Three Continents (41 page)

I'm not saying that the Rawul wasn't a royal figure wherever
he went—that was after all the strongest impression he gave; but here it was more than a personal impression, it was supported by his whole background, his whole dynasty, which everyone knew about and could place him in. He was a king come home to his own country. And here the movement wasn't eccentric or odd or fantastic: You believed in it as you did in him, that it could be and would be real; that it could and would happen. He was forming an independent political party in opposition to the ruling party, which he intended one day to defeat, and from this base, with real political power in his hands, he could work outward toward his great ideal—that is, from ruling India he could advance to uniting the world. There was an absolutely practical first step to be taken, and that was to have himself elected to a seat in the upper assembly—not all that difficult, with his contacts, and the votes he could count on from his own district. But it needed organizational work and that was the reason we lingered in Delhi instead of going to Dhoka, as I had expected. Bari Rani worked tirelessly, and also tirelessly poured in her considerable inheritance. I think she was looking forward to mine, to pour that in too. She organized lavish entertainments for the politicians, journalists, government officers, and big businessmen who were going to help the Rawul to a seat in Parliament. She hired banquet and conference halls and the best caterers, and she mingled among the guests and was charming to them, though privately she confided to me that they were very uncultured people whom she was only treating as equals for the sake of her husband's career.

All this policy making belonged to the upper echelons; but there were the lower echelons—that is, the followers who were organized as usual by Crishi and Michael. At least I thought that was what Crishi and Michael were doing when they were away the whole day. I soon discovered that it was only Michael who was doing it—when he came into my hotel room and said “Where's Crishi?” I said “I thought he was with you,” and he said “I haven't seen him in two days.” He sat down, looking dispirited, tired, and also I thought sick, or anyway drained. Since our arrival in India, Michael only wore Indian clothes, a loose white pajama with a loose white shirt over it. They did not suit him at all. These clothes need a sinuous physique to wear them, and Michael was bony and
rigid; his neck stuck out of the collarless shirt like a scraggy, angry bird.

He began to complain about Crishi. I'm not used to Michael complaining, so it sounded strange to me, and his voice sounded strange too, almost whiny. He said it wasn't fair to leave him alone with this new group of followers, who understood him no more than he did them—he meant literally; they spoke no English at all. And besides language, they were very different from the other followers, who had all been—Michael swallowed, his Adam's apple labored up and down while he tried to bring out a word he didn't like: He forced himself to say it—“idealistic,” he said. They had been true believers whereas these people here . . . He didn't go any further, he was never quick with judgments; instead he continued complaining about Crishi. “It's not fair,” he said again, “he has to give me some help, some support—where is he?” “I don't know.” “No, no one knows, he disappears and leaves me to deal with all of it.” Again he sounded whiny and I asked “Are you all right? I mean, healthwise?” “Of course I'm all right,” he said in his old impatient way with me, but then admitted grudgingly, “except for the stomach things one expects to get in India. Who cares about that—but to leave me alone this way—throw it all on me and take off—” The corner of his mouth turned down disagreeably; there was a sore on one of them; he touched it irritably with his finger.

Crishi came in, burst in—like a flame, bringing (depending on your point of view) light or danger; saying impatiently before he was even quite in the room, “There you are, Michael, I've been looking for you all
over
.” But as always hypersensitive to every nuance between people, he looked at us both, from one to the other—“What's up?”

I said “Michael's been complaining about you.”

“About
me
?” cried Crishi, pointing to himself, utterly absolutely incredulous but making sure I saw the smile flitting around his lips; and of course I did and responded to it, disregarding Michael. “What have I done, what's wrong?” said Crishi, putting his hand on Michael's shoulder; but Michael twitched his shoulder to remove that hand and, taking a step away from Crishi, he said “You leave me to deal with that bunch and disappear.”

“Can you believe it,” said Crishi in outrage. He took a deep
breath before he was able to go on: “And what do you think
I
've been doing? Playing around? Having a good time? Amusing myself? Is that what you think, Michael? Is it really?” He took a step forward to stand right by him and to touch him on the shoulder again; and this time Michael didn't move away but stood there silently and even cast down his eyes, making him look coy for a moment, girlish, womanish even, ready for submission.

