Three Continents (39 page)

I don't think the others were watching as intently as I was. They were all there, ranged behind the Rawul, everyone who had been at breakfast that morning; but they were
fidgety and Bari Rani and the girls were whispering together till Renée shot them an angry look. But Renée herself appeared to be restless and looked as often at her watch as did Bari Rani. And afterward, when the audience filed into the drawing room for the Rawul's speech, several of our family members lingered around the house with other matters than the Fourth World on their minds. The Rawul carried on undeterred, speaking with the same fervor as always and saying the same sort of things: about his dream, and looking up at the sky, and one world for one mankind. It was wonderful how consistent he was, and how it didn't make any difference to him whether he was under the tree at Propinquity, with the lake and the sun setting in it, or here in this cramped, genteel house in a London suburb, and the electric light shining dully against the windows, where the day was dying without ever having come alive.

I didn't see Crishi in the room, nor Renée, so I knew they were together somewhere and went to look for them. They were in one of the upstairs bedrooms and I went straight in there as unhesitatingly as Renée came in when Crishi and I were together. They didn't challenge my right to do so, nor did they try to disguise their intimacy. Renée was lying on the bed, on her back and with her arms flung out; and Crishi was exasperated with her and at the same time trying to comfort her, trying to make things sound better than they were. He pointed to me as a good example, how willing and happy I was to pack up and leave and go along to wherever we were going. “Aren't you?” he said, and I said yes I was. He smiled at me warmly—and when she wasn't looking, he cast his eyes up in comic exasperation for my benefit. She said “I'm sick of running here and there to raise money, and then more money, and what's it all for? . . . Has he started down there yet?” I said “Yes the Rawul has started his speech and we'd better go.” “Oh we've heard it before, so often it's coming out of our ears,” she said. Crishi sat down beside her on the bed and said “How you carry on”; and when he was close to her, she flung herself across his lap in one compulsive movement and clung to him. He looked so slight and she so large, I thought she must be awfully heavy for him to support. He didn't appear to be overwhelmed but was lightly stroking
her back to comfort her; it was a son comforting his mother more than anything else, and I felt nothing except maybe sorry for her.

After a while she sat up. She said “And what for? What's it all been for? I don't care for anything except that you and I should be together.”

She said this quite openly before me; and it seemed all right to me—or he made it seem all right by being turned toward me even while he was holding her. She was like the mother he had to humor and I the wife he wanted to be with.

“It'll work out,” he promised her. “Rupert's here, and when we want to come back it'll have blown over.”

“And then you'll start again.”

“No I won't. Why should I? I won't have to. I'll be such a good boy, you'll see. Just wait till June.”

“Yes,” I said, “in June I'll get my money.”

She looked at me; and I back at her, quite calm and reassuring. It did seem a very good thing to me that in June everyone's financial problems would be solved, and they wouldn't have to continue what they had been doing. My assurance calmed her; and Crishi said “Surely you can wait till June?” in a sort of coaxing way, playing with her large ringed hand in his, but at the same time looking at me and appearing to promise me something different from what he was promising her, as to what it would be like after June.

I didn't mind leaving them alone—she wanted it so much—while I went down to join the Rawul's audience. But on the way I met Rupert. He was sitting on the bottom stair, with his elbows on his big knees and supporting his head between his hands in a despairing attitude that was quite uncharacteristic of him. I mean, he was usually so upright and invincible, whatever happened to him, through all the ugly things that he had taken on himself. I sat beside him on the stairs, and he said “You'll look after Robi, won't you?” I knew Rupert was staying behind—he had to, because of his case—but this was the first I had heard about Robi coming with us. “It'll be easier for him with you there,” Rupert said. “He's rather nervous with everyone else. I suppose he's nervous generally—we've been together alone too much. My fault. I gave him to understand I'd always be there.” After
a while he said “I have to let him down.” And glancing up at the bedroom door where we both knew Renée was with Crishi, “I promised her the earth too and didn't deliver.”

