Travelers (30 page)

I didn't want to turn back into the room but sooner or later
Evie always called me. She made me sit beside her. She spoke gently with me then, knowing I was in a gentle mood from looking out at the sky like that. She said, “We'll go back together, you and I, won't we, we'll go back to him where he's waiting for us.” When I didn't answer, she persisted. She pressed my hands, she laid her cheek against mine. She was so sweet with me. She said, “We'll go soon now. As soon as Margaret's dead.” She added in a joyful voice. “How happy he'll be to have us back! He'll tease you no end, you look out. How he'll tease and joke! You'll see.” She clapped her hands, laughing.

Raymond and Bob

Raymond hung around the hospital, waiting for news. Whenever he entered Margaret's room, Evie became hostile, and when he talked to her, she pretended not to have heard. So he did not go in very often; anyway, there was no room. He had sent a telegram to Miss Charlotte and hoped very much that she would come.

Meanwhile he spent his time with Bob. Bob led a full and busy life. He dashed around the town and its surrounding districts in his jeep and made contacts and inspected land and set up deals. He sat in meetings with peasant landlords in their dark little rooms smelling of incense and cow. He told them that they could never hope to enter the modern world unless they radically changed their ways and adapted themselves to modern business methods. They listened with interest while sucking their milky tea. Often he threw up his hands and told them they were hopeless and, climbing back into his jeep, thundered away in a cloud of dust. Everyone liked him. He had grown up here, spoke the same language, ate the same food; his father was one of them, and so was he, and they were proud of him because he shook hands like an American and wore those clothes and dark glasses and was going to be very rich.

But sometimes Bob was in a relaxed, pensive mood. Then
Raymond and he climbed up the hill to the remains of the old fort and they sat there and looked out over the town. They usually came in the evening when the day's heat was over and the dust had settled. Everything that had been bleak during the day was transfigured by the evening sky. Bob became quite sentimental at such times. He pointed out all the landmarks of the town—the maze of the old town huddled around the maze of the Old Palace, the New Palace set in a park with peacocks, the old Civil Lines area with decaying British bungalows turned into municipal offices: and stretching around and beyond everything, so immense and unending that the town seemed no more than a handful of houses flung there in a moment of aberration, the brown and gray desert swelling a little now and again into brown and gray mounds.

Both Raymond and Bob often looked in the direction of The Retreat. Raymond thought of Gopi in there, but Bob had quite other thoughts. He had big plans for development in that area. He explained how he would be setting up workshops for the manufacture of spare parts which before could only be imported from abroad. He told Raymond about the process of manufacture and Raymond liked listening to him, although the details were usually too technical for him to understand.

But one day Bob said, “Seems she doesn't want to sell.”

Raymond said, “You see, the place has such associations for her.”

“I know.” Bob nodded maturely. “I guess I can build around it, but of course there'll be a lot of construction work and it may not be the best place for those parties she's planning. . . . Is that boy always there with her?”

Raymond saw Gopi as Bob must be seeing and judging him. He blushed and spoke quickly. “He's just on a visit. He'll be going back soon—as a matter of fact he's getting married quite soon.” Encouraged by Bob's kindly interest, he grew bolder. “He's marrying into a family in the sugar business. I believe it's quite a prosperous concern, and Gopi has plans for expansion. He would like to try out some new ideas.”

“Nothing like new ideas,” Bob said, taking a deep breath as of sensuous enjoyment.

Another time they walked around the fort within its massive crumbling walls. There were only a few pillars and gateways left inside, besides a temple and an empty tank and some subterranean passages. Bob knew the place well and pointed out spots where momentous events had happened—the cave in which he had found and killed a cobra, the broken-off steps from which one of his friends had fallen and broken his ankle and had had to be carried all the way down the steep hillside. He also tried to tell Raymond something of the history of the place; but here he was rather vague. Although he was proud of all that had happened, he had only a general picture of brave women who had flung themselves onto the funeral pyre while their brave men rushed down the hillside to meet the enemy.

