Excerpt:
The Guru

1.
Andy-dam’s Concern

Andy-dam closed the door of the Guru’s sleeping suite quietly behind him and paused, troubled, in the tiled passage. Morning sunlight had barely irradiated the green ridges of the cay, but already Andy-dam could sense the oppressive force of the day’s heat to come. Perhaps the Guru had felt this too, and this was part of his discomfort. More than discomfort, Andy-dam decided. There was a sadness, a kind of weariness and restlessness combined. The Guru was ill.

Andy-dam made his way to the sun parlor and was relieved to find the room bright and empty. Beyond the pier he could see the sun flashing whitely on the aquamarine. Andy-dam drew a cushion from the wall and seated himself to meditate. He must, he knew, recover the knowing and the steadiness he would need to address the seventy heart-sharers who had been granted their Life Retreat at Heart’s Rest. This would be their third day, and while they had been dutiful and useful around the compound—and blessedly quiet—they had come for the Sharing, and this morning once again the Guru had declined.

Andy-dam’s thoughts drifted to the ordeal, nearly ten years earlier, when the Guru had contended with hepatitis. It had begun, like this, with days of discontent and isolation. They were settled at the Star Shower compound near Aspen and were mid-way through the Spring Cycle of Sharings when the Guru withdrew. He had issued a printed Utterance that there was something deeply wrong—toxic, he had written—with the heart-states of the sharers, and he had asked for prayers and for a healing quiet. That delegation of sharers was then dismissed, saddened and hurt. The Guru remained in bed, listless and without appetite, even as another delegation of sharers arrived. Andy-dam had been surprised when the Guru agreed to meet them at the Arrival Feast. He had looked, to Andy-dam, drawn and without color, but he had been quietly kind to the guests. But as the Sharing proceeded into the Healing Sessions, the Guru abruptly withdrew again. The next morning he dictated on the mini-cassette recorder another Utterance which Andy-dam transcribed and distributed to the retreat delegation. The toxicity is profound, the Guru had written, and it darkens the heart of the communion in its entirety.

Even before the delegation could disperse, Elinore, then a heart-consort of the Guru’s and also a physician, arranged on her own initiative to hire a car to transport the Beloved to a clinic in Denver. The Guru did not resist. Andy-dam had entered the Guru’s chalet where Elinore, Maggie, another heart-consort, and Curtis Forbes were helping to gather the Guru’s things. Andy-dam drew Elinore aside to ask her by what authority she had called for the car. He had asked her with prayerful affection and courtesy. He had taken Elinore’s hands in his.

“He is very sick, Andy. He is passing blood.”

“Passing blood?” Andy-dam had been startled—made stupid—by the phrase.

“In his urine. His urine is black, which means his liver is not working, and he is losing protein. Andy—he needs to be treated.”

That spring and well into the summer, the posted Sharings had to be cancelled. Hospitalized for nearly two weeks in Denver after an allergic reaction to the first course of antibiotics, the Guru was quiet and very weak through most of the summer. With no revenue from the Sharings and diminishing reserves, it looked for a time that the Corporate Communion would be unable to meet its payments on the Star Shower Compound.

Andy-dam remembered that time as a mounting blackness, an accelerating descent. And then there was a saving Heart Beneficence from Curtis Forbes—the first check had been for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars—and the slow but gladdening return of the Guru’s health and Presence.

In August there had been the famous Augmented Sharing of Celebration. This was the Sharing of the Guru’s Great Laughter. Andy-dam remembered how the Guru had been sure again, and radiant.

Through the glass doors of the sun parlor, Andy-dam watched as Kamala, the Lasting Consort, greeted a pair of sharers as their paths came together on the grassy slope down to the pier. The guests, two slender women draped in brightly patterned sarongs, were embraced in turn by Kamala, then continued down the slope toward the shimmering sea.

Andy-dam felt the Peace in this. He would meditate now. He drew in a slow, deep breath and elevated his gaze over the retreating figures and the tapering pylons of the pier. He squinted out over the water to determine the horizon line, now an indistinct arc where dark water met the smoky blue atmosphere. Having found the horizon, Andy-dam relaxed his gaze, expelled his breath, and looked beyond.

2.
Leaving Heart’s Rest

In consultation with Kamala and Curtis Forbes, who had studied medicine but never practiced, Andy-dam proposed to the Beloved that an Entourage make arrangements at once to accompany him to the Cleveland Clinic where he could be thoroughly examined and treated if necessary.

As he listened to Andy-dam, the Guru, lying supine on his bed, felt a sickening spasm of discomfort in his scrotum, as if he were being gripped and cruelly squeezed.

“What is it?” Andy-dam asked, startled at the Guru’s grimace.

For a moment the Guru did not answer, then he said, “It’s pain.” The Guru turned to Andy-dam, and Andy-dam could see the hint of humor, however weakly, in the Guru’s eyes. “Mere pain, mere terrible pain.”

“I’m sorry. Is there something I can do?”

The Guru grimaced again. He made a faint laugh. “Yes, Andy-dam. You can make it stop.”

“That is my heart,” said Andy-dam. “Let Kamala, Curtis, and me take you to the Cleveland Clinic. Curtis has made arrangements for you to see an excellent internist there, and a proctologist if necessary. Curtis believes the Cleveland Clinic is the best hospital in the world.”

Again the Guru was smiling as he turned to Andy-dam. “Look out this window, and tell me exactly what you see.”

Andy-dam looked out into the knife-blade leaves of the green palms as they shivered with the breeze from off shore. Through the palms, Andy-dam could see only bright sea and sky.

