Travelers

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  Raymond’s Plans

  Raymond said it was a crazy idea and anyway he couldn’t come, he was going home. Asha said reproachfully, “How can you go?”

  “How can I go?” Raymond repeated with a laugh. “It’s high time I did.”

  “And Gopi?”

  “Gopi is getting married.”

  “Raymond, Raymond, how can you be so cold?”

  Raymond knew there was no point in defending himself against the charge of coldness. Self-control, a certain stoicism he had grown up with and used all his strength to develop—these too came under the heading of coldness and were equally reprehensible.

  She pleaded, “Only a little while, a few days, that’s all.”

  “But then it’ll have to end anyway.”

  “So let it end.”

  “And then?”

  “Then—nothing.” She made a throw-away gesture with her hand. He didn’t know what she was throwing away but it looked like her whole life.

  A few days earlier Raymond had written to his mother. He had given her the date of his return. He had also suggested that why didn’t she meet him somewhere halfway? For instance, in Teheran or Istanbul. His mother was a wonderful traveling companion. She liked the same things he liked. He had enjoyed every trip he had taken with her, and there was no doubt in his mind that he would enjoy this one too. Later, he had another good idea and at once sat down to write another letter. This one was to Miss Charlotte, and he invited her to join his mother and himself. Miss Charlotte and he would leave from New Delhi and Mother would meet them in the Middle East. He urged Miss Charlotte to come; he said he knew she and Mother would get on famously—perhaps too famously, he joked, so that he himself would end up feeling left out.

  After Asha, Gopi also came to ask Raymond to go with them to Maupur. He said it would be a very interesting cultural tour for him. When Raymond said he had already committed himself to a cultural tour with his mother and Miss Charlotte, Gopi urged him to postpone that and not to miss this unique opportunity to see more of India. “Perhaps you will never come back to us again,” Gopi pointed out, making a sad face, and perhaps he was really sad at the thought, but Raymond could see that he was also pretending a bit and his feeling was not so pure now as it had been that day on the river when they thought they were saying good-bye forever.

  “What about your wedding?” Raymond asked.

  Instead of answering the question, Gopi said, “If you cared for me at all, you would want to come. You would want to be with me.” He lowered his voice and it became soft and wheedling. “We shall have such a nice time, you and I.”

  “And Asha.”

  Gopi was silent.

  “Gopi, you shouldn’t go.”

  “But why not?” Gopi made innocent eyes. “Only for a little holiday before my wedding. My family are very happy. They say yes, go. Go with your friend Raymond.” He scanned Raymond’s face. “You will come? Say yes. Say yes, Gopi, I shall come and we shall have a nice holiday together. Say it.”

  “No! I won’t!” cried Raymond.

  “Just think—perhaps it is for the last time. Perhaps you will never come back to India. Or if you come, many years will have passed and you will be an old, old man, with white hairs, and I shall be fat like my uncle.”

  “Ah—don’t,” said Raymond, putting out his hands as if to ward off something.

  “Yes, with my stomach like this—and my chin here.” He tucked it in. They both laughed.

  Raymond Changes His Plans

  “You see,” Swamiji said, “Lee wants to do only half.”

  He had come by himself, unattended by Evie or any other disciple. He had told Raymond quite simply that he would like Lee to come back. He also told him the reason why Lee had run away; that too he said quite simply and smiling a little at Lee’s foolishness. Then he said, “You also, Raymond, want to do only half. But with you it is the other half.”

  “Are we discussing me now?” Raymond asked. He found himself talking in the somewhat bantering tone he usually adopted with Swamiji. He was rather glad to see him; he always enjoyed his company, sometimes in spite of himself.

  “Thank goodness we don’t have to discuss you, Raymond. You are not like those girls. They would like to sit all day and discuss about themselves.” The way he said that made Raymond laugh, and Swamiji smiled too and continued, “For them their own personality is the most important subject in the world. But—poor girls—what personality do they have worth talking about? They are like little mice, quite undeveloped. And when I try to develop them, they run away from me.” He smiled ruefully, one hand outstretched as if appealing for justice and reason.

