Three Continents (29 page)

Although theirs had been a religious and transcendent movement—I guess ours was political and immanent—-they had had a lot of worldly fun. There had always been something to celebrate, like Babaji's birthday or some great date either in the Hindu calendar or in the history of the movement, which had given them an excuse to perform great feats of vegetarian cooking and put up banners and garlands and strings of lights; and always there was music and singing—such
singing
! Here Babaji, who was listening from his room next door, would burst into a sample for my benefit: in his cracked old high voice but with leaps and jumps of joy in it, and Maya Devi would clutch my arm and whisper “There—that's what I mean.” God knows what he was singing, but it was uplifting—I mean, it did seem to ascend to some strange heights I hadn't known about. And perhaps it was an echo from those heights, or some fragrance of whatever it was that grew up there, that lingered on in the house and insinuated itself into the Rawul's teaching.

The Rawul's audience here was different from what it had been under the tree at Propinquity. For one thing, it was a paying audience, and the fees were high. I had heard Crishi and Renée arguing about how high they should be—Renée protesting that they wouldn't sign up for so much and Crishi overruling her, saying “They'll pay, they'll pay.” He had been right, but it did mean that the students were eager to
get everything they could out of their weekend, by way of food for thought. In any case, they were very serious people, educated and thoughtful. Most of them were English—it's strange that the largest conglomeration of English people I met in London was in this suburban house that the Rawul had taken over from Babaji. At Propinquity, after the Rawul's lectures, everyone sat silent and inspired, or if any questions were asked, it was usually Lindsay who asked, or Sonya when she had been there, and they hadn't been difficult for the Rawul to answer. But here they were often too technical for him—about forms of government and economic tariffs and that sort of thing, which he didn't know too much about. It was from this time on that we began to have academic types around—Crishi found them, and attracted them to the movement. That was his way—when he needed someone he attracted them, by charming and I guess inspiring them, even people you wouldn't think could be charmed and inspired. Anyway, these experts were there on the dais with the Rawul—an economist, a sociologist, a professor of political science—and after the Rawul had given his address and the questions began, they were there to answer them in a professional way.

This left the Rawul free to concentrate on his own ideas and philosophy, which as I've said were beginning to change. It was now that he first used the term
transcendental internationalism
, and when asked if this had any religious or metaphysical connotation, he would answer something like this:

“No! No, my dear friends! Not that ‘other world' the theologians have been fooling us with but
another
world! We too aim to transcend the world—this sorry wanting place of separate nationalities, countries, and continents—but transcending in the sense of transforming it into a new, a stateless, casteless, countryless one: not to leave this earth for heaven but to make heaven on earth, if you'll pardon my use of fairytale lingo.”

Up to this point, he was more or less saying the same thing as before; but from here on, he lowered his voice, became more questioning, even diffident, as he continued:

“And why is it—I ask myself, I ask you—why is it that men have always used this language? Why have there always been
terms like
heaven
, like
gods
, like
God
? What have we men been seeking beyond being men? Is it to be something better than men? To transcend ourselves as we are—to reach new heights within as well as outside ourselves?”

Crishi was usually too busy to be present at these lectures; but once when he happened to come in when the Rawul was talking about being better than men, Crishi asked Renée: “What's he on about?” She shrugged. I had noticed this about both of them, Crishi and Renée—they didn't care what the Rawul said as long as he had an audience to say it to. That was their business—getting the audience; getting houses and money; getting the movement going. The actual content of the movement was left to the Rawul, and he was completely free to think it out for himself. Although he was surrounded by so many people—all of us, and the followers, and the professors, and the students, and Anna and other journalists, and members of other political groups—there was an aura of aloneness about him, as though he were still by himself in the rocky desert of his kingdom, his eyes absorbing the color of the sky as he looked up at it for inspiration. Maybe it is so with all world leaders—that ultimately, at the center of their movement, they are alone and lonely.