“They always wore saffron when they went off to fight,” he said. “Because they knew they were going to die. They were a fine set of people. Of course they were all Rajputs. Rao Sahib is a Rajput.”

“Yes, I know.”

“A very fine person. . . . My family are banias.”

Raymond had read about the Rajputs and their martial spirit and heroic exploits, but there was not much to be read about the banias, who lacked these inspiring qualities. Bob also could not tell him very much.

“I guess we've always liked to make money. That's where I get it from.” He laughed and threw a stone into a well. “I'm going to make a lot of money. Just wait and watch.”

Raymond regarded him with affection. He had not before met anyone like Bob. There was something very new about his combination of vigorous speech and movements with his deep dark eyes and delicately turned wrists. Bob kept himself very fresh with deodorants, and though he still liked occasionally to chew betel, he was careful to rinse his mouth afterward with a hygienic mouthwash.

“In business of course you need contacts. You know, influence. Next elections I'll be getting a ticket.”

“You'll be standing against Rao Sahib then.”

“A very fine person,” Bob said again. “If you stay around, Ray, you'll see some changes. I wish you would. I'll give you a job. What do you think of that? I need you, Ray. I really can use you. I mean it.”

Raymond felt flattered but had to say truthfully, “I don't think there are any jobs for me.”

“Listen, I'll tell you something. It's terrible but I can't spell.”

“You don't need to spell.”

“Are you joking? Do you know how many letters I have to write a day?
A day.
And that's only letters. And who'll write my speeches once I'm in Parliament?”

“Not me, I fear.”

Bob playfully punched his arm. “You don't want to stay.”

It was true, Raymond didn't want to stay. He wrote many letters to his mother; sometimes he wrote twice a day. They were beginning to think that perhaps they wouldn't meet in the Middle East after all but in Europe. What about Italy? The proposal had come from Raymond and his mother had enthusiastically assented. Now often, when driving with Bob through this town of stone and rubble scooped from out of the desert, he thought of the Mediterranean. He longed for it.

Brother and Sister

Bulbul was telling stories to Asha and Gopi. It was one of their favorite occupations. They turned off the lights in the drawing room and Gopi lay at one end of a velvet settee and Asha at the other; their naked feet touched and sometimes they caressed each other's soles.

Bulbul's stories were all of the old times, of things that had happened in the Old Palace or, even further back, legends from the times of the fort. Bulbul was richly endowed with memories,
for her family had been here as long as Asha's. As far, that is, as she could be said to have a family. She came from a long line of singing and dancing girls none of whom had ever married but had handed down their traditions from daughter to daughter. Bulbul herself had been too ugly to be a singing and dancing girl, but she still had her connections in those circles. Sometimes she disappeared from The Retreat for several days, and went to stay with her cronies in a certain quarter of the town or to visit very old women with dyed hair who still lingered in outhouses inside the Old Palace compound.

Today she was telling a story of a hundred years ago concerning a widowed sister of the Rao of that time. She had been a woman of strong appetites who had to have many lovers to satisfy her. As she got older the lovers got younger, and there was a lot of scandal. But she did not care one jot for that nor for the warnings of her brother the Rao. To enable her to carry on her intrigues undisturbed, she had constructed a secret passage that led straight from her rooms to the back alleys behind the palace. It was not, however, very secret, as many people knew the way. “It is still there,” Bulbul said.

“Where?” asked Gopi, pulling away his foot, which Asha was tickling with her toe.

“Behind a picture,” Bulbul said. “The picture is of Rao Birendra Singh and it is in a beautiful gold frame but it is not really a picture but a door.”

“Don't do that,” Gopi told Asha, not wanting to be distracted from the story.

