Travelers

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  “I know, but she gets so angry. She’s terribly irritable. Actually, I think it’s her stomach. She hates the food here; even the smell of it makes her sick.”

  She looked past Raymond toward the tree where Swamiji sat. Swamiji waved to them and Lee wrenched her arm free and hurried toward him. There was a cluster of disciples sitting around his cot, and Evie was reading to all of them from a big book which lay open in her lap. Lee made her way through the circle and went up to Swamiji’s cot. She touched his feet, crouching down like a good and humble disciple, but he had eyes only for Raymond. He beamed with pleasure and said, “So you have come to pay us a visit.” He waved some disciples aside to make room, but Raymond wouldn’t sit down. Swamiji looked at him in his keen way and asked, “What has happened?”

  “He’s worried about Margaret,” Lee said.

  “Yes, she’s not feeling up to the mark these days,” Swamiji said regretfully. He turned to one of the women sitting round his cot and asked, “Did you give her those powders?”

  “She couldn’t keep them down,” Lee reported.

  Swamiji clicked his tongue in pity. Then he beamed again at Raymond: “You have come very auspiciously. I thought and thought about you all last night and wished oh, if Raymond would come. And today you have come. You must have heard me calling you. So it is true, you see—I have very special powers.” He laughed.

  Raymond was still standing. His Adam’s apple went up and down in agitation. “I could get a doctor out here or I could take her back to town with me.”

  “Let him hold it,” Swamiji said to Evie. She took the book from which she had been reading and gave it to Raymond. It was the same bulky manuscript they had brought to the hotel.

  “There it is,” said Swamiji. “Our first fruits. Our first child.” He and Evie both smiled with pride and so did everyone else there. “We are now in your hands,” Swamiji said. “We have placed our hearts and hopes in you. It is all up to you now.” He waved his hand to express the abandonment of all care for the manuscript.

  But Raymond stood holding it as if he didn’t know what to do with it. He looked down at it; actually he felt like flinging it on the ground and maybe stamping on it. Swamiji noticed his preoccupied look and gently took the book away from him.

  “Come,” he said, “leave it with me for a little while longer. I feel,” he said with his smile, “like the father giving away his daughter to a husband’s home—only one moment longer, he begs, let me hold her in my arms for this one last time.” He ran his hands over his manuscript and some of the disciples breathed “Ah” in blessed contentment. He passed the book back to Evie and asked her to continue her reading. She did so joyfully.

  “On Friday morning after breakfast we were all sitting under the tree. We were discussing an incident that had happened the day before which had had a very bad effect on some of us. A stray dog had been found lying injured near the ashram. It was in a very bad state and cried and cried and touched our hearts to pity. Lee especially was very much affected. She wanted to have it put out of its misery. But Swamiji would not allow it. The dog howled all night. She went again to Swamiji and begged for his permission but again he would not grant it. He said the dog would be dead in the morning. And so it happened. But Swamiji saw that Lee was still very much upset, so he explained the whole matter to her. He said, ‘Everything must be experienced to the end. This is true for a dog as for a man, as for a bud on a tree. Everything must unfold and ripen. There is sunshine and gentle breezes and there is rain and bitter storms. We must accept and enjoy, or accept and endure, as the case may be. Because we need both enjoyment and endurance, both sun and storm, so that we may ripen into our fullest possibility. Isn’t it wonderful that even a dog should be allowed to grow into such ripeness! And if for a dog, then how much more for a human being!’”

  There was a murmur of appreciation from the listeners. Swamiji too appeared to enjoy and approve of the thoughts expressed. Evie looked as if this reading had done her good in her innermost soul, and her face was radiant with love and bliss. She looked so gentle, so good, so full of kindness for all created beings that Raymond was stirred to appeal to her.

  “I really think she ought to be in a hospital. I could take her back with me now—I have a taxi waiting—or if you think that’s better I’ll bring a doctor out—”

  Before he had finished speaking, she had turned away from him, still with that smile of goodness and love, and fixed her gaze on Swamiji. Everyone else was looking at Swamiji in the same way. Raymond left them to go back to Margaret.

