I smeared the vibhuti all over my chest and forehead. It had a soft, powdery texture, not harsh at all. It smelled slightly of spice. Then I sat down in a chair to meditate.
What happened next is hard to explain. You probably won’t believe it. Part of this is clear to me, but part is vague. Kind of shadowy.
I dimly remember leaving the hotel. I remember renting a chauffeured car. I hardly remember the journey at all. I must have slept on the way. I remember arriving again in Benares, where I spent the night, what was left of the night, I’m not sure. I had no luggage – I found that out later. I don’t remember going down to the river, but it’s clear that I must have done so, probably under my own steam – the car and driver definitely didn’t take me – because I remember arriving there, by the Ganges, probably before dawn. I remember the darkness and the smells of incense, mud, and burning wood.
I sat down in the dirt by the river. Before that, as I told you, I couldn’t get into the lotus position, but now I did it, or at least a fair approximation of it. My legs were crossed in front of me, and my hands were in what I’d have to describe as a cupped position, also in front of me.
I wore only my undershorts. They were white Jockey shorts. I didn’t have another blessed thing on my body. No shirt, no socks and shoes, no pants, no hat. Just my white undershorts.
Do you see the picture I’m painting for you? I was thin, almost scrawny. I had long hair, even longer than it is now. It fell almost to my shoulders. I had a beard. And all my hair, of course, was gray, a pale shade of gray. I was not a thing of beauty.
I looked like a beggar. I was sitting there by the Ganges, in a trance, in beggar’s clothes and in a beggar’s position.
Now, as I may have told you, the riverside was full of beggars. They didn’t do very well except when an occasional tourist gave them a dollar – they could eat for a day or two on a dollar – in the hope that they’d go away. I, on the other hand, was sitting there cross-legged in my Jockey shorts, with my hands forming a little cup in front of me. I didn’t importune anyone, I didn’t clutch at them, I didn’t even ask. I just sat there, meditating. And I was deluged with money. With dollars, with rupees, with English pounds, with yen, with marks and francs. People couldn’t pass by without giving me something. Indians, Asians, Europeans – everyone gave.
You see, money just gravitates to some people, whether they’re accumulating TWA stock or sitting by the side of a muddy river in India. They’re money magnets, and money is like metal shavings. I’m one of those people. I can’t help it.
The coins and bills spilled over my cupped hands into a pile in the dust of the street. No one, not even the other beggars, dared take it from me. They must have thought I was a holy man come from afar, God knows where. I was thin enough, my hair was scraggly enough, my undershorts could have been taken for a loincloth, and I had the vibhuti rubbed into my chest and forehead. Anyone who stole from me would come back in the next life as a cockroach with backache.
I don’t know how much time passed. I only know I was there and doing very well indeed.
I know this because suddenly Helga said, ‘Howard! My God! Are you all right? What are you doing?’
She stood there in front of me wearing a lovely white silk dress from Chanel.
She had flown into New Delhi, gone to the hotel, found out I wasn’t there, checked around and quickly learned that a car and driver had taken me to Benares. She hired another car.
I wasn’t in any of the good hotels in Benares, but someone – she never knew who it was – said, ‘Madam, I have seen the man you describe. He is down by the river near such-and-such a temple.’
So she came down with a guide and found me. She helped me to my feet and took me back to the hotel. I had tears in my eyes. I don’t know why.
We took all the money with us in a sack. And outside of town, on the drive back to New Delhi, we passed a hospital for the poor. Helga took the sack inside and gave it one of the nursing nuns at the desk. It was a considerable amount of money – the driver had to help Helga carry it. I had done really well.
32
A GREAT PART of my experience in India – that last part, I mean, when I visited Sai Baba and ended up by the Ganges as a beggar – is of course difficult to explain. Most people wouldn’t believe it, and so I haven’t told it to anybody. They’d think I was cracked. They probably think it anyway, but if I told them about the vibhuti and the rest of it, they’d be absolutely certain.
Helga and I flew down to Rajastan: saw some temples, rode an elephant who tried to pickpocket me with his trunk, stayed in some palaces – played at being tourists.
While we were in Jaipur she said, ‘Howard, my husband knows about us. He doesn’t know it’s you, but he knows it’s someone. He begged me not to leave him for you.’
That made me nervous. I had never asked her to leave her husband.
She knew that. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I told him I wouldn’t. Then he asked me to give up seeing you so that he and I could try to make our marriage work again. I thought about it for a few days and then I agreed to do that, after this trip to India. He and I have a history, you see. History counts.’
‘You and I have a history too,’ I said.
‘I know. Well, maybe we’ll see each other again. Just give me time.’
I told her I understood. We flew back to California, I said goodbye to her at LAX, and then I took off for Las Vegas.
I didn’t feel good about that parting, but nevertheless, in a way, I felt liberated. I didn’t own her. I had fine memories. I still do. We talk now and then, but I haven’t seen her since. Sometimes that saddens me. But I’ve learned to accept it. What can I do? She made a choice. It was the right choice for her and the wrong choice for me. The Mexicans say, ‘Ni modo’ – so it goes. It implies the acceptance of suffering as part of life.
As soon as I reached Nevada, I thought, my time here is up. I’m leaving. This is not how I want to live. Let them take their treble damages, I no longer cared. My health was failing, and I had the feeling that there were greener pastures elsewhere, in the Bahamas, where the government was friendly to me, and malleable.
Did you try to buy the Bahamian government?
I didn’t have to go that far. I could just rent it, so to speak, for as long as it was convenient.
I flew out to the Bahamas on Thanksgiving Day of 1970. But that wasn’t a snap decision. In fact it was a decision I had made at least a year before that. I contacted the people I know on Paradise Island and they set it up within two weeks. I took over the top floor of the Britannia Beach Hotel.
Do you like the view better than the one from the ninth floor of the Desert Inn in Las Vegas?
There is no view. I had light-proof curtains put up before I moved in. I don’t need a view. The view is in my mind.
Regarding my getaway from Las Vegas, the newspaper accounts, as always, were partly cockeyed and partly accurate. I did contact the people I knew at Lockheed and borrowed one of their Jetstars to fly out of Nevada. But I never got carried down nine flights of stairs and put on any stretcher, and I never will – unless they’re carrying me out feet first to the graveyard, or I’m too sick to walk, or they’ve drugged me and are taking me away to dump me down an abandoned mine shaft. That last carries the highest probability rating, and if you ever hear that I’ve been carried away flat on my back you can tell the world that it undoubtedly wasn’t of my own free will.