  Raymond said, “It seems you’re the injured party.”

  “Certainly! I am injured. Very much injured. Please consider my position. Lee came to me, she wanted to be my disciple. I said, very good, Lee, I will take up this burden you have put on me. We are two people signing a contract together. It is signed and sealed. Very good. Then one of the parties decides that he or she no longer wishes to abide by the terms. In such a case, is it right willy-nilly to tear up the contract, to say finished, I don’t like it, go to hell? Is it right, Raymond? I leave it to your judgment entirely.”

  Raymond said, “I believe she wasn’t aware of everything there was in the contract.”

  “Oh, I see. She wasn’t aware. Then answer me one more question. When we find ourselves born into the world, we are here whole and entire, isn’t it? We are not just spirits but also minds, not only minds but also bodies. It is so, there can be no question or argument. Then what would you say to a person who, on discovering this incontrovertible fact of nature, says no I don’t want it to be so, I want to be only one or the other? You would say such a person is deficient in his understanding; you would say he is weak up here, poor fellow.” He said, “Everything must be full, whole, round, Raymond. It must be one.”

  “Have you been to see her?”

  “She is not ready for me now,” Swamiji said sadly. Then he brought his face close to Raymond’s. His eyes were bright as with fever, he ran a broad, pale tongue swiftly round his lips. “But I want her to become ready for me again. She must come to me as she did at first: with her hands joined, begging for me to take her. And I will take her, and we shall start again from the beginning. But this time we shall go further. I will take her far, very far, right to the end if need be—and this time, Raymond, this time there will be no running away.”

  Raymond didn’t tell Lee about this visit but he did tell her that, if she wanted to go to Maupur, he would postpone his departure and go along with her.

  part III

  MAUPUR

  The Retreat

  Asha had taken it for granted that they would have the New Palace to themselves, but when they arrived they found that Rao Sahib was already installed there with a retinue of retainers and helpers. Election time was drawing near, and he was very busy. He drove around the district in a jeep decorated with the flags of his party and a giant photograph of himself and addressed election meetings and met voters. All day party workers went in and out of the palace, which had become Rao Sahib’s headquarters. It was known as the New Palace to distinguish it from the Old Palace which was in the heart of the city. The New Palace had been built around 1910 and looked large and imposing with a vast marble entrance hall decorated with marble busts of Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, but it had in fact very little living accommodation so that the arrival of Asha and her party was a distinct inconvenience.

  Asha took them all away to another house. It was some way out into the country and had been built by Asha’s father in the thirties as a kind of private retreat. It was, in fact, called The Retreat. Asha’s father had been fond of Western pleasures such as whisky and cabaret artists, and the drawing room had been modeled on a nightclub featuring a bandstand and a bar with a jazzy mural over it. He had had great hopes of the place but, although he had lavished a lot of care on it, it had not yielded as much pleasure as he had an
ticipated. This was mainly due to its unfortunate situation in the middle of the desert. There was no water and the sun beat down on a landscape inhabited by jackals and vultures. Struggling hard with tube wells and electric generators, Asha’s father had managed to lay out a garden, and in his lifetime there had been a few weekend parties which his guests claimed to have been as good as anything to be enjoyed in London or Paris. But after his death there wasn’t anyone to take an interest in the place and it fell into disrepair and the garden died.

  Since the country was too rough and sandy for a car, Asha had to take her guests there in a jeep. They passed no signs of habitation on the way, and so it was a shock suddenly to see the house rearing up: a building in the thirties style, with futuristic cantilevers jutting out in sharp geometrical shapes. It had been plastered to resemble raw concrete, but the outside had not been repainted for a long time and had suffered much from the climate. The inside, however, was an agreeable surprise. Contradicting the austere style of architecture, the furnishing was of an Edwardian opulence; and although no one had lived there for many years, the servants had done their best to keep it all up—perhaps in the hope that one day the good times would start again.