“When the widow would not listen to her brother but went her own sweet way, then the Rao decided to teach her a lesson. He was a man of very strong temper, everyone trembled before him. Only his sister defied him. One night, when he knew she had a lover with her, he came to her quarters and, pounding on the door, commanded her to open. She did not lose her head but quickly let her lover out of the secret door. Then she told her maidservant to open up for the Rao Sahib. So when he burst
into the room with his attendants, there she was playing chess with her maid. When she saw him, she rose to welcome him and modestly covered her face with her veil.” Bulbul showed how, with a very graceful movement. “The Rao Sahib gave a sign to his attendants and quick as a flash they opened the secret door and pursued the lover down the passage. Then all the cries and pleas for mercy were in vain. He was dragged back into the room and there right there in front of the weeping princess the Rao Sahib—oh, he was a terrible, terrible man—drew his dagger and with his own hand he”—Bulbul made a dramatic downward movement and a sound as of a dagger whistling through the air—“he cut it off.”

“Cut what off?” Gopi asked.

The two women burst out laughing. Asha extended her hand to show him, but just then the light was switched on and Rao Sahib asked, “Why are you sitting in the dark?”

They all three had a shock—from the sudden light and also because they had not been expecting him. He apologized for the disturbance; he said he had been passing nearby on his way back from a village which he had visited for electioneering purposes. He was dressed in his electioneering clothes consisting of a plain dhoti and kurta such as the villagers wore; but his was made of very fine new muslin. He also had a big orange turban tied around his head.

Asha made a fuss over him and settled him comfortably. “How hard you work,” she said, soothing, admiring.

“We drove over two hundred miles today.”

She clicked her tongue. “It's too much.”

“Oh, but Ashi, I like it! I never get tired at all.” His cheeks shook with pleasure. “Those villagers are a wonderful lot of chaps. Of course they are still bound by old traditions but at the same time they are very open—you know, ready to listen and learn. We had some thumping good discussions.”

“That Bob or what does he call himself was here again today.”

Rao Sahib lowered his eyes. The glad expression went from his face.

“I'm not selling,” Asha said.

“Can I talk to you?” Rao Sahib pleaded.

Asha firmly grasped Gopi's hand. “We are going to live here.”

But after a time she consented to go out into the garden with Rao Sahib. In the moonlight the garden looked not dry and dead but as if it had mysteriously begun to bloom. Asha's Rajasthani skirt rustled as it swept along the paths. She lingered by a group of statues and ran her hand over a noseless maiden with a headless bird on her shoulder: “I'm going to get them all repaired.” After a while she added, “And the fountains too.”

Rao Sahib said, “You know he has acquired all the land around here.”

“Not this land. Not Papa's house and garden.”

“He has called for bids. He will be starting work very soon.”

“Let him,” Asha said. It was indeed difficult to imagine this future event. Like the garden, the surrounding landscape was transformed by moonlight and appeared as silent and silver as the moon itself.

“He is a very go-ahead person,” Rao Sahib said. “Such people are urgently needed. There are so many new developments that from now on it is work work work for all of us.”

She loved him. She kissed his cheek. She looked into his eyes that had never changed from the time he was her baby brother.

“Listen, Ashi, I'm going back to New Delhi in a day or two. I want you to come with me. . . . Don't say no, just listen to me. You know how many committees Sunita is on, how much work she does. And she is always looking for helpers, for really sincere people that she can trust and rely on. . . . Why are you laughing? What is there to laugh at? If you really put your mind to it, you can do it. Really, fundamentally, you are a serious and capable person. I have often said so to Sunita. If only you will put your shoulder to the wheel.”

“What wheel?”

“Of course if you are going to keep laughing . . .” he said in an offended voice.

“No, I'm not.” She straightened his great orange turban that
had slipped sideways. But she could not help laughing again, though she struggled against it.

Now he was really offended. He turned and left her to go back into the house. She went after him, asking him to wait and listen to her. He did so. Now she was quite, quite serious.

“You are sure you are going to win this election?”

“Of course.”

“How do you know?”