A Lovesong for India (31 page)
Read A Lovesong for India Online
Authors: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Those were days of such unpleasant heat that it became impossible, Betty told me, to continue the workshop in its present quarters. She had worked out a solution. The first part consisted of a collection from the members to hire a coach to bring them to the country, into the balmy summer air, the spacious grounds. The second part of Betty’s solution involved me, or rather my grounds, where the workshop was to be held, under my trees. ‘They needn’t come in the house at all,’ Betty promised, adding in her truthful way, ‘Except to use the toilet.’ I asked, ‘What about Maeve?’ But Betty hadn’t come here to make unnecessary excuses for Maeve. She said, ‘They’ll come in the coach after work – they’ll be tired at first from their long day – but then they’ll sit under the trees – he’ll talk to them – they’ll revive, they’ll be happy, peaceful.’
This was more or less how it happened. They arrived in the late afternoon, the same people as in the New York workshop. They fanned out after getting down from their coach, they wandered around, admired the flowering trees, breathed in the fragrant air. By the time he came out to talk to them, the shadows were longer and cool. He made them sit under one of the trees, the same under which he often lay and looked into the leaves. They looked only at him – though without the intensity there had been in that rented room where they had been squashed close together. Now each had space to breathe in, to inhale his message. I watched from the porch. For me, there was something almost legendary about the scene – the earnest seekers around their teacher, drawing inspiration from him and their surroundings. Lively households rustled and stirred within the trees, a chipmunk scurried across a path with a nut in its mouth. There was the sound of the waterfall and, as the sun contracted, a deer came out of the distant woods and stood, shy but fearless, against the sky that was partly rose-tinted and partly gold. Everyone was, as Betty had predicted, peaceful, serene. No one seemed to be aware that Maeve had got up from the group and was circling it, the way a wasp would.
They didn’t come again. The workshops resumed in New York, but not for long. I learned about the great upheaval after it happened by piecing together Betty’s reluctant account. It was easy to imagine how in that cramped and overcrowded room, simmering in dog-day heat, the smallest spark could have caused an explosion. Betty admitted that she had known from early morning that Maeve was not herself. Or rather, that it was one of the days when she was only part of herself, the part that early trauma had drained of her natural sweetness. At first Betty had tried to dissuade her from going, but Maeve had insisted with that stubborn, closed face I had begun to think characteristic of her. Betty settled her on a chair among the disabled, but it was only a few moments into the lecture that Maeve began her disturbance. At first all she shouted was ‘No!’ Then, ‘Lies! Lies and fakery!’ Maybe if at this stage Betty could have succeeded in taking her away, the others might have settled back into their concentration. But wedged between others on the floor, Betty couldn’t reach her, and Maeve went further out of control, shouting, ‘Ask him! Why doesn’t anyone ask him!’ Disconcerted by these wild shouts, the disciples turned their attention from their teacher towards Maeve. Jerked out of a deep tranquillity, they reacted violently, in shock and frustration. And Maeve worked them up along with herself: ‘Ask him!’ she shouted. ‘Ask him about the one he drinks with and eats meat!’ Then the room erupted – the cripple raised his crutch at her, others tried to pull her off her chair; by the time Betty managed to reach her, her frock was torn at the shoulder. She struggled against Betty too – maybe she didn’t recognise her, confused her with the rest; although, Betty admitted, Maeve had sometimes fought against her in this way. Betty put her arms around her to lead her out. Already halfway down the stairs, Maeve was still struggling to free herself, sobbing and yelling, ‘Ask him what else he does with her!’ No one followed them; the door upstairs was shut against them while the lecture continued, as maybe it had continued throughout that angry scene.
The girls no longer brought covered dishes for him and he no longer cycled to the station for the train to New York. This made me suspect that the ugly uproar may have caused a split among the members; or he himself, for reasons of his own, had terminated the workshop, like those in England and other places. I realised that this had always been on my mind: that everything with him was transient.
