Travelers

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  Gopi Is Displeased with Raymond

  Although Gopi had made no attempt at conversation during this tea party—he had sat there and scowled, disowning all of them—afterward it was not himself he blamed for its failure but his family and his guest. He was upset for days. When he was at home, he was sulky with his family, and when he was with Raymond, he kept picking quarrels with him. He found fault with Raymond’s living arrangements and sneered at all his little decorations. He characterized him as a fussy, snobbish English sahib. The tea party was never mentioned between them, but Raymond knew it to be the cause of Gopi’s displeasure. He had to admit that this displeasure was not entirely undeserved. It was true, he had tried hard—he had smiled, he had eaten to excess, and praised continuously—but he realized that Gopi was sensitive to the fact that inwardly he had remained withdrawn and critical.

  Lee came to see them quite often now and Gopi enjoyed her company. He made it clear that he enjoyed it more than Raymond’s. He would suggest some outing and then he would say to Raymond, “I think you don’t want to come.” Lee was surprised; she said “Oh, why not?” and Gopi would answer for him. He said, “He has been there before and he didn’t like it at all.”

  Raymond did not contradict. He suffered but acquiesced. He stayed in the flat by himself and put on records of Indian music. He had grown very fond of Indian music. It had become for him like a distillation of everything he loved in Gopi and everything he loved in India. These two were now inextricable.

  Lee and Gopi Eat Kebabs

  Gopi had taken Lee to the place where the best kebabs in town were to be obtained. He always knew the best places: there was one shop called Lahore Milk House that sold the best buttermilk; another, Mithan Lal Halwai, had the best jelabis; a third, Your Fry-Up Please, the tastiest fried fish in town. This kebab place was in the Muslim area, just opposite the big mosque. They sat at a table inside the dark interior of the shop; the man rolling and frying the kebabs sat at the front, facing the bazaar, amid cauldrons and pans sizzling on open fires. The shop was a family affair and everyone smiled in a knowing way and looked sideways at Lee. Gopi was embarrassed but also proud. Even the little hunchbacked servant boy who came to wipe the table with a filthy cloth smiled in the same way. But Lee didn’t notice anything, she was too busy eating the kebabs.

  Gopi liked seeing her eat. She made swift, neat, dipping movements into chutney and other side dishes and chewed and licked her fingers and enjoyed just like an Indian. She could eat the hottest food, and bit into fierce green chilis with relish. Watching her, Gopi commented, “You’re not like Raymond.”

  “No?” Lee said, too busy to be really listening.

  “No. He couldn’t eat this food. It would burn his mouth and how he would scream. And he couldn’t eat with his fingers either—oh, no, he has to have his knife and spoon. Like this,” Gopi said and gave an imitation of Raymond eating. He made very refined movements with imaginary cutlery. Lee, looking up briefly, laughed.

  “But you’re quite different,” Gopi said with enthusiasm, leaning across the table toward her. “You know what I think? I think you were Indian in your last birth.”

  “Really,” Lee said, too busy at present to realize that a very great compliment had been paid to her. “Hand me one of those, will you?”

  “These?” He held out a chili to her but instead of taking it in her hand she darted forward and bit into it. “Hm, lovely,” she said.

  Gopi burned and blushed. He was aware that everyone, everyone in the shop had been watching them and had seen her bite into the chili which he held out for her; and for them, as for him, the gesture was as intimate as a kiss. There was a great silent gasp. Even the party of Sikhs at another table—huge burly men who had seemed totally absorbed in eating—even they had seen and their mighty jaws stopped chewing in wonder.

  Someone came to serve them with a new plate of kebabs. He spoke to Gopi in an appreciative undertone. Gopi nodded and tried to smile. The man offered the kebabs to Lee, who said, “I couldn’t.” “Just one more, Memsahib,” said the man, holding up one tempting forefinger. “Oh, all right,” Lee said. The man winked at Gopi and moved off. The Sikhs made a joke to him as he passed and he answered with another joke. Everyone was having a grand time. To celebrate the occasion, someone put a record on the phonograph. It was a very old machine with a horn and the record too was very old. It was hardly audible, but “Ah!” everyone cried as they recognized the song. The woman’s voice that emerged from the scratching and crackling was laden with passion.

