A Lovesong for India: Tales from the East and West

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  Even on the days when he ate with me, I saw the girls going to the cottage with their covered dishes. At the end of one of our meals, I asked him what he did with the food they had cooked for him. He said he got up at night and ate it. ‘If I didn’t,’ he explained, ‘they’d discover it next day when they come to bring more. It’s their kind nature. There’s nothing I can do about it.’

  One evening, finding the cottage empty, they came up to the house to see if I knew where he was. They stood silent in the doorway, holding their covered dishes. At first we didn’t notice them, and as soon as we did, he took charge like a good host. He drew out chairs for them, he gestured towards the table. ‘There are some wicked things here that you won’t want, but what if – ’ he turned to me – ‘two more plates, would it be possible?’ And it was he who uncovered their dishes and served them on the plates I had brought. ‘What delicious smells, and may I?’ He dipped in a fork and, tasting, confirmed that it was indeed delicious. With all this, he didn’t quite succeed in overcoming my embarrassment and whatever were their much stronger feelings. After a while, I managed to contribute some small talk, and so did Betty, both of us half-heartedly. As for Maeve, she remained looking down at her plate, maybe trying to hide the tears trickling into her untouched food.

  Later in that second summer, Betty told me that my list of potential subscribers had proved useless. Now she had a new suggestion, which was that I should underwrite the publication of the manuscript. She made it sound like a good business proposition, pointing out that in no time royalties would be coming in, whereupon I would be the first person to be reimbursed. Maeve didn’t say anything; she only traced her toe over the floor, looking down at it so as not to look at my face or let me look at hers. Ever since that evening meal, this had been Maeve’s way with me; and it continued on subsequent visits when Betty went over the details of the publication. Maeve was always with her, but she wandered off outside by herself, making it clear that she wanted no part in any discussion with me.

  During these summer months my evening walk sometimes took me as far as the waterfall at the edge of my property. The precipitous climb to the rock from which it fell was no longer easy for me; but I enjoyed the solitude here, the moss-covered stones, the trees bending towards the arc of the water. One day I saw a figure within that arc, sheathed in its iridescence and turning in its spray: it was Dr Chacko, naked and singing as he soaped himself. His towel and a pair of rubber flip-flops lay on a rocky ledge far enough not to get wet. Before I could leave, he emerged, still singing and naked; if he saw me, he gave no sign until he reached his towel to wrap around himself.

  Nimbly, on naked feet, carrying his shoes, he climbed the rocky ledge that separated us. He sat beside me, drops still sparkling on his thighs and his chest. As far as I could make out over the roar of the water, he was telling me how much he enjoyed coming here for his shower – though of course he didn’t feel the same in the winter. I wondered then was he intending to spend another winter with us, or were we only his refuge from the summer heat of the city? When I thought ‘we’, I meant those of us who were united in our care for him – except now apparently I stood accused of having taken more than my fair share of him. It was so ridiculous! And, seemingly prompted by the same thought, he said the same word – ‘Ridiculous’ – as we got up to walk together towards the house. ‘But it’s always happening,’ he went on, ‘and it’s always my fault. I should have told them, why wouldn’t I have told them? There’s nothing wrong in it.’

  ‘You mean in eating meat?’

  ‘And your being my friend. Careful.’ He lifted a prickly branch nodding over our narrow path. I hadn’t mentioned Maeve, but in that way he had of taking up one’s unspoken thoughts, he continued, ‘It’s sad that she’s an orphan, but there are some orphans who grow up quite happy and carefree. When I was younger, very young, I used to look in the mirror: “Who is this?” I didn’t even know my name – Chacko were the parents who adopted me for a while. They were Indian, but they lived in the UK, in a very dull town, and at seventeen I made my way elsewhere. I’d been reading the old Russian authors, and I thought all Russians were saints or else gamblers and swindlers; but when I went there, I found no one like that; so I worked my way to Baku, and from there further east . . . A long story; a long odyssey.’ He didn’t tell me any more of it that day (or any other day, now I come to think of it). Instead he plucked one of his melodies out of the air, some strange tune from far away.

