My Nine Lives

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  He said nothing more to me but next morning confronted Dharma, and they had one of their violent quarrels. L.K. sat in the middle of it all, dipping rusks into his glass of tea while reading the paper. But finally he threw it aside and said he could not stay in a place where one was not even allowed to read the newspaper in peace, though it was all nonsense and lies that were printed there. Vidia pointed at his mother and said, “Do you know what she’s done?” Dharma cried “No!” and she ran into the bedroom in fright. And then, when Vidia told him about the abortion, I too became frightened of L.K. and the way he suddenly changed. His grey hair seemed to stand on end as he snatched up his stick and pursued her into the bedroom. “Murderess!” he cried—and when I followed, I saw that he had caught hold of her hair and was beating her around the shoulders with his stick. I shouted above their shouts that it was my fault, that I had asked to have it done—but as I tried to get between them, Vidia came and dragged me into the other room. He wrapped his arms around me—not in a tender way but to restrain me, and he did not let go till the shouts from the bedroom had subsided. When I went in, I saw Dharma huddled on the bed, with her hair wild and loose, and her bruised face swollen with tears. L.K. stood in front of her, drained of anger now, his head lowered in contrition. When he tried to touch her, she shook him off fiercely. After a while he went into the bathroom and returned with a wet cloth to wipe her face. She pushed his hand away several times but at last allowed him to sit beside her and wipe away her tears. Both were silent.

  The cost of the posters designed by Vidia’s friend turned out to be too high; and anyway, L.K. said they were suitable for an urban electorate but not for the villagers and landless laborers that their party represented. So when Vidia lost the election, no one blamed it on the lack of those election posters. L.K., who had been through many defeats of various kinds, took this one lightly and at once began to plan for the next campaign, in five years’ time. “Five years!” Vidia said with a dry laugh. But he too was not at all cast down by his failure. Unlike L.K., he didn’t speak of the future but seemed silently to be turning over plans in his mind. This gave him a closed, more determined look, as if a veil of sweetness had been torn away and another person revealed underneath. I loved him not less in this new character but differently; and it seemed almost right that he too should be different toward me.

  I was often alone at night now, while he was away somewhere, not returning till I was already asleep. During the day he no longer wanted me with him as before. When I asked him to take me, he said it would not be appropriate. I understood that it wasn’t his former coffee-house friends he met now, and when I asked about them, he waved them away as though they were child’s play he had outgrown. It seemed he was meeting other sorts of people now—“serious people,” he said. I was hurt; weren’t our ideas serious too, I asked, and everything we had talked about and thought we were living for? In reply, he made the same sort of dismissive gesture as he had done when speaking of his student friends. But then he kissed me and I felt all right, especially as he began to take more interest in my appearance. He said I should no longer wear my hair cut so short, or the kurta-pajama outfit I liked but a sari or salwar. I was glad to oblige him, but even so he never took me along to these new places nor to meet the new people he was seeing.

  When I met him again recently in New York, he failed to recognize me. How could he, why should he? We hadn’t seen one another for thirty years. But I think I would have recognized him, even if I hadn’t known that the reception at the consulate was in his honor. He probably hadn’t thought about me much in the intervening years, and I didn’t think that much about him either. But I was always interested to hear about him and had many opportunities to do so. Although I had never returned to India, I had kept in touch with Indian organizations like the Indo-American Friendship and the Asia Societies, and after my father died and left me most of his estate, I made donations to these and other organizations and was invited to sit on some committees and to be a patron at their fund-raisers. So I often heard about Vidia, who had become an important public figure in India. He was a leader of his party, which had remained in power for several years. He had held some important portfolios and might have become the Prime Minister, if it hadn’t been for the scandal in his private life. Soon after my departure, he had married the daughter of a rich industrialist and they had several children. But he had left his family to live with a woman who was herself involved in politics—she held some important post, which he had maneuvered for her. They were said to be very useful to each other.

