In Search of Love and Beauty

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  “It’d be good for me,” Kent urged. “Professionally. I’d meet people. I might get a commission to photograph the place. Listen, I thought you wanted me to get on. But all you care for is your dumb old house.”

  Mark left it at that, and for the next day or two Kent was alternately sulky and seductive. He said, “You’ve got someone up there, that’s why you keep going.”

  “I go for my house.”

  “That’s what you say.” Kent turned away in a sulk, and he did so with a graceful swing of his hips for Mark’s benefit. Mark observed and delighted in it—but he was also irritated, on two counts: he did not like to be nagged, and he did not like too many feminine seductive gestures in his friends. He was interested in boys who were boys—with scars on their knees and warts on their fingers from handling toads. Was Kent getting spoiled? Was he himself getting tired of Kent? These questions always came up for him in the course of his relationships, which had many ups and downs with now one person getting tired and then the other, in a seesaw of intense affections.

  Meanwhile, Mark was getting used to going away by himself on the weekend. After his usual business session with Leo at the Academy, he and Natasha would drive over to the house. Sometimes Stephanie and Jeff joined them, and while Mark was busy with the architect and the contractor, the other three lay in the grass, drowsy and drunk with the fragrant scents brought out by the sun. Natasha did her best to explain Mark’s plans for restoring the house, but she must have done it badly, for all Jeff ever said, from under the battered straw hat tilted over his eyes and with a blade of grass between his teeth, was “What’s he want it for?” Natasha was willing to start again, but perhaps it was hopeless; perhaps she would never get it right. It was strange—when she was here alone with Mark, she saw the house as he did: as a beautiful mansion, an immensely desirable possession, but when she was with the other two, she saw it the way they did, as just an old dump.

  But they were all glad to get away from the Academy for a while. Even Stephanie, though still involved in her work there, felt she needed an occasional rest from Leo. He kept on sending for her at night and had also begun to follow her around in the day. Sometimes when she looked around, she found him loping behind her like some great bear; or he would jump out at her from behind a tree, crying “Boo!” and laugh till he choked over the shock he imagined he had given her.

  All this, although a nuisance, did not undermine her faith in her work with him. She studied his doctrine and ardently followed the exercises and felt herself becoming a truly more integrated person (or, as they put it at the Academy, a more become person). As for Leo’s odd behavior, she took it as an additional incentive to her faith. Yes, it would be very nice, wouldn’t it, she said scornfully, if he were a stereotype saint with a long beard and kindly eyes and all of that; very easy to believe in him then—but to believe in lecherous Leo in his dirty monk’s habit, that was something else again. When she talked like that Jeff appeared to be asleep under his straw hat; until suddenly he jumped up and ran through the grass which sloped from the house down into the lake and he dived straight in the water with his clothes on and thrashed around there, making a lot of noise as though wishing not to hear anymore.

  The fact was, Jeff was getting ready to move on. That was his life, moving on: he didn’t really know anything else. This may have been because from his father’s side he came from a long, long line of prospectors, moving from place to place in a hunger for wealth and adventure, and on his mother’s side from migrant workers who had also moved in hunger, but only for food. Jeff had never known his mother who had run off when he was a baby; he hardly knew his father either, for like Jeff himself he had been constantly moving on. He had worked when he had to—on the railroads, in construction, in auto plants, as a short-order cook—and when he could afford to lay off and just spend, he did that. There had been no place for Jeff in this scheme, so he had been mostly in foster homes. No one family ever seemed to want to keep him for long, and as he grew older he grew wilder and got into trouble and spent some time in the reformatory. Here he found a library and read a lot and also wondered a lot, including why it was that no one wanted him. Later, when he grew up and began to move around the country, it was not like his father only in search of pleasurable survival but also of what he had read in those books or had thought for himself. He took the same sort of jobs as his father—whatever came to hand—but ranged farther and met up with people who were thoughtful like himself. He traveled with them and tried out different ways of living with them in communes and different ways of being in drugs and religions.

