Travelers

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  Besides finding jobs for her servants, Miss Charlotte had many other problems. One of these was all the old English people whom the mission had been caring for. Now she was trying to make arrangements to put all of them together in a home in Madras where they could be looked after by the church. But it was a very difficult task to persuade these old people to move out of their present homes. In a week or two, as soon as she had got the sale of the house on the way to a settlement, she was going to start off and travel around to the various places where they were scattered. Most of them were in the hills—in Simla, Mussourie, Ooty, Mount Abu. It would certainly be a nice trip for her—quite a little holiday—but in the meantime who was going to visit her friends in the home near the mission who were so used to her twice-weekly appearances? She really didn’t know whom she could ask to go in her place. There was a fractional pause, and then Raymond said, “I may be going away myself in a day or two.”

  “How lovely for you. Another tour?”

  “Well, no, actually, I’ll be going with a friend. He’s visiting his uncle in Benares.”

  “Benares is such a fascinating place.”

  “Yes,” Raymond said. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  Raymond Arrives in the Ashram

  Raymond had difficulties in finding the ashram. He had hired a taxi at the airport and they drove around for a long time before discovering that the ashram was not actually in the holy city but several miles outside it. By this time it was the driver’s mealtime and he said he could not go any farther, so Raymond had to get out with his suitcase. They were now in the middle of the holy city in one of a network of closely packed streets where tumble-down houses were perched above ramshackle booths. Raymond stood in the sun waiting for a taxi but the only transport available were cycle rickshaws. He had always looked with embarrassment on the passengers sitting at the back of these frail vehicles while the emaciated driver pulled and panted. However, when no taxi came and the sun got hotter and drew all sorts of fetid smells out of rotting vegetables and other refuse, he could hold out no longer. The rickshaw took him to a bus depot and, after a journey in a bus, he was deposited in the middle of what seemed to be an endless stretch of barren plains. Carrying his suitcase, he began to walk. The day ended, the sun began to set, the heat abated. Raymond did not notice. Sometimes he sat down to rest. He never thought he would find the ashram—he never thought he would find anything, or arrive anywhere—but suddenly, right there in that desert, there was a huge board which said in huge lettering: Universal Society For Spiritual Regeneration In The Modern World.

  Swamiji took it for granted that Raymond had come to stay in the ashram. He was glad. He assigned a place to him in one of the hutments, and Raymond lay down on a string cot and was at once asleep. When he woke up, it was morning and Lee was standing over him saying, “He wants to see you as soon as you’re up.”

  Raymond looked at her closely. At first sight she looked the same—unlike the other disciples, she did not wear a sari or an orange robe—but there was something in her face, her expression, that was different.

  “I wrote you such a lot of letters,” she said. “You never answered. And he kept asking for you.”

  “Has Gopi been here?” When she was silent, he continued. “Have you heard from him? Do you know where he is?”

  “Why, where should he be?”

  “He’s here in Benares. Staying with his uncle.”

  “So that’s why you’ve come,” Lee said.

  For a while they were silent. Then Lee said, “I thought you’d come because of what I wrote.”

  To this Raymond said nothing.

  “He thinks that’s why you’ve come.” She sounded both reproachful and unhappy. Raymond was sorry she should feel like that, but did not think himself to blame. He had not pretended that he had come on any business other than his own.

  He asked, “You haven’t seen him at all?”

  “Who?”

  “Gopi.”

  His face was strained, and Lee said, “My God, Raymond, are you still on that?”

  “He just went away. He’d been talking about it and I said all right I’ll come with you but he didn’t seem to care for that and one day he simply went off. Without a word to me,” Raymond said, swallowing as if he were swallowing something hurtful and bitter, aggrieved like a woman.

  “I hate to see you this way,” Lee said.

  “He sneaked away from me. Why did he have to do that? Does he hate me so much? I’ve tried hard to be nice to him—to make him like me and like being with me, and I thought he did, he said he did. But it seems I don’t mean a thing to him. Not a thing. After all this time.”