  She too was there at the reception—not as his companion of course (India wasn’t that advanced yet) but in her own right as the Commissioner for Women or whatever it was she represented. I looked at her with interest, which was easy since she took no notice of me: I was just another guest at the reception in Vidia’s honor. She wore a badly draped sari that kept falling down, revealing an expanse of naked fat flesh swelling out from under her blouse. But she moved her big bulk with the easy self-confidence of a successful person and was very responsive to those important enough to talk to her, often laughing out loud with two perfect rows of healthy teeth.

  It took me some time to get near Vidia, who was surrounded by Indian and American officials, several Indian businessmen settled in New York, and maybe some secret service personnel. I was shy and nervous of approaching him—and when at last I did, what I had feared happened. He stared at me with the fixed smile and the questioning regard with which important people shield themselves. I had to tell him who I was. For a moment the smile left him, but was almost at once replaced by a very cordial one—the sort extended to a former acquaintance whom one has not seen for a long time and is not anxious to see again. All around us there were others eager to talk to him and more coming up, and I had to give way. I’m not sure that I was not pushed aside by one of the secret service men in big shoes.

  *

  It was not long after Vidia lost his first election that his new contacts arranged a kind of semi-official job for him. I was never sure what this was, but it brought him into the orbit of some powerful politicians. He began to attend official functions, and sometimes an official car and chauffeur were sent for him and were admired by the children in our alley. The chauffeur was too grand to get out to open the door, so Vidia had to clamber in by himself. All the same, as he sat in the back of the car and was driven away to a destination unknown to us, he was already beginning to look like someone from a world superior to the inhabitants of our neighborhood, including ourselves.

  L.K. was mostly away at this time, and in his case too among people and places far removed from us. Weeks passed and we heard nothing from him and Dharma grumbled, “Not even a postcard to ask if we’re alive or what.” She was not at all her usual self during his absence—she didn’t even paint herself much but sat in an old cotton sari with her feet drawn up on the chair and her elbows propped on her knees. “Anyone can send a postcard—but no, it’s too much trouble for him. And next time he comes I’ll tell him ‘Get out—get out of my home!’ I’ve told that many times to grander men than he: get out! And they’ve cried and wept, yes right here at my feet,” and she pointed at them propped up on the chair, broad brown dancer’s feet, one of them adorned with a toe-ring.

  But sometimes she spoke admiringly of his work as a union organizer and how he went to remote places where no one had ever heard of labor laws. He sat under a tree and waited, and slowly people began to come to him and he told them how to work together against being exploited. “What does he eat when he’s out there for weeks and months on end, where does he sleep? No one knows. And for what?” she always ended up. “For nothing. No one pays him one single pai for his work, it’s all for others. For him—starvation and jail. Do you think that’s what I want for my son? Never. First carry away my corpse and burn it.”

  Though Vidia’s work often kept him away till late at night, when he finally came home he was as fresh as he had been when he left
in the morning. He only pretended to be tired when he said, “Meetings meetings meetings.” He never explained to me what these meetings had been or where or with whom. But I realized that whatever it was that was happening, it was something wonderfully hopeful for him. More than ever I loved to look at him and see his wide open, wide awake eyes sparkle in the light of the streetlamp. Sometimes he turned to me and held me hard against himself, and then I had no thought that his happiness came from anything other than myself.

  He never quarreled with me the way he did with his mother. I suppose he couldn’t because I didn’t know enough Hindi and that was always the language in which they fought. They used what sounded like some very violent invective, and it often ended with things being thrown and broken, usually by her but sometimes by him. Once he swept all the pots of paint off her dressing table. She was so furious that she threatened to jump out the window and already had one leg over the sill when he pulled her back. We were only on the second floor, he pointed out, and all she would do was break her other leg and limp even more. As he said it, he laughed, and then she laughed too, and whatever unforgivable thing had happened between them was completely forgotten.

