Three Continents

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  “A different family too, I guess.”

  But Michael frowned. He said to hell with all that. And he went off into what I can only call an impassioned speech. It would have surprised anyone who didn’t know him well—which I guess was practically everyone, since he wouldn’t let himself be known well. His manner made people think he was made of ice whereas really he was very fiery—in his ideals, that is; and it was only because he had been afraid of having them disappointed that he had kept himself so aloof, had played it so cool. But now, with the Rawul’s movement, he felt he could let himself go because at last he had found something in which to pour his whole self.

  He said I knew how he felt about the concept of family—and I did know, and to some extent, though not entirely, I shared it. Michael and I didn’t have that much of what is always thought of as family, not with Manton and Lindsay as parents. Grandfather’s embassies couldn’t take the place of a conventional family; as for Sonya—we had always been very fond of her, and in her last year Grandmother too had learned to appreciate her, but there were those years when everyone had to pretend Sonya wasn’t there, and that we weren’t visiting her in the hotel suite or sublet apartment she had taken near the embassy. Many people who don’t have a conventional family—and I suppose that is almost everyone nowadays—make up for it by getting very enamored of their ancestors, but that never happened to Michael and me; on the contrary. Everything Grandfather had said to us about the Wishwells, and everything Lindsay had tried to say to me about the Macrorys, had passed right over us. Michael said all that was played out. And not only family and family traditions, but also countries and the patriotism one was supposed to feel for them—humanity had passed beyond the stage of what Michael called tribal loyalties into a much higher concept of worldwide unity. It was the inevitable outcome of the scientific transcending of spatial limitations: No one was expected anymore to stay in the village where they were born, nor in the town, the city, the country, the nation, the continent—why, the very planet on which we live had been transcended! Ridiculous, said Michael, in such a world to remain imprisoned within the tiny concepts, geographical or other, of an earlier humanity. He said he had long felt that way—bound and imprisoned—and before the Rawul he had tried to free himself by means of philosophical ideas, which was what his studies of Eastern religions had been about. But it had been too abstract—he understood intellectually but as an existent being, as the everyday Michael, he remained bound to his own conditioning. It was only with the arrival of the Rawul that he was given an absolutely practical way of transcending his human bonds and boundaries. Moreover, here was an organization to perform this function—for the individual as well as for all peoples, all nations, all humanity. True, so far it was only an embryonic organization: but wasn’t that part of the excitement, to be in on the beginnings of such a movement, to be among its, if you like, apostles, and to have the privilege of day-to-day contact with the founder? All this Michael said to me, his gaunt face irradiated by a joy and passion that would make anyone, let alone me, forget that participation in this grand and heroic mission involved participation in what were I guess some rather sleazy smuggling activities.

  The privilege of day-to-day contact with our founder could sometimes be disconcerting. I was prepared to admit that the Rawul lived on a higher plane than the rest of us, but then I would see him emerge from his bedroom, completely confounded because there was a button missing on the sleeve of the shirt he had just put on: He held his arms out and looked piteously at Renée or anyone else who might be able to help him. He was very fond of drinking tea, and it was brought to him on a tray with the milk and sugar separate so he could stir them in to his own taste; he would do so very carefully and with relish, in the middle of dictating something or speaking into Anna’s tape recorder, sitting there stout and handsome in his velvet smoking jacket. One day I saw Bari Rani tie a bow tie on him, and having got him captive in that way, she took the opportunity to complain to him about one of the girls, who was going out with an unsuitable boy. “I think he’s on—you know—” Bari Rani said. He didn’t know and anyway wasn’t listening; he wanted her to hurry with his bow tie, he had a lunch appointment at the Savoy.

  “D-r-u-g-s,” Bari Rani spelled out for him. “Not that I think for a moment that Daisy would be silly and take anything. Although you might think she’s a scatterbrain sometimes, and certainly very untidy, God bless her, basically she’s a very sensible, good child and we’ve had a talk about it too. I’ve told her—if you don’t stand still I can’t do this—I’ve told her, Daisy, you know that at home only coolies at the railway station take that sort of stuff.”

