KARMA FINDS FRANNY GLASS
A short story
by
John William Tuohy
Speeding out of her buildings garage in
the East Seventies and then racing her Lamborghini over the George Washington
Bridge, Franny Glass found it amusing that Zooey Salinger considered her an absolute dearest friend. Actually, Zooey was
being too kind when she exaggerated
those words on the finely engraved invitation. The truth was, she saw Franny
Glass for what Fanny was, transparent and shallow. Everyone else in their tribe
saw her the same way, but, in fairness, that was also how they viewed Zooey
Glass and themselves as well. It is how these people are.
Compounding Zooey’s intense dislike of her
absolute dearest friend Franny Glass, was the awkward fact that Zooey and everyone
within their small universe, knew that Franny had been sleeping with her
husband, Zen Salinger, a partner in Salinger, Sacco & Vanzetti, mergers,
acquisitions and promotions a specialty.
She also knew, again as did everyone else,
that it was Franny who had been the defacto cause for Zen’s fatal coronary in flagrante delicto. Of course, the
pending federal indictment and the certain RICO conviction that would follow
and then Zen’s mandatory sudden disappearance with the cash in the firms escrow
accounts, may well have played a role in his unexpected early demise as well.
But, for the time being, gossip being what it is, everyone, simply everyone,
was blaming Franny for his death. What
Zooey didn’t know, was that it had been such a dreadful experience for Franny,
(Zen Salinger dying at the grand finale, not the sex, which was not in the
least grand) that she more or less absolutely sworn off sex with married men
for an indeterminate amount of time.
All that was behind them now and Franny
found it reassuring that the permanently oblivious Zooey Salinger should invite
her to a reception at her woodsy-leafy Litchfield place on Pilgrim Way to meet
the enlightened Maharishi Yogi Barish.
When Fanny arrived, Zooey planned to take
her by the hand and waltz her from one end of her spacious home to the other,
making small talk, the only kind of talk these people really know, making sure that everyone, simply everyone
saw that they were the dearest and closets of friends. Zooey had no choice in this
really. The day would come when she would carry on with someone else man, or
woman, and would be found out, for these people always find out, and life would
go on as before. She would not be cut out or cut off. She had to ensure that, not only for herself
but for all those others in this special tribe they belonged too.
So Franny accepted Zooey’s invitation.
Driving at break-neck speed through the Connecticut countryside, Franny was,
despite her near complete unreflective nature, somewhat concerned that she lived alone and that age 35, marriage
was not on the horizon, circumference, radius or any other Goddamn celestial
acronym. She reasoned it away. “A little
solitude” she thought “never hurt anyone. Emily Dickinson lived alone and she
wrote some of the most moving um….what did she write? Was it science fiction?
Something like that. Anyway, they were
some of the best whatever they were type of stories the world has ever
known...a lot of them became movies.”
She also recalled that Emily Dickenson
went stark raving, barking mad and ended her life in a mental asylum so she
decided to think about something else.
Tossing her phone into oxblood Versace bag, she brought the car to a
screeching halt
and waited for the
wrought iron gates to Zooey Salinger’s estate to open and then raced the car up
the gravel drive.
Taking her place among the very landed gentry, she sat shoeless on
the silk Zarcharakian rug, sipping a Chateau
Lafite and stealthily dripping a drop or two on the carpet because….well
just because, that’s why. It is just the way these people are.
There was Zooey Salinger, clad in black
Michael Kors One-Shoulder. It was so
last season. But, then again, Franny reasoned, Zooey was so last season. She was calling everyone to attention. Standing
beside her was a short, swarthy little man dressed in white linen robes and
fitted with a Buddha belly. So this was him, thought Franny.
“I like the long flowing white silk robes”
she said to herself “Nice effect and so very de riguor for any savior and/or mystique” She noted his salt and
pepper beard and his strategically designed mop of hair. “Micelle of Paris” she
though “No one else is that good”
Everyone feigned rapt attention as a
smiling and crying Zooey once again launched into another retelling of how this
little man, the Maharishi Yogi Barish, the
Wise Child, entered her life.
