Authors: Unknown
‘Yes.’ Janice wept, feeling her breath commingling with his, as his hands continued to grip her tightly.
His face softened, and she thought he would kiss her, would not have found it extraordinary, nor would she have resisted, but he did not.
His hands relaxed and slowly withdrew.
Unsupported, Janice took hold of the bedstead as she felt she might fall. Her legs were like water.
Hoover’s eyes remained fixed on her, but the tension had left them. He smiled in a kindly way and said, ‘Get some rest, now. I’ll let myself out. We’ll talk again in the morning.’
At the door, he turned and again smiled. ‘Good night, Janicej’ he said, pronouncing her given name with all the confidence and assurance of a conqueror.
She heard his footsteps trailing off through the apartment, then the distant click of the front door closing. Still, she remained standing, listening to all the old familiar noises of night reassert themselves: the clock, a distant siren, a car horn, and, added to them, another sound - unexpected, intrusive, demanding.
Janice groped about the room, tracking the wildly buzzing sound to its source, and discovered the telephone, still off its hook, on the floor where it had fallen. Her head reeled as she bent down and replaced the phone on its cradle. The moment she did, it rang, causing her to jump.
‘Mrs Templeton’ It was Dr Kaplan’s voice ‘I’ve been trying to reach you for the last hour, but your line’s been disconnected.’
‘It’s all right, Doctor,’ Janice stammered. ‘Everything’s all right, now.’
‘Is the child all right?’
‘Yes, Doctor, she’s fine. She’s sleeping quietly now.’
‘Good. Keep her on aspirin and plenty of liquids. I’ll stop by tomorrow.’
‘Thank you, Doctor.’
The rain, buoyed and driven by ocean winds, lashed against the long row of windows overlooking the night city. From where Janice sat in the rocker, the beads of water glistening in the foreground of a thousand lights appeared like diamond pendants tracing their mysterious paths down the glass panes. The tumbler of scotch in her hand was freshly filled from the half-empty bottle of J & B on the sewing table beside her. Liquor, fortunately, had an energizing effect on Janice, heightening her perceptions even as it dulled her senses and quieted her alarms.
The time was one ten. Two hours earlier Elliot Hoover had left, and now Janice sat in the nearly dark living-room beneath the cavorting nudes, waiting for morning to come.
She had decided to consider five o’clock as heralding dawn, at which time she would awaken Ivy. She had ordered the VIP limousine for five thirty. The sharp chill in the room had forced her to slip into her fur-lined raincoat, so that now she sat in the rocker fully dressed, with two packed suitcases on the floor beside her, sipping scotch and waiting.
There had been a jungle of decisions to pick her way through, and Janice prided herself on having been able to thrust emotion aside and channel her thoughts down a fairly straight and practical path.
Her first move had been to the telephone, to call Bill and throw the whole thing at him. She had actually placed the call and was waiting to be connected to the Reef Hotel when she changed her mind and cancelled it. Bill would simply tell them to come to Hawaii and might even convince her, but Janice knew that it was too late for Hawaii - too much had happened that night to be remedied by a Hawaiian tranquillizer.
It was then that Westport came into her mind, and the dreamy month they spent on the Sound the summer when Ivy was six years old. They had rented a cottage right on the water. Sound-Side Cottages, the colony was called. They’d probably be closed this time of year, but remembering that their cottage was equipped with a fireplace and wall heaters, Janice placed a call to the Stuarts, in Westport.
Mrs Stuart, the owner’s wife, answered after the fourteenth ring and was less angry at being disturbed than Janice expected she’d be. Although the cottages were indeed closed until late spring and there was some hesitation, arrangements were finally made with Mr Stuart to let Janice have one of the cottages the following day, but only after twelve noon, since it would require a full airing and cleaning.
In less than an hour she had packed two bags with a week’s worth of clothing for both of them, plus Ivy’s schoolbooks, Clue, Scrabble, WordKing, and medicinals; checked the balance in her chequebook; and counted her cash, fifty-eight dollars and ninety cents - enough to pay for the VIP limousine and lunch in Westport. She’d decided to splurge on the cab ride to Westport in deference to Ivy’s fever, which persisted even though she was sleeping soundly. She packed her electric blanket and would pack Ivy’s when she awakened.
