At the End of the Century

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  Diana tremendously admired Margaret’s selfless devotion to India, which she couldn’t help contrasting with her own selfish devotion to only two Indians, her husband and her son. But her sense of guilt left her as soon as she got home to where TC was writing his memoirs and waiting to read his day’s work to her. His style had been honed for official reports: ‘In November we moved to Sitapur where we encountered a variety of incidents, some of them of a humorous nature, others rather more serious.’ She knew all the incidents and was able to flood his spare prose with her memories. Often, while he read, it was not the city noises outside that she heard but the jackals and peacocks surrounding the bungalow of their early districts. She didn’t need to look out of the window of their cramped little flat to know that the sun setting over the city streets was the same that she had watched over the unbroken plains of their first postings. The moon too would be the same, spreading a net of silver over the people asleep outside the shuttered shops.

  Romesh came to Delhi to visit his parents. Stout, middle-aged, shining in a silk jacket and some gold jewellery, he burst in on them: ‘So what’s new!’ Of course he knew there never could be anything new for them, washed up in all their innocence, their total ignorance of life in the world. What he couldn’t account for was their happiness, though he was aware that it included him, all the years of his existence as their son.

  Pagans

  Brigitte: calm, large-limbed and golden as a pagan goddess, she loved to lie spreadeagled on the beach or by her swimming pool, in communication with the sun. Los Angeles had been good to her. When she was young, at the time of her marriage, she had been a successful model. Her husband, Louis Morgenstern, was a small, wizened, shrewd little man, thirty years older than herself but a studio head, a powerful producer, a very rich man. It had been a relief for her to give up her career. She preferred to swim, to sunbathe, to give dinner parties for Louis (studded with stars but as dull, in their different way, as those her sister Frances gave in New York for her banker husband); also to travel in Europe and occasionally take lovers – wry intellectuals who taught her what to read and confirmed her contempt for the sorts of films made by the studios, including her husband’s.

  Her sister Frances had been very sceptical about the marriage to Louis. She was wrong. In spite of the lovers – kept secret, discreet – it lasted almost thirty years, and so did Brigitte’s respect and liking for her husband. While Frances had married conventionally within their own circle, settled in the US for several generations, Louis was the first in his family to be born here and still had a grandmother who spoke no English. Frances and her husband Marshall were ashamed of what they considered their sister’s misalliance. They felt themselves to tower over Louis and his family – socially of course, culturally, and physically too, as was clear at the wedding when tiny Morgensterns scurried among the lofty trees of bankers and real estate developers. Afterwards Marshall joked about the ill-matched couple and how Brigitte would be crushing Louis on their wedding night between her mighty thighs.

  Brigitte was in her fifties when Louis died, and Frances, for whom Los Angeles was a wasteland, said, ‘Now perhaps you’ll come back to civilization.’ Brigitte sold her house – the Hollywood mansion of indoor and outdoor pools, patios and screening rooms – while Frances searched for a suitable apartment in New York for her. Meanwhile Brigitte moved into a suite in a hotel, and although Frances found one Upper East Side apartment and then another, all close to herself and Marshall, Brigitte kept making excuses not to move into them. She liked Los Angeles; unlike New York, it was lightweight and undemanding. From one hotel window, she could see pretty houses frail as plywood scattered over the wooded hillside. From another, she had a view over the city of Los Angeles spread flat as far as the horizon; at night it was transformed into a field of shimmering flickering glow-worms fenced by the cut-out silhouettes of high-rise buildings. And the trees – the tall, straight palm trees with their sparse foliage brushing a sky that was sometimes Renaissance blue and sometimes silver with pollution but all day held the sun to pour down on the ocean, the golden beach and Brigitte herself, past menopause but still golden and firm in her designer swimsuit, and pads on her large smooth lids luxuriantly shut.

  Frances was getting impatient. I suppose she has a new lover out there, she thought to herself; and she said it to Brigitte over the phone: ‘Who is it now, another of those foreigners filling your head with clever rubbish?’