I noticed that he often came up to Babaji's little attic room next to mine. Whenever he had a free moment between lectures and other activities, he would tap timidly on Babaji's door. He wasn't always admitted. Babaji would cry out: “Who is it?” and when the Rawul identified himself, he might say: “I'm sleeping! Go away!” The Rawul wouldn't argue but would humbly leave, though often Nina Devi took pity on him and let him come in her room. There she made cocoa for him on the little portable stove on which they did all their cooking, and she explained to him about Babaji, how he could understand and help you even without actually admitting you into his presence. But sometimes Babaji did admit the Rawul, and I heard them talking—or rather, Babaji talking: He used strange terms, like
Adhibhautika
, which he said was the cosmological dimension, and
Adhyatmika
, the anthropological dimension; and later I would hear the Rawul use these terms in his lectures and give his explanations of them.

I have to admit that Babaji was more interested in me than
in the Rawul. He liked it that I was next door to him and often called through the wall to make sure I was there. When Crishi was with me, it was no use trying to keep our sex low-key because Babaji heard every sound—avidly listened for it—and was not above shouting encouragement to us. Often he sang, some pure song of joy, which made Crishi laugh but at the same time grind his teeth. Babaji never called Crishi in to see him the way he did me; when I asked him why not, Babaji said “Oh, I've seen plenty like him.” I said “But you've seen plenty like me too.” “Oh yes! Plenty!” he cried. “But never enough.” He loved nothing better than to tell me about all the girls who had come flocking to him; leaving behind their parents, friends, lovers, husbands, they had followed him around the world, clad in orange saris, sandals, and with his picture on a medal around their necks. And it had been so easy for him, fatally easy. Sitting cross-legged on his bed in his nightshirt and nightcap, he described to me how he had sat on his throne in his audience chamber while new girls were led up to him, one by one. All he had to do was look at them, into them, and at once they threw themselves, literally, at his feet; and he touched them ever so lightly with his peacock fan on their bowed backs, and from that moment on they were his. “It doesn't work anymore,” he said, ruefully though not regretfully. “How do you know?” I asked. “It's not working with you,” he said; he shut one eye in a roguish way and said “You want to try?” I agreed, and he looked what I guess was deep into me—and he was right—it didn't work. Once he called Maya Devi in to give a demonstration: He asked for his peacock fan and she brought it, and then she prostrated herself by his bed and he touched her with it the way he had described to me. He winked at me over her back, and he and I both laughed; and when she got up, Maya Devi laughed with us but there was such radiance in her face—well, I wondered, would that still be there on my face after Crishi and I had been married for thirty years?

Michael didn't come for the weekend courses but was there during the week, when the rest of us had gone back to the London flat. I had never in my life seen so little of him, or perhaps I mean been so far from him, although we belonged to the same organization and were closest to the same
person—that is, Crishi. We no longer looked alike either. In the past, people had often commented on our resemblance, but Nina Devi said to me, “Your brother doesn't look like you at all.” Maya Devi confirmed this. They saw Michael quite often when he and the other followers came there during the week for the martial exercises, which they held in this house, it being less conspicuous than the Earl's Court one. They shut the doors and windows and drew the curtains and asked Maya and Nina Devi to stay up in the attic with Babaji and not come out to watch. “We don't want to watch,” Maya Devi said with a hint of complaint in her voice, which made Nina Devi say “No dear, we must let them do what
they
think right.” “But in this house,” Maya Devi said in a more complaining way, “with Babaji here—who would never even wear violent shoes.” They explained to me that violent shoes were made from animals killed for their hide, whereas Babaji would wear only those made from animals who had died a natural death. “And do you know where they keep their guns and things?” Maya Devi said. “In the prayer room,” she said, choking back her outrage. “No,” said Nina Devi, “it's not our prayer room anymore. We pray upstairs.” “But it used to be! A sacred place.” “Oh—sacred,” said Nina Devi. “Any place can be made that if you do something good in it.” She smiled to reassure me that the matter was not serious enough for me to worry about it.

