Travelers (28 page)

As soon as it's cool enough, I go out of the house. I walk through what's left of the garden—which I think was quite elaborate at one time but now there's only some broken statues and overgrown zigzag paths—till I'm out in open country with nothing there except all that dry land. It's as flat as the land around the ashram, but before it reaches the horizon there is a band of hills with woods where wild animals live. I see the sky and the stars in it. Then I feel better, and I can forget the house and everything in it and I can think the same thoughts as in the ashram. I know if only I'm patient enough and do everything he said to do and be what he said to be, then in the end I shall overcome myself. But how difficult that is.

How can I not think of him! Sometimes I see him so clearly with his forehead wrinkled up under his cap and he's smiling and beckoning with his eyes and teasing me.

Asha at Home

Asha said, “You know what I think? I think you're in love with your Swamiji.”

Lee stared straight in front of her. Raymond also pretended not to have heard. Only Gopi responded: he sniggered in a rather unpleasant way. He and Asha had been drinking for several hours and their faces glistened with heat and alcohol.

“So what's wrong,” Asha said. “Why don't you admit it? It's nothing to be ashamed of.”

Lee said, “I think you're very boring.” She got up and wandered out of the room. Raymond would have liked to follow her but forced himself to remain. Asha and Gopi went on drinking—not just out of boredom but with real thirst: only they couldn't quench it because their drinks were warm, the ice kept melting away in the heat. Unfortunately also the electricity had failed again and the electric fans were not working, so Asha had called
a servant to stand behind them and wave a large black-and-pink Japanese fan to and fro.

“Why does she run away like that?” Asha said. “So what if she is in love with her Swamiji. It can happen to anyone.”

“She's frigid,” Gopi said.

“Who taught you that word?” Raymond said sharply.

Gopi reared up; he was offended. “I've known it since long,” he said, and then allowed his indignation to mount. “You think I don't know anything. Only you know. Only you are very clever.”

“Not at all,” Raymond said. “Especially not in these things. And I think you're nicer without that too. Thank you,” he told the servant who bent more closely over him to cool him with the fan, “I really don't need it.”

“This side,” Gopi commanded. “Harder. Faster. I think everything we've been told about people in the West is a lie. It's all just propaganda. You don't know anything about sex—none of you know, you're all frigid.”

Raymond told Asha, “You're giving him too much to drink.”

He went away. He went out into the garden. The sun beat down and the light was electric sharp, but it was a relief to him to be here rather than in the house. There was a garden pavilion which was built as a hexagon with an emphasis on form and with the remains of its pink plaster peeling off in chunks. Raymond sat on the triangular bench inside and thought about what to do. He could send a telegram to Miss Charlotte and to his mother to reinstate their postponed trip; they could leave quite soon—it was only a matter of air bookings and hotel reservations. They would stay in international air-conditioned hotels, for Mother would prefer comfort to local color and so would Raymond himself.

He looked up and there was Asha coming toward him down one of the overgrown paths. Ever since their arrival in Maupur she had been getting herself up in her own version of the local peasant costume. She wore a voluminous skirt striped in black
and gold with a loose blouse of shot silk and a festoon of heavy silver necklaces.

“Come in,” she told him. “The electricity is on again.”

“I prefer to be here.”

“It's too hot.”

But she sat down next to him on the concrete bench. She seemed inclined for confidences. She said, “Papa used to love coming here. This house was his dream. . . . And now Rao Sahib wants to sell it.”

“Oh, does he,” said Raymond, wondering who would want to buy it.