  Lee came running after him and when she had caught up with him she said, “How can you behave like that?” She was angry and started shouting at him: “Don’t you realize what an honor he was doing you! And you stood there holding it as if it were—just nothing. I felt so ashamed of you. And he’s an angel, a saint—he really is a saint—his feelings were deeply hurt but his only thought was for you, that you shouldn’t be embarrassed—”

  Raymond remained cold to this outburst. He said, “I think we ought to worry more about Margaret than Swamiji’s or my feelings.”

  “She’s all right! Just leave her alone!”

  They had reached the hutment where Margaret lay on her bed. Her eyes were shut and she breathed like a person in pain. When they came in, she opened her eyes and made an effort to sit up.

  “You’re all right, aren’t you?” Lee said to her. “I mean, apart from your upset stomach—everybody gets that.”

  “Why don’t you come back with me?” Raymond appealed to Margaret.

  “She doesn’t want to!”

  “Let her speak for herself.”

  “I don’t want to,” Margaret said. She struggled to get up. She sat on the edge of her bed. She had been a plump girl but now her skin hung loose. It had turned yellow.

  “You’ve got jaundice,” Raymond said.

  “Don’t talk rot,” Lee said. “It’s her stomach. You should try and eat something,” she encouraged Margaret.

  A shudder ran over Margaret and she made a retching sound. She scratched at her thighs in an impotent, hysterical way. “I feel so itchy all the time.”

  “That’s jaundice,” Raymond said.

  Lee said, “It’s those damn bedbugs. You should see what I go through all night. Lie down, Margaret, he says you should rest.”

  “He said that?”

  “Yes, he said tell her to rest and get quite well and then she shall come and be with me again.”

  Margaret shut her eyes again, perhaps to overcome her pain, perhaps to think this message over. After a while she said, “You’re lying.”

  “Truly, Margaret, that’s what he said. I swear.”

  “He didn’t. You only want to keep me away from him.” She looked at Raymond. “She’d do anything to keep me away from him. She’s so jealous. She and that Evie both.” She fell back on the bed as if in despair and burst out crying.

  “You’re being very unfair, Margaret. You know that’s not true, you’re just saying it. It’s you who’re jealous because you don’t realize that in his love for us we’re all the same—”

  “Oh, shut up,” Raymond said, and he even pushed Lee out of the way. He sat down on the edge of Margaret’s bed: “Please come away with me. The moment you’re all right again I’ll bring you back. I promise.” She made no move. “Or I can bring you back straightaway, if you prefer that. We’ll just see a doctor and then we’ll come back. It’s easy.”

  “You’re making her feel worse,” Lee said.

  Raymond got up. “Then I’ll have to bring a doctor here.”

  Lee followed him out. “Swamiji doesn’t like doctors.”

  “He doesn’t?”

  “He believes in the ancient form of Indian medicine like it’s written in the shastras. I believe in it too. We all do.”

  Raymond got into his taxi which was waiting on the dirt track outside and drove away.

  Universal Synthesis

  Raymond had meant to fi
nd a good doctor as soon as he got back to the hotel, but there was a message waiting for him that delayed his plan. The message was from Gopi and asked Raymond to meet him immediately in the discotheque; it was very urgent. Besides this message, there were also two letters for him, one from his mother and the other from Miss Charlotte. He told himself that he would read his mother’s letter later at his leisure and opened his leather portfolio to keep it inside: but as he did so, he saw another of her letters lying there. It had arrived two days ago but so far he had forgotten to read it. He shut the portfolio again and, thrusting Miss Charlotte’s letter into his pocket, hastened off to obey Gopi’s summons.

