Three Continents (44 page)

I laughed; I said “Robi, I'm too big to go to school.” Straightaway I felt the stranger—Tom—studying me, assessing me, as if he weren't convinced by my statement but, on the contrary, was deciding what class I should be sent to. It was partly his cassock that gave him his authority, but there was something else about him too, something schoolmasterly, which made it right for him to be in charge.

“Well,” he said, “I'm not leaving for another week so you have time to decide.”

“You're not that big,” Robi answered me.

“I'm twenty-one,” I quickly made it known; finding Tom's strange clear gaze on me, I felt compelled to add “nearly.”

“Very nearly,” Renée said. To the visitor she said “We'll let you know about the boy.” She spoke both irritably and dismissively.

Robi said to me, “You said you never finished school.”

“Never finished college,” I corrected him but found myself blushing as at something I didn't want to admit before his uncle.

“I'll come and see you every day,” this uncle promised. “We'll get to know each other.” The first part of the promise seemed addressed only to Robi but the second to both of us; and he shook hands with both of us warmly in farewell, though Renée he acknowledged only from a distance, which somehow left her out. She said again, “We'll let you know,” sounding even more irritated than before. And after he was gone, she was really angry. She said “I'd hoped never to see
him again; but he always turns up again with some piece of unwanted advice. . . . You should have heard him when Rupert was—Go in the other room,” she told Robi. “Go and play; do you always have to listen to everyone's conversation. . . . As if I had wanted to marry his precious brother instead of doing everything possible to run away from him. But Father Tom carried on as if I were this terrible
femme fatale
he had to rescue his brother from. There's something eerie about him, don't you think? He makes me—” and she did genuinely shudder. “I just hate men who don't have sex, there's something dry and rotten—some dry rotten smell—he has it—or do I mean no smell at all? Anyway it makes me sick. I've always hated to be in the same room with him.”

“He's my uncle,” said Robi, reappearing in the doorway.

“Didn't I tell you to go and play and not hang around here
listening
?”

“He came to see me.”

“Yes to take you to school where they might teach you some sense. . . . Perhaps he's not so wrong for once. Come here. Closer. No I won't hurt you, what do you think I'll do to you?” But she must have been hurting his arm where she clutched him to draw him closer. “Do you want to go?” she asked, scanning his scared face. “Do you want to go away with this uncle whom you don't even know and leave all of us who love you so much—so much,” she said and drew him very close and stifled him against her bosom. When she released him, there were tears in his eyes and it made her mad to see them; and yet at the same time she was sorry to have caused them. “What's the matter with you, can't you even stand a little love from your own mother? He
is
right; you should go to school, to learn something and to get away. I suppose you want to get away? Do you? Answer me!” she said and shook him by both arms.

“I don't know,” he was sobbing openly.

She let him go and sank back against her cushions. “I don't know either,” she said and was as unhappy as he was. “What to do. About you. About anything. I just don't know anymore.” She leaned back like an exhausted creature.

Tom kept his word and came to see us the next day; and the next; and the next. It wasn't only Robi he got to know
but all of us—all, that is, except Renée, whom he knew already. And Crishi—I guess he had met him before too, in the course of Renée and Rupert's marriage; anyway, he certainly didn't try to pursue his acquaintance with him. But he made a point of dropping in on Sonya, who had a very high regard for him. Like Renée, Sonya rarely left her hotel suite—I don't know what it was about that hotel—sometimes I thought of it as an upholstered prison but sometimes as a giant carapace protecting us from whatever lay outside. We rarely went to the unfinished parts of the hotel, where walls and windows gaped open to the dusty desert air; only drilling and, faintly, the shouts of workmen reached us through our splendid padded walls. Sonya sat in the inner sitting room of her suite engaged in one of her favorite occupations, which was reading the future from cards. She was a bit shamefaced at being caught doing that the first time I brought Tom in to see her, but he didn't think anything of it and even asked her about the system she followed. When he came the next day, she was doing it again, and this time he asked her what it was she saw in her cards. At once she swept them up and said “Forgive a stupid superstitious old woman, Father—what must you think of me?” She tried to shake off whatever it was that was oppressing her and became her usual animated self; she made him sit close to her and began to ask him all sorts of questions. I didn't stay to listen because I knew it wouldn't be interesting for me. I was used to seeing her sitting in conclave with clergymen and other divines; whatever their denomination, she was forever catching hold of them to discuss spiritual matters. These were very important to her. In spite of her worldly tastes, of
haute cuisine
and
haute couture
, what mattered more to her than anything was the higher mystical element.

