Three Continents

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  Michael and I stayed down in the grounds to watch, and though we joined Jean in making some feeble protests to the boys, we didn’t mean to spoil their fun. Crishi, however, had gone straight up to the house, and it wasn’t long before he came out again with all the male followers behind him like an army. And like an army they converged on the boys, and what followed was unexpected and shocking. The boys didn’t have a chance against the followers, who used what looked like some very sophisticated techniques on them. It happened so fast—one moment everyone had been laughing and kidding around and there was music playing, and next thing there were these horrible thuds and cries of pain and the grim-faced followers stomping around on the cassette players, the pizzas, and the beer cans. In no time it was over; the boys had been pushed into their cars and the followers were cleaning up the mess on the grass. Everyone went back in the house and soon the lights were out again, and I guess we were all supposed to be asleep and not thinking about what had happened.

  But we did think about it—I did, and Michael did, and Michael must have talked about it to Crishi, because by the time I came to talk to Michael, which was the next morning, he had already come right around to Crishi’s point of view and explained it to me. I tried to protest—I said I didn’t think the boys had actually been doing anything so bad—but Michael said it had been a challenge, which had to be faced and dealt with. Well maybe, I said—but dealt with in that way? Then Michael said that action has no degree, and either you do something or you don’t do it.

  The Rawul was more accommodating—he had to be because he had to deal with Grandfather. I came in on them at breakfast in the dining room next morning: The Rawul had as usual heaped his plate from all the silver-covered dishes on the sideboard, while Grandfather, at the opposite end of the table, was only stirring a spoon around his cup of tea. Whenever the two of them were together, they gave the impression of two potentates conferring on matters of high state; and like two such potentates, they usually didn’t have to say anything because everything had been said by others at preliminary discussions, and all that was required of them was to be there face to face. But this time that was not so; for while Grandfather did sit there stirring in silence, the Rawul was talking quite volubly, as one out to convince, and justify.

  If someone else had been saying what he was, I might not have accepted it. But it was the Rawul talking, whom I knew to be kind and a gentleman; a kind gentleman. He spoke in his old-fashioned upper-class accent, stopping every now and again to take another mouthful of scrambled eggs with kidneys; and his voice was soft and so were the graceful gestures he made with his plump hands, one of them holding a fork. And he was utterly and absolutely sincere, as was obvious from the vibrations that came into his voice, and the passionate way he shut his eyes when he spoke of what was most precious to him: his plan for a new world, a Fourth World, where all that was best in the other three would come to fruition. That sounds abstract and unreal, but it wasn’t like that at all when he said it, because it came so deeply out of him, out of the Rawul in his English suit, eating his breakfast. It was, as he said, his world view, which he was in the process of putting into action with whatever means were available to him. These were not extensive, he admitted; indeed, to the casual eye they might appear extremely, even ludicrously, limited: just himself and the Rani and Crishi, and a handful of followers. But, he asked Grandfather, wasn’t that the way every great world movement had started off—whether it was religious or, in keeping with our times, secular and political, a drive by men not toward God but toward other men, toward humanity? He balled his fist against his heart, as if the weight of feeling there was heavy and hurting—his feeling for the humanity he wished to redeem and lead into the paradise of his Fourth World. Grandfather kept right on stirring his tea to cool it; his silence was disconcerting, as was the way he stared at the painting over the Rawul’s head—a portrait of Lindsay’s grandfather, who had made his money in the dry-goods business but here looked more like a Renaissance prince. The Rawul faltered a bit, and then he had to come down from the lofty height to which he had risen to a lower level, to discuss the boys who had been thrown off the property. And in view of what had gone before, it did seem petty that this incident had had to be mentioned, let alone justified; and it was magnanimous of the Rawul to see the boys’ point of view the way he did. He said he knew they meant no harm, that they thought they were only having a party, but that in fact and unbeknown to themselves, they were doing real harm: for they were challenging and thereby obstructing the work of his followers, the global regeneration that had been set in motion, and no one said the Rawul—and here he did look less like a kind gentleman and more like a world leader—no one would ever be allowed to do that.