Now on my evening walk I didn’t stumble over him under his tree because I had learned to expect him there; I never again lay down but sat beside him and we talked a bit. Strangely, I had become more shy of him than before. I even hesitated now to ask him for a meal; instead I brought him dishes I had cooked and sometimes left little treats on his doorstep. He never asked where they came from. He may have taken it for granted that there would always be someone to leave things for him.
One day Betty drove up to my house. She had brought all the unsold copies of Dr Chacko’s books, which was almost the entire edition. Only a few copies had been bought by some workshop students who had been able to come up with the price; efforts to place them on consignment in bookstores had been unsuccessful. ‘Where shall I put them?’ Betty said, staggering with armfuls of them up the steps of the porch. It’s not easy to accommodate over five hundred books without prior arrangement, so they had to be piled on chairs, sofas, tables, wherever there was a surface. I helped her carry them in, and when we had finished, she accepted a fresh lemonade. She became more relaxed than she had been on arrival with her load and I ventured to ask about Maeve.
Her face softened as always at mention of Maeve. ‘We’re past the worst of it, thank the Lord . . . Put yourself in her place – someone who’s been betrayed so bitterly in the past.’
I said, ‘I suppose everyone has been, at some point in their past.’ This was as far as I ever went in speaking to her about mine.
Anyway, it wasn’t me she wanted to talk about. ‘Maeve loved and trusted him and shouldn’t have. What do we know about him? Only what he’s told us . . . Are you going to let him stay in the cottage?’
I said, ‘He’s no trouble to me.’
She clamped her lips tight for a moment before continuing: ‘Not that I listen to gossip, though they say he was in prison in Bangkok for two years before being deported. But people will say anything, so who knows what to believe or not to believe . . . Well, thanks for the lemonade, it was a real treat on a day like this.’
‘And thank you for the books.’
‘Oh no. Those are yours. You paid for them.’
That day I overcame my embarrassment or whatever it was that had prevented me from inviting him to dinner. He laughed when he saw his books piled around the house; he said, ‘It looks like I’ve really taken you over here.’ But that was so untrue – he had never encroached on me or asked for anything.
Since my table and chairs were occupied, we sat on the porch with plates on our laps and glasses at our feet. For the first time I asked him about the workshop. He said, ‘People move on.
I
move on too.’ As so often, he answered my question before I had asked it. ‘There’s always somewhere. One gets used to it.’
I
move on too.’ As so often, he answered my question before I had asked it. ‘There’s always somewhere. One gets used to it.’
I said, ‘But wouldn’t you rather stay?’
‘If there are people who wish me to stay.’
Evidently he didn’t intend to carry on this conversation, and I also realised there was no need. It was cool outside now, in the night air. Glow worms glittered below, stars above. Instead of talking, he had begun to hum one of his songs. Was this his teaching? To say nothing, to want and need nothing? All the same, I couldn’t help myself, I had to ask. ‘So you think you won’t want the cottage much longer?’
He stopped humming. ‘Why? Are you looking for a new tenant? If so, hope he’ll pay you better than I.’
‘You’re not my tenant.’
‘No, of course not. Tenants pay rent. But I should do something for you. Look at this – ’ and he held up an early autumn leaf that had fluttered on to the porch. ‘You won’t be able to sit out here much longer – with luck another month, and after that you’ll need your chairs and tables back. You’ll have to get rid of the books. They’re useless anyway if you don’t understand them.’
‘One day I shall.’
‘And till then? Are you going to eat and sleep with them? I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll build you shelves for them so then they won’t be in your way and you can have your house back from all this intrusion.’
Did he mean my house or the cottage? Again I couldn’t ask; and this time he provided no answer but went on talking about the shelves and how we would need to buy wood – good quality, he said, to go with the rest of the house.
