Go West, Inspector Ghote Page 5

  Against its wall, just as he emerged into the centre circle, a bicycle was propped in a state of half-repair, the tyre of its front wheel off and the soft rubber inner tube loosely dangling. It was a machine of much the same old standard pattern as the thousands he saw every day on the streets in Bombay, markedly different from the one or two low-slung, heavily-geared affairs he had noticed at the start of his trip out to the ashram. The sight of this old machine reversed in an instant the depression he had been plunged into by his encounter with the Johnny-All-Alone box. Here at last was something that did not work, and someone who, clearly, had lost heart half-way through trying to put it to rights.

  Perhaps, here under the Californian sun, he was after all in a sort of India.

  So he marched, careless now of his still thud-thudding head, straight across the centre circle over to the pure whiteness of the domed Meditation Hall. Its double doors, like those of the Visitors’ Centre, stood invitingly open. But this time he did not hesitate, mounted the two or three wooden steps confidently and entered.

  He found himself in a lobby whose floor was covered with a huge variety of footwear, sandals, shoes, boots, runner’s shoes like the pair he had seen on the jogger and great clumsy rubber boots, all discarded in obedience to a stark notice on the wall saying ABANDON SHOES AND LOGIC ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.

  But he was not going to abandon logic. Certainly not. He was going to enter and observe and quietly deduce. He was going to be what Dr. Hans Gross called in his mildew-stained masterwork Criminal Investigation, which he had not succeeded in snatching before his departure from his cabin at C.I.D. Headquarters, “a careful weigher of facts.”

  His shoes, however, he would abandon. He did not want in any way to be conspicuous inside the hall.

  He slipped them off—they were his better pair, worn in honour and fear of setting foot in America—put them where he could slide into them again quickly and easily and then turned to the inner pair of double doors leading into the hall itself.

  Very quietly he pushed back one leaf and stepped inside.

  The sight that met his eyes was as reassuring as the half-repaired bicycle had been. Under its white dome the building looked not all that unlike a temple in India. It was a good deal more filled with light, but the whole floor area was cluttered with worshippers, most of them sitting cross-legged. Many wore clothes, either orange in colour or white, that might have been seen in any temple, though here and there some unashamed Westerners were dressed in T-shirts. On the far wall in huge Devanagri script was the mystic word AUM together with paintings that plainly represented swamis of a past era, men who had never left their native India, copiously white-bearded sages whose eyes glowed with tender thoughts. And they were garlanded, too.

  The air was heavy as well with the scent of agarbati, the drifting smoke from the little burning sticks visible here and there. And there was sitar music, rolling and tinkling out. Evidently the swami had yet to begin his discourse.

  All the better.

  He dropped into a sitting position on the floor by the doors.

  The sitar-player, when he had located him at the left-hand front corner of the raised platform at the far side of the hall, gave him a new jab of uneasiness. Although dressed in the ochre garb of a holy man and although his playing gave every evidence of familiarity with his instrument, he was unmistakably a Westerner. His shaven head, all but a tuft at the back, was white-skinned and pale and his deep-set eyes were a piercingly bright blue.

  The steady thudding of his headache obtruded itself again and he was once more aware of the weariness deep in every limb.

  And then suddenly his eyes were caught by the man he had come to observe, and had a little dreaded seeing. The Swami With No Name. At the opposite side of the platform to the white sitar-player he had quietly risen to his feet. But, smooth and apparently unobtrusive though the movement had been, somehow it had at once attracted the gaze of every person down on the floor of the big domed building.

  Perhaps, Ghote told himself sharply, this was simply because there had come the moment in a regular order of events when the swami’s discourse always began. So his hungry audience would have been expecting him to get to his feet. Perhaps no more than that was needed to explain the mass magnetic movement down on the floor. Or perhaps not.

  The swami stood looking silently down on the sea of upturned faces. At the other side of the platform the sitar music faded away into nothingness.

