PART TWO

 

Chapter 12

Finally, Colombo.

A tiring two days. First an early awakening followed by a swift breakfast. Only ten minutes after my eyes opened did I learn that Deborah would leave Villefranche with me if there was room in the car. I prayed for some. While she was paying her bill I found a way to rescue for Tom the microphone from behind the crepe-paper hangings in her room. Then, hesitation. I had tipped no one, would not. Then why leave behind such a valuable machine? When Tom came to take it they would pretend to know nothing of it. Then better carry the machine away myself and not make liars of them. The sitar would remain, however.

Deborah was very strange, puffy around the eyes, though she told me she had slept. With our bags around our feet, we waited in the patio for the car. I asked her whether she had seen the Mother. She nodded, then turned away and walked off a little distance. A minute later she returned, now wearing dark spectacles, though there was no bright sunshine.

"What was your impression?" I asked, very curious.

Deborah shrugged, then sighed. I waited. "Keine...," she began, then again a deep breath. "Keine Hexerei."

"You were not disappointed?"

She shook her head, then turned away again, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Let's not...." She waved her hand, unable to speak.

How overcome I was in front of this awful emotion. Stepping forward I would clasp her to my breast, only thinking one second how her tears would look on my shirt collar. But she was not wearing eye makeup, and the shirt was not perfectly clean, chosen for traveling the dusty roads.

As I tried to embrace her gently, as a brother, she pulled back. "Look out for your shirt!" (as if there was danger of car accident). But in fact, how good of her to think first of another. Extremely touching. I assured her that when I was a practicing psychologist many tears had stained my clothes, but they always washed away in the tub. (Not often was this so, the tears on the shirt, only with Erde.)

At this moment the car arrived, a rather disappointing sight, not really a car but a little truck or fourgonnette with windows only for the front seat, grey and quite rusted. Behind, a sort of workman's bench was arranged for sitting, but there was no back and it was not attached to the floor.

"Jesus," said Deborah when she saw all of this, but there was room for her, only a little crowded inside with our luggage and their household furniture.

Smiling bravely, she shook hands with the owners of the vehicle. These were a rather peculiar French Canadian couple whom I had met for the first time some days ago in front of the ashram library. Not the most successful human specimens. Their tiny eyes seemed rather far apart, the fronts much too broad and high, the chins too long and the noses too short. But I think there are very few absolutely "normal" people traveling these days through India. Deborah was sure that they, if not brother and sister, were close cousins. Quite possibly she was correct, for the baby in the mother's lap had many recessive qualities, looking rather like a dog than a human child.

The husband, we learned after starting out, for all his experience driving from Montreal, was not a good driver. Either too fast or too slow. With his wife he spoke a guttural French, difficult to understand from the rear. Often they pointed to sights that we, with no windows, could not see.

As it was difficult sitting on the bench — so many bicycles, animals, holes, etc., on the road making our way erratic — we soon pushed it aside and sat on the floor. This being rather hard, we pulled bits of pillows and blanket under us. It seemed we were sitting on their bedding and perhaps making it dustier than otherwise. But we shrugged like evil conspirators and did so anyway. I must say that, despite the discomforts (and I have survived worse, particularly in Afghanistan, Iran, etc.) the ride was one of the most enjoyable of my life, owing to the circumstances.

It is perhaps wrong to take as serious words spoken during great emotional upheaval. Deborah told me shortly after starting out, after wiping away some of the tears, that I was "a very good person." So flattering. I blushed. Fantastic dreams filled my mind. Flaminio and Deborah together, alone on a beach, sitting under a tree. I was reading to her out of some volume of history, she listening, occasionally asking a question on the text, I explaining, then reading on. Such a normal, beautiful existence, perhaps at last to come true (if at the Colombo airport I was not immediately arrested by the authorities!).

The windows on the sides and back of the fourgonnette had been painted over with grey paint for privacy during sleep. We each scratched a tiny hole, now at last could look out. A beautiful and typical but mostly uninteresting landscape. Fields of paddy, palms, villages. It had rained heavily that night. Much of the land was under water. There were temporary lakes with islands, but the road was high and dry.

"What will you do in Ceylon?" I asked Deborah.

She leaned back, thoughtful. She would find a beach somewhere, think, write. She told me that some very strange things had happened to her recently, and she would like to think about them.

"Tom?"

Only it was not Tom of whom she was thinking. Now she frowned. She was, she was positive, the worst person in the world. Tom had warned her that she would blow his mind and she had gone right ahead and done so. Had she told him of her plan to leave Villefranche this morning? No. She hadn't known herself until an hour ago. Suddenly she put her face on her knees. "Flaminio," she said, "did you ever feel that anyone ever really looked at you?"

I didn’t understand her question, only answering that I did not think she ever looked at me unless I was looking off somewhere else. I said this as if joking, but she nodded. Then after a moment she said, "But I mean, did anyone ever...." But again tears were running from her eyes and she had to find a tissue to blow her nose.

Needless to say, after my horrible experience with Erde, this unmotivated weeping was deeply upsetting to me. Only Deborah, more intelligent, seemed really trying to be kind toward me, unlike that evil one who almost destroyed my joy in life. To comfort her I reassured her that she need fear nothing. Tom would not be able to find her — she need not fear his angry, accusing eyes.

"I'm not talking about Tom."

"Peter?"

"Just in general. Did anyone ever look deep into you, right into your very soul?" Then she would absolutely know if such was possible. "Like looking into a deep, dark well, right to the muddy water at the bottom."

