Three Continents Read online

  Crishi began skillfully to divert the guests from the Rawul and Rani’s line straight to where their cars were parked. Manton and Lindsay were left standing alone, which gave Michael the opportunity to step between them, take an arm of each, and lead them away toward the house. Before they got very far, Jean came up behind them and took charge of Lindsay, leaving Michael to cope with Manton, who was saying “I have never been so insulted in my whole life.”

  I ran on ahead into the house and told Barbara that Manton might be ready to leave. She got up at once from where she had been lying on the bed and began very quickly and efficiently to pack up her own and Manton’s things; and by the time Michael appeared with Manton, she was almost ready.

  Manton was saying “For two pins I’d go straight to New York this minute and never come back again. I mean it,” and he sounded and looked as if he did—very resolute, with his high color and clear cold eyes.

  “I won’t be a minute, darling,” Barbara said; she had already stepped out of the robe in which she had been lounging around all day and was eagerly getting into her clothes.

  “I’d forgotten what your mother was like,” Manton was saying to Michael. “She’s a madwoman. I feel more sorry than I can say for you two, that you have to live with such a complete lunatic.”

  “That’s all right,” Michael said. “We can manage.”

  “Yes but don’t you think I feel a certain responsibility? However much I might like to get out of here and never see the place again, there is the question of my children.”

  “Ready?” Michael asked Barbara, who nodded; she was swiftly twisting up her long blond hair. Michael took the bag she had packed. “One moment,” Manton said. “We have to discuss this.”

  Michael was not in a mood to discuss anything. Much shorter and lighter than Manton, he moved much faster. Barbara, usually a bit phlegmatic, was also moving fast. I followed behind them with Manton, who was addressing himself to me: “I feel I’m letting you down, baby,” he said.

  “I’ll come to New York. I might stay a few days.”

  “If you really want me to,” he offered, “I could stay. I’ll swallow my pride and stay—good Lord, one can do that much for one’s children.”

  By the time we reached the front porch, Barbara had driven the car around and Michael had put their bags in. He held open the door for our father.

  “Good-bye, Daddy,” I said. “I’ll see you soon.” I only called him Daddy when I wanted him to feel nice; dignified. And in spite of his scrambled departure, he did look dignified. He sat beside Barbara and turned to us for a last word: “It might look as if I’m running away from the situation, but believe me that is not the case. It’s simply that one can take so much and no more. Please make my apologies and farewell to the Rani and Rawul. I hope everyone will understand.”

  Michael shut the car door. As Barbara drove off, Manton looked back at us with a sorrowful expression. “‘Good-bye, Daddy,’” Michael quoted at me. He could often be cold and contemptuous, and he was so now. He never had any sympathy for Manton; he made no allowances for him at all.

  I’m sure Barbara was happy as she drove away with him; and in fact the day ended happily for other people too, so perhaps the Rawul was right and the celebration had been a success. He and the Rani stayed for a long time down by the water where the flags were; they walked up and down there arm in arm—a dynastic couple, an embodiment of traditional matrimony (I didn’t know at that time that they weren’t married at all). Jean and Lindsay were in the kitchen, where Mrs. Schwamm was fixing a supper for them. It was Jean’s belief that quantities of food were the best antidote for Lindsay whenever she had been drinking, while Mrs. Schwamm was at all times happy to feed Lindsay. And Lindsay, relieved to be taken charge of, was calm and obedient and ready to do and eat whatever they wanted her to. Mrs. Schwamm was surveying the events of the day with Teutonic humor, which made Lindsay laugh; and when she laughed, Jean, full of fond love, kissed her cheek and said Lindsay was all better.

  And the day ended happily for Michael and me too. Crishi and Michael decided to go for a midnight swim by the waterfall on the outskirts of the property; Michael told me to come along too—he and I often went there; we were the only people who used it except for some Pickles or gardeners’ children who had always shared it with us. I would have gone, I wanted to go, but I still had bad feelings about Crishi, so I stayed behind. Awhile after they had left, I was surprised to see Crishi back again. It appeared he had returned for me. When I still wouldn’t come, he said “Because of this afternoon.” I didn’t deny it. “It was just a game, Harriet; a party game.” “All the same,” I said.

  He was silent; he looked down at the ground; he said “What can I say.” He sounded rueful, perhaps a bit annoyed but, if so, it was with himself, not me. He didn’t apologize; he didn’t try to make me change my mind; he didn’t look at me but kept his eyes averted. But I wanted to go swimming! And it had been a party game! I said “Oh all right; let me get a towel.” “I’ll get it!” He bounced off, bounced back again, he took my hand and pulled me along; he was laughing and skipping, so I had to skip along with him. He appeared so glad and relieved that I felt quite flattered, to have had this effect on him.

  Not many people knew about our waterfall. It was down a steep incline, and to get to it, you had to leave your shoes at the top and negotiate a descending series of slippery stones, and at the same time hold aside the branches and bushes overhanging this narrow path. Of course for Michael and me it was easy because we were so used to it. Crishi came behind me and once or twice I had to put out my hand to help him and he took it, but mostly he managed very well by himself. Michael was already in the water, swimming around in the pool formed under the waterfall. It was always dark down here even during the day, and at night the pool was like an underground cavern and Michael a white shape gliding around it. Crishi and I left our clothes on the stones at the side and got in with him. One of the good things about swimming here was that conversation was impossible—the roar of the waterfall drowned out all other sounds as it rushed down the rock in a cascade of foam and spray, which was white by day and silver by night. The three of us swam around in and under the water, and sometimes on our backs, looking up at a few stars flickering there so faintly that only people like us with very good eyes could see them. Crishi, a darker shape than Michael but as slender and swift, seemed to love being underwater, and we never knew when he would be appearing underneath Michael and when underneath me. Michael got out first and sat naked on the stones with his legs drawn up and his arms around them. I saw him look up at the sky and the expression on his raised face was one of utter bliss; the phrase “his streaming countenance” came into my mind. Next moment he was back in the water, and the three of us continued to flit around and beneath one another, our bodies forming patterns that sometimes appeared to intertwine.