  Ghote had to acknowledge that the man, true yogi or clever confidence trickster, was an impressive figure. Heavy curling locks of black hair fell tumbling on either side of a clean-shaven, full face that gave out a sweetness and benevolence which radiated to the very farthest points of the big domed building. He was tall, too. Tall and upstanding with broad, easily-held shoulders. He wore clothes of the same orange as most of the people sitting at his feet. But, it was plain to see even at a distance, that where they were dressed in cotton he was clad from head to foot in silk. A loose top-garment, loose trousers and a wide shawl across his broad shoulders in a shade of orange that was almost red.

  Yes, no getting away from it, an impressive figure.

  And now, after a long, long pause, he was raising his curl-framed head to speak.

  What would he say? Would he produce a stream of honeyed comfort such as the swamis on Chowpatty Beach back in Bombay poured out to their attentive hearers on the dry sand in front of them? Or would he produce something different? Something somehow American?

  The words the swami uttered as he began were neither of those. And they astonished Ghote.

  “There is someone here in pain,” he said. “Someone who has come and is not happy. His head is paining him. He needs help. You there, at the back by the doors, come here to me.”

  FOUR

  Could the swami’s summons be for someone else? How at such a distance had he come to know that there had entered the Meditation Hall somebody whose head was indeed thudding with pain? Would he come to know in just the same way when they were face to face that this was someone who had journeyed so many thousands of miles for the sole purpose of entering into contest with him? And if he did, surely he would be able to win the encounter there and then.

  Faces all over the hall were turned in Ghote’s direction. The people sitting on the floor nearest him—some, he noticed, had absurd bouncy cushions under them—were beginning to encourage him with little gestures and warming-beaming smiles to get to his feet and go forward.

  A spasm of rage jerked through him.

  He shot up and strode furiously towards the corner of the platform where the Swami With No Name stood smilingly awaiting him.

  Then, at last, they were face to face.

  The swami did not speak a word. Instead he put out his right hand and laid it on Ghote’s shoulder, quite close to the neck. Ghote at once felt a sensation of peculiar warmth there. It was something quite different, much more active than the warmth that might have been expected this warm, sunny Californian afternoon from a hand, even a rather plump hand. It was as if, he felt, there was an actual source of heat within that dense, soft flesh.

  And immediately all the weariness and grittiness accumulated over hours of being swept through the skies at hundreds of miles an hour began seeping out of him through, it seemed, some sump-hole in the back of his neck. All the hours of having time rush backwards past him sapping at his energies were within moments forgotten. The hours he had spent breathing sterile air until the spring of life in him seemed choked were in an instant obliterated. He felt as well as he had ever done in his life.

  Damn the man. Damn him, damn him, he thought savagely, his eyes looking straight at the gently swelling orange silk that hid a well-rounded stomach.

  Damn him. Why should he be endowed with a power like this? A power which at a stroke had put him himself completely at a disadvantage? How would it be possible now to interrogate the fellow as if he were some ordinary suspect hauled into C.I.D. Headquarters at Crawford Mark
et? How could he ask him sharp questions about the circumstances in which Nirmala Shahani had come to his ashram? How could he ask whether and how often he had seen the girl alone? How could he demand that the fellow account for the large sum removed from the State Bank of India, 707 Wilshire Boulevard?

  How could he even insist that he himself had a private interview with Ranjee Shahani’s daughter before anybody here had an opportunity to prepare her?

  “Sit now,” the swami said suddenly, in a low cooing voice. “Sit here just by me. You will be my favourite this afternoon.”

  Slowly Ghote lowered himself to a sitting position just beside the low platform within a few inches of where the swami’s bare feet were softly planted. Furiously he registered that he was actually feeling a sense of privilege at being the nearest person in the whole hall to him.

  He clenched his fists and made a deliberate, fierce effort to remove himself from the fellow’s influence.

