East Into Upper East

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  “Of course I did; we all did; that’s what he relied on. Making us his slaves—I don’t only mean working for nothing and giving our own money: he never had any poor disciples, he couldn’t afford them—but chaining us to him by our feelings, that’s what’s so horrible, that he made us his slaves by what was best in us.”

  Madeleine was shaken through and through—physically through her strong body, and through all the fortifications she had built up around her memories of the past. But consolation was immediate, for there was Claire and their hands were intertwined.

  “Come sit beside me,” Madeleine said. “Don’t sit on the floor—he was always doing that, making us get down on the floor at his feet. And of course we liked to do it, we loved it. I know what you want to ask me.”

  Claire had come to be with Madeleine on the leather settee; they were side by side, chastely holding hands while the moonlight streamed in on them.

  “No, I never slept with him,” Madeleine said. “It was all on a much higher plane—laugh if you want; I feel like laughing myself, now . . . But then of course I took it dead seriously. It made me proud; exalted, if you know what I mean, that I was overcoming myself. That was part of the philosophy, overcoming yourself. It wasn’t always easy, I tell you. I spent a lot of time with him, in intimate proximity, and he was a very attractive man, sexually attractive . . . Sometimes it was physical torture. But the worse the torture the better I felt—that I was doing this for him. I thought everyone else was doing it too, and it was only afterward that I found out he was sleeping with people right and left. Of course only the better looking ones.” She was silent; her face sagged.

  After a longish pause, “I think you’re nice looking,” Claire said. “I’m not just saying it, it’s true . . . Not in a conventional way, not just silly-pretty, but you have real character in your face. That’s because you are a real character; a really kind good person.” And moved by her own words, Claire leaned toward her friend and kissed her cheek.

  Madeleine burst out, “Thank God I have you now; oh thank God.” And then she threw everything to the wind—all calm, restraint, the good-girl way they were sitting side by side—she put her arms around Claire and began to kiss her hair, and her face all over, impetuously raining down kisses that sometimes missed their mark. And Claire laughed and cried out: “Stop it, Mad, have you gone crazy!” but it wasn’t till she cried, “You’re choking me!” that Madeleine let go.

  Claire smoothed her hair and clothes, which Madeleine had mussed. She gave an embarrassed little laugh: “I told you, you don’t know your own strength.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Madeleine admitted. She waited a moment: “Take off your clothes.”

  “You are crazy.”

  “Please. I want it. I want it so much. Only to see you, that’s all.”

  “Oh for heaven’s sakes, Madeleine: do you know how old I am?”

  “Yes; four months younger than I am, and I’m fifty-two. Go on, take off your clothes. I’ll help you, shall I?” She undid a button here, a zip there, Claire protesting all the way—but amused too, for it wasn’t much more than a game that two girls might play together.

  Then Claire was stripped naked. She was slender, small-breasted, and illumined only by moonlight she might have been young. Madeleine ran her hands down Claire’s hips, touching her reverently.

  “Now you,” said Claire.

  “Me!” Madeleine guffawed. “You don’t want to see me, I’m like a buffalo.”

  “Go on.”

  “Promise not to turn on the light.”

  “Of course I won’t. Go on. You have to. Otherwise it’s not fair.”

  It didn’t take Madeleine a moment—all she had to do was throw off her peasant gown; she wore nothing underneath. “Oh God,” she said, stark naked, covering her eyes so as not to have to see herself. “I told you.” But she too was transfigured by moonlight. The two of them stood looking at each other; they had clasped hands as though about to circle in a game of ring-a-roses. Katze humped his back and rubbed himself against their legs, so that they laughed out loud and gave little skips into the air to escape his tickling fur.

  On Monday Madeleine didn’t drop Claire at the station but drove her into the city. She found it impossible to part from her. But Claire was not pleased by this decision and sat tight-lipped and silent beside her. Madeleine tried to keep up her own high spirits by talking cheerfully and playing a lively tape as she drove her car over the winding wooded parkway. It was only when the beautiful landscape began to degenerate into New York City that Madeleine’s mood began to match Claire’s; and by the time they reached the Bronx, waiting by the crosslights where a brand-new McDonald’s had sprung up on what had been a basket-ball court for unemployed adolescents, Madeleine said gloomily: “I wish I hadn’t come.”