  Each of the guests was shown into a separate suite of bedroom, dressing room, and bathroom. Raymond’s suite was mainly red: red-shaded electric candelabras set into the walls, red plush curtains, and a slippery red velvet bedspread over the double bed. His bathroom had elaborate imported fixtures, but when he turned on the large majestic taps only a trickle of brown water came gurgling out. He heard Gopi calling him in an excited voice from the next room. When he went there, he found a suite almost identical with his own except that everything was in yellow. Gopi pointed out the attractive features of the room which included a set of old Punch drawings framed around the walls. Gopi looked at them and liked them but asked Raymond to explain them to him. They were English jokes of the thirties—mainly of a sporting or political character—and though Raymond tried to explain them, he did not feel he was able to make himself very clear; nevertheless Gopi said they were funny and laughed at them. He was pleased with everything and kept asking Raymond, “Aren’t you happy that you came? Aren’t you grateful to me that I brought you?” He threw himself backward on the yellow double bed and bounced up joyfully on its springs.

  Lee

  At first I thought it was a bit like the ashram. Perhaps because, like the ashram, the house is stuck out in the middle of nowhere with nothing growing for miles around as if it’s all been killed off by the sun. But of course it’s very, very different. I always felt good in the ashram but here I feel—not good at all, for many reasons. One of these is Asha and Gopi. They’re together all day. They sit down there in that drawing room with the bar and the bandstand. They both seem to like being here, though they don’t do anything except just sit. Oh, yes, sometimes they play cards. Asha’s started drinking a lot again, and Gopi drinks with her to keep her company. I think he’s beginning to like it too. In the afternoon they’re both in Asha’s bedroom and there’s no sound from out of there hour after hour. I don’t know if they’re asleep or not. I’m also in my room but I can’t sleep because of the heat.

  I think of him though I try not to. Now it’s not only that I don’t want to think of him because it hurts me to do so. But also I feel it’s not right to think of him. Not here. If I think of him here it’s almost as if I’m desecrating—not him so much but what he’s always been for me, what he’s stood for. And what I still believe in. How wrong, how bad this place is for me! To think that I’ve traveled and traveled and come all this way and now I’ve ended up here.

  As soon as it’s cool enough, I go out of the house. I walk through what’s left of the garden—which I think was quite elaborate at one time but now there’s only some broken statues and overgrown zigzag paths—till I’m out in open country with nothing there except all that dry land. It’s as flat as the land around the ashram, but before it reaches the horizon there is a band of hills with woods where wild animals live. I see the sky and the stars in it. Then I feel better, and I can forget the house and everything in it and I can think the same thoughts as in the ashram. I know if only I’m patient enough and do everything he said to do and be what he said to be, then in the end I shall overcome myself. But how difficult that is.

  How can I not think of him! Sometimes I see him so clearly with his forehead wrinkled up under his cap and he’s smiling and beckoning with his eyes and teasing me.

  Asha at Home

  Asha said, “You know what I think? I think you’re in love with your Swamiji.”

  Lee stared straight in front of her. Raymond also pretended not to have heard. Only Gopi responded: he sniggered in a rather unpleasant way. He and Asha had been drinking for several hours and their faces glistened with heat and alcohol.

  “So what’s wrong,” Asha said. “Why don’t you admit it? It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Lee said, “I think you’re very boring.” She got up and wandered out of the room. Raymond would have liked to follow her but forced himself to remain. Asha and Gopi went on drinking—not just out of boredom but with real thirst: only they couldn’t quench it because their drinks were warm, the ice kept melting away in the heat. Unfortunately also the electricity had failed again and the electric fans were not working, so Asha had called a servant to stand behind them and wave a large black-and-pink Japanese fan to and fro.

