Three Continents (49 page)

She didn't answer me; instead she got down on the floor and started crawling around, helping him search for the scattered stones. Her action seemed to me very undignified, and when at my urging she wouldn't get up, I left her to it and passed through the shop, brushing carelessly past the assistant and the two customers who moved out of my way. I resumed my search for Crishi.

He liked dancing but he wasn't in either of the two discotheques; nor in the twenty-four-hour coffee shop, where he sometimes entertained acquaintances whom he may have known for a long time or happened to pick up around the hotel; nor in the health spa, where the masseur was a special friend of his. I went upstairs to our room, though not too hopefully, for it was very rare for him to go there before he was ready to sleep around dawn. From there I went down to the next floor, to Renée's suite. I knocked on her door once, and louder a second time. There was no answer, but I was sure she was inside. In fact, I felt a sort of potent force straining at me from in there—and then I had a foreboding. I thought what she might have done to herself to give herself relief from the pressure of her passion, on the same principle that they used to let blood. I rattled the door; I called her name. Voices came from inside—they were kept low but that didn't prevent me from recognizing Crishi's. I rattled the door louder, and banged on it with both hands. Again the voices spoke, nearer the door, there was the click of a lock, and the door opened. Renée stood there, and behind her was Crishi. He spread out his arms in a helpless gesture and said “What can I do—she locked me in.” He looked at her with amusement as if it were a joke she had played, but she was deadly serious.

Apparently they were at the end of whatever scene it was they had had between them. Although I didn't know what the scene was about nor its result, I could see how it had left her exhausted but him absolutely fresh, untouched. Also how he was dying to get away—was glad to be rescued by me—while she hadn't finished yet. She locked the door again, with the three of us inside, and Crishi and I just had time to
exchange glances before she whirled around at us and looked keenly from one to the other as though suspecting some conspiracy between us. “Well tell her,” she said to Crishi; but without giving him time to tell me anything: “What's the use of hanging around here?” she said to me. “There's nothing more for us to do.” By us I guess she meant the three of us.

Above all, I wanted guidance from Crishi. But it was impossible for us to talk in front of her; she even continued to watch us to make sure that no secret signs passed between us. I realized that I would have to feel my way, and to guess what it was he wanted me to reply to her. I began with “Aren't we going up there—to Dhoka—”

“That's all nonsense,” she interrupted me. “There's nothing more to be got from there, or any of those places. Whatever's left, the museums are snapping up and we can hardly hope to compete with them.”

I realized she was talking about her business—what she used to make her living by, she and Crishi both. I was surprised—all that seemed so far behind us. She went on: “There are some pictures in The Hague—they're not entirely safe but we might make a deal and get them for the gallery.”

“She means they're stolen,” Crishi said, giving me the sweetest smile, which I couldn't help returning. This incensed Renée and she turned on him: “You used to be interested in the business and everything I taught you about it. You didn't know anything before, did you? You were just peddling rubbish. It's I who gave you your eye for the real stuff—-not that you didn't learn fast—you always have learned fast when it was for your own advantage.”

“Oh don't start again,” Crishi said, ruefully pleading. To me he explained “She's been at me for hours, even locked me in as you saw to tell me what a nasty selfish swine I am. Did I ever say I wasn't?” he ended up mildly.

“He's so slippery,” she said to me, as to a referee between them. “It's impossible to get hold of him. He won't say yes and he won't say no.”

“But to what?” I asked.

“To going home. To going back. To starting our business again and running the gallery and everything as it used to be. . . . Of course,” she said quickly, “you're with us now,
Harriet, I know that, and I'm glad that it's the three of us—we need one another.”

She didn't explain who needed whom, but obviously she needed Crishi so badly that she was willing to put up with me. I felt sorry for her—especially as Crishi wasn't paying much attention to her but was wandering around the room. He sat down and started leafing through the telephone directory as though he had just remembered an urgent call he had to make. She was forced to address herself mainly to me, and something even more desperate began to appear in her: “Who was it anyway,” she said, “who started the whole thing—who was it in the first place,” she challenged me, or was it him through me, “who asked you to marry him?”

