To cater to the taste of these Afghan traders, several eating stalls had sprung up with open fire pits in which highly seasoned chickens and lumps of meat were roasted on spits. C. loved this food, and when I saw him surrounded by his new friends, all of them tearing their food with their hands—so different from Shivaji’s refined table manners—it was impossible not to remember his stories of hunting and being hunted across forests and mountains. And although he was blond and they dark, dark-bearded, they were somehow of the same type: hunters, predators. They also introduced him to another of their great pleasures: Bombay films, for which we would queue up to get into the cheap seats. It was an experience to be down there in the stalls with our new friends, who knew and sang along with all the lyrics and cheered the hero and booed the villain and expired in ecstasy over the huge-bosomed heroine or with pity over her sufferings that made tears roll down her cheeks, plump as plums.
Priya deplored C.’s taste for these films, which she characterized as vulgar and childish. He went on enjoying them; he had even begun to learn the lyrics and to sing them with his friends. Although she so despised the films and their audience, Priya always came with us, for by this time she came with us everywhere. She sat around in our room for hours, though it was such a different atmosphere from anything she was used to. She never seemed to notice or to care about that. It didn’t bother her even when a fight broke out in one of the rooms, or there was screeching and cursing on the stairs every time a hotel guest was evicted. She made no secret of the fact that she had attached herself to C. and wanted to be where he was. It was very unusual for a girl like her to be seen in these bazaar streets, but she walked in them as proudly as she did everywhere, just lifting the edge of her sari a little to prevent it from trailing in anything trodden into the ground. There was something so royal about her confidence that no one dared to call after or molest her in any way. I myself had had more trouble when I first came here—the only women seen in these streets were poor shabby housewives or prostitutes dressed to kill—but by now I was generally accepted as C.’s companion. In any case, I had nothing very remarkable about me to invite sexual interest. That may have been why my presence never inhibited Priya or affected her interest in C. If he was out when she came to the hotel, she simply stayed to wait for him. I sat on the floor while she lay on the bed; no other furniture was provided except for an earthenware jar to store drinking water. When Priya ran out of conversation with me, she picked up one of C.’s books and was soon immersed in reading it.
Although Priya’s interest in C. was personal—and how could it not be?—that was only part of his appeal to her. Like everyone else, she felt the force of a great future in him, but in her case this went beyond a vague response to his personality. His ideas were in process of unfolding; and I think what interested her most was that they were so different from anything that Shivaji taught. As far as I understood this difference—and that was not very far—both wanted people to be more knowledgeable about themselves; but whereas Shivaji’s self-knowledge was aimed at transcending this world, C.’s was aimed toward a better adjustment in it. If Priya were to read this last sentence—but she won’t, she has long since moved away, physically and intellectually—she would be very impatient with me for my crude interpretation. For it was she who had tried to explain C.’s ideas to me in a way that he himself never did. He never spoke to me about these things; his relationship with me was on another level of his existence—one that was completely and utterly satisfying to me and, I like to think, in some way for him too. For me, there has never been anything like the sweetness of our sessions under the tree; and perhaps some small drop of it has also lingered with him, through all his subsequent career and his professional and personal relationships with many, many others.
When our money ran out—and I never figured how he had made it last so long—Priya became our patroness. She had a large allowance from her father and could always ask him for more, so it was not difficult for her to supply our needs. Nor was it difficult for us to accept. By this time I had adopted C.’s attitude toward money, and anyway it was fun to go shopping with Priya for new clothes, which we badly needed since ours were falling to pieces. She dressed us up in Indian outfits—the choice was hers, she knew best of course and was bossy by nature. C. now wore the same kind of loose shirt and baggy pajama trousers as his Afghan friends, so that he took on even more of their warrior appearance. Priya was also ready to move us out of our hotel room—she had already chosen a rooftop flat for us in a much better part of the city—but C. wanted to stay where we had made friends and become used to the streets and stalls that supplied us with cooked food in little earthenware pots covered with leaves. The only inconvenience was that we had only one small room with a single bed in it, and while this had been fine for only C. and me, it was no longer so when Priya began to spend most of her time with us. She often found it difficult to leave because of the discussion of ideas she was having with C. Here I might mention that it was no part of his method to confine himself to abstract discussion. Far from holding aloof, he threw himself in, made himself—his expression—part of the equation. And with Priya, as probably with his later students, this took a physical turn: and since it was part of their work together, there was no embarrassment for anyone except me, who left them alone at such times though they always said it was all right for me to stay.