  “Asha’s here too.”

  After a pause Raymond said, “I didn’t know that.”

  “She wrote to me,” Lee said, stubbing her toe against the rough floor, embarrassed, not knowing whether she should have told him or not.

  “No, I’m glad you told me,” he said, guessing this. “He could have told me himself instead of all those lies. When did I ever try and stop him from seeing her? Did I ever say a word? On the contrary, I encouraged him—I even went along with him—the hours I’ve spent with those two. I never asked them to consider my feelings, and I’ll say this for them, they didn’t. But that’s all right, I’m not complaining, I asked for it myself. . . . I shouldn’t be saying all this to you.”

  “You shouldn’t be saying it at all! You shouldn’t be like this! No one should.”

  Both couldn’t speak for a while. Raymond felt shaken but also relieved to have been able to talk to someone. Lee was upset too—to see him in this state which she knew to be deeply wrong.

  “I’m glad you came,” she said at last with feeling. “Even if it was for the wrong reason. After you stay here for a while, listening to him, or just being near him, it’ll all change for you. You’ll see. It’ll just drop off and be nothing. All you’re feeling now and everything that seems so important to you: you’ll laugh at yourself. But I know it’s no use my telling you—you’ll have to learn for yourself, through him. . . . Are you all right in here?” she asked, looking round the hut. “Which is your bed? This one? One string is broken. We’ll get it fixed.”

  “I’m not staying here, you know, Lee.”

  She looked at him.

  “I’m leaving this morning. Isn’t there a hotel in town?”

  “Yes, for American tourists,” she said with scorn.

  “That will suit me then.”

  “But I thought—and he thought—”

  “I never said so.”

  She sat very straight on a bed, staring in front of her.

  “You know I can’t stay here,” he said. “It isn’t the sort of place I would ever stay at. You know that. I came to see you.”

  He noticed that she looked stricken and even afraid. She had always seemed invulnerable to him, but now he saw she was so no longer.

  “What will he say?” she asked. She lowered her eyes. “He’ll be angry.” She really was afraid, he could see.

  Swamiji Eats Lunch

  But in fact Swamiji didn’t mind at all. He even encouraged Raymond to go and stay in the hotel. He said that Raymond would be more comfortable there. He thanked him very sweetly for staying in the ashram for that one night and apologized for its shortcomings. Later he several times visited Raymond in the hotel. He seemed to like going there. The hotel was, as Lee had said, intended mainly for foreign tourists and had been made as comfortable as possible. It was fully air-conditioned and licensed to serve liquor, and there was a bar and a dining room with a buffet table at which cold cuts of meat were served. Swamiji always accepted the drink that Raymond offered, and usually had more than one; once or twice he stayed for a meal in the dining room and ate his way heartily through the full course, including the meat dishes. Sometimes he came alone, sometimes accompanied by Evie. Evie didn’t have any drink, or any meat dish either. She sat with her hands folded in the lap of her white cotton sari, waiting for
Swamiji to say it was time to go. Then she got up at once and they went home together on the bus.

  Swamiji unfolded his plans to Raymond. He was trying to organize a lecture tour in the United States and, wherever he spoke, he would gather new disciples and found a new center for his movement so that a network would be established from one end of America to the other. On the way back he would also lecture in Europe and found other centers there. With the funds collected from these foreign tours, he would build a big comfortable air-conditioned ashram here in the holy city, on the very site where his present ashram stood. This ashram in India would remain the main focus of the movement, and Swamiji himself would spend some time every year in residence there. But mostly of course he would be traveling—going from one center to the other, lecturing, gathering new disciples, establishing new centers in new countries until he had covered the entire globe and his movement had become a worldwide religion uniting men of all creeds and all colors into one family and so bringing peace and harmony into the world.

