Three Continents (28 page)

I said “You'll have Propinquity, and the house on the Island, as soon as we're twenty-one.”

He nodded—a bit impatiently, so I felt these two properties were really not a very big deal. And it was true that, whatever they might be for a private person, they didn't count for much within the spectrum of a world movement.

He said “I got this chance for a good investment here, only where's the cash for the down payment—that's why I've been calling the old fool. I don't want you to get into any of this, sweetheart. It's tough enough for you with everything else. All of it,” he added. “All of us.”

“I don't mind,” I said, and I didn't at that moment, sitting in the rain with him.

“I know you don't.” He again tucked the strand of hair behind my ear and at the same time looked at me with such tenderness. The milkman came up the steps carrying our milk supply for the day—“A very nasty morning it is,” he said but beamed as though the sun were out: I guess we looked pretty romantic, Crishi and I, sitting on the doorstep. And what Crishi was saying was romantic too: “Don't think I don't appreciate you. You being with us and everything.”

“But of course I'm with you. I'm your wife, remember?”

“Oh, so you are. . . . Well that makes it even better, that you don't make these demands, wanting to eat me up—”

“I do want to eat you up.”

“Only physically,” he said. “Not like the others.” He put both his arms around me and I stayed there, sheltered though wet. Mr. Pritchett's letter had dropped out of my lap onto the step below, where the rain fell on it and blotted the type, and then it blew off into the street and landed I think in the gutter among the dead leaves.

One day Crishi and the Rawul took me with them to the old guru's house, which they were trying to acquire. It was on the outskirts of London, even farther away than where I had gone to see Anna, and in a more rural type of suburb. The houses were larger, and each one built to someone's personal taste and specification; some were modern, others baronial or Italianate. They had big gardens with flower beds and rosebushes, and beyond the gardens there was a lot of open land, some of it with horses in it where there was a riding school, and some with picturesque streams meandering through what was almost a meadow. But the houses fronted a highway where cars whizzed constantly, along with big vans and trucks and a bus connection to the tube station. The location suited the Rawul because it was near enough to London for people to drive out for his lectures and big enough to accommodate those staying for his weekend courses.

Probably that was why the guru in his day had taken the place, for he too had attracted many visitors and followers whom he had engaged in a round of activities. But that was in the past: Now there was no trace of any kind of activity, or of what had once been a vital movement. If anything, the house resembled a nursing home—a sort of hushed tone, with everything very clean and doing the best to look like home without the nursing. The woman who opened the door for us could have been a head nurse—she looked sturdy and sensible and had brown-and-gray hair neatly bobbed. But she wore a white sari, and she introduced herself as Nina Devi, and another sari-clad woman who came clattering down the stairs as Maya Devi. Where Nina Devi was short, calm, and controlled, Maya Devi was tall, gawky, and excitable.
They showed us around the house, explaining and reminiscing as they did so, and often Maya Devi's voice rose so high that Nina Devi had to shush her and glance warningly upward, where presumably someone lay sick or resting. There seemed to be no one else in the house; Nina Devi and Maya Devi were the only two followers left.

They told us that they had bought the house twenty-five years ago from the stockbroker who had built it. There were a few fancy touches outside, including two little turrets stuck on like stovepipes at the corners, but inside it was totally conventional and comfortable, with parquet flooring, green sofa sets, and a pale oak dining-room suite. They described what had gone on in each room and there was nothing conventional about that: morning and evening meditations in the front drawing room, daily discourses in the rear drawing room, discussion groups with buffet refreshments in the dining room; for weekend lectures, the hall had been cleared of its umbrella and coat stands and packed with collapsible chairs. Babaji had been very meticulous about arrangements—everything had to be running smoothly and to an exact schedule: “Who says Indians have no sense of time!” cried Maya Devi, shrieking a bit so that Nina Devi had to say “Sh,” and glance up again. “He was a wonderful organizer,” Maya Devi continued in a lowered voice. “Was?” said Nina Devi. “Is,” Maya Devi corrected herself; “I certainly had to change my ways with him—what they couldn't teach me at school, I learned here, from him. I was everyone's despair: such an untidy girl, always sent off to the headmistress for having ink spots on my uniform. ‘Will you
never
learn, Alice?' Miss Pratt used to say—I was called Alice then—well, when I became Maya Devi I certainly learned, and double quick! . . . But that's the way it is, isn't it?” she turned to me. “The only teacher you can learn from is the one you love.” She brought her face close to mine, with a smile that seemed to know all about me.

