Three Continents (38 page)

But when he saw me dressed up, Crishi said he would go with me. I was grateful, especially as he too made the effort of changing into a dark suit and sober tie. I thought we both looked very, very respectable, but Crishi wasn't satisfied and made me change into high-heeled shoes and tie my hair up. I was glad to do it, to be at my most presentable for Babaji's cremation; only it turned out we weren't going to the cremation, although I failed to realize that until our taxi drove up to one of those big stone buildings with symbolic sculptures in the city. When I protested, Crishi said it was all right, that he had to see someone about the interest payments on some loan he had taken and that there would be plenty of time to go on to the funeral afterward. I wasn't too surprised—we had done this before, dressed up in very presentable clothes and gone together to some creditor where Crishi introduced me as his wife. I guess we made a good impression together, for these interviews went off very cordially and the problem, whatever it was, was either settled or postponed. That was what happened this time too—Crishi was very charming, and frank and open, and I was demure with my little purse and gloves. Sherry was called for and brought in by a butler, and afterward there was a lot of handshaking and goodwill, and the whole thing took so long
that it was too late to get to the cremation in time.

The Devis brought the ashes back in an urn, and they were very eager to travel to India and immerse them in some sacred river there. To defray their expenses, and maybe also to keep them going in general, they urgently needed the rest of the payments on the house, and Crishi too was anxious to be in undisputed possession before our departure. He had payments to make on the gallery as well, and the rent of the Mayfair office had to be kept up in our absence, and there were many other financial settlements he had to take care of, not to speak of the cost of getting us to India: so there was a lot of wheeling and dealing going on, and I had to make calls to Sonya in New York to ask her for various loans. She was very willing to make them—she always was; asking her for money was the biggest favor you could do her, and she would bring you the check herself as fast as she could. But these were pretty big amounts we needed, which she couldn't get at without Mr. Pritchett's knowing. He must have said the usual sort of things to her, I mean, issued the same warnings he did to us: because she rang me back very embarrassed and said was I sure I needed quite so much—not that she wasn't happy to let me have it, but she didn't want me to make a mistake. I said what sort of a mistake, knowing all this came from Mr. Pritchett, and that as far as he was concerned, I had already made it, in marrying Crishi. I went on to tell her in a breathless little-girl voice I was surprised to hear from myself—Crishi was sitting there listening and nodding to me in encouragement—about what a great time we were having, Michael and I, and how much we were looking forward to going to India and having an even greater one there. Sonya was so moved and happy with our being so happy she could hardly wait to hurry away to Mr. Pritchett and overrule him: Money and the caution it should engender were to her as foreign as they were at that time to me.

A few days before Founder's Day, Barbara and Manton called to tell me the date of their wedding. Barbara said it was the last possible week—as it was, she had to go to the maternity department to have her wedding dress made; she asked for my measurements so she could order my matron-of-honor outfit from the regular bridal department. The date
they gave me was when we would be in India, but I didn't tell them that because they so absolutely expected me to be present. And later, when I told Crishi, he said that I would just have to fly back from India to New York for it. I didn't like that idea. When I thought of India, and in particular of Dhoka, it was as a sort of absolute destination from which there was no looking back, let alone taking a plane back for a wedding. But Crishi said “Your old dad's wedding” in a shocked and sacred voice; then he said “Doesn't Manton have some sort of trust fund?” Although I protested that he was usually horribly overdrawn on it, Crishi said that surely he could raise a loan for a daughter in difficulties, good heavens. When I called New York, I was tearful and Manton said “What is it, baby?” in his new voice of concern and responsibility. But when he had coaxed it out of me that I needed a loan, he went off the deep end in the old Manton way and said my God, didn't I know what sort of a hand-to-mouth existence he led anyway, and now with Barbara having got herself pregnant—I heard Barbara on the other line burst into sobs at this reproach, and I too began to sob but managed to say “It's only till next June, Daddy,” in between
my
sobs; till Manton grumbled, Well he would have to speak to his accountant and I hung up and smiled at Crishi, who said “Okay, every little bit helps,” in an offhand way but seemed pleased with me.

