She seemed to be saying goodbye to herself at a railroad station; standing among the mourners at the edge of a grave. Goodbye Nellie.
She had no role in this place and she felt it keenly. Census taker? Relief worker? An advocate for planned parenthood, distributing free pills? An adviser to unwed mothers? Lady bountiful dividing the proceeds from the church bazaar? She was none of these. She was a woman with a sick son, looking (at the advice of a thief) for a magician. I am a good woman, she thought. This foolishness was unintentional-compulsive-she seemed helplessly to ridicule herself. I've never once run over a squirrel on the highway. I've always kept seed in the bird-feeding station. She climbed the stairs. There was a window at the head of the stairs where someone had written on the dirty glass: "Sid Greenberg chews and smokes." There were two doors off the hall. One had a sign saying: "The Temple of Light." There was music beyond the door-singing-the voices compressed and funneled through a radio. She knocked and when there was no answer she called: "Swami Rutuola, Swami Rutuola…"
From behind the second door there was a loud sound of giggling-lewd or alcoholic-and then a woman imitated Nellie's accent. "Oh Swermi Rutaholah, Oh Swermi Rutaholah…" A man joined in the giggling. They must have been in bed. "Oh Swermi…" the woman said. She was nearly helpless with laughter. Nellie knocked again and a man asked her to come in. She stepped into a room where a light-colored Negro was tacking upholstery webbing onto a chair frame. There was a smell of shavings. Which came first, Christ the carpenter or the holy smell of new wood? There was an altar in the corner. A votive candle burned in a display of wax flowers. Wax flowers meant death-death and Chinese restaurants. "Welcome to the Temple of Light," he said. The voice was high, definitely accented. Jamaican, she thought. The face was slender and one of the eyes was injured and cast. A war, an arrow, a stone? This eye, immovable, was raised to heaven in a permanent attitude of religious hysteria. The other eye was lively, bright and communicative. "I'm Mrs. Eliot Nailles," she said. "Mary Ashton gave me your name. My son is sick."
"Would you like me to come with you now?" he asked. The voice was a very light singsong.
"Oh yes," she said, "if you could, if you think you can help him."
"I can try," he said. "I'll just wash my hands. I don't have a car and it's most difficult to find a taxi in the rain."
She described Tony's trouble and some of its history as they drove back to her house. The accent, she decided, was not Jamaican. It was a rootless speech, aimed at fastidiousness or elegance. She took him up to Tony's room and asked if he'd like a drink. "Oh no thank you," he said, "I have something within me that's much more stimulating than alcohol."
"Is there anything I can do?"
"I would like to be sure that we won't be disturbed."
"I'll make sure of that," said Nellie and went down and poured herself another drink.
"My name is Swami Rutuola," he said to Tony, "and I've come here to help you, or that's what I hope to do. First I will tell you about my eye. When I was fifteen years old I had a most unfortunate impulse to steal a bicycle. It was a bright-red English Schwinn with three-speed gears. It was irresistible. I hid it in the cellar. When my father found it he beat me most severely and then went with me when I returned it. The father of the boy who owned the bicycle had no wish to prosecute me but my own father and mother insisted that I be taken to court. They were afraid I would become a thief if I were not punished. They were gentle people and I think I have finally come to understand them but they were very frightened of everything. I was sentenced to six months in the reform school in Livertown. Among the prisoners, as is so often the case, were some gangsters who operated a government within the prison government. They were exceedingly brutal and in order to protect myself I developed a limp. I thought that if I limped they would not subject me to their brutality but one day in the mess hall I forgot to limp and when they saw how I had deceived them they beat me up. I was two weeks in the infirmary and as a consequence of their savagery I lost the use of my left eye. I mention all of this because I have observed that when men and women talk with one another they count on communicating with their eyes almost as much as they do with their voices and since one of my eyes has no means of communication some people find it very disconcerting. I will hold my head in the shadow while we talk so that you will not be perplexed by my bad eye, but before we do anything else I would like to tidy up your room. Godliness is next to cleanliness-is that what they say-or is it the other way around?"
"I think it's the other way around," Tony said.
The swami began to gather the clothing that hung on chairs and doorknobs. He found a laundry bag in the closet and stuffed the soiled linen into this. He hung a jacket on a hanger, treed Tony's shoes, closed the closet door, and gave the chair cushions a shake. "Well that looks a little better, doesn't it," he said. "Another thing I would like to do is to burn some incense if you don't object."
"I'd like you to do everything you want to do," Tony said, "but I don't really like incense. Any kind of perfume. I never use after-shave lotion. I like to smell perfume on girls but I don't like it when it's all over the place. I don't like the way department stores smell."
"I think I know what you mean," the swami said, "but this isn't sweet or strong. It's sandalwood. It has a clean smell." He took a narrow stick of incense from his pocket and lighted it.
"That's all right," Tony said.
"I was born in Baltimore," Rutuola said, "to poor people, but the hardships of my race are well known so I won't bother you with them. I went to school until the eighth grade and I can read very well but I cannot do much arithmetic. My father was a carpenter and when I was paroled from reform school I went to work for him. It was much later that I went to New York where I found a position with the New York Central. It was not a distinguished position. What I did was to clean the toilets in Grand Central Station eight hours a night, five nights a week. I mopped the floors and so forth but what I spent most of my time doing was wiping off the walls the writing people had put there. The walls are white and you can write on them easily and after a Saturday night those walls would absolutely be covered with writing.