Three Continents (43 page)

“Well madam,” said the Rawul, “I hope you feel you've said enough and are fully satisfied with the result.”

“I? What have I done? Except of course as usual kill myself with work for your sake.”

I left them and followed Michael. He hadn't gone back to Sonya's room but to his own. I understood completely how he felt—Michael had not come all this way to get himself mixed up in local politics! I could see that everything that had exasperated him about our parents and our whole life and everyone's expectations—everything that was “neti, neti”—was coming back on him. But I said “Michael, you have to be a little bit practical.”

“Well what do you think I've been doing?” he said. He lay on his bed like a knight on his tomb; his face was white, his eyes shut. “Who's been booking everyone's tickets and arranging every kind of practical shit—food and beds and guns and you name it, down to getting the Rawul's clothes from the dry cleaner's. I'm not complaining,” he said. “I don't mind. I like to do it, so long as I know what we're doing. Aiming at. As long as I'm sure of that.” He paused—I guess it was a natural place for me to ask “Well aren't you?” I didn't ask, and there was a silence; Michael opened his eyes and shifted them sideways to look at me—“What'll you do?. . . When we're twenty-one,” he added when he saw me hesitate.

“Same as you,” I said, looking back at him in surprise.

“Same as me,” he repeated as if he weren't sure what that might be. Again, I didn't want to get into it. There was nothing to discuss; it had all been settled long ago—when Grandfather was still alive and he had said three times to Michael “Are you sure?” and three times Michael had replied yes.

I was relieved when the Rawul came in—knocking timidly before entering and asking “May I? I'm not in the way?”—all tact and delicacy. Dear, good Rawul: He knew that Michael had been upset by Bari Rani and had come to make things better. “No absolutely not, my dear fellow,” he said when Michael tried to get up. He pressed him down gently, also pressed Michael's forehead and then looked at me with an expression of concern. “He's all right,” I said, and Michael
confirmed this, but the Rawul shook his head regretfully: “It's our climate,” he said. “Our climate and our wretched conditions. My poor squalid country,” he smiled. He wasn't serious, and how could he be—in this air-conditioned hotel room on the latest modular plan and with a picture window framing and rendering innocuous whatever lay outside.

The Rawul had come to apologize not only for his country but for Bari Rani. He said he knew how Michael felt—goodness, smiled the Rawul, he felt the same himself; because he was like Michael—fiery, impatient. “Yes yes, my dear fellow, that's the way we are—we want to shoot ahead, straight up to the stars, forgetting of course that human beings can't fly, that there are certain practical steps—yes very dull, very plodding, but unfortunately very necessary to get us where we want to go. Isn't it a bore,” said the Rawul, smiling down at Michael and squeezing his shoulder in a comradely way. Although so stout and sleek and middle-aged, the Rawul did give an impression of youth and idealism. And what he said was true—he and Michael were the same: They were the only two among us who still cared for the world movement, for Transcendental Internationalism, with a passion that the rest of us had dissipated on other, more personal ends of our own. Only those two continued to live in high, pure regions—though in different ways; for whereas the Rawul bloomed and flourished up there in that altitude, Michael was hollowed out, exhausted with effort and strain.

The person who had changed the most toward the movement was Renée. She carried on as if it didn't exist, never attending any of the Rawul's meetings or social entertainments. She rarely emerged from her suite but often sent for one or other of us to come to see her in there. These interviews were never easy, for she would ask a lot of questions but was too intent on something she was brooding on inside herself to listen or wait for any answers. She had violent mood swings, especially toward Robi. She might be passionately loving to start off with, crushing him in her embrace, gazing into his face in longing; and suddenly she would change utterly, pounce on him for some fault, that he hadn't cleaned out his ears properly, or was shrinking from her embrace—which I'm afraid was true; the most he would do was endure
it. She would push him away, strike at him, order him out of her sight. And how quickly he got out the door—relieved to get away but also terribly upset, as he ran down the carpeted hotel corridors sobbing out loud. When I wanted to follow him, she said “No, stay with me.” She forgot about Robi and started in on me. And with me too she was at first very sweet and loving, taking my hand in hers, turning it over and over, tracing her finger along the lines of my palm as if she were reading them; only the next moment to turn on me violently, to say I was jealous, selfish, possessive, and didn't care if I killed her or not as long as I had what I wanted. And like Robi, I was glad to get out of her sight when she told me to and went running down the hotel corridor—not sobbing, in my case, but lighthearted the way I was most of the time now, and completely forgetting everything she had said to me and even that she existed.

