Bruce Wagner - The Empty Chair

Just then, a coquettishly simian grin bloomed on the fellow’s face as he sat bolt upright. He looked gemütlich and hyper-alert. This time though, the effect was radiantly comedic, his countenance Chaplinesque. He began to mime a convict sizzling in an electric chair, not scary but delightful , his ticcing, twitching face pelted by the most wonderful hailstorm of expressions that morphed from an obsequious smile to the rictus of a silent scream (and everything in-between) as if to deftly convey a mission statement to the tribe: “I am not the Great Guru! He cannot be replaced… Yet I ask you to fear nothing, you are still in his hands! Have patience, I beseech you! I beseech you to trust! It is impossible for energy to err, of that you can be certain! Mysterious forces have brought me to this chair! All is predetermined …”

Thus, at the tail end of his inauguration, as a fillip to the substantive, wittily learned, deeply satisfying nature of his responses to the audience’s questions, did the vaudevillian Vedic scrum swing from the sublime to the ridiculous then back again, celebrated by a communal roar of approbation. The American had gambled with antic play, the same his teacher had usually confined to the kitchen table. It was a brilliant stroke. The maneuver forced skeptical seekers to challenge their reactionary resistance to change. He was their saint now (at least in this moment, for mobs are notoriously fickle) and had gained more than a toehold on their ardor and respect, perhaps even on their fear… Many pairs of hands followed Kura’s. The American’s face became inscrutable while he received further benedictions, which seemed befitting. For he was the American no more.

He was the Great Guru.

As I said — this I know I did tell you — Kura remained on Mogul Lane and environs for seven years. During satsang he could always be found in the exact spot he alit upon that first morning. He became fluent in the same duties the American had been entrusted by his own teacher.

Me? I lasted about four months, four very long months — I was young, and bored with the company. The ashram diehards and devotees were either putzes or major dicks and that last category included women. I did some fooling around (I was an equal gender employer) but Kura didn’t seem to give a shit. He’d lost the urge. I tried not to take it personally. After the head-rush of Bombay wore off, I grew restive. He had enough sense to give me a long leash. He was too caught up in the annihilation of the Self to be bothered.

I went through a manic month of buying rare fabrics. I became addicted to the markets that sold them, whole cities unto themselves where transactions were conducted over dreamily aromatic tea in hidden rooms looking out on acres of silk, linen, cotton, muslin. I made day trips in search of obscure ayurvedic treatments, though what I really wanted was a massage that would never end — I wanted to massage my way to nirvana. The longer I stayed, the stranger my pursuits. I uncovered an infamous cult of sacred prostitutes who taught me their bittersweet songs. (That’s another story.) Day trips became overnights, overnights turned into weekends, weekends into extended stays. I actually loved India but discovered I didn’t enjoy traveling by myself, which was a new one because I so cherished and protected my autonomy. Now I see what I couldn’t see then: I was furious at the American for stealing my man. I could handle the abstinence part but not having him in bed with me was a bear. He insisted on sleeping alone, something having to do with his “subtle body.” I think I was probably going through withdrawal because sex with us was definitely a drug. I kept our suite at the Taj and Kura rented a disgusting little room much closer to Mogul Lane. Each time I returned from one of my forays, I fantasized he’d appear at the hotel to apologize for his behavior, and come to his senses by announcing we were leaving for Paris at once —or Morocco, Ibiza, Timbuktu— if I’d have him. (At this point in the fantasy, he was still down on his knees.) In reality, he was sullen and displeased. Which was immensely disconcerting to a wild child like myself who was accustomed to a man’s affections compounding in ratio to the amount of time I’d blown him off. I’d always heard that gurus were notorious for taking their students to bed, but my efforts to seduce the American were a dismal failure. Finally, I worked up the courage to tell Kura I wanted to go home. Wherever that was… the Marais I suppose. I didn’t get the reaction I’d hoped.

One day, he showed up at the pool while I was doing my club sandwich thing. (I always order triple-deckers at hotel pools, it’s a Queenie tradition.) I was on a chaise longue fooling around with a rich kid whose parents had taken the train to Goa without him. Out of nowhere Kura grabbed my arm. The boy hightailed it — so blind was Kura’s anger I don’t even think he noticed. He began to shout about how he’d made a mistake bringing me there, how I was an albatross around his neck, that at long last he found what he’d been searching for and was hereby firing himself from the job of nanny… I kept a stiff upper lip, not easy under the circumstances. I said I was happy for him and didn’t need a nanny, thank you very much. I must have been talking through my tears but it wouldn’t have mattered. He wasn’t listening. He said he wasn’t going to waste his time on a spoiled little cunt doomed to perpetual adolescence and that I was “spitting at God,” flushing my only chance at self-liberation like so much shite down the toilet. In mid-tirade, he grabbed my hand by the wrist and raised it up as if to present its amputated fingers to the jury as Exhibit A. I recall a jolly waiter striding triumphantly toward us with my club, fries and sundae held high on a tray. When he saw what was going down, he neatly swiveled and departed. I was still seated and Kura was standing; he held my wrist so high that my shoulder flirted with dislocation. As hurtful as it was, and as poorly handled, I understood where Kura was coming from. His life had been dislocated too, in the most gorgeous way, and he’d generously wanted me to have the same experience. I had my doubts about his new relationship. At the time, I felt he was determined to meet a guru, any guru, it just turned out that the American was the handiest , with the best provenance. I never thought it would last — and believe me, when he crawled back to me I wasn’t planning on being there to pick up the karma. So I pretty much handled his rage-out, until he said something that wounded me to my core.

“Why didn’t I just let you die?”

O, Bruce! I think I did die — right then — died again —as I searched the eyes of my killer — my killer by default, or do I mean omission? — the killer I loved before knowing what love is — searched his eyes for a sign of mercy …

I held his gaze but none was forthcoming.

He came to my room while I was packing. I thought he was going to hit me. That’s how far from love we had come. He gave me $25,000 worth of francs and enough damp, stinky rupees to buy myself a soda at the airport. I went back to Paris and stayed at the George V for a month. I was not in good shape. Had a wicked parasite too, not to mention a few stowaway demons of lower caste.

That was the last I saw or heard of him until that day he called my apartment in New York, seven years ago. There are so many “sevens,” do you notice? Sevens and elevens… they really do seem to come up more than other numbers. O! Now I remember his last words to me in Bombay: