Travelers

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  “Mutton stew—when they know perfectly well I can’t stand it. I’ve told them over and over again I want my rice and curry; at least that has some taste to it. But it’s because of him upstairs. I think he bribes them in the kitchen. Those people would do anything for a bribe.”

  “Don’t they cook your curry on alternate days?” Miss Charlotte said. “And look at the chutney I brought you—that’ll make everything taste nice.”

  “He pretends he doesn’t like Indian food. He says it’s too hot for him, burns his tongue, he says. Of course that’s just his lies and hypocrisy to show everyone how English he is. English, is he? Well, I have a story to tell about that if anyone cares to ask and I should care to answer.” She swayed and smirked but the next moment remembered something unpleasant that made her stop. “He knows very well I know what I’m not supposed to know—that’s why he’s telling all those lies about me. To pull the wool over people’s eyes. Have you heard the latest? He’s been telling Ayah and all the servants that my father—my father—kept a shop in Amritsar. Really, I ought to laugh and I would if it weren’t such a hateful, detestable, wicked lie. Hand me that,” she told Raymond, pointing to a metal plaque propped up in the center of the mantelpiece.

  She took the plaque between both her hands, and when she had gazed at it long enough, she gave it to Raymond and told him to read it. “Out loud,” she said. He read that this plaque had been presented to Lieutenant F. J. Peck of the 13th Bengal Infantry to commemorate his participation in the relief of Lucknow, December 1857.

  “My father,” she said impressively, and indeed Raymond held the plaque with wonder and looked from it to her as she sat there swollen and discolored in her polka-dot frock.

  “Put it back,” she ordered. “Now you know what to say next time you hear him tell that lie. The things he’s been telling people, someone ought to do something about it. Not that anyone believes him of course, because everyone knows he’s a liar through and through. He’s just rotten with lies. Rotten and stinking!” she shouted, croaking, apoplectic, but with surprising energy.

  “Shall we say our prayers now?” suggested Miss Charlotte.

  “All right, dear,” the old lady said at once and meekly.

  Miss Charlotte slipped from her chair down to the floor in a practiced, agile movement. The other two remained where they were but lowered their heads respectfully. Raymond thought how hard the floor must be under Miss Charlotte’s knees, but he knew she didn’t feel it. Surreptitiously he looked over at the old lady. Her head was still lowered but she was looking at him out of the corner of one of her blotted eyes. She closed it at him in a wink that made him look away again quickly. Miss Charlotte prayed out loudly and in a voice full of faith and joy.

  Raymond Writes to His Mother

  “. . . I always feel strange walking into the High Commission compound. It’s so tremendously clean—you can’t help thinking that no place in India has the right to be that clean. And all that smart new suburban architecture and the Mums sitting gossiping by the swimming pool and calling in loud voices to their children splashing about inside. When a stranger like me comes in, they glance round for a moment and look at you with those cold eyes, you know, the sort that say since they don’t know you obviously you’re not worth knowing. The tennis courts are usually occupied by girls with stout red legs playing men also with stout red legs and they call to each other across the net in those same loud voices in which the Mums call to the children. It’s funny, everyone here seems to have this same commanding sort of voice, even the children. (Or is it the way English people always speak and I’ve forgotten?)

  “Mr. Taylor couldn’t have been more cordial, was very pleased to see me, insisted I have a drink. He’s a counselor and so gets a special bungalow, fully air-conditioned of course and with fitted carpets. When I talked about Miss Charlotte, he made a face—in a nice way, showing how he was not hiding his feelings from me—he said yes, he knew about those people, and one did feel sorry for them and no one could deny that they had been doing good work—but unfortunately the Indian government was rather sensitive about them and High Commission could hardly afford to stick its neck out for them because alas there were so many things the Indian government was sensitive about. . . . Here he sighed, and I could see that he had plenty of troubles of his own. I think he was about to tell me about them when Mrs. Taylor came in and said she hoped he wasn’t forgetting the Wodehouses at eight and he hadn’t even changed yet, darling. So of course I jumped to my feet, and he got up too and put his hand on my arm and said he hoped I understood his problem and I said I did. And actually I did—things are like that nowadays—it’s all right to use those loud voices inside the compound but outside they have to be rather circumspect. . . .”