Her words recalled the I Ching. A city can be moved, but not a well. The city must be built around the well. But I knew little about wells and was alarmed at the metaphor she would absolutely make. Did wells as a rule have mud below?

She was certain of it; pollution was everywhere. Then she would know how to clean the well without making dirty the rest of the water.

So I must absolutely follow her metaphor, or she would not be happy. "One way to clean the polluted soul at its very bottom is by psychotherapy and by following the examples of great men," I told her. But she seemed to lose interest suddenly in our conversation (a typical nervous reaction), took out one of the bananas we had brought along, peeled and ate it.

 

The journey south was long for the bones but short for the interior man. Most of the way Deborah was very quiet, lost inside herself. I had never known her so kind to me, as if I were a puppy, but often I was thinking of how she could be with Tom and Peter. Then a suitcase threatened to topple onto me from behind. She threw herself to stop it and a breast was suddenly against my ear. By accident a hand was against her posterior, then disappeared. She sat back with a strange expression. Puzzlement? Had she finally noticed that I am, after all, a man?

Seats on the plane from Tiruchirapalli to Colombo were not available until the next day owing to a pilots' strike. We bid farewell to the French Canadians (who had been wise to bring their own food in the car — we two were by now dying of starvation), and put our suitcases at the Government Bungalow where we each took a room for the night, an unnecessary extravagance since one room was enough. Deborah changed from trousers to a dress, then we went like starving souls to find lunch. After walking about the town with a crowd of curious Tamils behind us, we were able to eat a very good meal of idlis, doshas and sambar at an Indian restaurant (vegetarian, no meat or forks). Naturally Her Ladyship was the only woman in the entire place. This in a country where the Prime Minister wears a saree!

I paid for our lunches — three rupees only for the two meals, coffee making it a little more — and we went "on the town" like tourists. The Rock Fort, dominating the whole city, was 300 feet to the top. By the time we reached the temple we were quite damp with perspiration and happy to sit in the breeze looking down on the city, river and countryside below.

Deborah was very impressed to find where her feet had brought her, but still unhappy and distant. We watched a large bird, a sort of hawk, riding the upwind around the mountain top, just by our feet. He turned and twisted in the wind and came higher. He looked at us, perhaps was puzzled, for he brought one foot out of his tail, stretched it forward carefully against the wind, and scratched his head. Very dusty. We both had to laugh at this so amusing and unexpected sight. Now that Deborah was looking gayer, I asked her why before she had been so sad.

Standing up, she would now move to a place where the view was different. I followed her. She sat on a low wall. I put my hand near, ready to catch her if she fell.

She told me that the day before she had had a very "strong experience" when seeing the Mother and asked if she could tell me about it. I tried to keep my face normal as I said yes.

She told me then that she had been expecting nothing when she went there. First she had met her friend Thérèse, and for a while they waited together in a room somewhere in the ashram. The furniture and most of the floor were covered with piles of books. (Yes, it had been the same when I was there. I had to crouch almost on the floor, so many were waiting that day.) Thérèse, she told me, had worn a far-away, happy expression on her face, but Deborah did not know what to expect. She had been given some garlands to give to the Mother and now watched ants crawling over the blue flowers.

Then they were called and followed a woman to a stairway in a narrow hall with windows. (I too had been there.) At the top was a door. They were told again to wait and sat down on the stairs. (1, in contrast, had been ushered in immediately.) Here Thérèse’s eyes were closed and she wore a rapturous smile. Deborah still felt nothing internally, only in her fingers the sticky flowers. She did not even feel curious. (This is not surprising if one considers what she had been doing when the call came!)

Finally the door opened and a woman bade them enter. They were now standing in the large, spacious apartment filled with sunlight, books and personal objects where the Mother lives. Across the room a woman, her back to them, was sitting at a desk. She was in a wheelchair. Deborah could tell she was very old. Her hair was short and thin. She did not sit up very straight. The woman who had let them in took the flowers from their hands.

"Then Thérèse and I walked across the room and came up in front of the desk. I watched the old woman greet Thérèse warmly, but so quietly. She didn't even look at me. They exchanged a few words and Thérèse, speaking French, told the Mother who I was. And then the Mother ... smiled. And with this smile ... turned completely toward me, and ... and...."

I have never before seen tears burst like that from a person's eyes. Deborah was weeping, nearly lying on the wall, shaking with sobs. I put my hand on her head and she raised herself slightly and tried to speak, only her mouth would not come together around the words.

"And what?" I asked, trying to help.

"She ... she...," her face was distorted with the effort, "looked at me." Then Deborah hid her face in her hands and wept.

They say there are some persons having much power over others, and this we know is true from studying the lives of certain kings, generals and saints. In some cases the power is political, in others simple hypnotism, with others a true spiritual superiority. I would say that the Mother is no hypnotist, but rather a very spiritually advanced person possessing a great deal of spiritual power. Of course, as with a radio, not everyone is tuned to that power source. I, personally, am not, although I have had deep spiritual experiences from other sources.

I told this to my friend. She shook her head very forcefully, saying that she did not believe in spiritualism. Then how, I would know, did she account for what had happened? She shook her head again, but slower. No rational explanation did she have. A few minutes later, feeling better, she promised one day to tell me more about her meeting with the Mother. When she had recovered herself, we climbed down to the city and returned to the bungalow to wash and rest before supper.

 

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