The only one who was not there as a member of the family was Anna. In fact, she was packing upstairs, for she was moving out that day. I had heard her during the whole of last week making phone calls to find a place to live. She spoke in a soft low cajoling voice, which wasn’t part of her personality and which she took off the moment she replaced the receiver, looking disgusted, like one who had done this before and was sick of it. But she tried to make her own arrangements and never complained or confided in anyone. She and Crishi were no longer on speaking terms—she never came out when he was there, and he never went in to her. There was something still, self-contained, and brooding about her. I found it impossible to put her out of my mind; and when, during the Rawul’s birthday breakfast, the doorbell rang in a very short, sharp way, I knew at once it was she. I went to open the door before anyone else could, and there was Anna wearing a hat and coat. She asked me to go and call Crishi; something in my expression made her laugh and she said “I only want him to help me carry down my luggage.” I said “I’ll do it”; she said “No, you don’t have to do all his work for him.” She was not looking at but past me, alert for an opportunity to push her way in. I was determined not to let her. I put the chain on the door and we stood on either side of it, both of us waiting. I was afraid Crishi would come to see what was happening, so I held on to the dining-room door from outside. She said “One day you’ll want to do the same thing yourself.” I didn’t argue with her, just held on to the dining-room door. When someone tried to open it from inside, I threw my whole weight against it.
But it wasn’t Crishi, it was Michael. It was his voice I heard say “What’s the matter?” I let him come out; he went to the front door and took the chain off, for now there were two of us to stand guard, facing Anna. We were very unevenly matched; he and I were not tall, but we towered over her small figure. On the other hand there was the possibility that she had a gun, and this was in his and my mind, and maybe it was what made her so tense and determined as she faced us in her hat and coat and clutching her handbag. I could feel Michael beside me revving himself up—getting himself to that pitch of precision that all his exercising was about—and next moment he put out his hand to grab her bag; but she was as quick as he was and swung it aside and he grabbed hold of her wrist instead. They were locked together in an impasse, with her not letting him get hold of her bag but he, with his grip on her wrist, preventing her from opening it and taking out whatever was in there. Clearly it was now up to me, and I caught hold of her bag. I was surprised by the fierceness of her struggle, but obviously she didn’t have a chance with him holding her, and I soon had the bag. I opened it and found the gun I had been searching for all these days. The moment Michael let her go, she pounced on me to try to get the purse back; he pulled her off me and threw her down on the floor and, taking the handbag from me, he extracted the gun. He tested the safety catch, and he put the gun in his pocket. Anna was lying on the floor with her skirt half hitched up and one leg bent in an awkward way under her; her hat was still in place, and she looked up at us from under it with the eyes of a fierce, hurt little animal. Now that we safely had her gun, I wanted to help her get up, but Michael said “Let’s go,” and flung her handbag down on the floor beside her so that the harmless contents scattered, some on the landing and some on the stairs. We didn’t wait to see her retrieve them but returned to the breakfast table. Crishi looked up at us and said “Where have you been, you two?” rather casually, as if he weren’t expecting much of an answer.
It was the second time I had seen Michael in action—the first time had been with Nicholas in the gallery—and I was impressed with him. I mean, the way he was so decisive and in a completely unreflecting way, although he was by nature such a deeply reflective person. And that same day I saw him again in this new aspect—or maybe it wasn’t new, maybe it was the same Michael, my Michael, completed, fulfilled. An important part of that day’s festivities was the ceremonial march in the back garden, followed by a display of martial exercises. Michael was sort of the commanding officer of the squad of followers, and they filed past the Rawul, who, standing under an umbrella, took the salute from the stone-flagged terrace at the back of the house. Of course it was raining and of course they got wet, but that had been expected—in fact, in his inaugural address the Rawul had made a little joke about it, how they were now in that part of his dominions where he had to contend for his title with the god of rain. But as with all his jokes, he lifted the theme into a higher sphere: saying that it was an essential part of his movement, and of his inspiration, that all landscapes, all climates as well as all peoples and nations, should be comprised within it. Anyway, there they were, now marching, now displaying their martial skills of judo and karate in the rain. I don’t know if it was an inspiring scene for everyone, but it was for me. Unlike the front yard, laid out with flower beds and bordering the main road, where commuting cars whizzed past, the back had been left more untended to give some impression of a rural retreat. It stretched for quite a way, and beyond it there was an open field with a horse or two in it from the neighboring riding school. Although beyond that there was a new housing development and a glassware factory, these were blotted out by the rain so that the mists and vapors enveloping them might as well have been enveloping a lovely English landscape of fences and stiles and yellow-and-green fields with haystacks in them and brown cows. That was the background; and in the foreground there were Michael and the followers—I must admit I didn’t take much notice of the latter, except for being impressed by their eagerness, which made them absolutely impervious to the rain. This eagerness, so it seemed to me, reached its highest pitch in Michael as he shouted his words of command and wheeled and turned and threw up his knees. He radiated pride and joy and certitude, and these were also there in the Rawul watching from under his umbrella—I don’t know if they flowed from him to Michael or from Michael to him but I suppose it was a sort of two-way traffic between them, each inspiring the other, each believing with an ardent soul in the high destiny of the Rawul’s mission.