  After the night of the boys’ invasion, security measures were introduced, and though there was no actual boundary wall, a very definite demarcation line was drawn around Propinquity. Trees along the lake and on the outskirts of the property had red PATROLLED and POSTED signs stuck to them; gaps in the hedges were carefully closed with new plantings; one of the two entrances to the main driveway was barricaded completely; and at the other a sort of checkpoint was set up where two followers monitored all entrances and exits. Even Mrs. Pickles, when she arrived to work next morning, had to be cleared; she muttered darkly as she pushed her vacuum cleaner to and fro and packed up and left early, without having her cup of coffee with Else Schwamm. The same dark mood was shown by the deliverymen who came on their usual rounds that day, and the heating people who were checking our oil supply. They brought news of general indignation in the neighborhood, for it seemed some of the boys had been quite badly hurt and their parents were making a complaint to the police. The Rawul and his party carried on smilingly with their daily routine; only Crishi was busier than ever that day, talking a lot on the phone in his easy, persuasive manner and from time to time roaring off in the convertible he drove to make visits in the neighborhood. I don’t know whether it was as a result of his activity, but neither parents nor police appeared at the house on that day or the next; and on the third day there was a beer-and-tacos party at which parents and police mingled in a relaxed way with the people in the house. By that third day Mrs. Pickles too had got over her bad feelings, even though by then there was not only a checkpoint but a walkie-talkie system by which the followers at the gate called up for clearance to the house. That morning over her coffee with Mrs. Schwamm, Mrs. Pickles expressed her appreciation of the general discipline and order that were now so apparent in our household; and she confided that, speaking for herself and a few others she could mention, and these did not exclude some parents, what had happened to the boys was not altogether undeserved, and maybe it was about time they learned that they couldn’t do as they pleased with everyone.

  Was I the only one who remained uneasy? What made it worse was that I couldn’t talk about it to Michael—couldn’t admit to having such feelings because he himself completely approved of what had been done. I couldn’t understand it—Michael had always been so much against every kind of outer order and discipline that he couldn’t ever stay in a school. He would accept nothing except what came from inside himself; no discipline except self-discipline. Of that he had much more than anyone else I had ever known. Even as a child he used to impose days of fasting on himself, also days of silence and other austerities he knew of; he told no one except me. He would have been the last person to wear any kind of uniform, but he had laid aside his kurta, steel bangle, and earring and dressed like the followers in blue shirt and navy jeans. Crishi issued orders to him the same as he did to everyone else, and Michael followed them. He and Crishi were very close—they worked together during the day, supervising the followers on the Xerox machines and teleprinter, and every evening the two of them went to the waterfall. They always expected me to join them, but after the incident with the boys, I no longer wanted to. They didn’t press me but went off by themselves while I stayed back, feeling miserable and waiting for them to return
. It was very late when they did, and I watched them from my window, walking across the lawn with their towels and wet hair—dreamy and happy, which was the way we always felt when we had swum and afterward lay in the field under the moon. Next morning again I couldn’t bring myself to join them, and again they went off by themselves and I felt more miserable than ever. The third night too—this was after the beer-and-tacos party—I had intended to stay behind; but when Crishi said to me, quite casually, over his shoulder almost as he was about to go off with Michael, “Coming, Harriet?” I went to get my towel and hurried after them.

  During these days, after his breakfast with the Rawul, Grandfather stayed the entire time in his bedroom. When I went to see him there, I found him propped up in the great four-poster in which our other grandfather had died. Sonya sat beside him on a chair, very wifely and domesticated, with some embroidery in her lap; she smiled at me and said “This big bear isn’t feeling so good today.”

  “Nonsense,” said Grandfather; and “We’re leaving tomorrow.”

  “If you’re better,” Sonya said.

  “There’s nothing wrong with me at all.” But he did look sick; his head was laid back against the pillows, as one who is very, very tired. He appeared immensely aged, and grand, with his large head and the tufts of white hair showing where the top button of his pajamas was undone. His hands lay like sculpture on the covering sheet. Sonya laid her own little warm plump hand on one of them and said “Stubborn as a mule, as always”; she looked at me and tried to smile again, but her eyes were scared.