  I am Ganesh Ghote, he forced his mind to hammer out. I am an Inspector of the Bombay C.I.D. I have been sent to this place on the orders of my superior officer to fulfil a request by a citizen of Bombay with the right to make it—or at least with the influence necessary—to investigate whether his daughter, Nirmala Shahani by name, is or is not being detained here against her will. Unless I find altogether satisfactory evidence that she is here of her own free will, I intend to take her back with me to Bombay, there to hand her over to her concerned father so that she can make the marriage he has arranged for her to the mutual advantage of the families on both sides. And afterwards she will live an ordinary, simple life, happy at some times, less happy at others. But the life that she was born to. I am Inspector Ghote, and I will see that this happens.

  So was Nirmala Shahani here now somewhere? Almost certainly she must be.

  Careful not to make any conspicuous movement, he began a cautious survey of the attentive upward-turned faces in front of him. From the platform above, the swami launched into his promised discourse like a wide-bowed ship gently descending into waiting waters.

  “My friends, today I have something to give to you. A present from Swami. Is it a little, little present? Oh no. Swami is feeling very kind. He is going to give each one of you a present that is very, very valuable. It is a present that he knew he was going to give long, long ago when he was meditating in the Himalayas and an inner command came to him that said: Go West, young man, go West. Yes, Swami is going to give you now—a future. It will be a future guarded more wisely than your future ever could be by any insurance company however big, however careful. Yes, I am giving it …”

  Ghote slipped into a state of half-listening. The fellow’s approach was not much different after all, he thought, from that of those holy men who had chanced to pass through his village when he was a boy and had brought everyone out to enjoy a distraction in their unvarying common round. Except that here the words were in English, and the promises were bigger.

  But what about these people here listening? Were they as pleased as everybody in the village had been?

  Seen from where he was now, face-on instead of from the back, they looked despite their orange clothes a good deal less like worshippers in a temple. To begin with they were, of course, almost all Westerners. The faces gazing up at Swami, for all that they bore a repeated expression of unthinking, undemanding happiness, were white or pink or ruddy red, not brown.

  For a moment he hoped that he would be able to find only one brown face among them all, Nirmala Shahani’s. But a longer look showed him there were quite a few Indians present. There were, in fact, a good many of his compatriots in California, he recalled. He had read that in some magazine or other.

  So, it was not easy to find Nirmala. It would have to be done methodically, in the manner recommended by Dr. Gross. Start at the nearer end of the first row, work your way all along it at an even, unhurrying speed, then go back to the start of the second row and repeat the process.

  Mechanically his eyes swept past white face after white face. That fat sixty-year-old woman sitting on her little meditation bench, what had brought her all the way out here from the city to which, with her soft, ring-glittering hands, she obviously belonged? What was keeping her here was easy enough to see. Adoration for Swami. It shone from every inch of her lightly wrinkled cheeks and pursed lips.

  But she was not the object of his quest. Move on. The next face, the next.

  At last he came across a girl who might well be Nirmala. She was clearly an Indian and had the right complexion for a Sindhi like her father. She was about the right age, too, fresh-skinned with a small soft nose and big dark eyes … eyes that were fixed on Swami with all the devotion of a puppy’s.

  But he ought to check the rest of the audience. He resumed his methodical survey. From just above him Swami’s voice, gentle, persuasive, coaxing, drifted on.

  “… Ah, I hear you. Swami hears what you are thinking in your heads only. You are saying: But now Swami has contradicted himself. He is no good at all this fellow, you are saying. Just now he told us the very opposite of what he said ten minutes ago. Oh, oh, my friends. Of course I am contradicting myself. I am contradicting myself because the two things I have told you are like the two wings of a bird only. If a bird has one wing and no more, how can it fly, fly in the air like your souls too must fly? How can it? But it …”

  With a sigh Ghote came to the end of another row of fixed, bemused, unthinking, utterly content faces.

  Swami had power, he reflected. More power even than that which his own unthrobbing head still demonstrated.

