At the far end of the valley fields of grass rippled in the gentle breeze. It wasn’t until later that I realized what kind of grass it was. Grass! That’s what kind of grass it was. Pot! Mary Jane! Marijuana!
Bambi (the girl) carried me directly to the palace of the High Lama. Sunlight filtered surrealist patterns into a long, high-domed chamber. The High Lama was seated in a high chair carved of marble at the far end of the chamber.
There was—how can I describe it?—an aura about him. As Bambi carried me closer to him, I could feel his spirituality almost as though it were a physical force. It overwhelmed me so that now, in retrospect, our meeting comes back to me in disconnected snatches.
First there was the visual impression of him as Bambi set me down on the polished stone floor in front of him. He had a full black beard. There was a hole in the right cheekbone, directly under the eye, into which a diamond had been set. He carried a New York City Police Department service revolver in a holster at his hip. He was playing with a little white mouse in the palm of his hand. A full-grown English sheepdog dozed at his feet. He was a small man, slender but compact, olive-skinned, and he looked a lot like the actor Al Pacino.
“You look a lot like the movie actor Al Pacino,” I told him.
“What you mean, my son,” he told me in a voice that managed to be both unearthly and whiny at the same time, “is that the actor Al Pacino bears a striking resemblance to me. That’s what the fuck you mean, my son.”
“You’re the High Lama?” I couldn’t help it. A note of doubt crept into my voice.
“The twelfth of my line,” he assured me.
“You don’t look like a High Lama.”
“What do I look like, my son?”
“You look Italian. Italian-American. Like an Italian-American hippie.”
“Cool,” he said coolly, noncommittally, dragging on a roach.
“You don’t dress like a High Lama either. Whoever heard of a High Lama wearing a New York City policeman’s jacket with dungarees and sneakers.”
“What then should I wear, my son?”
“White robes, I guess.”
“I’m the High Lama here in Läger Shang, but I’m not quite that high, shmuck!”
“You don’t look old enough to be a High Lama either.”
“How old do you think I am?”
“Thirty-five. Maybe forty.”
“I am one hundred and sixty-three years old.”
“You’re a liar!”
“What is truth?” he spread his hands philosophically. “Shithead!” he added.
“And you don’t talk like a High Lama either.”
“Ahh, fongool!” He shrugged and smiled beneficently.
“You have a New York City accent.”
“You don’t zackly sound like Oxford either, brother.”
“How did you get to be the High Lama?” I wanted to know. “And don’t bother telling me again that you’re the twelfth of your line.”
“You mean I’m not the twelfth of my line?” He dragged on the stick deeply, fatalistically. “All right, then. The truth is nobody else wanted the job. That’s how I got to be High Lama.”
“You ran unopposed?”
“I didn’t even have to run. Like all I did was say I’m your High Lama and everybody in Läger Shang nodded their heads and said, ‘Cool. That’s cool.’ ”
“Nobody objected?”
“Nobody. That’s how it is in a Utopia. Nobody ever gets uptight.”
“What makes Läger Shang a Utopia? Its remoteness? The climate?”
“No, paisan. It’s a Utopia because there is no crime in Läger Shang.”
“How come?”
“No cops, putz!”
“You mean where there’s no police -?”
“That’s right. There’s no payoffs. And where there’s no payoffs, there’s no corruption. And where there’s no corruption, there’s no crime.”
“If that’s so, then how come you wear that pistol?”
“The price of Utopia is eternal vigilance.”
“I don’t think I understand,” I confessed.
“You don’t have to understand. Just enjoy. You dig, bubula? Relax and enjoy. Pretend it’s Miami Beach and comes off your taxes.”
“I hope it’s not as expensive as Miami Beach.”
“Don’t sweat it. Everything’s free. There’s no such thing as money in Läger Shang.”
“If there’s no money, then what do you use for barter?” I wondered.
“There is no barter ’cause there’s no such thing as property here, my son. Nobody owns anything. Everybody owns everything.”
It was a can of worms to me. One, I suspected, where each question I asked would receive the sort of answer which could only lead to another question. Somehow it made me think of Dickson with his oft-stated law-and-order philosophy. I wondered how the anarchy of Läger Shang must be striking him. I inquired of the High Lama about Dickson.
“I believe, my son, that your companion is hanging out at the entry gates waiting for the search party that went out to retrieve his gold.”
“Do you think they’ll be able to find it?”
“Oh, yeah, my son. One of our sentinels watched the parachute with the gold descend. It landed not far from here. It will be recovered in short time.”
“Won’t it be community property then?” I asked. I wondered how Dickson would like that.
“Technically, yeah. But gold has no value in Läger Shang. I don’t think anybody will care if your friend keeps it.”
“Then we’ll be free to take it with us when we leave?”
“Leave? What are you, meshuginah, my son? You can’t leave.”
“What do you mean? Why not?”
“Nobody is ever allowed to leave Läger Shang. If we let people leave when they wanted to, how long do you think it would be before word of our Utopia here reached the outside world?”
“What if it did?” I wanted to know.
“You think we want Läger Shang turned into a retirement community for urban dwellers? You think we want real-estate developers laying out a golf course where we grow our grass? You think we want the American Legion holding its convention here?”
“You really mean we can’t leave? You’re going to hold us prisoner here?”
“Not at all, my son. You’re free to leave whenever you want. But without a guide you will perish before you have gone one day’s journey from Lager Shang. You dig?”
I dug.
The interview with the High Lama was over. He stood up, took a final puff of the roach, pirouetted, and did a farewell entrechat. Bambi (the girl) carried me from the chamber.
She took me to a cottage which it had evidently already been decided I would share with Dickson. He wasn’t there. Bambi (the girl) left and returned with a physician. He examined my ankle and taped it, assuring me that it would be as good as new in a few days.
Bambi (the girl) prepared some food. After I had eaten, she helped me bathe, provided a garment like a long white nightgown for me to wear, and tucked me into bed. “After I go home and cook dinner for my husband, I’ll come back and fuck you,” she told me sweetly. She left.
I was still pleasantly mulling over the prospect of her parting remark when Dickson showed up. He was in a dither. He’d gotten his gold all right, but he’d also just come from the High Lama where he’d received ,the word on the obstacles to leaving.
“That High Lama is un-American. He’s subversive. He’s probably a [adjective omitted] communist!” Dickson was fuming.
“What happened?”
“I told him that if he’d provide us with a guide to get out of here, when I got back to the States I’d make a serious recommendation to President Cadillac that we institute a foreign-aid program for Läger Shang. And do you know what that [expletive deleted] said? Do you know what he said?”