It started with a death, but then again,
most things about Zooey revolved around death in one way or another. First, it
was Zen and then Seymour, her toy Shiatsu, the canine in-residence until last
fall last autumn when he went out the window at the Salinger’s Park Avenue
place, falling Nine Stories to his death. Actually, it wasn’t the fall that
killed him. He survived the fall. What killed him were the giant hooves of a
team of hansom cab horses as they pulled away to show another tourist from
Wichita dubious wonders of Central Park at night.
As one can imagine, the death just
absolutely mortified poor Zooey,
coming in the wake of Zen’s death. She was beside herself with grief and not
one of her three analysts, the Freudian, the Jungian or even the Mime therapist
could pull her from her sorrow. Well the Jungian probably could have, but he
insisted she do it herself.
The situation worsened after rumor started
that it was not suicide and that perhaps Seymour had been pushed. It was the
talk of the summer people at the Hamptons but not of the summer people at
Newport because they play tennis.
It was about that time that Dede Bradley
came back from Europe, because she was always coming back from somewhere, and
was bursting, simply bursting with the news of the Marharishi Yogi Barish who
was taking London by storm. Dede told Muffin Walsh who told Geno the hair
sculptor who repeated everything he heard anyway, thank God and that was how
Zooey heard all about the wonders of the little man.
A the Marharishi Yogi
Barish estate in London, Zooey was fairly certain she was in London, she didn’t
handle those details, she found her scrawny naked body lathered in tea oils and
saturated rose infused yogurt.
By weeks end, the Marharishi inserted in
her, among other things, the spirit of Seymour the Shiatsu which assured Zooey
that he had not taken his own life nor had he been pushed from the ledge.
Rather, as she would later recall, again and again and again, for enthralled
hairdressers from Park Avenue to Palm Beach...she didn’t do Aspen because it’s
so...so...so...not New York and the
people are so...so not New York, that
the spirit of Seymour the Shiatsu said he had fallen from that of that window because he a brain the size of a
walnut. She was also mentioned, quite often, that Seymour the Shiatsu spoke
English. Everyone was so delighted for her.
The Marharishi Yogi Bera was, proclaimed
Zooey to all the right people who had gathered in her bar sized living room
that autumn, a spiritual genius and all agreed with a hardy burst of applause.
Of course, to these people, anyone who had an occasional reflection on the
meaning of life beyond Town & Country,
was a spiritual genius because, argued many, these people had no souls.
When Zooey was finished gushing on about
the little man, the little man spoke, whispered really, whispered and smiled
and babbled on for twenty minutes speaking psycho-social babble gibberish
intertwined with most of the keywords needed to create spiritual hogwash. It
was, thought Franny Glass who was there to judge the performance, a cellular
performance.
It was only kismet that Zooey should invite Franny to heat Yogi Bera. Her firm,
Salinger, Sacco & Vanzetti, mergers, acquisitions and promotions a
specialty, had been watching this little man and was impressed with what they
saw and what they saw was money and the potential for more money.
Franny had hired Hal Martini ‘Olive’
Lipchitz everyone’s favorite P.I and learned that the Marharishi Yogi Bera was a fourth
generation East-ender from Londoner whose true name was Rajesh Gupta Barish,
the western equivalent of Joe Smith. He was raised vaguely Hindu but he had
absolutely no interest in the faith because its deep, beautifully simple
doctrines confused him.
The firm’s data analysis experts...their
term for computer hackers...had determined that the Marharishi Yogi Bera liquid
assets were in access to one hundred and fifty million. There was the clothing
line, Yogi for Young Kids, and an
airline, Flying Carpet Airlines with
hubs in New Delhi and Hanoi. There was the Happy
Hindu Hotel chain with locations throughout Europe, Asia and Africa. There
was the equally profitable Curry Up and
Eat! Restaurant chain, assorted real estate holdings, which included an
off- shore casino in the Caribbean and a nut farm in Brazil.
The Yogi had everything a money hungry
yogi could want. Everything except the vast richness of America. The problem
was that the Marharishi was a European phenomenon and what he needed was a single
magic bullet that would shoot open the golden gates of the land of milk and
honey.
It was an odd twist of fate, kismet if you
will, that the Maharishi’s magic bullet to America came in the form of the
spirit of Seymour the Shiatsu. Zooey
Salinger had introduced the Yogi correctly. She waited for the late fall, that special magical time between the closing
of the summer places and the arrival of the first dividend checks from those
offshore investments that nice people did not
discuss. not without a lawyer present, anyway.
