When the World Was Steady

by Claire Messud

  ‘Lovely flat,’ said Virginia, for lack of any better conversational gambit. ‘Just like Angelica’s.’

  Nikhil looked pained and said only, ‘Tea?’ and then, ‘Do sit.’

  ‘Yes, yes …’ Virginia turned back to the picture. ‘I’m sure the others will arrive any minute. And Angelica, of course.’

  From the kitchen came an unexpected crashing of dishes and pots by way of reply. Virginia imagined cramped squalor, and regretted agreeing to tea.

  The photograph was a black-and-white posed family portrait that looked ancient although it could not be, for to one side, among several other youths, stood a stern but only slightly younger Nikhil. There were about a dozen people in all, in front of a large tropical-looking tree, with a snowy-haired patriarch and a distinguished older woman in a sari seated in the centre.

  ‘Are these your parents?’ she asked as she accepted a chipped mug of boiling black tea.

  ‘No milk, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Are they?’

  He appeared closer to emotion than she had yet seen him. ‘My grandparents,’ he said. ‘And cousins and brothers. And parents, my father’—pointing to a round, balding man—‘and mother’—a tired, gaunt woman with an expression of marked displeasure—‘and my sister.’ He said this last very softly, and allowed his finger to linger on the tiny celluloid chest of his sibling. She, an adolescent of perhaps sixteen at the time of the picture, was by far the most perfect figure in the rows of family members: dark-eyed and clear-skinned and … the word that came unbidden to Virginia’s mind was luscious. Just looking at her moved the stiff Nikhil almost to tears, which seemed to Virginia unhealthy and possibly suspicious.

  ‘You miss them a great deal?’

  Nikhil’s nod was dutiful. ‘But it’s more complicated with Rupica. Will you sit?’

  Virginia perched gingerly on the arm of the sofa and surreptitiously inspected her tea for bugs. With the same effort with which she had—unsuccessfully—willed Angelica into her flat, she willed one or all of the group into the hallway downstairs. She strained to catch a footstep or a tapping on the building’s front door, and imagined that they were all even now gathered comfortably on the steps, Mrs Hammond leaning against the railing with the others grouped around her, placidly passing the time about the drive to raise money for prayer books or the forthcoming summer retreat … Virginia very much did not want to hear about Nikhil’s sister Rupica, although she could not have said why not, except general residual bitterness about all very good-looking people and an unacknowledged fear that she was going to hear something unsavoury.

  But Nikhil was speaking. ‘… Eight months ago.’

  ‘Pardon? I thought I heard them coming.’

  Nikhil would not be diverted. ‘I said,’ he said, ‘that when I first came, for my studies in international relations’—a wave at the books and papers—‘my family came with me from Delhi, the three of them. This was eight months ago. My father is a civil servant and took a month’s leave. Rupica is now of university age, nineteen. She is as beautiful as her photograph, and we have all wanted the best—for her to study and then marry well and be happy. But she’—a limp, helpless gesture. Nikhil reddened. ‘She has never had a studious or orderly temperament. She does not accept the inevitable.’ He paused, began again. ‘My parents are very educated people. My father, too, studied in England.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Virginia, rueing her decision to ring the Gupta bell.

  ‘They are not backward or provincial. But Rupica … so when we came, all together, for a month in September, we were staying first in a hotel in Bloomsbury, and Rupica and I shared a room. In the night, after the first week, she would wait until she thought I was sleeping and then she would dress and go out.’

  ‘In revealing clothes?’ asked Virginia, in the tone that prepares to be scandalized. She listened less now for sounds from the landing.

  ‘Jeans. A pullover. Her hair in a plait down her back.’

  ‘Where did she go? Poor girl, led astray, was she—she wasn’t—

  ‘She had met a man. I did not tell our parents. I thought she would tire of him, that there was nothing in it. Before, in Delhi, she had met others. She was reckless, as I say. But I was wrong, and it was a grave mistake.’

  ‘She wasn’t—’

  ‘On the morning before they were all to return to Delhi, Rupica did not come back to the hotel. I was forced to tell my parents how she had gone every night and forced to say I did not know where to.’

  ‘Odd you didn’t ask?’

