At that moment two of the Bhais who had been gambling at the back of the tent came around to ask Michael when their meal was going to be sent to them; and so that no mistake could be made as to their meaning, they made eating motions by stretching their mouths wide open and pointing inside them. Michael’s fury turned on them—in any case, he hated them, ever since he’d come. It may have been these feelings, festering inside him, which were responsible for his sick look and the sore on his mouth that didn’t heal. That was how it was with Michael—he turned everything inward on himself; but it had never harmed him before, perhaps because up till now all his deeper feelings had been good and noble.
Bari Rani spoke across him to the Bhais in the language he and I didn’t understand. Whatever it was she said, it made them draw closer together as if they were getting ready for attack or defense. Advancing toward Michael, they stood and looked at him. “Michael dear,” said Bari Rani in a sweet, subtle, insinuating tone, “you’re not very well, why don’t you go and rest. Don’t you think he ought to?” she said to me, but I wasn’t about to be drawn to her side against Michael.
“That’s all anyone can ever think of,” said Michael. “When someone’s serious, they’re sick. . . . Yes I know,” he said when she was about to speak again, “it’s the climate. But there’s nothing wrong with the climate, it’s everything else. Every rotten thing else,” he said, and in a way that made her turn again to me and, getting no response, to the Bhais, who stood there in readiness.
But Michael laughed: “You can call them off. I’m not crazy”; and to them he said “Don’t panic, you’ll get your food.” They waited for Bari Rani’s command, and when she hesitated, Michael laughed again. “It’s all right, I’m telling you—I’m not dangerous.”
She didn’t seem at all sure of that, and to see her dubious about him got me mad. I told her, “Get your watchdogs away from us.” She communicated with them again. Though I couldn’t understand the words, I sensed some other secret exchange hidden inside them. The Bhais withdrew, leaving Bari Rani facing the two of us. She was in a dilemma, I could see. She wanted to get back in the tent to the hostess duties she performed so well; but she didn’t want to leave us on a note of hostility. It was not so much that she was afraid Michael would rush in there but that she might lose us—that is, our allegiance, or rather, our money. What power this money gave us—without it, what were we but a couple of American kids who were getting in her way and whom it was just the easiest thing in the world to have thrown out. But there we stood, and had to be cajoled.
We both wanted to save her the trouble; and anyway what could she say to allay his doubts, when these were only too visibly confirmed by the goings-on inside the tent. We both told her not to worry but to go and help the Rawul entertain his guests. She said she wasn’t worried about anything except Michael’s health; that she felt he had been working too hard, had had to bear too many responsibilities by himself—“Where’s Crishi?” she interrupted herself at this point, and she couldn’t have said anything that so diverted our attention from the party inside.
Michael said “Don’t ask about him—he has a lot of things of his own to do, a lot of other interests.”
Bari Rani said to me, “Is he in the hotel? Why don’t you go and find him? He ought to be helping Michael and all of us down here.”
When I promised her I would, she was partly satisfied to leave us, though not without first trying to make me understand that Michael needed watching. “He’s been working so hard,” she said, once more passing her hands over his chest so that he stiffened against her. With a last half-warning, half-pleading look at me, she went inside. I was glad to be alone with Michael. And he with me—he must have been waiting for this moment and said at once: “Sonya’s right. Tom’s right. We should go.”
My heart leaped up in shock; at the same time my mind began to work furiously, getting together reasons to refute him. As though he knew them already, he said “Sometimes you just have to admit you’ve made a mistake.”
He was still standing at the open door of the tent and could look inside at the feasting. I felt it to be important to turn him away from that sight, for anything I said would be at once contradicted by it. I took his arm and pulled him into the semidarkness of this newly planted garden, between the tent and the looming ship of the hotel. “The Rawul told you,” I said urgently. “How we have to be practical and do things we don’t care for if we want to get even halfway to our ideals. He’s told you. Do you think he likes all this any better than you do? No he doesn’t!” I at once answered myself, not giving Michael a chance to say yes.
“It’s not only that,” he said, gritting his teeth. “It’s not only negative that I don’t want any of this. I’m positive too—absolutely positive what I do want: Sonya and I’ve been talking. Don’t think she’s tried to change me or anything. But I’ve changed myself, by myself. It’s like you think and think and think—about what you want and don’t want; about what you’re going to do and not going to do: and all the time something quite different is preparing inside you, so suddenly you know: not what you want to do but what you have to.”
I said “You mean go back to Propinquity; take back the house on the Island; you mean go on fighting with Mother and despising Manton and everything else you’ve always run away from. All that damn neti.” I looked at him sideways: In half-darkness, his pale face illumined only by the glow of the lanterns strung up around us, he appeared most beautiful to me. By which I mean he was like the old Michael before we came here. No, from long before that—what seemed long, long before that—I guess I mean before he ever met Crishi and the Rawul and Renée. But you can’t go back like that in time even if you want to. I felt I had to think fast, talk fast, hold on to him, get him on my side; I said, in a half-complaining voice: “And whatever you did, I followed you. Whatever it was; wherever you went; you never had to ask me or explain anything. I was right behind you.” Thinking or maybe only hoping that I saw a shadow of doubt pass over his face, I went on more directly: “It was you who met Crishi first; and liked him—very very much. You liked him very much. It was your fault,” I said like an accusation.
