Free S. by John Updike Page A

among her boyfriends and girlfriends and the scenery and ancient glories of England and shouldn’t be bothered with our old spites and injuries and your impotent rage. Don’t you see, dear muddlehead, we were a
wave
, a certain momentary density within the maya-veil of karma-events that produced Pearl, but now she is moving on and we must too. Let go of her and me. You have the houses and the New Hampshire land and all the silver that didn’t come from either the Prices or the Peabodys—the Worth stuff is clunky but sterling and you could sell it on consignment through Shreve’s if you’re feeling so desperately poor. You have your profession and society’s approbation. I have nothing but my love of the Arhat, and he promises me nothing. Nothing is
exactly
what he promises—that my ego will become nothing, will dissolve upwards.
    I do hope you aren’t letting the lawn boys scalp that humpy section out by the roses with that extra-wide Bunton. Theyshould be spraying for aphids now. The peonies should be staked—the wire support hoops are in the garden shed, behind and above the rakes, on nails, in the same tangle that last year’s boys left them in. I
do
hate missing the azaleas—that deep pink is so stunning against the ocean this time of year, all steely-blue and sparkly and bitter cold and dotted with whitecaps and the first brave sailboats.
    The cold I left home with is at last getting better. Since you have the address there’s no harm in telling you that the days are so hot and bright your lips and elbows keep cracking, but the nights can be quite chilly still. I didn’t bring enough warm clothes and sleep sometimes in a parka and longjohns and have become quite deft at draping myself in a sari. At first I was assigned to a trailer—the others with me were more Pearl’s age than mine and always wanted to go dancing—but now I’m in an A-frame I share with only two sannyasins, and these suitably mature. The word “sannyasin” originally meant someone who’s become a holy beggar wandering from place to place. Our guru says that we travel most when standing still. We wear purple and pink because those are sunset colors and the world, he thinks, is in terrible decline. Also these are at the “love end” of the spectrum. I’ve become quite brown and my hair quite unruly. You would hardly know your smooth old coefficient in that baby-making wave we together formed twenty years ago. We seem quite sweet in our Brighton apartment as I look back on it—for all of your ugly present noises.
    Fondly,
S.
    P.S.: If by any dreadful misestimation of your rights and powers you carry out your threat to show up here, please understand that you will be taken into custody by ourashram security forces, a team of zealous young men I don’t think you will find as cute as I do. They wear lavender uniforms and carry real guns and all graduated in the top third of their classes at the Arizona Police Academy. You will be held in a little detention room filled with pictures of the Arhat while tapes of his discourses play continuously through a loudspeaker. You will be released only when (a) a sannyasin vouches for you as a visitor (b) you find yourself on fire with love of the Arhat and humbly request to join the ashram (c) you make a generous contribution to our manifold good works and promise to go away. Since (a) will not forthcome from me, nor, most likely, (b) from you (though your expertise would be very useful here—the medical services are overstrained and the head of the clinic, a woman called Ma Prapti, seems to be in a gloomy trance most of the time), you should save yourself the ignominy of (c) and stay where you are and take care of our joint property. I assume you will be renting the Cape place this summer. Be sure to send me half the proceeds.
    May 26, 1986
    Dear Mrs. Blithedale—
    It filled me with limitless sorrow to receive the letter of your lawyers inquiring after the whereabouts of the principal amount