Phases of Gravity Page 4

  Maggie's laughter echoed off the tall building. An elderly English couple glared at them as if they were giggling in church.

  "All right," she said at last. "That's why I'm here. Why did you come?"

  Baedecker blinked. "I'm his father." Maggie Brown's green eyes did not waver. "You're right," he said. "That's not enough." He reached into his pocket and withdrew the Saint Christopher's medal.

  "My father gave this to me when I went off to the Marines," he said. "My father and I didn't have much in common . . ."

  "Was he Catholic?"

  Baedecker laughed. "No, he wasn't Catholic . . . Dutch Reformed . . . but his grandfather had been Catholic. This thing's come a long way." Baedecker told her about the medal's trip to the moon.

  "Jesus," said Maggie. "And St. Christopher's not even a saint anymore, is he?"

  "Nope."

  "That doesn't matter, does it?"

  "No."

  Maggie looked across the river. The light was fading. Lantern lights and open fires gleamed along a line of trees. Sweet smoke filled the air.

  "You know what the saddest book I ever read was?" she asked.

  "No. What was the saddest book you ever read?"

  "The Boys of Summer. Ever read it?"

  "No. But I remember when it came out. It was a sports book, wasn't it?"

  "Yes. This writer—Roger Kahn—he went and looked up a lot of the guys who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1952 and '53."

  "I remember those seasons," said Baedecker. "Duke Snider, Campanella, Billy Cox. What's sad about that? They didn't win the Series, but they had great seasons."

  "Yeah, but that's just it," said Maggie, and Baedecker was amazed at how earnest and tense her voice seemed. "Years later, when Kahn looked up these guys, that was still their best season. I mean, it'd been the best time in their goddamn lives, and most of them didn't want to believe it. They were just old farts signing autographs and waiting to die, and they still pretended that the best stuff was ahead of them."

  Baedecker did not laugh. He nodded. Embarrassed, Maggie poked through the guidebook. After a silent moment she said, "Hey, here's something interesting."

  "What's that?"

  "It says here that the Taj Mahal was just for practice. Old Shah Jahan had an even bigger tomb planned for himself. Across the river. It was going to be all black and connected to the Taj by a graceful bridge."

  "What happened?"

  "Hmm . . . evidently when Shah Jahan died, his son . . . Aurangzeb . . . just slid his father's coffin in next to Mumtaz Mahal and spent the money on other things."

  They both nodded. As they left they could hear the haunting cries of the Muslim call to prayer. Baedecker looked back before they passed out the main gate, but he was not looking at the Taj or its dim image in the darkened, reflecting pool. He was looking across the river at a tall, ebony tomb and its soaring bridge connecting it to the closer shore.

  The moon hung above the banyan trees against the pale of the early-morning sky. Baedecker stood in front of the hotel with his hands in his pockets and watched the street fill with people and vehicles. When he finally saw Scott approaching, he had to look again to make sure it was Scott. The orange robe and sandals seemed appropriate to the long-haired, bearded image, but none of it held a referent for Baedecker. He noticed that the boy's beard, a miserable failure two years earlier, was now full with red streaks in it.

  Scott stopped a few feet away. The two stared at each other for a long moment that had just begun to shade into awkwardness when Scott, teeth white against the beard, held out his hand.

  "Hi, Dad."

  "Scott." The handshake was firm but unsatisfactory to Baedecker. He felt a sudden surge of loss superimposed upon the memory of a seven-year-old boy, blue T-shirt and crew cut, running full tilt from the house and throwing himself into his father's arms.

  "How are you, Dad?"

  "Good. Very good. How about you? You look like you've lost quite a bit of weight."

  "Just fat. I've never felt better. Physically or spiritually."

  Baedecker paused.

  "How's Mom?" asked Scott.

  "I haven't seen her for a few months, but I called her just before I left and she was great. She told me to give you a hug for her. Also to break your arm if you didn't promise to write more often."

  The young man shrugged and made a motion with his right hand that Baedecker remembered from Little League games in which Scott had struck out. Impulsively, Baedecker reached out and clasped his son's arm. It felt thin but strong under the flimsy robe.

  "Come on, Scott. What do you say we go somewhere to have breakfast and really talk?"