For a few seconds Crishi kept him like that, before taking his hand away. He went on talking to him in a gentle, understanding way: “I know it's tough for you being on your own with them but you'll get used to them. I'll come along with you now, shall I, and give them a little talking to; set them right, like. Okay? Okay, Mike?”

“I'll come too,” I ventured, and Crishi laughed and said “Why not.” It was Michael who said “Why? Why should she?” Crishi shrugged, leaving it to the two of us to settle. I could see Michael didn't want me to come, and in the past that would have been enough to make me not want to. But I doubted his motives; without quite admitting it to myself, I felt that Michael was trying to guard something that was between him and Crishi and excluded me—that is, their work with the movement. In other words, Michael was jealous of me! Perhaps he suspected this of himself the same moment I did, and it was as inadmissible to him as to me, for he too shrugged and said “Well why not, if you want to,” trying to sound as indifferent as Crishi but not succeeding.

The Indian followers, who were known as the Bhais, had been installed in a house on the other side of the river. To get there we had to drive over an old pontoon bridge. The lane they lived on was too narrow to admit our car, so we got out and walked along some planks laid across a miry path. Their house was as new as our luxury hotel and as unfinished. The outside walls had been whitewashed but the window frames were still raw wood, and a pile of bricks and a ladder on the roof may have meant that another story either had been abandoned or was being completed. The Bhais all lived in the three little downstairs rooms and the courtyard leading off them. They
were
different from the other followers. Those others may have burned with a fierce flame from
within, but from without they were mostly meek, pale, and mild. These Indian followers were a tough, burly crew, hairy and dark within their loose white clothes, which suited them so much better than they did Michael. They had been brought from Dhoka—I thought that they might be family retainers but Crishi said no, he had recruited them from that desert state, where they had been hanging around in the bazaars, all of them penniless and some in trouble with the police. I felt something violent and threatening about them, partly because of the weapons they so openly displayed around the house. Several hunting rifles were hung up on the walls, and one Bhai was sitting there digging at his toenail with quite a dangerous-looking knife.

As soon as we came in, they surrounded Crishi. They were mostly taller than he was, and certainly all of them more muscular; they seemed to be demanding something in their loud, harsh voices. But Crishi kept calm, reassuring them in a soft, even tone. He spoke to them in their own dialect—he always said that he didn't speak any Indian language well, just what he had picked up here and there, and that he couldn't sustain much of a conversation. But he communicated perfectly with them, and after a time he had them laughing—that is, when he opened the money belt he wore under his shirt and started distributing rupees to them. They were happy, they shouted and joked, and dispersed, satisfied, each counting the notes he had received.

There was another group of followers for us to visit. The place they stayed seemed familiar—not that I had actually seen it but it was the hotel near the railway station Michael had described where he had first met Crishi. There was the tea stall outside and the Hindu temple opposite with the bells ringing from it and making the house shake. The followers who lived here, five or six of them in one little blue-plastered room, were European or American and had the usual pale drained look about them. One of them greeted me as if he knew me, but it took me some time to recognize him, because I hadn't expected to see him or because our last meeting seemed so long ago and far away. It was Paul. When I looked surprised, he said laconically, “I got out”; he jerked his head toward Crishi: “He got me out.” He laughed and made a
grim joke of it: “He got me in and he got me out,”

I lowered my eyes, I didn't want to know too much about any of that. I felt ashamed, as though I were responsible—I mean, for Paul's suffering. And in a way I was; if Crishi was, so was I. It was like that now.

But I don't think Paul held anyone responsible. None of them did—they seemed weary and fatalistic, but also cheerful, unlike the followers at home, who were mostly rather glum. After my first visit, I often went to see Paul and his companions, taking Robi with me: It was somewhere to go and they were nice to be with. They had a lot of time and the air of people used to killing it. They sat crowded together in their little hotel room, doing personal things like trimming their beards or their nails. They were ready to talk, though not necessarily to any other person—sometimes I heard them muttering to themselves and cursing not anyone in particular but life in general, in an almost good-natured way. They liked it when I brought Robi; they showed him magic tricks and made puppets out of handkerchiefs for him. What they didn't like was when Michael came. They seemed to dislike him intensely, I don't know why; and he had absolutely no use for them.