  “Yes, why did you?” Claire snapped back at once, as though this was what she had wanted to say the entire way.

  Youths with wet cloths had sprung forward to wipe the windscreen. Madeleine furiously waved them away, but Claire lowered her window and held out money to them. Just then the lights changed and Madeleine drove forward with a jolt. “You shouldn’t encourage them,” she said in an angry voice.

  “What’s a dollar,” Claire retorted in the same voice. Both of them stared straight out the windscreen, though there was nothing beautiful to see now—condemned buildings with their windows boarded up, a warehouse selling off furniture from a closed-out factory. Claire said: “You don’t care for young people, that’s your trouble, you have no feeling for them.”

  “Not for young criminals I don’t.”

  “You don’t know they’re criminals. And what’s wrong with trying to make a little money cleaning people’s cars? It’s better than stealing.”

  “My window was perfectly clean.”

  It took a long time to get across to the Upper East side where they lived. Again and again they were stuck in dense traffic; heat, noise, and fumes filled their car; they sighed and shifted their thighs where their dresses stuck to them with perspiration. At last Claire broke out: “You didn’t have to come—I had to, but you didn’t.” She was not speaking in anger now but exasperation.

  “I know,” said Madeleine. She cursed briefly as again they missed the green light, stuck behind a removal van. She thought longingly of the house in the country, the shadows of her trees lengthening on the lawn, the splash of water as a startled frog jumped into the pond.

  “And there’s something else,” Claire said in a gentler, conciliatory voice.

  Madeleine said at once: “That’s all right—he can stay on in my apartment, I didn’t expect him to move. It’s hardly worth it—” she slid her eyes toward Claire—“since we’ll be going back on Thursday.”

  “Yes, or Friday,” Claire said.

  Bobby seemed glad his mother had come back and was indifferent to Madeleine’s presence. He took it for granted that he would stay on in Madeleine’s apartment; the idea of moving didn’t occur to him. Claire showed Madeleine into the spare bedroom in her own apartment, which was really a maid’s room, but Madeleine preferred it to sleeping in what was usually Bobby’s. Anyway, she soon joined Claire in her bed; it was what they had gotten used to since the night they had skipped around in the moonlight. But that first night in the city Claire was constantly alert, listening—“What’s the matter?” Madeleine asked.

  “The door’s locked, isn’t it?”

  “You locked it yourself.”

  Nevertheless, Claire got up to make sure. When she returned to bed, she was shivering with cold or fear. She slept fitfully, and before dawn she insisted that Madeleine return to the maid’s room.

  After such a disturbed night, they both slept late and it was almost noon when they had breakfast. Bobby was still asleep in Madeleine’s apartment; he rarely got up before afternoon. “He’s awake all night,” Claire explained, “that’s why I never put the chain on my front door. So he can let himself in if he wants.”

 
; Madeleine finished her toast, chewing slowly, and then she said: “But he never comes in your room? He doesn’t disturb you? I hope not.”

  “Oh no—usually he just bangs around the kitchen for something to eat. He only wakes me if he really needs me. If there’s something he really wants to share with me. He gets some of his best ideas at night.” She gave a shy glance at Madeleine. “You’d be surprised—he has some very original theories—scientific theories about sound waves?—well, it may all be a lot of nonsense, I don’t know, you remember what an absolute idiot I always was with math and physics. But Dr. Stein says—”

  “Yes? What?”

  Claire shot her another look and went on bravely: “He says that Bobby could have been a genius. He has that sort of brain, only there’s some chemical imbalance, that’s why he has these personality disorders or whatever it’s called. I don’t really understand it, but anyway that’s what Dr. Stein says.”

  “How often does Bobby see Dr. Stein?”

