A Lovesong for India: Tales from the East and West

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  Besides being brilliant, Theo was attractive to women. Above his sensuous lips, his features were finely modelled, his brow very high and very white. The women he chose were always of the same type. He hated scruffy girls and what he considered their scruffy ideas; even at college, he had only liked students who were well groomed and well mannered. While this usually meant a moneyed background, it was not the money he valued but the breeding it had bought. Eileen, who became his wife, had all the virtues he esteemed. Shortly after the marriage, he and his mother, Madame Sybille, moved into the large Upper East Side apartment Eileen had inherited from her family. Here he had a leather-furnished, mahogany-panelled study that admitted practically no sounds and gave him everything he needed for his creative work.

  At that time, still in his twenties, a married man living in luxury with his wife and mother, he mostly wrote plays. This was due to the influence of his mother. Madame Sybille had been an actress in her native Hungary, but on moving to New York, she had to earn her living as a sales lady in an upscale department store. Her talents were not wasted here – tall and gracious, she exuded distinction and ruled her floor like a queen of the stage. Her head remained held high – literally and otherwise: she was confident that the disappointment in her own career would be more than made up for by her son’s success and fame. But when finally recognition came to him, it was not through his plays, nor the novel he was trying to write, but through the critical articles he was publishing. In the end, he became the undisputed reigning critic of a prominent cultural magazine, and there he remained for more than a decade, forming the taste, and distaste, of an entire generation of readers.

  In those years he put on quite a bit of weight. His life was sedentary, moving from screening rooms to his study where he sat for hour after conscientious hour polishing up the steel of his fine prose. Some nights he worked late to meet his deadline, and then stayed to sleep in his study so as not to disturb his wife. Other nights he was out – if he gave an explanation, it was always of some professional gathering he had to attend; whatever he said, Eileen accepted it, though not as the truth.

  While he grew plump, Eileen, who had always been thin, became gaunt. She couldn’t have children; Theo didn’t miss them, and she had many nieces, nephews and godchildren. She also kept up with her friends, most of them women dating from her school and college days, with whom she recalled amusing incidents of their past. She joined a fitness club, and the hours Theo spent on his articles and other pursuits, she spent on the treadmill, her ears plugged into a tape, which drowned out her thoughts with music.

  Theo and Eileen were never heard to shout at each other – their differences of opinion were conducted with polite words uttered through pinched-in lips and nostrils. Eileen’s eyes and the tip of her nose were often red, usually on account of some affair Theo was having. The worst for her was not when this was at its height, but later, when it was winding down and he needed her help to extricate him. Then he would ask her to deal with telephone calls that he didn’t want to take, and while she refused at first, in the end she gave in and could be seen trying to be patient with the hysterical caller at the other end. Afterwards she retreated to her bedroom and no sound could be heard from behind her closed door.

  They had persuaded Madame Sybille to give up her job as sales lady, so she was idle most of her days and unable to sleep at night. With Eileen’s great-grandfather’s grandfather clock striking out the midnight hours, she wandered around the huge apartment, back and forth between two closed doors, her son’s study at one end and Eileen’s bedroom at the other. Sometimes she stepped close to listen at the latter, not out of curiosity but compassion. Only once did she hear what sounded like muffled sobs, and after receiving no reply to her knock, she opened the door. Eileen was lying face down on the bed, but she sat up at once and groped for a tissue. She said she had a cold.

  ‘Oh, my dear,’ Madame said and tried to press her close.

  Eileen held herself aloof. ‘Be careful. I don’t want you to catch my cold.’ And she smiled. ‘Two sick women in the house would be more than Theo could bear.’ Next moment, still smiling, she defended him. ‘For his work,’ she said, wiping her reddened nose. ‘He needs to save himself for his work; all of himself.’

  Madame thought, what work? For unspoken, secretly, she was disappointed – that he was a critic and not the great artist she had expected. But to Eileen she joked, ‘It’s my fault. I should have encouraged him to become a doctor, a lawyer – some respectable work.’