  In the middle of the next row there was another possible Indian girl, but though she was much the right age for Nirmala she appeared to be with a middle-aged couple who might well be her parents. There was also a fat woman, wearing a light-pink sari and large horn-rim spectacles, and a small dried-up man in tweed jacket and grey-flannel trousers.

  Then, a little further along, he spotted the first face he had seen that was not evidently under Swami’s thrall. It belonged to an American girl. Young. Not much more than twenty, he guessed. And her complexion, unlike that of every other girl he had seen in California so far, did not radiate sheer well-being. Instead, it was a dull white, and there was a tight, unrelenting frown on her forehead.

  Because almost all American girls looked alike to him, he made a mental note of the clothes this one was wearing, blue jeans and a white high-necked pullover which looked—his eyesight seemed unusually keen after the swami’s lightning cure—decidedly grubby. Why on this warmly sunny Californian afternoon did she feel the need of a pullover? Yes, here was someone it might be a good idea to talk to if the swami put up any opposition to Nirmala’s departure. And that he was almost certain to do.

  The swami was telling a story now, about what a millionaire here in California who was also far advanced along the spiritual path had been able to do. It was only from something in the expressions of the next row of intent faces that Ghote had realised that the discourse had moved on to this. At first he had not been able to pinpoint the change. Then suddenly he had recognised a repeated look of bright-eyed expectation. He had seen just the same expression in the past on the face of his own little Ved when the boy had been listening to his mother telling him one of the old, old tales from the Ramayana. It showed complete abandonment to the unfolding story, marvellous to see in a child. But surely not somehow altogether right for adult face after adult face?

  A chuckle of laughter that moved over the sea of upturned countenances like a gentle wave greeted the end of the story. Ghote, proceeding systematically with his hunt for possible Nirmala Shahanis, noted that the man had clearly linked great wealth and high spirituality. Was this a way of hinting to those members of his audience with money, like the fat lady with the glittering rings near the front, that gifts were acceptable? Was it a confidence man’s softening-up?

  Just at the beginning of the next row that he examined he found a face that looked as if it belonged to another dissenter. I
t was a girl’s, but unlike the girl with the grubby white pullover this one was a picture of supreme Californian healthiness. Ghote saw her, for all that she was sitting cross-legged on the floor, as a tennis player, a tireless tennis player on one of the high mesh-walled courts he had seen as they had come out of Los Angeles. And she would be a player set to win.

  He made a mental note of her clothes, a pale orange T-shirt and a white skirt. But he thought somehow that he would have no difficulty in recognising her again, even in a crowd of other Californian goddesses. She would be the one more full of life, more confident than any of the others.

  He went back to his searching. And only three faces further along he saw the most likely candidate yet for Nirmala Shahani. She was the right age and she had the right colour of skin for a Sindhi girl, and even more than any of the other devotees, if that were possible, she seemed absolutely under the spell of Swami’s words. As he watched her chubby, rounded, vacant-looking face he could see each of Swami’s phrases reflected there as if a dim mirror was catching at a distance the brightness and the changing colours of a rippling display of lights.

  He moved on to the other faces in the row, to the next row and the next until he had satisfied himself that he had examined every person in the hall. And all the while Swami’s voice poured out from just above him. It was a stream, an unendingly flowing stream. From time to time there were little eddies in it, tiny back-currents, a joke, a long-held pause before a particularly striking declaration—“I shall go down in history with Henry Ford”—but the flow underneath was all the time rolling, rolling, rolling towards some distant sea, now a little faster, now slower, now tumbling playfully, now sliding swiftly and strongly.

  Ghote, as he returned his gaze to the chubby rather vacant face he was now sure belonged to Nirmala Shahani, half took in references to the silence within, to floating fragrances, to the soul, to the higher self, to gardens, to electricity, to being in tune with the infinite, to chickens wandering headless, to the elephant that breathed only ten times a minute and lived long, to the harmony that spread above and beyond everything. Each shift of meaning in the flowing stream, he saw, was reflected at once on the face of the hypnotised girl.