A Lovesong for India: Tales from the East and West

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  ‘Don’t hit me!’ cried Ellie.

  ‘I wasn’t going to hit you,’ Magda said. But Ellie still didn’t trust her – she squinted at her fearfully from behind the elbow she had raised to protect herself, like an orphan child who was used to being beaten.

  ‘Why would I hit you – why would anyone?’

  ‘He did,’ said Ellie. ‘My teacher in London. Pulled my hair and pinched me . . . No, I don’t want to eat. I ate at your mum’s. Well, why shouldn’t I visit her? Getting to know your family isn’t a sin, I hope. She’s introduced me to your aunt too, she was dying to meet me, Robert told her about me, about my voice.’

  ‘Why did you tell Robert what you told him?’

  ‘I can’t stand this,’ said Ellie. ‘I’m going to bed.’

  Magda barred her way. They stood face to face. Of course Magda was much bigger and stronger and could easily have forced her to stay. But it was Magda who moved aside. She said, ‘As if I would ever ask you to leave – I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.’

  Ellie nodded briefly, in acceptance of this situation. She went into her room, with Magda following and standing in the door. Ellie undid a button of her frock, then another, then she stopped. ‘I want to change.’

  ‘You can change with me here.’ Magda stepped into the room. ‘I’m not stopping you.’

  ‘. . . Is this my room or isn’t it my room?’

  A terrible fury seized Magda, pounding in her veins (fifteen years later, at fifty, she would die of a stroke). But now she managed to control herself, though she couldn’t trust herself to speak, or to stay any longer.

  Ellie dismissed her from her thoughts as lightly as from her presence. She stepped out of her clothes and, since it was a warm night, she didn’t bother about her nightie but lay on the bed, naked and smiling and humming to herself a little bit. A muted sound of traffic came up from the Avenue and fused with Robert’s composition, which she was humming. It was filled with the sound not of brooks and nightingales – Robert couldn’t stand the country – but of trashcans, garbage trucks, road-drills and the spike heels of office secretaries tripping down the steps to the subway and then running faster and faster as the train was heard arriving at the platform.

  Ellie began to go to auditions again and, in spite of her unpromising personality, she got on well and was several times called back. It was not too long before she was offered a part; not a lead of course, but she had a few moments on her own in which to make her mark. It was a big show – Magda and her agency wouldn’t have handled anything else, and the money they negotiated for Ellie was good too; so it was an important break for her, which she owed entirely to Magda. The two of them had a little celebration together, not in the sort of place where agents entertained their clients but in a modest neighbourhood restaurant. Magda had been coming here for years and was known to the proprietors. She had often eaten here alone and had even celebrated events by herself, ordering champagne by the glass. But now she and Ellie were together, and they had a bottle between them, which brought a little sparkle even into Ellie’s pale green eyes.

  Magda had a gift for Ellie: a beautiful aquamarine box out of which emerged a little gold heart on a gold chain. ‘May I?’ She reached forward to fasten it around Ellie’s neck. For a moment, she totally enveloped her in her big warm arms, naked except for a silk fringe that formed the sleeves of the elaborate black dress she had chosen to wear. As she drew back, this fringe brushed across Ellie’s face like a bat, causing her to give a little cry. Magda interpreted it as one of pleasure for the gold heart she had given her, and she put out her hand to fondle Ellie’s face – lightly and only for a moment, withdrawing it to kiss her own fingers that had touched Ellie’s cheek.

  ‘What’s that?’ Robert asked, for as Ellie leaned forward to see the notes he was pointing at – she was slightly near-sighted and he didn’t like her to stand too close to him – the heart slipped out from inside her blouse.

  ‘She gave it to me.’ Ellie never called Magda by her name when talking to Robert; she didn’t have to. ‘Because of – you know what I told you.’

  She peered into his face for some reaction, but there was even less than when she had first told him of getting an important role. He held the heart for a moment to examine the diamond that glittered in its centre. ‘It’s like an eye,’ he commented. ‘Her eye.’ That made Ellie giggle, but he was already back on the phrase he needed her to sing.

  ‘Do you think he’s pleased?’ Ellie later asked Fred. ‘He still hasn’t said anything.’

