In Search of Love and Beauty

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  She sat with the letter in her hand. It was an aerogram form and had grease stains on it; to get everything in, the writing was cramped like the narrow rooms they lived in. It seemed to her that it held the same smells too, of spices, pickles, and perfume essences, of mangoes, tobacco, and drains. She tried to visualize Ahmed as he was now, old and sick and being carried from room to room; except for his swollen ankles, he would be very thin and dried-up, shriveled away. He was over seventy years old now! Hawking and spitting—he had always done a lot of that; he smoked too much. She thought about him having to write to her to ask for money. He would be quite matter-of-fact about it. He had been that way when they lived together. He had hardly earned anything—he taught a few pupils, and gave a concert every now and again, with the impresario usually cheating him. But he didn’t need much, living in her apartment, taking all his meals there except every afternoon he drank tea in an Indian restaurant with friends; and for his cigarettes. She always kept money in a drawer and he took what he needed; it was very little. He wasn’t shy about taking it, though; nor when he had to send money home—he would tell her the exact amount and whom to make it out to.

  She thought of him with affection. He had always been so tolerant, even of what he didn’t understand, so accepting of everything, including her. He made jokes about what couldn’t be helped—for instance, when the impresario wouldn’t pay him. He would turn up his eyes and one palm to heaven as if appealing to higher powers to share the joke. When he had bad news, he didn’t speak and smoked more than ever; then he got over it by himself, without further comment or complaint. It saddened her to think how far away he was in space and time—irrecoverable, irrevocable. She could still see him so clearly: the way he smoked with relish, enjoying every puff, the cigarette so close to the end that it almost burned the two fingers between which he held it and brought it up to his lips. His eyes were half closed against the smoke, and he looked calm, pleased, placid like a Buddha, though a skinny one.

  Marietta and Kent met again, and more than once, and he even began to visit her in her apartment. With his feline instinct for adopting nice homes, he made himself easy on her raw-silk sofa. He was much larger than anyone she had ever had in there, and altogether—in his designer cowboy clothes-consorted strangely with her very light furniture and her gold-framed miniatures. He had stopped talking to her by now; they were in agreement—about Mark, that is—and there wasn’t anything else he had to say. At first his habitual deep silences bothered her, but then she got used to them and talked her way through them.

  Once when he was there, Mark called. It was a routine call—he was usually on the phone to her at least once a day, often more—but very strange for her, with Kent sprawled there, gazing into the distance. “Yes, yes,” she said while Mark was giving her instructions—he always gave her instructions in the course of his calls, with regard to her financial affairs, or her health—there was really no area of her life with which he was not in the closest touch. And of course he knew every tremor, every inflection. “What’s up?” he said. “No, no, nothing”—playing with a little gold pencil by the phone, trying not to laugh—“No, really, nothing.” She knew he didn’t believe her, but what could she tell him?

  “What did he want?” Kent asked. The casual familiarity with which he spoke—and Mark’s voice still in her ear—made her stop smiling. She said, “I think we ought to tell him, about us meeting.”

  “Why,” Kent said, not as a question but as a negative.

  “We ought to. It’s stupid not to,” She found herself getting excited. Kent sat staring out the window, and his immovability excited her further. She began to pace the room, her arms crossed and her nails digging into her silk sleeves. She talked—she said things that came into her mind about how they shouldn’t be meeting—then she contradicted them. He just sat there, with his tremendous capacity for just sitting. His physical presence overwhelmed her in a way that was strange to her. Even in her younger days, with lovers, she had never really been shaken by their physical presence; sex was always secondary. But now with Kent it loomed, it was as huge as he was.

  “He wouldn’t like it,” she was trying to explain herself.

  “There are a lot of things he doesn’t like,” Kent said with a grim sort of proprietorship; and at the same time he glanced at her with his clear and youthful eyes of beauty. When he did that, she stopped before a mirror and saw her face: how old it was, and ravaged, and what was that little pulse twitching in her cheek? She put up her hand to cover it, and noticed that this hand, veined and thin, was also twitching.