  “My grandfather died of an overdose.”

  “Oh well, your grandfather. But you know how young people are. If one of them does something all the others have to do it too, and quite apart from anything else, I don’t like the boy.”

  “Finished? I do have an appointment, I’m afraid, and a very important one at that.”

  “He’s not the sort of boy you would want your daughter to be going with, and though she swears that ‘We’re just friends, Mummy, that’s all,’ we know how one thing leads to another. He is not an educated boy or even a nice boy and one is not supposed to say this but I don’t think he comes from a nice family, his father is a—oh I don’t know—something not very nice. . . . Oh well, if you’re happy if she marries a coal man or something of that sort, then what more can I say.”

  “Good Lord,” the Rawul said, really struck now, for he did care—he cared as a father, and he cared dynastically as a ruler, and most important, he cared as a world leader whose image had to remain unblemished.

  He thought a lot about the image of his movement. He liked to devise new emblems for it, and new celebrations and rituals like the flag-hoisting ceremony at Propinquity, and my wedding. His own birthday was coming around, and he was planning to make a sort of Founder’s Day out of it. He had never mentioned any particular day as the one on which he had founded the movement, but his own birthday appeared appropriate, and he could be heard rehearsing a speech that began: “Not only was I born on this day but also reborn . . .” While he was completely involved in planning for the great day, all sorts of other things were going on that he knew nothing about—that were being kept secret from him the way our crises usually were, especially the financial ones.

  The reason Crishi needed a mortgage on Propinquity was that the movement had had “losses” lately. He said “losses” vaguely, but through hints from Anna, and also some restlessness among the followers, I gathered that there had been more arrests at certain borders. Each arrest meant—besides the disappearance of the arrested person into some foreign jail—a considerable financial setback with the impounding of whatever it was that was being carried from one place to another. While the ranks of the followers could be filled in without much difficulty, the other loss caused embarrassment. A mortgage on Propinquity would at this point have been helpful. It was impossible to get at Grandfather’s property, which was solely in our name and unavailable to us till next June; but since Lindsay was both co-owner and trustee of Propinquity, she could have easily raised some useful cash on it for the movement. The fact that she refused drove Michael mad. He had gone to the Ritz to try to reason with her, and when she gave him the same argument she had given me—about family and tradition—he stormed out and said he never wanted to see or hear from her again. I came in soon afterward and found Lindsay and Jean packing. Or rather, Jean was packing—she usually did that, anyway—while Lindsay was working herself up against Michael. When I arrived, she let go about him to me. I had already heard a lot about her from him, and the only conclusion I could come to was that they were two people who had better not meet. I had come to the same conclusion about Manton and Michael. I suppose it is something that often happens between parents and their children, although in this case it went a lot further than the generation gap. It was a pity that both Lindsay and Manton had developed such strong fe
elings about family, since the only family they had was Michael and me—at least in the sense that they meant, as a continuation of their line and as inheritors of ancestral money and property.

  UNLIKE Michael, Crishi didn’t seem in the least put out by Lindsay’s refusal. He even very politely came to say good-bye to her and Jean before they sailed (both loved the fun to be had on an ocean liner). That was his way—never to waste regret on a scheme that didn’t come off but to be busy planning another. What he planned next was to use the old guru’s house as a collateral, but here he came up against other difficulties. Since he had not yet managed to raise the full price on the house, Babaji and the Devis were still its part-owners besides living up on the top story. The arrangement was loose and friendly, and the Devis might have consented to the mortgage if in the meantime they hadn’t had their own troubles. These were to do with Babaji’s failing health. I had never known him anything but bedridden, but now there was a change; the top floor took on a sickroom atmosphere, and the Devis constantly went in and out of Babaji’s room with his bedpan or drink of pomegranate juice. None of them believed in modern medicine, so there was never a doctor but only little packets of powder, which they tried to coax him to take. He was weak but cheerful—I could hear him singing in a reedy voice, and whenever he caught a glimpse of me passing his door, he would call “Bring her in, let me see her,” and the Devis would usher me to his bedside. He laughed and nodded at me, and the most he would ask was for me to bring my face close so he could pinch my cheek. I was glad to do this for him. It seemed to give him pleasure and made him cackle and cough and laughingly wave away the Devis, who tried to calm him down. At other times he would tell me about India—at least I presumed it was India; it was always some hut by a river where he said he was born.