  Fred himself had congratulated Ellie cordially when she had brought him the news of her success, which showed up Robert’s silence all the more. ‘He’s busy,’ Fred tried to explain. ‘He’s like that when he’s working – nothing gets through to him.’

  Ellie said, ‘Maybe he doesn’t want me to take it. Because he needs me here with him.’ Fred tried not to look sceptical. She went on: ‘And what if I’m tied up in another show when he starts his rehearsals.’

  ‘He could work for months and then throw it all in the trash. I’ve seen him do it. And then he starts over. It could take years. Meantime he wouldn’t want you to lose your chance with something else.’

  ‘But if he needs me?’

  ‘You could ask him,’ Fred said, only to be kind.

  She was afraid – both of asking and of not receiving the answer she wanted to hear. But she had now advanced far enough with him to ask for other things: for instance, money. One day she had simply informed him that she needed some, and he said, ‘For a hotel?’ After that it became a joke between them. ‘I need to go to the hotel again,’ she would say. If she hadn’t asked for a while, he himself said, ‘What about the hotel?’ And she would say, ‘Yes, all right.’ It became a regular transaction between them and would have made her as independent of Magda as Robert assumed. But Magda began to ask, ‘Don’t you need some cash?’ and although once or twice Ellie said no, in the end it was easier to say yes. This worked out well, for it enabled her to send money orders to her parents in London. They got very little work nowadays and couldn’t always afford their little extras, like their evening gimlets or the flowers her mother liked to buy to put a bit of colour in their room.

  Robert said, ‘We’ll try this again tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow’s my rehearsals,’ said Ellie. And after a pause, ‘You never said not to.’ Maybe he failed to understand what she meant, so she made herself clearer: ‘If you think I shouldn’t, I won’t.’

  ‘Come over here a minute. I want to try it another way.’

  She went gladly, standing by his shoulder while he scribbled some changes on his score. ‘Now,’ he said; she lifted her voice and it spread its wings and floated all by itself till she made it come down again. It was so right, he didn’t even have to say ‘Yes’. Their eyes met and she tried to enter as far into his as she could; they were a deep blue like a woman’s eyes and with a woman’s thick honey-blond lashes. She lingered, her left foot draped around the ankle of the right so that she stood on one long skinny leg like a stork. When he looked up and saw her still there, he gave a nod of dismissal. ‘See you tomorrow then?’ she said and tried to catch his eye, but his gaze was too abstracted for any kind of understanding.

  Next morning, Magda, riffling through Ellie’s closet, moaned, ‘What are you going to wear?’

  Ellie said, ‘It’s only rehearsals.’

  ‘We’ll have to get you some new clothes.’

  ‘OK,’ Ellie agreed indifferently. She glanced at Magda, who was ready to leave for a breakfast meeting in a smart polka-dot two-piece. Ellie said, ‘You’ve got lipstick on your teeth.’

  ‘Oh hell.’ Magda rushed to the mirror with a Kleenex. After wiping the lipstick off, she surreptitiously blew into her hand to check up on her breath before gathering up Ellie’s frail form wrapped in a sheet. ‘Just a hug for good luck.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing on,’ Ellie protested, but Magda only embraced her closer.

  Later that da
y Ellie packed everything she had into a suitcase and left. When Fred opened the door to her, she didn’t go down in the kitchen but up to the studio. ‘Hey!’ cried Fred, but she only briefly turned: ‘He said I could.’ She went straight in and put her suitcase in the corner where she herself usually crouched. Robert let her stay, and when Fred brought up a tray for him at lunchtime, he told him to make some more sandwiches. ‘Very well,’ said Fred, as though he were a real butler, and when he returned, he offered the tray to Ellie with a frozen face.

  In the afternoon he returned to say that Magda was on the phone. He said, ‘She’s asking for her.’

  Ellie said to say she wasn’t there, and Robert confirmed: ‘She’s not here.’ When Fred hesitated for a moment, he asked, ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Fred and went out to do as he was told.

  Ellie said, ‘They must have called her from the rehearsal.’ Seeing Robert frowning over a crucial passage, she kept quiet and banished all thoughts that might disturb him or herself.

