Max looks at the photograph again and feels himself moved back in time to see, through the eyes of his father, himself as a naked baby. Max was named after Maxim Gorky. Max’s father, Alexander, had seen Gorky’s play, The Lower Depths, and had read it many times. ‘To write like this,’ he said, ‘is to see the whole world in what you look at.’ Alexander Lesser was a homeopath. Max was born at the Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia, which was named after the founder of homeopathy. His father sat his patients at an optical device on which they propped their chins while he examined their irises and explained why their circulation was bad or their bones ached. He took Max to the pharmacy where his prescriptions were filled. It was cool and dark. It smelled like midnight gardens, dusty caravans, secret caves. There were tall cabinets of many drawers with white china knobs. From the blue lettering on the white porcelain label plates Max copied some of the names: valerian; veronica; calendula; melissa; belladonna atropa; primula. They were like the names of beautiful women, he liked the feel of them in his mouth. These magical ingredients were dispensed in little bottles with complex instructions. Alexander Lesser had loyal patients who claimed to be helped by the medicines and came back again and again. Max too, when feeling not quite right, propped his chin on the iridology device and was given little bottles and instructions.
‘Think of it,’ his father used to say — ‘in a thousandfold dilution, the memory of a single drop of medicine persists and works its cure. Only the memory! In a single cell of a human being is the memory of the whole design. In each of us is the memory, however inaccessible, of the beginning of the universe. We are the memory of the dust of stars.’ He would press his forehead against Max’s. ‘In you,’ he said, ‘there must be memories inherited from me. I know I have these from my father — black trees, the smell of snow, the sound of cossacks. Ravens.’
Remembering his words, Max sees again Noah’s Ark stranded on the mountains of Ararat behind the boiler. He sees the raven loop the loop and fly away and wonders if Victor will remember it. ‘A single drop,’ says Max. He recalls that when he had chicken pox and measles his mother called Dr Farber, a regular GP.
45 Not a Retreat
December 1997. ‘Diamond Heart,’ says the brochure, ‘is not a retreat. It is a centre of dynamic calm in which mind and spirit gather energy for the next forward move.’ On offer are yoga, tai chi, feng shui, and Zen disciplines including meditation, gardening, flower arrangement, archery, snooker, and poker. Vegetarian, kosher, and halal cuisine. Acupuncture, reflexology, aromatherapy, and homeopathic medicine. Tuition in classical Indian music with Hariprasad and Indira Ghosh. The photograph shows Mr Ghosh sitting crosslegged with a sitar. He’s wearing a proper sitar-playing outfit just like Ravi Shankar. He looks like someone you could trust.
Diamond Heart, established two years ago, has given a new lease of life to the defunct herring port of Port Malkie on the Firth of Moray. The harbour is almost empty, stretching out its arms to the past. The tide comes in, goes out around coastal features known locally as Kirsty’s Knowe, Teeny Titties, and Deil’s Hurdies. The wind sighs in the grasses. The pebbles rattle in the tidewash, the sea-shapen rocks abide. There are plenty of gulls, shags, and cormorants but no herring. Port Malkie, however, now buzzes with new businesses supplying goods and services to Diamond Heart.
Diamond Heart is not cheap. The one thing its varied clientele have in common is that they can all afford it. There are ageing hippies, youthful rebels, stressed-out executives, ex-husbands and ex-wives, broken-down pop stars, actors in the throes of expanding consciousness, and everything between. Cannabis is not compulsory. The Diamond Heart complex has many large and small dome-shaped buildings (called tholoi in the brochure) overlooking the sea. Lola and little Noah occupy a medium-sized tholos which is designated as a family unit. It has a small but adequate galley and is equipped with a washing machine, dryer, and dishwasher. The town is geared up to deliver everything necessary to the residents of Diamond Heart twenty-four hours a day. Although only recently arrived, Lola settles in quickly and is already known among the other residents as the E-type from Belgravia.
As soon as possible she goes to sign up for private tuition with Hariprasad Ghosh. When she shows up at his studio he’s sitting crosslegged on a Kelim. He’s wearing jeans and a green sweatshirt on which is a gold-tinted photograph of a Kola bronze of Shiva Nataraja with the words DIAMOND HEART arcing over Shiva’s ring of fire. Mr Ghosh is a man of slight physique with a face that makes it difficult to guess his age. When he stands up to greet her she feels as if he can read her mind. His bare feet look ingenuous but not naive. Cushions and hassocks lie about. There’s a long table with various instruments on it, sheet music and music paper with handwritten notation. Lola recognises sitar, tabla, flutes. She’s been thinking sitar but now another instrument is talking to her. ‘What’s that one?’ she says, pointing.
‘That’s a sarod,’ says Mr Ghosh. ‘Like the sitar, it’s a thirteenth-century instrument. Eight main strings and this one has sixteen resonating strings. The body is hollowed-out wood but the top is leather and the fingerboard is metal. You use a coconut-shell plectrum. It’s not like the sitar, it hasn’t got any frets. You have to find the notes by yourself, as with a violin. Because it is more difficult to learn than the sitar it is not so popular here. It requires a good musical ear and hard concentration.’
Lola takes the sarod in her hands, feels the weight of it. It’s the instrument Clint Eastwood would choose, it’s the.357 magnum. ‘This is the one I want to learn,’ she says.
‘Are you a musician?’ says Mr Ghosh.
‘I play the piano a little.’
‘The sarod requires great dedication and patience,’ says Mr Ghosh. ‘It will take a lot of time.’
‘I’ve got the time, and I want lessons every day.’
‘It is my wife who teaches sarod,’ says Mr Ghosh. ‘If you wish to go ahead with this, she will see you tomorrow.’
‘A woman,’ says Lola. ‘Yes, I’d like to be taught by a woman.’
‘The fee is forty pounds an hour. You want to do this every day?’
‘Yes.’
The next day Lola loads Noah into his pram and returns to the studio to meet Indira Ghosh. She is a small woman in a red sari. She has a red bindi on her forehead. Her face is round, and at the first glance childlike. But it is the face of a child who cannot be fooled by anybody or anything. She smiles when she sees Noah and greets him with a little bow. ‘What is your child’s name?’ she asks.