  When Mark had finished with his people in the house, he came to join the others lying in the grass and to listen to their conversation. But often Natasha saw that he was not so much listening to as looking at Jeff; and she also saw that Jeff was aware of this and that he did not seem to find it unusual. Jeff was a nice-looking boy, blond and sunburned with flat hips and rounded buttocks in very tight jeans. And when Mark’s eyes lingered on him, Jeff could be seen to arrange himself in attractive attitudes. Natasha tried not to notice all this, but where Mark was concerned she noticed everything, whether she wanted to or not.

  In this instance, Stephanie also noticed, for one night up in the attic, she said, “I think he’s getting really hot for Jeff.”

  Although she spoke casually, Natasha, lying in the lower bunk, became alert. She longed to ask questions but felt shy about doing so. There were so many things she didn’t understand that everyone else seemed to take for granted.

  Stephanie went on musing as casually as before: “Jeff wouldn’t mind. He does it with men sometimes; he’s still sort of free-lance. He told me about an actor he was doing it with, out on the coast. He said he did it for the money but you could see that wasn’t a hundred percent true. It’s fantastic the things you can see when you know what to look for.” Now she stopped speaking casually and became engrossed in giving Natasha a rundown on the techniques of lie-detecting, in oneself and in others, that Leo was teaching them. She talked till she fell asleep, which happened very suddenly.

  Jeff could be seen to wander over more and more frequently to Mark’s house. This may have been because he was getting tired of what went on at the Academy, and of the Academy itself. Mark’s house was in the greatest possible contrast to it. Leo’s house and grounds were as Gothic, convoluted, inward-looking as the psychic activities that went on inside it; whereas Mark’s house was simple and classical, standing on an eminence which commanded a clear view over the surrounding countryside. It was a long drive up to the house, and though the gates were missing, the gatekeeper’s cottage was still there, a sturdy little one-room stone house of the same period as the main building. One day Jeff asked Mark: “What are you going to do with it?”

  “I guess I’ll need a caretaker,” Mark said.

  After a longish silence and probably much thinking on both sides, Jeff said, “That’s right.” With that, an understanding seemed to have been reached between them, so that they didn’t need to talk about it again.

  Leo had once confessed to Mark that he too had at one period of his life tried to love men—as indeed he had tried, experimented with everything (one had to if one was, as he put it, “into human nature”). “It was quite fun, Mark,” he said, “but it wasn’t the same thing.” He then went into the sort of rapture over the luxurious intricacies of the female body that he liked to indulge in, especially with Mark whom he knew to be bored and irritated by the subject. “No,” he concluded, “you see, Mark, once you’ve been into all that”—he roared for a moment at the accidental ambiguity—“you can’t be satisfied with some little boy’s backside. . . . By the way, I understand you’re taking Jeff away from me.”

  “He’s going to be my caretaker.”

  “So that’s what you call it.” Leo never could resist that kind of joke nor laughing at it inordinately himself. But this time he sobered up more quickly than usual; he raised a warning forefinger: “Don’t expect much
from him, Mark, in your line. He may be willing to play a little bit here and there, but once you like girls you like girls, even when it’s the thing not to.” And then he sighed in real deep human concern: “It’s all just fucking around, body and mind—except that fucking is too good a word for it. No one’s serious,” he lamented, very serious himself, even grave, and in despair of a generation so light-minded that it didn’t even know which sex it wanted to belong to.

  But Mark found Jeff to be serious—certainly about moving into the gatekeeper’s cottage. While work on the main house proceeded under contract, Jeff fixed his own little place up himself. Wearing nothing but a pair of cut-off jeans, he worked from morning to night, whistling cheerfully. It turned out he could strip and solder and plaster and carpenter and put in sanitary and electrical fittings. He didn’t seem to think anything of knowing all these crafts. He couldn’t even tell how he had picked them up. He had often worked on construction sites, all over the country, months at a time, doing every kind of work; but then, he had worked at many other kinds of jobs too, anything that came to hand, skilled or unskilled, he didn’t care as long as he could earn enough money to live on. That was the only reason he did it.

