Volker looked maddeningly innocent. What an act! she thought.
"Er, Dmitri ... umm ... great to see you ... but how did you get in?" asked Volker.
"How did I get in? Why, through the front door. Heavens, that seems an age ago!"
Helga began tapping her foot impatiently. A foot swollen from such long flights. "Who minds this foot pain?" she tried to ask silently, but a wave of anger broke right over the question and she shouted, "Volker! How dare you invite people without asking me!"
"I didn't invite him," said Volker.
Could he possibly be telling the truth?
Helga noticed Elfi and Heinrich leaning out of the window. "Stop that! Were you raised in a barn? Where are your manners?"
Instead of flinching, both Elfi and Heinrich turned to her with huge happy smiles and said, "We are trying to see where the lions and leopard went. Can we invite them for supper?"
Helga felt she was about to go into a screaming fit at any second.
"I expect you are longing to fall at Swamimiracleananda's feet!" said Dmitri in a jolly voice, trying to lighten things up.
"What?" asked the whole German family.
"Why are you calling Bhagavan that?" asked Elfi. "He never takes credit for miracles."
Dmitri looked baffled. "Never? It is one of his favourite topics! Just this morning he said he could make vibhuti pour out of his murtis into the hands of his devotees. Big heaps of it!"
"He would never say such a thing!" said little Heinrich.
"Be polite to our guest," corrected Volker, but turning back to Dmitri, he said, "I'm afraid Heinrich is right ... Bhagavan would not say that."
There was a sudden bang from the next room.
"What? Are there more people here than you?" asked Helga in alarm.
"Well, of course Swami Miracleananda himself," said Dmitri.
"Stop calling Bhagavan that ridiculous name!" said Elfi sternly. "And where is Bhagavan's picture?"
Her family realised that the beautiful photograph of Bhagavan that used to hang beside the Arunachala-facing window was missing!
"And what do you mean he lives here?" asked Heinrich. "Once a little girl asked him to go and visit at her house, and he said he could not, because then people would not know where to find him."
There was another much louder crash from the living room.
"Goodness!" said Dmitri. "Just let me check on his holiness. You wait here ..."
The family looked at each other, totally bewildered.
In the next room, Dmitri found Swami Miracleananda trying to struggle out the window!
"Wait! Wait!" Dmitri shouted.
But Miracleananda seemed absolutely determined to leave right away.
The cubses could not resist a small peak in the door. From the living room, they could hear the sounds of crunching window-frame and Dmitri's pleas.
They dashed to a hiding spot behind a big tree. From there, they saw Miracleananda suddenly leap through the enlarged window and run away at quite a clip.
It was later reported that he went straight to the train station. To each person he encountered on the way, he explained, "This mountain is not sacred enough to welcome my divinity ... I must journey on, in search of a place whose sacredness is on a par with my own."
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