Rupert wasn't the type to talk freely about anything, least of all himself; but I guess there was a bond between us. He may even have thought that our situations were alike—only there he was wrong, even though the stairs on which we were sitting led up to the door where my husband was with Renée.

We could hear the Rawul from inside the drawing room—his voice sounded high and bright as he proclaimed his new world order. He probably didn't notice that we weren't there; maybe he didn't even glance toward his scanty audience of earnest English people. I think the Rawul was never much concerned about who was physically present, carrying as he did the cheering crowds of the future inside him.

Rupert said “She was bored from the first day she married me—bored with me and everything I thought I could offer her. Such as my freezing house which I loved, but all I ever saw her do there was walk around shivering and rubbing her arms. She couldn't get rid of it fast enough; and to keep her, I let it go and sold whatever she wanted me to sell. I couldn't have loved it so very much, after all, could I? Finally it was nothing to me, compared to her. It still isn't; and all I regret is—you know—not coming up to standard. To her standard.” He looked at the door again and said matter-of-factly, “I suppose only Crishi does that.”

Crishi came out of the bedroom upstairs just then, glanced around, glanced down, saw me—“There you are, Harriet.” He had been looking for me! He had come out of that room, leaving Renée behind, to look for me! I forgot about Rupert that instant, rose from the step where I had been sitting with him, and walked straight up to the landing where Crishi was. He took my hand, and instead of going downstairs to the Rawul's lecture as we should have done, we went up to the little attic room next to Babaji's. Of course Babaji was gone; only the urn with his ashes was there on his bed, waiting to be taken to India. Crishi locked our door and we fell on the bed, laughing like runaways, escaped from somewhere or someone. We started kissing and never had his lips tasted so soft and sweet, like sweet soft berries, and when we took off
our clothes, his skin was smooth as honey except for the places where it was puckered by his scars. With his clothes he had thrown off everything else, whatever worries he had, and his deals, even his own past and whatever might have gone wrong in it. “Isn't this nice,” he kept saying as he kissed me again and again with those lips like berries. We clung together—it was wonderful the way our two bodies fitted into each other.

He started making plans. I don't know for when, but the point of them was that they didn't include anyone except him and me. We were going to get a two-seater convertible and keep driving till we were tired. If there was a big hotel, preferably by the ocean, we'd stay in that and dress up and dance in its discotheque, or if it was just some motel, we wouldn't dress at all but stay lying around in bed eating fried chicken we'd sent out for. I assumed this trip was taking place at home in the States, but next moment he was talking about crossing the Alps, and then we were driving from Marseilles to . . . to . . . Istanbul; across every European border where they might search us and our car as much as they pleased and wouldn't find anything because we wouldn't be carrying anything. Perhaps we would get a dog, a German shepherd or golden retriever, and it would come with us in the car everywhere, except in some countries there would be trouble about quarantine so we'd better forget about the dog.

Then I made a mistake; I said “But we're going to Dhoka.” As soon as I said it, I felt a shadow pass over his bright and happy spirit. I didn't know why that should be but wanted above everything to get rid of it and went on quickly, “I guess you mean when we come back.” “Yes,” he agreed as quickly, “when we come back.” But the shadow remained.

Trying to return to our earlier mood, I said “All we need do is wait till June.” He agreed heartily and I went on, “We could go to Hong Kong if you like.”

“Hong Kong!”

“Your mother. Don't you want me to meet your mother?”

He groaned, though it was partly in amusement. “Leave it, Harriet. Leave all that. It's too much. . . . Isn't it enough that you know Rani? That we have Rani?”

“She's not your mother.”

“She's adopted me.” And he invited me to gaze into his
eyes, which he made very serious; but his mouth corners were twitching and next moment he was laughing and so was I and we rolled around a bit.

I couldn't leave it alone. I said “I want to know everything about you and everyone who's ever known you and everything you've ever done.”