  It was, he explained to Raymond, essentially a movement of Today, of Now. In the old days men of high spiritual development had had only limited resources at their disposal with which to radiate outward; hence their influence had also been limited in scope. But nowadays, thanks to the developments of the modern world, everything could work jet-swift, enabling Swamiji’s beams to penetrate into the farthest corner of the remotest country on the map. That was progress indeed! Nor would Swamiji stand in its way but on the contrary he intended fully to avail himself of all its manifold devices. He would travel everywhere by airplane and helicopter, and also multiply his presence by means of television appearances. The printed word would not be neglected, and besides syndicated articles about himself and his work in all leading newspapers of the world, there would be feature articles with illustrations in photo magazines. The more subtle points of his doctrine would be expounded in published book form—and here Raymond’s advice would be particularly valuable to him, for he had heard from Lee, and heard with interest, that Raymond was in the publishing business. He nodded to Evie, who was nursing a cloth parcel in her lap. Evie unfolded the cloth, which was snow-white and tenderly embroidered by hand, to reveal a bulky manuscript within. This, said Swamiji, handing it to Raymond, was something of a first fruit of his literary labors—his and Evie’s—a collection of his discourses and significant sayings up to the present time. Of course the work would grow and swell into many volumes, for there would be many more discourses and Evie had the habit of taking down his sayings every day. Meanwhile, however, he would be glad to make a first offer of the present manuscript to Raymond’s firm.

  Raymond liked him. He found him to be cheerful and amusing company, a relaxed person though giving an impression of tremendous energy. Raymond liked it best when he came without Evie—he found it difficult to ignore her silent presence and felt compelled to keep offering her things: “You’re sure you wouldn’t care for a drink? Just a tomato juice? a Coke? a glass of water?” In reply, she put up one frail hand as if to say please don’t bother about me, I’m not here, or if I am, I am as nothing. But—unlike Swamiji, who did so without effort—Raymond could not regard her as nothing, and consequently it was a relief to him when she was left behind. He did wish, though, that in her place Swamiji would sometimes bring Lee and once he even asked him to do so. But Swamiji said no. He said Lee wasn’t ready yet to come out of the ashram and mix freely in the world.

  “But if Evie can come—” Raymond ventured.

  Swamiji vigorously waved his hand to and fro in a negative movement. He couldn’t speak, as his mouth was full of fish. They were in the hotel dining room, where Swamiji was Raymond’s guest for lunch.

  “Evie is quite a different case,” Swamiji said when he could. “It doesn’t matter where she goes, what she does, nothing can shake her.” He gestured to a bearer to bring the tray round again, and the man came hurrying over. Raymond had noticed that everyone was very eager to serve Swamiji. His air of authority pervaded the dining room. He was also an object of curiosity to the other diners who were mostly elderly Americans. It was not every day that they could see a holy man in an orange robe sitting right there having lunch among them. Swamiji remained quite undisturbed by the attention he was getting and went on enjoying his food.

  “Evie is firm,” he said. “I have made her firm. But Lee—” he laughed. “There is still a lot of work to be done with Lee.”

  “What sort of work?”

  “Ah, Raymond, that is a very long story.” He pointed his finger into his empty beer glass and the steward himself came quickly to refill it. “Thank you, my son,” said Swamiji, and drank heartily. “You see, Lee is now in my hands. She is my responsibility to mold and to make. But before I can mold and make, I have to break. The old Lee must be broken before the new Lee can be formed, and we are now only at the first stage of our task.”

  Raymond blushed bright pink. He could not speak for a while, afraid that if he did he might speak more rudely than he would wish. Swamiji asked, “Is this the butter knife?”

  “That one,” Raymond said, pointing to it.

  “Ah,” said Swamiji gratefully and proceeded to use it. He was always asking about these little points of etiquette. He was preparing himself for his foreign tours and did not wish to do small things incorrectly. He learned very fast—perhaps because he was so unembarrassed about it—and ever since his first visit to the hotel dining room had made giant strides forward in his table manners.

  “But who decides that?” Raymond managed at last to ask in a steady voice.

  “Decides what?”

  “When someone has to be”—Raymond swallowed, trying to speak without distaste—“broken and remade.”

