Three Continents (24 page)

The girls were a few years younger than I—the eldest, Priti, had her seventeenth birthday around this time—and I knew that, like everyone I had gone to school with, they were very interested in sex. They talked and read about it and discussed it, with each other and their friends; but here too I couldn't contribute, for although by this time I thought of nothing else either, it was in a different way. They knew
nothing about the kind of sex I was going through, and I didn't want them to know; it was as though I were protecting them. Probably they thought I was frigid, as everyone usually did, and I preferred a hundred times to have them think that than to know the reality. Only Crishi knew the reality, and it amused him no end. “What would Aunt Harriet say?” was his standard crack whenever he involved me in some act he knew about. Aunt Harriet was one of his favorite jokes—he had seen her only that one time at Grandfather's funeral, but he made her into this sort of archetypal figure to which he claimed I would revert. Whenever I hesitated to perform some new thing he wanted me to do, he said “There, see, you've reverted already.” He had many Aunt Harriet stories. He said she always had to wear a brooch on her blouse so people could tell which was front Harriet and which was back; and once he came with a very serious face, saying a dead woman had been found and they were about to carry her off to the mortuary when he saw her and cried “No wait stop! That's no corpse, that's my Aunt Harriet.” And so on. The frigidity of Anglo-Saxon women was a favorite subject with him, and the more we did at night the more jokes he made by day.

Unable to stay another minute alone in the flat, or cope with the romantic-girl atmosphere in the other house, I would walk miles in the hope of tiring myself out and dropping off to sleep till Crishi came. It was getting into fall, damp and chilly, and though the leaves were still on the trees and still green for the most part, they kept being blown off and lay on the paths and were trodden into mulch. Sometimes I sat on a wet bench in Hyde Park and got even more wet from the leaves dripping down on me. Lonely men wandering by stopped, and some sat with me to talk but I didn't answer them much, so they soon wandered off again, sadder than ever. One man—quite an old man with a hat on that he didn't take off—lay down on the grass near me, and it took me awhile before I realized he was masturbating, so I moved. I thought it was terrible that people, and even old people, should have these sensations, and be tortured by them. Another man must have witnessed this and he followed me and offered to call the police. He said it was disgusting and such
persons must be stopped. I said no it's all right, and walked faster and he walked faster too, and then it seemed he had to protect me and wouldn't leave me. He said London was a very dangerous place, very bad people around, and a girl like me shouldn't be walking in the park. He said in his own country no girl ever walked alone, and if she did, she was picked up by the police and sent back to her family. He didn't say which his country was but referred to it constantly, so that practically every sentence started with “In my country . . .” He was short, muscular, dark in a Middle Eastern way. His clothes were quite clean and whole but looked as though he might have bought them secondhand, maybe found them hanging in a market on a Sunday morning. After a while, walking with me, he took my hand, very nicely and respectfully, so that I felt I had to leave it there. His hand was very very warm, even hot, as if the climate of his country were stored in it. The rain kept on squeezing down the way it does in London, out of spongy colorless clouds. All around us in the park were these magnificent tall old trees, and when we came out there were these magnificent tall old buildings looming up into the wet air. He kept on talking, about his country and other general topics, still holding my hand very respectfully; sometimes he tickled my palm but stopped at once when he saw I didn't like it. We went down a tube station, and since he had only enough money for one ticket, I bought my own. It was a long underground ride, anonymous and ghostlike, as though I had just died and didn't know where I was bound for and neither did the other people who got in and out as the doors slid open at the stations; there was an unending stream of them, all smelling damp as if in their grave clothes. I felt completely passive and had stopped noticing that he was holding my hand.

When we got off and emerged up a long escalator, it was still raining from the same drained sky and over streets and streets and streets of identical houses. They were smaller houses than the ones where we lived, and grimier, and there were more gaps where some had been torn down and weeds grew in their foundations. There were also more shops—laundromats, a few supermarkets, a few very small shops going out of business and others already gone and boarded
up; every block had at least one Pakistani or Bangladeshi restaurant and a donna-kebab place. We turned in to a doorway beside one of these places and walked up a very dark staircase. On the first landing he stopped and kissed me and his lips were as hot as his hand. He said his name was Salim. There was a dense smell of kebabs and the oil in which they had been fried many times. We walked up one flight more and he unlocked a door and invited me into his room. It was poorly furnished but he kept it nice with a tablecloth and photographs. He had made his bed before going out and there was a blue cotton cover on it. A pair of dark trousers was folded over the only chair. He hung them in the wardrobe so I could sit down. There was an awkward silence, for it was difficult to find anything to say. He had a clock, ticking with a tinny sound, and this seemed the most prominent object in the room except for the wardrobe, which was a very bulky piece of furniture and leaned forward slightly as though about to crash down.