  “She is singing for her lover,” Gopi told Lee. “She says, ‘Love’s madness has carried me away in its embrace.’ It is a very old popular song. Everyone loves it. Ah!” He shut his eyes in ecstasy. “Now she is saying, ‘Save me, bring me back, don’t you see that I have been snatched away by this madness!’ They are very beautiful words.” He leaned again across the table toward Lee. “This place is a hotel also.”

  “I like it,” Lee said. She looked around the little dark room: it was painted green and was dense with the smell of spicy cooking and incense. She liked the song too and the way everyone was enjoying it so much.

  “The rooms upstairs are also very nice,” Gopi said. When she didn’t react, he swallowed once or twice and said with effort: “Would you like to see?”

  “Not especially,” Lee said. She had been inside a lot of homes by this time and was no longer as interested as she once had been in seeing how people really lived.

  “There’s a very good view,” Gopi said temptingly. Lee showed more interest—as he had expected. How these people cared for views! Gopi had learned this lesson from Raymond. What it was they saw so much in a view God only knew.

  “Would you like to see?” he asked again.

  “All right.”

  Gopi felt victorious. He raised his hand and soundlessly snapped his fingers. The proprietor nodded and beamed. The hunchbacked boy was sent over to their table; he was carrying a bunch of keys as well as his filthy cloth.

  Gopi jumped up. “Come on.” But Lee took her time; she leaned back luxuriously in her chair and held her stomach. “I’m so full,” she said happily. She saw everyone looking and smiling at her and smiled back. “Lovely food,” she said. They nodded at her encouragingly. The record came to an end on a last note of passion and pain. “Again!” cried the Sikhs.

  “Come on,” Gopi repeated. The little servant boy also stood waiting. Lee stood up slowly. “I can hardly move,” she said, holding her stomach again. Gopi followed her closely. He knew all eyes were upon him. He was a hero and he liked it, but he was also rather nervous. To hide this, he gave a jaunty hitch to his pants and walked in a careless, swaggering way.

  They groped up the dark staircase, holding on to both side walls for support. They came to a landing with two doors and the boy opened one of them with his keys. He ushered them in and shut the door on them. The mosque was so close it seemed to be right there in the room with its huge domes and its flight of steps and the booths huddled at the foot of the steps. Lee gave a cry of pleasure and strode to the window. She stayed there looking out, so enraptured by what she saw that she quite forgot about Gopi.

  He didn’t know what to do next. For a while he stood behind her, also looking at the view; but he couldn’t see what was so interesting about it—it was just the usual things. Then he turned back into the room and that wasn’t interesting either. He sat by the side of the bed and eased himself out of his shoes; this was always a luxurious moment for him and he sat wriggling his toes and pulling and cracking them. Next he lay down on the bed. His eyes roved over the ceiling and down the walls; there was nothing to hold his attention except a framed sampler in cross-stitch hanging crooked from a nail. So he looked at Lee standing by the window. How slim and strong she was; her light brown hair trailed down her back. He desired her very much.

  “What’s that?” she asked. “What are they doing? Gopi, do come here.”

  He got up and joined her again by the w
indow. He looked, but all he saw was the usual cotton-carders working the strings of their machines. Lee watched fascinated as the flakes of cotton rose and fell in fluffy clouds. Gopi put his arm round her and ran his hand down her hip. “Don’t,” she said and shook him off with an easy practiced movement.

  What next? He felt utterly bewildered. He also felt that he was letting himself down—and not only himself but all the men downstairs whom he knew to be having exciting thoughts about what was going on up here.