Zooey made sure the yogi had face time, a
favorite expression of these people, with
that smart-alecky Carlo Saint John River from The New Yorker and of course, Thomas Wentworth Higginson from Charge, Style and Life Magazine just
absolutely had to have his ten minutes.
By the end of the month, the Marharishi
Yogi Barish was famous in America and so was his ‘Self-Help and Actualization
Movement’, or ‘SHAM’. Although it was all explained in his 125 page, ghost
written book, The Way of the
Christian-Hindu Pilgrim, the basis for SHAM was taken from the Yogi code of
life, ‘To know nothing is to know bliss’. The concept was fusion, Judeo
Christianity and Hindu principles and that the Yogi had gotten the idea after
eating at the Paris French-Chinese restaurant Chinois. When asked if the book was henotheistic, the Yogi replied
no, it was for homosexuals as well.
So, now the grinning Guru had every
intention of quadrupling his cash by taking his show to the states and lifting
cash from the pockets of the fad happy-spiritually starved Americans and the
senior partners at Salinger, Sacco &
Vanzetti, mergers, acquisitions and promotions a specialty, believed they could
help the Yogi with that conquest.
So
while the firm wanted his business,
Franny needed his business. The remaining partners of Salinger, Sacco
& Vanzetti, or more specifically the wives of the remaining partners, the
ones huddled in the corner throwing her death-stares, believed that Franny
should have been boiled in oil for sexing Zen Salinger to death. Barring death
by oil, they made it very clear to their husbands that Franny Glass must go.
Yes, the end was near and Franny Glass, a
born survivor, could smell it in the air, and it troubled her. She felt
vulnerable, a new sensation for her. That was why she had given herself that ‘A
little solitude and Emily Dickinson lived alone’ pep talk on the way up to
Connecticut.
He drooled
for her. “Hello my lovely” leered the Yogi to Franny when she managed to push,
shove and elbow her way up to him.
Franny, who stood just over 5’10 with in her Stu Weitzman heels, thought it was rude that the Marharishi, who
was surrounded by two massive former Mossad men, did not stand when he met her.
Staring at him, she realized he was standing.
Franny smiled her best heartwarming smile and handed the little man one
of her plasma designed translucent plastic business cards.
“Franny Glass, Costello, Lansky, Siegel
and Accardo” he said reading the card aloud.
He looked over Franny again and stopped giggling. He leaned in close and
lowered his voice to a barely audible whisper and said in a distinct British
working class accent “I have the letters you sent to my general manager. But
caw blimey girl, had we knewed you looked as you do I woulda called” and then,
effortlessly returning to his high pitched south Asian dialect, he said loudly,
“You must come to my new ashram”
The Marharishi Yogi International Academy
of Meditation was, the Yogi’s financial advisors advised him, the strategically
right thing to do. If he intended to conquer America, he would have to give the
Yanks what they expected. What they expected was for all of their Marharishi’s
to fit their version of authenticity. Their version of authenticity for
Marharishi’s everywhere demanded that they lived in Ashrams in India.
So, after they slowly explained to the
Marharishi what an ashram is, a buyer was dispatched eastward to purchase a
2,000-acre former maize plantation along the edge of Lake Vembanad in Duta,
Arunachal Pradesh, in the easternmost tip of India, under the snow peaked
Himalaya Mountains, where Bhutan and Tibet meet.
Franny Glass arrived at Tezpur Airport
after a grueling 15-hour, seven thousand mile flight. She had her Henk luggage tossed into the back of a
rented ancient Russian made Orbita and started the 200-mile ride north to the
Yogi’s ashram.
Five hours after she left the airport,
Franny Glass arrived at the ashram, her nerves shattered. The Russian made car
had come equipped with a tape deck, circa 1972. After a couple of hours of
silence, Franny slammed in an ancient eight track she found in the backseat, a
Russian made tape, Yuri Popinov sings
Elvis. She turned the volume up all the way and listened to Yuri’s very
enthusiastic rendition of A hunk a Bunk
of burning Funk and then the tape got stuck.
She hit it, several times but all that did
was to make it louder. After a half hour, she kicked it, she spat on it and she
threatened it with an injunction. Nothing worked. For the next three and half hours
the lyrics “I’m a hunk a bunk a burning funk….yeahhhh!... I’m a hunk a bunk a
burning funk….yeahhhh!...” played over
and over and over and over again, sung in English in a thick Russian accent
set at full volume. By the time she arrived at the ashram, Franny was
temporarily deaf, spoke with a distinct Russian accent and had developed an eye
twitch.