  Eileen half joked back: ‘Oh but then I couldn’t have fallen in love with him. Not with an ordinary person.’

  Madame knew about and blamed her son for his infidelities. But sometimes, within her heart of hearts, she made excuses for him. She reflected that, if she was disappointed in his work, how could he himself not be? He was her son, his nature as full of storm and stress as her own. With that whole side of him kept unsatisfied, it was no wonder that he should try to find fulfilment in women as romantic and passionate as himself – that is, women who were totally different from Eileen.

  If she imagined that he was having affairs with fabulous stars, she was mistaken. His integrity depended on remaining aloof from their world and accepting no favours from it. Some of these favours were crudely offered by production companies, money men, and it was not difficult to reject them. Others came mostly from aspiring actresses, who took him to be a more powerful insider than he was. Sometimes he did take advantage of their misconception, but the truth was he never liked them much: for him their neediness put them in the category of the scruffy college girls he had rejected in his younger days. His preferences had remained for women who had inherited or married the money that gave them the style he admired. And so he took up with rich women at whose dinner parties he could shine. He enjoyed that for a while but never for long, and since there was a choice of ambitious hostesses married to elderly businessmen, he went easily from one to the other. But as the years passed, the twist of his mouth became more bitter, and his prose took on a more virulent edge.

  He had invitations to every premiere, film festival and awards ceremony on the calendar, but he didn’t often take them up. The popular attraction at these glittering venues was always the stars, the tall and gorgeous men and women who made everyone else appear small, including Theo, though he had spent the week cutting them down to size. Eileen rarely accompanied him, and when she did, she felt herself to be dowdy and out of place. But her presence made him feel better. He knew she was not dowdy but understated with a breeding these people were not qualified to appreciate. Like himself, she was different, more highly evolved. The two of them often skipped the last course of a banquet, relieved to get out of the perfumed precincts, past the limousines and lounging chauffeurs, turning the corner to hail a yellow cab.

  It was different when he took his mother. For Madame Sybille it was like reclaiming a past she had not had. Her clothes were old, her jewellery undistinguished, but she herself had the bearing of one who belonged. When Theo wanted to leave early, she begged to stay till the end. It was what had happened at the premiere of a film he had just demolished in his column. He had especially targeted the leading actress – who of course was present at the party as its centrepiece.

  Theodore was used to two kinds of reaction from his victims. Actresses usually showed him how little they cared – they turned their backs on him, tossed their beautiful heads while loudly enjoying the company of their circle of admirers. The second reaction was more common with actors, but on this occasion it was the leading actress who came up to him, caressing him with her smiles as though she had not read his review, or cared nothing about it, or even agreed with him. Her name was Patty Pope, she was twenty-eight years old, at the height of her beauty and ready to ascend to the height of her career.

  Theo and his mother were seated at a less than distinguished table. Their host was an independent producer, and although he had bought a table for ten at $2,000 a head, he was not impo
rtant enough for all his guests to show up. So it was easy for Patty to join them – ‘May I?’ she breathed, slipping into a chair left empty between Theo and Madame Sybille.

  She concentrated most of her charm on the mother, hovering over her with her perfumed half-bare breasts. She only occasionally smiled at the son over her shoulder, amusing him by her effort to show herself above all feelings of resentment. ‘I knew it!’ she suddenly exclaimed, and from the way his mother preened herself a bit, Theo guessed that she had just confessed to being an actress herself. ‘Of course,’ Patty said to Theo, ‘how could she not be.’ She was referring to Madame’s air as of some great diva, unbowed after the curtain had fallen.

  The speeches had begun – producers, actors and financiers stood to thank one another, some with humour, others with sentimental tears. By this time Theo would have long since left, but Patty and his mother could not be parted. They had moved even closer together, and from time to time Patty whispered something that made Madame smile and lay her hand on Patty’s. Theo had to let them sit there and he with them right through the speeches, which set his teeth on edge. He heard them exchange addresses and telephone numbers – on the way home he asked his mother, ‘What do you want with her?’ and was further irritated by Madame’s silent, knowing smile.