  "I don't have a lot of time, Dad. The Master begins his first session at eight and I have to be there. I'm afraid I'm not going to have any free time during the next few days. Our whole group is at a real sensitive stage right now. It doesn't take much to break the life-consciousness. I could slip back a couple of months in my progress."

  Baedecker cut off the first response that welled up. He nodded tightly. "Well, we still have time for a cup of coffee, don't we?"

  "Sure." There was a slight undertone of doubt in the word.

  "Where to? How about the hotel coffee shop? It seems to be about the only place around here."

  Scott's smile was condescending. "All right. Sure."

  The coffee shop was a shaded, open structure adjoining the gardens and pool. Baedecker ordered rolls and coffee and noticed from the corner of his eye the "Scheduled Class" woman mowing the lawn with a hand sickle. Untouchables remained untouchable in modern India, but they were no longer called that. An Indian family had come to use the pool. Both the father and his little boy were grossly overweight. Again and again they jumped feet-first off the low board and splashed water on the sidewalk. The mother and daughters sat at a table and giggled loudly.

  Scott's eyes looked deeper, even more serious than Baedecker had remembered. Even as a baby Scott had been solemn. Now the young man looked tired and his breathing was shallow and asthmatic.

  Their food arrived. "Mmmm," said Baedecker, "I haven't cared too much for the Indian food I've had on this trip, but the coffee's been delicious."

  "Lots of karma," said Scott. He stared doubtfully at his cup and the two rolls. "You don't even know who prepared this stuff. Who touched it. Could be somebody with really lousy karma."

  Baedecker sipped his coffee. "Where are you living here, Scott?"

  "Mostly at the ashram or the Master's farm. During solitude weeks I check into a little Indian hostel a few blocks from here. It has open windows and a string bed, but it's cheap. And my physical environment doesn't mean anything to me anymore."

  Baedecker stared. "No? If it's so cheap, where has all the money gone? Your mother and I have sent you almost four thousand dollars since you decided to come here in January."

  Scott looked out at the pool where the Indian family was making noise. "Oh, you know. Expenses."

  "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.

  Baedecker received the invitation in late May, shortly before embarking on a month-long business trip that would take him to three continents. He filed the letter and would have forgotten it if he had not mentioned it to Cole Prescott, vice president of the aerospace corporation for which he worked.

  "Hell, Dick, why don't you go? It'll be good PR for the firm."

  "You're joking," said Baedecker. They were in a bar on Lindbergh Boulevard, near their offices in suburban St. Louis. "When I lived in that little Podunk town during the war, it had a sign that said POPULATION 850—SPEED ELECTRICALLY TIMED. I doubt if it's grown much since then. Probably gone down in population, if anything. Not many people there would be interested in buying MD-GSS avionics."

  "They buy stock, don't they?" asked Prescott and lifted a handful of salted nuts to his mo
uth.

  "Livestock," said Baedecker.

  "Where the hell is this Glen Oak, anyway?" asked Prescott.

  It had been years since Baedecker had heard anyone say the town's name. It sounded strange to him. "About 180 miles from here as the provincial crow flies," he said. "Stuck somewhere between Peoria and Moline."

  "Shit, it's just up the road. You owe it to them, Dick."

  "Too busy," Baedecker said and motioned to the bartender for a third Scotch. "Be catching up after the Bombay and Frankfurt conferences."

  "Hey," said Prescott. He turned back from watching a waitress bend over to serve a young couple at a nearby table. "Isn't the ninth of August the beginning of that airline confab at the Hyatt in Chicago? Turner got you to go to that, didn't he?"

  "No, Wally did. Seretti's going to be there from Rockwell and we're going to talk about the Air Bus modification deal with Borman."

  "So!" said Prescott.

  "So what?"

  "So you'll be going that way anyway, pal. Do your patriotic duty, Dick. I'll have Teresa tell 'em you're coming."

  "We'll see," said Baedecker.

  Baedecker flew into Peoria on the afternoon of Friday, August 7. The Ozark DC-9 barely had time to climb to eight thousand feet and find the meandering path of the Illinois River before they were descending. The airport was so small and so empty that Baedecker thought fleetingly of the asphalt runway at the edge of the Indian jungle where he had landed a few weeks earlier at Khajuraho. Then he was down the ramp, across the hot tarmac, and was being urgently hailed by a heavy, florid-faced man he had never seen before.