The idea was to vanish for a time without trace, clue, or scent. Janice needed time to think, away from the pressure and hysteria of Elliot Hoover. If, as he insisted, Ivy’s life was in danger, and past history could be trusted, the danger was more acute with Hoover nearby than when he was far away. There had been no nightmares in his absence.
‘We are so connected. You. Your husband. Your child. Audrey Rose. And I. We have come together by a miracle and are now inseparable.’
He had invaded their home, planted his stake, and established his right to be there.
Janice shook her head dazedly and wondered which was the more incredible: that it could all be true, or that she was willing to accept it as being true? She was not a gullible person, had never been a believer in the occult or the supernatural. But this was different. She was directly involved, an eyewitness, a participant in Audrey Rose’s little game of spiritual hide-and-seek.
She took a large swallow from her glass and thought how good if, in the end, Bill was right, and Elliot Hoover turned out to be just another crazy person shattered by his loss, unable to cope, employing magic as a means of compensating for the brutal blow that life had dealt him.
But deep inside, she knew differently. And Hoover knew that she knew.
‘… your fear keeps holding you at arm’s distance from what … you know …to be the truth’
He was right.
Her fear had steadfastly veered her mind away from a direct confrontation with the logic of all she had seen and heard.
‘… you know so little, and there is so much you need to know…’
Janice rose and, swaying unsteadily, minced her way to the hall closet, where, standing on a chair, she foraged about the dark corner of the upper shelf until she finally brought forth the book she sought.
Seated once again in the rocker, Janice pulled the floor lamp closer to her side, and gazed down at the large leather-bound diary in her lap.
Scuffed, worn, abused by time and the elements, it bulged with swollen pages and paper clips, fastidiously directing the reader’s attention to the more cogent passages in the seven-year hegira of Elliot Hoover.
Flipping through the segmented pages, Janice immediately recognized the small, dainty script. The earlier portions were clearly written in black ink; the later pages, many of which were stained and discoloured, in barely legible pencil. This, in itself, seemed to trace the route of Hoover’s quest for the truth, from the comforts and niceties of Western civilization to the hardships encountered on his journey through India.
There were no datelines, printed or otherwise, and each page-was crammed to the margins with a spillage of words, writing as he spoke, in staccato bursts of information.
The first page contained his name and the date, which was April 17, 1968. And, just below it, two words, handprinted in large block lettering: ‘I START!’
And, turning the page, so did Janice.
I left my ticket upstairs. Had to find the landlady to unlock the door and bribe the cabdriver to wait. Already the whole thing is too hard to handle …
Air India is terrific. We have a hostess named Suman and a pilot named O’Connor. Next to me is this elderly lady who keeps touching Suman’s outfit. A sari in pink and purple. My companion’s name is Mrs Roth, and she said she’s ‘in woollens.’ Suman doesn’t seem to mind, so I told her I was ‘in woollens,’ too …
I’m feeling a little weak. We’ve been in the air almost a day and that means a lot of martinis. Also double Lassi.
Suddenly, I’m scared, like I’m the new kid in school and they’re not going to like me …
Dumdum Airport. I think that’s the whole reason I chose Calcutta to land in. Just to look at that sign.
Took a cab to the hotel where I’ll rest before starting the railway tour in the morning. Indian State Railways. I’ll travel light. A few changes - some shirts, ties, slacks, a pair of shorts - and my credit cards can take care of anything that might come up. At all times, I’ll have my notebook, my $10.95 ‘Travel to India’ fact book, and a book on reincarnation which, by the way, I cover with a brown paper bag.
It’s hot, and I think I just saw a dead man lying on the street.
My hotel overlooks the Maidan. It’s like Central Park.
I cross Chowringhi Road, which takes a while to do. At the southern end of the park is the Victoria Memorial, very marble, with a statue of Queen Victoria herself. Leaning on the statue right now is a skinny Indian boy about seven, selling something in a little bag to a group of people watching a performance of the Gita. I’m surprised I recognize it. I remember something about … ‘between us, lies the difference …’ you know, like, I remember about past lives, and you don’t…
I buy a bag from the boy and find it is grain. Am I supposed to eat it? I pass student meetings, prayer meetings, and I see dancing bears and a fortune-telling monkey. I give the monkey some grain, and I eat some, too. That monkey could have all my answers…
The first paper clip in the diary secured a thin sheaf of pages representing days, weeks, months - of what adventures Janice was excluded from knowing - which led her eyes to a page bearing the printed caption ‘Benares.’