Crishi too had changed, with regard to the movement and in other ways. Just as Renée left everything to Bari Rani, Crishi left it to Michael; but unlike Renée, he didn't stay brooding in the hotel but was out and about all day long. He had so many places to go to, some of which I knew about and others not. There was the back room of the jeweler in the hotel lobby, where he sat with cronies or business partners or whatever or whoever they were; and there must have been other back rooms, all over the city, where he was familiar and known and where secret business was transacted. And there was the house of the Bhais and the bazaar hotel where the European followers lived—each entirely different from the other and only Crishi at home in both. I think he had a good time roaming around the city all day and half the night; he usually came home the other half of the night—that is, back to the hotel where I was waiting for him, though I must admit I didn't always manage to keep awake because it was near dawn when he came in. Renée too was waiting for him; I think she was a complete insomniac nowadays. She called several times in the night to ask if he had come home; sometimes she came in to check for herself. Half-asleep, I watched her moving around the suite, her reflection ghostlike in the mirror as she leaned over Robi, who slept in the dressing room. After she returned to her own suite, she phoned again
an hour later to ask if he had come in; I said no, even if he had, because he told me to. He didn't want her disturbing us. He locked the door after he came in, and we heard her rattle it but never for long, because once the door was locked, she knew he was home. Then she returned to her own room to brood on God knows what. I might have felt sorry for her—the way I used to for Anna—except that there was no time to think of her. However late it was when he came in, Crishi was wide awake and ready to talk and make love, though when he went to sleep at last, he slept till midday.

During these nights—or early mornings—I could ask him about anything I liked and he would answer me. For instance, when I asked him about his first wife, he was absolutely free and open about that chapter in his life and seemed to want me to know about it. He even offered to take me to the place where she had lived with their two children. It turned out to be in a very ordinary middleclass district, with a lot of rundown two-story houses and a municipal milk booth and washermen pressing clothes on the sidewalk. The house too was ordinary, just like all the others, with the whitewash flaking off and bars on the windows. He took me right inside—there were people living there, but he asked them so nicely if we could come in; he told them some story in Hindi, which I couldn't understand but it made them very friendly toward us and offer us tea and send out for sweets. It was the upstairs flat, two little rooms and a veranda; everything was painted pink and with fluorescent tube lighting and calendars of saints and film stars and not much furniture except for string cots and steel trunks. Several children stood around, staring at us with their fingers in their mouths. It was so domestic and ordinary—maybe that was why he had brought me here, wanting me to see how they had lived.