  Patty called two days later. She announced herself for the same afternoon, just giving Madame time to bake some of her flaky confectionery. Then she stood in the doorway to welcome her visitor: she threw her arms wide and Patty entered into them. Patty made herself at home at once, slipping out of her leopard-skin jacket, unwinding her scarves, looking around the apartment: ‘It’s just the classy sort of place I’d expect him to live in.’ His mother apologised for his absence; as usual in the afternoon he was at a screening. ‘But I’ve come to see you,’ Patty said. ‘And what a heavenly smell – are we going to have something lovely to eat?’

  She was licking flaky crumbs off her fingers when Eileen came home from the gym. ‘Oh please don’t get up,’ Eileen said. Patty had made no move, but Eileen didn’t know what else to say: she was embarrassed, overwhelmed. There was something overwhelming in Patty’s presence. Naturally, she was a star, carrying the admiration of millions. She also exuded a sense of money – not the sort that had been expended on this apartment with the inherited furniture but what had been lavished on Patty herself, by daring young designers, even by dentists who had made her teeth sparkle along with the rest of her. But she carried her load of beauty so lightly that she appeared utterly unaware of it. It was Eileen who was aware of herself, of her gym clothes and her face sweaty from her exercise.

  In the course of the afternoon Patty made herself more and more at home, kicking off her shoes and tucking her feet under her. There was a lot of conversation, most of it from Patty, though she fell silent whenever Madame spoke, respectfully listening to what the older actress had to say about parts she had played or had wanted to play.

  ‘They really knew what they were doing in those days,’ Patty said to Eileen, not leaving her out for a moment. ‘That was real acting, not the sort of monkey thing we have to perform for our bread and butter.’

  Madame got up and with appropriate gestures she declaimed Schiller in German.

  Patty applauded. ‘Isn’t that marvellous. Brilliant. The worst of it is, there’s no one nowadays to appreciate the real thing. Except Theodore Fabrik, of course. That’s why I don’t care at all when he gives me a bad review. I’m grateful for it. Because I know he’s right.’ She unwound her feet from under her. ‘I’ll creep away before he gets home. He’ll want to be quiet to write his review.’

  His mother and his wife said nothing, not wishing to admit that there may have been no screening, or that he had gone on to some other appointment they didn’t really need to know about.

  That day there had been such an appointment, and Theo came home long after Patty had left. He found his two women in a state of excitement. Madame Sybille was pacing the passage and declaiming aloud, only interrupting herself to seize her son’s lapels and draw him close to kiss him.

  Eileen was in bed, wide awake and eager to tell him about their visitor. He was not pleased. ‘She admires you so much,’ Eileen urged, but this too did not please him. Eileen said, ‘It’s so good for Mother to meet someone who knows about acting.’

  ‘It’s bad for her,’ Theo said. ‘She’s over-excited. You know what her doctor said about her blood pressure.’

  A new friendship had developed, and Patty didn’t let up on it. She called a day or two later, and Madame Sybille accepted an invitation to visit her. Patty lived across the Park in a building that, rising in one long shaft above the earth, seemed unsupported by anything more material than a feat of theoretical engineering. The interior was completely separate from anything going on outside: self-enclosed, self-generating in columns of glass and lights, and at its centre a fountain that rose and then descended in further arcs of light. Everything was mirrored and multiplied, glass within glass, soaring and spiralling right up to the apex where Patty lived.

  Her door was opened by a young man in jeans and polo shirt. ‘Hello! I’m Simon.’ Was he a guest, a butler, maybe a lover? He gave no clue. ‘She’s in the butterfly room,’ he said, leading the way. There was also no clue why it was called the butterfly room. Evidently it had been done up by an interior decorator and glittered as much as Patty herself, though today she was dressed like Simon, in jeans and polo shirt. The room was untidy, making it clear that the money spent on it – the silk walls and painted panels – was of no consequence. An interior staircase led up to further floors, there may have been two or three, inhabited by Patty’s large retinue of employees, guests or hangers-on. The telephone rang constantly, but the only call Patty took was from her agent and it made her angry.

