Three Continents (2 page)

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 on a lower plane, disgusted us. I was used to following Michael's lead, so when he said that the Rawul and Rani and Crishi operated on the highest level possible, I didn't contradict him, although it seemed to me at that time that they were very worldly people. But Michael understood what was on my mind, and he confessed frankly that at first he too had thought that and hadn't taken them seriously enough. In fact, he had got completely the wrong impression—both from Crishi and from the other two.

He had met Crishi first, in Delhi, where they were staying in the same hotel. Michael was as usual alone, and Crishi with a bunch of other people. The hotel was wedged in at the end of an alley, opposite a Hindu temple where they chanted and rang bells at dawn and at dusk. The hotel was a narrow, shaking building; the rooms were on three upper floors, and downstairs, open to the street, was an eating stall that supplied them with meals. Michael's room faced the temple, and when they started up at dawn, it was as if those holy sounds coming over loudspeakers were right in there with him, shaking the walls. He wouldn't have minded that—in fact, he liked it—but he had been kept awake by the noise from Crishi's room, where they were up talking and sometimes fighting or playing flute and guitar till just before the temple
bells got going. Michael didn't complain; after all, he hadn't come to India to
sleep
. Sometimes he joined Crishi and his friends in their room. This was as cramped as his own and was painted in the same bright-blue color and had a dim light bulb under a paper shade; it also had the same smell of dirty bedding, cockroaches, and stale food, which they tried to relieve by burning sandalwood incense. Michael had already met some of Crishi's friends, in Kathmandu and Varanasi and other places where they all traveled. He hadn't met Crishi before and liked him at once. Crishi was easy and friendly. He was also stimulating. One reason Michael preferred to travel alone was that others on the same trail often had a depressing effect on him. They would sit around in their hotel rooms or outside tea stalls in the bazaar, swapping information about the cheapest places to stay, or stories of how they had either been cheated by or had outwitted some native trader. Some of them were sick with dangerous and infectious diseases like jaundice or dysentery, and some of them had blown their minds so that you might as well have been sitting with robots, Michael said. He also said that some of them were so stinking dirty, it was difficult to be near them.

But Crishi and his group were different. Crishi kept everyone lively and alert—it wasn't that their conversation was in any way elevating, not at all, it was often quite childish. But everyone had something to say and was eager to say it; or perhaps eager to get his attention—there was always tension in the air, as of rivalry. Crishi himself was absolutely relaxed and didn't seem to encourage one person above another, but lay on the floor cooling his bare chest under the fan. Michael couldn't remember anything particular he ever said or did, except once when he suddenly turned on a German girl, who was sitting as near to him as she could get, and told her, “Phew, get away from me, Ursula—you
stink
.” The girl pretended to laugh it off, but later Michael passed her on the stairs, sobbing with her head on her knees. Michael stepped around her without saying anything—not only was it true that she was very dirty, but she was also very pregnant, and this was off-putting to Michael, who hated anything like that, any female manifestations.

Michael never made arrangements to meet people again,
because he knew he always would. They covered vast tracts of the earth, but they traveled within a narrow route of the same sort of cheap hotels, beaches, and campsites, and spent many nights on the floors of airport lounges or bus terminals. It was in some such place that Michael expected to meet Crishi and his gang again someday; but when he did meet him, it was somewhere so entirely different that he didn't recognize him. It was in Berkeley Square, in London; Crishi was emerging from an art dealer's and about to step into a limousine. It was he who recognized Michael; that wasn't difficult because in those days Michael wore the same sort of clothes wherever he was—jeans,
kurta
, steel bangle, and one earring. But Crishi himself was transformed, in a velvet jacket and silk scarf tucked into his shirt. He was cordial to Michael but was in a hurry; he offered him a ride, which Michael refused because he was staying nearby. “Where?” Crishi asked. Michael muttered—he hated it to be known that he was staying at the embassy. But Crishi got it out of him, and also that the ambassador was a family friend, and after that everything else about our family; so then Crishi became cordial in a different way, and he invited Michael to come and visit him; and that was how Michael got involved with them all—that is, with the Rawul and Rani and their entourage, and with their Fourth World movement.

In order to find out more about this movement, I began to join the group under the tree when the Rawul gave his evening talks. It took me some time to get used to his accent. He spoke the way Englishmen themselves no longer speak—in a very upper-class drawly way that made him sound like a stage Englishman. In appearance he was plump and pampered, not a bit like a leader of a new world or redeemer of the old. All the same, these talks under the tree were inspiring. The setting may have had something to do with it—those beautiful summer evenings with the sky gold from the sun melting into it, and behind us the pillared house dark in shadow, and in front of us the lake illuminated by the sunset and reflecting, like an underwater painting, the woods on the opposite bank and the deer that came out to drink. The members of the Rawul's entourage—those pale messengers—sat enthralled, though they must have heard him
a thousand times. Their enthusiasm and reverence affected everyone else—Lindsay and Jean and even Mrs. Schwamm, who came out of her kitchen to listen to the Rawul; and when he had finished, she went back and clattered among her pots and pans, muttering “Good heavens, good heavens,” in sheer wonder at what she had heard. It was then I realized that everyone—everyone in the world, maybe, and not only Michael and me—would like to have something better than they had, and when it was offered to them, were ready to rise to heights one would not have suspected.