The ashram guesthouse is on a street out of sight of the sea. In winter the garden patio is a comfortable, breezy place. Then there is the garden wall, then the public sidewalk with very high curbs, then the street. The street is blinding hot from the sun on the yellow walls opposite. Cycle rickshaw people sleep in their carts or sit watching the guesthouse gate like a bunch of crows.

"Tom's got the rickshaw wallahs organized," Deborah told me one day. A ferocious-looking driver wearing a green turban (it is too short and always coming undone) saluted her with a wide grin. "That's the leader." She returned the salute with a slight nod. "He took us personally for a ride the other day, but usually he just lets the others work. He likes Tom."

"That rascal took me also the first week until he realized that I would not overpay him," I told her.

"Of course, Tom's bought him. Anyone can be bought."

Only these young Americans and certain middle-aged Frenchmen, thought Conningsfield, can take for granted the death of civilized values which is coming as a direct result of American pragmatism and French existentialism, two sides of the same coin. I knew that Tom had given her gifts. "Has he also bought you?"

But she didn't reply, preferring to change the subject, too tired, she said, to talk semantics. Then she admitted friendship "isn't always negotiable." I felt however that I had seen rather deep into her despair.

I was sitting this morning in the back garden when Tom came out of his room, crossed the path, and tried the handle of his bathroom door. It was locked from inside; Her Ladyship was bathing. Perplexity. Then he glanced around, shrugged, and entered Evil-eye's bathroom through the next door.

Now the garbage cans were smelling quite strong of fish, but I could not leave that spot. What if Evil-eye should this minute arrive to use her bathroom? And then suddenly there she came, La Dame Terrible. Opening the bathroom door (Tom had not locked it!), she went inside. I watched the doorway, faint with apprehension. A moment later she backed out, muttering to herself. Closing the door she pushed wildly at the outside bolt with the back of her wrist until it locked. Then holding her hands in front of her face as in thick fog, she stumbled back into the house.

A minute later Tom's head and shoulders appeared through the transom. He spread wide his long arms. "Help, help!" He saw me as I was jumping to go to his aid. "Help. Some evil witch has locked me in here." Deborah came out of the other door. "Rapunzel Chickie. Save me!"

Together we released him and he fell out the door into our arms. "A living nightmare," he told us when he had regained his breath. "Locked in Evil-eye's voodoo shithouse."

In Tom's room Deborah poured tea through a stainless steel strainer. "The tea is full of flies," she explained. She poured the milk through the strainer. "It's full of skin."

"You could use some exorcising yourself," said Tom. Then we saw her face was pale. We looked outside, but saw nothing. "What's the matter? "

"Evil-eye just went into our bathroom."

We watched the door, our hearts almost stopped. "Why on earth you ever went into hers in the first place...."

"I had to."

"And why you didn't lock the door...."

"Don't nag, Chickie. I just thought the odds were against anyone arriving at that precise moment."

Now we saw the hag, bent and old, come out. She pushed the bolt and disappeared toward her room, carrying something that we could not identify.

"Go see," said Deborah.

Tom went and came back a moment later clutching his throat. He collapsed into his chair. "That fucking bitch."

"What did she do?" Deborah was squeaking from nervousness.

"She ... she...." He hid his face in his hands.

"What?"

"...washed out her chamber pot all over the floor."

We both cried out in horror.

"What ... a ... foul ... smell."

Deborah was laughing and moaning. "Poor sweetie has to clean it up," she said, meaning Tom. (But later, when Deborah and I looked into the bathroom, there was no sign of disorder, no odour. Deborah accused Tom of exaggeration and Tom claimed it was a miracle.)

We finished the tea and I was saying goodbye when suddenly we stopped, again staring through the door into the garden. A young man was standing in the sunshine. He had just come out of Evil-eye's bathroom. This we had all clearly seen. We regarded the stranger curiously. He was a bland-faced young western man, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up on his arms.

"He looks too normal to be a guest here," said Deborah.