  A Secular State

  Rao Sahib’s office was done up in wood paneling and had an enormous teak desk with a silver inkstand on it. Rao Sahib sat behind this desk in a carved chair that reared above him like a throne; on the wall behind him hung a colored portrait of the President of India. Rao Sahib was leaning back in his chair and explaining himself to Raymond.

  “You may take note that I am speaking as a secular state and hence these restrictions would apply to all denominations. Our policies are framed regardless of any particular creed but only on the basis of the widest application of principle. . . .”

  He was talking himself into a trance, and Raymond, sitting opposite him, felt in danger of sinking with him. He made an effort to rouse himself. He proffered the opinion that Miss Charlotte’s activities were of an entirely philanthropic nature and that her concern was solely with material and not at all with spiritual conditions. Rao Sahib was traveling too smoothly on his own track of ideas to make it easy for him to switch to another, but when Raymond had respectfully tendered this point, he made a sincere effort to accommodate him and succeeded so well that he was soon launched on another flow of words.

  “While not denying the value of the philanthropic work that has been done by many of these missions in the past, we must stress the fact that philanthropy is a form of charity that the government of India, indeed I may say the people of India, can no longer allow themselves to accept. The giant task ahead of us is one that must be solved not through the individual efforts of foreigners whose presence in our midst is an anachronism but through our own machinery of parliamentary democracy and nationalized socialism. . . .”

  Raymond was sad. Rao Sahib’s words were so big and Miss Charlotte’s efforts so small. He thought of her little school for sweepers’ children and the cluster of sick people on her back veranda to whom pills and bandages were dispensed. In the face of those giant problems and that giant machinery Rao Sahib spoke of, what did any of it amount to? But there was Miss Charlotte herself, and for her sake Raymond again ventured to interrupt Rao Sahib, who again obligingly shifted his discourse and admitted that yes, it was not to be denied that there were cases of individual hardship which the government of India would indeed do its best to take note of; but was it not true to say—Rao Sahib appealed to Raymond—that in the upheavals of history there was bound to be individual suffering that no power on earth was able to prevent? It struck Raymond how kind Rao Sahib was being in giving him so much of his time and in taking the trouble of explaining the standpoint of his government to him at such length. So courteous was Rao Sahib that he gave the impression of having no other work but to sit here and talk to Raymond; and he seemed ready to extend the interview indefinitely when they were interrupted by the entrance of his private secretary, a deferential young man in suede shoes on which he tiptoed up to Rao Sahib’s desk to remind him of his next engagement.

  “Oh, dear dear dear,” said Rao Sahib. “You see what comes of having such interesting chats.” He stared down at the papers the young man had glided before him. “Your speech, sir,” the young man murmured.

  “Ah,” said Rao Sahib. He looked down at it and read fleeting phrases which seemed to please him. His chest swelled over his desk, hi
s face shone with interior smiles; he cleared his throat and patted it. He appeared impatient to launch forth on his speech and to anticipate pleasure from its delivery.

  “At six-thirty,” said the secretary, looking at his watch as if apologizing for its impertinence.

  Rao Sahib got up and said “Do forgive me” to Raymond, who also got up. He held his hand out across the desk and shook Raymond’s warmly. Midway he stopped short and looked inquiringly at Raymond’s necktie.

  “Pembroke,” Raymond said.

  “My dear chap,” said Rao Sahib, shaking Raymond’s hand all over again and with redoubled warmth.

  Lee Writes to Raymond

  “. . . This girl Evie is getting to be a sort of ideal for me. She’s been with him for three years and it’s all she wants and all she is really. He’s writing this book on the ‘Essence of the Upanishads’ and he’s dictating it to her bit by bit, just as the thoughts come to him. It’s going to be a very revolutionary work, because it’s the first really serious attempt to fit Indian thought into the framework of Western apprehension in such a way that it’s not only with the mind that we shall be able to understand it but with our whole being which is really the only way to really know anything. Evie is also taking down whatever thoughts he throws out during the course of the day, and need I say that this keeps her very busy because he’s so phenomenal, I mean it’s so fantastic the way his mind is always alert. He himself is always tremendously alert—I can’t imagine him ever feeling tired, and as far as I can see he doesn’t, he’s always awake long after the rest of us have gone to sleep and he’s always the first up, so that sometimes I wonder whether he ever goes to sleep at all. And because he keeps these fantastic hours Evie has to too. She doesn’t ever like to leave him in case he says one of his things while she’s not there and then it would be lost forever and she’d never forgive herself. She also spends a lot of time writing up her notes, so she’s always working hard and as she’s not very strong it’s really a miracle how she keeps it up.