“Jesus Christ, Rani, what's got into you,” said Crishi, looking up from the directory with calm eyes. “Digging up all these old stories, all that's been and gone—”

“Oh yes, old stories. Been and gone,” she repeated bitterly. “That's how he feels about everyone who's been of use to him till he found someone to be of more use to him—whether it's his mother, his wife, God knows how many others before he got to me. And then to you,” she said to me, and was silent for a while and brooding; and Crishi, his lips moving, ran his finger along the names in one column, utterly absorbed.

“Except you might last a bit longer,” she went on to tell me. “Because he hasn't had a prize like you before, or as you will be soon.”

Crishi burst out laughing and, snapping the directory shut, he said: “She's on again about your money.”

I said “As if that mattered.”

“Oh no not at all,” she said. “No one cares about your money. All he cares about is you. Is that what you believe, really and truly? You poor child!” she cried, flinging back her head in what was meant to be laughter.

Again I tried to guess how Crishi wanted me to react. He himself was so utterly untouched by what she said, and by her general air of hysteria, that I thought it best to follow his example. And it was easy for me, because what she said couldn't touch me in the least;
she
couldn't touch me in the least, nor stir up any strong emotions in me, though she herself was tormented by them.

I spoke to her very calmly and in a sort of naïve voice: “No,” I said, “I don't believe that. I believe he cares for us equally but most of all for the movement, and he's looking forward to the money coming to help the Rawul and the movement.”

She stared at me as if she thought I was crazy. When she looked at Crishi, he turned away from her, trying to suppress the twitching of his lips. I continued as I had started: “And that's why I'm glad I'll soon be twenty-one and can do what I want.”

“And what do you want?” she asked.

I looked at her steadily and I answered her steadily: “To help the movement, of course. Don't you? Isn't it what's most important to you?” I waited, daring her to say no, and continued, addressing both of them now: “There's this party going on down there and I don't know why you're not there—the Rawul's looking for you, he needs you—so does Michael. He's on his own and it's difficult for him.” This was meant for Crishi and he acted on it at once: “If she'll let me out, I'll go down. I'd have been there hours ago if she hadn't locked me in.” He held out his hand, smiling, cajoling: “Give me the key, Rani; that's enough.” His tender voice made her suddenly fling her arms around his neck—she was so ample, he so slender, but he caught her around her big hips and made a laughing sound like someone who has caught a heavy ball thrown at him in a game. “Promise and I'll let you go. Promise, promise,” she said. She was laughing and crying at the same time. “I'm not saying just you and me—I'm not asking for that—Harriet'll come too—”

“How do you know she'll come?”

“She'll go where you go.”

He stood holding her and she clinging to him; and without looking at me, he said “She won't leave without Michael.”

“Michael wants to go home with Sonya.” I delivered this as a warning, and I could see he took it as such. “Come on, Rani,” he murmured, “let me go, let me go, let me go”; and with each repetition he kissed her inside her neck, pleasing and tickling her so that she laughed; and he unwound her arms very gently and very gently he took the key from inside her clenched palm, not forgetting to kiss that palm. She became soft and yielding and made no difficulty about his letting
himself out—and I couldn't help wondering why he hadn't done this hours ago, if he had really wanted to go. But I didn't have much time to wonder, for he shot me a look—a glint of his quick eyes—and next moment I was by his side. He let both of us out, and we went hurrying down the corridor. As we went, I told him everything that was happening—about Michael and Bari Rani and the Bhais, Sonya and the jeweler.

Inside, the hotel was impossibly loud and bright, but outside, in the space between the building and the tent, there was a soothing darkness. The air was balmy and saturated by a honeyed fragrance. Here he stopped and held me; he said “I didn't promise her anything.” He ran his hands down my back to my thighs, and as always at his touch, I became a flame of desire. I pressed myself against him, wanting to burn him up with me, and I shut my eyes and I clung to him and clung to him and clung to him. “Oh my,” he whispered, “where's Aunt Harriet now.” Some bearers were coming toward us, carrying empty dishes out of the tent to the makeshift kitchen behind the hedge. I didn't care who saw us, I wanted to go on standing there with him; and when he wouldn't, I said “Let's go in.” “We can't—you said Michael needs me.” “He's all right. Let's go. Now, Crishi. Now.” So we went back inside.