"'Maybe he's an international youth," suggested Tom.

"Then what was he doing in her bathroom?"

"He might have lost his way. That can happen around here."

The young man looked over, squinting, but he couldn't see into the doorway where we were standing. "Shall I ask him if he needs help?" asked Deborah.

"He's doing all right," said Tom. "You keep your claws off him."

At lunch that fellow Peter (family names are never used at the ashram, so much the better) was at the table. Also there was an autostop couple from Germany, very well dressed for desert campaign. The husband wore a sun helmet on his lion head. The wife, who was American-born and in her late thirties or early forties, wore a turban with veil. When not talking or eating she kept it in place across her face by holding a corner of it in the side of her mouth, then moving her mouth toward the far ear. Very well done. She had bought the turban some years before on a trek to Masada (in Israel). Though she limped slightly from a ski accident, she was always jumping lightly on her feet, thus remaining very girlish in spite of her old face.

Having heard of the Mother of Villefranche, they had made a detour to this place with the idea of visiting her. They were then very disappointed to find this was impossible.

"My own mother died years ago," the wife told us softly, "and my husband's mother was killed in a hunting accident last year."

The poor woman, while on a cross-country trek, had been mistaken by hunters for some animal or bird and shot between the eyes.

Peter, also an American, stocky and with a flat, uninteresting face, has come, he tells us, to observe the youth conference. All of us began now to observe him. An unusual silence came over the table. Her Ladyship asked him what part of the United States he came from.

"Washington." He smiled and looked around at us all. "You can call me Pete."

"D.C.?" One could tell that all the ears in the room, even those belonging to Evil-eye and Juney, were listening carefully.

"State of."

From all sides a sigh of relief. Smiling, Pete looked from one of us to another, finally at Deborah, who wiggled. This sort of fellow is able to attract women by a helpless expression and wavy hair. She asked him why he had come to observe the youth conference. He told her that he had been sent by a publishing company and mentioned a name that the Americans present said sounded "vaguely familiar."

Then Pete turned suddenly to Conningsfield. "What brings you here?" he asked pleasantly.

After the crudites an enormous pearl-coloured fish came from the kitchen. Very reluctant to leave Deborah, but determined for the sake of his yoga, Tom would serve. The fish's top side was strewn and garlanded with pink onions, tomato slices (very small, Indian tomatoes) and carrot bits. Colourful. It reminded one of Samadhi, the Founder's marble tomb.

Conningsfield had begun to reply to Pete's question and was still talking in a rather loud voice. Saying little. Everyone had grown bored and restless, so the fish was welcomed with exclamations of delight. What an old bore, this fellow Conningsfield, they were thinking as they carved the fish hungrily with spoons, these mystical ascetics. Oh, creature of the deep, I said silently to the fish, what would they say to learn this not-so-old bore has 10,000 rupees of sarees in his suitcase, bought on credit in Benares and ready for sale as contraband in Ceylon?

The German's wife was sitting next to Deborah, and they began to talk. They took an instant liking to one another, along with a certain distrust. (It seems they are both Jewesses!) So intimate they became, so quickly, knowing they would never see one another again.

This couple had not the money to sleep in the guesthouse (and did not do as I with postdated cheques), so were planning to move on after lunch and be in Madras that night. As the two women were sitting on my left, I could hear parts of their conversation.

"...and she told my husband that the reason for her headaches was that her twin was in her head."

"Her what was in her what?" squeaked Her Ladyship.

"Her twin was in her head. That's right. The undeveloped embryo of her twin was discovered as the cause of her headaches."

Keeping their voices low, they were both shaking with giggles. "What did your husband say?"

"Baldur just nodded and said, 'I see.' "

"Then he'd heard of such things before? It wasn't the first time in the history of mankind?"

"Not at all. It seems it's very common. People can have their twin buried in some part of their body and never even know it until it starts to grow."