After that we often talked about his first marriage, and I was eager to know everything about it because I was eager to know everything about him. And he was entirely frank with me, even admitting his own fault in getting married so young and to such a young girl—she was seventeen—and both of them without any money. “But what could I do?” he appealed to me. “I was crazy about her, I had to be with her all the time—just like I have to be with you. Nothing wrong
in that, is there?” I shook my head; I agreed with him all the way. Still he went on blaming himself—he said maybe he shouldn't have left her here by herself; she was only a girl just out of school, from Romford, Essex. But his work at that time was here; and as a matter of fact he had been getting on quite well when unfortunately he had a setback and was forced to be away for some time (I guess he meant in jail). It was very tough on her, being left alone with two little children and no money and too proud to ask anyone, not even her parents. “Stupid little girl,” he smiled affectionately, and I too felt affectionate toward her, thinking of her in those little pink rooms and too proud to tell anyone she had a husband in jail. He said “When she came to see me there, she was always crying. She had been so pretty when we got married, like one of those English flowers, what are they called, but with all that crying—I
told
her everything would be fine and of course it was. I got out much sooner than anyone expected and started doing very well but by that time she had done that silly thing. I'll never know why, Harriet,” he said, looking at me with honest and innocent eyes. “Except she did have a bit of a tendency toward depression and she never could take the heat, especially when she was pregnant.” “And was she—?” “Yes,” he said regretfully; “I told her it would be okay—if you can look after two, what's three, but she wouldn't listen, wouldn't wait.” “Where are they?” “The children? With her parents. I send money whenever I can.” “Well thank God,” I said. “What?” he asked, kissing me in some nice spot; we were back in bed; it was dawn. I said “Soon there'll be plenty for everyone.” “Of money? Yes, thank God,” he echoed, though his voice was muffled as he was kissing me again in the same spot.

It may have been because of my knowledge of his two previous children—or because we had Robi with us—or just because he himself, Crishi, was so very much more with me—but my desire to get pregnant had completely disappeared. In fact, I took every precaution against it. My attitude did not change after we lost Robi, which happened around this time and in the following way. One morning Renée called for Robi and me to come to her suite. When we got there, we found someone was with her—a tall gaunt priest in a
cassock that had been washed too often to come anywhere near white again. “Ah here he is,” he said to Robi, in an accent as English as Rupert's; and at once, in spite of their very different appearance, or very different aura, I knew him to be Rupert's brother. Robi must have had the same feeling, for he went to the visitor immediately and stood before him and raised his face to be studied; which the visitor did very earnestly, with his finger under Robi's chin.

“He's come to take you away,” said Renée.

Robi didn't react to this but continued to stand between the other's big knees; and still studying Robi's face, turning it this way and that, the priest said “Don't you want to? Go to school and all that, hm? Don't you think you ought to?”

“Where's my father?” Robi said.

It was the first time Robi had asked after Rupert. He had never mentioned him any more than the rest of us had. On our part, the silence was deliberate, for the subject of Rupert, who had been sentenced, was embarrassing; now, from the promptness of his question, I realized that Robi had been afraid to ask what he was longing to know.

“Your father's written to me,” said the priest. “It's he who wants you to go to school.”

“Why doesn't he write to me?”

“Because he wanted me to speak to you for him. Because he wanted us to get to know each other and be friends. Because I'm his brother—which makes you what? . . . Hm, what?” he said, turning Robi's face again, and answering himself: “my nephew.”

Did he—could he—really believe that? There was a suppressed smile on Renée's face, mocking his assumption. Certainly, Robi, with his creamy skin, his dark curls, and the embroidered silk shirt we had bought him in one of the fancy tourist shops downstairs, did not appear to bear any more relation to this tall bald pale man than did Renée herself, lounging on a velvet sofa in her satin negligee.

Nevertheless, undaunted, “I'll take you with me,” said our visitor, taking charge as though his study of Robi's face had fully satisfied him as to his rights as a blood relative. “I'm leaving in a few days. We'll go on a train and then on a bus up to the mountains; to the school, in the mountains. You'll
like it there. My name is Tom,” he said and held out his hand for Robi to shake; and when Robi did so, his uncle smiled with such a real, such a radiant pleasure that one couldn't help returning this smile; at least I couldn't.

And as I did so, he seemed to see me for the first time and said “Hello?” half in query as to who are you, and what are you doing here?

This was not a question I felt I had to answer. I dropped my eyes away from him; and I looked at Renée, who slightly raised her eyebrows at me, in a signal that united her and me against the stranger. But Robi said “Can she come too?” indicating me, and after looking in my direction for a moment, his uncle answered “Surely, if she wants to.”