  “Why does she run away like that?” Asha said. “So what if she is in love with her Swamiji. It can happen to anyone.”

  “She’s frigid,” Gopi said.

  “Who taught you that word?” Raymond said sharply.

  Gopi reared up; he was offended. “I’ve known it since long,” he said, and then allowed his indignation to mount. “You think I don’t know anything. Only you know. Only you are very clever.”

  “Not at all,” Raymond said. “Especially not in these things. And I think you’re nicer without that too. Thank you,” he told the servant who bent more closely over him to cool him with the fan, “I really don’t need it.”

  “This side,” Gopi commanded. “Harder. Faster. I think everything we’ve been told about people in the West is a lie. It’s all just propaganda. You don’t know anything about sex—none of you know, you’re all frigid.”

  Raymond told Asha, “You’re giving him too much to drink.”

  He went away. He went out into the garden. The sun beat down and the light was electric sharp, but it was a relief to him to be here rather than in the house. There was a garden pavilion which was built as a hexagon with an emphasis on form and with the remains of its pink plaster peeling off in chunks. Raymond sat on the triangular bench inside and thought about what to do. He could send a telegram to Miss Charlotte and to his mother to reinstate their postponed trip; they could leave quite soon—it was only a matter of air bookings and hotel reservations. They would stay in international air-conditioned hotels, for Mother would prefer comfort to local color and so would Raymond himself.

  He looked up and there was Asha coming toward him down one of the overgrown paths. Ever since their arrival in Maupur she had been getting herself up in her own version of the local peasant costume. She wore a voluminous skirt striped in black and gold with a loose blouse of shot silk and a festoon of heavy silver necklaces.

  “Come in,” she told him. “The electricity is on again.”

  “I prefer to be here.”

  “It’s too hot.”

  But she sat down next to him on the concrete bench. She seemed inclined for confidences. She said, “Papa used to love coming here. This house was his dream. . . . And now Rao Sahib wants to sell it.”

  “Oh, does he,” said Raymond, wondering who would want to buy it.

  “But I will never allow it, never. If there were someone who could appreciate—but it is a local person who wants the land to put up factories. Can you imagine! Oh, I will never allow it, I’ve told Rao Sahib. Papa planned and did so much wor
k for this place. He had a German architect but most of the ideas were his own. He liked having parties here—very intimate type of parties that he couldn’t have in the palace. Papa loved to have a good time. Like me.” She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, mischievously, her mouth corner twitching as if wondering whether she could smile; when Raymond gave her no encouragement, she didn’t, and went on talking quite seriously. “Of course we weren’t supposed to know what was going on and he never brought us here, but we knew. Everyone did. He always had a lot of girl friends all his life long but toward the end he fell in love very seriously. She was quite an ordinary girl, an Anglo-Indian, her name was Kitty. She used to sing in a cabaret in Calcutta, that’s where he saw her first. He brought her here and it was for her he had the parties. He would bring a band all the way from Calcutta and they played and she sang the numbers she used to sing in the cabaret. Papa was always afraid she would get bored and wouldn’t want to stay—she was quite young and she was used to living in Calcutta; so he would do anything for her, anything he could think of to amuse her. But she did get bored. Poor Papa.”

  Raymond said, “Gopi’s going to get bored too.”

  “He is very happy here.”

  “How long do you intend to keep him?”

  Asha’s face clouded over; the necklaces on her bosom heaved.

  “You said just a few days.”

  She shook her head. Tears shone in her eyes like jewels.

  Raymond said, “Why not let him go now, before he gets bored like Kitty and runs away.”

  “Kitty didn’t run away.”

  He knew he was going to hear some dreadful story. He didn’t want to. Already it was so oppressive in that dead garden. Some heavy dark birds hung motionless from the sky. He asked, hoping to ward off the story, “Is there any wildlife around here? Sometimes—at night—it sounds like it.”