  “You’re worked up for nothing,” Kent said, absolutely calm and paternal. “Mark gets like that. I guess you’re alike.”

  “Naturally we’re alike. He’s my son, after all, good heavens.” She laughed—and could hear it come out hysterically. That was the way she was beginning to feel. She dared not look at Kent. The strange thing was that the sensation his presence evoked in her was not for herself but for Mark: the thought of what Kent was to Mark—what they did together-penetrated her as no physical relation of her own ever had done.

  She continued—she couldn’t stop herself—“And who are you to say who he’s like? I should think I know him better than you do. It would be strange if I didn’t.”

  “There are a lot of things you don’t know,” Kent said. “You didn’t know about me. And don’t think I’m the only one—”

  “The only one what?”

  “The only friend he has.”

  Why am I quarreling with this boy? Marietta thought; but also, What is he trying to tell me? And next: If he is going to say more, I won’t listen.

  Kent didn’t say more. Instead, he got up. He had slow and deliberate movements always, so it seemed a long time before he was actually on his feet. It was like hoisting up a large stone statue—and Marietta felt that if she were to hit him, it would be like hitting against stone. And actually, she did feel like hitting him and trembled from head to foot with the effort of holding herself back. The only other person who ever made her feel that way—tempted her that way—was Mark himself; and as if she were talking to Mark himself, she said, “Sit down. Why are you going now? Why do you say these things—throw out these hints—and then go away?”

  “I’m not getting in a fight with you,” he said. He let himself sink down again. “Bad enough I have to fight with him. I’m not going to start with you.”

  His rough familiarity was the way a lover might speak to his mistress, or a son to his mother, but no one else in between. Marietta didn’t know how they had got to that stage, but there they were.

  He had said he didn’t want to fight with her, but that was what he went on to do—continuing his fight with Mark, drawing her into it, to get her on his side or to hold her responsible: “What’s he want a house in the country for? I keep telling him; and running off there every weekend when he should be at home . . . But of course we all know why.” He waited for her to ask, and when she did—“Oh,” he said, “you don’t mean to say he hasn’t told you?”

  Marietta wasn’t sure whom she was defending, herself or Mark: “He wants a place down there because it’s where his father’s family came from. And he wants somewhere for Natasha other than Leo’s . . .”

  “Oh, yes, Natasha,” Kent said.

  “He’s very fond of her. They’re very, very close.”

  “I guess he hasn’t told you about his other friends he has down there.” Kent pouted, but next moment he said: “And who’s Eric? Do you know?”

  “No. No, I don’t.” Marietta put her hands to her temples; really, she wanted to put them over her ears and to say, please, no more, I don’t want to hear any more; let me be. She who had so longed to be privy to all the secrets of Mark’s life!

  Kent wasn’t through yet: “We have this fight every weekend. I want to stay in town; it’s the one chance I have to be with him when he’s not rushing off to his office or wherever. And I want to work on my photography. I really li
ke to. It’s what I do. I’m doing a lot of portrait studies now—here, want to see?”

  Out of a manila envelope he drew some recent examples of his work. When she looked at the pictures, she saw that they were all of Mark—but as she had not seen him for a long time. Lit by sunlight filtered through white curtains, Mark lay stark naked on a brass bed. There was something very familiar to her in the expression on his face: wasn’t it just the way he had once looked at her, years and years ago, when he was her own little boy and no one else’s? This was the way he had lain on her bed after his bath, waiting for her to put his nightclothes on, looking at her with just those eyes with which he now looked into Kent’s camera—full of flirtatious love. Some of Kent’s studies, and these too were heartbreakingly familiar to her, were of Mark in back view. He hadn’t changed at all—he was over thirty now but she saw that his back was still slender, long, and boyish, ending up in buttocks as sweetly rounded as a girl’s.

