At the End of the Century

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  After the final appeal was dismissed and there was only one week left, they allowed me to visit the prison every day. I always brought his food with me. All this time, I had been providing his meals at the jail. At first, I brought his food from a cooking stall and sent it to him in the little mud pots covered with a leaf that they give you in the bazaar. But after a time, and without anything being said, my wife cooked his food herself, and it was carried to him in dishes from our house. I was glad to be able to provide this home-cooked food, which he liked and was used to. But soon I discovered that he ate only a part of it, and had the rest taken away to Sachu, for whom no one sent anything, of course. When I mentioned this to my wife, she began to send more food, and after a time there were always two dishes of everything.

  On the last day, when he asked me to see Sachu and say goodbye to him, I said I would but I didn’t do it. So it was that my last word to him was a lie. He asked, ‘Did you see him?’ and I said, ‘Yes.’ But next day I did something I hadn’t expected. When the hearse arrived to take Bablu, I told the prison officials that I would take the other one, too. They agreed and were glad to be relieved of this charge. So I took both of them to the electric crematorium, and there I performed for both the ceremonies and prayers due to a brother. Sohan Lal and the rest of my family blamed me for this and said I had polluted the last rites. They were all angry and refused to participate in the final ceremony, when the ashes are committed to the river. I didn’t care and prepared to do it on my own.

  I bought two silver urns and returned to the crematorium to collect the ashes. I had determined to go to Allahabad, to the most holy and purifying place of all, where the three great rivers meet and mingle, but a lot of business came up during the next few days and I could not leave at once. I placed the two urns in the front room, and when I was ready to leave I packed them in a cardboard box I had brought from the warehouse for this purpose. The night before, I told my wife to wake me early so that I could be in time for the plane. She said, ‘I will come with you,’ and in the morning she was ready in new white clothes. We drove to Delhi to go to the airport there. They allowed us to take the box on board with us. My wife had never been on a plane before and was very excited, though she pretended not to be. She kept looking out of the window to see the clouds and whatever else you see. Once, she turned to me and said, ‘Bablu has never been on a plane before.’ I didn’t answer her but I thought, yes, it is true; it is the first time for all three of them. The two others would have enjoyed it too and would have been as excited as she was. In Allahabad we took a boat, and a priest went with us, and there was a beautiful ceremony as the ashes were committed at the confluence of those very holy rivers – the Ganges, the Jumna, and the Saraswati.

  Great Expectations

  Pauline was a New York real estate agent – middle-aged and comfortably settled. It had taken her many years to reach her present plateau of contentment, also to build up her own business, after having worked for other people. Now she had a tiny office which was almost a storefront – it had been an unsuccessful dry-cleaner’s before she had rented it and was in a row of other commercial establishments, including a deli, a nail spa, a newsagent and a jewellery boutique about to go out of business. But Pauline had converted her interior into what was almost a cosy little parlour, with flowers, prints and little armchairs done up in striped silk. The windows had curtains from inside, but from outside they were plastered with notices offering apartments in terms so attractive that passers-by often stopped to read them, even those who didn’t need new accommodation.

  However, there were enough people who did to give Pauline a comfortable income and a devoted clientele of her own. She took a very personal interest in her cases – as she humorously called them – and several of them remained her friends after she had accommodated them. These were mostly single women – though, unlike herself, not by choice but as a result of divorce or abortive affairs, so that they were often in need not only of apartments but of solace and friendship.

  And of all the needy cases who came to her, Sylvie was the most desperate. It wasn’t that she was poor – some of the others were in really tight straits because of unfavourable divorce settlements forced on them by their husbands’ lawyers. But Sylvie’s husband had remained supportive. Of course, there wasn’t only Sylvie to consider but also their daughter Amy. Sylvie and Amy came as a pair, a team: this was how they had first presented themselves in Pauline’s office, two waifs in tatty but chic little frocks, so desperately in need of help that they sat in dumb despair, winding locks of their long blonde hair around their fingers.

  It was Pauline’s speciality to know just how to cater to the needs and means of a client. But although Sylvie always said, ‘It’s lovely, Pauline’, to whatever she showed her, and Amy echoed, ‘It’s lovely, Pauline’, they never took the place. Something was always somehow wrong; neither of them could say what this was. So they said, ‘Lovely’, or ‘Fabulous’, or ‘Fantastic’, and then looked vague or blank, or miserable at not being able to oblige Pauline by signing a contract.

  Yet their situation was hazardous – they really had to have a place, for they were under duress to vacate their present quarters, belonging to a friend who was no longer a friend. ‘Mona is so hostile,’ Sylvie said and then clamped her lips tight, indicating that she did not want to say anything derogatory about anyone. And even when they were forced out – legal threats were involved – Sylvie still did not utter a word of complaint, but she and Amy came to Pauline’s office with their bundles and suitcases, and they sat there, silent and forlorn.

  Pauline had no alternative but to take them home to her own apartment. She did not want to at all. Pauline liked – she loved – her privacy, a preference it had taken her many years to achieve. In her youth she had been like everyone else and had craved romance, or at least companionship. When these were not forthcoming, or their promise was blighted, she had slowly come to accept her solitude and self-reliance. These became an absolute necessity after her mother died. Although they had not lived in the same city for years – the mother had remained in Kansas City – Pauline had visited her home town at least three or four times a year, and they had spoken almost daily on the phone. Pauline had a married brother in Washington, and in the first years after their mother died, she was expected to spend Christmas and Thanksgiving with him and his family. But soon it was only Christmas, and then one year Pauline decided that it was easier to stay home; and after that she spent all her Christmases at home, and usually alone – which she grew actually to like: that was how independent she was.

  Sylvie and Amy stayed in her second bedroom. They were very considerate and tried to make themselves useful, which was not easy with someone of Pauline’s settled temperament. Pauline didn’t like the way they made beds, or washed and put away her dishes, so when she came home in the evenings, she undid everything they had done – rather grimly, for she was tired after her day’s work. And she didn’t like the way they cooked, either – well, it wasn’t really cooking, they usually prepared some sort of salad and beans (both of them were vegetarians), so that Pauline had to run down and buy herself a steak. By the time she had cooked and eaten it, she was completely exhausted and in no way inclined to be sociable or even agreeable. She went to bed long before they did – Amy was only ten, but she kept the same hours as her mother; and Pauline could hear them showering together, or laughing at the TV, and though they shushed each other and tried to walk on tiptoe, they kept her awake long after she needed to be asleep.

  Still, she endured the situation. As all her friends and acquaintances could testify, she was a good sort who was always glad to help people out in their troubles. Besides, she knew the arrangement was only temporary, and that as soon as she found them a good apartment, she could have hers back again to enjoy in undisturbed comfort. This business of finding them an apartment had become a professional challenge: for whatever she came up with – and she came up with many, many – they co
ntinued to find unsuitable for their particular needs. She began to wonder somewhat bitterly how those complicated needs could possibly be satisfied in her spare bedroom: but of course they did have the place to themselves the whole day and could make full use of its many advantages, such as her washer and dryer, which were always full of their panties and tee-shirts.

  Unfortunately, besides laughing and showering together, they also had fights. Out of deference to her, they tried to keep their voices down, but getting excited, they began to shout and bang doors. They fought like children – well, Amy was a child, and Sylvie reacted as if she was, too. They called each other names like stinkbag and went over old grievances, such as when Amy ruined two pairs of Sylvie’s jeans with bleach. These fights often ended with Amy stuffing some tutus and her fluffy giraffe into a backpack, saying she was leaving, she was going to her daddy. However, this did not appear to be feasible, for she soon allowed Sylvie to unpack again and then they both went to sleep, earlier than usual because of being exhausted from their fight.