  So the hours passed, and Ellie saw the day’s light change to dusk and then to dark. At last Robert pushed back on his piano stool and stretched; and Ellie stirred a little bit, in case he had forgotten her. He looked not at her but at her suitcase. ‘Do you need a hotel? . . . I mean really.’ He smiled. ‘A room in a hotel.’

  ‘I could stay here,’ she suggested, but even if she hadn’t seen his frown, she would have realised at once how wrong it would be for anyone – let alone a girl like herself, who might even be having her monthlies – to do anything as physical as sleep in his place of work.

  He told her he was going home and would drop her off at a hotel on his way. She picked up her suitcase and followed him. It was only when they were in a cab that she said she didn’t want to go to a hotel.

  ‘Then where?’ he asked. She said nothing, so he said, ‘You can’t come with me. You know I live with my mother.’

  ‘She likes me.’

  ‘Not that much,’ Robert said.

  Several times he told the driver to let Ellie off, but she wouldn’t get out, so that Robert had to tell him to keep on driving.

  Magda burst in, demanding, ‘Is she here?’ though one glance told her that her mother was alone.

  Lottie had just settled down by the TV for a programme that sometimes made her laugh. She had lit her evening cigarette, and now she quickly had to get rid of it, for she had assured Magda that she had stopped smoking completely.

  ‘You’re not hiding her, are you? I know she comes to see you.’ Loud laughter came out of the TV set and Magda yelled, ‘Shut that thing up!’

  Lottie turned the programme off. ‘It gets sillier every week,’ she said.

  ‘Then why are you watching? And why the hell are you smoking?’

  ‘I know I shouldn’t, but sometimes I have to have it. I just can’t control myself – you know how I am,’ Lottie said humbly.

  But it was Magda who lost control. She sank on to the sofa and buried her head in her hands. Lottie looked down at her, at her wild dark hair. Once she had read somewhere of someone – it may even have been an emperor – who had circled his dying son’s bed, praying to draw the boy’s sickness into himself (and the emperor had died). Whenever as a child Magda had been ill, with mumps or measles, lying in bed with fevered eyes, Lottie had thought of this story, and she thought of it now.

  ‘I don’t know where she is,’ Magda said, still with her head buried so that it was difficult to hear her.

  But Lottie heard. ‘She was here yesterday. She said she was starting rehearsals today – she was excited about it. That’s where she is.’

  ‘You don’t know anything. About rehearsals or anything,’ Magda said. ‘Anyhow, she didn’t go.’

  ‘So what? She’ll go tomorrow.’

  ‘They won’t have her tomorrow. They’ll have cast someone else.’

  ‘That’s her funeral then. You’ve done all you could, and more – my Lord, a girl like that, she should count herself lucky you’ve taken her on.’

  ‘A girl like what?’ Magda had raised her face, swollen like a child’s with tears.

  ‘Well, I’m sure she’s got a pretty voice but you could hardly call her – I mean, nothing like your other clients, dear.’

  ‘There’s no one like her! She’s head and shoulders above all of them! Above everyone!’

  ‘OK, I believe you, but why are you yelling at me?’ After a moment, she said in a nice bright voice, ‘Have you eaten?’ and though Magda angrily waved this away, she went right on in the same voice: ‘Oh but you should. You have to build yourself up, with all the work you do. Look at me – I don’t do a thing all day, but I have to have my three meals.’ She laughed. ‘And you can see where it all goes.’

  Magda began to wipe her eyes. ‘Yes, look at you,’ she said.

  ‘It’s time I booked myself into that place in Florida again. What about you? Just for a week? Of course I like you the way you are. If you’re built big, what can you do? Your father hated the skinny ones – he wanted a woman who had something you could talk with, that was his joke . . . Oh don’t cry again, darling, it’s not worth it, nothing is.’ She moved closer to Magda on the sofa and she put her arms around her and they sat in silence for a time. Then Lottie began to wipe Magda’s face, her eyes, her cheeks, and holding the handkerchief to her mouth, she said, ‘Spit for me, darling, there’s lipstick on your teeth,’ but at once Magda burst again into a storm of tears.

