Three Continents

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  Crishi loved being there; not inside the house but on the beach and in the ocean. He walked around in his swimming trunks and fell into the waves whenever he felt like it; and afterward he lay on the sand, drying off the drops of water that glistened all over him. It seemed he stayed outside most of the night too, for I saw him come in at dawn—tousled, damp, trailing the towel on which he had fallen asleep. He slept a good part of the day; when I went walking along the edge of the ocean, I saw him lying on his stomach in the shadow of a dune, and when I came back, having walked a mile or so, he was still there in exactly the same position. Later, when I went out again, he was gone, and I found him lying on the black rock, which jutted out into the sea. I walked past him and kept on walking, on and on, away from the inhabited part of the Island to where it trailed off to a point. Then there was only water, and the sucking, lapping sound of it close by and the dull roar of it in the distance.

  On my way back I stopped at the Linton house—the last on that side of the Island, ours being the last but one. Ever since I could remember, the Linton house had been deserted: in fact, abandoned, for it had been built too close to the ocean. For several years nothing much appeared to be happening to the empty house; it still stood there in its old-fashioned modern-architecture geometric style, but there was something eerie about it, for everyone knew it was doomed, with the ocean encroaching on it. One year the top cantilever collapsed, and after that the entire front of the house, and now all that was left was the rear wing and the garden and swimming pool. The place had not lost its eerie character—as well as the waves eating away at it, there were the rumors I had heard about what had gone on inside.

  Walking past it, I came to the black rock again, and Crishi was still sleeping there, face down. I sat near him and leaned against the rock to rest a bit before returning to the house. The sun was setting, and while that part of the ocean into which it was sinking was burning with fire and color, the rest of the water had grown dim and so had the sky and the dunes and everything else around, smoky blue with dusk. A slight chill had replaced the heat of the day; it ruffled my skin but Crishi kept on sleeping as though he were still drenched in sun. I looked at his naked back and the strange scars I had wondered about before, which appeared so incongruous on the satiny texture of his skin. While I was looking at him, he stirred and quite suddenly he turned from his stomach to lie on his back, and from that position he looked at me, entirely awake and alert. It was strange, the way he always gave this impression of alertness, even though his eyes were dreamy and deep. He smiled at me as he lay there, and his smile was also paradoxical, for while his teeth were white and sharp—one might almost say sharpened—his lips parting over them were silky soft. We didn’t speak; he didn’t even sit up. I don’t know how it happened—I think he gestured to me the way I had seen him do to Michael (“come here, I want you”)—gestured and smiled to me; I leaned closer over him, which seemed to be what he wanted, and then he put up one arm and drew me down with my breast touching his naked chest and my lips on his. A swooning sensation came over me, dark, vibrant, and pleasurable, an entirely new sensation for me.

  I should mention here that up till that time I had not had much sexual history. I never seemed to be interested the way other girls were, and when they started talking about it, I never cared to listen. I guess that is unnatural, and I know most the girls thought so. I did go out with boys, but I didn’t care for any of them and it was always because they wanted it and not I. I felt very remote from them, and it irritated me when they tried to get closer and to make scenes, because I preferred to be alone or with Michael. To oblige them, I let them touch me and all that, and a few times I went quite far—very far, all the way—but only to see what it was like and not really feeling anything and surprised that they felt so much. Sometimes there were older men too, and on the whole I preferred them—they didn’t seem to be in such a rush and also knew what they were doing better; but even when I liked them, such as Rob Kemp, my history tutor, I didn’t let them get in control of me. There was never any question of that; I just didn’t care enough, and on the whole didn’t care whether we kept on seeing each other or not. When Rob Kemp’s wife, Ann, started to fuss, I thought it would be easier to break off and I couldn’t understand Rob’s reaction—after all, it was he who had a wife and children and should have wanted to go back to them.

