Three Continents (48 page)

He said “I told you, you have to admit sometimes when it's a mistake.”

“Yes when it's something small that doesn't matter very much—”

“Is that what you think it was for me?” he answered. I took him up at once and said “No it wasn't and that's why you can't walk away from it, any more than I can . . .” I failed to conclude the sentence, not caring to point out that it was two different things we were committed to. But I felt he was eluding, slipping away from me—that I wasn't making enough impact on him. After all I didn't have much practice at it because it had been always he who thought and decided for both of us, not the other way around.

But he was fair-minded, with me as with everyone. He went his way and asked no one to follow him—no, not even me;
he never had; it was out of my own free will and feelings for him. So he could now say “Well you know, H., you don't have to come with me if you don't want to,” and say it calmly, as though it were a possibility. But for me to admit that it was, that it could be, was like breaking off a part of myself. I was so shaken, I could only speak in a hushed voice; I said “You mean you go, and I stay.”

We looked at each other. Although there was no physical resemblance between us, this act of being face to face had always been and still was at this moment like facing a mirror. The possibility of our parting may have been open—but how do you tear yourself apart from your own image or reflection?

“You're so impatient,” I said. “We've spoken about this. It's only here that it's—you know—” I made an impatient gesture toward the tent behind me. “But once we get to the Rawul's kingdom and can really work—devote ourselves—once we get up there—”

“You mean where they come from?” His gaze had shifted from my face over my shoulder. I turned around. Some Bhais—four of them—had approached us. I must say, they looked like terrible brigands standing there. One of them was repeating that eating motion into his open mouth, the others were grinning; nevertheless, there was something menacing about them.

“They're all right,” I said. “It's just we can't understand what they say.”

“Oh no, I understand,” he said. “Food. Drink. Money. Hold on!” he called to them. “I'll get it for you.”

“You needn't be doing this,” I said.

“Who else then?”

Not wanting an answer, he went away to where a makeshift kitchen had been set up behind some shrubbery. I followed him and heard him give orders to the cooks there, doing his best to make himself understood. It was wrong to leave him with these menial tasks he hated, and nothing else. But where was Crishi? I went toward the hotel to search for him.

The nearer I approached the hotel, the louder it became. All the lights were blazing and the sound of several bands came blaring out. Many strains of music were mixed up—there were ballroom-dance tunes, some disco music, some
South Indian sort of toneless throbbing rhythms, and one of those festive instruments they play at weddings. Somehow all this did not result in hideous cacophany but blended into festive noise. The whole huge hulk of the hotel, rearing up into and eclipsing the night sky, seemed to be shaking and vibrating with this noise; it was really like some big liner sailing by with parties of revelers on board. And inside it was packed with people in their shiniest clothes and jewels, for several wedding and other receptions were going on simultaneously in the various banquet halls. The inside of the hotel was of white marble and it was flooded by a light so bright that it appeared almost supernatural. There must have been hidden lamps and tube lighting, but the entire illumination seemed to be concentrated in, to stream down from the gigantic crystal chandelier that reached right from the highest point of this tall building to the white marble fountain in the center of the lobby.

To take advantage of the many guests and visitors that night, the shops in the arcade were wide open for business and had hung their most tempting carpets, shawls, and brocades outside their doorways. I stopped by the jeweler's, to see if maybe Crishi was there; the jeweler's assistant was in the front of the shop, displaying some very good fakes to a couple of American customers who were making knowledgeable comments about them. I peered past them into the back room, and there I saw the jeweler himself. He was crouching on a stool over a little white-covered table and displaying some jewels to a customer who turned out to be Sonya. From the confidential way he was talking to her, I suspected it wasn't about the jewels. When I entered and she looked up at me, my impression was confirmed, for her eyes were full of tears, so I knew he had been telling her all sorts of things about Crishi. All those old past things!

I said “What are you buying?” and sat down next to her on another little stool. I didn't want to leave them alone any longer. But I knew it was already too late, and he had told her more than I would have wanted her to know.

“Oh darling,” she said; she was sobbing and I pretended not to know what about. I looked at the jeweler, who was concentrating on his stones and arranging them for her inspection.
I said to him, “Why don't you go and see to your customers outside.” When he hesitated, I laughed. “We won't make off with your stuff,” I said, so he had to go though I could see he didn't really trust us.

The moment he went into the front of the shop, I put my arm around her and said “You mustn't cry about it.” I went on, “How do you know what he told you is true? . . . And anyway, you knew some of it—about being in jail and all that—”

“But the rest! The rest!”

She drew away from me; she was so horror-stricken, I wondered exactly what he had told her. Probably about the English wife and who knows what else, true or false, but I didn't want to go into it. I said “You're willing to listen to anyone—any stranger—who'll say anything about my husband. . . . How do you know it's true?” I urged her again. “Any more than you know if these stones he's selling you are true or fake—” I picked one of them up, a little black stone that didn't look like anything, but she quickly took it from me. She said it was a very unlucky stone for me, the sort that would have a baleful influence over my destiny. I said “But if what he told you is true, isn't it too late to worry about my destiny?”

“Oh my darling, don't laugh about it. Your grandfather always laughed—all of you did—so I kept quiet. But if I had only spoken—as long ago as your wedding night—”

“Why? What happened that night?”

Instead of answering, she seized my hands and said “Let's go home, darling, everyone wants it.”

She was pleading, but I withdrew my hands and said “Not everyone. Not me. . . . No nor Michael either!” I cried, more stubbornly than necessary since she hadn't mentioned him.

