Three Continents (34 page)

“What, Else's gone?”

“Didn't I tell you? It was getting too difficult, Harriet. She had too many personal problems. And just when Jean and I were trying to work out our relationship, which is what we've been doing, haven't we, Jean, so that we know a little better where we're going.”

It was clear where they were going with each other. Jean's sad-dog air had given way to one of happy fulfillment. They appeared to have reached a plateau of accord that was not unlike Manton and Barbara's; and judging by what they went on to say, they had also reached the same conclusions as my other set of parents.

This was that I had made an unfortunate marriage. They had had time to think about it, and to discuss it with each other, and they knew a mistake had been made. Lindsay even blamed herself, which was unprecedented for her, saying that she should have warned me—“Against what?” I asked.

She stared at me, with her beautiful though rather blank blue-gray eyes: “Don't you know? Isn't it perfectly obvious? What he married you for? But of course he did,” she said when Jean tried to hold her back. “They might dress it up under all sorts of fancy names, but that's what it comes down to: your money. Our money. Our properties. Propinquity.”

“It isn't true,” I lied.

“No? Then why has he been pestering me to mortgage the property? He's in such a hurry to get his hands on everything,
he can't even decently wait till you're twenty-one. But I've disappointed him, I'm afraid, and I'm going to disappoint him even more—him and Michael both. Oh yes, we've been hearing from Michael too, didn't you know?”

“Yes I did know. Of course I know,” I lied some more.

“And you think it's quite all right? That I should mortgage Father's house, the Macrory house, our property—throw away our property—” At that moment the waiter came with our dessert, and she felt compelled to be charming and grateful to him the way she was with people in England. We ate in silence, even taking care, as did the other guests in that well-bred dining room, not to make too much clatter with our cutlery. I took the opportunity to think out what to say, now that I knew why Crishi and Michael had sent me on this trip; what it was they wanted me to say.

“It's only a mortgage. We'll be able to repay it when we get the house on the Island and all the rest. . . . And it's just temporary: I mean, we're just in temporary difficulties.”

“Who's we?” Lindsay said. That was too obvious for me to answer. She and Jean might think I had made an unfortunate marriage, but that wasn't my opinion.

For the rest of our trip, they said more or less what Manton had said: about family, tradition, holding together. It must have been maddening for them, the way I was so impervious to everything they said—as well as to the sights we saw, the well-kept castles, mansions, gardens. Wherever we were, all I thought about was getting home.

W
HEN at last I did, Crishi wasn't there, so I went to look for him. First I went to the gallery, where Nicholas was now in sole charge. Ever since the trouble with the stolen paintings had started, Rupert didn't come there any more; it was thought that, with all the bad publicity attached to him, his presence might undermine the prestige of the place. As usual, the haughty girl assistants tried to discourage me from staying, and not finding Crishi, I was ready to leave when I heard Michael's voice from the little office downstairs—and that was how I came in on the scene between him and Nicholas. Nicholas, who was quite short, had drawn himself up to his full height and was being very cocky with Michael. He said in his sneering, drawly accent—“You surely don't imagine that I run this place in order to act as your fence.” Michael said “You're here to do what you're told.” Nicholas twitched his nose in an uppity little sniff: “I might have my own ideas about that”—but had hardly got it out when Michael caught hold of his elegant lapels and drew him up close: “You do what you're told.” Nicholas maintained his dignity awhile longer: “Would you mind taking your hands off me?” he said, trying to keep his voice steady but sounding fussy and frightened. “You do what you're told,” Michael repeated, more threatening, and tightening his grip. Nicholas looked down at his own lapels—he seemed as nervous about any damage to his very smart suit as to himself, or perhaps made no distinction
between the two. His eyes roved around for rescue, but he saw only me. Michael, too, glanced at me for a moment but had no time for me. His fury was rising, fueled perhaps by Nicholas's fright, or the sensation of having caught hold of him. Nicholas tried to be defiant. “I have no business with you,” he said. “But I have with you,” Michael replied; Nicholas's voice rose to a rabbit's shriek: “Get out of my gallery, you and that sister of yours, before I call the police!”