  He did stay through the winter, and through the spring, and then another year had passed and it was summer again. In the meantime Betty had seen his book through production and had made it into a very handsome volume. She watched me examining it, while Maeve stood by, gazing at her own toe circling the carpet. That evening I sat down seriously with the book, but I still understood very little; actually nothing.

  Carrying the book, I went to see him next morning. He was sitting on the threshold of the cottage, carving a piece of wood. He invited me to sit next to him, and when I did, I had again that feeling of intimacy I’d had lying next to him under the tree. An innocent intimacy, enhanced by the way he was carving, like a boy whittling a stick. He showed it to me, a simple little figure that could have been a man or woman or, most likely, a symbol. But he said it was a piece of wood he found that looked good for carving. Woodwork was just a hobby for him now, but once it had been useful when he had fixed shelves and done minor repairs. It was his only skill, he said, since he hadn’t had much education. Then I did ask about the book, pointing at the title page where his name was printed – with ‘Ph.D.’ attached to it.

  ‘I bought it,’ he said. ‘Not actually I, but a lady who liked to hear me talk. There’s a small college in India that sells Ph.Ds. BA and MA too, if that’s all you want . . . It never earned me a living, for that I had to do other things – when I really needed money, for a wife and kids.’ He was silent for a while and so was I. Then he went on, ‘Three of them, all grown up now. I miss them, but they’re doing all right. Some of them are married, they may even have children of their own. I miss my wife too, occasionally. She’s with someone else now. I liked her, I still do, though she never understood a word of anything I said or wrote . . . Do you?’ he asked me, but I didn’t have to answer, for he had opened the book, was leafing through it, reading a sentence here and there as if he had never seen it before. Then he shook his head and laughed. He had a rather whinnying laugh, like a horse; I liked his singing better. ‘Probably only God knows what it’s all about . . . But there are others – others,’ he said, for just then the girls’ car drew up, ‘others who think it’s me who understands, and so I must be God.’ He whinnied again and waved at them and Betty waved back. But Maeve was looking at me, where I sat close beside him on the narrow doorstep; and from that day her hostility to me entered a new phase.

  Those were days of such unpleasant heat that it became impossible, Betty told me, to continue the workshop in its present quarters. She had worked out a solution. The first part consisted of a collection from the members to hire a coach to bring them to the country, into the balmy summer air, the spacious grounds. The second part of Betty’s solution involved me, or rather my grounds, where the workshop was to be held, under my trees. ‘They needn’t come in the house at all,’ Betty promised, adding in her truthful way, ‘Except to use the toilet.’ I asked, ‘What about Maeve?’ But Betty hadn’t come here to make unnecessary excuses for Maeve. She said, ‘They’ll come in the coach after work – they’ll be tired at first from their long day – but then they’ll sit under the trees – he’ll talk to them – they’ll revive, they’ll be happy, peaceful.’

  This was more or less how it happened. They arrived in the late afternoon, the same people as in the New York workshop. They fanned out after getting down from their coach, they wandered around, admired the flowering trees, breathed in the fragrant air. By the time he came out to talk to them, the shadows were longer and cool. He made them sit under one of the trees,
the same under which he often lay and looked into the leaves. They looked only at him – though without the intensity there had been in that rented room where they had been squashed close together. Now each had space to breathe in, to inhale his message. I watched from the porch. For me, there was something almost legendary about the scene – the earnest seekers around their teacher, drawing inspiration from him and their surroundings. Lively households rustled and stirred within the trees, a chipmunk scurried across a path with a nut in its mouth. There was the sound of the waterfall and, as the sun contracted, a deer came out of the distant woods and stood, shy but fearless, against the sky that was partly rose-tinted and partly gold. Everyone was, as Betty had predicted, peaceful, serene. No one seemed to be aware that Maeve had got up from the group and was circling it, the way a wasp would.