  He found him sitting in the discotheque with Babloo and Babloo’s friends. They were the only customers, for in spite of its attempts at a modern atmosphere, the place had not proved popular. They were discussing a news item that had appeared in the papers that morning. It concerned a popular film star against whom a charge of bigamy had been brought. Babloo and his friends discussed hotly to and fro. Some were against him, some for him, but all were united in passionate involvement. They spoke of him as a person they knew well and the details of whose life were as familiar to them as their own. They knew about the fabulous house he had built on Juhu beach and his white Mercedes sports car; they discussed how much he got for each film and that most of it was in black money to evade the income tax; twice a week he went for a body massage, and last year he had been involved in a brawl with a rival star and had slapped his face at a great glittering premiere party in a Bombay hotel. All this they spoke of with excitement. Raymond enjoyed listening to them. They were youthful and fervent and their eyes shone beneath their brushed-up puffs of hair. They reminded him of Gopi as Gopi had been when he had first met him. But now Gopi appeared very different from them. He wasn’t taking any interest in their conversation but leaned back in his chair and stretched and yawned rather arrogantly. Finally he nudged Raymond under the table and made a sign to him that they should leave. He got up first.

  His cousin Babloo stopped talking and looked up at him. “Where are you going?” There was something imploring in his eyes that said don’t go. It touched Raymond and he would willingly have stayed. But Gopi said, “See you later.”

  “All right.” Babloo dropped his eyes, tender and hurt. How often Raymond had seen Gopi look like that and how it had always wrung his heart!

  Without another look at his cousin, Gopi steered Raymond outside. “They are so boring,” he said.

  “Do you think so? I like them.”

  “That’s because you haven’t heard them one hundred million times before.”

  Gopi said he had to speak to Raymond very urgently. Raymond told him how he must get hold of a doctor to take to Margaret. He wanted to do it at once, but Gopi said wait, they would go home and ask his uncle about a good doctor, but first Gopi simply had to speak to him, he had been waiting for him most impatiently. They were standing in the busy street and Gopi looked round for somewhere to go. They found a tea-stall and went and sat inside the booth attached to it. It was a steamy, dingy little place with only two tables in it.

  Although Gopi had been so impatient to speak, now he was shy. He bent his head and scratched his finger on the wooden table. “Yes,” he said at last, “they took me to see that girl. You know,” he said, impatiently, even angrily.

  “The one they want you to marry?”

  Gopi looked round as if he didn’t want anyone to overhear. There wasn’t anyone except the proprietor, who sat with his back to them, engrossed in frying.

  “They want to do it quite soon,” Gopi said. “Very soon.”

  “I see.”

  “What do you see? Why do you say that?” Gopi said, relieved to be able to vent his nervous irritation. He turned round again to throw another suspicious look over his shoulder. “They took me for tea there.”

  “With her family you mean?”

  “They are a nice family. The tea also was very nice. They had pakoras and samusas and all sorts of other things. A cake also.” He stared down at the table and scratched at the dirt ingrained in it. “They said the girl had baked the cake.” His voice had become husky but next moment, as if ashamed of this, he added, “Of course they always say that. They say it to show you how well versed she is in household affairs.” He laughed with false cynicism.

  But soon he was quite serious again. There was a brief, thoughtful silence.

  Then Gopi said, “I must tell Asha.”

  “Yes,” Raymond said.

  “She will be very happy. She often says she wants to see me well settled. Naturally, every mother wants this for her son.” He said sharply, “And she is like a mother to me now.”

  So as not to have to look at Gopi, Raymond looked at his watch. “Shall we go to your uncle’s house now and ask about a doctor?”

  “I want you to go to Asha first and tell her.”

  When Raymond said nothing, Gopi urged, “It’s best if you tell her.” He didn’t say why but leaned across the table and lowered his voice intimately: “Don’t you want me to be married?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “And well settled?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then?”

  Raymond began to climb the stairs to Banubai’s room, but on the first gallery he met Asha, who told him he couldn’t go up now. “She’s in her mood,” she said, looking up reverently toward Banubai’s door. Raymond didn’t know what she meant, but he was relieved not to have to unburden himself of his message in front of Banubai. “I’d like to talk to you,” he told Asha.

  “What about?”

  “It’s—something quite private really.”

  “About Gopi?” she said at once, with a nervous catch in her voice so that Raymond could not pluck up enough courage to begin. Instead he said, “I have to find a doctor—it’s for Lee’s friend, she’s very ill.”

  “Oh, my God, Lee is very ill?”

  “No, her friend Margaret.”