While Nina Devi was demonstrating closets and light fixtures to the other two, Maya Devi took me into a space that may have been designed for an office but had become a prayer room. There was a white sheet spread on a mattress on the floor; a little shrine with a fresh flower garland and
a stick of incense burning; and a picture of what was presumably Babaji. A blind had been lowered over the only window, so it was dark in there, but Babaji glowed on the wall: Perhaps it was his bright-orange robe that made him luminous, or was it his burning eyes? I guess he was the usual kind of Indian guru, and if you believed in him you could see a mystical light in those eyes, and if you didn't, it was just cunning and cleverness. Maya Devi sat cross-legged on the mattress, facing the shrine and the picture, and she invited me to do the same. It would have been impolite to refuse, so we both gazed up at the picture, but I'm sure with different feelings. “You may pray, if you wish,” she whispered to me, and did so herself; and when she had finished, she jumped up in a clumsy, coltish way, laughing and looking refreshed.

We followed the others upstairs, where Nina Devi was showing them the bedrooms. There were many of them, large ones on the second floor and a few little poky ones on the third. Maya and Nina Devi occupied two of the little ones, and the others were empty. Yet they were ready for occupancy, waiting for guests, with fresh sheets and bedspreads and bowls of flowers from the garden. The whole house was like that—empty yet ready for life, alive, with the parquet floors newly polished, the windows washed, the vases filled. The movement may have been dead, the disciples departed, but there was still a vital spark somewhere that kept everything going—including the two women, who, though in their fifties, were jolly as girls. They stopped outside one of the bedroom doors; they looked at each other—“Shall we? Should we?” They giggled, and bent down to call coaxingly, tenderly: “May we come in? May we bring you some guests?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!”

They giggled again, and enfolded us in their conspiracy, like aunts with a special secret treat. They opened the door, and there was another bedroom with flowers and flowered curtains and a pastel carpet. This was Babaji's room, and he was lying on the big, double, double-mattressed bed: tiny, shrunken, old, and sick, wearing a saffron nightshirt with saffron nightcap on his head. “Yes,” he said once more, “who is it?” and he scanned us, narrowing his eyes a little, which gave him a very shrewd look—as if those eyes were not shrewd
enough already, and bright with the vital spark that lit up his withered form and this room and this house and I guess the hearts of his two women.

Nina Devi introduced us, and the Rawul stepped forward, with his hands joined together in the Indian salute. But Babaji stretched out his two hands, inviting the Rawul to grasp and shake them; and as the Rawul did so, it was as it had been when he had greeted Grandfather—historic, momentous, a meeting of two world figures. The rest of us stood in the background, an admiring circle of courtiers—that is, Maya and Nina Devi and I did; Crishi was going around the room as he had done around the others, checking up on the fixtures.

“Well now,” said Babaji after this handshake. “I want to hear all about it: all about your world movement!” His voice was weak but high and shrill, as one used to rallying spirits. The Rawul's voice in reply was very deep, full of health and strength: and that was the way he appeared too, in contrast to the spent figure on the bed. He was murmuring modestly—praising Babaji's contribution to the world spirit, deprecating his own. It was a statesman's courtesy, but Babaji had no time for it—he wasn't listening, he was looking eagerly past the stout figure of the Rawul, and spying me between Maya and Nina Devi, he cried out “Who have we here!”

The two women smiled, again like aunts with a treat—but now the treat was for Babaji as well as me. They pushed me forward—they even tugged a little at my clothes to make them fall more prettily. “Closer!” cried Babaji, and gently their hands propelled me toward him. The Rawul stepped aside to make room for me by the bed; I wasn't sure what was expected of me—everyone murmured at me in encouragement, and even Crishi joined us and he too murmured at me, in fact murmured right into my ear what it was that was expected of me: so then it was difficult for me not to laugh—which would have been terrible, with everyone so reverent.