  Although he was never really angry with me, he began to be irritated—by small things I had done or omitted to do, and he remembered them for the rest of the day, and the following day too. He often accused me of not looking after his clothes properly, for he was even more particular about his appearance than before: naturally, since he had to be seen by many important people in important places. If the washerman hadn’t starched his shirts well enough, it was my fault, and I often found it easier to have new ones made. I went back to the textile merchant and to the tailor where they kept Vidia’s measurements; and with the jewelers’ market so conveniently close by, I also bought new little jeweled studs to fasten the new shirts with, because I knew how much he appreciated them and was always grateful.

  I still hadn’t told my father about our marriage, and whenever I asked Vidia if it wasn’t time we did, he always said to wait. In the end I never did tell my father—in fact, he never knew that I had been through a marriage ceremony in India, and he always thought that my second marriage (of which he, rightly, disapproved) was my first. What happened to that piece of paper that Vidia and I signed under penalty of a fine or jail sentence or both? Vidia told me not to bother about it—to forget it, he said—so I don’t know what strings were pulled to make it disappear. It never surfaced before or during any of my subsequent marriages. Vidia too seemed not to have been troubled by it.

  L.K. reappeared on a day when I had bought a new set of clothes for Vidia. Vidia was trying them on before the little mirror attached to Dharma’s dressing table; this was at floor level so that he could see only his legs and feet and was complaining at there not being a decent mirror in the house. L.K., who had entered in his usual way with his stick held aloft as though announcing some victory, burst out laughing: “You won’t have need of many mirrors where you’re going,” and then, waving his stick at the new outfit: “Or of fine clothes.” He sucked in his cheeks to keep himself from saying anything more, like someone relishing a secret.

  “What, no tea?” he asked Dharma, who at once began to grumble how was she to know he was going to walk in the door after not even a postcard—but at the same time she was whispering to me to go down for the milk rusks that he liked. And it was only when he was dipping these rusks into his tea that he came out with his secret. Vidia would not have to wait five years before contesting the next election. A seat had fallen vacant due to a death or resignation or expulsion, and L.K. had persuaded his party to let Vidia stand for it.

  “Now we’ll show them,” L.K. said. “Now they’ll see something new.” He extended his hand to pinch Vidia’s cheek in his usual way, but Vidia moved out of reach. L.K.’s enthusiasm was not dampened. “Tell your mother how you’ll drive them out from all the seats and portfolios they’re keeping warm for themselves,” he went on. “No more shirts washed in Paris! No more rose in the buttonhole!” He laughed out loud, but Vidia only responded with a faint smile.

  L.K. wanted them to leave on a new election tour at once, but Vidia said this would not be possible as he had some affairs to attend to in Delhi. And next morning he had no time at all to discuss anything because the official car came for him again and was waiting outside. I stood on the balcony to watch him leave; as usual, he never glanced back but looked straight ahead with his thoughts already fixed on the places and people he was being driven to. So he was unaware that L.K. stood on the balcony with me and that he too was looking down at the car. Although he made no comment, there was a peculiar expression on L.K.’s face, and it was then I noticed for the first time that the car driving Vidia away carried the flag and the number plate of the ruling party.

  Later that day I saw Vidia and his new girl friend (subsequently his wife). I was standing outside the American Express office together with some of the others who had also come to collect their money. The office was next to an opulent restaurant that none of us cared to patronize; we had not come to India for luxury and display. But the place was popular with a modern type of Indian businessman and their elegant girl friends. We watched with disdain as their chauffeured cars drove up and the tall doorman in splendid tunic and turban opened the brass-studded doors for them.

  One sleek sky-blue limousine delivered Vidia and his girl friend. I watched them get out and walk toward the restaurant. Even if he had not been with her, I would have noticed her, she was so beautiful, spilling over with jewelry, with happiness, and with laughter at what she was telling him. He was leaning toward her, listening to her with the half-smile I knew well, indicating his acceptance of his good luck. It was the way he received things I was able to buy for him—in fact, he was wearing the same new outfit he had tried on the day before while grumbling that the mirror wasn’t big enough.

