Suddenly the guru stood in the doorway. The room faced an open courtyard and this was full of moonlight which illumined him and made him look enormous and eerie. Jean and I sat up. I felt scared, my heart beat fast. After looking at us in silence for a while, he ordered Jean to go away. She got up to do so at once. I said, ‘No, stay,’ and clung to her hand but she disengaged herself from me and, touching the guru’s feet in reverence, she went away. She seemed to dissolve in the moonlight outside, leaving no trace. The guru sat beside me on my bedding spread on the floor. He said I was under a delusion, that I didn’t really want to leave; my inmost nature was craving to stay by him – he knew, he could hear it calling out to him. But because I was afraid, I was attempting to smother this craving and to run away. ‘Look how you’re trembling,’ he said. ‘See how afraid you are.’ It was true, I was trembling and cowering against the wall as far away from him as I could get. Only it was impossible to get very far because he was so huge and seemed to spread and fill the tiny closet. I could feel him close against me, and his pungent male smell, spiced with garlic, overpowered me.
‘You’re right to be afraid,’ he said: because it was his intention, he said, to batter and beat me, to smash my ego till it broke and flew apart into a million pieces and was scattered into the dust. Yes, it would be a painful process and I would often cry out and plead for mercy, but in the end – ah, with what joy I would step out of the prison of my own self, remade and reborn! I would fling myself to the ground and bathe his feet in tears of gratitude. Then I would be truly his. As he spoke, I became more and more afraid because I felt, so huge and close and strong as he was, that perhaps he really had the power to do to me all that he said and that in the end he would make me like Jean.
I now lay completely flattened against the wall, and he had moved up and was squashing me against it. One great hand travelled up and down my stomach, but its activity seemed apart from the rest of him and from what he was saying. His voice became lower and lower, more and more intense. He said he would teach me to obey, to submit myself completely, that would be the first step and a very necessary one. For he knew what we were like, all of us who came from Western countries: we were self-willed, obstinate, licentious. On the last word his voice cracked with emotion, his hand went further and deeper. Licentious, he repeated, and then, rolling himself across the bed so that he now lay completely pressed against me, he asked, ‘How many men have you slept with?’ He took my hand and made me hold him: how huge and hot he was! He pushed hard against me. ‘How many? Answer me!’ he commanded, urgent and dangerous. But I was no longer afraid: now he was not an unknown quantity, nor was the situation any longer new or strange. ‘Answer me, answer me!’ he cried, riding on top of me, and then he cried, ‘Bitch!’ and I laughed in relief.
I quite liked being back in Delhi with Henry. I had lots of baths in our marble bathroom, soaking in the tub for hours and making myself smell nice with bath salts. I stopped wearing Indian clothes and took out all the dresses I’d brought with me. We entertained quite a bit, and Ramu scurried around in his white coat, emptying ashtrays. It wasn’t a bad time. I stayed around all day in the apartment with the air conditioner on and the curtains drawn to keep out the glare. At night we drove over to other people’s apartments for buffet suppers of boiled ham and potato salad; we sat around drinking in their living-rooms, which were done up more or less like ours, and talked about things like the price of whisky, what was the best hill station to go to in the summer, and servants. This last subject often led to other related ones like how unreliable Indians were and how it was impossible ever to get anything done. Usually this subject was treated in a humorous way, with lots of funny anecdotes to illustrate, but occasionally someone got quite passionate; this happened usually if they were a bit drunk, and then they went off into a long thing about how dirty India was and backward, riddled with vile superstitions – evil, they said – corrupt – corrupting.
