Travelers (16 page)

She was sitting on the floor with her knees hunched up and her head resting on them. She was making retching sounds. I told her to go outside and she ran and I heard her throwing up. I began to feel sick myself. The kitchen didn't have any windows, only a hole just under the roof; the walls had heated up like an oven, and there were a lot of flies buzzing about. I looked around for what could be done about cooking. There were three rusty bins, which I opened, and found lentils in one, rice in another; the third was empty except for a cockroach enjoying some bits of dried flour stuck in a corner. The only vegetables
were some onions in a basket. Out of these materials a meal had somehow to be cooked for the whole ashram.

I went out and started lighting the fire in the cooking range, which consisted of some bricks placed on the ground against the outside wall. I vigorously waved a bit of bamboo fan to get the sparks alight; it was terribly hot, with the sun and the fire. Perspiration ran into my eyes so that I had to keep wiping it away.

Just then Evie came up and said, “He's calling you.”

I got irritated; I said, “Well, I can't come now, can I?”

“Where's Margaret?”

“Can't you hear her?”

Evie clicked her tongue in that gentle, pitying way she has. She stood there, watching me, so I told her to help me. She hesitated—I could see she was thinking how Swamiji would be cross if we didn't come, so I said, “He's going to be a lot more cross if there's no lunch.” Then she pitched in. I must say, she was quick and efficient. We got the fire going, we cleaned the lentils and washed the rice and cut up the onions. After a while Margaret joined us, looking like death. I gave her some cauldrons to take to the pump to see what she could do about getting the dirt out of them. She came back after a time, looking rather hopeless, and with the cauldrons wet but no cleaner. Evie said, “Never mind,” and snatched them from her and poured oil into them out of an old tin she had found. We slid the onions in and the oil splashed up high and a drop of it fell on Margaret's hand so that she cried out in pain. She put her hand to her mouth and sucked the sore spot but she said, “Okay, thanks, I'll carry on now.”

We ignored her.

“He told
me
I had to cook today.” She said it as if we were taking a privilege away from her and she wasn't going to let us. She tried to take the ladle with which I was stirring out of my hand but I said, “Watch it, you'll get burned again.” She quickly jumped back. She stood watching us, not knowing what to do,
and then she went round to the other side of the shed and started throwing up again.

I said to Evie, “You know, I think there's something wrong with her. . . . I often hear her at night being sick like this.”

“It's the heat,” Evie said.

I didn't think it was only the heat but there was no time to argue. We kept on working till we got things going. Then we slacked off a bit and looked at each other. We both laughed—she looked terrible and I must have looked the same with my face red and wet and blackened with soot. We could still hear Margaret.

I said, “Why did he tell her that? He knows she can't cook.”

Evie turned away from me as if she thought I'd said something that shouldn't have been said. I knew how sensitive she was about any word of criticism uttered against Swamiji; usually I'm sensitive in the same way but now I felt different. I said, “She should have said no.”

Evie pretended to be very busy stirring. I could see her wince, as if really I had hurt her, physically hurt her. But I kept on. “Why didn't she say no? She should have. Why not?”

Evie blushed painfully and bent her face over the cooking. She stirred and stirred. At last she said, “The least we can do is obey.”

“Why?” I cried. As if I didn't know the answer—usually I would have known it, I would have said myself, “in return for everything he gives us”—but now I was in a rebellious mood. And the strange thing was, it wasn't him so much I felt rebellious against but against myself, my own feelings.

Asha Writes Two Letters

Asha and Banubai often gossiped about old times. Together they recalled many incidents of Asha's past and they laughed a lot—especially Banubai, who was always bubbling over with laughter even at things that were not funny at all but sad.

“Why are you sad?” she asked one day when she and Asha had been recalling incidents from Asha's married life. “Those were happy, happy days. No? They were not good? Then you should be glad they are over. But to be sad—for what?”

“It was my fault. I was to blame. Everyone warned me—Rao Sahib pleaded with me on his knees—”

“Rao Sahib is a fool,” Banubai said. She had been the only person to encourage Asha to get married. She had liked Asha's husband very much and said that, in spite of his faults, he had a pure and beautiful soul. Later, when the troubles had started, she had always taken his side against Asha.