I don’t think the others were watching as intently as I was. They were all there, ranged behind the Rawul, everyone who had been at breakfast that morning; but they were fidgety and Bari Rani and the girls were whispering together till Renée shot them an angry look. But Renée herself appeared to be restless and looked as often at her watch as did Bari Rani. And afterward, when the audience filed into the drawing room for the Rawul’s speech, several of our family members lingered around the house with other matters than the Fourth World on their minds. The Rawul carried on undeterred, speaking with the same fervor as always and saying the same sort of things: about his dream, and looking up at the sky, and one world for one mankind. It was wonderful how consistent he was, and how it didn’t make any difference to him whether he was under the tree at Propinquity, with the lake and the sun setting in it, or here in this cramped, genteel house in a London suburb, and the electric light shining dully against the windows, where the day was dying without ever having come alive.
I didn’t see Crishi in the room, nor Renée, so I knew they were together somewhere and went to look for them. They were in one of the upstairs bedrooms and I went straight in there as unhesitatingly as Renée came in when Crishi and I were together. They didn’t challenge my right to do so, nor did they try to disguise their intimacy. Renée was lying on the bed, on her back and with her arms flung out; and Crishi was exasperated with her and at the same time trying to comfort her, trying to make things sound better than they were. He pointed to me as a good example, how willing and happy I was to pack up and leave and go along to wherever we were going. “Aren’t you?” he said, and I said yes I was. He smiled at me warmly—and when she wasn’t looking, he cast his eyes up in comic exasperation for my benefit. She said “I’m sick of running here and there to raise money, and then more money, and what’s it all for? . . . Has he started down there yet?” I said “Yes the Rawul has started his speech and we’d better go.”
“Oh we’ve heard it before, so often it’s coming out of our ears,” she said. Crishi sat down beside her on the bed and said “How you carry on”; and when he was close to her, she flung herself across his lap in one compulsive movement and clung to him. He looked so slight and she so large, I thought she must be awfully heavy for him to support. He didn’t appear to be overwhelmed but was lightly stroking her back to comfort her; it was a son comforting his mother more than anything else, and I felt nothing except maybe sorry for her.
After a while she sat up. She said “And what for? What’s it all been for? I don’t care for anything except that you and I should be together.”
She said this quite openly before me; and it seemed all right to me—or he made it seem all right by being turned toward me even while he was holding her. She was like the mother he had to humor and I the wife he wanted to be with.
“It’ll work out,” he promised her. “Rupert’s here, and when we want to come back it’ll have blown over.”
“And then you’ll start again.”
“No I won’t. Why should I? I won’t have to. I’ll be such a good boy, you’ll see. Just wait till June.”
“Yes,” I said, “in June I’ll get my money.”
She looked at me; and I back at her, quite calm and reassuring. It did seem a very good thing to me that in June everyone’s financial problems would be solved, and they wouldn’t have to continue what they had been doing. My assurance calmed her; and Crishi said “Surely you can wait till June?” in a sort of coaxing way, playing with her large ringed hand in his, but at the same time looking at me and appearing to promise me something different from what he was promising her, as to what it would be like after June.
I didn’t mind leaving them alone—she wanted it so much—while I went down to join the Rawul’s audience. But on the way I met Rupert. He was sitting on the bottom stair, with his elbows on his big knees and supporting his head between his hands in a despairing attitude that was quite uncharacteristic of him. I mean, he was usually so upright and invincible, whatever happened to him, through all the ugly things that he had taken on himself. I sat beside him on the stairs, and he said “You’ll look after Robi, won’t you?” I knew Rupert was staying behind—he had to, because of his case—but this was the first I had heard about Robi coming with us. “It’ll be easier for him with you there,” Rupert said. “He’s rather nervous with everyone else. I suppose he’s nervous generally—we’ve been together alone too much. My fault. I gave him to understand I’d always be there.” After a while he said “I have to let him down.” And glancing up at the bedroom door where we both knew Renée was with Crishi, “I promised her the earth too and didn’t deliver.”
Rupert wasn’t the type to talk freely about anything, least of all himself; but I guess there was a bond between us. He may even have thought that our situations were alike—only there he was wrong, even though the stairs on which we were sitting led up to the door where my husband was with Renée.
