'No,' said Baedecker softly, 'I don't know. What kind of expenses?' Scott frowned. His hair was very long and parted in the middle. With the beard, his son reminded Baedecker of an eccentric ground crewman he had known while flying experimental aircraft for NASA in the mid-sixties.
'Expenses,' repeated Scott. 'Getting around wasn't cheap. Most of it I've donated to the Master.' Baedecker felt the conversation slipping out of his control. He felt the anger that he had sworn he would not let come. 'What do you mean you give it to the Master? For what? So he could build another auditorium here? Move to Hollywood again? Try to buy another town in Oregon?' Scott sighed and bit into a roll without thinking about it. He brushed crumbs from his mustache. 'Forget it, Dad.'
'Forget what? That you dropped out of graduate school to come spend money on this fake guru?'
'I said forget it.'
'Like hell. We can at least talk about it.'
'Talk about what?' Scott's voice was rising. Heads turned. An older man, in orange robe and sandals, his hair tied back in a ponytail, put down his copy of the Times and stubbed out his cigarette, obviously interested in the exchange. 'What the hell do you know about it? You're so wrapped up in your American materialistic crap that you wouldn't know the truth if it appeared on your fucking desk someday.'
'Materialistic crap,' repeated Baedecker. Most of the anger was gone now. 'And you think that a little bit of tantra yoga and a few months in this ass-backward country is going to lead you to the truth?'
'Don't talk about things you don't know about,' snapped Scott.
'I know about engineering,' said Baedecker. 'I know that I'm not impressed with a country that can't manage a simple phone system or build sewers. I know useless hunger when I see it.'
'Bullshit,' said Scott, perhaps with more of a sneer than he had intended. 'Just because we're not eating Kansas beef you think we're starving . . .'
'I'm not talking about you. Or these others here. You can fly home anytime you want. This is a game for rich kids. I'm talking about . . .'
'Rich kids!' Scott's high laugh was sincere. 'This is the first time I've been called a rich kid! I remember when you wouldn't give me a goddamn fifty-cent allowance because you thought it'd be bad for my self-discipline.'
'Come on, Scott.'
'Why don't you just go home, Dad. Go home and watch your color TVs and ride your exerciser in the basement and look at your fucking photos on the wall and leave me here to go about my . . . my game.' Baedecker closed his eyes for a second. He wished the day would start over so he could begin again. 'Scott. We want you home.'
'Home?' Baedecker watched his son's eyebrows arch. 'Where's home, Pop? Up in Boston with Mom and good-time Charlie? Your swinging-bachelor pad in St. Louis? No thanks.' Baedecker reached out and took his son's upper arm once again. He could feel the tightening there, the resistance. 'Let's talk about it, Scott. There's nothing here.' The two men stared at each other. Strangers in a chance encounter.
'There's sure as hell nothing there,' said Scott fiercely. 'You've been there, Dad. You know it. Shit, you are it.' Baedecker leaned back in his chair. A waiter stood obtrusively nearby, uselessly rearranging cups and silverware. Sparrows hopped across nearby tables, eating from the soiled plates and sugar cups. The fat boy on the diving board called loudly and hit the water in a crude belly flop. His father shouted encouragement, and the women laughed from poolside.
'I have to get going,' said Scott. Baedecker nodded. 'I'll walk you there.'
The ashram was only two blocks from the hotel. Devotees were walking up the flowered lanes and arriving by autorickshaw in twos and threes. A wooden gate and tall fences kept out the curious. Just inside the gate there was a small souvenir shop where one could buy books, photographs, and autographed T-shirts of the guru.
The two men stood a minute by the entrance.
'Can you get away long enough for dinner tonight?' asked Baedecker. 'Yeah. I guess so. Fine.'
'The hotel?'
'No. I know a place downtown that has good vegetarian. Cheap.'
'All right. Well, okay, good. Stop by the hotel if you get out early.'
'Yeah. I'll be going back to the Master's farm on Monday but maybe Maggie could show you around Poona before you leave. Kasturba Samadhi, the Parvati Temple, all that good tourist shit.' The motion with his right hand again. 'You know.' Baedecker almost reached out to shake hands again — as with a client — resisted it. The diffuse sunlight was very hot. From the humidity he knew that it would rain hard again before lunch. He would use the time to buy an umbrella somewhere.
'I'll see you later, Scott.'
His son nodded. When he turned to join the other robed devotees to enter the ashram, Baedecker noticed how straight the thin shoulders were, how his son's hair caught the light.
On Monday morning Baedecker took the train, the Deccan Queen, for the hundred-mile trip down out of the mountains to Bombay. His flight to London was delayed three hours. The heat was very great. Baedecker noticed that the aged airport guards carried ancient bolt-action rifles and wore only sandals over their patched socks.
That morning he had walked through the old British section of Poona until he had found the doctor's house where Maggie worked. Miss Brown was gone — taken the children to the pavilion — did he care to leave a message? He left no message. He left the simply wrapped package holding the flute he'd purchased in Varanasi. The flute and an old Saint Christopher's medal on a tarnished chain.
He boarded about six P.M. and the aircraft was a physical relief. There was an additional maintenance delay, but the stewardesses brought around drinks and the air-conditioning was working well. Baedecker leafed through a Scientific American he had bought in Victoria Station.
He dozed off for a while just before they took off. In his dream he was learning to swim and was bouncing lightly over the clear white sand of the lake bottom. He could not see his father, but he could feel the strong, constant pressure of his father's arms buoying him up, keeping him safe from the dangerous currents.
He awoke just as they took off. Ten minutes later they were far out over the Arabian Sea and they broke through the ceiling of cloud cover. It was the first time in a week that Baedecker had seen a pure blue sky. The setting sun was turning the clouds beneath them into a lake of golden fire.
As they reached their cruising altitude and ended their climb, Baedecker felt the slight reduction in g-force as they came over the top of the arc. Looking out the scratched window, searching in vain for a glimpse of the moon, Baedecker felt a brief lifting of spirit. Here in the high, thin air the demanding gravity of the massive planet seemed slightly — ever so slightly — lessened.
Part Two
Glen Oak
Forty-two years after he had moved away, thirty years after he had last visited, sixteen years after his week of fame walking on the moon, Richard Baedecker was invited to come back to his hometown. He was to be guest of honor during the Old Settlers Weekend and Parade. August 8 was to be declared Richard M. Baedecker Day in Glen Oak, Illinois.
Baedecker's middle initial was not M. His middle name was Edgar. Nor did he consider the small village in Illinois his hometown. When he did think of his childhood home, which was seldom, he usually remembered the small apartment on Kildare Street in Chicago where his family spent the years before and after the war. Baedecker had lived in Glen Oak for less than three years from late 1942 to May of 1945. His mother's family had owned land there for many years, and when Baedecker's father had gone back into the Marine Corps to serve three years as an instructor at Camp Pendleton, the seven-year-old Richard Baedecker and his two sisters found themselves inexplicably whisked from their comfortable apartment in Chicago to a drafty old rental house in Glen Oak. For Baedecker, memories of those times were as hazy and out of context as the thought of the manic paper and scrap-metal drives that had seemed to occupy his weekends and summers during their entire interlude there. Despite the fact that his parents were buried just outside of Glen Oak, he had not visited or thought of the town in a long, long time.