Three Continents Read online

  By the Same Author

  NOVELS

  To Whom She Will (US Amrita)

  The Nature of Passion

  Esmond in India

  The Householder

  Get Ready for Battle

  A Backward Place

  A New Dominion (US Travelers)

  Travelers

  Heat and Dust

  In Search of Love and Beauty

  Shards of Memory

  STORIES

  Like Birds, Like Fishes

  A Stronger Climate

  An Experience in India

  How I Became a Holy Mother

  Out of India (Selected Stories)

  East into Upper East (Selected Stories)

  Copyright © 1987 by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

  First Counterpoint paperback edition 1999

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under international and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer, 1927–

  Three continents.

  I. Title

  PR9499.3J5T47198782387-7880

  First Printing

  Jacket design by Caroline McEver

  COUNTERPOINT

  P.O. Box 65793

  Washington, D.C. 20035-5793

  Counterpoint is a member of the Perseus Books Group

  10987654321

  e-book ISBN 978-1-61902-878-4

  For

  JAMES IVORY and ISMAIL MERCHANT

  My thanks and deep appreciation to the

  JOHN D. and CATHERINE T. MACARTHUR

  FOUNDATION

  for their most liberal—and liberating—support.

  CONTENTS

  I · PROPINQUITY

  II · THE FAMILY

  III · IN THE RAWUL’S KINGDOM

  I

  PROPINQUITY

  MICHAEL, my twin brother, and I always wanted something other—better—than we had. Of course people would say that what we had was pretty good, and from a materialistic point of view that would be true. Our family name was well known, both our great-grandfather and our grandfather having held office in Washington; and though our parents were forever complaining that they were completely broke, this was part of their character rather than actual fact—our father because he was always overspending his allowance from the family trust, and our mother because she was afraid someone might ask her for money. They were divorced, and since the age of six, Michael and I lived mostly with our grandparents in the various embassies to which Grandfather was posted. That was how we came to spend some crucial years in the Middle East and then farther East; and it might be from those years that we got our restlessness, or dissatisfaction with what was supposed to be our heritage—that is, with America. Our last year of high school was in the International School in Bangkok and after that we both got into the college traditional to our family, where Michael lasted one semester and I two. Michael got back to the Orient as fast as he could, and then he traveled around and was sometimes in Kathmandu and sometimes in Goa, and then he turned up in Buddh Gaya, and then Gangtok, and back in Kathmandu. I missed him terribly and really didn’t know what to do with myself when he was away.

  It was during that year that Michael became involved with Crishi and the Rawul and Rani and all of them. He was one of the people who wanted to give his life for them and their cause. It was I who was skeptical at first; that is, when he first brought them to stay with us. It was the summer when I was nineteen—very long ago—and trying to decide whether to go back for my sophomore year or not. I was relieved when Michael called from London to say he was coming home; he was the one person who could help me decide. I wasn’t bothered when he said he was bringing some friends—usually his friends just drifted around in the background and didn’t get in anyone’s way. I mean, in Michael’s and my way; no one of them had ever come between us. But I was surprised the way he was so particular about how these new friends were to be entertained. He told me to call Lindsay, our mother, to the phone, and then he gave her very precise instructions, which threw her in a fit. He wanted all the best bedrooms made up, including the big front one where our grandparents slept when they came, and the entire house and grounds to be cleaned up for these friends of his who were apparently very important. I couldn’t understand it at all, because Michael usually avoided important people; in fact, he couldn’t stand them.

  When they arrived, it really was like royalty descending on us. I’m trying to remember who was with them; they had quite an entourage—they never traveled without one—but so much has happened since and there have been so many people coming and going, that I can’t remember who was there that first time. Or perhaps I didn’t notice the people on the periphery because they were eclipsed by the ones at the center: that is, the Rawul, the Rani, and Crishi. These three made an overwhelming impression, singly and together. A lot of time has passed and what has happened has happened, and it is hard for me to describe how I saw them at first meeting. But I will try to do so as though they were three strangers who played no part in my life.

  It is easiest with the Rawul, because my opinion of him, or perhaps I mean my feelings for him, has not changed so much as for the other two. The Rawul’s personality was royal and gracious. He was royal, he had a kingdom—a very small but very ancient one: the kingdom of Dhoka. The Rawul was tall and stout and imposing, and he usually wore handsome English suits and shoes, and when in town he carried a rolled umbrella just like an English gentleman—which he was, besides everything else, for he was brought up there and went to Harrow and Cambridge. He had English manners and an English accent, but very much softened by his Oriental disposition. One only had to look at his eyes to realize how different he was from English people—for instance, from Manton, our father, and our grandfathers on both sides; it was over two hundred years since their ancestors came to America, but they still had those very Anglo-Saxon eyes, cold and blue like the sea. The Rawul’s eyes were not the usual kind of liquid brown that Indians have but were light gray—opalescent almost, in his dark face. I thought of them as mystical; a dreamer’s eyes. Of course he was a dreamer—of the past, when his ancestors conquered and ruled their desert kingdom, and of the future, when he himself would rule, in his own way. There was nothing selfish or ambitious about him; he was as idealistic as Michael, and probably that was how Michael got involved with them all in the first place. Because he thought that they—like he and I—wanted something better than there was. And in the Rawul’s case this was probably true.

  The Rawul was Indian, and when I first saw her, I thought the Rani was too. She was dark and voluptuous, and though she usually moved slowly and languorously, she gave an impression of power and energy held in check. She had marvelous teeth, so strong that she could bite and chew anything. I never got it quite clear what nationality she actually was—as I didn’t at first with Crishi; but like him, she was a mixture of various strains, partly French, partly Afghan, even a little bit of German. All this made her very beautiful, and she also had these very beautiful clothes and jewels. She was always called the Rani, and it wasn’t till later that I realized this was not a title but the name she had adopted. Her real name was Renée.

  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 tha
t 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.