Henry never spoke like that – maybe because he never got drunk enough – but I know he didn’t disagree with it. He disliked the place very much and was in fact thinking of asking for an assignment elsewhere. When I asked where, he said the cleanest place he could think of. He asked how would I like to go to Geneva. I knew I wouldn’t like it one bit, but I said all right. I didn’t really care where I was. I didn’t care much about anything these days. The only positive feeling I had was for Henry. He was so sweet and good to me. I had a lot of bad dreams nowadays and was afraid of sleeping alone, so he let me come into his bed even though he dislikes having his sheets disarranged and I always kick and toss about a lot. I lay close beside him, clinging to him, and for the first time I was glad that he had never been all that keen on sex. On Sundays we stayed in bed all day reading the papers and Ramu brought us nice English meals on trays. Sometimes we put on a record and danced together in our pyjamas. I kissed Henry’s cheeks which were always smooth – he didn’t need to shave very often – and sometimes his lips which tasted of toothpaste.
Then I got jaundice. It’s funny, all that time I spent travelling about and eating anything anywhere, nothing happened to me, and now that I was living such a clean life with boiled food and boiled water, I got sick. Henry was horrified. He immediately segregated all his and my things, and anything that I touched had to be sterilized a hundred times over. He was forever running into the kitchen to check up on whether Ramu was doing this properly. He said jaundice was the most catching thing there was, and though he went in for a whole course of precautionary inoculations that had to be specially flown in from the States, he still remained in a very nervous state. He tried to be sympathetic to me, but couldn’t help sounding reproachful most of the time. He had sealed himself off so carefully, and now I had let this in. I knew how he felt, but I was too ill and miserable to care. I don’t remember ever feeling so ill. I didn’t have any high temperature or anything, but all the time there was this terrible nausea. First my eyes went yellow, then the rest of me as if I’d been dyed in the colour of nausea, inside and out. The whole world went yellow and sick. I couldn’t bear anything: any noise, any person near me, worst of all any smell. They couldn’t cook in the kitchen any more because the smell of cooking made me scream. Henry had to live on boiled eggs and bread. I begged him not to let Ramu into my bedroom for, although Ramu always wore nicely laundered clothes, he gave out a smell of perspiration which was both sweetish and foul and filled me with disgust. I was convinced that under his clean shirt he wore a cotton vest, black with sweat and dirt, which he never took off but slept in at night in the one-room servant quarter where he lived crowded together with all his family in a dense smell of cheap food and bad drains and unclean bodies.
I knew these smells so well – I thought of them as the smells of India, and had never minded them; but now I couldn’t get rid of them, they were like some evil flood soaking through the walls of my air-conditioned bedroom. And other things I hadn’t minded, had hardly bothered to think about, now came back to me in a terrible way so that waking and sleeping, I saw them. What I remembered most often was the disused well in the Rajasthan fort out of which I had drunk water. I was sure now that there had been a corpse at the bottom of it, and I saw this corpse with the flesh swollen and blown but the eyes intact: they were huge like the guru’s eyes and they stared, glazed and jellied, into the darkness of the well. And worse than seeing this corpse, I could taste it in the water that I had drunk – that I was still drinking – yes, it was now, at this very moment, that I was raising my cupped hands to my mouth and feeling the dank water lap around my tongue. I screamed out loud at the taste of the dead man and I called to Henry and clutched his hand and begged him to get us sent to Geneva quickly, quickly. He disengaged his hand – he didn’t like me to touch him at this time – but he promised. Then I grew calmer, I shut my eyes and tried to think of Geneva and of washing out my mouth with Swiss milk.
I got better, but I was very weak. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I started to cry
. My face had a yellow tint, my hair was limp and faded; I didn’t look old but I didn’t look young any more either. There was no flesh left, and no colour. I was drained, hollowed out. I was wearing a white nightdress and that increased the impression. Actually, I reminded myself of Jean. I thought, so this is what it does to you (I didn’t quite know at that time what I meant by it – jaundice in my case, a guru in hers; but it seemed to come to the same). When Henry told me that his new assignment had come through, I burst into tears again; only now it was with relief. I said let’s go now, let’s go quickly. I became quite hysterical so Henry said all right; he too was impatient to get away before any more of those bugs he dreaded so much caught up with us. The only thing that bothered him was that the rent had been paid for three months and the landlord refused to refund. Henry had a fight with him about it but the landlord won. Henry was furious but I said never mind, let’s just get away and forget all about all of them. We packed up some of our belongings and sold the rest; the last few days we lived in an empty apartment with only a couple of kitchen chairs and a bed. Ramu was very worried about finding a new job.