He came to take measurements, and then we drove to a building supply depot in town. He heaped two huge shopping carts, he pushed one and gave me the other; when it came time to pay, he wouldn’t let me sign my credit card slip before he had checked all the amounts. Next day he set up the trestle table we had bought under a tree, and there he worked with his shirt off and singing. I carried out sandwiches for us at lunchtime, and we ate them under the tree with the trestle table. The air was filled with the scent of sawdust, of grass and the wilted leaves that had begun to fall, and also the whiff of perspiration rising from the tangled hair on his naked chest. It was the last, the very last days of summer, already in its decline with dusty drooping trees, and flowers going to seed, and flying insects fierce in their final throes.
I was eager to pay him for his work, and while I was still wondering how to raise the subject, he presented me with a bill. He had itemised all the hours he had spent working for me, and it came to a substantial amount. But anyway, whatever I paid was worth it for me. I continued to make sandwiches for his lunch and to join him in eating them. More and more leaves had begun to fall, some on his naked back and some on his hair where they remained like Bacchanalian vine leaves. Sometimes a stronger breeze brought down a shower of them which fell on both of us, veiling us in gold.
One day he said: ‘Betty came to ask when I would be moving out of the cottage.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said I have a job to finish here.’
Several days of rain followed, and since he could no longer work outdoors, we carried the shelves into the house. The woodwork was almost finished and he had begun to varnish and polish. As I realised the work was drawing to a close, I thought up more jobs for him: a spice rack in the kitchen, towel rails in the laundry room. Although he was always agreeable, I began to worry that, to oblige me, he was postponing other plans. But I kept on finding things I needed to have done around the house, including some I didn’t need at all.
When I had almost run out of ideas, he himself brought a suggestion. He said it made him uneasy to see my silver so insecure in the breakfront where any intruder could smash the glass. In the dining room there was a niche large enough, he told me, for a cabinet that he could build for me with several shelves and also a lock to secure my silver inside. We went out to buy more wood, and he set to work at once. He explained the kind of lock he needed, and as I drove myself to the store, I thought that maybe not only I but he too was trying to prolong his stay – if, that is, he intended to stay.
On my way back, I drove past the girls’ house. It was thrown wide open, windows and doors flowing out into the front yard, which was full of toys, and playing with them were the usual children the girls gathered up from the town – orphans, or fugitives from bad homes. The girls had set up a swing and Maeve was sitting on it, shouting ‘Higher!’ while two laughing children pushed her. Betty saw me in my car outside; she waved and called, ‘Isn’t this fun!’
But when she came out to talk to me through the car window, the first thing she said was, ‘Is he still in the cottage?’
‘He’s working on my bookshelves.’
‘If he’s working for you, why don’t you let him stay in the house? There’s plenty of room for just the two of you. He hardly needs a whole cottage to himself.’
‘Then who else would stay there?’
‘You’ve seen our kids, how happy they are just in that inch of space we have for them. And on your place, in that air, those trees – and then the seasons! Rain and wind and snow! Beautiful.’
I started the car, and when I revved the engine, she had to talk louder: ‘It’s not good for people to stay alone. I know what I was before I met Maeve, and I know what she was, but together – ’ here she shouted after the moving car – ‘the two of us together, that’s a life!’
The cabinet took longer than the other jobs he had done for me. He became so involved in the work that he continued after our supper and after I had gone to bed. I listened to him hammering downstairs, and one night I got up to see how he was getting on. He was concentrating on fitting in the shelves but was dissatisfied and took them out again to plane them. I stood silently watching him. When he turned around, he looked at me in the doorway in my long nightdress, which was of delicate silk, fit for a bride. I remembered the thoughts Betty had tried to put in my head – had actually put there; and the idea that he could read them, as he so often could, both embarrassed and excited me. I went back upstairs and continued to lie in bed listening to his hammering. When it stopped, I heard him moving around downstairs and, wondering what he was doing, wanted to go see for myself. But the same embarrassment overcame me, and I continued lying in bed listening; that too was nice, to hear him moving inside my house.
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