“You only liked him because he was handsome,” Asha accused her.

That made Banubai laugh a lot. It was true, she was fond of handsome men and liked to make a fuss of them. “What about the new one?” she asked. “Is he nice-looking?”

Asha shut her eyes, as if unable to encompass Gopi's beauty in thought or words.

“Tall?”

Asha shook her head.

“Slim?”

Asha nodded, trying to suppress her smiles.

“Big eyes?”

Asha showed how big. Banubai drummed her knee and opened her mouth wide with pleasure. Then Asha took a sweetmeat and popped it into Banubai's laughing mouth to silence her. Banubai chewed gaily. She loved sweets as much as nice-looking boys, and Asha often bought her soft crumbly milk-sweets, which she could easily mash between her gums.

Although Banubai lived on a spiritual plane, she had retained a lively interest in the world and all its passing show. “Leila,” she called it, or “God's play.” She said that we owed it to Him to be fascinated by Him in all His divine moods and aspects. So she wanted to hear every detail of Asha's life—about her apartment in Bombay, and the parties she went to, and all her
friends. She was particularly interested in Lee, and often urged Asha to ask Lee to come and visit them. She didn't like it that Lee was staying with Swamiji.

“Is he a dangerous person?” Asha asked.

Banubai wouldn't commit herself, though she made it clear that, if she had a mind to, there was much she could tell about him, and all to his disadvantage. Asha became worried. She knew how much harm these sorts of people could do once they got a hold over someone. She decided to write to Lee and went up on the roof where she could sit undisturbed. Even when she had finished writing, she did not go down again. It was evening time and the steps leading down to the river were getting crowded. Boats went up and down and the people sitting in them chanted to the setting sun, and some of them floated little paper boats loaded with candles and flowers. On the steps just below Banubai's house there was the usual concourse of widows. They all looked alike, for they had all shaved their heads and were so thin and old that not much was left of their bodies; they wore white cotton saris with nothing underneath, so that their emaciated arms and shriveled, hanging breasts were visible. They had come to the holy city to purify themselves of all the desires of the senses, and now they lived only to pray and die.

They were splashing about in the water, and their voices came faintly floating up to Asha. They were cackling and singing. They were happy. To want nothing except to pray—that was indeed happiness! Asha herself felt heavy with bad thoughts and desires. The lively festive scene moving up and down on the river and the bright orange sun setting into it and flushing the sky with colors that were reflected back from the water—all this did not lead her to anything higher but increased her worldly longings. It was Banubai's fault. Banubai should not have asked her all those questions about Gopi. Now Asha could not stop thinking of him—and to think of him was to desire him unbearably. The pad of writing paper on which she had written
to Lee was still balanced on her knees, the pen still in her hand. It trembled in her hand. But she knew she had no right to write to him. The only thing she still had a right to in life was to be like those widows splashing in the holy water below. She shut her eyes and begged for help to overcome her temptations. But that day her prayer was not granted, and when later she went down to the post office, she was carrying two letters to post.

Lee and Swamiji

Swamiji smiled and said, “You're angry with me, I can see.”

He had sent everyone away. They were alone together under the tree. There was only one full-grown tree inside the ashram, a huge banyan with ancient gray roots spreading in all directions. It was shady here and quite cool; there was even a little breeze rustling about among the leaves. He had never done this before—sent everyone away so that they could be alone together. In fact, they had never been alone together.

“Tell me why,” he said, “so that I can try and improve.”

Lee hardened herself against him. She said, “You know Margaret can't cook.”

He laughed: “Is that all?”

“You made her do it. You
bullied
her.”

“Bullied . . . bullied . . . I like that word. Do I do it to you also? Tell me.”

He leaned forward; his eyes were screwed up and the tip of his tongue protruded mischievously from between his teeth. Lee didn't like the way he looked at that moment—there was something in his expression that made her turn her face away from him.