“Yes why don't you,” said Michael, and at the same time he struck the other's face so hard that blood gushed out of his nose. Nicholas cried out, “My glasses!” for these had fallen to the floor. Michael said “Pick them up,” and struck him again; Nicholas fell to the ground, where he began to crawl around in search of them. Blood came from his nose, tears from his eyes; he groped for his glasses, but they had fallen some way off and I went and picked them up for him. This seemed to infuriate Nicholas and he screeched “Get out of my gallery, both of you!” By this time the haughty girls had arrived and Nicholas cried out to them, “Call the police!” Then Michael did something really horrible: He kicked Nicholas where he was on the floor, not once but several times, and Nicholas crawled away to get out of his reach. “Go on, call the police, why don't you,” Michael told the girls. “And let me give you something more to call them for—assault and battery,” he said. “Isn't that what you call it?” and he followed Nicholas and kicked him again, and again, just the way I had seen Crishi kick Paul, and with the same expression on his face.

But there was this difference between Michael and Crishi, or used to be: Whereas Crishi accepted everything he himself did as right and never thought about it again, Michael had to go through a long course of self-justification. As we walked away from the gallery, Michael reflected on what he had done. But, unlike in the past, he didn't have to justify himself to himself—he was absolutely certain that he was right. “What's the matter with him?” he said angrily. “Does he think we go through all that so he can play it big in his crappy little gallery?” “Go through all what?” I asked, though I knew perfectly well. Naturally, he didn't answer my unnecessary question, and I asked another: “Where's Crishi?” “Risking
his neck so that creep in there can wag his ass at duchesses.”

“When's he coming back?”

“When he is back. . . . Don't fuss, H.”

“I only want to know when. I miss him.” Yes that was true, but it wasn't that I was worried about the hour of his return: I was worried about him, as I was each time he or Michael went on a trip, each time fearing what would happen, what I might expect to hear.

And I wasn't the only one who felt that way. When we got back home and were walking up the marble stairs, the door of the downstairs flat opened and Renée came out. She said “I thought you were Crishi.” Then: “Is he back?” When Michael said no, she tried to sound casual: “Oh well, I'm sure he will be, any moment.” Michael and I went on upstairs. The flat was empty, Anna wasn't home; Michael and I were alone. This happened so rarely nowadays that I felt I had to take advantage of it. I faced him and asked straight out: “Why do you have to do it? Why do you have to go, you and Crishi?”

“What a question,” he brushed me aside, but I insisted: “Why you and he, when there are all the others?” I meant all the followers—I meant, quite frankly, Let them take the risk, not you.

“Oh they panic,” Michael said. “They get scared. That's how they're caught.”

“And you?”

“Shall I tell you something? I like it.” His eyes, cold and clear as water, narrowed with pleasure. “If you're not scared—if you make yourself not be—you just walk through; no one can touch you. It's almost
they
're scared, if you're not. You should see Crishi—it's like he's daring them to stop him, always hanging around to ask some damn fool question about where's the men's room or what's the local time. Well I can't do that, not being naturally gabby like him, but I can be not scared—you know? Keep my head up, walk through any place I want, at any pace I want, in a hurry or with plenty of time to spare. God, it makes me feel good. Better than anything I've ever done.” And really, there was a sort of glow about him I hadn't seen before, as if he had truly found, fulfilled himself the way he had always wanted to.

I said “Lindsay says you want a mortgage on Propinquity?”

“We need it, only she's being her usual dumb stupid bitch self. . . . I tell you, I'm counting the days till we're twenty-one and can do what we want and get rid of everything.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Well don't you?” he said and continued at once. “Of course you do. You don't want to be tied up with all that junk.”

“Lindsay and Manton have gone into a big thing about the family. Families: the Wishwells and the Macrorys. They've both developed strong feelings on the subject.”

“Too bad we've got different plans.”