  I think he wished to die by this river, and the Devis were very keen to take him there. They wanted to dissolve their last asset in England, which was this house, and so it happened that when Crishi needed to raise a mortgage on it, they needed the final payments he owed them. Nina Devi had a long business talk with him, in which he agreed to everything she asked; but after that she could never get hold of him, and whenever she wanted to renew their talk and settle the terms with him, he was in a terrible rush to get to a meeting or catch a plane. I had noticed this about him—when people wanted something from him, whether it was money or, as in my own case, anything else, he tended to disappear.

  One day there was a conversation between Renée and Rupert concerning Crishi. While awaiting trial, Rupert was out on bail and had taken Robi back to live with him. He continued to stay away from the gallery but visited us at home. I say us, but it was Renée he came to see. Although they were no longer husband and wife, two strong links remained between them—one was Robi, and the other must have been Rupert’s feelings for her, for he couldn’t keep away, although when he was there, she was irritable and impatient with him. She was the same with Robi, and he usually got away from her and came upstairs to be with me. I missed him now that he was back with his father, and made a big fuss of him whenever he came to visit. He sat very still when I combed his hair and even let me kiss him sometimes—he pretended he was doing me a favor, but I think he wanted me to. We played the games we used to play when he was living here, hide-and-seek around the flat or catch, not caring how much noise we made even when Anna was in the flat and said we were giving her a headache. We played forfeits and tickling games—these latter with him squirming and screaming around on the bed. In these abandoned moments he looked much more like Crishi than when he was his usual staid, shy self. But if being with Robi was sometimes reminiscent of being with Crishi, at other times it was as if he were Michael—not that he looked like Michael but it was as it had been when Michael and I were children together. Whenever Robi came it was very satisfactory for me, and when he had left, I wanted more than ever that Crishi would let me get pregnant, but he kept saying “Wait,” or “Not now,” though in a nice way, as if he wanted it very much as soon as it would be convenient.

  On this day, when it was time for Robi to leave and I took him downstairs, Renée and Rupert were in the middle of an argument. When I say argument, I mean that it was as usual between them—Renée irritated with him, and he doing his best to placate her. Only this time she was more than irritated, she was really upset, and I guess it was an indication of the progress of our relationship that she at once told me what it was about. Perhaps I hated Renée and she hated me—and how else could we possibly feel about each other, as how else could she and Bari Rani feel about each other? But just as in many ways she and Bari Rani were closer to each other than to anyone else, in so far as they shared the same close concern—that is, in their case, the Rawul—Renée and I too were united, even tied together through our concern, if that is the word, for Crishi.

  Rupert had come to warn Renée that, in the course of the inquiry against him, he had begun to realize that the police were well informed about Crishi and his activities and those of the followers, including Michael. The recent spate of arrests should have been a warning, but Crishi either was not ready to listen to warnings or enjoyed carrying on in spite of them, or both. Taking risks put him in a good mood. Even in things like swimming—if there was a rock to dive from, if the Coast Guard had the red flag out, that was his best time; or just crossing a city street, he seemed deliberately to wait for the “Don’t Walk” sign. As for Renée, I think she didn’t want to know about the police—both because she wanted to shut her eyes and depend on Crishi completely, and because she couldn’t deal with the idea of any danger threatening him. When Rupert gave her this information to warn her, she turned on him. It was at that point that I came in with Robi. Robi must have witnessed fights between his parents before and didn’t want to see any more; he pretended nothing was happening and got behind a sofa, where he played a game I had taught him, of making animals out of a combination of your fingers and a handkerchief. I would have liked to join him but couldn’t; and if I had had any doubts about being fully adult, Renée settled them at once by drawing me in and telling me about the information Rupert had given her. She made it sound like Rupert was responsible—she accused him of giving this information to the police. It was useless for him to try to defend himself; she insisted that was what must have happened.