  After Crishi had kissed me, he seemed not to want anything more but said it was getting chilly and he was going up to the house to put on a shirt. I was surprised but not sad—no, glad to walk with him to the house; he was holding my hand and swinging it to and fro. Our house had been built some way back from the ocean and quite high up, so unlike the Linton house it had not been endangered in any way but stood as solid as the day it was built. Although the Island was quite populated by now, and the other big houses along the coast were hotels with many summer visitors, our house continued to look solitary. The dunes sloped away from it down to the beach and the only view was of sand and waves and the black rock and the wind blowing through the tufts of dry grass.

  Next morning I went walking along the beach again. It was quite early, but I saw Crishi was already lying there, apparently asleep. I resisted sitting beside him but walked on even farther than usual, almost into the town, past all the beaches belonging to the hotels, where children ornamented their sand castles with shells; and on to the public beach, where the lifeguard was, and the changing rooms, and the visitors lying on towels with their suntan oil. When at last I turned back, it had become hot, but the edge of the waves washing over my feet was cool and refreshing. I didn’t walk fast, I lingered—I wasn’t in any hurry; sometimes, to cool off, I went farther into the water. The nearer I got to where I had seen Crishi, the more I delayed—I wanted yet didn’t want to sit by him and put off the decision. When at last I approached him, Michael was there with him, and that was a relief and I didn’t hesitate to join them. Crishi was still sleeping, and Michael was looking at his back the way I had done the day before. It was very hot sitting there, for the sun had shifted and with it the shade in which Crishi had sheltered himself. Michael and I didn’t move or speak but waited for him to wake up.

  When he did, it was in the same way as before—suddenly turning around with his eyes wide open and alert as though he hadn’t been sleeping at all. He said “Are you crazy, sitting here in the sun,” and he got up and ran across the beach till he was in the shade thrown by the black rock. Michael and I followed, bringing the towel on which he had been lying. By the time we caught up with him, he was already in the water and called to us to join him. The title was coming in and the waves were high and he was letting himself rise and fall with them. Actually, one was not supposed to swim here but within the area where the lifeguard hoisted a white or red flag to say whether it was safe to swim or not. Crishi didn’t know that, or care about it, and we felt embarrassed to tell him; he looked so free and easy bobbing there and would surely have laughed at us for thinking of danger. We followed but didn’t catch up with him, for whenever we got near enough, he turned and swam out farther. Michael and I were good swimmers but not spectacular like Crishi, and we didn’t feel at ease in the ocean the way we did at the waterfall. The farther out I swam in the ocean—and Crishi was making us swim much farther than we wanted to—the more helpless I felt, not so much against the waves as everything beneath them, all the mysterious unknown dark goings-on there like some vast cosmic unconscious threatening to overwhelm the light of day or reason. But for Crishi the ocean seemed to be his favorite element, and he wasn’t being overwhelmed by the title surging up from God knows where but playing along with it, absolutely at his ease as he swam now on his back, now on his stomach, now tossed high up, now out of sight, but always laughing and calling to us. There came a point where Michael and I could no longer follow him but had to give up; unable to surrender ourselves like Crishi, we were struggling and that left us exhausted and a bit afraid. We had to turn back and wait for him on the shore. He st
ayed in there, went out even farther, evidently enjoying himself. When at last he swam back—not because he was tired but because we were waiting—he didn’t mock or reproach us for not following him but affectionately put an arm around each of us and walked back with us to the black rock, where we lay and dried off, with grains of sand sticking to the salt water on our bodies.

  Crishi explained to us that the reason he so loved being here was that he spent years living on the beach in Bombay. What years were those? we wondered, but he wasn’t very specific. We gathered that it was when he was a boy and there were other boys also living on the beach and it wasn’t too hard to survive. There were coconuts people didn’t want to finish eating and leftover grain and flour cakes the hawkers had thrown away, though you had to be careful with that—once a whole family of beggers had died from eating spoiled flour cakes; and the monkey keepers could spare some nuts and bananas, and there were tricks to perform if you were a reasonably good acrobat. Most of the year it was warm enough to sleep out at night on the sand, only during the monsoon you had to find somewhere else. Crishi was very good at diving for coins, he said, and he mostly did that when he moved north to Fatehpur Sikri, where tourists threw them into a tank.