  Brigitte laughed; she had always laughed at Frances’ disapproval, whether it was of Louis, of her lovers or of her indolence. Brigitte still had male friends – she needed them to tell her what to read – but she had long since reached a stage where she could admit that sex was boring for her. With Louis, she had enjoyed sitting beside him while he explained their stocks and shares and other holdings to her. By the time he died, he had been ill for some years but was only semi-retired, for his successors at the studio continued to need his experience and his financial clout. Twice a year he and Brigitte still gave their dinner parties where the agents and the money men mixed with the stars. Louis had little respect for most of the stars; he mocked their pretensions and perversions, their physical beauty which he said was the work of plastic surgeons and monkey glands. After each dinner party and the departure of the famous guests, he kissed Brigitte in gratitude for what she was: full-figured and naturally tanned, almost Nordic, God knew how and it was not only the hairdresser and the beautician. Louis had grown-up children from a previous marriage, and when it turned out that Brigitte couldn’t have any, he was glad, wanting to keep her perfect, unmarred. Actually, Brigitte was not sorry either; she didn’t think she had time for children. Frances said anyway she was too slothful and untidy ever to be able to bring them up. Frances had untold trouble with her own now grown-up son and daughter, who had gone the unstable way of the young and too rich.

  Two years after selling her house, Brigitte was still in Los Angeles. By this time she had met Shoki, a young Indian, and an interesting relationship had developed. It may have appeared a classic case of older woman with impoverished young immigrant, but that was not the way it was at all. It was true that he was young, very young; it was also true that he was poor, insofar as he had no money, but the word impoverished was inapplicable. He had the refinement of someone born rich – not so much in money as in inherited culture. This expressed itself in him physically in fine features and limbs; culturally in his manners, his almost feminine courtesy; and spiritually – so Brigitte liked to think – in his eyes, as of a soul that yearned for higher being. These eyes were often downcast, the lashes brushing his cheeks, for he was shy – out of modesty, not lack of confidence. As far as confidence was concerned, he reposed as on a rock of ancestral privilege, so that it never mattered to him that he had to take all kinds of lowly jobs to keep himself going. Brigitte had met him while he was doing valet parking at her hotel; he had been filling in for another boy and left after a few weeks to work in a restaurant, again filling in for someone else. There were always these jobs available in a shifting population of unemployed or temporarily unemployed actors and other aspirants to film and television careers.

  He himself wanted to become a writer-director, which was why he was here so far from home. He informed Brigitte that film was the medium of expression for his generation – he said it as though it were an idea completely original to himself. He carried a very bulky manuscript from agent to agent, or rather to their secretaries, and was always ready to read from it. Encouraged by Brigitte, he sat in her suite and read to her, while she watched rather than listened to him. Maybe it was all nonsense; but maybe it wasn’t, or no more than the films on which Louis had grown so immensely rich; and she wanted him to be successful, so that he wouldn’t go away, or wouldn’t sink along with the other young people for whom he filled in on an endless round of temporary jobs.

  She introduced him to Ralph, who had started off as a producer and now had his own talent agency. He had often been am
ong her and Louis’ guests, the powerful locals who had been their friends or had considered themselves so. Actually, some of them had made a pass at her – as who did not, even when she had been beyond the age when any woman could have expected it. Usually she laughed at them, and the one she had laughed at the most had been Ralph: ‘Come on, you don’t mean it.’ Finally he had to admit that he did not. His excuse was that she was irresistible. ‘At fifty-five?’ she asked. He was the only person ever to explain to her in what way, and of course it was easier for him, with his lack of taste for women, to be impersonal. He said that her attraction was her indifference – the fact that she just was, the way a pagan goddess is, Pallas Athene or someone, ready to accept worship but unconcerned whether it is given or not.

