Out of India

by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  She was working too hard, and though she would never have admitted it, he was quick to notice. One day, though she sat there ready with notebook and pencil, he said, “Off with you for a walk.” Her protests were in vain. Not only did he insist, but he even instructed her for how long she was to walk and in what direction. “And when you come back,” he said, “I want to see roses in your cheeks.” So dutifully she walked and where he had told her to: this was away from the populated areas, from the throng of pilgrims and sadhus, out into a little wilderness where there was nothing except rocky ledges and shrubs and, here and there, small piles of faded bricks where once some building scheme had been begun and soon abandoned. But she did not look around her much; she was only concerned with reckoning the time he had told her to walk, and then getting back quickly to the ashram, to his room, to sit beside him and take down his dictation. As soon as she came in, he looked at her, critically: “Hm, not enough roses yet, I think,” he commented, and ordered her to take an hour-long walk in that same direction every day.

  On the third day she met him on the way. He had evidently just had his bath, for his hair hung in wet ringlets and his robe was slung around him hastily, leaving one shoulder bare. He always had his bath in the river, briskly pouring water over himself out of a brass vessel, while two of his disciples stood by on the steps with his towel. They were coming behind him now as he—nimbler, sprightlier than they—clambered around ledges and stones and prickly bushes. He waved enthusiastically to Daphne and called to her: “You see, I also am enjoying fresh air and exercise!”

  She waited for him to catch up with her. He was radiant: he smiled, his eyes shone, drops of water glistened on his hair and beard. “Beautiful,” he said, and his eyes swept over the landscape, over the rocky plateau on which they stood—the holy town huddled on one side, the sky, immense and blue, melting at one edge into the mountains and at another into the river. “Beautiful, beautiful,” he repeated and shook his head and she looked with him, and it was, everything was, the whole earth, shining and beautiful.

  “Did you know we are building an ashram?” he asked her.

  “Where?”

  “Just here.”

  He gave a short sweep of the hand, and she looked around her, puzzled. It did not seem possible for anything to grow in this spot except thistles and shrubs: and as if to prove the point, just a little way off was an abandoned site around which were scattered a few sad, forgotten bricks.

  “A tiptop, up-to-date ashram,” he was saying, “with air-conditioned meditation cells and a central dining hall. Of course it will be costly, but in America I shall collect a good deal of funds. There are many rich American ladies who are interested in our movement.” He tilted his head upward and softly swept back his hair with his hand, first one side and then the other, in a peculiarly vain and womanly movement.

  She was embarrassed and did not wish to see him like that, so she looked away into the distance and saw the two young men who had accompanied him running off toward the ashram; they looked like two young colts, skipping and gamboling and playfully tripping each other up. Their joyful young voices, receding into the distance, were the only sounds, otherwise it was silent all round, so that one could quite clearly hear the clap of birds’ wings as they flew up from the earth into the balmy, sparkling upper air.

  “I have many warm invitations from America,” Swamiji said. “From California especially. Do you know it? No? There is a Mrs. Fisher, Mrs. Gay Fisher, her husband was in shoe business. She often writes to me. She has a very spacious home that she will kindly put at our disposal and also many connections and a large acquaintance among other ladies interested in our movement. She is very anxious for my visit. Why do you make such a face?”

  Daphne gave a quick, false laugh and said, “What face?”

  “Like you are making. Look at me—why do you always look away as if you are ashamed?” He put his hand under her chin and turned her face toward himself. “Daphne,” he said, tenderly; and then, “It is a pretty name.”

  Suddenly, in her embarrassment, she was telling him the story of Daphne: all about Apollo and the laurel tree, and he seemed interested, nodding to her story, and now he was making her walk along with him, the two of them all alone and he leaning lightly on her arm. He was slightly shorter than she was.

  “So,” he said, when she had finished, “Daphne was afraid of love . . . I think you are rightly named, what do you say? Because I think—yes, I think this Daphne also is afraid of love.”