I heard him argue with Crishi about keeping them. Crishi said they were useful because they knew their way around; had done this so long that they were like trained and experienced soldiers. Michael said yes, but on the other hand they were known to every customs officer between here and San Francisco; Crishi argued that could work both ways because it made the couriers aware of who was to be avoided and where the weak links were. No, Michael said, they weren't aware of anything, their minds were too far gone; all they were fit to do was scheme for their own survival. “That's good,” urged Crishi; “it makes them more careful.” “They're more than careful,” Michael said. “They're afraid. They smell of fear,” he said with contempt. I too had noticed that about them.

These followers stayed in their own bazaar hotel and never came to ours, and they had nothing directly to do with or for the Rawul. That was left to the Bhais, and there were several of them on duty during the day, and at night two of
them slept outside his door. They also acted as guards at the Rawul's political meetings, and it was they who recruited people and paid them and brought them in truckloads to cheer for the Rawul. Bari Rani always sat on the platform with the Rawul at these meetings, and when they could be wooed away from their friends and discotheques, the girls sat with them too. The rest of us could be there or not, and most of the time I must admit I preferred not to. If someone had asked me if I believed in the movement, of course I would have said yes—I mean, one world where everyone is united and no more wars, what could be better? But I couldn't say that it was my whole life the way it was for Michael, who never missed a meeting if he could help it, or an opportunity of being near the Rawul, or doing something to promote the movement. Even if he wasn't feeling well or had to deal with people he didn't like and who didn't like him, such as the Bhais and the other followers—he never let his personal feelings stand in the way of what he saw not only as his duty but his whole existence and self-fulfillment.

I don't think Crishi felt that way. Maybe he never had—I can't say; but because he was still bustling around as usual, full of eagerness and energy, I thought it was in the service of the Rawul. It wasn't until Michael had several times come to ask “Where's Crishi?” that I realized there was a change. And more and more I heard Michael nag at him, pick fights with him for not working hard enough for the movement; although the way he fought with him was the way you fight with someone you love and feel slipping away from you.

There was the night of the party in the Bhais' house. The Bhais liked to eat and drink and make a lot of noise, and they loved having a party. On that night they had lit a bonfire in their courtyard; whole chickens were being roasted on a spit, and there was singing to the accompaniment of one of those drums that are banged from both ends. The Bhais were wrapped in blankets and their faces lit up by the flames. I was there by special invitation, as was Robi, and we sat with Crishi by the fire on cushions placed there for the three of us. Crishi was enjoying himself. I could see that he liked being with the Bhais and that he belonged with them in a way he didn't with the pale foreign followers. Robi sat between us
and did his best to have a good time, but he was a bit frightened; and when someone picked him up and he was exuberantly passed from hand to hand around the fire, he was ready to cry, and would have if he hadn't caught Crishi's frown on him. Like Renée, Crishi could stand no sign of weakness in Robi.

Michael arrived, not to join the party but on business. The Rawul was holding one of his meetings next day, and Michael had worked out a duty roster for the Bhais to act as ushers and bodyguards. When Michael came, austere and pale in white, the Bhais had started dancing—a parody of a dance, with one of them pretending to be a girl in a veil eluding the attentions of another. It made all of them laugh a lot, and some joined in, dancing by themselves or around an imaginary love-partner, with fingers snapping and eyes ecstatically closed. They made Crishi get up, and he didn't need much persuading; he danced around with the others and knew how to do it too. I enjoyed watching him but I could see Michael looked disgusted, as well as impatient at not being able to get on with his business. And when someone pulled his arm to make him join in, he snatched it away and gave a push to the person who had touched him. He shouted something but couldn't be heard—at least no one took any notice of him—and that made him more furious; and next thing he did, he strode into the circle, and roughly pushing the dancers aside, went straight for Crishi and caught him by both arms to make him stop dancing. Crishi did stop; everyone did; the drummer went on banging for a while before he too fell silent with a last embarrassed little bang. Only the flames roared and someone was washing dishes in the kitchen, clattering the plates.