  Pauline had met Amy’s daddy once or twice, when she had come home earlier than expected, and she suspected that he spent more time in her apartment than they wanted her to know. It must have been a convenient place for them, better than strolling around the streets and shops and cafés, which were their other alternatives. This was because Sylvie was not welcome in the place where her ex-husband lived – in his mother’s very grand Park Avenue duplex, where Amy went to visit, by herself, every third Sunday.

  Sylvie’s ex-husband, whose name was Theo, was so much like Sylvie herself, and like their daughter, that Pauline wondered they had not stayed together. They certainly seemed to enjoy one another’s company, and when Theo was there, the three of them did the same sort of things Sylvie and Amy did on their own. Theo even looked like them – he was slender and pale and fair-haired; and when he accompanied them to view the apartments that Pauline was hopefully showing them, he reacted with the same ‘It’s lovely,’ and the same unspoken opinion that it was not for them. He was also a vegetarian – in fact, he and Sylvie had met in India, in a guru’s ashram where, let alone eggs, not even root vegetables, such as onions and potatoes, were allowed.

  On the Sundays when Amy visited her Park Avenue grandmother, Sylvie was so depressed that Pauline felt obliged to cancel her usual Sunday arrangements and devote herself to Sylvie. But she never succeeded in making her feel better. There was the time when she had taken her for a walk in the park, hoping to console her among the holiday crowds in spring clothes come out to enjoy the blossoms flying through the air like pink raindrops. Sylvie was in one of her long flowing pastel dresses – a bit faded because of being washed so often – and people looked at her with pleasure: only to look away again at once, shocked to see this embodiment of youthful enchantment in tears. Pauline was embarrassed, as if people were blaming her for her companion’s misery. And in a way she felt guilty that it was she who walked beside this girl and not a youth as fine and fair as Sylvie herself: not, that is, someone like Theo – or indeed, Theo himself.

  This was the essence of their tragedy: that they could not be together. Every third Sunday Sylvie said it, or hinted at it, in a different way; but she always ascribed the fault to fate, or destiny, or plain bad luck, never blaming their separation on any person. Yet she could, it seemed to Pauline after several of these Sundays, very easily have named Theo’s mother as the agent of their malevolent fate – Pauline herself was inclined to do so, after piecing together Sylvie’s various hints on the subject. But as soon as Pauline said anything subversive about his mother, Mrs Baum, Sylvie begged her to be silent; she put her hand on Pauline’s and said in a gentle voice, ‘No, she’s Theo’s mother; she’s a good person.’

  ‘She hasn’t been good to you,’ Pauline said in her outspoken way.

  Sylvie shook her head and smiled: ‘She’s good to Theo and to Amy.’

  She did not mention the fact – very clear to Pauline by now – that she herself was never invited to accompany Amy, or ever visit the Park Avenue place at all. Gradually Pauline came to realize that Sylvie had not even met Mrs Baum. Yet she always spoke of her with admiration: what a grand lady she was, who gave the most fabulous parties, never for pleasure but always for a good cause or for some cultural purpose, for she sat on many boards – for the opera, and the ballet, and for the educational advancement of disadvantaged youths in the inner city. She was also the chairman of her late husband’s company, which was a huge undertaking for a woman alone, so that she needed all the support she could get. And the way things were in the business world, Sylvie said, looking grave as though repeating a thought that was too big for her to handle, you were surrounded by sharks wanting to swallow you and all your assets, and the only people you could trust were your own immediate family.

  ‘That’s Theo?’ Pauline said.

  ‘She has no one else. No one in the world.’

  ‘What about you?’

  But again Sylvie shook her head, smiling: ‘Oh, you know how I’m just this airhead.’

  Pauline said, ‘I don’t know anything of the sort.’ This was on another Sunday, when they had gone to a museum and were looking at pictures. Pauline’s favourites were sunny landscapes with graceful young people walking in them in eighteenth-century clothes. Sylvie didn’t seem to have any particular favourites – but she would suddenly be transfixed by a picture and would stand in front of it as in a trance; and when she finally managed to break away, it was evident that she had had a deep experience.