In stark contrast to the majestic but
rugged mountain that surrounded it on every side, the ashram had a by-design
laid-back feel to it. To ensure that the local smell of wet mud, cow dung and
burning garbage didn’t disturb the nasal sensitive westerners, every two hours,
the ashram staff would spray vast amounts of floral aromas and pleasant spicy
scents into the air. Meals were prepared
by a Parisian chef and each guest cottage was built with a private plunge pool
and came equipped with an 88- inch television theater set.
In her massive and beautifully appointed
room, Franny found scented candles flickering in the near darkness as
magnificently beautiful and uncomfortably sensual Asian women with almond eyes,
almost seductively asked Franny to disrobe so she could begin the ayurveda
treatment. Surprised but intrigued, Franny slowly undressed and as directed lay
face down, across a solid oak table. Slowly and methodically, the beautiful
woman with the almond eyes slathered oil, infused with pungent herbs, along the
length of Franny Glass’s slender milky white body.
About a half hour after the treatment
began, the Marharishi Yogi Barish wordlessly slithered into the room, leaving
his two bodyguards waiting outside. The women with the almond eyes slipped
quietly outside. He then disrobed and reached out to Franny’s prone body in a
way she would have never expected. Feeling the light nudging on her ribs, she
lifted her head from her forearms. When her eyes focused, she wondered how that
ugly fat mouse crawled so far up the table. Then she refocused. A few seconds later, her curled fist landed
in the Marharishi’s groin with a sickening snapping sound. The little bearded
man’s eyes immediately turned inward towards his nose. Sucking in an enormous
amount of air as he fell to his knees he uttered, squealed really, one word
“okay”
Franny leaped from the table and
frantically wiped the oil and honey from her body and dressed just as the Yogi
dragged himself to his feet. My goodness
what magnificent legs she has was
the last thought that went through his tiny brain before Franny’s karate kick
to his forehead knocked him unconscious.
Dashing out the door, she slowed
considerably as she passed the solemn sun-glassed bodyguards, slipped into the
ancient Russian Orbita, whispered a her version of a quick but silent prayer
that it would start, smiled at the guards when it did and with Yuri Popinov
happily singing away, she sped out of
the complex and down the Burma Road.
When the Marharishi awoke, he had a severe
headache and the sinking suspicion that his advances had not gone over well
with the American woman. Worse, if word of his behavior reached the right New
York circles and then the press, he was ruined.
He called for his guards. “Find her! Bring
her back!” he ordered, “Offer her a free week at the Ashram”
As the guard rushed towards the door, he
reconsidered “No, wait. Offer her 50 percent off a half week at the Ashram”. A moment later, as the guards were about
to peel away in a black Mercedes with
tinted windows, he stopped them again “Make that, ten percent off her bar bill!
Now go! Find her!”
When Franny looked into her rear view
mirror, one of the few times in her life that she had actually used the device,
she spotted the black Mercedes pulling out of the ashram gate and closing in on
her fast. The Russian clunker strained to hit a top speed of fifty miles an
hour and when it did it shook violently, reconsidered exerting itself, and
slipped slowly into second gear.
Franny spotted a cut off from the road
that disappeared down a slope. Turning a violent left that nearly toppled her
car, she sped down the narrowing road. Moments later, the Marharishi guards, up
the main road. sped past her.
Franny kept driving down the road until it
turned into what she assumed correctly was a cow path, which is why it was odd
that she should have been surprised to see that large black and white cow,
running towards her.
Kharaab Kismet hated that cow. He suspected the cow hated him as well, but that
was not what had ignited his complete contempt toward the ugly beast. Theirs
had always been a complicated, rocky relationship largely because, as cows, go
this one was as savvy and spiteful as it was ornery. This is why Kharaab was
certain it had trounced into his neighbors tea rows on purpose, performing a
sort of bovine ballet as it crushed hundreds of the neatly aligned rows of the precious mint under its mud-caked hooves
before the performance ended and she was led away.
The local magistrate determined that
Kharaab’s cow had caused $600 worth of damage to the neighbor’s crop. In a good
year, a very good year, Kharaab
earned $450. In a bad year, which was most years, he earned half that amount.