  Now Lee’s attention traveled from the cotton-carders to the steps of the mosque. There were people going up or coming down from the mosque, stepping around others who sat there to rest or had stretched themselves out to sleep. Many of them were beggars and some importuned the passers-by while others held out their mutilated limbs in silence. There were some terrible sights down there, but Lee had already seen many like them in the course of her travels. She had begun to accept the fact that it was the fate of many to suffer hunger and disease. Just now the beggars seemed like essential props placed on the steps of the mosque to remind those who were going in to pray of how much there was to pray for.

  Gopi again put his hand where it had been before; again she flicked him off with the same movement as of a practiced hand waving away flies. She really didn’t notice or care; she was too engrossed in what was outside. Now her eyes had traveled up to the great domes hovering against a sky of a cerulean blue which she had before seen only in paintings depicting the birth or death of Christ. At that moment she had what she thought must be a mystic experience: at any rate, she felt a great desire to merge with everything that was happening out there—to become part of it and cease to be herself.

  “Then why did you come!” Gopi suddenly shouted. She turned to him in amazement. She saw he was terribly upset.

  “What happened?”

  Her question, uttered in such innocence and her eyes also so clear and puzzled and innocent, increased his sense of humiliation. Why did she think she had been brought up here? What did she think of him? What opinion did she have of his manhood? Tears of rage stung his eyes. He could not put up with such insult. Suddenly he flung himself against her. He bit her neck like an angry animal.

  “Hey!”

  Lee fought back and she was quite strong. He was surprised by her strength and eased off a bit. He was still struggling with her but at the same time he also said in quite a begging voice, “Come and lie on the bed with me.”

  “No, why should I?”

  “Please,” Gopi said.

  “Certainly not.”

  Then he let her go and lay down on the bed by himself. He lay there face downward and appeared in despair. She didn’t know what to do about him. She wanted to get back to the window and look out and be filled by those wonderful sensations. But she couldn’t just leave him lying there. Reluctantly she went and sat on the bed beside him. He didn’t move. She couldn’t see his face because it was buried in a pillow. “Turn around,” she said. “Look at me.”

  “No, no. Please go away.”

  Although she would not at all have minded going away, it was not in her nature or upbringing to turn from distressful situations. She saw that they would have to have this out and prepared herself.

  He raised his head to see what she was up to: then he flung himself round to face her. “Yes, go. I know you want to.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you want to get away from me. Because you hate and despise me.”

  “Hate and despise?” she repeated. “Why are you talking like that to me?”

  “It’s the truth.” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye and saw he had her attention. “You know it’s the truth,” he said. Perhaps they could have a quarrel. He wouldn’t at all have minded that. Quarrels heated people, raised their emotions for one another; they could be exciting.

  But Lee was not disposed to quarrel. She was busy criticizing herself. It was not true that she hated and despised Gopi but if he felt that way, obviously something had gone wrong, she had failed him somewhere. “Gopi, I like you,” she said with sincerity.

  “Then why did you push me away?”

  “I didn’t mean to. I was thinking of something else.”

  What to make of her? A girl who had been brought to a hotel room—had been led upstairs in full public view—and now she said she had been thinking of something else. And this was not an inexperienced, unknowing Indian girl like his sisters, but a Western girl who was traveling all round the world by herself. Everyone knew that Western girls were brought up on sex, lived on sex. She must have slept with many, many men, over and over again. This thought suddenly excited and infuriated him. Who was she to push him away?

  “You’re a bitch!” he cried.

  “That’s not fair, Gopi,” she protested. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I never thought of it, that’s all.”

  “Never thought of it! As if you English or American girls ever think of anything else! Everyone knows it. Everyone knows what you are.”

  “Well, some of us,” Lee admitted, trying her very best to be impartial and truthful. “But it’s not true about everyone, you can’t say that. It’s not true about me.”

  Actually, he believed her. There was something disappointingly upright and cool about her as she sat there right next to him on the bed, prepared for serious discussion. But he didn’t want to admit it to be true. He wanted to think about her as one thought about these girls, as the people downstairs thought about her.