He made tea on a tiny portable stove he had by the open fireplace. The tea was very good, very strong with creamy milk and much sugar and some other taste that may have been cloves. I wished I could have drunk it and said thank you and good-bye, but of course that was not what we had come for on that long underground ride. I looked at the photographs that stood on the tablecloth as on a little altar. There were some old people, some children, some young men in military uniform; when I looked at them, he explained who they were and at the same time he put his hand on my knee. I moved this knee slightly and in my embarrassment asked more questions in fast succession. He answered them and put his hand back on my knee. I picked up a studio photograph of a young man—I thought it was he but he said no, it was his brother. “Dead,” he said, and I had hardly made sounds of regret, when he added “Shot.” He slid his hand farther up my thigh, and feeling shocked and sorry about his brother, I didn't like to stop him. He leaned forward from the bed and pressed his lips on mine. His chin felt rough and stubbly—he may have shaved in the morning but probably needed to do so at least twice a day. He smelled like a person who tried to keep himself clean but
did not have adequate bathing facilities. He was now breathing hard and tried to make me get off the chair and join him on the bed. I said “I must go. My husband's waiting.” I'm sure I sounded like Aunt Harriet. If I had had gloves, at this point I would have put them on.

I had forgotten how much stronger men are than women. It wasn't that he was a rough or brutal man—on the contrary—but that his need was great. After all, he was away from his wife, his family, and lived alone in this little room in a rainy city of endless row houses. He even tried to argue with me—he said, quite reasonably, “Then why did you come?” I couldn't say for the tea; I couldn't say anything. I felt I had to go through with it. But anyway there was no choice anymore. Lying under him on the lumpy bed onto which he had thrown me, watching his contorted, sweating face, I stroked his cheek because I felt sorry to have roused him so far. He didn't take long and afterward appeared to feel satisfied and grateful. I also felt grateful—that it was over, for one thing, and for another that I hadn't enjoyed it: not at all, there had been no gratification of any kind for me. I realized that my ravenous need was not that of one physical animal for another but for one particular human being—for Crishi, for my husband, whom I loved.

If only I could have seen him more often! But some days he was only a voice on the other end of the telephone—I didn't even know where he was calling from, and often it sounded like a pay phone. He was always cheerful and charming but always in a hurry, and when I called, desperately sometimes, “Where are you? When am I going to see you?” he would say “I have to go now” and hang up. I was reminded of what I had read about the Lord Krishna, when Michael was in his Indian period: how Krishna had all these girls in love with him but he would tease them, hiding himself from them, just showing a glimpse of himself every now and again to keep them in line, while they would be staggering around day and night calling for him—“Where are you? Can't you see how I'm longing and waiting for you?” All they heard was his laughter from behind some trees, but when they followed it, he was gone.

I
SAW a lot of the Lord Krishna during these days because of all the pictures we had, the Indian miniatures. They hung on the walls of the flat upstairs and there were more downstairs, in gold frames, and portfolios of them were kept in drawers. Many of them were scenes of nature and others were interiors, but they were all somehow erotic. New ones kept arriving, and Renée and Crishi pored over them together. Various kinds of people brought them—some of them were followers, who had no interest in the pictures but acted only as couriers. But there were also some Indians, most of them stout and shining all over—-their suits shone, their big rings with jewels in them, their oiled hair, their brand-new shoes—and these did have an interest and argued with Renée and Crishi over the date and place of origin of the pictures, and their price. Renée and Crishi usually won these arguments; they seemed to be real experts. I thought at first they were collectors but then discovered that they were dealing too. Besides receiving consignments from India, they visited salesrooms—here in London, or one or both of them would fly to Switzerland or Holland, and once or twice to New York. These trips were always very sudden; I didn't even know they were gone till Crishi called me from Zurich or somewhere, or sometimes he didn't call but was missing for a few days. When he turned up again, I would pounce on him in desperate relief—“Where have you
been
?” and he grinned and said “I'm back now.”