“I see palm branches and beyond that, the sea.”

“And--?”

“And it lifts my heart. It makes me glad.”

“And so, my friend, you want me to travel to Cleveland, Ohio, to visit a proctologist?” The Guru began a great heart-laugh, but the pain quieted him.

“Only until you are better. And besides,” Andy-dam said with some urgency, “it is going to be hot here, too hot for your comfort. Come with us to Cleveland, get whatever is required, and we will go on to Star Shower to regain your strength. It will be cool and beautiful there.”

“You are kind and thoughtful on my behalf.” The Guru said. “If Curtis thinks this is necessary, we should probably go. He is usually right about the body. Another thing,” the Guru continued, “This is a matter of the first chakra. The ugly—and also always honest! —heart of it all. Perhaps I am being told to come down to earth. Do you think?”

Andy-dam’s heart suddenly swelled with a fullness and warmth he did not believe he could bear. The Beloved had once again, in heart friendship, asked of him.

“I would like to know what you think.”

“You know,” said the Guru, “That the first chakra is the cellar and furnace and first fountain of everything. In a sense, it is everything, except in its most vulgar, meaning its most honest, aspect.”

Andy-dam said nothing. He hoped the Guru would continue.

“Do you know what this is like, Andy?”—Andy, not Andy-dam—“Let me tell you exactly. Let me speak as the first chakra speaks. Imagine a hand inserted somehow up between your balls and your anus. Imagine that hand up there squeezing the hell out of you. Are you picturing this, Andy? Feeling it?”

“Yes.”

“Imagine also that you feel like shitting and peeing every second, even though you know it feels like passing fire even to try. Can you imagine?”

“Yes, and I am so sorry.”

“That is the first chakra in a declaratory condition. And what is it declaring to me this morning? Is it come down, come down, come back to me? Is it saying, don’t forget my power, my love? As if--”

The Guru fell quiet.

At length, Andy-dam said, “I’m afraid we must go in Meyer’s little plane. The Kornbluth jet is away on company business.

“And Meyer’s plane, no less,” the Guru said weakly.

“Just to Nassau. The sky this morning is clear. It will be no more than forty-five minutes.”

“Forty-five minutes in Meyer’s plane…” The Guru said. He remembered vividly. The whine, the tinny chassis of the little prop plane seeming to want to spring its rivets at the terrible vibration, vibration that was unbearable on take-off and did not abate in the air. The Guru could hear it now. He could feel it in the fillings of his teeth. Another spasm. He could feel it in his contracted scrotum.

“Yes, I’ll go,” said the Guru. “One more hell. One more illusion. When we are ready, call the sharers together in the Session Hall. I will greet them and send them off. The Levinsons can structure a Quiet Retreat for those who want to stay.”

“Very good—but are you strong enough for the Greeting. There are seventy of them.”

“Of course I am not,” said the Guru, “And of course I will.”

3.
The Educated Finger

Dr. Rana Sarinivasan, the specialist in proctology at the Cleveland Clinic selected by Curtis Forbes, confirmed that the Guru’s prostate was indeed inflamed. But more worryingly, his manual examination revealed a hardened growth—“about the size of a pea”—protruding from the gland. “You can tell this,” the Guru had asked, “Just by probing me?” The pain of the sudden intrusion from Dr. Sarinivasan’s rubber-gloved hand had taken the Guru’s breath away.

“In this peculiar specialty,” Dr. Sarinivasan had said gently, “the educated finger can be a remarkably precise instrument. Now we must determine what kind of growth it is.” That determination entailed, over the course of the following three days, a biopsy of the tumor, a colonoscopy, an irradiated enema, several scans, and blood work.

With Dr. Sarinivasan had reviewed the results; he told the Guru that there was a kind of cancer in the cells biopsied. The encouraging news, he added at once, was that this particular type of tumor was not known to metastasize quickly or unpredictably, indeed the other examinations revealed no signs of involvement.

“What is to be done?” The Guru asked.

“There are a number of approaches to consider. The most radical, the most conservative, would be to remove the prostate surgically. This would eliminate the cancer almost certainly—but there are likely losses of function you will want to consider seriously.”

“That I will become a eunuch?” The Guru raised his eyebrows dramatically and smiled disconcertingly at Dr. Sarinivasan.

“There would be a loss of potency. Of course the least radical response would be to do nothing surgically, and to attempt to arrest any further growth with a course of medicines. Many men your age choose to do this and do very well.”

“And continue to fuck!” The Guru raised a heart-laugh.

“And continue to have relations, yes. A middle course might be to try to shrink or even eliminate the growth with radiation.”

The Guru, while not really looking away, seemed to absent himself from what Dr. Sarinivasan was saying.

Dr. Sarinivasan continued in a soothing voice: “As I said, there is much to consider, and you must take your time. Happily, we are not in a crisis. Your present discomfort should pass in a day or so as the medicines take effect. It is quite possible, you know, that this bout of prostatitis has nothing to do with the tumor. Bouts like this are common in men over fifty.”

“So all of this highly technical buggery is actually ho-hum?”

“Excuse me?”

“It is nothing. And I mean that, sir. It is—all of it is—precisely nothing. For which I thank you. You have been wonderfully attentive to me and most kind. My medical advisor, Curtis Forbes, tells me you are a preeminence in your field.”

Dr. Sarinivasan was startled by another explosive heart-laugh.

The Guru threw back his head and said, “The most educated of the educated fingers!”