I don't think she believed me, but she changed her plea to: “Then for my sake. Only for me. Please, darling, for Sonya.” She desperately patted her little stout bosom in floral silk and looked at me with faded blue eyes brimming. “What if something were to happen—” She became desperate and didn't even hear me when I laughed at her and asked “Such as what?” “I'd never forgive myself,” she said, wringing her hands and went on: “And what would I tell him, what would I say to Grandfather?”

There was a pause. In the front of the shop, separated from us by a curtain, we could hear the jeweler trying to sell his clients his fake pictures; but Sonya went on talking as if she and I were alone and in a very private place. “Yes darling,” she said, “I talk to him. You might as well know it—how Grandfather comes to me at night and says ‘Well, Sonya?' and I tell him what's happening, what I've been doing and about you two children. He wants to know everything there is to know about you and Michael, he asks me the most searching questions, you know how he does so that you have to tell him even if you'd rather not. . . . I know you don't believe me, darling, but it's true, and if it weren't I wouldn't want to go on living.” She dried her tears.

No I didn't believe her—how could I—and yet I wished I could because I thought it was so beautiful, such a wonderful thing to hope for. I mean, if you love a person that much in your life, then you can't be separated from him afterward. I wanted to ask her more—sort of detailed questions about Grandfather—but she went back to her first theme and the tears she had been drying welled up again: “And now what can I say to him—if something happens—”

“But what could happen?” I cried. Instead of answering me, she put up her hands to ward off something—it might have been a blow or it might have been a vision. At that moment the jeweler stuck his head through the curtain, I waved him away in anger, and though it was his shop, he obeyed me. Maybe he felt guilty—he
was
guilty, for it was he who had filled her with this fear: by telling her about Crishi's first wife, I suspected, and what she had done to herself. I made Sonya look at me and said “Do you really think I would ever—” She wouldn't let me get any further; she put her hand over my mouth but I took it away and went on speaking: “It's not the same at all—for one thing, she was very young—”

“Yes and you're fifty years old,” Sonya said, not humorously.

“And she was pregnant—no I'm
not
—and he was away and there was no money—which you can't say about me, can you, and besides,” I said firmly, “I'm happy. I'm very very happy.”

“And Michael?” she came back at once.

“You know perfectly well how it is between me and Michael.
Whatever one of us feels the other one is the same.”

“Not now,” she said in sadness.

“How do you know that? Shouldn't
I
know better than you?”

“Not now.”

I was silent. I was getting annoyed with her. She was coming between Michael and me, influencing him to feel and want in a different way from me. “What's he said to you?” I asked her.

“Does he have to say anything for me to know? Or you, darling—don't you think I know about you too without your having to tell me?”

I was too fond of her to contradict her; but it had never been true. Although she so deeply cared for us, she had never understood us in the way she thought she did. And now she knew even less—now she had absolutely no idea!

“And we did talk,” she went on. “You were there too. We discussed it and Michael thinks—”

“What?”

“Michael wants to see his little baby brother. Don't you? Don't you want to see him?”

I said “You know how much Michael cares about babies and such. All right! Supposing he has for the moment got sentimental—or whatever you want to call it,” I conceded. “How long do you think it'll last? And you know how it is once he gets together with Manton, how he can't stand him for five minutes—”

Sonya was pained by the way I spoke and she interrupted me: “They've both changed.”

“They'll never change.” I spoke with confidence, and I did know better than she did. She never really saw people but wrapped them in her own romantic ideas about them.

“Michael has,” she said. She looked at me sideways, shyly but speculatively, wondering how I would react. I tried to hide it but I didn't react well. She and Michael had talked together too much—she had encouraged him, thinking she was helping him by making him talk about himself. She was wrong. I remembered how Crishi had asked “When's she leaving?” He had known before I did that it was better she should.

The jeweler came back through the curtain, and the irritation
I felt with her turned into fury against him, who had wrought her up with all his slander. I saw him cast a quick look over his tray of jewels and that gave me an excuse to let go—I shouted “Why don't you count them and make sure we haven't made off with any”—and I went further and tipped the tray so that the jewels rolled to the floor. He cried out, as did Sonya; he got down on the carpet at once and began to pick them up, making distressed little noises. It gave me a sort of pleasure to see him on his hands and knees. I wanted to kick him while he was down there, the way Crishi had kicked Paul, and Michael had Nicholas in the gallery. I understood now what had compelled both of them to do it. And I think I might have done it myself—I was standing over him—if it hadn't been for Sonya looking so aghast at me, staring at me as if she didn't know me. I said “Why doesn't he say we've stolen his jewels, why doesn't he? He's said everything else he possibly can!”

That made him stop for a moment and look up from the carpet: “I've said nothing—if I were to speak out what I know, he would be in there again tomorrow.” I made no move toward him but something in my face and attitude made him put up his hand to shield himself. I laughed, but Sonya was clinging to me to hold me; she too didn't know what I would do next. I asked her, “Do you believe him?” and when she didn't answer at once, “Do you believe this creature against me?” “I told her the truth! The truth about him! You don't know!” he cried. The curtain behind him shook a little—I could imagine his assistant and the two customers standing there petrified, listening—well let them. I said, very calm and sure, “If I tell him to, he'd come in here and kill you.” It gave me satisfaction to say that; nor did it seem to me such a very big deal if Crishi did it, or had it done. The man was still on the floor and staring up at me with his dark eyes; it was funny about his eyes, that they were so beautiful and dreamy, not at all the mean shrewd merchant eyes you'd expect. On the wall there was a picture of one of those fearful-looking holy men, and smoldering in a corner of the frame, a stick of incense. Sonya had let go of me by now and was standing in a peculiar way with eyes downcast, like one ashamed.

“Let's go,” I said to her. “I can't stand being in here with this liar and cheat.”