  She told Madame that all her agent, a woman called Robyn, ever got for her was rubbish, and Patty was tired of playing rubbish. What she really wanted was to get back to the theatre, but Robyn wouldn’t let her because of the money. All she was interested in was the money earned from films, which was a lot, it was true, and Patty needed it because not only did she have an agent, she had a manager too, and a lawyer, and her personal staff, all of whom needed to be paid.

  ‘And of course there’s the alimony,’ she said, taking it for granted that her visitor read the sort of magazines in which a star’s personal life was displayed. But Madame did not, and she was too tactful to ask any questions.

  Later she asked Theo, and although he didn’t care for personal gossip, he did know that Patty had been married to an actor when they were both very young. She had prospered and he had not, and by the time she realised that they were incompatible, he needed an income and considered himself entitled to a share in hers. He clung on through the years, even after she had married again, this time a rock star; that marriage too broke down, under the weight of two stars, in less than a year.

  ‘She’s too intelligent,’ Madame concluded.

  ‘Is that what she told you?’

  ‘Too intelligent for the roles she has to play. Did you know that she wants to leave films and go into the theatre?’

  ‘I didn’t know but I could have guessed,’ Theo said. ‘Her last film didn’t do well, the big film she was hoping for went to another actress, and that’s usually when they decide that their real talent is for the theatre.’

  Madame’s visits to Patty continued. For Patty, Madame was the inspiration she had not had in any of her relationships. If her parents had guided her, she confided, she wouldn’t have married in that stupid way before she had even graduated. But though her parents were professional people, they had cared nothing for Patty’s education or her artistic development. Her mother, now living in Santa Fe with a third husband, was only interested in Patty’s career for the publicity it generated and to be photographed with her on showy occasions. There was no one in Patty’s life with Madame’s background, the talent and training she had been able to transmit to her son.


  ‘It’s not only that he’s fantastically clever and brilliant,’ Patty said. ‘He also has a sort of European culture that people here just don’t have. I long to do something he could at least approve of. If only someone would write a decent part for me! But I guess nowadays that’s too much to hope for.’

  As usual, Patty wanted to send Madame home in her chauffeured limousine, but Madame loved to walk. She strode across the Park, as upright as any of its trees. It was a windy day, she was bareheaded, her white hair flew around. She felt strong as a prophetess and full of an idea that excited her.

  Before she could enter the study alone, she had to wait until both Theo and Eileen were out – he maybe at a screening, she certainly at the gym. She knew the place where he kept his plays and his unfinished novel. There was one play she especially remembered from its production in a small theatre club. It was an interesting subject. The hero was a famous conductor whose affair with a young piano student went further than he had intended. He divorced his wife of twenty years, he married the girl, but from there on everything went downhill, and what he had loved – her naivety, her innocent questioning – became a source of intense irritation. But the author – Theo – saw both sides, as did his hero, who realised that, instead of admiring his fame and brilliance, she was now judging him for his daily shortcomings: his temper, his ageing, his sour breath in the morning. The play had been well received by the club members, mostly elderly subscribers, but had not gone anywhere after its week-long run.

  Madame carried the play in her large handbag across the Park. She presented it to Patty as a gift and watched her unwrap it. When she saw what it was, Patty said, ‘I don’t believe it,’ and a moment later, looking up from a page, ‘I do believe it.’ She said she knew that Theo was not just a critic – was something more than a critic – much more, she said, leafing through the bound script. She wanted to read it right away, but Madame asked her to wait till she was alone, without the author’s anxious mother there to watch her. Again Madame walked across the Park, her handbag empty now and lighter, and her heart light too and soaring upwards.