  They didn’t come again. The workshops resumed in New York, but not for long. I learned about the great upheaval after it happened by piecing together Betty’s reluctant account. It was easy to imagine how in that cramped and overcrowded room, simmering in dog-day heat, the smallest spark could have caused an explosion. Betty admitted that she had known from early morning that Maeve was not herself. Or rather, that it was one of the days when she was only part of herself, the part that early trauma had drained of her natural sweetness. At first Betty had tried to dissuade her from going, but Maeve had insisted with that stubborn, closed face I had begun to think characteristic of her. Betty settled her on a chair among the disabled, but it was only a few moments into the lecture that Maeve began her disturbance. At first all she shouted was ‘No!’ Then, ‘Lies! Lies and fakery!’ Maybe if at this stage Betty could have succeeded in taking her away, the others might have settled back into their concentration. But wedged between others on the floor, Betty couldn’t reach her, and Maeve went further out of control, shouting, ‘Ask him! Why doesn’t anyone ask him!’ Disconcerted by these wild shouts, the disciples turned their attention from their teacher towards Maeve. Jerked out of a deep tranquillity, they reacted violently, in shock and frustration. And Maeve worked them up along with herself: ‘Ask him!’ she shouted. ‘Ask him about the one he drinks with and eats meat!’ Then the room erupted – the cripple raised his crutch at her, others tried to pull her off her chair; by the time Betty managed to reach her, her frock was torn at the shoulder. She struggled against Betty too – maybe she didn’t recognise her, confused her with the rest; although, Betty admitted, Maeve had sometimes fought against her in this way. Betty put her arms around her to lead her out. Already halfway down the stairs, Maeve was still struggling to free herself, sobbing and yelling, ‘Ask him what else he does with her!’ No one followed them; the door upstairs was shut against them while the lecture continued, as maybe it had continued throughout that angry scene.

  The girls no longer brought covered dishes for him and he no longer cycled to the station for the train to New York. This made me suspect that the ugly uproar may have caused a split among the members; or he himself, for reasons of his own, had terminated the workshop, like those in England and other places. I realised that this had always been on my mind: that everything with him was transient.

  Now on my evening walk I didn’t stumble over him under his tree because I had learned to expect him there; I never again lay down but sat beside him and we talked a bit. Strangely, I had become more shy of him than before. I even hesitated now to ask him for a meal; instead I brought him dishes I had cooked and sometimes left little treats on his doorstep. He never asked where they came from. He may have taken it for granted that there would always be someone to leave things for him.

  One day Betty drove up to my house. She had brought all the unsold copies of Dr Chacko’s books, which was almost the entire edition. Only a few copies had been bought by some workshop students who had been able to come up with the price; efforts to place them on consignment in bookstores had been unsuccessful. ‘Where shall I put them?’ Betty said, staggering with armfuls of them up the steps of the porch. It’s not easy to accommodate over five hundred books without prior arrangement, so they had to be piled on chairs, sofas, tables, wherever there was a surface. I helped her carry them in, and when we had finished, she accepted a fresh lemonade. She became more relaxed than she had been on arrival with her load and I ventured to ask about Maeve.

  Her face softened as always at mention of Maeve. ‘We’re past the worst of it, thank the Lord . . . Put yourself in her place – someone who’s been betrayed so bitterly in the past.’

  I said, ‘I suppose everyone has been, at some point in their past.’ This was as far as I ever went in speaking to her about mine.

  Anyway, it wasn’t me she wanted to talk about. ‘Maeve loved and trusted him and shouldn’t have. What do we know about him? Only what he’s told us . . . Are you going to let him stay in the cottage?’

  I said, ‘He’s no trouble to me.’

  She clamped her lips tight for a moment before continuing: ‘Not that I listen to gossip, though they say he was in prison in Bangkok for two years before being deported. But people will say anything, so who knows what to believe or not to believe . . . Well, thanks for the lemonade, it was a real treat on a day like this.’

  ‘And thank you for the books.’

  ‘Oh no. Those are yours. You paid for them.’