  Obviously, under such circumstances, it was not possible for her to look at many pictures, and they often sat out, either in one of the galleries or under the glass roof of the loggia where fountains played and sometimes splashed them with cool drops.

  ‘No, I’m not very bright,’ Sylvie said. ‘Of course I never had the chance to go to college, though I’d have loved to study something. Painting, or psychology.’

  Pauline put out her hand to tuck a loose strand of hair behind Sylvie’s ear. ‘Oh, you’re wet,’ she said, feeling her cheek. ‘Should we sit somewhere else? I’m getting splashed too.’

  ‘No, I like it, don’t you? . . . Maybe Sanskrit. Or religion. I’ve always been very interested in religion. But I never even finished school. It wasn’t my fault,’ she said, looking sad, as she usually did when talking of the past, or that part of it.

  Pauline had picked up some details of this past on a succession of previous Sundays: Sylvie’s difficult childhood with a divorced mother, who had nervous breakdowns and finally died in a psychiatric institution – a private one that had absorbed most of her funds, leaving Sylvie only just enough to take a trip to India in pursuit of an interest in Hindu religion.

  ‘I bet if you had finished school you’d have done something,’ Pauline assured her. ‘I think you have a lot of talent.’

  ‘Oh really?’ Sylvie’s interest was stirred enough for her to turn her face and focus her eyes, vague but luminous, on Pauline. ‘For what? Or are you just saying it?’

  ‘I mean it. I think you could do anything you put your mind to.’

  ‘You think I could paint?’

  ‘I’m sure . . . And you’d be very good at business too.’

  For a moment Sylvie looked at Pauline as if she were crazy. Then she lost interest in her and the subject completely; she turned away her face again and let her eyes wander, filling them with the light filtered through the glass roof and through the springing silver cascades of the fountains.

  Pauline, in her anxiety to recapture her attention, became light-headed: ‘If you were to come with me in the office, you’d learn the business in no time.’

  ‘Real estate?’ Sylvie laughed but was quick to explain: ‘I’m laughing at me, not you. I mean, it’s so fantastic, me learning real estate.’

  ‘What’s fantastic about it? Only you’d have to come in the office with me every day. To see how things are done,’ Pauline explained.

  There
was a moment’s silence between them; then Sylvie did turn her face towards Pauline again: ‘Are you offering me a job?’

  ‘Yes.’ Pauline spoke resolutely, although the thought had never till that moment occurred to her. And she went further – she heard herself offer Sylvie a full-time job in her office, and when Sylvie asked, ‘With a salary and all?’ she said, ‘Oh yes, and commissions. That can work out to a lot of money.’

  ‘How much?’ Sylvie said, not so much out of interest as out of courtesy, to keep the conversation going.

  ‘It depends on the sale. For instance, if you were to sell a two-bedroom, two-bathroom in a good location at 450K – but I don’t want to confuse you with figures—’

  ‘No, don’t. I was never any good at sums. Arithmetic and stuff. Hopeless.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have to be. Nowadays, with computers and calculators, you hardly need a brain – I’m not saying you don’t have one, Sylvie, on the contrary, I think you’re a very intelligent person and that’s why I’d like you to come work for me. With me,’ Pauline said, like a suitor ready to promise the earth.

  ‘Let’s not talk any more now. It’s so wonderful just sitting here.’ Sylvie raised her face to the glass roof, letting the light stream down on herself. ‘It’s like being under water. Like we were two mermaids.’ Although it was only she who looked like one.

  They did not mention the subject of Sylvie working in Pauline’s office for several days. But Pauline found herself thinking about it more and more – especially in the afternoons, when she suspected, or rather knew, that Theo was with Sylvie in her apartment. What did they do there? She supposed they made love – and yet, it was difficult to think of them doing so, at least not in the way other people did it. There was something otherworldly about them; they seemed to talk to each other on an ethereal level – when they talked at all. Mostly there was a charged silence between them, which neither of them seemed to want to break with anything more substantial than ‘Divine, isn’t it,’ while the other breathed back, ‘Out of this world.’