  He pinched her arm, mischievously, but seeing her battle with stormy feelings, he tactfully changed the subject. Again his eyes shone, again he waved his hand around: “Such a lovely spot for our ashram, isn’t it? Here our foreign friends—from America, like yourself from U.K., Switzerland, Germany, all the countries of the world—here their troubled minds will find peace and slowly they will travel along the path of inner harmony. How beautiful it will be! How inspiring! A new world! Only one thing troubles me, Daphne, and on this question now I want advice from your cool and rational mind.”

  Daphne made a modest disclaiming gesture. She felt not in the least cool or rational, on the contrary, she knew herself to have become a creature tossed by passion and wild thoughts.

  But “No modesty, please,” he said to her disclaimer. “Who knows that mind of yours better, you or I? Hm? Exactly. So don’t be cheeky.” At which she had to smile: on top of everything else, how nice he was, how terribly, terribly nice. “Now can I ask my question? You see, what is troubling me is, should we have a communal kitchen or should there be a little cooking place attached to each meditation cell? One moment: there are pros and cons to be considered. Listen.”

  He took her arm, familiar and friendly, and they walked. Daphne listened, but there were many other thoughts rushing in and out of her head. She was very conscious of his hand holding her arm, and she kept that arm quite still. Above all, she was happy and wanted this to go on forever, he and she walking alone in that deserted place, over shrubs and bricks, the river glistening on one side and the mountains on the other, and above them the sky where the birds with slow, outstretched wings were the only patterns on that unmarred blue.

  Not only did it not go on forever, but it had to stop quite soon. Running from the direction of the ashram, stumbling, waving, calling, came a lone, familiar figure: “Yoo-hoo!” shouted Helga. “Wait for me!”

  She was out of breath when she caught up with them. Strands of blond hair had straggled into her face, perspiration trickled down her neck into the collar of her pale cerise blouse with mother-of-pearl buttons: her blue eyes glittered like ice as they looked searchingly from Swamiji to Daphne and back. She looked large and menacing.

  “Why are you walking like two lovebirds?”

  “Because that is what we are,” Swamiji said. One arm was still hooked into Daphne’s and now he hooked the other into Helga’s. “We are talking about kitchens. Let’s hear what you have to advise us.”

  “Who cares for me?” said Helga, pouting. “I’m just silly old Helga.”

  “Stop thinking about yourself and listen to the problem we are faced with.”

  Now there were three of them walking, and Daphne was no longer quite so happy. She didn’t mind Helga’s presence, but she knew that Helga minded hers. Helga’s resentment wafted right across Swamiji, and once or twice she looked over his head (which she could do quite easily) to throw an angry blue glance at Daphne. Daphne looked back at her to ask, what have I done? Swamiji walked between them, talking and smiling and holding an arm of each.

  That night there was an unpleasant scene. As usual, Daphne was sitting writing up her notes while Helga lay in bed and from time to time called out, “Turn off the light” before turning around and going back to sleep again. Only tonight she didn’t go back to sleep. Instead she suddenly sat bolt upright and said, “The light is disturbing me.”

  “I won’t be a minute,” Daphne said, desperately writing, for she simply had to finish, oth
erwise tomorrow’s avalanche of notes would be on top of her—Swamiji was so quick, so abundant in his dictation—and she would never be able to catch up.

  “Turn it off!” Helga suddenly shouted, and Daphne left off writing and turned around to look at her. From the high thatched roof of their little room, directly over Helga’s bed, dangled a long cord with a bulb at the end: it illumined Helga sitting up in bed in her lemon-yellow nylon nightie, which left her large marble shoulders bare; above them loomed her head covered in curlers, which made her look awesome like Medusa, while her face, flecked with pats of cream, also bore a very furious and frightening expression.