We could hear the Rawul from inside the drawing room—his voice sounded high and bright as he proclaimed his new world order. He probably didn’t notice that we weren’t there; maybe he didn’t even glance toward his scanty audience of earnest English people. I think the Rawul was never much concerned about who was physically present, carrying as he did the cheering crowds of the future inside him.
Rupert said “She was bored from the first day she married me—bored with me and everything I thought I could offer her. Such as my freezing house which I loved, but all I ever saw her do there was walk around shivering and rubbing her arms. She couldn’t get rid of it fast enough; and to keep her, I let it go and sold whatever she wanted me to sell. I couldn’t have loved it so very much, after all, could I? Finally it was nothing to me, compared to her. It still isn’t; and all I regret is—you know—not coming up to standard. To her standard.” He looked at the door again and said matter-of-factly, “I suppose only Crishi does that.”
Crishi came out of the bedroom upstairs just then, glanced around, glanced down, saw me—“There you are, Harriet.” He had been looking for me! He had come out of that room, leaving Renée behind, to look for me! I forgot about Rupert that instant, rose from the step where I had been sitting with him, and walked straight up to the landing where Crishi was. He took my hand, and instead of going downstairs to the Rawul’s lecture as we should have done, we went up to the little attic room next to Babaji’s. Of course Babaji was gone; only the urn with his ashes was there on his bed, waiting to be taken to India. Crishi locked our door and we fell on the bed, laughing like runaways, escaped from somewhere or someone. We started kissing and never had his lips tasted so soft and sweet, like sweet soft berries, and when we took off our clothes, his skin was smooth as honey except for the places where it was puckered by his scars. With his clothes he had thrown off everything else, whatever worries he had, and his deals, even his own past and whatever might have gone wrong in it. “Isn’t this nice,” he kept saying as he kissed me again and again with those lips like berries. We clung together—it was wonderful the way our two bodies fitted into each other.
He started making plans. I don’t know for when, but the point of them was that they didn’t include anyone except him and me. We were going to get a two-seater convertible and keep driving till we were tired. If there was a big hotel, preferably by the ocean, we’d stay in that and dress up and dance in its discotheque, or if it was just some motel, we wouldn’t dress at all but stay lying around in bed eating fried chicken we’d sent out for. I assumed this trip was taking place at home in the States, but next moment he was talking about crossing the Alps, and then we were driving from Marseilles to . . . to . . . Istanbul; across every European border where they might search us and our car as much as they pleased and wouldn’t find anything because we wouldn’t be carrying anything. Perhaps we would get a dog, a German shepherd or golden retriever, and it would come with us in the car everywhere, except in some countries there would be trouble about quarantine so we’d better forget about the dog.
Then I made a mistake; I said “But we’re going to Dhoka.” As soon as I said it, I felt a shadow pass over his bright and happy spirit. I didn’t know why that should be but wanted above everything to get rid of it and went on quickly, “I guess you mean when we come back.” “Yes,” he agreed as quickly, “when we come back.” But the shadow remained.
Trying to return to our earlier mood, I said “All we need do is wait till June.” He agreed heartily and I went on, “We could go to Hong Kong if you like.”
“Hong Kong!”
“Your mother. Don’t you want me to meet your mother?”
He groaned, though it was partly in amusement. “Leave it, Harriet. Leave all that. It’s too much. . . . Isn’t it enough that you know Rani? That we have Rani?”
“She’s not your mother.”
“She’s adopted me.” And he invited me to gaze into his eyes, which he made very serious; but his mouth corners were twitching and next moment he was laughing and so was I and we rolled around a bit.
I couldn’t leave it alone. I said “I want to know everything about you and everyone who’s ever known you and everything you’ve ever done.”
Crishi groaned again and shut his eyes. When he opened them, they had a very young puzzled look in them; and when he spoke, he sounded genuinely aggrieved: “Why can’t we take it easy? Why does everyone want something all the time? Nothing is ever enough—whatever they’ve got, it’s never enough. Rani is like that, you are, Michael of course; what is it? What’s the matter with all of you? I can understand it with people who don’t have anything—who are sort of hungry, like my mother, and me, I guess, when I started out. My mother was so pretty, in her little pink negligee with swansdown on it. But there were weeks we lived on packet soups and pizza till she found someone who liked her enough to take care of us. Her and me that is. They weren’t always very nice people, but what could she do? She didn’t like to go out to work—she tried i
t, she took a job in one of the big stores in the makeup department, but her feet hurt from having to stand all day. Well, now she’s got her Chinese wrestler, she’s okay and can just sit and eat and grow fat and read palms and tea leaves or whatever. Kiss me, Harriet,” he ended up. When I did, he shut his eyes again and sort of sank down in what was bliss or relief—as if he didn’t want anything else ever except to be in bed with me. Of course that suited me too, better than anything.
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