  ‘Perhaps. But in the afternoon she came back, and brought the man. I was at the university and did not see him, but my parents said he was very old. As old as they are, perhaps. And they were married. They had married in the morning while we worried. And my parents did all they could, but they are married. Rupica is nineteen and can do as she pleases here. They live in Scotland, and we have broken with her.’

  ‘He’s Scottish? How interesting.’

  ‘I don’t care what he is. My beloved sister is lost. And perhaps I come to your meetings to try to understand. Your meetings with Angelica.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Rupica insisted that he was, in his way, a very religious man. A Christian. So I try to understand him. And her. Until I do, I cannot see or speak to them. And it is not easy.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Angelica about this? I’m sure he’s not one of us. Not a Christian. Some sort of nut, perhaps. But no truly religious man would behave the way he has. And against your parents’ wishes!’ Virginia was thinking, ‘And no true Christian would marry a Hindu. A heathen. No matter how beautiful she was.’

  ‘I think they are here now,’ Nikhil said, resuming his distant manner. In the stairwell, Angelica’s heavy, even tread was followed by other, more eccentric gaits, and the sound of voices and of Mrs Hammond’s cane. Then there was the click of the key in the lock, and the shuddering of floorboards overhead as half a dozen or more bodies settled themselves in, scraped furniture about the hardwood floor. That racket alone would have been enough, Virginia thought, to make her join the group. Better the fellowship than the sound of their feet.

  ‘Shall we?’ Nikhil stood in the hallway, waiting.

  On her way out, Virginia managed to dart into the kitchen to put down her empty mug; to her consternation, she found the tiny room was spotless, the earlier clamour caused by the washed dinner dishes on the draining-board: one lonely plate, one bowl, one glass, and two battered but impeccably scrubbed pots.

  Upstairs, the meeting was already well into its opening ritual: flopped in the most comfortable armchair, dress hiked, cane between her knees, Mrs Hammond was praying aloud, eyes upturned and shining. The others were more sedate, heads bowed and eyes shut, and Alistair the doctor was scratching at a spot on his chin while he spoke to God. In the corner, one of the students was actually kneeling. Angelica was in the kitchen, and alongside Mrs Hammond’s encomium to the Reverend and his flock came the intermittent rustlings of cake wrappers and the packet of tea, the burble of water, the soft chink of porcelain cups. Virginia and Nikhil surveyed the sitting-room. For the first time, she saw it a little as he must, and it suddenly looked peculiar and not cosy and familiar at all. She quite hated him for spoiling her evening.

  Angelica brought the tea tray through as Mrs Hammond wound up her prayer and Philip—was it?—shouted a hearty ‘Alleluia’. He had a small, forgettable face and little round spectacles and it was surprising that his lungs were so strong. Angelica, on the other hand, was radiant, her large, oval face glowing pink as the Laura Ashley lamp at her elbow, her blue eyes wet-looking and innocent, her dimpled forearms dispensing the necessary in deft, graceful movements. Her attractiveness was felt by everyone, Virginia was sure. It caused a hush, an admiring look from Stephen (or was it Philip? the same face, only dark instead of blond, and without glasses), and a light smile even from Nikhil, who strode forward to accept his cup as though he hadn’t drunk tea in days in
stead of minutes.

  ‘I thought, everyone,’ said Angelica, never stopping the circulation of food and drink and never spilling a crumb or drop, ‘Sugar, Mrs Hammond? I know I was to prepare an analysis of the reading Frieda suggested last time … but—milk, Philip?’—with the glasses, Virginia noted—‘but this week has been awful. I am sorry, Frieda—’ Frieda, her wiry hair askew and her face furrowed, slumped back in her chair and scowled at the plate of Madeira cake. ‘But I thought it might be apropos and maybe easier, seeing as I’ve made us all late, if we just had a little talk about Reverend Thompson’s last sermon. I mean, especially seeing as he’s not here?’

  ‘Oh, goody,’ said Stephen, in an unappealing way.

  ‘Which was it again?’ from Mrs Hammond.

  ‘I was so looking forward to discussing the reading,’ grumbled Frieda.

  ‘On what, again?’ from Mrs Hammond.

  ‘Revelation, chapters five to eight,’ offered Janet.

  ‘The sermon?’