But it was Babaji who burst out laughing: “Yes! I see!” he cried in such high glee that everyone else laughed with him, including me. “Closer,” he cried again, and I stepped up fearlessly, and sat where he patted the side of his bed. And
he was so gentle and sweet with me, talking to me as if there were no one else in the room, only him and me. He asked me many questions, the sort one child might ask another—what's your name? how old are you? where do you live? any brothers or sisters? When I told him I came from America, he exclaimed: “America!” as though it were truly a newfound land; but he was that way with all my answers—everything I told him was new, unexpected, unprecedented, exciting. And those bright eyes roved over my face, reading everything there was to read, taking me in, drinking me in; and in the end he said “Those two were like you once: When they first came to me, they were like you.” And his eyes wandered from me to Maya and Nina Devi, who stood there beaming (but were there tears in Maya Devi's eyes?). Babaji's glance fell on Crishi, he pointed his finger, he said “Who's that?” I told him—“My husband,” I said—whereupon Babaji's mood changed, and again like a child, or a very old man, he made no attempt to disguise it. “I'm tired,” he sulked. “You'd better go.”

Nina Devi turned out to be a tough businesswoman—well, she had to be; she was in charge of whatever funds were left and had to meet their expenses out of them and see to Babaji's comforts. She wasn't going to let the house go below its market price, although Crishi tried every way to make a deal. But since he couldn't for the moment meet her price—and wouldn't be able to do so till our birthday next June—they came to a compromise: that for the next few months they would move up to the top story, while we took over the rest of the house and its expenses. The Rawul began to give his weekend courses there, and we usually moved to the house on Fridays to be ready to receive the twenty or so students who would be arriving the next morning. Renée came with us, to help Crishi with the practical arrangements for the weekend, but she would depart as soon as possible because she couldn't stand the suburban atmosphere, she said. When she left, Crishi and I stayed in one of the three attic rooms, next to Babaji and the women in the other two. The Rawul slept in what had been Babaji's room—that is, the principal bedroom—and when she consented to stay, Renée would be there with him and so would Crishi for at least part of the
night. I always hoped she would leave, though usually there was a fight because she wanted Crishi to go with her. Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't. Of course I was very happy when he stayed; I loved those nights with him in the little attic room, shushing each other so that Babaji wouldn't hear us.

But Renée was passionately angry when she had to go off on her own, and she stayed angry through the week when we rejoined her in the London flat. She would quarrel with me and say I was keeping Crishi away from his work, and when I pointed out to her that on the contrary his work was with the weekend course, not here with her in London, she would flare up tempestuously. Then she appeared very Oriental, with those flashing eyes full of dark feelings, and I thought of the stories of intrigue and poison and other hidden deeds taking place in the harem. But invariably, after one of her outbursts of hate, she became extra sweet to me, coaxing and loving and giving me little presents—though as she slipped one of her bangles on my arm, I thought of those stories even more. The Bari Rani was constantly warning me against her, hinting at things she knew and I didn't, and working me up to assert my rights; and there were the tensions between her and Renée, older and more intense than those between Renée and me, and these too alternated with periods of affection too cloying to be sincere, and with periods of a sort of relaxed harmony that
was
sincere, born of the mutual interests that keep a family together.

When Crishi did go back with Renée, I was left upstairs with Babaji and Maya and Nina Devi. I was amazed by their cheerfulness—I mean, here they were reduced to living in the attic, after having been the center of a movement much larger than ours. But far from resenting our usurpation, they took an intense interest in everything that went on in the house. When the weekend students arrived on Saturday mornings, Nina and Maya Devi would be hanging over the top banister to watch them. They kept Babaji's door open so that they could report to him everything that was happening, and if they were too slow in doing so, he called out to them impatiently. They thought it a great privilege to attend the Rawul's lectures and discussion groups, and without feeling
entitled to join in, they sat there attentively with their hands folded in their laps. Nina Devi was always very polite when she commented on what she had heard. “
So
interesting,” she would say, and added “Fascinating,” in case anyone felt she hadn't said enough. Yet I knew she had her reservations about the Rawul's movement, which was so different from their own. It was Maya Devi who sometimes voiced these reservations—“Yes,” she would say, “but there has to be something more; something else.” Nina Devi wouldn't allow her to say anything further—she didn't feel they had the right to criticize—but Maya Devi was too impetuous to be able to keep her strong ideas to herself. She would come into my room—this was when Crishi had left with Renée—and sit cross-legged on my bed and talk about the old days, and Babaji, and everything he had meant to them.