VACANCY & ARIEL

The Hare Krishnas are the Southern Baptists of Hinduism and like their American counterparts, they delight in opulent temples. The centerpiece of the Moundsville Krishna colony was Prahubada’s Palace of Gold, purportedly an example of the architecture of classical India. If this was, indeed, the case, classical India must have looked a lot like Las Vegas. The palace was gaudy, covered with gold leaf, and seemed very much a place where you could lose all your money. As I ascended the winding road toward the temple, the golden dome rising above a green hill had a surreal aspect—it might have been an art construction by Christo or some other conceptualist, a shiny yellow ball of immense proportions dropped in the middle of nowhere. Seen straight on, the building possessed a certain rococo delicacy, but its good qualities were diminished by the orange-robed lotus eaters flocking the grounds, all sporting Krishna-conscious smiles and offering repulsively cheerful greetings as I passed by.

Ravinda turned out to be a Jewish kid from Brooklyn Heights whose shaved head and monkish attire did little to disguise his heritage. He led me across the lawn to a shade tree beneath which a paunchy fiftyish man, also clad in orange robes, a smudge of red powder centering his brow, sat cross-legged on a prayer rug. His flesh was pasty, soft, and his brow was creased by the Three Sacred Wrinkles. His heavy-lidded eyes looked like walnut halves stuck in an unbaked cookie. His demeanor conveyed an oafish tranquility. This, Ravinda said, was Shivananda.

“What’s up?” I asked Shivananda, just on the chance he might know the answer.

With a forlorn look I attributed to his having been summoned back to the world from Fifth Dimension Avenue, he inclined his head and said, “You are welcome here.”

Ravinda withdrew to a discreet distance and Shivananda asked why I was interested in Guruja. I was fully prepared for the question. I offered my P.I. credentials and handed him a forged letter from imaginary parents asking one and all to cooperate with their agent, myself, in discovering what had happened to their little sweetheart, Ariel, missing now for lo these many years.

“She left us two months ago,” Shivananda said. “I advised against it, but she refused to listen.”

“Know where she went?”

“California. But where exactly…” He spread his hands in a helpless gesture, head tilted, eyebrows raised. “We have a box of her possessions. You are welcome to take them…for the parents. Ravinda will fetch them for you.”

“What can you tell me about her?”

“She was of God,” Shivananda said. “She came to us empty and we sought to fill her with blessings.”

There was an oiliness in his voice that led me to suspect the metaphor, to wonder what sort of blessing he had sought to fill her with. He shook his head ruefully and went on: “But her nature…she was not suitable. Not a seeker.”

“She was wanton?” I suggested.

He glanced sharply at me.

“She had some trouble along those lines before she ran away,” I said. “You know…boy-crazy.”

“She was a very sexual being.” Shivananda gave the word “sexual” a dainty presentation. “But I believe she has a special purpose in the world. One day she will return to us.”

In your dreams, Lardboy, I said to myself. I agreed with Henley—Ariel was a mover. I believed she was still trying to head toward the destination from which the project had diverted her, unaware of why she was going there.

I talked to Shivananda for half an hour. He had little salient to tell me; everything he said bore a taint of petulant regret. I had a sense that he had been more than a mentor, that he had been smitten by Ariel, hauled back into the world of illusion and desire. I pictured the novice Krishnas giggling and singing, “Shivananda and Guruja sittin’ in a tree…” The one bit of information that intrigued me was that Ariel had done some writing while she was at the center. I asked what sort of writing.

“Frivolous,” he said. “Worthless fantasies.” He pursed his lips as if able to taste their worthlessness.

I wished him happy dharma and went with Ravinda to collect Ariel’s possessions, which had been loaded into a cardboard file holder. This afforded me a quick tour of the palace. Peacock vanes in brass urns. Sandalwood incense. Sumptuous rooms with silk pillows for reclining. Every surface inlaid and filigreed. I’ll say this for the Krishnas—as interior decorators they wallowed in style.