  And next day, in spite of her protests, they did leave. Their car, packed with books and luggage, drove up to the porch, and everyone came out to watch their departure. It did not have the stateliness of their arrival, although the Rawul and Rani were both in attendance. In fact, it appeared rather scrambled, as though they were getting away in a hurry; people had to be sent back in the house several times for things Sonya had forgotten to pack. She was crying, and I don’t know whether it was because she thought Grandfather wasn’t well enough to leave, or because she was sorry to part from her friends new and old. She embraced everyone with the same fervor—that is, all of us as well as the Rawul and Rani and whatever followers were within reach. Grandfather stood a little to one side, as though it were nothing to do with him. I thought he still didn’t look well, almost frail in spite of his heavy build; it seemed to me that his clothes had grown too large for him, but perhaps this had been so for a long time and I hadn’t noticed it before. The Rawul tried to make a little farewell speech, but with Grandfather remaining grim and withdrawn, it died, and the Rawul was left standing there, smiling and patting one of his hands on the other. While Sonya was still kissing and embracing, Grandfather went down the steps of the porch and settled in the back of the car. He beckoned to me from there, and when I came to the car window, he asked “Where’s Michael?”

  It was embarrassing, but I had to tell him Michael wasn’t there. He had driven with Crishi to the printers to collect a new set of Fourth World literature. If he had known that Grandfather was leaving that morning, he might have postponed his errand; but, as I said, Grandfather left in a hurry—wanting to get to the Island, or just wanting to get away.

  “Tell him—” Grandfather began to say to me, and then stopped. His eyes swept up the porch steps, where the Rawul stood smiling with the Rani beside him and some followers behind them. Whatever it was Grandfather had wanted me to tell Michael, he changed his mind and said instead, “Why don’t you come to the Island, both of you; come and be with us. I want to see you,” he added and stopped looking grim for the first time that morning. He had his hand on the car window and I took it and held it in mine. He smiled at that, and seemed completely to forget about the Rawul and his party standing there. “See that you come now,” he said. “Bring Michael; and soon.” I said “I’ll tell him.” “Not just tell him: make him. Make him come home.” I couldn’t say anything to that; I couldn’t promise. I didn’t think Michael would want to go to the Island and I didn’t think I myself wanted to either. I too felt that we had work to do here, that we had begun to undertake something.

  But Grandfather didn’t want to know about this. He withdrew his hand from mine and called to Sonya. Before they drove off, he said again, “I want to see you there soon”—but he seemed to have lost interest in me almost as much as in the others standing on the porch. I guess he was just looking forward to being on the Island and doing his work there, writing his book to sum up all his life and what he had done in it.

  BUT Grandfather had a heart attack on the Island and died before we got there. As soon as we had the phone call, Michael and I left for the airfield. Crishi drove us there and chartered a plane to fly us and was both sympathetic and efficient. Michael was very tense and white and silent, and I must have been the same, so it was just as well that Crishi took charge. As we were about to board, he embraced Michael and held him for a moment, and Michael leaned his head against Crishi’s shoulder and stood as if he didn’t want to leave him. Crishi gently pushed him away, and then he turned to me. I thought—Is he going to embrace me too? and when he didn’t, I felt more relieved than anything else.

  It was Grandfather’s father who had built the house on the Island. At that time—around 1910—there had been only a dozen or so summer homes there, all of them like ours, large and comfortable, to accommodate the big families they had in those days. In the winter the houses had been shut up with a caretaker to look after them, and then it must have been very quiet on the Island, with its one street of stores and the rows of fishermen’s houses and the dwellings of retired sea captains. But it had soon become a more popular resort, and the big summer houses were turned into hotels and the sea captains’ houses were rented out for the season. Just three of the big houses were still owned by the original families, and not many of us came there regularly. Only Grandfather had spent as much time there as he could—that is, whenever he was on leave from his missions. It meant a lot to him; it was where he spent his vacations as a boy, and I know he loved the Island very much and would have thought it a good place for him to die in.