  Kent had his hair cut and it did not suit him at all. It made his ears and neck emerge naked and raw and also revealed a rash of small pimples on the back of his neck. He looked sullen and unattractive. “Why, he’s just a lout,” Mark thought; he repeated the word in his mind, looking at Kent as with eyes newly opened.

  He felt that it had been a long time since he had met anyone new, and now he was eager to go through all that again—to part from a new partner at daybreak and to come home, slightly reeling with drink and satisfaction, at that point of dawn where the light from the street lamps and the light of the morning are equally frail. He began to go around the usual places and to make some new assignations; but his pleasure in them was marred by the thought that he might meet Kent there. Once he thought he did see him—it was in a dimly lit bar, and through the crowd of bodies pressed together, through the smoke and noise, he thought for a moment he glimpsed at a little table for two against a pillar an older man entertaining a young man who might be Kent. Mark strained backward a bit so as not to be seen (he too was entertaining a young man, a boy really, very sweet, English but hoping to get a green card and work in the theater). But he kept wondering—was it Kent?—and couldn’t refrain from leaning forward again in that direction to see if it was. It wasn’t, and Mark leaned back, exhaling, he thought, with relief; and yet for the rest of the evening he was distraught, so that his companion was disappointed in him and pouted in a terribly attractive way and said, “You don’t actually really care for me.”

  When he did meet Kent, it was again in the Old Vienna and with the same elegant gray-haired man as before, at one of the tables for two down the center. Mark, entertaining an exceptionally dull out-of-town client, watched them. It was clear to him at once that their relationship had in the meantime considerably progressed. Although the older man was no longer as nervously on display as the last time—fidgeting with his tie, his hair, talking in a high-pitched manner in order to amuse and hold the attention—he still appeared to be under strain: in fact, even more so, and in a deeper way. Now there were silences between them filled with covert glances from the older man and broken by him with a desperate spurt of talk that died away into another quivering silence. Kent, his broad back to Mark, was as always a rock against which others had to break themselves.

  Besides being bored by his companion, who was telling him about different girls he had made it with in Hong Kong and Singapore, Mark was also aware that their projected business deal would come to nothing: so his attention was entirely on the other table. He silently considered what to do. Several possibilities were open to him. One of these was to do something he had never done himself but had on several occasions been a witness to. This was to get up, go over, and make a scene. The idea, especially under the influence of the potent little drinks in which the Old Vienna specialized, was enticing to him. He imagined all sorts of possibilities, a variety of three-way emotions. But, in fact, such a public scene was not within his character, and when he did go over, it was in the cool, friendly manner of an acquaintance. Kent did not see him till Mark came and laid his hand on his shoulder; then he looked up and Mark was gratified at the tremor that passed over his impassive features. The other man, so intent on him, saw it too. Mark felt at an advantage. He even drew up a chair for a moment and perched on it and asked to be introduced to Kent’s companion. When Kent unwillingly muttered a name, Mark cupped his ear and made him repeat it; it was Anthony.

  One leg tucked under him, his elbow on the table, his chin cupped in his hand, Mark continued to regard Kent with a teasing look: “I wish your hair’d grow back,” he said after a moment. “You shouldn’t have it cut that way, it doesn’t suit you at all.” He turned his eyes, slowly and deliberately, toward Anthony: “Don’t you agree?” he said lightly.

  The other tried to answer him in the same tone. But his hand was shaking, so that he had to put down the glass he held in it. Mark saw that he was a good deal older than he appeared from a distance; also that his eyes, when they met Mark’s, were pale and drained of color as though washed by nights of tears. They were also full of fear—not only present fear but fear of everything that had happened to him in the past. Mark’s jauntiness left him. He got up and said good-bye and went away. He wound his way gracefully between tables and gilt chairs, not looking back but knowing Anthony’s eyes to be following him. Nor did he again glance over at their table but listened to, and apparently greatly appreciated, his companion’s racy humor.

  Later, when questioned by Mark, Kent was dismissive: “Just a guy I met.”

  “Where?”

  “. . . He’s an agent.”

  “What sort of an agent?”