  “Margaret is funny nowadays. I don’t know what’s the matter with her. Of course she’s studying very hard because she’s taking the Way of Knowledge but that’s no reason why she should get so snappy. She spends a lot of time meditating on her mantra (we all have a different mantra to meditate on that he gave us when he formally adopted us as his disciples). But it’s not making her one bit serene the way it should. She and I and Evie are in the same hutment, and she’s always picking on us for nothing. I try to ignore it as much as possible because I don’t want to be disturbed in my mind. The other day she went for poor Evie—she accused her of using her towel, which Evie hadn’t done, but even if she had what did it matter? And Evie never said a word to defend herself, she just looked down and smiled that pale smile she has. But that made Margaret madder than ever. Afterward she kept muttering horrid things about her, how she didn’t trust her one inch, that Evie was smarmy and deceitful and that it was sad to see Swamiji so taken in by her and unable to see her in her true colors.

  “But it’s stupid of me to write you these things and I’m giving you entirely the wrong impression of our life here. I wish I could tell you about it, describe it to you as it is. If only you would come and see for yourself! I know if you did you wouldn’t want to go away again ever. Swamiji is also convinced of it and often says, ‘I wish Raymond would come.’ Yes, he calls you Raymond and knows all about you, he has this power of knowing people before he’s actually physically met them. And he knows like I do, Raymond, that you’re wasting India, which has such supreme things, such gifts to give those of us ready to take them. . . .”

  Friendship Renewed and Transformed

  Gopi asked, “Aren’t you pleased to see me?”

  “It’s been a long time,” Raymond said. He was staggered by Gopi’s unexpected appearance in the flat. He had come bounding up the stairs and was suddenly in the room—radiant and smiling as if nothing whatsoever had come in between.

  “I know,” Gopi said. “But I’ve been thinking of you so much.”

  This was not true. Gopi had hardly thought about Raymond at all—he had been too preoccupied to do so. But once the idea of visiting Raymond occurred to him, he wasted no time at all but rushed to see him. And now that he had come, he was very glad: all the pleasant hours he had spent here came back to him and the memory made him feel so good that he threw his arms round Raymond and hugged him with true affection.

  But Raymond was shocked by this embrace and moved away from him. Then Gopi was shocked too and cried, “What’s the matter! Are you angry with me?”

  Raymond was trembling and could not answer. Weeks had passed, and now Gopi came and asked what was the matter.

  “Don’t you want to speak to me?” Gopi asked sadly. “Should I go away?”

  Raymond knew that if he said yes, Gopi would obey, he would slowly walk down the stairs feeling very, very sorry that Raymond was angry with him.

  Raymond shrugged and said, attempting indifference, “Now you’ve come—”

  “Are you ill?” Gopi asked, looking searchingly into Raymond’s face. “You look pulled down. Have you been to see a doctor?”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Is there bad news from home? Is Mother well?”

  Raymond felt that Gopi had no right to ask him these intimate questions as if everything was as it had been before. Yet he saw that Gopi was absolutely sincere in his concern. There was so much tenderness in his eyes and his voice that Raymond’s determination to harden his feelings began, in spite of himself, to weaken.

  “Asha and I speak of you so often. Always she asks, I wonder how Raymond is, what he is doing now. . . .” As he spoke, Gopi looked slyly sideways at Raymond as if he were asking him whether he knew about himself and Asha. And Raymond blushed, so that Gopi saw that he did know, and that made Gopi burst out laughing in a mixture of embarrassment and pleasure. He said, “She likes you very much,” and laughed again—and then he wanted to talk about Asha and share his happiness with Raymond and also draw him into it because he was so fond of Raymond and wanted him to be happy too.