To pay for the damages he would have to sell his tiny patch of land that sat
aside the Apatani River and without his land, he had nothing. So the cow, the symbol of abundance, had
taken everything he had.
With that recent torrid history in mind,
it made sense to Kharaab Kismet to kill that goddamn cow and then, since he had
nothing left to live for or to live on, he decided that he would kill himself
as well.
He was slightly concerned about how he would
kill himself with the wooden club, the only thing he owned resembling a weapon.
He was new to suicide. Certainly, beating oneself to death would be very
painful and take a long time but he elected to deal with issue when he got to
it.
Of course, there was another issue. There
always is. Kharaab was a devout Hindu it was wrong to kill a cow, even that
smirking weasel that had caused him so much misery and shame because, Lord
Krishna appeared on earth as a cow. But,
thought Kharaab with a twinge of guilt, not
even the great and mighty Lord Krishna
would save this cow from his wrath.
Walking about behind the arrogant grazing
cow, Kharaab raised the wooden club up over his eyes and screamed “Krishna!”
His eyes were opened wide with murderous rage.
The cow’s eyes were opened wide in terror.
Nobody’s fool, the cow ran before Kharaab could lower the killing blow. Up the
cow path it scurried, running, in as much as cows can run, for dear life
itself.
Kharaab didn’t give chase. He tossed the
club aside and let out a long miserable sigh. He could not go through with it.
He didn’t have it in him to murder a living thing, even that miserable beast of
a cow that deserved so much to die.
Now he would have to live with his
actions; the contemplation of taking a sacred life was an affront to the great
Lord Krishna. He, Kharaab Kismet, whose existence on this earth meant nothing,
had spat in the eye of the magnificent and giving Krishna and he was
ashamed. So Kharaab Kismet, this good
and decent man with the broken heart and the empty stomach, fell to his knees
and lowered his head and spoke to the Lord Krishna. Praying aloud, he said, “I
fear my anger has driven you, oh great and merciful Krishna, the essence of my
very soul and the purpose of my life, further from me and without you, your
humble servant is nothing. Forgive me Krishna.”
Krishna, who is a basically good-natured
type god, in as far as gods go these days, heard his servant’s heart-felt words
and smiled upon him. The cow hit the fan and every other part of Franny’s front
engine, killing itself and the car in a single head-to-head blow.
Hearing the crash and the mandatory
screams of frustration, from both Franny and the cow, Kharaab rose to his feet
and climbed the knoll and looked down at the crash site. Realizing that the car
had killed the beast, he broke down in tears of joy. The Lord Krishna, in all
his greatness, had heard his prayers and had forgiven him. Better yet, that
bastard cow was dead and he hadn’t done it. Tears of joy; great unadulterated,
wonderful joy, streamed down his wonderfully weather beaten face.
“Krishna!” He cried as he fell to his
knees “Krishna!”
“Let’s not cry over spilt milk” said
Franny as she climbed from the wreck and lit a Gitane.
She
disdainfully inspected the considerable damage to the cars mostly tin engine
and then looked full circle at the endless miles of Himalayan vastness and
asked, “Is there a Hertz around here?”
Kharaab shrugged in reply.
“El…el…” she groped for the words “El caro
rento”
He shrugged again
“Oh honestly” she fumed lighting a second Gigante to accompany the first “Why
can’t you people learn English?”
“I speak English, Mame,” he said in
flawless English
“They why didn’t you answer me?” she
demanded, also in English
“I don’t speak Spanish Mame,” he said,
again using English.
Franny was completely confused and decided
not to follow up on that angle. “Well where can I rent a car?” she said
exasperated
“At the Tezpur Airport in Assam” he
answered pointing over the mountain towards Assam
“That’s where I rented this car” she fumed
“So you can see then, I am correct, it is
a very good place to rent cars Mame”
“Would you drive me there?” She asked
“I’ll pay you”
Kharaab pulled himself to his feet “I have
no car Madam”
“Then how do you get around?” She didn’t
believe him. He pointed to the dead cow
“Look” she paused, handed him one of her
plasma business cards, and extended her hand “Franny Glass, merger,
acquisitions and accounts management…what’s your name?”