  Now he was on Mark’s payroll, and while getting the cottage ready, he camped out in the big house. Dinnertime, he sat with the men working there, eating pastrami leaking out from huge rolls and drinking Pepsi or beer. At night he was alone and cooked and slept either in those lofty rooms or, on very warm nights, he stayed out on the grounds, rolled up in a sleeping bag and smeared with mosquito repellent. Natasha and Stephanie came to visit him, and on weekends Mark came too. Mark still checked into the fancy local inn, but he spent all day and slept most nights with Jeff in the unfinished house, or out on the grounds. This was very idyllic for him. He felt himself to be really taking possession of his property. He also incidentally took possession of Jeff, but this was just part of the pleasant summer nights, which were always astir and alive with passionate insects.

  Mark’s relationship with Kent was far more complicated. All week in the city Mark kept long office hours and had meetings and site inspections and all sorts of business to attend to, and during that time he could only hope that Kent was, if not profitably, then at least innocently, employed. Of course he called frequently—and it was remarkable how often Kent was at home, so that it was really unreasonable for Mark to be so agitated when he was out. Whenever that happened, Mark called again and again, every ten minutes sometimes, in between all his business, and when Kent at last answered, Mark couldn’t stop himself from saying first thing: “Where were you?” Kent didn’t answer that question, and when Mark held out an excuse for him—“Were you out taking pictures?”—he didn’t take it up, too proud or too indifferent either to account for himself or to tell a lie.

  For his own social pleasure, Mark wouldn’t have gone anywhere near the Old Vienna. But he sometimes took out-of-town people there—businessmen from Oregon or Oklahoma with whom he had property dealings. Some of them brought their wives, eager to see exciting aspects of New York, and with them the Old Vienna was always a great success. They didn’t realize that they were mainly excited by people like themselves who had been brought there for the same purpose. In vastly increasing its popularity, the Old Vienna had changed its character. While in earlier years—in Leo and Louise and Regi’s heyday—it had been a gathering place for theatrical and other well-heeled bohemian circles, now only the audience of this former clientele remained. If people connected with the arts came in, they were mainly agents or publicity managers. But these were certainly impressive enough to give full satisfaction to Mark’s guests: they dressed very stylishly, ordered lavishly on expense accounts, and spoke famous names often and loudly. The management had, over all these years, not only maintained the standard of its performance but brought it up to a higher pitch. Chandeliers, mirrors, and blue velvet were there in such profusion that they were almost a parody; the dishes on the menu had retained their exaggeratedly Viennese quality; and while the cooking was nothing to write home about—who came to the Old Vienna to eat, anyway, except Leo—there were some wonderful drinks. Made up of a basis of vodka or brandy mixed with fruit juice and liqueurs, these were sweet, pungent, and unexpectedly potent.

  One day, when Mark came in with a couple from Portland, Oregon, Mr. and Mrs. Cross, the first person he saw sitting there was Kent. He was with an older man, who wore a pink shirt and had gray hair beautifully modeled in a boy’s haircut. They had one of the tables for two down the center—as it happened, Regi and Louise’s table—so that Mark, whose party was in an alcove at the side, had a good view of them. Although electrically aware of Kent’s presence, Mark in no way neglected his guests. After ordering the house specialties for them, he casually mentioned some of the interesting people who had figured there in the past. He pointed out Leo’s table; he explained the signed photographs of other celebrities which could be glimpsed through the potted lemon trees; he greeted people here and there and murmured their connections; he drew their attention to the hatcheck girl—into her fifties now—who had once been slapped at her post by a famous actress. It did not take much of this to enchant his guests—especially Mrs. Cross (Alice) who sat next to Mark on the velvet banquette; her husband faced them, overflowing his little gilt Viennese chair.