  “Not very often . . . Actually, he hasn’t been for some time. It was Bobby’s own decision, I think he feels that he no longer needs Dr. Stein, and he’s right because I think he’s much much better, don’t you, I mean calmer, I mean last night at dinner, don’t you think he was—” she answered herself, “absolutely normal and nice;” and she jumped up and busily cleared away the breakfast dishes.

  Claire had a very fine platinum chain, which always got knotted up. “Bobby’s the only one who can undo it,” she told Madeleine that evening. She took it off and gave it to him, smiling, and continued to smile as she watched him apply himself to this task. Madeleine too watched, and it was wonderful to see the way his large peasant hands so delicately picked at the dainty chain. It took a long time, but he was patient and painstaking, a perfectionist. When at last he finished, he looked up with a happy smile. How his face cleared with that smile—how handsome it was and open; his brooding eyes were candid under his nobly arched brow. He said to Claire, “Come here.” She stood with her back to him while he put the chain around her neck. They were almost the same height, for he was not very tall though broad-shouldered and muscular. He fastened the clasp and she asked, “All right?”; she didn’t move but waited, her head bent as for execution. He too stood a while longer, and then he ran his finger along the nape of her neck: Madeleine, who had done the same herself, knew that under his finger he could feel the frail down of hair where it started on Claire’s neck and then continued all the way to the small of her back.

  He didn’t leave till after midnight, so it was late before they got to bed. Even then, Madeleine couldn’t fall asleep, and when she went in to Claire, she found her awake too. She locked the door and got in with her, but Claire shifted uncomfortably. “This bed’s too small for two of us.”

  Madeleine said, “I’m going back tomorrow.”

  “All right,” Claire said. “I’ll see you Friday.”

  “I don’t want you staying here alone.”

  Claire said, “I’m not alone . . . Sh,” she said, her ears far more finely tuned to sounds in her apartment than Madeleine’s. “Turn off the light,” she whispered—so urgently that Madeleine obeyed before she heard the sound herself: of the front door closing, of steps in the hall.

  The two women listened while the steps approached their door. They heard the handle being turned, gently at first, then not so gently when the door was found to be locked. There was a pause. Again the handle was turned, and again—and then the door was being rattled, insistently, furiously. “I’ll open it,” Madeleine said in what she tried to make a normal voice. Claire whispered, “No, no!” and the fear in her angered Madeleine so that she jumped out of bed, shouting, “Wait!” She unlocked the door and flung it open. “What’s wrong with you?” she scolded Bobby. “We’re trying to get some sleep, don’t you have any consideration?” He looked past her toward Claire, sitting shivering on the bed. He seemed reassured when he saw her, as though the only reason he came was to make sure she was there.

  Claire said, “Go to bed, darling. I wasn’t feeling well, so I called Madeleine.”

  He said, “Do you want an aspirin or something?”

  “No, no, darling, please don’t worry. Go to sleep. Madeleine’s here.”

  “Okay,” he said, seemingly satisfied, and turned and went back out again.

  But next morning Claire said she would return with Madeleine. They left before Bobby woke, and the way Madeleine drove it was as if they were fleeing the city. When they pulled up before the house, they looked at each other and laughed, the way people do when they have outwitted everyone and got away. Katze was sitting on a green cushion on a wicker chair right in the middle of the front porch, and his only greeting was a narrowing of his glinting eyes. “Can’t even say hi decently,” said Madeleine, and in her exuberance she tipped him off his chair so that he indignantly stalked away. That made them laugh, but so did everything that day; they were so glad to be there. The hushed, orderly house seemed to welcome them home, even to be grateful for their return—including Katze, for all the superior airs he gave himself. He followed them around as they went from room to room and up and down the stairs; they straightened photo frames and emptied vases, all the time calling to each other—always for some ostensible purpose but really just to hear each other’s voices filling this loved and loving house.

  It wasn’t till next morning at breakfast that Claire said, “He’ll probably come this weekend.”