"Grow!" shrieked Her Ladyship, and the two fell into paroxysms of mirth. Tears appeared in their eyes. Tom was frowning. "Dear Lord," moaned Deborah, "the things that happen to people. It grew inside her head, like an idea?"

"It had been there from birth."

"Did they take it out? Don't tell me." She hid her face in her hands.

"I suppose so."

"And was it alive? Did it have the form of a baby? Or of a," she could hardly say it, "yolk?"

"I couldn't ask."

"I don't know which would be worse. It might have been rotten after all those years. A rotten egg in the brain. I never heard of anything so awful in my life." (Strange, for a moment I thought she would weep.) Then she shuddered. "Let's talk about something else."

After lunch the autostoppers left the guesthouse with their packs on their backs. We three "mousquetaires" invited Pete to sip coffee with us in the patio. He asked many questions about Ice Cream, about the American hippy "element" he had heard was living there, whether they took drugs. He asked several questions about cannabis, hashish and LSD, on which Tom happened to be an expert. Had he asked something about philosophy or history, I would have been able to participate, but like this I was forced to silence.

Tom spoke of drugs for nearly twenty minutes without once mentioning hippies or Ice Cream. As far as we all knew when he was done, "strong Nepalese hash" had never moved south of Katmandu.

Pete asked Deborah what her father did.

"He's retired."

"What did he do?" His eyes were looking very sharp now. He examined her face and breasts.

"Who?" She had turned rather red in the face.

"Your father."

"He doesn't do anything. He's retired."

Later, in Tom's room, Deborah was furious. "Why did he want to know about my father?" she cried. "He has to be from Washington, D.C., from the C.I.A."

"Of course," agreed Tom. "Ninety-eight percent of us in India are."

Deborah told us she had guessed the truth when she saw him coming out of Evil-eye's bathroom, had said to herself: "That man is from Central Intelligence." The question then was, what should we do about him?

"Everyone should be warned."

Deborah laughed, saying that Villefranche was not exactly a "hotbed" of drugs and communism. Rather, we should "put him onto Evil-eye," tell him she has a transmitter in her room. "We'll tell him to sniff around in there."

This image made us all cry out in pain.

"We'll tell him Juney's on Nepalese hash and if he's nice to her she'll let him have a little."

"We'll tell him Flam...." Deborah broke off, recalling perhaps that I had some reason to wish not to be under suspicion by the authorities. "We'll tell him Flaminio's from Central Intelligence and we're all scared to death of him."

"Perfect," I cried.

It is flattering to be included in their play, though I never before imagined Conningsfield in the role of a C.I.A. agent, I who have played Socrates and Bonaparte, speaking real lines, thinking real thoughts.

"Actually," said Her Ladyship then, "for a C.I.A. wallah, Pete has divine eyes."

"Chickie..."

"I think the best way to find out why he's here is to do a little ... uh ... counterespionage." She moved her body as a snake.

"Bull shit!" cried Tom. "Chickie, if you ..."

Deborah was offended. Did Tom really think she would have something to do with that lout? "With those divine eyes?"

"Chickie!"

She told him that he could watch to make sure things didn't go too far. She would just get the necessary information out of Pete, then fade away. She winked at me.

"I'll kill him before he puts one hand on you."

For a long moment they looked at each other eye to eye. I realized she was still trying very hard to seduce Tom and had found this menace.

"I refuse to be threatened," said Tom at last.

"Then you'll come across?"

"Come across! You know I can’t."

"Then you'll watch?"

"You know, Chickie, you bitch, this is doing fuck-all for my yoga."

"Nonsense. It's just what your yoga needs. Something to get its teeth into."

"What teeth?" asked Tom, looking very sad. "It's just a baby yoga, soon to become a statistic. 'Baby yoga, died in infancy while watching Chickie seduce intelligence agent.' But not in my bed."

"Next door at Hotel de France."

"Hotel de France? What will the rickshaw wallahs think?"

She laughed, so wicked. "That baby needed a new pair of shoes."