  Mark liked Mrs. Cross, and it seemed she liked him. She had pressed her leg against his, and he good-naturedly left it there. It didn’t make any difference to him though probably a lot to her, reminding her of much earlier days when she had sat with her leg pressed against the young man who was taking her out. Mark was used to this; it often happened to him with the middle-aged matrons whom he had to entertain in the course of business along with their middle-aged husbands. He had worked it out that it was being around these social scenes that excited them and brought back the time, full of possibilities, when they had been pretty girls. They tended to recall scenes from that time—at this very moment Mrs. Cross was talking about the party her parents had given for her and some of her friends at the country club on their high school graduation. She had worn a dress of lemon-yellow net over silk and had petted in the rose arbor with a youth called Philip whom she had liked all through senior year but until that night had thought to be more interested in her friend Lynn. The party had been less successful for Lynn—in aqua net over silk—and in the early hours of the morning she had had some sort of crisis in the changing room by the pool. Alice talked about all this with a tender, nostalgic smile on her pretty, wrinkled face. Mark found her delightful—he loved these wives—and so did her husband. Mr. Cross was a big, bearlike, ugly man, self-made and rich, but as he listened to his wife he wore an adoring, utterly weak and tolerant expression. While pressing her thigh against Mark’s, she also exchanged smiles with her husband and their eyes spoke to each other in a way that moved Mark and made him glad to be with them.

  Meanwhile, something within him keen as a hunter was poised in Kent’s direction. He saw that Kent’s companion was really putting himself out. He was a man considerably older than Mark, and much older than Kent. But he had kept himself together pretty well and presented a distinguished appearance with his gray suit matching his gray hair and the ensemble lightly relieved by his pastel shirt. He appeared to be a successful professional man—an actor’s agent? a show business lawyer?—and with his good manners and pleasant life-style supported by easy means, he would make an excellent, not to say delightful, friend: this would be the aspect of himself that he was just then presenting to Kent. Mark guessed their acquaintance to be in its earliest stage, for Kent’s companion was making conversation with him in that rather formal, mannered way—weaving his hands in stylized gestures—that showed he was going through the introductory passages in which he would be trying both to impress Kent and to test him out.

  Kent was listening in the impassive manner that Mark knew well. He also knew that this manner would be as exciting to Kent’s companion as it used to be to himself. It
always suggested that Kent was thinking of something else—that in spirit he was somewhere else, somewhere more beautiful and pure like in a meadow or by a stream. In fact, however, Mark reflected rather sadly, Kent wasn’t there at all nor did he want to be. In spite of his faraway look, he was very much here in the Old Vienna, with waiters running around to serve little drinks and leaning sideways under trays of hors d’oeuvres; and moreover, though appearing to ignore them, he was perfectly attuned to the meaning of his companion’s gestures and knew how to respond or, if he so chose, not respond to them.

  Alice Cross, smiling at the recollection, wondered what had happened to Philip, the brightest boy in the class of—(well, never mind, she said, with a wink at her husband, not giving any dates away). He had been really something—all the girls had had a thing for him, and he had been voted not only “Most Likely to Succeed” but also “Most Stylish Man of the Year.”

  Mr. Cross had information: “He failed in the air-conditioner business and, as far as I know, moved to Roseburg.”

  “You never know with people, do you?” mused Alice. She told Mark, “You remind me of him, a bit. It’s the way your hair grows.” And she touched it at the temple, in a manner that was partly maternal and partly not so.

  “You look out now,” her husband warned him, twinkling at the two of them across the table. “She was the belle of Beaverton High, the rangers’ mascot and all of that.”

  “That was just kid stuff,” smiled Alice, touching up her hair a little.

  “I had competition, I can tell you.”

  Mark entered into their smiling good mood; he pressed his knee against hers lightly, like a friendly, reassuring, almost paternal pressure of the hand.