Three Continents. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
a dreamer—of the past, when his ancestors conquered and ruled their desert kingdom, and of the future, when he himself would rule, in his own way. There was nothing selfish or ambitious about him; he was as idealistic as Michael, and probably that was how Michael got involved with them all in the first place. Because he thought that they—like he and I—wanted something better than there was. And in the Rawul’s case this was probably true.
The Rawul was Indian, and when I first saw her, I thought the Rani was too. She was dark and voluptuous, and though she usually moved slowly and languorously, she gave an impression of power and energy held in check. She had marvelous teeth, so strong that she could bite and chew anything. I never got it quite clear what nationality she actually was—as I didn’t at first with Crishi; but like him, she was a mixture of various strains, partly French, partly Afghan, even a little bit of German. All this made her very beautiful, and she also had these very beautiful clothes and jewels. She was always called the Rani, and it wasn’t till later that I realized this was not a title but the name she had adopted. Her real name was Renée.
As for Crishi—it is impossible for me to look back and see him as I did then at the beginning. What I do remember is that I thought I disliked him. I said so to Michael; I said “He’s—.” I didn’t have to put the adjective; Michael and I never had to finish sentences with each other, we always knew what we meant and usually agreed on everything. But that time Michael didn’t agree. He said I didn’t understand, and I said again, “But he’s—.” Michael wouldn’t discuss it any further; he was very preoccupied and didn’t have time for me—which made me unhappy, because there was so much I had to say to him. But he was entirely taken up with our guests and eager that everything should be done for them. And for once he and Lindsay were in total agreement. Usually, if we brought any guests, Lindsay just simply, as she said, couldn’t be bothered. If we argued with her, she said “But darling, everything’s there, isn’t it, what more do they want?” It was true that everything was there: that is, the big house and grounds, with lake and springs and woods—Lindsay’s whole estate, Propinquity, which had been in her family since the early years of the century, when they made a fortune in dry goods. Lindsay was the last survivor of her generation—the others had drunk themselves to death long ago—and so it was all hers now and Michael’s and mine; we were the only descendants. Although she had other places, like her apartment in the city and a ranch in Arizona she had leased out, this was where she liked to be the most; usually she was alone here with her woman friend, Jean, and neither of them welcomed visitors. But this time, with these visitors, Lindsay felt differently. She was excited.
Our visitors were exciting—everyone felt that, even I, who was the only one not pleased to have them there. Around the exotic trio was a retinue of followers. Although these must have had pronounced personalities of their own, they were so completely overshadowed that I can’t even remember who they all were at that time. The Rawul’s retinue was constantly changing because there was a lot of rivalry and jealousy among its members, so that they had often to be sent away and replaced or reshuffied. But they were always the same type of people—pale, intense, and overworked; all were young in age but not in spirit, and there was something depressed about them, or maybe I mean repressed. It was hard to distinguish male and female because they all wore the same type of light-blue shirts and dark-blue jeans like a uniform; they were also all rather sexless. At night, at least one of them slept on the floor outside the master bedroom where the Rawul and Rani were. I don’t know where the rest of them slept, or how many to a room, but the whole house was filled with people and activity. The phone rang a lot with overseas calls, and there was always a hum of typing and click of Xerox machines that had been installed, and people going around with messages and important faces. It was all very, very different from Lindsay and Jean’s usual life in the house, where they stayed mostly in the kitchen and Jean did the cooking as well as the gardening and other outside work. Now their part-time handyman and cleaning woman and some other local people who helped them out had to come full time, and Lindsay’s old Austrian cook, Mrs. Schwamm, whom she had been glad to get rid of and retire, was recalled. Jean couldn’t stand Mrs. Schwamm and vice versa, but since she was a marvelous cook and the Rawul a gourmet, Jean had to put up with her.
What was it all about? Who were they, and why had they come? I waited for Michael to tell me, but he had no time to tell me anything. “You’ll find out,” was all he said. I didn’t want to emerge from my room and tried to shut out everything that was going on beyond my door. From the first evening, they all gathered under the maple on the side lawn. I saw them from my window, and also I saw that the Rawul was addressing them and everyone sat still and listened, even Lindsay, who was usually very fidgety and got bored very quickly. The only one who was not spellbound was the Rani, who was playing with the bracelets she wore halfway up both arms. She was also the only one who looked around her and up at the house, and when she did that, I got away from the window. I didn’t want anyone to think that I was in the least interested. But actually no one seemed to think anything at all—about me, that is; they never saw that I was missing, not even Michael.
On the third day of their arrival, I went to Michael’s room early in the morning. It just shows how wrong things were that I had to wait that long to see him alone, for usually when we had been separated, we had so much to communicate that we stayed together all night. But this time Michael hadn’t even noticed, and when I came in his room he said “What’s the matter?” and I replied “You tell me.” I turned the key in the door, which we always did to be together, but he said “No don’t, someone might want to come in.” “Who?” I asked; and then I said “Who are these people?” He was still in bed, but when I wouldn’t unlock the door, he got up and did it himself.
His room was the same as mine. Both of us liked bare walls, bare floors, and no curtains, to let in as much light as possible. The only books were those we were currently reading, which he chose for both of us (the ones around this time were Buddhist texts). Any attempts by Lindsay or Jean or anyone to relieve the ascetic atmosphere were defeated. And besides the sameness of our rooms, being with him was like being with myself; and as soon as he got back in bed, I sat in my usual cross-legged, or lotus, position at the end of it, and it was as it always had been between us. He began straight off to answer the questions I hadn’t yet asked—he had got as far as, “When I met them in London, Harriet, from that moment, that absolute moment in time—” when there was a knock at the door that wasn’t a knock so much as a rap of command: and simultaneously the door was flung open and Crishi came in. I looked not at him but at Michael—I ought to explain that Michael and I often felt as with one body, so the shock that passed through him at that moment seemed also to pass through me. I was startled, for that was the first time I felt it, though later I got used to it, for I had it too whenever Crishi appeared: the same shock—I would say thrill except that word isn’t physical enough to express the sensation he induced, as of a live electric wire suddenly coming into contact with an innermost part of one’s being.
He had come only to borrow some shaving cream and departed as swiftly as he had entered: just throwing off some obvious sort of crack and a quick smile and glance at Michael and me. I didn’t know it then, but this was typical of him—an inane remark on his lips, he could penetrate you with his eyes and his smile in such a way that after he had gone he remained vibrating within you. Michael leaned weakly against his pillow and even shut his eyes for a moment. But when he opened them, he was radiant. He tried to tell me; he said “This is it, Harriet. Om, the real thing,” and an outsider might have interpreted this as meaning that Michael was in love. But I knew it was something much more, for that wasn’t what Michael and I had been searching for—the Om, the real thing—through our restless yearning childhood and growing up.
I didn’t ask Michael if he thought I should go back to school. The question was settled: for if he had found what he said he had, going back to school was a very trivial and irrelevant issue. He began to tell me about the Rawul’s movement. It was a world movement, involving empires—actual as well as intellectual ones. Well, Michael and I were used to thinking big—we had always done it. While our parents were having marital squabbles and adulterous love affairs and our grandparents were giving diplomatic cocktail parties, he and I were struggling with the concepts of Maya and Nirvana, and how to transcend our own egos. Anything smaller than that, anything