LITMIR.BIZ

      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 Market? 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.