  That day I overcame my embarrassment or whatever it was that had prevented me from inviting him to dinner. He laughed when he saw his books piled around the house; he said, ‘It looks like I’ve really taken you over here.’ But that was so untrue – he had never encroached on me or asked for anything.

  Since my table and chairs were occupied, we sat on the porch with plates on our laps and glasses at our feet. For the first time I asked him about the workshop. He said, ‘People move on. I move on too.’ As so often, he answered my question before I had asked it. ‘There’s always somewhere. One gets used to it.’

  I said, ‘But wouldn’t you rather stay?’

  ‘If there are people who wish me to stay.’

  Evidently he didn’t intend to carry on this conversation, and I also realised there was no need. It was cool outside now, in the night air. Glow worms glittered below, stars above. Instead of talking, he had begun to hum one of his songs. Was this his teaching? To say nothing, to want and need nothing? All the same, I couldn’t help myself, I had to ask. ‘So you think you won’t want the cottage much longer?’

  He stopped humming. ‘Why? Are you looking for a new tenant? If so, hope he’ll pay you better than I.’

  ‘You’re not my tenant.’

  ‘No, of course not. Tenants pay rent. But I should do something for you. Look at this – ’ and he held up an early autumn leaf that had fluttered on to the porch. ‘You won’t be able to sit out here much longer – with luck another month, and after that you’ll need your chairs and tables back. You’ll have to get rid of the books. They’re useless anyway if you don’t understand them.’

  ‘One day I shall.’

  ‘And till then? Are you going to eat and sleep with them? I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll build you shelves for them so then they won’t be in your way and you can have your house back from all this intrusion.’

  Did he mean my house or the cottage? Again I couldn’t ask; and this time he provided no answer but went on talking about the shelves and how we would need to buy wood – good quality, he said, to go with the rest of the house.

  He came to take measurements, and then we drove to a building supply depot in town. He heaped two huge shopping carts, he pushed one and gave me the other; when it came time to pay, he wouldn’t let me sign my credit card slip before he had checked all the amounts. Next day he set up the trestle table we had bought under a tree, and there he worked with his shirt off and singing. I carried out sandwiches for us at lunchtime, and we ate them under the tree with the trestle table. The air was filled with the scent of sawdust, of grass and the wilted leaves that had begun to fall, and also the whiff of perspiration rising from the tangled hair
on his naked chest. It was the last, the very last days of summer, already in its decline with dusty drooping trees, and flowers going to seed, and flying insects fierce in their final throes.

  I was eager to pay him for his work, and while I was still wondering how to raise the subject, he presented me with a bill. He had itemised all the hours he had spent working for me, and it came to a substantial amount. But anyway, whatever I paid was worth it for me. I continued to make sandwiches for his lunch and to join him in eating them. More and more leaves had begun to fall, some on his naked back and some on his hair where they remained like Bacchanalian vine leaves. Sometimes a stronger breeze brought down a shower of them which fell on both of us, veiling us in gold.

  One day he said: ‘Betty came to ask when I would be moving out of the cottage.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said I have a job to finish here.’

  Several days of rain followed, and since he could no longer work outdoors, we carried the shelves into the house. The woodwork was almost finished and he had begun to varnish and polish. As I realised the work was drawing to a close, I thought up more jobs for him: a spice rack in the kitchen, towel rails in the laundry room. Although he was always agreeable, I began to worry that, to oblige me, he was postponing other plans. But I kept on finding things I needed to have done around the house, including some I didn’t need at all.

  When I had almost run out of ideas, he himself brought a suggestion. He said it made him uneasy to see my silver so insecure in the breakfront where any intruder could smash the glass. In the dining room there was a niche large enough, he told me, for a cabinet that he could build for me with several shelves and also a lock to secure my silver inside. We went out to buy more wood, and he set to work at once. He explained the kind of lock he needed, and as I drove myself to the store, I thought that maybe not only I but he too was trying to prolong his stay – if, that is, he intended to stay.