Just before we were to leave for the airport and were waiting for the car to pick us up, I went on the terrace. I don’t know why I did that, there was no reason. There was nothing I wanted to say goodbye to, and no last glimpses I wanted to catch. My thoughts were all concentrated on the coming journey and whether to take air sickness pills or not. The sky from up on the terrace looked as immense as ever, the city as small. It was evening and the light was just fading and the sky wasn’t any definite colour now: it was sort of translucent like a pearl but not an earthly pearl. I thought of the story the little saintly old woman had told about Krishna’s mother and how she saw the sun and the moon and world upon world in his mouth. I liked that phrase so much – world upon world – I imagined them spinning around each other like glass balls in eternity and everything as shining and translucent as the sky I saw above me. I went down and told Henry I wasn’t going with him. When he realized – and this took some time – that I was serious, he knew I was mad. At first he was very patient and gentle with me, then he got in a frenzy. The car had already arrived to take us. Henry yelled at me, he grabbed my arm and began to pull me to the door. I resisted with all my strength and sat down on one of the kitchen chairs. Henry continued to pull and now he was pulling me along with the chair as if on a sleigh. I clung to it as hard as I could but I felt terribly weak and was afraid I would let myself be pulled away. I begged him to leave me. I cried and wept with fear – fear that he would take me, fear that he would leave me.
Ramu came to my aid. He said it’s all right Sahib, I’ll look after her. He told Henry that I was too weak to travel after my illness but later, when I was better, he would take me to the airport and put me on a plane. Henry hesitated. It was getting very late, and if he didn’t go, he too would miss the plane. Ramu assured him that all would be well and Henry need not worry at all. At last Henry took my papers and ticket out of his inner pocket. He gave me instructions how I was to go to the air company and make a new booking. He hesitated a moment longer – how sweet he looked all dressed up in a suit and tie ready for travelling, just like the day we got married – but the car was hooting furiously downstairs and he had to go. I held on hard to the chair. I was afraid if I didn’t I might get up and run after him. So I clung to the chair, trembling and crying. Ramu was quite happily dusting the remaining chair. He said we would have to get some more furniture. I think he was glad that I had stayed and he still had somewhere to work and live and didn’t have to go tramping around looking for another place. He had quite a big family to support. I sold the ticket Henry left with me but I didn’t buy any new furniture with it. I stayed in the empty rooms by myself and very rarely went out. When Ramu cooked anything for me, I ate it, but sometimes he forgot or didn’t have time because he was busy looking for another job. I didn’t like living like that but I didn’t know what else to do. I was afraid to go out: everything I had once liked so much – people, places, crowds, smells – I now feared and hated. I would go running back to be by myself in the empty apartment. I felt people looked at me in a strange way in the streets; and perhaps I was strange now from the way I was living and not caring about what I looked like any more; I think I talked aloud to myself sometimes – once or twice I heard myself doing it. I spent a lot of the money I got from the air ticket on books. I went to the bookshops and came hurrying back carrying armfuls of them. Many of them I never read, and even those I did read, I didn’t understand very much. I hadn’t had much experience in reading these sort of books – like the Upanishads and the Vedanta Sutras – but I liked the sound of the words and I liked the feeling they gave out. It was as if I were all by myself on an immensely high plateau breathing in great lungfuls of very sharp, pure air. Sometimes the landlord came to see what I was doing. He went round all the rooms, peering suspiciously into corners, testing the fittings. He kept asking how much longer I was going to stay; I said till the three months’ rent was up. He brought prospective tenants to see the apartment, but when they saw me squatting on the floor in the empty rooms, sometimes with a bowl of half-eaten food which Ramu had neglected to clear away, they got nervous and went away again rather quickly. After a time the electricity got cut off because I hadn’t paid the bill. It was very hot without the fan and I filled the tub with cold water and sat in it all day. But then the water got cut off too. The landlord came up twice, three times a day now. He said if I didn’t clear out the day the rent was finished he would call the police to evict me. I said it’s all right, don’t worry, I shall go. Like the landlord, I too was counting the days still left to me. I was afraid what would happen to me.