I’m walking and many things are coming at me. First is the smell of jasmine, very sweet. Then the smell of smoke, and that’s not so sweet. And the crowds - the crowds of people - wedding processions, crowds of cows, buffalo, and there are men with long Biblical beards who are nude except for loincloths, and pilgrims on foot, and streams of camels, and children yelling, laughing, squalling, and bells, I hear bells all over, and then I see corpses wrapped in white silk or linen. They’re on bamboo stretchers, and they’re being marched to the Ghats, where they will be deposited and await their turn to b’e cremated.
I talk to a man who cannot understand me, nor can I understand his language. Later another old man approaches me, and he speaks English with a British accent but is still difficult to understand. He tells me that his ambition has been to visit Benares once in his lifetime, and that now he has realized this ambition and, if possible, he would care to remain here to die. He tells me that the waters here hold the powers of salvation. All the waters do in India, but the main sanctuary is Benares. The old man tells me that people who have never in their lives walked out of their villages will come and make a pilgrimage to Benares. And they’ll take about a week to do so and are absolved of all their sins and stand a good chance for spiritual salvation. He also tells me that if he could have his ultimate goal attained, it would be not to be reborn at all.
Right now, there is srnoke twisting up in the sky, and it is from the burning corpses in the Ghats, and I’m half afraid to investigate further. I do not understand my fear, unless it has something to do with the fiery deaths of my wife and child …
I watch the bodies being removed from the bamboo stretchers, with the families in attendance, as they prepare the bodies for cremation. The Ghats are over three miles in length, three miles of steps that lead down from a very steep bank into the sacred river. And these stone steps wed this great Hindu city to the Ganges.
Water, flowers, smoke, fire - all are forces of divine meaning to these people. In the Ganges are bathing bodies, while in the Ghats are burning bodies. Life and death, the living and the dead, moving onward together in close proximity and in perfect harmony.
Kids. Young children, watching bodies being burned. Flesh being burned. And they’re smiling and handing out flowers. They’re even giving funeral cakes called pindas to the dead. Imagine that! Cakes. Pastries. To the dead…
I think of Sylvia and Audrey Rose, their ashes mingled with those of the ‘62 Impala, sealed together in copper cylinders, consigned to the great forgettery in Mount Holyoke Mausoleum. I think of the quick Baptist service … words read from a book … postures, pos-ings, the regulated silence, a tear shed, a brief exchange of grief -all over in less than an hour. No cakes. No pindas. In lieu of flowers, the family requests a donation to be made to your favourite charity. No ritual offerings of prayer, daily, monthly, yearly, or otherwise.
Janice flipped past a thicker group of clipped pages to the next entry Hoover thought essential for her education.
There is a fact of life here that means everything we do each day is potentially a pious act. I’m grasping, I think, either a truth about the way these people live, or I’m imagining a very wonderful way to live. I must learn more. And that’s not going to happen in forty five days.
That, perhaps, is the most important thing I discovered in Benares - that time is unimportant.
The way that woman launders her clothes is as pious an act as that man who hasn’t stopped looking at the sun. I don’t know, I might be getting far afield of reality. Perhaps it’s just a poetic way of seeing a life-style that is totally new and different to me. Or maybe there is indeed that poetry here in the sounds and vibrations of work and religion …
Reincarnation here seems a fact of life.
Destruction, which confused me at first, which caused me to wonder why there was a temple for a goddess who was the consort to the god of destruction, is an equal fact of life.
Destruction and creativity go hand in hand. As I look around me, I see temples and homes that are lopsided, I suppose from the floods during the monsoons, and practically falling into the river, held up by the river. And once again, the idea of destruction - of life persisting, of life continuing, of life fighting on in the midst of all this destruction - seems to pull me towards an understanding of a basic truth, as yet unclear to me. And in trying to define this basic truth, I’m brought back to all the reading I did back in the States. The reading that didn’t make sense there but that now, in view of all that I see around me, must become a whole new education.