  He flung himself on Raymond’s sofa in his old position—half lying, half sitting, utterly at ease. He cried out how good it was to be back again and Raymond could not help himself but had silently to agree that it was good—very, very good—to see him there again in the flat which had been so bleak without him. And when Gopi indicated with a smiling glance the space left empty on the sofa, Raymond went and sat there and both looked at each other and were glad—yes, Raymond could no longer and wanted no longer to hide the fact that he was.

  “Do you remember,” said Gopi, beaming now that Raymond seemed to be pleased with him again, “that evening when she came? And we all went swimming—Lee too—have you heard from Lee?”

  “Yes.” Raymond added ruefully, “Poor Lee.”

  “Why? No—she’s very happy—and it is a very good place. We want to go and visit her there, Asha and I. . . .” Again he looked sideways at Raymond, again he laughed. He longed to talk to Raymond about Asha but at the same time he felt shy.

  Raymond went on talking about Lee. “I suppose it was to be expected sooner or later—obviously she’s the type.”

  “What type?”

  “To fall for one of these people.”

  “Oh, no,” Gopi said, rather shocked, “he must be a very holy person.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Asha thinks so too.” Now he could no longer restrain himself but blurted out, “Do you like Asha?” He went on in a rush—“Because she likes you very much, how often she speaks about you, we both speak about you and I say yes, he and I are great, great friends. . . .”

  “Such great friends,” Raymond suddenly said, “that you haven’t bothered to see me or ring me or give any sign of life to me for nine weeks and four days.”

  Gopi was silent in astonishment. It did not seem to him that any time had passed at all—the minutes had flown so lightly for him—and even if it h
ad, he couldn’t understand why Raymond should be bitter about it. It did happen sometimes that friends were prevented from meeting, but that did not make any difference to their feelings for each other. His feelings for Raymond had certainly not changed at all. He murmured, “I wanted to come very often,” but with downcast eyes and all the joy gone out of him.

  Then Raymond felt sorry and thought, wasn’t it enough that Gopi was here now, wasn’t that happiness enough that he must hark back to what was past and of no importance to anyone but himself? So he said, “I know you were busy,” meaning it as an apology for the way he had spoken.

  Gopi swiftly raised his eyes and tried to search out from Raymond’s features what there might be in his heart. Their glance met for an instant and Raymond had to look away: he could not bear the beauty of Gopi’s eyes nor the surge of emotion that they evoked in him.

  “She’s very kind to me,” Gopi said, misinterpreting Raymond’s expression. “Look at this shirt—just feel it”—he stuck out his sleeve at Raymond and waited till he did feel it—“you see, what silk it is.”

  “Yes, it’s very good.”

  “She gave it to me.” He added, “And so many other things.” And when Raymond said nothing, he thought he had to say more. “Whatever I want, she buys for me. She’s very rich.”

  Raymond said quickly, “I know she’s very generous. I like her.”

  Gopi’s face lit up. “Really? You really like her?”

  “Very much.”

  “You don’t know how she speaks of you—she thinks you are wonderful and she is always wanting us to be together with you, she keeps saying, where’s Raymond? Why don’t we call Raymond?”

  He looked at Raymond with love. He sparkled and shone. And Raymond felt, whatever happened, he couldn’t let him go again.

  The weeks of privation had schooled Raymond in patience, and he was content to be able to see Gopi in between Gopi’s other commitments—to his college, his home, and to Asha. This undemanding attitude pleased Gopi and made him feel more affectionate toward Raymond than anything else could have done. He came to look on Raymond’s flat as a place of refuge and visited at any hour of the day or night it suited him. He lounged around there wearing nothing but a lungi tied around his waist and spent a lot of time fast asleep in whatever place—a sofa, the floor, Raymond’s bed—he happened to drop down. Then Raymond moved around on tiptoe and slipped pillows under Gopi’s head to make him more comfortable. Once, while he was doing this, Gopi suddenly opened his eyes and looked at him and smiled so sweetly that Raymond’s heart turned right over.