Today the landlord evicted Ramu out of the servant quarter. That was when Ramu came up to ask for money and said all those things. Afterwards I went up on the terrace to watch him leave. It was such a sad procession. Each member of the family carried some part of their wretched household stock, none of which looked worth taking. Ramu had a bed with tattered strings balanced on his head. In two days’ time I too will have to go with my bundle and my bedding. I’ve done this so often before – travelled here and there without any real destination – and been so happy doing it; but now it’s different. That time I had a great sense of freedom and adventure. Now I feel compelled, that I have to do this whether I want to or not. And partly I don’t want to, I feel afraid. Yet it’s still like an adventure, and that’s why besides being afraid I’m also excited, and most of the time I don’t know why my heart is beating fast, is it in fear or in excitement, wondering what will happen to me now that I’m going travelling again.
Two More under the Indian Sun
Elizabeth had gone to spend the afternoon with Margaret. They were both English, but Margaret was a much older woman and they were also very different in character. But they were both in love with India, and it was this fact that drew them together. They sat on the veranda, and Margaret wrote letters and Elizabeth addressed the envelopes. Margaret always had letters to write; she led a busy life and was involved with several organizations of a charitable or spiritual nature. Her interests were centred in such matters, and Elizabeth was glad to be allowed to help her.
There were usually guests staying in Margaret’s house. Sometimes they were complete strangers to her when they first arrived, but they tended to stay weeks, even months, at a time – holy men from the Himalayas, village welfare workers, organizers of conferences on spiritual welfare. She had one constant visitor throughout the winter, an elderly government officer who, on his retirement from service, had taken to a spiritual life and gone to live in the mountains at Almora. He did not, however, very much care for the winter cold up there, so at that season he came down to Delhi to stay with Margaret, who was always pleased to have him. He had a soothing effect on her – indeed, on anyone with whom he came into contact, for he had cast anger and all other bitter passions out of his heart and was consequently always smiling a
nd serene. Everyone affectionately called him Babaji.
He sat now with the two ladies on the veranda, gently rocking himself to and fro in a rocking chair, enjoying the winter sunshine and the flowers in the garden and everything about him. His companions, however, were less serene. Margaret, in fact, was beginning to get angry with Elizabeth. This happened quite frequently, for Margaret tended to be quickly irritated, and especially with a meek and conciliatory person like Elizabeth.
‘It’s very selfish of you,’ Margaret said now.
Elizabeth flinched. Like many very unselfish people, she was always accusing herself of undue selfishness, so that whenever this accusation was made by someone else it touched her closely. But because it was not in her power to do what Margaret wanted, she compressed her lips and kept silent. She was pale with this effort at obstinacy.
‘It’s your duty to go,’ Margaret said. ‘I don’t have much time for people who shirk their duty.’
‘I’m sorry, Margaret,’ Elizabeth said, utterly miserable, utterly ashamed. The worst of it, almost, was that she really wanted to go; there was nothing she would have enjoyed more. What she was required to do was take a party of little Tibetan orphans on a holiday treat to Agra and show them the Taj Mahal. Elizabeth loved children, she loved little trips and treats, and she loved the Taj Mahal. But she couldn’t go, nor could she say why.
Of course Margaret very easily guessed why, and it irritated her more than ever. To challenge her friend, she said bluntly, ‘Your Raju can do without you for those few days. Good heavens, you’re not a honeymoon couple, are you? You’ve been married long enough. Five years.’
At the End of the Century Page 15