  “Always making up to Swamiji,” she was saying in a loud, contemptuous way. “All night you have to sit here and disturb me so tomorrow he will say, ‘You have done so much work, good girl, wonderful girl, Daphne.’ Pah. It is disgusting to see you flirting with him all the time.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Daphne said in a trembly voice.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Helga repeated, making a horrible mimicking face and attempting to reproduce Daphne’s accent but drowning it completely in her German one. “I hate hypocrites. Of course everyone knows you English are all hypocrites, it is a well-known fact all over the world.”

  “You’re being terribly unfair, Helga.”

  “Turn off the light! Other people want to sleep, even if you are busy being Miss Goody-goody!”

  “In a minute,” Daphne said, sounding calm and continuing with her task.

  Helga screamed with rage: “Turn it off! Turn it off!” She bounced up and down in her bed with her fists balled. Daphne took no notice whatsoever but went on writing. Helga tossed herself face down into her pillow and pounded it and sobbed and raged from out of there. When Daphne had finished writing, she turned off the light and, undressing in the dark, lay down in her lumpy bed next to Helga, who by that time was asleep, still face downward and her fists clenched and dirty tear marks down her cheeks.

  Next morning Helga was up and dressed early, but contrary to her usual custom, she was very quiet and tiptoed around so as not to disturb her roommate. When Daphne finally woke up, Helga greeted her cheerfully and asked whether she had had a good sleep, and then she told her how she had watched poor Klas stepping into a pat of fresh cow dung on his way to meditation. Helga thought this was very funny, she laughed loudly at it and encouraged Daphne to laugh too by giving her shoulder a hearty push. Then she went off to get breakfast for the two of them, and, after they had had it, and stepped outside the room to cross over to Swamiji’s, she suddenly put her arm around Daphne and whispered into her ear: “You won’t tell him anything? No? Daphnelein?” And to seal their friendship, their conspiracy, she planted a big, wet kiss on Daphne’s neck and said, “There. Now it is all well again.”

  Swamiji was receiving daily letters from America, and he was very merry nowadays and there was a sense of bustle and departure about him. The current meditation course, for which Daphne and Helga and all of them had enrolled, was coming to an end, and soon they would be expected to go home again so that they might radiate their newly acquired spiritual health from there. But when they talked among themselves, none of them seemed in any hurry to go back. The two Scottish schoolteachers were planning a tour of India to see the Taj Mahal and the Ajanta caves and other such places of interest, while Klas wanted to go up to Almora to investigate a spiritual brotherhood he had heard of there. Swamiji encouraged them—“It is such fun to travel,” he said, and obviously he was gleefully looking forward to his own travels, receiving and answering all those airmail letters and studying airline folders, and one of the young men who attended on him had already been sent to Delhi to make preliminary arrangements.

  Daphne had no plans. She didn’t even think of going home; it was inconceivable to her that she could go or be anywhere where he was not. The Scottish schoolteachers urged her to join them on their tour, and she halfheartedly agreed, knowing though that she would not go. Helga questioned her continuously as to what she intended to do, and when she said she didn’t know, came forward with suggestions of her own. These always included both of them; Helga had somehow taken it for granted that their destinies were now inseparable. She would sit on the side of Daphne’s bed and say in a sweet, soft voice, “Shall we go to Khajurao? To Cochin? Would you like to visit Ceylon?” and at the same time she would be coaxing and stroking Daphne’s pillow as if she were thereby coaxing and stroking Daphne herself.

  All the time Daphne was waiting for him to speak. In London she had been so sure of what he meant her to do, without his ever having to say anything; now she had to wait for him to declare himself. Did he want her to accompany him to America; did he want her to stay behind in India; was she to go home? London, though it held her mother, her father, her job, her friends, all her memories, was dim and remote to her; she could not imagine herself returning there. But if that was what he intended her to do, then she would; propelled not by any will of her own, but by his. And this was somehow a great happiness to her: that she, who had always been so self-reliant in her judgments and actions, should now have succeeded in surrendering not only her trained, English mind but everything else as well—her will, herself, all she was—only to him.