  He was lying on his bed in his own bedroom. Sonya sat beside him in a little low chair. It wasn’t so different from when he had lain on my other grandfather’s deathbed, except that now it was his own. He still looked very grand, and his hands were folded in the same sculptured way over the sheet. Sonya, Michael, and I stayed with him through the rest of the day and took turns through the night. Sonya was dissolved in an unending stream of tears; her whole life was visibly melting away. Michael and I were dry-eyed. It wasn’t that we didn’t feel Grandfather’s death but that our own life hadn’t gone away with his, as Sonya’s had. Staying with him all those hours in the silent room, I studied him, and I know Michael did too. We made ourselves consciously look at death; its complete stillness, its absence of life—which made it a presence; that is, Grandfather was no longer there but Death was. Michael probably contemplated a lot on this subject of presence and absence, being and nonbeing—he had a mind for abstract ideas. I didn’t, and soon found myself sliding into other thoughts—the hours were long and slow—and I wondered what they were doing at Propinquity now. Were they under the tree listening to the Rawul, was the Rani laying out her tarot pack with Mrs. Schwamm, did Crishi go to the waterfall on his own or had he taken someone with him?

  Michael got on the phone to the people who had to be called: Aunt Harriet, Grandfather’s only surviving sister; the attorney; the Times; official people in Washington; but what took the most time was trying to locate Manton. It seemed he and Barbara had taken off for Spain somewhere, and after Michael managed to reach him, it took Manton a day and a half to get his plane connections. So it happened that the Rawul and his party got there before him. They did us the courtesy of attending Grandfather’s funeral—the Rawul himself, Crishi, and two followers. These latter at once relieved the rest of us of all arrangements—they took over in the same efficient way as t
hey had at Propinquity. By the time Manton finally arrived, the bedrooms in the house had been opened up, and the preparations for the funeral were complete. This was just as well, for Manton was incapable of giving thought to anything except his own grief. He and Grandfather had hardly been on speaking terms for many years, but this was due not to personal animosity—so Manton had once explained to me—but to their being totally different personality types. It did not, Manton told me, detract from his filial feelings in any way, and I must say he proved them now with his abundant tears. He and Sonya rushed into one another’s arms, where they clung together; and then Manton went around embracing everyone else including the Rawul and Crishi, so that in a way I was glad Grandfather wasn’t there to witness his son’s grief for him. Michael stood prudently aside, and when Manton looked around for him, he disappeared. Manton also looked for Lindsay, and when he realized that she hadn’t come, he fell around my neck again and thanked God I hadn’t taken after my mother but after him and his side of the family.

  At the funeral, however, he was controlled and stately. We were not a large group at the graveside—besides the Rawul’s party, there was Aunt Harriet, who had flown in from Martha’s Vineyard; some local people; an emissary from Washington sent to pay the President’s respects; Mr. Pritchett, who was Grandfather’s attorney; and Reverend Endicott from the Episcopalian church on the Island. As the principal mourners, Sonya stood between Manton and me, Michael between me and Aunt Harriet. It was more or less as it had been at Grandmother’s funeral eight years before. The place was the same—the small maritime cemetery with its very early, very simple graves of fishermen and sailors. It was on slightly higher ground than the rest of the Island, with an unimpeded view, clear above the houses and churches, of an expanse of sky and ocean; and this gave the cemetery the feel of a small craft sailing out into uncharted waters. Michael and I were used to being principal mourners at our grandparents’ funerals: Grandfather was the last—besides Grandmother, we had been there for both Lindsay’s parents. But I had not felt before as I did now. Perhaps because I was older; perhaps because he had been such a presence—in our lives, as well as in himself. Even last night he had been there, silent and immobile, but still it was he, his corpse. Now there was only the sealed coffin being lowered into the deep-dug grave; and the smell of newly turned earth and of the sea; and the sound of the sea and Sonya’s sobs and Reverend Endicott saying dust to dust. Grandfather was the dust he spoke of. There was a cramp in my heart, like some hand had caught and squeezed it. Michael felt the same, I’m sure, but he stood as straight and stiff and dry-eyed as I did, watching the coffin go down.