  Well, all this seemed a far cry from the almost royal Crishi we knew, with his air of being the crown prince in the Rawul’s entourage. Yet somehow it fit, as if this free life by the sea were the ideal boyhood for a future prince, and that it was there that his slim brown supple subtle body was formed; only the scars on it remained unexplained. Michael and I were thrilled by what he told us. It was so remote from our own childhood, in Lindsay’s house and Grandfather’s embassies, with intervals in Manton’s hotel suites. And yet, although we had come by such different routes, sitting there by the black rock we felt very close together; at least Michael and I felt very close to him. Michael, who doesn’t say much usually, began quite a long speech about how he felt alienated by an environment of sea and sand, that this was too volatile for him and bright, and what he really liked was a rocky mountain landscape with practically no vegetation but only snow, ice, and caves inside the rock. Crishi laughed at that, and turned to me and asked me what I liked. I had never thought it out but I tried to; and what I came up with was that I liked sitting under a tree after it had been raining, and even with the sun shining, there was a breeze sweeping over the lake with the smells of wet growing things, and when it grew a bit stronger, some remaining drops fell down on me from the leaves of the tree; I said I would be looking at water—not restless water like the sea but a still, sweet body of it like the lake at Propinquity. I guess I talked a lot of nonsense. Anyhow, Crishi didn’t hear most of it—he was asleep before long, lying on the sand in the shadow of the black rock with Michael and me looking at each other across him, smiling at each other and feeling happy.

  Feeling happy: That was how it was with us during those days on the Island after Grandfather’s funeral. It might seem strange that we should be that way when Grandfather had just died, but to us it was perfectly natural—that he was buried here where he so loved to be and at the same time plans were being made for the house he had cherished. We felt vaguely that we were acquitting ourselves well as Grandfather’s heirs. Not that we gave much thought to our heritage—for one thing, because at that time we were not concerned with heritage, either as a concept or as property, and also because we were so entirely taken up with Crishi. We spent every minute we could with him—all day, that is—and he was very nice to both of us. I knew he could be impatient and imperious, but he never was at that time; probably because he was so relaxed, sleeping on the sand and swimming in the sea. We stayed outside till it got dark, going in only for the meals the followers prepared for us, and by night time we were so drugged with sun and sea air and, as I said, happiness, that we fell asleep immediately.

  One night—a week after Sonya and Manton’s departure—I woke up suddenly, as if someone had called me. As a matter of fact, someone had: Crishi had come into the room and stood by my bed. I thought oh my God, what shall I do; my heart beat very fast—I didn’t want to sleep with him, not now, not yet. Also I think I had just been dreaming of him; anyhow, he had been somewhere in my dream and I felt it difficult to reconcile that dream figure, which had risen from inside myself, with the real Crishi. But it seemed all he wanted was for me to come out on the beach with him. I was relieved and got up very quickly and slipped on a robe, for I was naked, which was the way I always slept. We went through the sleeping house, past Michael’s room. I had expected that we were going to wake up Michael too, but this was not Crishi’s intention. When we got on the beach, he said “Why don’t you take that thing off,” meaning my robe. It seemed a good idea, and I did so and left it lying there. It was very pleasant to walk that way on the empty beach, where everything shimmered with a pale hidden light from the moonless sky, or was it from the ocean? In this ghostly seascape we too were like ghosts—I was white and naked, and Crishi wore only a pair of pajama trousers, the Indian kind, wide and white, billowing out from the waist. I might have had difficulty knowing what to talk to him about, but he was fluently making the sort of conversation a boy is supposed to make with a girl he is walking out with. In fact, he was quite banal, telling me what sort of cars he liked to drive.