  His dictation still continued every day; evidently this was going to be a massive work, for though she had already written out hundreds of foolscap pages, the end was not yet in sight. Beyond this daily dictation, he had nothing special to say to her; she still went on her evening walk, but he did not again come to meet her. In any case, this walk of hers was now never taken alone but always in the company of Helga, whose arm firmly linked hers. Helga saw to it that they did everything together these days: ate, slept, sat with Swamiji, even meditated. She did not trust her alone for a moment, so even if Swamiji had wanted to say anything private to Daphne, Helga would always be there to listen to it.

  Daphne wasn’t sure whether it was deep night or very early in the morning when one of the bearded young men came to call her. Helga, innocently asleep, was breathing in and out. Daphne followed the messenger across the courtyard. Everything was sleeping in a sort of gray half-light, and the sky too was gray with some dulled, faint stars in it. Across the river a small, wakeful band of devotees was chanting and praying; they were quite a long way off and yet the sound was very clear in the surrounding silence. There was no light in Swamiji’s room, nor was he in it; her guide led her through the room and out of an opposite door that led to the adjoining veranda, overlooking the river. Here Swamiji sat on a mat, eating a meal by the light of a kerosene lamp. “Ah, Daphne,” he said, beckoning her to sit opposite him on the mat. “There you are at last.”

  The bearded youth had withdrawn. Now there were only the two of them. It was so strange. The kerosene lamp stood just next to Swamiji and threw its light over him and over his tray of food. He ate with pleasure and with great speed, his hand darting in and out of the various little bowls of rice, vegetable, lentils, and curds. He also ate very neatly, so that only the very tips of the fingers of his right hand were stained by the food and nothing dropped into his beard. It struck Daphne that this was the first time that she had seen him eat a full meal: during the course of his busy day, he seemed content to nibble at nuts and at his favorite sweetmeats, and now and again drink a tumbler of milk brought to him by one of his young men.

  “Can I talk to you?” he asked her. “You won’t turn into a laurel tree?”

  He pushed aside his tray and dabbled his hand in a finger bowl and then wiped it on a towel. “I think it would be nice,” he said, “if you come with me to America.”

  She said, “I’d like to come.”

  “Good.”

  He folded the towel neatly and then pressed it flat with his hand. For a time neither of them said anything. The chanting came from across the river; the kerosene lamp cast huge shadows.

  “We shall have to finish our book,” he said. “In America we shall have plen
ty of leisure and comfort for this purpose . . . Mrs. Gay Fisher has made all arrangements.”

  He bent down to adjust the flame of the lamp and now the light fell directly on his face. At that moment Daphne saw very clearly that he was not a good-looking man, nor was there anything noble in his features: on the contrary, they were short, blunt, and common, and his expression, as he smiled to himself in anticipation of America, had something disagreeable in it. But the next moment he had straightened up again, and now his face opposite her was full of shadows and so wise, calm, and beautiful, that she had to look away for a moment, for sheer rapture.

  “We shall be staying in her home,” he said. “It is a very large mansion with swimming pool and all amenities—wait, I will show you.” Out of the folds of his gown he drew an envelope, which he had evidently kept ready for her and out of which he extracted some color photographs.

  “This is her mansion. It is in Greek style. See how gracious these tall pillars, so majestic. It was built in 1940 by the late Mr. Fisher.” He raised the lamp and brought it near the photograph to enable her to see better. “And this,” he said, handing her another photograph, “is Mrs. Gay Fisher herself.”

  He looked up and saw that light had dawned, so he lowered the wick of the lamp and extinguished the flame. Thus it was by the frail light of earliest dawn that Daphne had her first sight of Mrs. Gay Fisher.

  “She writes with great impatience,” he said. “She wants us to come at once, straightaway, woof like that, on a magic carpet if possible.” He smiled, tolerant, amused: “She is of a warm, impulsive nature.”