  “Of course,” said Madeleine, in a calm, matter-of-fact way. “You know he’s always welcome. It’s his home as much as it’s yours and mine.”

  Claire took Madeleine’s hand, where it lay between them on the table, and kissed it. Madeleine snatched it away: “Don’t do that, silly.” Her big face had flushed scarlet. Their eyes met. “Silly,” Madeleine repeated, in a husky, scolding voice.

  He arrived that same evening. Madeleine found herself scanning his face, gauging his mood, in the same way as Claire. When they went to bed that night, Claire said how she was looking forward to a nice long lazy sleep; Madeleine understood and stayed in her own room—anyway, she wanted to, she felt safer there. He kept playing his music till late into the night. Madeleine put the covers over her head, but there was no escaping the sounds that struck through the house like blows from a hammer. Once she thought she would get up and storm down and turn it off, but she felt afraid; and that made her furious, to think she was afraid in her own home. She leaped out of bed and was already on the landing when she thought better of it. She returned to her room, lay down again. She thought of Claire in her bed, penetrated by the same sounds—and not only now, but forever, inescapably. Then Madeleine thought, if you can stand it, so can I, and this idea filled her with a feeling of peace, even contentment: to be enduring together with Claire, both of them nailed down and battered by the brutal music, as though they were not two persons but one.

  Next day Bobby’s mood was ugly. Even Katze felt the danger. When Bobby got up in the afternoon and came into the kitchen for his food, Katze slipped off the window sill where he had been contemplating birds and squirrels on the grass outside; but before he could slink out the door, Bobby caught him—“Ah-ha! No you don’t!” He was gentle with him—Madeleine watched his huge hands stroking Katze’s fur, to and fro, from head to tail, back and forth. Katze was not happy, Madeleine could see, but he kept still, maybe not daring to move. Bobby went on and on; his caressing hands appeared to take on a life of their own. Claire laughed: “That’s enough now, Bobby. Eat your breakfast or lunch or brunch or whatever you want to call it.” To Madeleine she said, “Bobby loves animals.”

  Madeleine remembered how Claire had once told her that Bobby was usually kind to animals. When he was a child, she could buy goldfish for him and keep them in a tank and he would remember to feed them; once he had been given a canary, but it had died in its cage, a natural death. It was when he had been around other children, Claire had gone on to admit, that she had been nervous. It was usually all righ
t when she took him to the park where the swings were, but there had been incidents, so that she preferred not to go to places where there were other children. “It wasn’t his fault,” Claire had explained, referring to one such incident when he had struck a little girl on the head with his fist repeatedly so that people had had to come running. “She must have said something to him—you know how kids can be, awfully mean sometimes. He was just defending himself.”

  That weekend he turned on Madeleine. She tried to suffer it patiently. He insulted her in the same way he had before he got used to her being around. He sneered at her physical appearance, at the peasant gowns she wore, at what she was, who she was, everything about her, including her past. “Tell me about your philosopher,” he taunted her. “What sort of philosopher could that have been—what sort of philosophy would you understand?”

  “Oh no, of course not,” Claire replied, with a wink at Madeleine to show it was all good fun. “We’re not high-powered brains like you are, darling, we don’t understand these abstruse things.”

  “You can say that again,” he agreed. “Straw up here, that’s all you have, like all women: straw. Okay!” he shouted at Madeleine. “If you’ve got more than straw, tell me what was this great philosophy you learned from your philosopher, just tell me.”

  “Well, I’ll try,” said Madeleine good-humoredly.

  He folded his arms in challenge, and now he winked—at Claire, to draw her in on this joke against Madeleine. And Claire smiled with him.

  Madeleine said, “It was like this: he had a Latin tag he had learned—probably at school, like the rest of us. Remember Latin with Miss Coffin?” she asked Claire.

  “Oh my Lord!” Claire exclaimed. “Miss Coffin! Will I ever forget her, in her baggy Jaeger skirt—” but with Bobby’s frown on her, she broke off and said to Madeleine, “Go on then.”