In this time I got to know the city of Delhi well, wandering around on my own in its streets and parks and tombs and temples and mosques. But as the season advanced and the heat became intense, I drifted more and more to the other house, where Shivaji was. Here it was cool and tranquil, and I was given almond sherbet to drink out of a silver vessel. I sat with Renuka, Priya’s mother, on a brocade sofa while she spoke to me of her difficulties. Chief of these was her daughter Priya—she knew that daughters often rebelled against their mothers, but she could not understand why Priya’s hostility extended to Shivaji, who was such a great and realized soul. How was it that instead Priya should attach herself to someone like C.—and here she had the same sort of questions as my mother Edith used to ask me: who is he, where does he come from? “And why is she with him so much?” Renuka also asked me. This question I could answer more easily: “They’re discussing his ideas. Priya’s the only person really able to understand them.” Priya’s mother said nothing, but bit her lips like one who could say a lot if she wanted to.
While Renuka kept her opinions to herself, Priya couldn’t pronounce hers loud enough. “It’s really quite sordid,” she said of her mother and Shivaji. “It’s all about money. She’s afraid that if she doesn’t come up with it, he’ll just drop her and take up with someone else. He would too; he’s the greediest person alive.”
I didn’t believe her. Along with his other visitors, I spent a lot of time in his presence, and I always tried to be there when he was singing. He had a light, melodious voice, and although I couldn’t understand the words, I realized that they expressed feelings of love and devotion. Listening to him, all of us sat very still with only an occasional deep sigh of contentment. The one who sighed deepest was Renuka, and I think she would have liked to do more—to cry out maybe, to dance, to roll on the ground—but Shivaji was opposed to any form of ostentatious behavior. She was an imposing, regal woman, with an imperious manner, but I noticed that, when she approached him, this manner changed entirely: she became like a humble handmaiden whose one desire was to serve him. But I also saw that this deference was extremely irritating to him—he would frown and be curt with her and send her briskly about her business (which of course was his, she had no other thought or occupation). Then she would come out of his room with tears in her eyes, and complain to me afterwards about how difficult it was to serve a saint. However, whenever he had been impatient with her, he made up for it later by singling her out for praise before everyone for her selfless work, so that she glowed with pride and was able to preen herself a little.
Priya conceived the idea that C.
too had to be set up, like Shivaji, as a leader with a following of his own. He could not be wasted just on me and on herself in a broken-down bazaar hotel. She wanted to take him away—not just out of the hotel or the city of Delhi but right out into a bigger world. Shivaji already had a following in Europe, but for C. Priya wanted a new world, the New World, America itself. The first step was to get him there: to make his travel arrangements and set him up on a suitable scale. Of course everything had to be first-class, as it was with Shivaji. Money had never presented a problem for Priya, any more than it had for C: in his case, because he had never had any, in hers because she had always had enough. But now her father said he couldn’t support two world movements, his daughter’s and his wife’s. He was perfectly willing to part with a certain fixed sum, the way another husband and father might have allotted pin money; and if Priya’s scheme was to be financed, then she and her mother would have to share the available amount between them. Busy with his own affairs, he left them to fight the matter out between themselves.
Renuka became very worried about not having enough money for Shivaji. It was the one thing she had to offer him, and without it she felt unworthy. There was a humility in her of which Priya had no trace. Priya felt that her contribution to C. was not money but understanding, intelligence, strength of mind, resolution, ability. She was no one’s handmaiden but a muse, a partner, a spouse. That was why it was so easy for her, I think, to disregard and displace me: because she knew I couldn’t be any of those things to him. I didn’t even have money to sponsor him. She quite liked me—indeed, I became her principal confidante: she told me how they were going to go to America and set up there and start their work. There may even have been some suggestion that I might go with them, she didn’t say in what capacity, nor did she promise anything.
It was her mother who questioned me as to what I saw as my role in their future plans. What could I tell her, since I knew nothing myself? All I had ever wanted was to be with him, but I had realized from the beginning—when my mother Edith too had questioned me about what I saw as my future with C.—that he could not be confined to only one person. He belonged to the world in all its manifestations, including all its physical pleasures that he relished so much—eating, and having sex with women he liked. It may sound strange that he enjoyed it equally with Priya and myself, and even more strange that this was acceptable to both of us. For her, it was anyway secondary and, I believe, always remained so. She stayed with him for many years in America and was largely responsible for building up the practical side of his movement. There were always many women around him, and I have heard that Priya encouraged their physical involvement with him as part of their treatment.
As for me in those early years, I began to learn to do without him. It was not that I felt differently about him—not at all, any more than he did about me. It didn’t seem to make that much difference to either of us that he now spent more time with Priya than with me. We both recognized that a new phase had started for him, one from which he could no more draw back than I could or would hold him back. “What belonged to us was that earlier time in London, our times under the tree. That was sealed, sealed off in all its sweetness, for the rest of my life anyway. Later I heard and read about him in newspapers and magazines, and saw photographs of him. He grew immensely fat, mountainous. I studied the pictures closely, trying to make out the features that I had known so well. Probably it was my imagination but I liked to think that I could find the original C. in that mass of flesh and fame: that what he had given me—all that youth and love—was still there within him and that the memory of our tree remained inviolate in him, as it did in me.