  Robert and Ellie rode around in the taxi cab for a long time, till at last he gave up and told the driver to take them to Hannah’s building. He strode ahead, leaving Ellie to follow with her suitcase; he didn’t even hold the elevator doors for her, so that she was nearly caught between them. Once upstairs, he curtly told his mother that Ellie would be spending the night and then disappeared into his room. Hannah gaped at Ellie, who smiled ingratiatingly; no one had asked her to sit down, so she stood with her suitcase wedged between her legs.

  ‘Carmen’s not coming till tomorrow,’ Hannah said. ‘I haven’t got a bedroom ready.’

  ‘I could sleep here. On the floor.’ She indicated it, not daring to mention the grand sofa.

  Hannah drew a deep breath, as in pain. ‘I’ll see,’ she said. She went into her bedroom and stealthily dialled her sister. ‘That girl’s here. She wants to stay the night. What shall I do? Did you hear what I said?’ for Lottie still hadn’t responded.

  Lottie said, ‘I’ll come get her.’

  ‘Really? You don’t mind? . . . It would be very inconvenient for me to have her here.’

  ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’

  ‘I appreciate it.’ Hannah remained sitting on the edge of the bed, examining the polish the girl at the nail spa had put on her.

  Lottie, having let herself in with her own key, found Ellie still standing patiently with her suitcase. When Lottie told her to come with her where Magda was waiting, Ellie squeezed her legs together, in case anyone should try to take the suitcase out from between them. And when Lottie did try, she began to protest so loudly that it brought Robert from his study and Hannah from her bedroom.

  ‘I’m not going with her,’ Ellie told Robert.

  ‘It’ll be such a nice surprise for Magda,’ Lottie urged. ‘You look quite nice too, you’ve done something different with your hair. And what’s that?’ She looked closer at the heart with the diamond sparkling on Ellie’s chest.

  ‘It’s my present from Robert,’ Ellie said.

  At that, Hannah also came to see, with burning eyes, which she then lifted to her son.

  ‘I’m taking her to a hotel,’ Robert said. He even picked up Ellie’s suitcase, though when they were outside, she took it back again, not wanting to burden him.

  Hannah explained to Lottie, ‘He’s taking her to a hotel and then he’ll come home to eat.’

  ‘I told Magda I was going to Chez Cheese to buy something for her and she said, “It’s past nine, they’re shut long ago,” so I made
up some other lie. Just to keep it a surprise who I was bringing . . . Well, I’m glad I didn’t tell her.’

  ‘What’s it all about, Lot, do you suppose?’

  ‘God knows, I don’t; and I don’t want to know and neither should you.’

  Robert didn’t take Ellie to a hotel but to his studio. He opened the front door with his key and they both crept up the stairs very quietly. Nevertheless, Fred heard them and appeared in the door of the little room where he slept just under the studio. ‘It’s all right, Fred,’ Robert said, as to a dog who has barked in angry alarm. Ellie, coming behind with her suitcase, smiled at him; Fred didn’t smile back but silently watched them go up, and then he shut his door.

  She was relieved to put down her suitcase again in a corner of the studio. They both looked at the piano. ‘Shall we?’ said Robert, opening it with an almost guilty little smile. Ellie watched his hands run over the keys, taking charge of them in the way she loved. He played the composition he had been working on for the last few weeks, and it sounded completely lovely to her. But he wasn’t satisfied and changed it here and changed it there and still wasn’t satisfied. Ellie, squatting near him on the floor, dropped off to sleep now and again. It was dawn when he asked her to sing a passage for him, so that her voice, rising as usual in perfect purity, might have been the first bird to wake up for the day.

  Critic

  Theodore Fabrik was a highly respected and well-paid film critic, but it was not the profession he might have chosen for himself. There was a bitter twist to his lips, which were sensuous, rosy and full, as though meant for something romantic rather than cerebral. It may also have been due to his distaste for the kinds of films he had to review. But his comments ranged far beyond them – sometimes they were scarcely mentioned – into thoughts on the current state of society and culture and meditations on the human predicament. His editors allowed him many pages, for he was avidly read as much for his weighty ideas as for the devastating wit with which he expressed them.