They visited various art galleries, but there was a particular one, just off St. James's, they were in all the time. Crishi often called and told me to meet him there. He was usually late, so I spent a good deal of time waiting for him and got to know the pictures really well—they were the kind I was familiar with at home, for the gallery specialized in Indian art. Many of the visitors appeared to know each other, and the gallery was almost like a club; and as in a club, if they didn't know you, they didn't speak to you, so I sat there reading the same catalog over and over, pretending I wasn't hearing the conversations going on literally over my head. There were the usual very superior sort of girls who work in art galleries; and after asking in frigid voices if they could help me, they left me conspicuously alone. It was no better when Crishi finally came, for he knew everyone and had a lot to talk to them about. He never seemed to notice me sitting there waiting till he was ready to go, when suddenly he said “Well are you coming or not?” as if it had been I who had kept him waiting. The only person to take notice of me was the owner of the gallery, who gave me different catalogs to look at when he saw how long I had been reading the same one. In a way, he appeared to be as much an outsider as I was, for whereas everyone else had a lot to say in loud confident voices, he was quiet and withdrawn; when he did speak, he stuttered a bit, but that may just have been his hesitant way of talking. He was a tall, very English Englishman called Rupert.

It was Bari Rani who first told me that Rupert had been Renée's husband. She told me a lot of things, for we did finally have that talk she kept mentioning, at least in part. It wasn't an undisturbed session, for it took place in her house, with the girls running in and out calling to her and to each other and to Teresa, who was pressing their clothes and packing them. They were all going to Bombay for a wedding—it was their second trip since I had known them; they stayed for a few days, did a monstrous lot of shopping, and came back loaded with presents for everyone. Teresa went too, to help with the luggage. It was about Teresa that our talk began, when the Bari Rani confided to me: “They've been trying to get at her—you know, to make her take things. But I said absolutely not.” I didn't know what she meant and
waited for her to go on. She had to exchange some more shouts with the girls, but she came back to me: “It's something where I've always put my foot down, since the beginning: otherwise they would be on to us too, can you imagine—the girls and myself. And you, Harriet. You'll have to be very firm about that.” Here I did have to admit I had no idea what she was talking about. She was astonished: “Oh my goodness,” she said and got up and shut the door, which was unprecedented in that house. She came and sat very close to me on her gold sofa: “I should have known,” she said. “You're exactly the sort of innocent person they would trap. Trap and use. . . . No, Daisy, I'm talking, shut the door! I said, shut it!” She sat beside me, sighing. I waited and wondered; actually I didn't want to hear too much. “Where to start,” she said and was silent a bit longer. I looked down at the floor. I thought, If she says too much, I won't believe her.

She started at the beginning, with her own marriage to the Rawul. “His family wanted him to marry some traditional girl from a royal house, but he chose me. I'm not even saying it was because of Daddy's money—though he did need it, for his movement. I believed in the movement too. I thought it was wonderful. I thought he was wonderful—such an idealist and so clever and educated; and of course a very ancient title and a state of his own and a palace—not that I would spend five minutes in it—it is the most gruesome place, Harriet, and you must never let them take you there. But Daddy bought us a flat on Malabar Hill and a house at Devlali and these houses in London, so we could be wherever we liked and it was really quite beautiful, Harriet, in the beginning. I'm not saying it was ideal—no marriage is ideal—Baby, did you hear me! I don't want to be disturbed, I'm talking to Harriet, very privately!—there were difficulties naturally, problems, I'll go into that some other time, Harriet, when you've been married longer and will understand better—but it was working out quite all right, till she came. Renée. That's her name—not Rani, not the Rani—she has no right to a title. Just Renée.” She had to collect herself a bit before going on: “She came for the pictures and things first. There were others like her who made friends with the royal houses and went from one to the other to see what they could buy up
and sell at a big profit in their galleries or at auction. It was all illegal of course, high-class smugglers, that's all they were, but so charming and such nice company, you know how English people can be when they want to. Not that she's English, not properly, though she's married to Rupert—you didn't know that? Oh yes, poor Rupert. I don't think he knows in the least what's going on. No one really knows—not the Rawul, he's much too up there in the clouds—only she knows, she and Crishi.” Here she gave me a sideways glance, and I felt we were reaching the point where it was not my business to hear much more. She caught hold of my hand urgently: “Don't let them involve you, you mustn't. They'll use anyone in any way they can—I told you, even Teresa, the stupid girl. She had no idea what they gave her, she thought she was just taking a little package among her bras and panties; that's what they told her. But when I found out, I put a stop to it, once and for all. I was furious. I told Teresa yes, and if the customs had opened your baggage, do you know where you'd be today? In jail where you deserve to be, not to speak of the terrible publicity for us. Let them use their own people, my goodness, there are enough of those poor sick creatures and no one would even miss them if they rotted away in jail for the rest of their lives.”