  The introduction to Ralph was a success. Shoki came back enthusiastic about Ralph’s kindness to him. When Brigitte phoned Ralph to thank him, Ralph said it was one’s duty to help young talent. He sounded guarded; there was a silence, then she said, ‘So what did you think?’

  ‘About the screenplay? It’s interesting. Different.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it.’

  Brigitte had hoped Ralph would have a more explicit opinion. She knew for herself that the work was different, and also difficult. The characters spoke in a poetic prose that was not easy to understand, but it sounded beautiful when Shoki read it to her, and every time he looked up for her appreciation, she had no difficulty giving it. Then he continued, satisfied – though really he did not need approval; he had the same confidence in his work as he did in himself.

  When there was another crisis in his living arrangement, Brigitte solved it by taking a room for him in the hotel. He was concerned about the expense, but when she reassured him that it wasn’t a suite, just a single room, he moved in with his small baggage. He liked it very much. It was on the second floor and overlooked the hotel garden with its cypress trees and silver fountain. It was also decided around this time that it was really not necessary for Shoki to take any more jobs when he could do so many helpful things for Brigitte.

  Frances found the perfect New York apartment for her sister and Brigitte agreed to take it, pay a deposit, sign papers – ‘Oh please, Frankie, whatever.’ Frances was not satisfied; she knew she was being got rid of and asked herself, What’s going on? Unfortunately she had no one with whom to share her doubts. Although she and her husband Marshall were known and seen everywhere as an indivisible couple – large and rich – the communication between them was not intimate. Whenever she tried to confide some deeper concerns to him, he answered her with an indifferent grunt or by rattling his newspaper at her in irritation.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she reproached Brigitte over the telephone. ‘What’s wrong? I thought you wanted to come.’ Then she said, ‘Do you have someone out there? A relationship?’

  ‘Oh absolutely. He’s sitting right here.’ Brigitte smiled across the room at Shoki, who looked up inquiringly and smiled back.

  ‘It’s not a joke. And if you knew how I’ve been running around trying to find the right apartment for you, and at last I have.’

  ‘Bless you,’ Brigitte thanked her, but Frances remained dissatisfied.

  A few days later, after a particularly annoying telephone conversation with Brigitte, Frances decided it would be best if she went herself to Los Angeles. She proposed this idea to Marshall, who said at once, ‘Impossible.’ They were about to go out to someone’s anniversary dinner – she had laid out his evening clothes and was putting on her jewellery.

  ‘Only for a few days,’ she said.

  ‘Oh yes? And what about the hospital ball, the library, the God-knows-for-what fundraiser?’ He was looking at himself in the mirror, adjusting his suspenders over his dress shirt. He was a big, broad man carrying a load of stomach in front, but it gave him pleasure to dress up and see himself. She, on the other hand, inserted her earrings as though she were undergoing a disagreeable ritual.

  ‘Why?’ he said. As if he didn’t know that her reason for going to Los Angeles could only be her sister. But she wasn’t going to spell anything out for him: if Brigitte was to be mentioned, he would have to do it. ‘You hate flying,’ he said, holding out a sleeve for her to insert the cufflink. ‘You sit there as if the pilot’s one ambition is to crash the plane with you in it. You spoil every trip you take with me before it’s even started . . . I thought you told me she was moving to New York.’

  Frances was now concentrating on tying his black tie, something he had had no cause to learn since she did it so expertly.

  ‘Well, is she or isn’t she?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know. That’s your sister all over – playing mystery, making everyone dance to her tune.’

  But later, inside their chauffeured limousine, where they took up the entire back seat as they sat side by side in their party clothes: ‘Call the office to book your seat; or remind me tomorrow, I’ll tell them.’

  Frances was querulous. The flight had been as horrible as she had expected, she already hated her room and it was all Brigitte’s fault for making her come here. ‘Yes you did – I knew something was up, and who else is there to care except me?’

  ‘Darling,’ Brigitte acknowledged. She looked around the room. ‘But it’s charming, what’s wrong with it?’