  “I’m not even blaming you,” she told Rupert, though her eyes flamed with fury. “I blame myself for getting you involved at all. I should have known—I did know—you couldn’t handle it. You couldn’t even sell your own house, even a simple little thing like that I had to come and do for you, so how to expect you to get anything else right.”

  Rupert stood very upright and said “I did my best.”

  “Oh your best.” She turned to me: “Rupert’s best isn’t up to much. As you can see, all it’s done is land us in trouble.”

  There was plenty he could have said in reply but he only stood there and watched her pace up and down, working herself up against him. He had tried to sacrifice himself—to divert all blame and punishment on himself so that they could carry on their work—but had failed even in that. And maybe that was why he didn’t defend himself more—because he did feel guilty in general, for not being the strong and able personality she required him to be.

  The Rawul came in, with the speech he was writing for his birthday celebration. He had been working on it for many days in his study, and every now and again he emerged to try it out on his household. He saw at once that the moment was not right—there was Rupert standing like an accused person in the middle of the room, and Renée had thrown herself into an armchair in a movement of despair. Her despair appeared to include the Rawul. She glowered at both of them as they greeted each other with the cordial courtesy of two English gentlemen, as if she were asking herself what good were they to her—her two husbands—how could she depend on them.

  “Is something wrong?” the Rawul spoke into this constrained atmosphere. “Can I help in any way?”

  He looked aro
und at us, genuinely concerned to participate in any difficulty there might be. But there was the understanding that the Rawul was not to participate in these aspects of the work: that as the founder and figurehead of the movement he was not to know what had to be done to keep him afloat.

  It was Rupert who reassured him: “No,” he said, with his deprecating smile, “there’s nothing wrong except that I’ve been a fool again and Renée is quite rightly telling me off.”

  “My dear fellow,” smiled the Rawul in return. “I can’t believe that. We all have utter trust in you—don’t we, Rani?—we know you to be an utterly splendid chap, and we also know—don’t we,” he said coyly, “that our Rani can sometimes be a little bit—impatient? Just a little bit?” He smiled at her, and went on quickly, “But where would we be without her? Where would I be without her? Yes, I have these ideas, but without her I would still be up there in my mountains dreaming of my new world—while thanks to her, here I am, making that world. We have to hand it to her, absolutely,” he said and began to pat his palms softly together at her, in applause.

  “Absolutely,” agreed Rupert, looking down at the floor.

  “You’d better go,” Renée told Rupert; she was still sprawled sullenly in her chair. He hesitated, wanting so much to stay, maybe even try to improve her mood toward him, but when he took a step in her direction, she turned her head away. “And take the boy with you,” she said. Rupert got Robi from behind the sofa, and they went out in the rain together. I watched them from the window, walking in the street below—rather slowly and sedately, tall Rupert holding his umbrella protectively over Robi.

  Renée didn’t stir from her chair but continued to stare ahead of her in moody silence. The Rawul glanced at her, and at the sheets of paper in his hand he had come in to read to anyone who might be there to listen. He proceeded to do so; it was a good speech. Renée wasn’t listening, but he didn’t notice, he so much enjoyed his own words; he smiled and glowed as he read. It was a shock to him, and to me, when suddenly she shouted: “Oh be quiet, can’t you, I can’t stand it another minute!” She had flung back her head and let her hands sink down to the sides of the chair, in weariness. The Rawul appeared not to know what to do; he looked at me, helplessly, the way he did when there was a button missing on his shirt. He approached her very slowly, very carefully—there was always that air about her, of a tigress who might do something terrible and entirely unexpected. He put his hand on hers, gingerly, fearing she might claw him. But she left his hand there as though she didn’t feel it. She said to him as she had said to Rupert, “You’d better go,” only in a less hostile way.