"Tingle?" asked Powell. Was she trying to communicate in code? Was the eye makeup a narcotic? Was she bugged? This was all strange to Reverend Powell.
"The feeling behind my eyes. We were created to enjoy our bodies, not suffer with them. The Blissful Master, all praise be his name, has taught us to free ourselves. Tingle is part of the freedom."
"Yes, we got your letter—your father, my good friend, and I."
"Oh, that. All praise be the name of the Blissful Master. Praise be his infinite name and infinite being. He is wondrous in his life, and his life is our proof. Praise the blissful masterful life."
"Joleen, child, is there some place where we can talk in privacy?"
"Nothing is private from him who knows everything."
"I see. Then perhaps you would care to return with me tonight or as soon as possible, to spread the good word to Jason," said Reverend Powell, scanning the walls. Standing along them were robed, turbaned men with unholy machine guns and bandoliers. The courtyard floor was delicate inlaid gold and red tile. Reverend Powell could hear the clod of his rough leather shoes as he walked with the girl who had been Joleen Snowy into the building under the golden dome. Inside, the Oriental splendor disappeared with a gust of cold air. He was walking on linoleum, with hidden air conditioning chilling him, and indirect lighting proving restful, if strange, to his eyes. It was good to be cold and dry, away from the hot, dusty death of the roads of India, away from the brown mud of the Ganges and the reek of human waste in body and in discharge.
Clear water bubbled from a clean chrome fountain. Set against a clear white formica wall was a red man-high soda machine.
"The Blissful Master believes that is holy which is made holy," said Joleen. "He believes we are here to be happy and when we are not, it is because we have poisoned ourselves in our minds. Don't be shocked by the modern heart of this palace. It is another proof of the Blissful Master's truth. Do you want a soda?"
"With all my heart, child, I would dearly love a soda. Do you have orange soda here in Patna?"
"No. Just Tab. The Blissful Master prefers Tab. If you want orange, go to Calcutta or Paris. Here we have Tab."
"I see the Blissful Master has a problem with calories."
"It is not a problem. A diet drink is a solution." Reverend Powell saw a flush creep up her soft pale cheeks. For the first time, he saw a strand of her golden yellow hair peek out from under her pink hood.
"We can leave to spread his word tonight, if you wish, child."
"You think I've been kidnapped, don't you? Don't you?"
Reverend Powell glanced around the large expanse of the cool, white-walled room, like a horizontal snow pop set in a hot pink and brown dish that was India. Modern luxury in a continent of rancid death. If it were modern, it could have electronic listening devices. Suddenly he noticed cleanliness in the air. He was no longer smelling human excrement.
"Of course, I don't think you've been kidnapped. As I was telling your father, my close friend, I just want to come and see our little Joleen."
"Rubbish. Daddy isn't your friend. The day I was born it almost cost you your life to get coffee at his pharmacy. Daddy's a reactionary racist. Always has been. Always will be."
"But the letter, Joleen?" asked Reverend Powell, his mouth open in astonishment.
"Brilliant, wasn't it? Another proof of the perfection of our Blissful Master. He said you would come. He said Daddy would go to you and you would come here for me. He said you would do this at the request of a man who would have watched you die for a cup of coffee twenty years ago. Doesn't this prove his brilliance? Oh, perfection, perfection, perfection is my Blissful Master," shrieked Joleen, and she jumped up and down, clapping her hands in ecstasy. "A perfection. A perfection. A perfection. Another perfection."
From doors he had not seen, from drapes he had not noticed until they rustled, from stairways that had blended into the walls until he saw sandals coming down them, came young men and women, almost all of them white, a few black. None looked Indian except one girl who was more likely Jewish or Italian, thought Powell.
"Let me tell you another proof of our Blissful Master's perfection," Joleen announced to the throng and told about Jason, Georgia, and the history of the races, black and white, how distance had always been between them, but the Blissful Master had said his perfection transcended races.
"And to prove it," shrieked Joleen, "here is a black man who has come at the bidding of my father, a white man and a hated segregationist. Lo, perfection we behold."
"Lo, perfection we behold," chanted the group. "Lo, perfection we behold." And Joleen Snowy led the Reverend Mr. Powell through the group of young people to two white doors that slid apart, revealing an elevator.
When the door shut them off from the crowd, Powell said, "I don't think deceit is a form of perfection. You lied, Joleen."
"It's not a lie. If you are here, isn't that a stronger reality, a stronger truth than a piece of paper? Therefore, a greater truth overcomes a lesser one."
"You sent a letter with deception in it, child. This deception is still a deception, still a lie. You never used to lie, child. What have they done to you here? Do you want to go home?"
"I want to achieve perfect bliss through the Master of Bliss."
"Look at me, child," said the Reverend Titus Powell. "I have come a long way and I am tired. Your father is worried about you. Your mother is worried about you. I was worried about you. I came because I thought you had been kidnapped. I came because your letter read like a code calling me to come. Now, do you want to go home with me, back to Jason?" He saw her head tilt and her eyes fix on his chest as her mind put together the intricacies of her answer.
"I am home, Reverend. And besides, you don't understand. You think it was what you call your Christian virtue that brought you here. It wasn't. It was the perfection of the Blissful Master, and I feel so happy for you, because now you will enter bliss with us. And you almost missed it because of your age."
The elevator doors opened to a room furnished in chrome and black leather, deep chairs and long sofas, round glass tables and lighting that looked to Reverend Powell as if it had come from the pages of that fancy magazine he had once bought by mistake. He and Mrs. Powell had read it, laughing at the prices. You could buy a house for the cost of some of those furnishings.
He heard a mechanical "pong" from a far corner of the room, which smelled like lemon-scented Airwick.
"We're here," said Joleen. "The inner sanctum of the Divine Bliss Mission. Hail perfection, full of grace."
"Pong," came the noise again. Reverend Powell peered into the large, low room. The noise came from a machine. Two pudgy light brown hands twitched nervously at the sides of the cabinet.
"Pong," went the machine again.
"Shit," said a voice from behind the cabinet.
"Reverend Powell is here, O Blissful Master," chanted Joleen in a squeaky sing-song.
"What?" came the voice from behind the cabinet.
"Pong," went the machine.
"Reverend Powell is here as you predicted, O Perfection, O Enlightment."
"Who?"
"The one whom you perceived would come. The Christian. The Baptist whom we will show as a convert to our true enlightenment."
"What? What are you talking about?"
"Remember the letter, O Perfect One?"
"Oh, yeah. The nigger. Bring him in."
Joleen squeezed Powell's hand and with a beaming grin nodded to him to come along with her.
"I don't like that word. The last time it was used on me, young lady, was by rowdies in your father's pharmacy."
"You don't understand. 'Nigger' in the mouth of the Blissful Master takes the sting and prejudice from the word. What is the word but two insignificant sounds anyway? Nig and er. Nothing."