F
OUNDER'S DAY started off as an ordinary family birthday. Bari Rani and the girls came for breakfast, bearing gifts. The Rawul was in his family-man aspect, extending his plump, shaved cheek to each girl in turn to come up and kiss. He was wearing his brocade dressing gown over his undershirt and the white leggings he had got on for later in the day. He smelled fresh and nice of after-shave and eau de cologne and beamed all around in radiant goodwill. It was a big and happy day for him. The girls had made birthday cards and wrapped their gifts very artistically, and he accepted them graciously and put them aside. But the Bari Rani insisted he open them there and then, and she also made him try on the contents because, if they didn't fit, she was going to take them back right away to change them. He didn't want to but she insisted, and this ruffled him a bit—in his mood, as well as literally, because of having to pull a sweater over his smoothly brushed hair. But everyone was determined that no cloud should mar this perfect day. Renée and Bari Rani were on their best behavior with each other, and they even joined in protest when the Rawul began to make a little impromptu speech at the breakfast table. “We're going to hear enough of that all day,” said Bari Rani, and Renée agreed he should be saving his voice. “Only a few words,” he pleaded, looking around the table. “A few special words to those of you who have made my dream yours.” The girls groaned, and the Rawul defended
himself: “It's not a speech—it's a declaration of love. For my family,” he said. “Because at heart that is what I am—a family man, in the deepest sense of that term. That is the instinct prompting me—driving me—to make a family of the whole world, to make everyone sit down together in peace and love as we are sitting here around this table—” “It's a
speech
!” cried the girls accusingly—“No no no,” said the Rawul, but he laughed and good-naturedly allowed Daisy to stop his mouth with a piece of croissant.

But what he was saying was true, and I too looked around the table at all of us sitting if not in unalloyed peace and love, at any rate in some sort of harmony, which was in itself an achievement. The Rawul sat across from me, partly hidden by the big Georgian coffeepot; beside him sat the Bari Rani and beside her their three daughters. The five of them appeared as the solidly Indian phalanx of our family—not that they were very dark; on the contrary, they were light-skinned, Aryans, Parthians; yet in the timbre of their voices, their deportment, their physical aura, there was something that spoke of different landscapes from those we knew, with strange mountains and rivers springing out of them and flowing over pastures where strange cattle grazed. On the other side of the Rawul sat Renée, and although her skin had an ivory tint to it and her hair was as dark as that of the girls and flashing with the same dark auburn lights, there were other countries and climates compounded in her, nearer home, and not only because she wore Parisian clothes (Bari Rani wore those, too, sometimes, but they only made her look more Oriental). Crishi sat next to Renée—if he had been younger or she older he could have been her son, for he also had an Oriental basis underlying his many other characteristics: but in his case the mixture was even more indefinable, for it seemed to include everywhere he had been, the many places where he had lived and traveled in every hemisphere, and all the things he had done there. And next to Crishi there was Rupert—yes, also a member of the family, tall calm courteous noble English Rupert; and next to Rupert, Michael with his pale craggy visionary's face and his hair shaved to a bristle; and me, his twin; and next to me Robi—completing the circle and somehow belonging to Bari Rani's side of it, for he looked as
Indian as that side: as though the Oriental quality, which in his mother—and in Crishi—had been overlaid with other strains, had come out pure and strong in him.

The only one who was not there as a member of the family was Anna. In fact, she was packing upstairs, for she was moving out that day. I had heard her during the whole of last week making phone calls to find a place to live. She spoke in a soft low cajoling voice, which wasn't part of her personality and which she took off the moment she replaced the receiver, looking disgusted, like one who had done this before and was sick of it. But she tried to make her own arrangements and never complained or confided in anyone. She and Crishi were no longer on speaking terms—she never came out when he was there, and he never went in to her. There was something still, self-contained, and brooding about her. I found it impossible to put her out of my mind; and when, during the Rawul's birthday breakfast, the doorbell rang in a very short, sharp way, I knew at once it was she. I went to open the door before anyone else could, and there was Anna wearing a hat and coat. She asked me to go and call Crishi; something in my expression made her laugh and she said “I only want him to help me carry down my luggage.” I said “I'll do it”; she said “No, you don't have to do all his work for him.” She was not looking at but past me, alert for an opportunity to push her way in. I was determined not to let her. I put the chain on the door and we stood on either side of it, both of us waiting. I was afraid Crishi would come to see what was happening, so I held on to the dining-room door from outside. She said “One day you'll want to do the same thing yourself.” I didn't argue with her, just held on to the dining-room door. When someone tried to open it from inside, I threw my whole weight against it.