Kharaab was fascinated with the card. Like
half the people in his village, he was illiterate so the words on the card
didn’t matter but he had never seen anything like it. Franny withdrew her hand
since he hadn’t accepted it and asked again, “What’s your name? Kay es su
namo?“
“Kharaab” he answered still looking at the
card
“Well listen Carlton, what’s it worth to
you?”
Kharaab returned the card with a sad
smile. “I can’t afford it, Madam, I’m sorry”
“No, you idiot not the card…the cow
thingy…how much for the cow?”
“The cow is sacred to us. In India we call
it the gift of Avataar”
“In Manhattan we call it sirloin. How
much?”
Kharaab thought it was amusing but odd that
the people in Manhattan named their cows and then continued “The cow’s dung is
worth a fortune. It is used as an insecticide, a source of fuel and a
fertilizer….and then there are the dairy products”
“My God” Franny said appalled “You mean
you people use cow dung as a dairy product?” she waved off the thought “No
don’t tell me…look Carol, I’m sorry I killed your little” she turned and looked
at the animal’s corpse because she couldn’t remembered what they called those
things “Bull cow friend or whatever ….but it was Krishna’s fault. He ran out in
front of my car after escaping from the… a...a….um…” again a word escaped her “a bunch of cows where he
belonged!" She was dialing her
phone and waiting for the signal to connect
"Not a bunch, Madam, a herd", he
corrected her respectfully.
"Heard of what?" she asked, her
eyes glued to the phone screen
"Herd of cows, Madam"
"Of course I've heard of cows."
"No, a cow herd."
"No, a cow herd."
"What do I care what a cow heard?”
She said peering up on the road for the Yogi’s thugs, “I have no secrets
to keep from a cow! Look Caribbean, I’ll pay for your little friend but don’t
try to milk me on this one”
He considered the vaguely sexual physical
act of milking a cow and pondered what his ancestors were really thinking when
they explored that option. He was jolted out of his thoughtful trance by the
sound of Franny’s snapping fingers under his long, thin nose.
“They moved my eyes up here, buddy boy”
she said, “Look. Carmichael…I ….”
“Kharaab” he said respectfully
“Whatever” she said disrespectfully “I
won’t take any bull”
“I don’t want to give you a bull, Madam,”
he said completely confused
“Well don’t,” she repeated busily digging
through her purse.
“I don’t even have a bull,” he said to
himself because New York had picked up and was busy making arrangements to
bring her home. The bad news was New
York wouldn’t be able to get her another car out of the valley until the
following morning. The good news was, well actually, there wasn’t any good
news.
She slammed the phone closed and looked
around the barren hills. “Look, crabby,” she said to Kharaab “Is there a Hilton
or anything resembling a hotel around here?”
“Yes” answered Kharaab cheerfully. It
wasn’t often he knew the answer to two questions in row “I am told there is a
very fine hotel at the Tezpur Airport in Assam….very fine a Motel Six”
Franny, who was at least a full foot
taller than Kharaab blew a ring smoke in his face and said quietly “Don’t bust
my balls or I swear to God you’ll join your little friend over there”
Despite what he suspected might be a
hostile attitude from the American, Kharaab invited her to his humble home to
spend the night because she had nowhere else to go. It is the Indian way.
He prepared a reasonably good, if spicy
but bland dinner of seasoned rice with bamboo shoots and local herbs, a pile of
leafy vegetables and maize with eggs, all washed down with Apong, the local
drink made from rice and millet.
Franny, who had not eaten that day and was
very hungry, had noted the sparseness of the food and noted again that Kharaab
took less food for himself than he had given to her.
“Thank you Kharaab” said Franny Glass when
the modest meal ended. There was nothing unusual in the words themselves. It
was only unusual that she meant it.
“I should tell you, Karuba, there are men
after me. They want to harm me. I’ll go up and sleep in the car, if I stay
here, you could be harmed”
The near constant smile fell from his face
and Kharaab looked her in the eyes for the first time “You are a guest in my
home. No harm will come to you that will not befall me first” and then the
smile returned to his face and for the first time Franny Glass smiled at him as
well.
“Thank you Kharaab” she said quietly, this
time with a smile.
When night fell, Kharaab took a thin,
musty blanket from the shed and set on the ground. The lady would have the bed
for the evening. He would sleep out under the canopy of stars that shone a
brilliant bright blue against the black sky. In so long as gallant souls like
Kharaab Kismet roam the earth, the last faint lights of chivalry will never
die.