“Look at me,” he said lightly. When she remained with her face averted, he said it again, in the same light tone, but when still she did not turn, he put out his hand and grasped her chin and turned her face toward himself. She cried out at the touch of his hand.

He compelled her to look into his eyes. She was aware of nothing but his eyes. They were quite different from usual—no longer narrow and shrewd, they appeared enormous and glowed and burned with a supernatural power. Looking into them was more than she could bear, but he would not let her look away. He raised one forefinger and slowly, slowly he brought it forward and while she watched it, in fear and fascination, he finally brought the tip of it to rest between her eyes. Again she cried out. There was something like an explosion in her mind and circles of light sparked and revolved within its pitch-black night; all the time she remained aware of his eyes. “Lee, Lee!” a voice called as if from far away, but it was his voice.

He took his forefinger away again. “Why are you crying?” he asked.

She said, “I'm not.” But when she put her hand to her eyes she found she was. She felt amazed and ashamed; she hadn't cried in years.

“Now you will say that I'm bullying you also.” He smiled gently. “But you like it when I bully you. Isn't it?”

He laid his hand on her small breast. He did this quite casually and as if it didn't mean anything to him. But what a lot it meant to her! She trembled and shuddered as she had never done before for anyone. He said, “How small you are. Like a child, a tiny girl.” But he took his hand away again and said, in quite a different voice, “I have a letter for you.”

He took it out of his orange robe and held it before her eyes. “Who is it from?”

She shook her head. She didn't know, and she didn't care. At that moment she couldn't care for anything.

“It's from Asha,” he said. He drew it from its envelope, which had already been opened, and showed it to her. She put out her hand to take it but he drew it back again. “She is quite near to us,” he informed her. “She is staying with a lady called Banubai. Quite a famous lady,” he said, smiling in a way that suggested
he knew more about Banubai than she might like him to know. “Now I think you're angry that I opened your letter.”

“What's it matter?” Lee said.

“Really? You're not angry? You don't mind it?”

She put up her hand in a gesture that begged him not to tease, not to play with her in this way.

“You're glad I opened it? . . . Say that. Say you're glad I take all things away from you and do what I like and how I like with you.”

After a longish silence Lee said yes.

He gave her a smile that was full of triumph for both of them. He ran his eyes over the letter again and said, “She wants you to visit her.”

“When?”

Again he smiled in the same way. “When
I
say,” he said, and then he tore up the letter and threw the pieces to the ground.

Raymond Writes to His Mother

“. . . From your air of quiet reasonableness I deduce that you're cross and Uncle Paul is cross too. Am I really as valuable to the firm as you both make out? I wish I could believe it. Yes, I know I said one year but that was before I came, before I ever knew what I was going in for. It's impossible to explain to you, darling, or to anyone who hasn't actually been here—but this is not a place that one can pick up and put down again as if nothing had happened. In a way it's not so much a country as an experience, and whether it turns out to be a good or a bad one depends I suppose on oneself. Well, no more of this what you call abstract talk—which in any case is for you alone. For Uncle Paul I would add that I'm working on this study of shrines about which I wrote to you both and which I feel might be an interesting idea for the firm sometime in the future. A slim volume of specialized interest. . . . No don't tell him that, he will have a fit.
But
seriously, it is a good subject and is involving me in some fascinating research. . . .”

Raymond's Fascinating Research

Gopi and Raymond were spending a lot of time together. They went around old monuments the way they used to and reclined under trees in beautifully laid-out old gardens. They often wore Indian clothes, exquisitely starched and embroidered kurtas over wide muslin pajamas. There were other young men similarly dressed reclining under other trees, and Raymond felt as if all of them, including himself and Gopi, had been arranged there very carefully amid the grass and flowerbeds and channeled waterways. Sometimes he and Gopi went away for weekend trips to nearby places, but it didn't really matter where they were. The setting and atmosphere seemed always the same, and Raymond was happy wherever they were. He thought Gopi was happy too. Gopi did not speak much, but Raymond liked these silences between them which seemed intimate and beautiful to him. He did not suspect that Gopi's thoughts were often far away.