  He explained the situation. Asha said she would go with him into town to fetch a doctor she knew of. She was ready to start at once. So then Raymond had to say, “There’s something else. . . . It is about Gopi.”

  Asha’s hand flew to her heart. “Come in here,” she said. She drew him into the little room which housed the University of Universal Synthesis. There were two mattresses on the floor, on one of which the founder-president lay asleep. Some clothes hung from a nail on the wall and there were piles of old newspapers and pamphlets.

  Her eyes scanned Raymond’s face. They kept scanning it while he told her the news till at last she flung her hands in front of them and rocked herself to and fro. When she uncovered her eyes again, her first question was, “What about her?”

  “Who?”

  “Her, her—that saint, that mother!”

  Suddenly a very sweet sound came from the top of the house. It was Banubai singing. She had a high voice, clear like a flute. With what joy she sang, how she trilled and soared! Tears rolled down Asha’s cheeks. She said, “She is singing to her Lord Krishna.”

  Their host sat up. He was surprised to see two guests in his room and fumbled for his spectacles to see who they were. When he couldn’t find them, he gave up and instead listened to the singing from above. He loved it. He was an old man with sunken stubbled cheeks and suffering from cataract, but he was smiling in a childlike way. He said, “Beautiful, beautiful.”

  “She is in such mood today,” Asha told him. “She got up this morning and said He had come to her in her dreams. He said, ‘Come, Banubai, today we’ll play.’ She followed Him but He hid behind a tree. She called ‘Where are you?’ but He only laughed at her and then He hid behind another tree. The more she followed Him, the more she called to Him, the more He hid himself and laughed at her. Sometimes He played little snatches on his flute to torment her. Oh, He was so mischievous! He had a good game with her!” She smiled through her tears, but next moment she turned again to Raymond and wrung her hands. “Ho
w will I tell her?”

  “But you say she’s Gopi’s mother—mothers are glad on such occasions—”

  “Yes, his mother but also so much more! It’s true, she has made him her son, she loves him like a mother but the Lord has many aspects. . . . What is the use of telling you these things, you understand nothing.”

  “I know I don’t. Everyone keeps saying so.”

  “And also you are cold and unfeeling.”

  Here their host leaned forward to intervene with gentle wisdom. He touched Raymond’s knee with his forefinger, and then held that forefinger up for attention. “Not unfeeling,” he said, “but rational, rational. For the Westerner the mind comes first, then the heart. With us it is topsy-turvy, or vice versa. It is the aim and basis of my university to unite these two tendencies of the human constitution, to educate the mind in the language of the heart and the heart in the language of the mind. This synthesis achieved, then we shall truly have a fully rounded human being.”

  “And once I thought you cared for him too. Now I see you don’t know what love means. If you did, you couldn’t come here like this—”

  “Like what!” Raymond cried.

  “Banubai is right: she told me Raymond is a cynical person. She said she got bad vibrations from you. I told her oh, no, Raymond is a very feeling person. He loves Gopi the way English men often love boys. I told her about poor Peter, Rao Sahib’s tutor who tried to kill himself, and I said you were just like Peter. But she said no, he doesn’t feel love in his own heart and he sneers at the love in other people’s. It’s true.”

  Raymond did not relish this analysis of his character but checked himself from taking offense. He said gently, “How do I sneer? Why do you say that?”

  “You don’t believe that I’ve changed. You sneer when I say I’m his mother.”

  “I don’t sneer, surely not.”

  “But you have bad thoughts.”

  Instead of defending himself against this charge, he suddenly said, “You really think I don’t care about losing Gopi?”

  She didn’t hear him. The sweet sounds had started again from upstairs. For a moment she listened to them with delight, then she sighed. “I must tell her.” She got up to go, leaving Raymond behind as if she had forgotten all about him. He could see her ascending the stairs with a heavy tread. Considering his mission here accomplished, he was anxious to get away and find a doctor to take to the ashram. But when he attempted to get up, the old man gently pressed him down again. He wished to give him more details about the University of Universal Synthesis: he loved talking about his scheme, and it did not often happen to him that a new visitor came to listen.