But he wouldn’t take that; he said dryly, “I never asked you to follow me there. I’ve liked other people before—in that way—but I didn’t ask you to fall for them.”
“Is that all it was then? Just falling for him—and when it’s over, it’s over? Is that all it was?”
I was really shaken, and he was too and said “No. That’s not all.” But I knew he meant the Rawul and the movement—everything that was at this very moment being dissipated for him in a vulgar feast. If he had said, about the Rawul and his movement, “It’s all a fraud. Let’s go home,” I wouldn’t have made a fuss; I would have followed him as usual. But he was saying it about my marriage—about me and Crishi—and there I couldn’t, wouldn’t, wouldn’t ever agree with him.
He said “I told you, you have to admit sometimes when it’s a mistake.”
“Yes when it’s something small that doesn’t matter very much—”
“Is that what you think it was for me?” he answered. I took him up at once and said “No it wasn’t and that’s why you can’t walk away from it, any more than I can . . .” I failed to conclude the sentence, not caring to point out that it was two different things we were committed to. But I felt he was eluding, slipping away from me—that I wasn’t making enough impact on him. After all I didn’t have much practice at it because it had been always he who thought and decided for both of us, not the other way around.
But he was fair-minded, with me as with everyone. He went his way and asked no one to follow him—no, not even me; he never had; it was out of my own free will and feelings for him. So he could now say “Well you know, H., you don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to,” and say it calmly, as though it were a possibility. But for me to admit that it was, that it could be, was like breaking off a part of myself. I was so shaken, I could only spea
k in a hushed voice; I said “You mean you go, and I stay.”
We looked at each other. Although there was no physical resemblance between us, this act of being face to face had always been and still was at this moment like facing a mirror. The possibility of our parting may have been open—but how do you tear yourself apart from your own image or reflection?
“You’re so impatient,” I said. “We’ve spoken about this. It’s only here that it’s—you know—” I made an impatient gesture toward the tent behind me. “But once we get to the Rawul’s kingdom and can really work—devote ourselves—once we get up there—”
“You mean where they come from?” His gaze had shifted from my face over my shoulder. I turned around. Some Bhais—four of them—had approached us. I must say, they looked like terrible brigands standing there. One of them was repeating that eating motion into his open mouth, the others were grinning; nevertheless, there was something menacing about them.
“They’re all right,” I said. “It’s just we can’t understand what they say.”
“Oh no, I understand,” he said. “Food. Drink. Money. Hold on!” he called to them. “I’ll get it for you.”
“You needn’t be doing this,” I said.
“Who else then?”
Not wanting an answer, he went away to where a makeshift kitchen had been set up behind some shrubbery. I followed him and heard him give orders to the cooks there, doing his best to make himself understood. It was wrong to leave him with these menial tasks he hated, and nothing else. But where was Crishi? I went toward the hotel to search for him.
The nearer I approached the hotel, the louder it became. All the lights were blazing and the sound of several bands came blaring out. Many strains of music were mixed up—there were ballroom-dance tunes, some disco music, some South Indian sort of toneless throbbing rhythms, and one of those festive instruments they play at weddings. Somehow all this did not result in hideous cacophany but blended into festive noise. The whole huge hulk of the hotel, rearing up into and eclipsing the night sky, seemed to be shaking and vibrating with this noise; it was really like some big liner sailing by with parties of revelers on board. And inside it was packed with people in their shiniest clothes and jewels, for several wedding and other receptions were going on simultaneously in the various banquet halls. The inside of the hotel was of white marble and it was flooded by a light so bright that it appeared almost supernatural. There must have been hidden lamps and tube lighting, but the entire illumination seemed to be concentrated in, to stream down from the gigantic crystal chandelier that reached right from the highest point of this tall building to the white marble fountain in the center of the lobby.
To take advantage of the many guests and visitors that night, the shops in the arcade were wide open for business and had hung their most tempting carpets, shawls, and brocades outside their doorways. I stopped by the jeweler’s, to see if maybe Crishi was there; the jeweler’s assistant was in the front of the shop, displaying some very good fakes to a couple of American customers who were making knowledgeable comments about them. I peered past them into the back room, and there I saw the jeweler himself. He was crouching on a stool over a little white-covered table and displaying some jewels to a customer who turned out to be Sonya. From the confidential way he was talking to her, I suspected it wasn’t about the jewels. When I entered and she looked up at me, my impression was confirmed, for her eyes were full of tears, so I knew he had been telling her all sorts of things about Crishi. All those old past things!
I said “What are you buying?” and sat down next to her on another little stool. I didn’t want to leave them alone any longer. But I knew it was already too late, and he had told her more than I would have wanted her to know.
“Oh darling,” she said; she was sobbing and I pretended not to know what about. I looked at the jeweler, who was concentrating on his stones and arranging them for her inspection. I said to him, “Why don’t you go and see to your customers outside.” When he hesitated, I laughed. “We won’t make off with your stuff,” I said, so he had to go though I could see he didn’t really trust us.