  I thought Vidia hadn’t seen me, but he had. When he came home that evening, he at once began to reproach me for standing around on the street like a common person with hippies and bums. “What about you?” I said. “I saw you were not with a common person.” He didn’t blink an eyelid, but went on, “You don’t understand anything.”

  And the next day I heard Dharma say the same words to L.K. She was sobbing as he collected the few clothes he kept in the flat. “You don’t understand anything,” she said. “He’s my son. My son.” L.K. didn’t respond but bundled up his things. He was ready to go, while she went on pleading: “Is there a mother on earth who wouldn’t want everything for her son?” He proceeded toward the door with his bundle and his stick. He stopped for a moment in front of me—perhaps he wanted to say something but didn’t. He looked deeply grieved, his face pulled down in the lines of sad old age. Calmer now, Dharma was wiping her eyes. She asked him at least to take some food for his journey, but L.K. said he wouldn’t need anything, he was taking a train and there would be food and tea sold at every station platform on the way. When she asked him if he had money, he waved her away majestically. Then he was gone, we heard his stick thumping down the stairs.

  Now, whenever I think of him, it is not the way I saw him that last time but as I imagined him on the train that took him away from us. There he is not at all the L.K. I had first seen on the bus giving speeches to his fellow passengers. Instead, he has become like other gaunt old men I had met in third-class carriages—sitting upright, staring straight ahead with eyes that don’t want to see anything more. When others, unpacking their bundles, offer him bread and pickle, he holds up his hand in refusal. At station platforms he doesn’t buy anything for himself but only some candy for the children in his carriage, wailing from heat and weariness.

  And the way I remember Dharma is as she was after L.K. left: sitting on the floor by her little dressing table, she talks to me about love and longing; about meeting and parting; about sacrifice, and the passing of all things good and bad. But Life goes on, she says, and we with it. She is resigned, both for herself an
d me. She explains that often the people who mean most to us have to be left behind because they cannot follow us along our destined path. We may be born into a high-caste Indian family or as a foreign girl, a free spirit, dedicated to travel, but for each of us Life has many stages.

  She turned out to be right; I did pass through many stages. When I look back at the time with her and Vidia and L.K., it seems separate from the rest—of a different quality like a dream, or one of those dances she showed me, made up of graceful gestures executed in the air to the accompaniment of ankle bells, drum, and some sort of lute.

  8

  Refuge in London

  ALL THE people—the lodgers—in my aunt’s boarding house had a history I was too young to have known. I had been brought to England when I was two—“our little Englander,” they called me. I knew no other place, and I felt that this made me, in comparison with them, rather blank. Of course I liked speaking English as naturally as the girls at my school, and in other ways too being much the same. But I wasn’t, ever, quite the same, having grown up in this house of European émigrés, all of them so different from the parents of my schoolfellows and carrying a past, a country or countries—a continent—distinct from the one in which they now found themselves.

  They were not always the same lodgers. There was a fairly quick turnover, for some of them prospered and moved on, others had to make different arrangements when they could no longer come up with the rent. My aunt, with whom I lived in the basement, was a kind landlady, but beyond a certain point she could not afford to be generous. Also—for my sake, she said—she had to be more strictly moral than it was perhaps in her nature to be. The way émigrés live is determined not so much by conventional morality as by the emotional refuge they find in each other. There is always some looseness in these arrangements, odd marital and extramarital situations: for instance, Dr. Levicus, who had started off in one of the rooms with his wife to whom he had been married for thirty years, replaced her with a young lady of twenty, also a refugee but nowhere near his level of refinement. My aunt was prepared to wink at such behavior; she knew how difficult life could be. But she did give notice to Miss Wundt who, having taken her room as a single lady, had different men coming out of it in the mornings and could often be heard screaming insults after them as they made their shamefaced way down the stairs.