  “He could be useful.” Kent stretched and yawned and appeared too tired to answer any more questions. When Mark persisted, Kent became absorbed in studying some contact sheets. Mark tore them out of his hand, and from there on their fight took its usual course, reaching its climax when Kent pulled out his fine leather bag (a present from Mark on his last birthday) and began to stuff some shirts and underclothes in it. He packed with great determination—waiting all the time for Mark’s pleas and protests. These were not as fervent as they used to be. Mark lay on his bed, with his arms folded behind his head, saying nothing beyond, “Now don’t be stupid, Kent,” so that Kent grimly shut his bag and dragged it to the outer door. Having got that far, he had no alternative but to go out and slam it. Mark raised himself on his elbow at the sound: he vibrated to it, and also to the silent cry he felt coming to him from Kent waiting to be called back. But Mark lay down again and continued to look at the ceiling, taking his time.

  After less than five minutes, he was surprised to hear a key unlock the outer door. Kent had returned. He was very quiet now. He put down his bag and sat on the side of Mark’s bed. He clasped his hands and looked down at the space between his feet. Mark, watching him, thought that perhaps his haircut suited him after all; it made him look very young and defenseless, like a boy of twelve in reform school.

  “He’s down there.”

  “Who?”

  “Anthony.”

  Kent’s Adam’s apple went up and down: “He often does it,” he said. “Stands out there half the night. Waiting. He says it’s just so he might get a look at me coming in or going out . . . He doesn’t leave me alone,” Kent said in mounting desperation. “Calling me. Writing me letters. And he cries. It’s weird. Says he’ll kill himself and all of that. Sometimes I think he’ll kill me, he’s that crazy. Or you. He might try that. I’m scared to look out the window in case he’s there . . . I’m sorry for him—I mean, he’s a nice guy. But he’s gotten so intense. You’d think he’d have better sense, but he’s worse than anyone, worse than any crazy kid. He’s old, Mark—that’s what’s so weird—how can you get like that when you’re old?”

  “That’s when,” Mark said. He remembered Anthony’s eyes, and a sense of his own future passed through him in a shudder. But he shook it off and decided at once what to do.

  Jeff was getting really restless. He had been about a
s long in this place as he ever stayed anywhere; and besides, he didn’t like the setup in the house. By this he meant mainly, even solely, Kent: for, in order to get Kent away from Anthony, Mark had installed him in his house. Now that it had begun to take on the look of an elegant country residence, Kent liked it. He stalked around with his camera and took pictures from all sorts of angles. Once, while he was perched in the cleft of a tree to frame a very interesting composition of the gatehouse, Jeff unexpectedly opened the door and came out holding a tooth mug. He was trying out a new mouthwash he had concocted out of various herbs boiled together. Kent shouted for him to get out of the way. It took Jeff some time to locate him, and when he did, he went on standing there and watched him gesturing more furiously; and then, when he got tired of that, and also cold—he was wearing only a pair of cut-off jeans and his chest was bare in the autumn air—he spurted out his mouthwash in Kent’s direction with a horrid grimace, partly at the taste of the concoction, partly at Kent.

  “I can’t stand having that creep up there,” Jeff said to Stephanie and Natasha when they came to visit him. He closed the green shutters of his cottage and stoked up his wood stove and they huddled around it, but it was impossible to forget the house looking down on them with Kent inside it, like a giant in his keep.

  The reason Jeff was delaying his departure was that he was waiting for Stephanie to make up her mind to go with him. At night, in her bunk above Natasha, Stephanie tried to get at her own motives and to decide whether it would be more meaningful to stay with Leo or to go off with Jeff. Although she had not yet come to a conclusion, Natasha noticed that every day when they went off to see Jeff, she took some little bundle of her possessions along. “What is it?” Natasha asked, and Stephanie said “Oh, just some crummy old jeans . . . And those blue sneakers I don’t wear anymore? They may be in there too. And my Book of the Dead.” Gradually, everything she had kept in her trunk in the attic found its way to Jeff’s cottage.