“But I will never allow it, never. If there were someone who could appreciate—but it is a local person who wants the land to put up factories. Can you imagine! Oh, I will never allow it, I've told Rao Sahib. Papa planned and did so much work for this place. He had a German architect but most of the ideas were his own. He liked having parties here—very intimate type of parties that he couldn't have in the palace. Papa loved to have a good time. Like me.” She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, mischievously, her mouth corner twitching as if wondering whether she could smile; when Raymond gave her no encouragement, she didn't, and went on talking quite seriously. “Of course we weren't supposed to know what was going on and he never brought us here, but we knew. Everyone did. He always had a lot of girl friends all his life long but toward the end he fell in love very seriously. She was quite an ordinary girl, an Anglo-Indian, her name was Kitty. She used to sing in a cabaret in Calcutta, that's where he saw her first. He brought her here and it was for her he had the parties. He would bring a band all the way from Calcutta and they played and she sang the numbers she used to sing in the cabaret. Papa was always afraid she would get bored and wouldn't want to stay—she was quite young and she was used to living in Calcutta; so he would do anything for her, anything he could think of to amuse her. But she did get bored. Poor Papa.”

Raymond said, “Gopi's going to get bored too.”

“He is very happy here.”

“How long do you intend to keep him?”

Asha's face clouded over; the necklaces on her bosom heaved.

“You said just a few days.”

She shook her head. Tears shone in her eyes like jewels.

Raymond said, “Why not let him go now, before he gets bored like Kitty and runs away.”

“Kitty didn't run away.”

He knew he was going to hear some dreadful story. He didn't want to. Already it was so oppressive in that dead garden. Some heavy dark birds hung motionless from the sky. He asked, hoping to ward off the story, “Is there any wildlife around here? Sometimes—at night—it sounds like it.”

“Those are hyenas. Perhaps there may be a stray tiger, but this is not really hunting country. If you want to shoot, you have to go farther to Sagarvan. That's very good country. Do you want to go?”

“Not really.”

“No, I think you're not the sporting type. Like Peter. I told you about Peter, Rao Sahib's tutor? Once Papa took him hunting. When they came back, Papa was laughing and laughing. ‘What sort of an Englishman are you?' he asked him. Peter couldn't stand the sight of blood.”

“I don't like it either.”

“You're very much like Peter. I told you before.” She hesitated. Again he felt her to be on the verge of some undesirable revelation. Meanwhile Gopi had put a record on the gramophone and the “Donkey Serenade” came out into the garden. It sounded gay and tinny.

“It was here, in this house, in this garden, that Peter tried to kill himself.”

Raymond said, “Asha, I don't think I need to hear this.”

“It was all Kitty's fault. You see, she got so bored she was ready to take up with anyone. And that boy was quite handsome—the
one Peter was in love with, the clerk from the guest house. When Papa was away, Kitty would send for him and he came and they had a good time together. And Peter followed him and waited down here in the garden. All night sometimes.”

Gopi sang with the record. He didn't know the tune, and his attempts to reproduce it sounded bizarre because he had transposed it into the Indian scale. Sometimes he laughed at himself for the strange sounds he was producing.

Raymond said, “You really shouldn't make him drink so much. He's not used to it.”

“If you take him away, I don't know what I shall do. Can you imagine being alone here?”

“You don't have to stay here.”

She said, “It's the same everywhere. In Bombay too. Those sounds you say you hear at night, so often I hear them in Bombay. Of course I know it's the sea really but to me it sounds like here and then I think I am here.”

Progress

Raymond had to go into Maupur to post letters to his mother. Afterward he was reluctant to return to The Retreat, and he walked around Maupur although there was not very much to see. It was quite an ordinary little town with a bazaar and a railway station. On a craggy mound overlooking the town stood the remains of what had once been a fort. From here Rajput chieftains had marched out to fight—sometimes against other Rajput chieftains, sometimes against Moghul princes, and sometimes against Mahratta generals. That particular clan of Rajputs had died out—those that had not been killed in battle having been poisoned by their sibling rivals—but had been revived through the female line by the British. That had been the beginning of Rao Sahib's own family history. They had not lived in the bleak old fort but in a palace in the town with many little dark rooms and passages. This palace had also fallen into disuse,
and the bazaar had grown around it and encroached on it closer and closer so that now there were little stalls selling electrical goods spilling right into the palace courtyard.