But I did mention it to Crishi and Michael—and they both dismissed it, in their different ways. Crishi said “Oh isn't that terrible,” clicking his tongue in pity before adding “but then why the hell don't they get out and leave the house to us.” “They can't, Crishi,” I said. “You know they can't—not till you get the money to pay them.” “Oh yes the money,” he said. “We're all waiting for the money. Your fault: Why can't you have your birthday now instead of June?” It was useless talking to him.

And for once talking with Michael was useless too. It turned out he hated Babaji—“All that stuff: the incense and the nonviolent shoes and the sublimated sex. It's rotten,” he said. “Soft and rotten.” His face took on a contorted, harsh expression that I didn't like to see, and he knew I didn't. He defended himself: “They're so fanatical, you have no idea.”
“But don't you have to be?” I asked. “If you truly believe in something?” “Of course,” he said; “but what you believe in has to be the truth, not made-up lies like theirs.” There was no point in arguing with him; he was so proud and sure. Maybe that's why we had begun to look different from each other, for there was nothing I was sure about. If he resembled anyone now, it was the other followers—and not only because he wore the same clothes and had his hair cropped close to his head: It was something in his bearing too, something rigid and trained. This was probably due to the martial exercises they practiced; but how to account for the change in his eyes—no longer the far-seeing seafarer's eyes he had inherited from Grandfather and Manton, but more like the other followers', unblinking and almost blank in deadly certainty.

C
RISHI still often called me to meet him in Rupert's gallery, and I dropped in on my own too, to see Rupert. Since discovering he had been married to Renée, I regarded him as a member of our very extended family. The way I felt about this family was that some members of it I liked better than others, but in any case there we all were. I certainly liked Rupert, and even felt a sort of bond with him, maybe because he was the only one besides me who didn't seem to be confident about anything. Even in his gallery he looked as if he didn't know why he was there. I often wondered why he was—he wasn't the type to run any kind of business; and in fact he didn't—he left everything to his partner, Nicholas. There were frequent parties at the gallery, and while everyone was shouting darling at each other, Rupert sort of hovered about, looking apologetic when he took anything off the trays the waiters were carrying around. The gallery was on two floors, one of them a basement with the tiniest little cubbyhole tucked away in it, and this served as Rupert's office. It was a hiding place as much as an office—that was what I used it for during these parties, and sooner or later Rupert would join me. It was there that he told me about Renée and himself and other things he didn't usually talk about. He kept interrupting himself—“Is this boring you?” Sometimes other people would come in to ask about some picture on display, and when he went out with them to look at it, he stood there swaying on his heels, not
knowing what to say but too polite not to show interest, till Nicholas came bustling up to rescue both him and the potential buyer.

Rupert had met Renée in India. It had been his first visit, though his family had an association with the country going back to the eighteenth century. He had gone to visit his brother Tom, who had joined a kind of mission there—he was a priest but he didn't work to relieve people's religious needs so much as their physical ones. There were a lot of physical needs in India, Rupert said and fell silent and looked down into his glass reflectively. At this point someone came to ask him about a picture, and I saw him go through his usual routine in front of it, till Nicholas took charge. Rupert certainly knew about the picture, but he was too reticent to air his views. When he came back and it was only me, he talked about it knowledgeably and made me go and see it with him. I had seen hundreds like it—in the gallery and with Indian dealers who brought them to the flat. This one showed a prince in pearls, turban, and silk tunic entertaining his beloved at a picnic, both of them sitting on a carpet with maidens at hand playing musical instruments; in the foreground were tiny delicate dishes and flasks, along with the flowers in the meadow, and in the background a palace that had open doors and windows and all sorts of goings-on inside, and behind that there was a stream and you could see the fish in it and above it blue rain clouds and cranes flying through them. I don't know what it was that made these pictures so erotic, so charged with something exciting and delicious about to happen. Rupert felt it too; and talking about the picture, he told me that it was in just this sort of place and atmosphere—very different from his brother Tom's mission in Meerut—that he had met Renée. He had been invited to a palace in Saurashtra by one of the princes, who had gone to school with him; Renée was there too—she traveled from palace to palace in her search for treasures to buy and sell.