Although she didn’t understand why he did
it, Kharaab’s sacrifice wasn’t lost on Franny Glass, an unusual moment of
cogniscence for her, but then again the experience of having someone act
decently without cause, was new to her. Before she turned in for the night she
said “Sleep well Kharaab”
“I doubt it,” he whispered back
Franny slept well. In fact, she couldn’t
recall when she had last slept o well and woken up so refreshed and relaxed.
Maybe it was brisk mountain air, the dose of healthy food or the unbelievable
beauty around her that she was noticing for the first time since she’d
arrived.
She joked with Kharaab as he prepared them
a traditional breakfast of warm rice, stuffed paratha bread that Franny
recognized as crepes, cold butter, cooked spicy aloo sabzi and unsweetened
milk. It had been over a decade since Franny had sat and eaten a full breakfast
and when it was over, she did something she rarely ever did, she relaxed. She
lay back on the ground and stared up at the mountain peaks.
When the man entered the property, Franny
noticed that Kharaab’s hands were trembling and he would not raise his eyes to
look at the unhappy visitors as they spoke in a language she didn’t understand.
She was pretty sure it wasn’t Spanish or Russian. Maybe Chinese.
The man left as abruptly and as unhappily
as he had arrived and in his dark and gloomy wake stood Kharaab who slowly drew
back his head and sucked in a deep, long breath and then closed his eyes and
lowered his chin to his chest.
Franny stood to her feet and walked over
to where he was standing and placed a hand on
his arm “What is Kharaab? What’s wrong? Who was that man? What did he
say to you?”
They walked silently to the river’s edge
and washed the morning plates and as they did, Kharaab told Franny about that
horrible cow and his neighbor’s field and the magistrate’s decision and how his
neighbor, the gloomy man who had just left, had come to evict Kharaab from his
land. This tiny patch of earth that had been the home of his father’s father
and his father’s father before that. When the story ended, Kharaab lowered his
head in defeat and after a long silence, Franny said “Wow..…you mean that cows
name wasn’t Krishna?”
That evening after a supper of a mild meat
and vegetable dish cooked in yogurt and flavored with fragrant spices, Franny
asked Kharaab “How much do I owe you for the cow”
Kharaab smiled warmly at the American.
Hers was a noble spirit he thought. Like him she was poor, in fact, he
recalled, she was so poor that when they first met, she tried to sell him a
plastic card with writing on it.
“We are the humble of the earth” he smiled
“We owe each other only our kindness”
“All right you bastard, you won. I’ll pay
out” Franny barked as she took out her checkbook
“Now I’m going to assume that cow thing
was a Holstein or Goldstein or whatever those things are, right? So what’s the
value on that? Six? Seven grand?”
“Well” said Kharaab thoughtfully because
he had no idea about what the hell she was talking about.
“All right! All right!” she snapped,
“Seven five and that’s it. Now since...um…cowing or whatever it’s called….is
your primary source of income which is just a screaming endorsement to bring
back vocational training in my opinion, you’ll need to get back on your bare feet,
so that’s another year or so to train the new cow to…do whatever you two do
together….so what will you gross this year? Twelve, fifteen grand? We’ll call
it an even 13 five, how’s that? I’ll
toss in another five for stress, trauma and turmoil and….” She said handing him
the check form the Bank of New York for twenty-six thousand dollars “That’s
that”
Although at the time, handing over the
check was a spur of the moment-never-to-be-repeated act of generosity on
Franny’s part; her accountants later labeled it a legitimate travel and
business expense and wrote it off of her taxes. It wasn’t all that much money
anyway, not in the larger scheme and not when you considered the thirty-five
thousand it cost to charter the private helicopter that flew her out of
Kharaab’s back yard the next morning.
In the end, maybe Franny Glass really was,
at her core, a very bad person, although if you were to ask her if she was, she
would say it wasn’t so. And she would say it wasn’t so because she could recall
once, during a fleeting moment in time, in a place that didn’t matter, the
great and merciful Krishna had tested the goodness of Franny Glass’s soul, and
for a brief and glorious moment, Franny Glass was a powerful and great spirit
filled with goodness, kindness, decency and all those other wonderful but sadly
rare things that occasionally allow a mere mortal to stand with the gods.