N
EXT morning I was woken up by the phone ringing by the bed. It was Sonya. She was very apologetic—she said she hoped she hadn't woken me up, she knew that we slept late—as she talked, my eyes fell on the empty pillow next to me: Crishi had gone! At the same time Sonya was saying “Where's Michael?” I assumed at once that he and Crishi had gone out on some mission together, and I was glad that Crishi was helping Michael. Sonya was saying “I know I'm an old fusspot but Michael comes every morning to breakfast with me, sharp at eight, bless him, every single morning till today.” I had a sort of twinge—that they did this every day and I hadn't even known. I reassured her; I said Crishi had gone out too, and that they were together.

Several hours passed, and she called again. “Have you seen him?” she said at once as if she hadn't been thinking of anything else the whole time. Her unease transmitted itself to me—about Michael; not about Crishi. I was sure there was no need to worry about him, wherever he was and whatever he was doing. I told myself that it was equally unnecessary to worry about Michael, who sometimes disappeared for several days—at least from my sight, though it turned out that he and Sonya had been meeting every morning. I called her back and she must have been sitting right by the phone, for she snatched it up immediately. I asked her whether she had seen Michael last night; she said no, that she had gone straight back to her room after—after I had left her, she concluded
the sentence. There was something shamed in her voice and I knew she was thinking of what had happened in the jeweler's shop. But I was thinking only of Michael. I tried to recall exactly when I had last seen him: It was when he had gone to order the Bhais' food. I also recalled how the Bhais had stood there waiting for him outside the tent.

I went to Bari Rani's suite to find out what had happened at the end of the party. I got as far as her sitting room, where Teresa, her maid, sat stitching the hem of some bright-yellow silk skirt. Yes, she said, Bari Rani was in the bedroom but had a terrible headache and had given orders not to be disturbed; no, the girls were not there; they had gone out shopping. She didn't look up from her sewing while giving me this information. I lingered and asked more questions: Why did Bari Rani have a headache? Had she gone to sleep very late? Had the party lasted very long? Teresa knew nothing; she hadn't been there; she had gone to sleep at her usual hour of ten o'clock. That was her habit, she said, lowering her face to bite off her thread, and if she didn't stick by it, she was a wreck the next day, unfit for anything. It had happened to her hundreds of times before, so now she knew better. She was still biting at the thread, which appeared to be rather tough.

The Rawul's suite was next to the Bari Rani's and with a connecting door to it. But I went around to the main door in the corridor and was let in by one of the European followers—which surprised me, for since our arrival it had been the Bhais who were in attendance. The Rawul was magnificently dressed, in white silk with jeweled buttons, ready to welcome an important delegation. Even though I wasn't one, he received me graciously—of course I had never seen him as anything but the soul of graciousness and courtesy, lightened for my benefit by a dash of fatherly affection. But there was something impersonal in those qualities, as there was in everything he said. It was because he was concerned with the universal and couldn't stoop to the particular; but it made it difficult to ask him a direct personal question—like what had happened at the end of the party. I couldn't even mention the party, his thoughts were so far beyond it. That was another thing about him; he never looked back—not
even to last night—but only forward, forward, to new plans and triumphs.

This might have gone on for some time—my standing there growing every minute more anxious about Michael, and his giving me a speech on how he was going to mobilize the potential dynamic of the youth of his country—but we were interrupted by Renée coming in. He trailed off, and lowered his eyes, extinguishing the vision in them. She, however, faced him aggressively—I had never seen them together this way; but of course I hadn't seen them together since our arrival in India. She said at once, “Do you have it?” and he murmured “Dearest Rani, where should I get it from?” At the same time he looked warningly toward me, not wanting her to speak before me of whatever it was she was speaking.