Crishi groaned again and shut his eyes. When he opened them, they had a very young puzzled look in them; and when he spoke, he sounded genuinely aggrieved: “Why can't we take it easy? Why does everyone want something all the time? Nothing is ever enough—whatever they've got, it's never enough. Rani is like that, you are, Michael of course; what is it? What's the matter with all of you? I can understand it with people who don't have anything—who are sort of hungry, like my mother, and me, I guess, when I started out. My mother was so pretty, in her little pink negligee with swansdown on it. But there were weeks we lived on packet soups and pizza till she found someone who liked her enough to take care of us. Her and me that is. They weren't always very nice people, but what could she do? She didn't like to go out to work—she tried it, she took a job in one of the big stores in the makeup department, but her feet hurt from having to stand all day. Well, now she's got her Chinese wrestler, she's okay and can just sit and eat and grow fat and read palms and tea leaves or whatever. Kiss me, Harriet,” he ended up. When I did, he shut his eyes again and sort of sank down in what was bliss or relief—as if he didn't want anything else ever except to be in bed with me. Of course that suited me too, better than anything.

It was Michael who disturbed us. He came up the stairs, calling for us. He said we had to go downstairs now because the weighing ceremony was about to begin. It was the climax of the celebrations, so we had to go, though I think Crishi was as reluctant as I was. Before going down, I called in on the Devis in the next room to invite them to join us, but they declined. They were busy packing, which they did very expertly, like people who are used to going from place to place and know exactly what to take. They had old-fashioned luggage, the kind there used to be before air travel, bound with heavy leather straps. Some of the open suitcases were on the
floor and some on the bed along with the urn of Babaji's ashes. Although they themselves had no time to come down, they urged me to hurry so as not to miss a second of the occasion. They beamed with joy for me that I had this wonderful festivity to go to; probably they remembered similar events in their own past when they had celebrated Babaji's birthday or other big days in their movement's calendar.

But when I went down, I didn't find the atmosphere very festive, especially compared with earlier celebrations, like the flag-raising ceremony at Propinquity, or my own wedding. By this time in the history of the movement—or in our own history—a guiding hand seemed to be missing. I guess it was Renée's, for she and Crishi had taken no part in these preparations. Everything was left to Michael and the followers, and although they had spent days trying to get the house ready, their efforts didn't add up to much more than the tacky decorations pinned up for a school's annual day. The rainy midseason twilight did not enhance the effect; and neither did the audience—our usual one here, of very serious people who thought and studied hard in whatever spare time their jobs left them and took for granted such inconveniences as sitting in wet clothes in a not-too-well-heated room.

Having spent time with the Devis upstairs, I came in too late to join the rest of our party in the front row. I stood to one side at the back, together with Michael, who was there to oversee the arrangements. He didn't want anything to go wrong, and I could feel him tense and concentrated beside me. I must admit that I wasn't paying too much attention to the ceremony but was mostly looking at our people in the front row. All the glamour that was missing from the rest of the room was concentrated in them: Renée, Crishi, Bari Rani and the girls—they shimmered in their gorgeous clothes and were exotic, so that even the earnest listeners to the Rawul's lecture were diverted into throwing glances in their direction. But perhaps the effect was not unintentional—it struck me for the first time that the Rawul's family were an integral, a physical part of his movement, their presence giving body to his ideas, like a pantheon of gods embody a pantheon of Ideas, or Ideals, or Virtues; and it doesn't seem to matter that sometimes these gods don't behave too well, Venus running
off with Mars, Krishna cheating on Radha—they still remain gods whom others can look up to, worship if they want to, for their divine qualities. In the same way, it wasn't important that none of our family in the front row paid attention to what was going on. Renée was fidgeting with her bracelets, and I saw her yawn without even bothering to put her hand in front of her mouth except perfunctorily at the end of the yawn; and the girls were whispering among themselves, and when Bari Rani shushed them, she got drawn into an argument with them; and Crishi was looking everywhere except where he should be, and sometimes he was amused by the Bari Rani and the girls whispering and sometimes he turned around to wink at me. But still, they were there, they were with us, and this seemed to satisfy some need in most of the people present, including, I guess, myself.