  ‘No, no dear,’ said Virginia, patting Mrs Hammond’s exposed, bony knee and endeavouring to pull the old woman’s dress down a little as she did so. ‘The reading. That was the reading Angelica didn’t prepare. You must remember the sermon, dear. It was on the sins of the flesh.’

  ‘Of course, of course. Very strongly worded, a fine sermon.’

  ‘So relevant, I thought,’ said Janet, stirring her tea.

  ‘Is that all right then, shall we just do that?’ Angelica smiled hopefully.

  ‘Yes dear, fine. We’ll do the reading next time,’ said Mrs Hammond, who, by virtue of her seniority, was able to decide any such issues without consulting the others.

  Virginia only half-listened to the discussion that followed. For the first time ever, she was watching instead of participating, and it was as if she couldn’t will herself back into her body, back into herself; she had to sit on the outside, painfully aware of the absurdities Nikhil must see and hear, and painfully aware, too, of Nikhil. He was physically separated from the others, sitting on a straight-backed dining-chair outside the plush circle of sofas and armchairs. Stephen and Philip were almost outside, but not quite, and they were together. Nikhil sat with a coffee-table book of the Sistine Chapel on his lap (a gift from Virginia to Angelica the Christmas before, when the latter had gone to Rome for a week), and he looked alternately from the magnificent representations on glossy paper to the eager faces of the group. He had a strong hooked nose, which seemed to incline even further earthwards when particularly evangelical or extreme comments were made. Then, when Alistair spoke (which was rarely), or Mrs Hammond (who, despite her energy and commitment, was also a fairly modest contributor to discussions), Nikhil would turn abruptly back to Michelangelo, as though he could glean more about his sister’s choice from the vision of Judith bearing Holofernes’ head than from the timid, dithering remarks of those present.

  The conversation turned to communism, and thence to extreme politics, to the Americans, to AIDS and to homosexuality. Nikhil was aware of the heat generated by the topic: Virginia saw him shut the book of photographs altogether.

  ‘I think they deserve it and I’m not ashamed to say so,’ said Frieda, crossing her arms and glaring at the window. ‘It’s a sin, it’s in the Bible, it’s very clear. Ask the Reverend. And the Church of England, they’re always pussyfooting around the issue because half the ministers are pansies, groping up each other’s frocks in the vestry before services—’

  ‘Frieda, please!’ Angelica made a rapid eye gesture at Mrs Hammond, who hadn’t heard all of the tirade but enough to pique her interest.

  ‘What about women?’ said Philip with a smirk. ‘It’s not so clear about women, is it?’

  ‘Well,’ said Virginia, in as icy a tone as she had ever used, ‘I can’t imagine it’s an issue. It’s just not an issue.’

  ‘It exists, you know,’ Philip insisted.

  ‘God’s retribution isn’t seeking out women, because women aren’t guilty. We only have to look at who is being struck down. It’s men,’ she hissed, with such venom that Angelica made a chiding face, and Nikhil leaned forward in his chair, biting his lip.

  ‘Virginia dear,’ said Janet, in her soothing, counsellor’s voice that made Virginia bristle down the back of her neck, ‘You mustn’t simplify so. I do think we’re taking rather a reductive approach. I really do not believe that AIDS is caused by God in that way. If it were, God would stop it, in the repentant.’

  ‘Does He?’ asked Stephen, from the kitchen door, where he had gone to ferret for more food. ‘I mean, in all the crusades, Billy Graham and Swaggart and Bonker and even less massive gatherings, has anyone been healed of AIDS?’

  Everyone looked up, or down, or at their hands and tried to think of an instance they had heard of, or better yet, had witnessed. At length, Mrs Hammond said, ‘There must be someone. It’s just that in our church, our congregation, we don’t have such problems, so we don’t know.’

  Virginia looked from Philip to Stephen and back again; she could have sworn they exchanged glances, significant ones.

  ‘Rotten fruit. Can’t repent properly, can’t be healed,’ muttered Frieda.

  ‘Madeira cake?’ Angelica passed the plate, depleted now, to Nikhil.

  He stood up and rubbed his trousers with his palms. ‘Thank you, no. Thank you, Angelica, this has been most interesting, but my books are calling.’