  “The guru decides it.” Suddenly Swamiji laughed at the expression on Raymond’s face. “But that is another very long story and why should I spoil your lunch?”

  “No, I want you to tell me.” When Swamiji continued to laugh and shake his head, he said, “Why not? You think I wouldn’t understand?”

  “With your mind perhaps yes, but there where it really matters—this fish is quite delicious, I think I shall have one more little piece, what about you?”

  “And Lee—does she understand where it really matters?” He squirmed on the last phrase.

  “She wants to. She desires to. She longs to with all her being.” He put down his fork and looked sideways at Raymond with his shrewd, narrow, laughing eyes: “But you don’t want to, you don’t even begin to want to.”

  “That’s true.”

  “So we can be excellent friends, and I think we are excellent friends, you and I, isn’t it, but I can never be your guru.”

  Raymond laughed. “Perhaps that’s just as well.”

  “But of course! Of course! It is a great relief to me. Do you think it is easy,” he said, smiling but serious, “to be someone’s guru? To take over this responsibility so that the other person need do nothing but have trust and faith? Only to say: now I am yours, take me, do what you like with me; and so this person is in the guru’s hands and the guru carries this person over stick and stone.”

  As he spoke, his eyes darted here and there and he was aware as always of everything that went on around him. He was aware, for instance, that one of the American ladies at the next table had been trying to catch his eye; so he allowed it to be caught and even answered with a smile which made the lady blush like a girl, and drop her eyes, and pat the pearls around her elderly neck.

  “Yes, Raymond, I think you are a little bit angry with me about Lee, isn’t it? Perhaps you are thinking—look at him, the old rascal, he comes here, he eats and drinks and enjoys to his heart’s content, while my poor friend is asked to give up everything. But please understand—it is only when you have given up all enjoyment so that it is no longer enjoyment, it is only then that you can have these things back again. How far Lee is still away from this goal! I have to help her and guide her every step so that she will know that every
thing is nothing and also that she herself is nothing. Only then can she belong to me as the disciple must belong to the guru.”

  The bearer came with the next course but Swamiji ignored him, for he was taken up with what he was saying: he leaned toward Raymond and his eyes did not look shrewd or laughing now but they glittered in a strange, passionate way. “I want her to be mine. She must be mine completely in heart and soul and—yes, Raymond,” he said, easily able to read his companion’s thoughts, “in body also, if I think it necessary. That is quite by the way only. Ah,” he said, turning at last to the bearer who had been patiently, even reverently, waiting, and helping himself from the tray, “I think this is called roly-poly pudding, isn’t it? A great favorite with me.”

  And he smiled—first at the pudding, and then, his eyes beginning to rove and dart again, at the American lady at the next table who had been greedily awaiting this smile; and then his eyes roved farther, all round the dining room, at all the foreign guests eating their lunch, and he regarded them in a sort of easy, speculative manner as if one day perhaps, if he wanted to, if he cared to, they would all be his.

  Gopi’s Life Takes on Complexity

  In the mornings Asha was quite domestic. She had all the rooms swept out and afterward she went shopping for her own and Banubai’s meals. She looked like any middle-class, middle-aged housewife in her plain cotton sari and a plastic shopping bag on her arm. That was perhaps why Gopi did not recognize her at first, not even when he came up quite close to her. But she had recognized him from a long way off—perhaps because he was already there in her thoughts, he was there all the time really even when she was thinking and doing something quite different.

  When at last he saw her, he was so overcome by her changed appearance that he quickly averted his eyes, not wanting her to see the expression in them.

  But she had seen. She said, “Yes, everything is changed now.” She passed her hand ruefully down her face, which was innocent of all makeup. “And I’m glad it’s changed,” she went on. She didn’t sound glad but she wanted to be. She also wanted to be glad that he had come upon her so suddenly before she could be tempted to improve her appearance. Now he could see her as she was, as she wanted to be. It was good—she was glad—and yet also how that look of his stabbed her!