Three Continents. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
so that the boys, greatly outnumbered, had to pack up and leave. A few hours later they returned, with reinforcements; they brought pizzas and six-packs and started a party down by the barns. It was late by then, and many people had gone to sleep but woke up again with all the noise.
Michael and I had been swimming by the waterfall with Crishi. I ought to say that we did this every night and we stayed there many hours before slowly trailing back to the house; sometimes we lay down in a field for a while and looked up at the moon. When we came back that night, we were surprised to see the lights on in the house and everyone woken up, with the boys having their party. By that time Jean had emerged in her robe and slippers and was reading what she called the riot act to them; but they just invited her to join them, and one of them put his arms around her and made her dance with him. She pretended to be angry but couldn’t help laughing; it was all quite good-natured, and some people in the house had stuck their heads out the windows and were enjoying what was going on.
Michael and I stayed down in the grounds to watch, and though we joined Jean in making some feeble protests to the boys, we didn’t mean to spoil their fun. Crishi, however, had gone straight up to the house, and it wasn’t long before he came out again with all the male followers behind him like an army. And like an army they converged on the boys, and what followed was unexpected and shocking. The boys didn’t have a chance against the followers, who used what looked like some very sophisticated techniques on them. It happened so fast—one moment everyone had been laughing and kidding around and there was music playing, and next thing there were these horrible thuds and cries of pain and the grim-faced followers stomping around on the cassette players, the pizzas, and the beer cans. In no time it was over; the boys had been pushed into their cars and the followers were cleaning up the mess on the grass. Everyone went back in the house and soon the lights were out again, and I guess we were all supposed to be asleep and not thinking about what had happened.
But we did think about it—I did, and Michael did, and Michael must have talked about it to Crishi, because by the time I came to talk to Michael, which was the next morning, he had already come right around to Crishi’s point of view and explained it to me. I tried to protest—I said I didn’t think the boys had actually been doing anything so bad—but Michael said it had been a challenge, which had to be faced and dealt with. Well maybe, I said—but dealt with in that way? Then Michael said that action has no degree, and either you do something or you don’t do it.
The Rawul was more accommodating—he had to be because he had to deal with Grandfather. I came in on them at breakfast in the dining room next morning: The Rawul had as usual heaped his plate from all the silver-covered dishes on the sideboard, while Grandfather, at the opposite end of the table, was only stirring a spoon around his cup of tea. Whenever the two of them were together, they gave the impression of two potentates conferring on matters of high state; and like two such potentates, they usually didn’t have to say anything because everything had been said by others at preliminary discussions, and all that was required of them was to be there face to face. But this time that was not so; for while Grandfather did sit there stirring in silence, the Rawul was talking quite volubly, as one out to convince, and justify.
If someone else had been saying what he was, I might not have accepted it. But it was the Rawul talking, whom I knew to be kind and a gentleman; a kind gentleman. He spoke in his old-fashioned upper-class accent, stopping every now and again to take another mouthful of scrambled eggs with kidneys; and his voice was soft and so were the graceful gestures he made with his plump hands, one of them holding a fork. And he was utterly and absolutely sincere, as was obvious from the vibrations that came into his voice, and the passionate way he shut his eyes when he spoke of what was most precious to him: his plan for a new world, a Fourth World, where all that was best in the other three would come to fruition. That sounds abstract and unreal, but it wasn’t like that at all when he said it, because it came so deeply out of him, out of the Rawul in his English suit, eating his breakfast. It was, as he said, his world view, which he was in the process of putting into action with whatever means were available to him. These were not extensive, he admitted; indeed, to the casual eye they might appear extremely, even ludicrously, limited: just himself and the Rani and Crishi, and a handful of followers. But, he asked Grandfather, wasn’t that the way every great world movement had started off—whether it was religious or, in keeping with our times, secular and political, a drive by men not toward God but toward other men, toward humanity? He balled his fist against his heart, as if the weight of feeling there was heavy and hurting—his feeling for the humanity he wished to redeem and lead into the paradise of his Fourth World. Grandfather kept right on stirring his tea to cool it; his silence was disconcerting, as was the way he stared at the painting over the Rawul’s head—a portrait of Lindsay’s grandfather, who had made his money in the dry-goods business but here looked more like a Renaissance prince. The Rawul faltered a bit, and then he had to come down from the lofty height to which he had risen to a lower level, to discuss the boys who had been thrown off the property. And in view of what had gone before, it did seem petty that this incident had had to be mentioned, let alone justified; and it was magnanimous of the Rawul to see the boys’ point of view the way he did. He said he knew they meant no harm, that they thought they were only having a party, but that in fact and unbeknown to themselves, they were doing real harm: for they were challenging and thereby obstructing the work of his followers, the global regeneration that had been set in motion, and no one said the Rawul—and here he did look less like a kind gentleman and more like a world leader—no one would ever be allowed to do that.
After the night of the boys’ invasion, security measures were introduced, and though there was no actual boundary wall, a very definite demarcation line was drawn around Propinquity. Trees along the lake and on the outskirts of the property had red PATROLLED and POSTED signs stuck to them; gaps in the hedges were carefully closed with new plantings; one of the two entrances to the main driveway was barricaded completely; and at the other a sort of checkpoint was set up where two followers monitored all entrances and exits. Even Mrs. Pickles, when she arrived to work next morning, had to be cleared; she muttered darkly as she pushed her vacuum cleaner to and fro and packed up and left early, without having her cup of coffee with Else Schwamm. The same dark mood was shown by the deliverymen who came on their usual rounds that day, and the heating people who were checking our oil supply. They brought news of general indignation in the neighborhood, for it seemed some of the boys had been quite badly hurt and their parents were making a complaint to the police. The Rawul and his party carried on smilingly with their daily routine; only Crishi was busier than ever that day, talking a lot on the phone in his easy, persuasive manner and from time to time roaring off in the convertible he drove to make visits in the neighborhood. I don’t know whether it was as a result of his activity, but neither parents nor police appeared at the house on that day or the next; and on the third day there was a beer-and-tacos party at which parents and police mingled in a relaxed way with the people in the house. By that third day Mrs. Pickles too had got over her bad feelings, even though by then there was not only a checkpoint but a walkie-talkie system by which the followers at the gate called up for clearance to the house. That morning over her coffee with Mrs. Schwamm, Mrs. Pickles expressed her appreciation of the general discipline and order that were now so apparent in our household; and she confided that, speaking for herself and a few others she could mention, and these did not exclude some parents, what had happened to the boys was not altogether undeserved, and maybe it was about time they learned that they couldn’t do as they pleased with everyone.
Was I the only one who remained uneasy? What made it worse was that I couldn’t talk about it to Michael—couldn’t admit to having such feelings because he himself completely approved of what had been done. I couldn’t understand it—Michael had always been so much against every kind of outer order and discipline that he couldn’t ever stay in a school. He would accept nothing except what came from inside himself; no discipline except self-discipline. Of that he had much more than anyone else I had ever known. Even as a child he used to impose days of fasting on himself, also days of silence and other austerities he knew of; he told no one except me. He would have been the last person to wear any kind of uniform, but he had laid aside his kurta, steel bangle, and earring and dressed like the followers in blue shirt and navy jeans. Crishi issued orders to him the same as he did to everyone else, and Michael followed them. He and Crishi were very