  ‘I can’t hear them,’ said Stephen.

  Nikhil frowned. ‘Yes, well, goodnight to you all. And to you, Virginia.’ He bowed and left the room. Virginia could hear his lonely trail back to the vinyl lounge suite.

  ‘What was that all about?’ asked Frieda.

  ‘He does seem sweet. Oddly silent though. Never know what he’s thinking,’ said Janet, as if, reflected Virginia, those whose minds were not illuminated by the gospel thought and felt in mysterious, dark ways.

  ‘Were you with him, then?’ prompted Angelica.

  They were all watching. Virginia stretched her neck to its full length. ‘Well, you weren’t here, and I couldn’t stay out on the doorstep—the neighbours were staring.’

  ‘So what’s his flat like?’ Alistair had woken from apparent slumber to ask.

  ‘Rather grim. It’s rented. It’s—’

  ‘You don’t suppose—I mean, he didn’t take offence, he’s not—’ bubbled Angelica.

  ‘If he is, it’s a damn good thing. He should know where we stand.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Frieda. Of course he’s not. He’s had a hard time. A difficult year.’ Virginia spoke sharply. ‘And there’s no need to swear.’

  ‘But did you, I mean, what did you find out?’ Angelica had her wet velvet eyes open as far as they would go.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘About why. Why us, why here.’

  ‘Because you live here, my dear. Because his sister has married a Christian.’

  There was a murmur all around and then everyone tried to speak at once. Virginia picked up the Sistine Chapel book and slammed it on the coffee table. ‘One thing I found out,’ she said, as all eyes turned again to her, ‘is that noise in this building carries dreadfully. So if I were you I would save my unpleasant speculation for another time and place.’

  When the others had gone home, Virginia stayed to help Angelica with the washing-up. The small kitchen grew steamy from the torrents Angelica wasted—she didn’t fill the sink but washed and rinsed each dish individually—and Virginia felt soothed for the first time that evening. There was great intimacy in the act of drying Angelica’s plates, in the two women brushing against each other as they made order. Angelica was so generous, physically, that she all but filled the kitchen on her own, and Virginia had the impression of moulding her sparer self into the spaces that were left for her. Such a sense would, in other circumstances, have grated, but with Angelica, she believed it was a harmonious compromise, an expression of God’s love.

  ‘Did he really say that?’ Angelica asked, as s
he swizzled soapy water in the teapot.

  ‘Who? What?’

  ‘Nikhil.’

  ‘Oh yes, apparently his sister, who is younger than he, if you can believe it—’

  ‘No, Ginny, about coming up here because of me. Because I live here.’

  ‘Not in so many words, I suppose.’

  Angelica looked disappointed.

  ‘But he implied it. I’m sure he implied it. Do you—you don’t—’

  ‘Don’t be silly. I just wondered, because you said.’

  ‘Of course.’ Virginia dried the cutlery energetically. The moment was spoiled. She had to keep talking to cover the annoyance she felt—annoyance at Nikhil’s intrusion even into this private time. ‘About his sister, it’s extraordinary, as I say, she’s younger than he, a child really, and she’s gone and married a much older man, a Christian apparently, and she’s—’ And then Virginia stopped suddenly.

  ‘She’s what?’

  ‘Nothing. He told me stories about it. In confidence. It’s not for me to repeat them.’ In fact, Virginia found, with the words on the tip of her tongue, that she was as jealous of her time with Nikhil as of her time with Angelica, and that particularly given the interest the latter displayed in the former, she didn’t want to give anything away. By way of changing the subject she said, ‘He is, they are Hindu. The family. He said.’

  ‘Yes I know. Quite a peaceable and delightful religion, I always think.’

  ‘Honestly, Angel! And them off knifing each other by the dozen in the back alleys of Calcutta!’

  Angelica furrowed her creamy brow and said, sternly, ‘I do think you fall prey to stereotypes too much, Virginia. Just too much. It’s backward and intolerant of you, I sometimes feel.’

  Virginia could not move. It was as if every pore had begun to seep moisture or tears and it was all solidifying into a cold, horrified casing around her. Her friend had never spoken so harshly to her before. She heard the little gasping sobs her throat made, and set all her strength to not crying in earnest.