  “Then why did you come upstairs with me?” he taunted her. “Only for what? Only to sit here and talk and have conversation?”

  “And see the view.”

  He wanted to laugh and he wanted to cry. Everything was going so wrong.

  “It’s a marvelous view. I’m glad I came, Gopi. And now I’m glad to be with you and that we’re having this talk. It’s good to have the chance to clear up any misunderstanding. I mean, regarding the way I feel about you.”

  “How do you feel about me?”

  “I told you. I like you.”

  “Like! This is not what we have come upstairs for.”

  He was sitting up on the bed. They were very close together. She could see the tears that sparkled on his lashes. Although he already had a strong growth of beard, his complexion was as smooth as that of a child. His eyes were velvet and heavy. He looked very oriental. She wished they could be closer together in understanding, that she could explain herself better to him. But perhaps it was not possible by means of words.

  “Okay,” she said. She unbuttoned her blouse and took it off. She was wearing nothing underneath. He stared. He couldn’t believe it for a moment. Then he wasted no more time. He was a strong boy, brimful of appetite though not very skilled. She suffered rather than enjoyed while he lay on top of her. But she was glad to be doing this for him and, at the final moment, thought to herself that perhaps this was part of the merging she had so ardently desired while looking out of the window.

  By the Swimming Pool

  When Lee took her to meet Raymond and Gopi, Asha was delighted. She always liked meeting young people. She also adored Raymond’s flat and marveled at the way a man could make himself so comfortable and have all these nice ideas.

  She took a special fancy to Raymond. She sat close beside him and asked him many questions and while he was answering them she touched his knee in an affectionate way. She heard about how he had come here to spend a year or two on his aunt’s legacy, and she advised him about all the places he ought to see. She also invited him to come and stay in Rao Sahib’s state of Maupur: “If you really want to see India,” she said, sounding a little doubtful. Raymond said he did, very much, and he would love to come, thanks most awfully.

  “It’s very dull,” she warned him. “Right in the desert—nothing to see, nothing to do,” but then she looked round at the other two and added, “Of course if we all go, we could have fun. All four of us together.” She became enthusiastic about this idea a
nd seemed to wish that they could set off there and then. And failing that, why didn’t she take them out for a nice drive, she said, she had Rao Sahib’s car and chauffeur outside and they could go wherever they liked.

  They drove to one of the big hotels which had a floodlit swimming pool. Although it was so late at night, the place was quite crowded. There was a band playing in white tuxedos and waiters hurried about with trays to serve the guests lying in deck chairs. Lee and Gopi hired costumes but Asha said she was too ashamed of her figure and would just sit and watch them. Raymond also didn’t want to go in. Gopi asked him “Really? You don’t want to? Really?” very solicitously; he had been solicitous and affectionate toward Raymond throughout these last few days, ever since he had gone off with Lee and left Raymond deliberately behind. Now it was as if he wanted to make up for that and also any other harshness he may have shown him.

  Asha talked to Raymond. She still touched him as she talked, on his arm, his knee, but purely out of habit. While she had sat in the car beside him, she had squeezed herself against him but had felt no answering thrill. She understood; it did not make her like Raymond any less. Now she was telling him about the English governess she had had as a girl, a Miss Hart. Miss Hart had taught her to esteem everything English very highly. She had tried to curb Asha’s appetite for Indian food in favor of a healthy diet of roast mutton and caramel custard. It was eating all that spicy food, Miss Hart had explained, that made Indian boys and girls grow up so quickly, for it heated the blood and caused premature lust. She had also insisted on a lot of exercise and had taught Asha to play netball and hockey. Although there was no one to play except herself and Asha, Miss Hart had played in earnest and cheered the two of them on as if they were a full team. “Oh, butterfingers!” she had shouted; or “Well played, Alice!” She had always called her Alice; she said she couldn’t pronounce Asha.