  ‘It’s cheap and gaudy, like a film set. And the light is giving me a headache.’

  ‘I’ll draw the curtain’ – but Brigitte regretted having to exclude the sun, the bright view.

  ‘Marshall thinks you have a lover, that’s why you’re sticking on here.’

  ‘Did Marshall say that?’

  ‘I’m sure it’s what he’s thinking.’

  ‘I have a friend,’ Brigitte said.

  ‘A man?’

  ‘God, Frances. What are you thinking?’

  ‘Who knows, nowadays?’ Frances was sad, thinking of her own children, about whose lives she could only speculate. ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Young. Very young, Frankie.’

  Her sister was the only person left in the world to call her Frankie, and Frances’ mood softened. She said, ‘I suppose it happens, especially in this place. You’d be far better off in New York.’

  ‘There are no young men there?’

  ‘I’m there. We’d be together again, after so many years . . . We don’t have to be lonely.’

  With her cool lips, Brigitte kissed her sister’s cheek. ‘You must be dropping. I’ll let you rest.’

  Frances agreed meekly. She really was tired – certainly too tired to call Marshall and tell him she had arrived safely. Anyway, he would only say that, if she hadn’t, he would have heard about it soon enough.

  But it was he who called her. He even asked about her flight; he also asked about her return booking, and would she and Brigitte be arriving together? She told him she was worried about the New York apartment for which she was negotiating – it was very desirable and others might pre-empt it – and in reply he did what she had hoped, asked for details, so she knew that he would be following them up and far more efficiently than she could. There was no reason after that not to hang up, but at the last moment he said, ‘What’s she tell you?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About being a crazy woman and getting herself in a mess back there.’

  Brigitte was woken up by a phone call from Ralph, asking her if she knew where Shoki was. He was trying not to sound agitated. ‘He’s not in his room, so I thought he’d be with you.’

  ‘No, but he’ll be here for breakfast.’

  ‘Breakfast! Do you know what the time is? . . . Anyway, he was supposed to be here; I’d set up a breakfast meeting for him. Remember? I’m his agent.’

  Brigitte said, ‘Of course.’ But it was true – she really had forgotten about this connection between Shoki and Ralph. Maybe she had even forgotten that Shoki was here for any other purpose than to be with her. She asked, ‘Do you and he of
ten have breakfast meetings?’

  ‘Well. Most days. I’m trying to help him, Brigitte.’ She could hear Ralph trying to choke down his anxiety. He said, ‘Have you any idea where he spends the night? You think he’s in his room, don’t you, but have you ever checked?’ His voice rose. ‘Don’t you ever wonder?’ he asked, angry with her now.

  Actually, she did wonder sometimes – not as Ralph evidently did, with anguish, but with curiosity, even pleasure. She knew it was not possible for Shoki to restrict himself to people he liked but who, by virtue of their age, were barred from one whole potent side of his nature. For that he did need – she freely admitted it – those as young as himself, and as gay (possibly in both senses). But to Ralph she only said, ‘What’s happening with his screenplay?’

  ‘It still needs work.’ He swept aside the irrelevant subject. ‘The fact is, he needs someone to take charge, be a bit strict with him.’

  ‘You mean to make him work?’

  ‘Yes yes, that too. Now listen, Brigitte, we need to talk—’

  ‘Oh,’ she said quickly, ‘there’s someone at the door. That may be he.’

  But it was Frances. Brigitte went back to the phone. ‘No, it’s my sister. She’s here from New York.’

  ‘Do you realize he was not in his room, not at midnight, not early this morning?’

  ‘My sister and I are going out now. This minute. We have a dental appointment.’

  When Brigitte was off the phone, Frances said, ‘I don’t know why you have to tell people lies all the time.’

  ‘That’s not fair, Frankie.’ But she reflected for a while. ‘It’s mostly to save their feelings.’