before the Indo-Europeans came down to the plains of India.”

Janice finished with her notes, and the Master sighed, rubbed his eyes, and shivered.

“Before I go,” Janice said gently, “I must ask you one more thing.”

“I will answer it if I can.”

“If there is a reincarnation — I mean, when there is a reincarnation — is it possible to know where the soul will return?”

The Master smiled gently. “The physical location?”

Janice nodded.

“The soul seeks the locus of its growth and its greatest happiness. That normally means very close to where it left the previous body.”

“So if a person died in New York City—”

“One must assume that it will reappear in the area. You see, it is like a gravitational field. The soul drifts and, faster and faster, as it approaches life again, it falls toward its previous origin.”

Janice paled, but said nothing. For a while, she thought of not writing down that answer. Then she put her pencil to paper. Then, confused, she put the pencil and paper away, discouraged.

“Perhaps I should go now,” she said.

“As you wish.”

The Master, in the Western manner, rose from his orange crate and escorted her to the door. Feeling lonely, or disturbed about something, he accompanied her down the dark stairwell, into the white garden. The snow was falling, smaller, colder, a bitter screen of textured dots over the fat stone walls where old basins of stained wood had been brought from temples in India.

“If you could impress upon your husband,” he said delicately, “not to dwell too rashly in these ideas….”

“Why not? Is it dangerous?”

“Not dangerous, exactly. But I have seen too many young people who also suffered mentally as does your husband. They seized upon Hinduism and Buddhism, like drowning men clutch at the air. And in the end they misunderstood everything, and were no better off than before.”

“Yes. I’ll tell him. Perhaps, in time, his enthusiasm will die down.”

“Clarity of mind,” the Master said, leading her back through the empty Temple, where only one disciple looked up from sorting a few prayer books along the wall, jealous of Janice’s proximity to the Master. “If the mind is unclear… like a distorting pool… the doctrine becomes warped.”

Janice left the Temple. As usual, the visits to Sri Parutha left her strangely energized, eager to face the rest of the day, yet with a lingering sensation of doubt. And as the day wore on, the doubt always grew stronger. Until, finally, when the tranquility of the old Brahmin had faded sufficiently, a kind of bleak terror invaded her very body, and she took to mixing Scotch with soda as a more durable, if less spiritual, antidote to the conflicts within her.

Back at Des Artistes, the telephone rang. Janice tried to ignore it, wielding the ink brush as quickly as she could manage. But the ringing never stopped. She conceded, and picked it up.

“Janice,” Bill exclaimed. “Where the hell were you?”

“I just came in as the phone was ringing.”

“Did you see the priest at the Temple?”

“Yes. We had a very nice talk.”

“Good. Very good. Listen, I’ve got something I want you to do.”

“No, Bill.”

“Janice, you have to go downtown to the—”

“We agreed this was the last time.”

“Janice,” he pleaded. “I’m begging you!”

“No. I’ve got work of my own, Bill. Be reasonable.”

“But we’re running out of time.”

“We’ve got plenty of time, darling. Now I have to jot down some ideas Elaine gave me, and—”

“Then I’ll do it myself.”

Janice decided Bill was not fooling.

“I’m telling you, Janice,” he said darkly. “If I have to, I’ll bust out of this place and do it myself.”

“Don’t talk like that, Bill. It frightens me.”

“It has to be done and it doesn’t matter who does it.”

“What, Bill? What has to be done?”

“Somebody has to go down to the Hall of Records. And see who was born the same minute Ivy died.”

“Bill, this is all nonsense. Sri Parutha said not to be rash, and here you are—”

“Screw Sri Parutha. Listen to me, God damn it, Janice! Somebody has to go down and look at those records!”

“This is crazy! I won’t do it! It’s one thing to bring you books, and — and go visit the Temple, but this is impossible!”

Bill said nothing for a while, yet she heard him breathing at the other end.

“All right,” he said angrily. “At least I know where you stand.”

He hung up. Janice clicked the receiver button again and again, but the line was irretrievably dead. Miserable, she resumed her work at her table, where the designs lay in sketched form under the lamp by the windows. After ten minutes, an uneasy feeling grew to where she could no longer think straight.

She called the clinic back.

“Mr. William Templeton, please,” she said.

After ten minutes, during which Janice was afraid they would not find him, Bill came to the telephone.

“Yes?” he said.

“All right. You win. I’ll go. But please, that’s got to be all. You’re chasing crazy will-o’-the-wisps.”

“Let me be the judge of that. You know what you’re looking for?”

“I think so.”

“Tell me.”

“February 3, 1975. 10:53 in the morning.”

“10:43!” Bill shrieked. “10:43 in the morning — a mistake like that could be fatal!”

“All right—10:43—I’ll look it up for you.”

“Okay. And bring me notes on what the priest told you today. Okay? Will you do that?”

“Bill.”

“What?”

“Why New York? Why not Baltimore? Or Chicago? Or even Pittsburgh or Hong Kong? Why would she come back to New York? She could be any place at all!”

“Because the soul seeks the locus of its greatest happiness. It’s like a gravitational field, Janice. Picture a meteor falling through space. Suddenly it gets caught up in a force field and it starts to accelerate downward. Well, it’s like that. Back to where the soul developed.”

Janice bit her lip. Bill had answered, almost word for word, as the Master had. Evidently Bill’s expertise was reaching startling proportions. Janice began to be afraid of him in the way that she had once been afraid of Hoover. There was too much knowledge at the other end of the line.

The Hall of Records stood recessed from the streets, its upper reaches in the slanted sunlight, but off the ledges of the first floor icicles melted slowly in shadow. Long windows, crisscrossed with a protective wire inside, gave off no light. The steps to the main doors were unscraped, covered with sprinkles of salt and brown dirt. Around the building rose higher structures, sleek, expressive of the supernational organization of the twentieth century, while the massive Hall, like a throwback to gray stone and marble, huddled in their shadows, a monument to weight and ornamented facade.