The moment he went into the front of the shop, I put my arm around her and said “You mustn’t cry about it.” I went on, “How do you know what he told you is true? . . . And anyway, you knew some of it—about being in jail and all that—”
“But the rest! The rest!”
She drew away from me; she was so horror-stricken, I wondered exactly what he had told her. Probably about the English wife and who knows what else, true or false, but I didn’t want to go into it. I said “You’re willing to listen to anyone—any stranger—who’ll say anything about my husband. . . . How do you know it’s true?” I urged her again. “Any more than you know if these stones he’s selling you are true or fake—” I picked one of them up, a little black stone that didn’t look like anything, but she quickly took it from me. She said it was a very unlucky stone for me, the sort that would have a baleful influence over my destiny. I said “But if what he told you is true, isn’t it too late to worry about my destiny?”
“Oh my darling, don’t laugh about it. Your grandfather always laughed—all of you did—so I kept quiet. But if I had only spoken—as long ago as your wedding night—”
“Why? What happened that night?”
Instead of answering, she seized my hands and said “Let’s go home, darling, everyone wants it.”
She was pleading, but I withdrew my hands and said “Not everyone. Not me. . . . No nor Michael either!” I cried, more stubbornly than necessary since she hadn’t mentioned him.
I don’t think she believed me, but she changed her plea to: “Then for my sake. Only for me. Please, darling, for Sonya.” She desperately patted her little stout bosom in floral silk and looked at me with faded blue eyes brimming. “What if something were to happen—” She became desperate and didn’t even hear me when I laughed at her and asked “Such as what?” “I’d never forgive myself,” she said, wringing her hands and went on: “And what would I tell him, what would I say to Grandfather?”
There was a pause. In the front of the shop, separated from us by a curtain, we could hear the jeweler trying to sell his clients his fake pictures; but Sonya went on talking as if she and I were alone and in a very private place. “Yes darling,” she said, “I talk to him. You might as well know it—how Grandfather comes to me at night and says ‘Well, Sonya?’ and I tell him what’s happening, what I’ve been doing and about you two children. He wants to know everything there is to know about you and Michael, he asks me the most searching questions, you know how he does so that you have to tell him even if you’d rather not. . . . I know you don’t believe me, darling, but it’s true, and if it weren’t I wouldn’t want to go on living.” She dried her tears.
No I didn’t believe her—how could I—and yet I wished I could because I thought it was so beautiful, such a wonderful thing to hope for. I mean, if you love a person that much in your life, then you can’t be separated from him afterward. I wanted to ask her more—sort of detailed questions about Grandfather—but she went back to her first theme and the tears she had been drying welled up again: “And now what can I say to him—if something happens—”
“But what could happen?” I cried. Instead of answering me, she put up her hands to ward off something—it might have been a blow or it might have been a vision. At that moment the jeweler stuck his head through the curtain, I waved him away in anger, and though it was his shop, he obeyed me. Maybe he felt guilty—he was guilty, for it was he who had filled her with this fear: by telling her about Crishi’s first wife, I suspected, and what she had done to herself. I made Sonya look at me and said “Do you really think I would ever—” She wouldn’t let me get any further; she put her hand over my mouth but I took it away and went on speaking: “It’s not the same at all—for one thing, she was very young—”
“Yes and you’re fifty years old,” Sonya said, not humorously.
“
And she was pregnant—no I’m not—and he was away and there was no money—which you can’t say about me, can you, and besides,” I said firmly, “I’m happy. I’m very very happy.”
“And Michael?” she came back at once.
“You know perfectly well how it is between me and Michael. Whatever one of us feels the other one is the same.”
“Not now,” she said in sadness.
“How do you know that? Shouldn’t I know better than you?”
“Not now.”
I was silent. I was getting annoyed with her. She was coming between Michael and me, influencing him to feel and want in a different way from me. “What’s he said to you?” I asked her.
“Does he have to say anything for me to know? Or you, darling—don’t you think I know about you too without your having to tell me?”
I was too fond of her to contradict her; but it had never been true. Although she so deeply cared for us, she had never understood us in the way she thought she did. And now she knew even less—now she had absolutely no idea!
“And we did talk,” she went on. “You were there too. We discussed it and Michael thinks—”
“What?”
“Michael wants to see his little baby brother. Don’t you? Don’t you want to see him?”
I said “You know how much Michael cares about babies and such. All right! Supposing he has for the moment got sentimental—or whatever you want to call it,” I conceded. “How long do you think it’ll last? And you know how it is once he gets together with Manton, how he can’t stand him for five minutes—”
Sonya was pained by the way I spoke and she interrupted me: “They’ve both changed.”
“They’ll never change.” I spoke with confidence, and I did know better than she did. She never really saw people but wrapped them in her own romantic ideas about them.
“Michael has,” she said. She looked at me sideways, shyly but speculatively, wondering how I would react. I tried to hide it but I didn’t react well. She and Michael had talked together too much—she had encouraged him, thinking she was helping him by making him talk about himself. She was wrong. I remembered how Crishi had asked “When’s she leaving?” He had known before I did that it was better she should.
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