Raymond went to visit Rao Sahib in the New Palace on the outskirts of town. As usual, Rao Sahib was cordial but he was also very busy and kept having to greet new visitors. He was cordial to everyone and anxious to show that he liked them. His visitors were leading citizens, self-made men with little businesses, and they were pleased to be there in the palace and looked around them complacently. They spoke reassuringly to Rao Sahib and promised him all the votes they knew they had in their pockets. In return, Rao Sahib redoubled his attentions to them, and a nice atmosphere of mutual good will was built up. They spoke of different areas of interest and the most powerful men to be courted in each area. There was particular mention of one man—a shopkeeper who had made money partly through his shop in the bazaar but mostly through his money-lending activities—and everyone stressed how important it was to make sure that he was on their side. He had given promises, but in a town as small as this it was not difficult to hear that he had given promises to the other side as well. On the spur of the moment, Rao Sahib decided that he would personally go and call on the man at his house. They all piled into Rao Sahib's big Mercedes. Raymond went along too, although the car was already very crowded and there were several people crammed together on the front seat, getting in the way of the chauffeur who was ill-pleased and somewhat contemptuous of them.

The house they went to was in a very narrow lane, and they had to descend several steps to enter it. Now they were in a cool, dark room which was bare except for a white sheet spread on the floor and bolsters spaced at intervals. Their host emerged from behind a greasy curtain and declared himself overwhelmed by the honor. However, he did not appear to be overwhelmed at all but quite self-possessed. He was a thin old man with a dyed mustache and a rather merry face. They all sat
in a circle on the sheet, and although conversation was sparse, there was no sense of awkwardness. A lot of activity was going on behind the greasy curtain which trembled in excitement, and soon refreshments appeared and were passed round and pressed upon the guests. There was spiced tea in tumblers and a variety of fried delicacies that looked harmless from outside but released a stuffing of fire in Raymond's mouth as soon as he bit into one. Conversation became more lively under the influence of these refreshments, although it remained an expression of pleasure in one another's company and still no mention was made of the election. And indeed, Raymond began to see that it would have been bad manners to mention it.

One or two anecdotes were related, and here their host showed himself particularly talented—at any rate, the guests were very appreciative and they laughed and repeated his punch line to each other. He was pleased and stroked his dyed mustache and twinkled with his bright eyes. And he stroked and twinkled in the same way when he turned to Rao Sahib and said, “The boy is waiting to come and speak with you.” Everyone craned forward a bit, and Raymond realized that for the first time something of importance had been said. Their host smiled and turned up one hand in a gesture of resignation. “Nowadays, young people—” and there was a murmur to say that times were changing fast. Then Rao Sahib thanked God from the bottom of his heart that they were, and their host smiled depreciatingly as if it were a compliment paid to himself.

Later Rao Sahib and Raymond sat together in Rao Sahib's drawing room in the New Palace while Rajput bearers served them with Scotch whisky. Rao Sahib was excited, even exalted. He talked freely to Raymond. He said how the country stood on the threshold of great changes and what a privilege it was to be able to play a part in them. He was sincerely grateful that he had been born in these times when it was not rank or wealth that counted but one's own character and abilities. Here he was modest. He said he knew he was not a man of very outstanding
ability but there was one quality he had in abundance and that was his sincere desire to serve. Under the influence of whisky and excitement, he spoke with more passion than usual, and his rather sad eyes—large and full like Asha's—shone the way hers did.

He spoke warmly of all his visitors that day, but especially of the man whose hospitality they had enjoyed. Rao Sahib admired him very much, for, although the son of a poor widow, he had worked his way up by his own efforts and made himself rich and powerful enough to be a leading citizen in the district. And that wasn't all—no, the story of progress went further—for this man had sent his son to college in an adjoining state and from there the boy had gone to America; and now he had returned and was starting a chain of workshops all over the district and making money hand over fist. “Soon,” chuckled Rao Sahib, “he will be buying me up”—and indeed, already he was making an offer for The Retreat.