The Beautiful Possible by Amy Gottlieb

Author:Amy Gottlieb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-12-21T16:00:00+00:00

NEW SHANTINIKETAN

July 1971

Walter runs his fingers over the stamped cover of his latest book: Religious Themes in Tagore’s Poetry, Paul Richardson and Walter Westhaus, coeditors. He leafs through the pages he and Paul wrestled over for years. When Paul had translated a line from Gitanjali to read: “Thou art the sky and Thou art also the nest,” Walter changed it to read: “You are the heavens and You are the home.” Our partnership is impossible, Paul had said to him. I understand Bengali better than you ever will and I can’t revise your work. You are closer to the source than I am. Walter believes that he will always be Paul’s lost man, the refugee who followed him off the ship, the Jew who accepted an offer in India that was better than no offer at all.

When he finishes reading Walter calls Paul.

“Namaste.” The lilt of a sitar plays in the background.

“I was rereading our Tagore,” says Walter. “We created something wonderful, didn’t we?”

“That we did.”

“I want to thank you for everything—”

“Enough with the propriety, Walter! When are you coming to the ranch? Be my scholar in residence, comfort my more intellectual students with your prowess and reputation.” Walter doesn’t want to be Paul’s sidekick, but he is grateful for the offer. Since Rosalie’s last visit to Berkeley, Walter has felt bereft. He needs to get away from the confines of the studio that he now thinks of as their lovers’ den, their beit midrash, their hideaway sanctioned by the peacocks that now annoy Walter with their night cries and putrid droppings.

“Think of Eden Ranch as a new Shantiniketan,” says Paul. “You can lie under a tree and dream your life into possibility.”

The ranch is a seventy-acre desert wilderness overlooking a canyon, dotted with a single house, several tents, outhouses, and a trailer. Paul has set a circle of stones in a clearing and he calls this the amphitheater, the place where his students gather and listen to him speak about the power of juice fasting and the teachings of a Baba he met on his last trip to India. Over the years, Paul has morphed from a scholar into a guru. He has grown his hair long and after years of meditation practice, his left eye no longer twitches. His students call him a maharishi, and he lays marigold garlands at their necks.

At dawn Paul and Walter patrol the perimeter of the ranch.

“I don’t get it,” says Paul. “All these years later and your head is still in that spice sack. You’ve built an illustrious life and you’re still the vagabond I found in Bombay. There are ways to work through trauma, my friend.”

“That was a long time ago,” says Walter.

“Then why do you remain so disconnected? You carry on with models in your little studio and do nothing to secure your future.”

“I wrote five books,” shouts Walter. “One of them with you! Find a tenured professor who’s published five books in ten years and still sketches and makes love to women with generosity and care and—”

Paul laughs.

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