There were also discussions between Tom and the Rawul. These started off on the subject of Robi's schooling—as head of the family, the Rawul had to be consulted—but from there they branched out into other areas. This always happened with the Rawul; sooner or later he got back to the movement and his ideas. He particularly enjoyed his sessions with Tom because he could regard him not as an individual but as the representative of an equal power, and their talks became a
dialogue between Transcendental Internationalism and the traditional church. Not that there was much of the traditional church about Tom, or of a potentate, and yet on the whole he did not hold his own badly with the Rawul. Anyway, he soon had the Rawul agreeing that Robi should be taken away to school and from there to go on to another subject of his own choosing, which was me. The way I knew it was that the Rawul sent for me during one of his sessions with Tom. I found them seated face to face, both on chairs as upright as any the hotel could furnish—not unlike the way I had seen the Rawul and Grandfather in conference at Propinquity. Like Grandfather, Tom looked tall, austere, and uncompromising; and like him he appeared skeptical of whatever it was the Rawul was saying. The Rawul invited me to sit with them. There wasn't another chair, only a velvet ottoman on which I perched between them, wondering what they wanted of me. The Rawul looked at me in his kindest manner (which was
very
kind): “Father Tom seems to think you're not happy with us.”

“What!”

“No no no,” laughed Tom. “I didn't say that. Quite the opposite.”

I speculated on what was the opposite of not being happy: Did he mean that I was
too
happy? If so, it was the first time I had heard that this might be considered bad. With these thoughts, I must have been looking at him defiantly, for he went on as though defending himself: “All I said was I didn't think you had had enough choices yet. Like Robi really. . . . You said yourself,” he stopped short my protests, “you didn't finish college. Well it's not too late yet.”

I flushed with anger, but before I could say anything, the Rawul came between us in a conciliatory way: “Father thinks you should go home for a while. Go back to your family.”

“
You're
my family.”

The Rawul made a gesture toward Tom, signifying, You see, I'm helpless. It also appeared to me to be a signal that I had to make my position clear to Tom, and I was glad to do so. “It's the first real family I've ever had, my own family having split up ages ago.”

“And you don't care for them at all,” Tom said—as a statement,
so that I felt I had to modify it a bit: “We're not all that close anymore. My father has remarried and my mother has other interests and Grandfather died and Michael is here of course.”

“Yes Michael is here,” Tom said, and again in such a way that I felt he needed clarification: “It was Michael who started it in the first place—brought me into the movement and arranged for us to—” I was going to talk about the money but felt reluctant, so I ended up: “You should talk to Michael, he'll explain everything to you.”

“I have talked to Michael.”

“It's always the same with these young people,” said the Rawul, making another helpless gesture, though this time with a tolerant smile. “They won't listen to reason, to anything sensible that we can say to them. Yes, we must blame them for that, we must be severe with them; but at the same time, my dear sir,” he appealed to Tom, “shouldn't we be a little bit indulgent with them—even perhaps admire, even envy them the tiniest little bit for being—ah!—such idealists; such pure uncompromising spirits.”

Tom was amused—I don't know whether it was at the Rawul or at me, but it was me he smilingly asked: “Is that what you are?”

Without thinking, and not even knowing this was what I was going to say, I said: “And I'm married.”

“So you are,” said Tom. The smile went from his face. He got up, and while the Rawul tried to detain him to continue their conversation, Tom seemed to feel there was nothing more to say, at least not to the Rawul. Putting his arm across my shoulders, he made me come to the door and outside with him; and there he said, smiling again and looking down at me from his great height: “Not all marriages are made in heaven, you know.”