  We walked toward the end of the Island, in the direction of the Linton house, and when we drew level with it, Crishi said “Let’s go in.” I didn’t want to, I liked it out here on the beach, but he said “I’ve never been in,” so we went. It was eerie—as I said, the front of the house was gone, and you couldn’t forget that sooner or later the rest would go too, for there was the pounding sound of the sea that was coming to get it. We looked in at the window of the long room at the back, which was still intact. It had been a ballroom, where they had given parties and dances; though the furniture had long been removed, some textured panels remained on the walls, and the ceiling was painted with ogres, angels, and unicorns. The Lintons had been a young couple about the same time as Manton and Lindsay, and while at the beginning their marriage had been happy or, anyway, high-spirited, later it turned terrible and the Island rang with wild rumors about them. Finally, Mrs. Linton was found dead in the empty swimming pool, and Mr. Linton was charged with murdering her, and though acquitted, he killed himself within a year. I told Crishi some of this; I didn’t know too much. Grandfather never talked about it, and while the local people and Sonya did, I wasn’t that interested in listening.

  There was a terrace outside the ballroom and some steps leading down to a sort of bower, which enclosed the swimming pool. The high bushes around it were straggly and overgrown, making the space inside appear like a forest clearing. The empty pool had a cracked mosaic of mermaids, and the same motif was repeated in a mural behind the bar built within a niche of the changing rooms, and also on the little circular dance floor facing it; a rusted music stand still remained, as did some bar stools to perch on. Crishi got up on one of them and called for a Manhattan with a cherry and laughed at his own joke. He seemed to like being here—he said he thought they must have had a pretty good time before everything went rotten. I wanted to leave, to get back on the beach, maybe even go home and go to sleep or wake up Michael.

  “What are you scared of?” he asked me, and then “Who are you scared of?” and then “Is it someone dead or someone living? Give us a clue,” and again laughed as at a good joke he had made. I shook my head—no, I wasn’t scared, I only wanted not to be in this place. He began to be very nice to me. We had been sitting side by side without touching—he didn’t even hold my hand as he sometimes did. But now he let his cool brown fingers rest first on my shoulder and then slid them down my arm and toward my breast, where he paused, hesitated, smiled. “Let’s have a look at you,” he said and held me at arm’s length and commented on my figure in such a natural way that I couldn’t help smiling with him. He said he guessed it could be called a good figure, if you liked this particular type, more boy than girl. “Look,” he said,
inviting me to study him as he had studied me, “not all that different, is it.” He undid the cord at his waist and let his pajamas fall, so that I could study his narrow hips and long thighs. Well, it was true, we were built along the same lines—the same as Michael too, except that Crishi’s penis was very different from Michael’s or any others I had seen. It was much longer and also darker, the darkest part of him; though slender, it looked very powerful, like a potent weapon; he had very little pubic hair and was uncircumcised. As my gaze so irresistibly lingered, he put both his hands over it and said I was making him shy; but next moment, not a bit shy, he touched my genitals, quite delicately and inquiringly. We moved together and we kissed, and this too was delicate, though no longer inquiring but affirmative, as it had every right to be, for by this time each tiny nerve in my body was quivering for him. It was long, long, long ago—in another life—but is very easy for me to remember.

  He took my hand and led me down the steps of the empty swimming pool. Although the rest of the bower was dark and overgrown, the pool itself was open to the moonless sky, which gazed down into it like another pool—not an empty one but filled with dim shifting clouds. We lay down on the mermaids, and I had hardly time to think “Not here,” when he was on top of me, very quick and ruthless. That potent weapon of his lived up to its appearance, and I cried out several times, as I had never done before; and he came much too quick for me, leaving me in tears of disappointment. He was amused and said “Better luck next time”; and to make up for it, he kissed me tenderly all the way down from my neck to my thighs.