But now came the years of change, or change-over; for the more time Priya spent with him, the more time I spent in the house with her mother. Renuka wanted me there, since I was the only person she could talk to, and question about C., and about Priya, and their project together. Driven by Priya’s energy and her organizing ability, both stupendous, this was now really taking shape. Whenever she showed up at the house, she was like a whirlwind, making her arrangements over the long-distance telephone and assigning tasks and commissions to her mother’s staff. She was impatient and high-handed—doubtless like Renuka when she had first begun to organize Shivaji’s movement. But now Renuka had to stand by and watch her daughter setting up her rival organization. She also had to watch her bank account being drained of its usual allowance, for Priya had instructed her father’s employees to divert these sums to the account she had set up for her and C.’s needs. When Renuka tried to dispute or even discuss this new arrangement, Priya would brush past her without a word, her arms full of important files.
Renuka was desperate. She needed money for the house she had bought for Shivaji and its large staff, for entertaining the crowds of visitors who came to see him; at the same time there were halls to be hired for his public appearances, and the brochures and pamphlets to be printed. All this she confided to me—whom else could she talk to? Priya wouldn’t listen, and as for Shivaji himself, she would not have dared to bring these matters to his attention. Not that he wouldn’t have listened, and probably very carefully, but this was her domain, the work he had assigned to her. There was nothing else he would accept from her. And here she extended her confidence to me and spoke of that other matter she could tell no one else: her relation to Shivaji, her need for him, his coldness to her that prevented her ever showing her feelings for him, not even her reverence, for when she tried to touch his feet, the way a disciple does to a master, he drew them back and clicked his tongue in annoyance.
She chose me for her confidante, I think, because of the way I tried to listen to her: with all my attention, all my understanding. These were qualities I had not shown my mother when she needed them. At that time I was too immersed in my own happiness to pay any attention to her. And if I had listened, all I would have heard were complaints—mostly about me, how I was too young, and about C., and how no one knew where he came from. Even when she spoke more generally, as she liked to do, about the experience of love and loving, I wasn’t prepared to listen because I was in the middle of living that very experience and had no need of her theories about it.
As for C., he was himself young in those London years and concerned more with formulating his ideas than with their practical application. Later I believe he did help people in trouble with their psychological problems, although even then, in America, he got into difficulties when some of his patients did not react well to his methods. Or to him—for those who came to him for guidance (or whatever) had first to deal with him, with that personality of his which played such an enormous part in his work. For some, he must have been too strong, but he was probably unaware of that, the way the waves of the ocean are not conscious of sweeping you away.
The night that Edith killed herself she had come bursting into the attic where I was sleeping with C. Perhaps she just couldn’t stand it any more, creeping around on the stairs and maybe listening at the door. This time she pounded on it and then pushed it open. And she saw us in the light of a streetlamp outside—both of us naked and asleep in one another’s arms. It was only when she began to tug at me that we started up out of our deep sleep. “Give me back my daughter!” she shouted. C. leaped out of bed, and as he stood stark naked before her, she began to drum her fists on his chest as she had done on the door. But he was more solid than any door, and besides he had this blond fur of hair softening her blows. “Who is he anyway?” she was shouting at me. “Where does he come from? What’s he doing in our house?” C. laughed in that easy hearty way he always had, and said, “But I’m your lodger.” She began to plead with me: “Let him go, darling, everything will be as it was when he’s gone. He’s just a coarse, common person!” That made him laugh again, so that she tried to hit him again. This time he stepped aside—more to save her than himself, I think—and she caught hold of me. She held me so tightly that, when I remember that night, I can still feel myself pressed against her heart and
hear its beat. But then I was concerned only with getting free, shaking her off, and when I couldn’t, I cried out against her, “Leave me alone!” Instead she held me closer, and I cried, “Go away and leave us alone! Go,” I cried, “go!” and with each word I struggled more fiercely to release her arms from my neck. And when I succeeded, it was I—I, not C.—who pushed her out of the door and shut that door behind her, so that I could lie down and go to sleep again with C.
Books have been written about the number of suicides that have occurred from around the beginning of the twentieth century among middle-class Jewish women. One theory has it that the cause may have been a sense—a fore-sense—of the fate in store for them in the following years. But another reason may also have been their own psyche and the tremendous importance they had learned to attach to it. The constant analysis of their own feelings and their attempt, on the one hand, to control themselves and, on the other, not to suppress but fully to release their impulses—all this involved them in a maze of conflict from which they couldn’t find an exit. And when something bad happened to them, such as a failed exam or an unhappy love affair, then the only exit was suicide and that was the route often taken. Some of them even kept the means for it close by—Edith, ever since she was a young woman in Vienna in the 1920s, had carried a phial of cyanide in her handbag.
My Nine Lives Page 23