But it wasn't Crishi, it was Michael. It was his voice I heard say “What's the matter?” I let him come out; he went to the front door and took the chain off, for now there were two of us to stand guard, facing Anna. We were very unevenly matched; he and I were not tall, but we towered over her small figure. On the other hand there was the possibility that she had a gun, and this was in his and my mind, and maybe it was what made her so tense and determined as she faced
us in her hat and coat and clutching her handbag. I could feel Michael beside me revving himself up—getting himself to that pitch of precision that all his exercising was about—and next moment he put out his hand to grab her bag; but she was as quick as he was and swung it aside and he grabbed hold of her wrist instead. They were locked together in an impasse, with her not letting him get hold of her bag but he, with his grip on her wrist, preventing her from opening it and taking out whatever was in there. Clearly it was now up to me, and I caught hold of her bag. I was surprised by the fierceness of her struggle, but obviously she didn't have a chance with him holding her, and I soon had the bag. I opened it and found the gun I had been searching for all these days. The moment Michael let her go, she pounced on me to try to get the purse back; he pulled her off me and threw her down on the floor and, taking the handbag from me, he extracted the gun. He tested the safety catch, and he put the gun in his pocket. Anna was lying on the floor with her skirt half hitched up and one leg bent in an awkward way under her; her hat was still in place, and she looked up at us from under it with the eyes of a fierce, hurt little animal. Now that we safely had her gun, I wanted to help her get up, but Michael said “Let's go,” and flung her handbag down on the floor beside her so that the harmless contents scattered, some on the landing and some on the stairs. We didn't wait to see her retrieve them but returned to the breakfast table. Crishi looked up at us and said “Where have you been, you two?” rather casually, as if he weren't expecting much of an answer.

It was the second time I had seen Michael in action—the first time had been with Nicholas in the gallery—and I was impressed with him. I mean, the way he was so decisive and in a completely unreflecting way, although he was by nature such a deeply reflective person. And that same day I saw him again in this new aspect—or maybe it wasn't new, maybe it was the same Michael, my Michael, completed, fulfilled. An important part of that day's festivities was the ceremonial march in the back garden, followed by a display of martial exercises. Michael was sort of the commanding officer of the squad of followers, and they filed past the Rawul, who, standing
under an umbrella, took the salute from the stone-flagged terrace at the back of the house. Of course it was raining and of course they got wet, but that had been expected—in fact, in his inaugural address the Rawul had made a little joke about it, how they were now in that part of his dominions where he had to contend for his title with the god of rain. But as with all his jokes, he lifted the theme into a higher sphere: saying that it was an essential part of his movement, and of his inspiration, that all landscapes, all climates as well as all peoples and nations, should be comprised within it. Anyway, there they were, now marching, now displaying their martial skills of judo and karate in the rain. I don't know if it was an inspiring scene for everyone, but it was for me. Unlike the front yard, laid out with flower beds and bordering the main road, where commuting cars whizzed past, the back had been left more untended to give some impression of a rural retreat. It stretched for quite a way, and beyond it there was an open field with a horse or two in it from the neighboring riding school. Although beyond that there was a new housing development and a glassware factory, these were blotted out by the rain so that the mists and vapors enveloping them might as well have been enveloping a lovely English landscape of fences and stiles and yellow-and-green fields with haystacks in them and brown cows. That was the background; and in the foreground there were Michael and the followers—I must admit I didn't take much notice of the latter, except for being impressed by their eagerness, which made them absolutely impervious to the rain. This eagerness, so it seemed to me, reached its highest pitch in Michael as he shouted his words of command and wheeled and turned and threw up his knees. He radiated pride and joy and certitude, and these were also there in the Rawul watching from under his umbrella—I don't know if they flowed from him to Michael or from Michael to him but I suppose it was a sort of two-way traffic between them, each inspiring the other, each believing with an ardent soul in the high destiny of the Rawul's mission.