I dropped my eyes to his white feet in Jesus sandals. I was furious and was thinking what to answer him, but he strode off—down the deep-pile carpeted corridor with “Don't Disturb” signs on the closed doors and trays of dirty dishes waiting to be collected; he returned the respectful greetings of the hotel bearers and sweepers, all in uniforms much cleaner and smarter than his cassock.

The Rawul must have mentioned his conversation with
Tom to the Bari Rani, for she sent for me that same day and made me repeat everything to her. She was extremely indignant—“It's always that way with these missionaries. They think they have the right to interfere in everything that's no concern of theirs.” I could see she wanted to have an extremely long and intimate talk with me, but this was even more difficult here than it had been in London. Besides the girls and Teresa running in and out to consult her about their program and problems, her hotel room had taken on the air of a party headquarters: The phone rang constantly, and people stood around waiting for her orders. She took everything in her stride, was flushed with activity and importance, and had time also to respond to the Rawul, who wandered in sometimes to try out a speech on her or have her do up the top button of his long silk coat. It was not the most convenient place to have the long talk she wanted, but she did her best. She said “All right, let him take the boy. He needs to go to school and he is (they say) his nephew. . . . But you? What has he to do with you?”

“No nothing,” I agreed.

Here there was another interruption, and when she came back to me, Bari Rani began to interrogate me: “What did he say to you? How has he been trying to get at you? . . . Oh I know how it is; didn't everyone try with me in the same way, first not to marry the Rawul, then not to let him get at the money. My own family, the lawyers, every busybody there ever was, even after the girls were born—all everyone was waiting for was for me to say it was all a mistake, help me, don't let him get at my money. That's all they're interested in really—the money. These wonderful Christians just like everyone else.
Tom
,” she said, pronouncing his name as something ridiculous. “I suppose he pretended great concern for you, tried to make you say you were unhappy. You're not, are you?” she suddenly shot at me.

“Of course not,” I answered her at once, indignantly.

She patted my cheek and smiled: “I know you're not. Not now. But if ever—no, wait: Every marriage has its ups and downs, and one day we'll talk about it in
detail
—but whatever happens, you won't forget, will you: that you're ours; our child; just as much as the girls, you belong to us.”

“Oh absolutely,” I agreed with enthusiasm.

O
NE morning Sonya came rattling at our door in excitement. It was Robi who let her in—he got up hours before we did and went down to forage for his breakfast in the twenty-four-hour coffee shop. Sonya had great news—there had just been a phone call from Manton; she had tried to call Michael and me to speak to him but the connection went off: The news was that Barbara had had her baby, a boy! “Just think, darling,” cried Sonya, clasping her hands, “another sweet little darling baby boy!” “How wonderful,” I said, wishing she wouldn't shout so loud. I gave a quick look at Crishi, lying on his stomach, one cheek pressed into the pillows; he appeared not to have woken up. “What's the time?” I asked. “Darling, it's noon,” said Sonya. “Oh is it”; I failed to stifle a yawn; we hadn't been asleep all that long—it was three or four o'clock in the morning by the time Crishi had come home and there had been a lot to talk about and do. But Sonya felt everyone had to participate in her news, and she tried to shake Crishi awake—“It's a boy!” she cried to him. It was strange the way he went on sleeping, he who sat up awake and alert at every sound. “No he must get up, we must tell him,” she insisted when I got between him and her. “He'll never forgive us if we let him sleep through our great news. Our boy! Our baby!”

“What's his name?” asked Robi.

“Darling, of course he'll be called after Grandfather; his grandfather. Oh my darling, my heart will burst,” she said
to me. “Another Samuel Wishwell.” She stretched up to kiss me on the mouth in her usual way; she was wearing little high-heeled mules and a high turban around her curlers, but she remained considerably shorter than I. Stretched up on tiptoe, she whispered into my ear: “Perhaps it
is
Grandfather. I have a feeling, darling.” Her secret tickled my ear; I knew she believed in transmigration of souls—I had heard her discuss it with her friends, many of whom had had proof of it.