“A different family too, I guess.”

But Michael frowned. He said to hell with all that. And he went off into what I can only call an impassioned speech. It would have surprised anyone who didn't know him well—which I guess was practically everyone, since he wouldn't let himself be known well. His manner made people think he was made of ice whereas really he was very fiery—in his ideals, that is; and it was only because he had been afraid of having them disappointed that he had kept himself so aloof, had played it so cool. But now, with the Rawul's movement, he felt he could let himself go because at last he had found something in which to pour his whole self.

He said I knew how he felt about the concept of family—and I did know, and to some extent, though not entirely, I shared it. Michael and I didn't have that much of what is always thought of as family, not with Manton and Lindsay as parents. Grandfather's embassies couldn't take the place of a conventional family; as for Sonya—we had always been very fond of her, and in her last year Grandmother too had learned to appreciate her, but there were those years when everyone had to pretend Sonya wasn't there, and that we weren't visiting her in the hotel suite or sublet apartment she had taken near the embassy. Many people who don't have a conventional family—and I suppose that is almost everyone nowadays—make up for it by getting very enamored of their ancestors, but that never happened to Michael and me; on the contrary. Everything Grandfather had said to us about the Wishwells, and everything Lindsay had tried to say to me about the Macrorys, had passed right over us. Michael said all that was played out. And not only family and family traditions,
but also countries and the patriotism one was supposed to feel for them—humanity had passed beyond the stage of what Michael called tribal loyalties into a much higher concept of worldwide unity. It was the inevitable outcome of the scientific transcending of spatial limitations: No one was expected anymore to stay in the village where they were born, nor in the town, the city, the country, the nation, the continent—why, the very planet on which we live had been transcended! Ridiculous, said Michael, in such a world to remain imprisoned within the tiny concepts, geographical or other, of an earlier humanity. He said he had long felt that way—bound and imprisoned—and before the Rawul he had tried to free himself by means of philosophical ideas, which was what his studies of Eastern religions had been about. But it had been too abstract—he understood intellectually but as an existent being, as the everyday Michael, he remained bound to his own conditioning. It was only with the arrival of the Rawul that he was given an absolutely practical way of transcending his human bonds and boundaries. Moreover, here was an organization to perform this function—for the individual as well as for all peoples, all nations, all humanity. True, so far it was only an embryonic organization: but wasn't that part of the excitement, to be in on the beginnings of such a movement, to be among its, if you like, apostles, and to have the privilege of day-to-day contact with the founder? All this Michael said to me, his gaunt face irradiated by a joy and passion that would make anyone, let alone me, forget that participation in this grand and heroic mission involved participation in what were I guess some rather sleazy smuggling activities.

The privilege of day-to-day contact with our founder could sometimes be disconcerting. I was prepared to admit that the Rawul lived on a higher plane than the rest of us, but then I would see him emerge from his bedroom, completely confounded because there was a button missing on the sleeve of the shirt he had just put on: He held his arms out and looked piteously at Renée or anyone else who might be able to help him. He was very fond of drinking tea, and it was brought to him on a tray with the milk and sugar separate so he could stir them in to his own taste; he would do so very carefully
and with relish, in the middle of dictating something or speaking into Anna's tape recorder, sitting there stout and handsome in his velvet smoking jacket. One day I saw Bari Rani tie a bow tie on him, and having got him captive in that way, she took the opportunity to complain to him about one of the girls, who was going out with an unsuitable boy. “I think he's on—you know—” Bari Rani said. He didn't know and anyway wasn't listening; he wanted her to hurry with his bow tie, he had a lunch appointment at the Savoy.

“D-r-u-g-s,” Bari Rani spelled out for him. “Not that I think for a moment that Daisy would be silly and take anything. Although you might think she's a scatterbrain sometimes, and certainly very untidy, God bless her, basically she's a very sensible, good child and we've had a talk about it too. I've told her—if you don't stand still I can't do this—I've told her, Daisy, you know that at home only coolies at the railway station take that sort of stuff.”