  THE Rawul wanted to meet our grandparents—that is, our paternal ones, from Manton’s side (our grandparents from Lindsay’s side were dead—that was how we owned Propinquity and the rest of their property). I couldn’t see the point of it myself, but he seemed to think it was important; he wanted to make influential contacts wherever he could. Actually, Grandfather wasn’t all that influential anymore, for he had retired several years ago. He was also too preoccupied with his own affairs to have time to spare for anything else. By his affairs I mean the book he was writing about his public career; his moves between his house in town and his place on the Island, with all the books and papers he needed to take, and the clothes and makeup Sonya needed; and Sonya herself. She was his wife now—our grandmother had died several years earlier—but they had been together long before that, and whenever he was sent on a new posting, she used to take a place nearby. In the end she moved right into the residence and they became a ménage à trois, which was useful after Grandmother got sick and needed someone to look after her. By that time Sonya was really like her sister, although they couldn’t have been more different—
Grandmother was New England, and Sonya some sort of Russian refugee. Sonya was much, much more effusive than Grandmother, and she adored children and had never had any of her own, so Michael and I benefited from that all through these years.

  When the Rawul wanted to make contact with Grandfather, Michael and I decided that the best way was through Sonya. Although he had been a diplomat for so many years, there had always been something skeptical and aloof about Grandfather, which made it difficult to approach him; and after his heart attack, it became even more difficult, as though he had withdrawn a little farther from the world. Sonya was the opposite—she must have been in her late sixties by this time (no one knew how old she was), but she was still open to every kind of new enthusiasm, and when we phoned and told her about the Rawul, she gave a gasp and said she must meet him. I went with him to the city; I drove the car and he sat in the back so he could spread out and study his papers.

  The meeting was an immediate success. Meetings with Sonya always were; she was so eager to be won over that she ran forward most of the way herself: literally, for although their manservant opened the door, Sonya herself came tripping up as fast as she could to welcome us. She was tiny, and the very high heels and high golden hairdo she wore didn’t help—she had to stretch up with all her might to get as far as kissing my cheek. Actually, she liked to kiss right on the mouth—it was some Russian custom, I think—but I had long since learned to turn my face aside at the right moment. She had a sumptuous tea ready, with every kind of pastry and cake she must have run out herself to select at Greenberg’s, and she wore one of her flowered silk tea gowns that opened deep, deep down into a cleft. Grandfather was summoned from his study, and under her excited fluttering—she appeared actually to be skipping around them—he and the Rawul shook hands and looked each other steadily in the eye like two statesmen. I suppose there was a sort of historic ambience about their meeting—or would have been, if it hadn’t happened to take place in Sonya’s drawing room. I say Sonya’s, for although the house had been given to Grandfather’s parents on their wedding in 1898, after her marriage to Grandfather Sonya had managed to make it her own. The original sofas and cabinets and tables and bookcases were still there, but Sonya had overlaid them with her own taste and possessions: with fringed shawls, with rose-and-gold upholstery, and a whole heap of treasures dating from her traveling days around Europe and the Near and Far East and her forays into Madison Avenue antique shops—but all of them, wherever they had come from, marked by a preponderance of gilt and shell-pink ornamentation.

  It was an incongruous setting for Grandfather, but he didn’t seem to mind. On the contrary, he loved it—no doubt because he loved her so much and was so proud and pleased with her; and all the time she talked and fluttered and fussed around, he watched her with a smile and look you wouldn’t think someone like Grandfather could have had for anyone. Without her, I don’t suppose he would have had much time for the Rawul and his movement and his inspirational style of speaking. However, he sat there listening patiently, one long leg stretched stiffly out in front of him, and he even took the trouble to nod from time to time as though he were listening, which he probably wasn’t but was waiting for the polite moment to return to his study. Sonya was beside herself—everything the Rawul said struck chords in her, and she even claimed that, if she had been clever enough, she would have thought of something like it herself. She said she had always had this intuition—not that she was an intellectual person or educated or anything, but she had traveled and seen a great deal, many many civilizations old and young, and it seemed to her that something like the Rawul’s Fourth World was what humanity needed. “Oh wonderful, wonderful, marvelous!” she exclaimed often, clasping her small wrinkled hands with all her rings and squeezing Grandfather’s arm to make him respond too. But he only sat there and smiled a little bit at her enthusiasm—except once, when he leaned forward keenly and made the Rawul repeat something he had just said.

  This was about Lindsay, Michael, and me donating Propinquity. I was surprised myself to hear the Rawul refer to it so naturally, almost casually. There had been no reference to it for some time, which had been a relief to me, making me hope that the question had been shelved and with it the need for me to decide. But now I learned it had been decided—anyway, the Rawul seemed to think so. And when Grandfather heard that, he turned to me and asked “Is that what you’re doing, Harriet?”

  Grandfather’s eyes were the same as Manton’s and Michael’s: far-seeing seafarer’s eyes—though we don’t come from seafaring stock at all but from Irish Protestant landowners whose younger sons usually became clergymen or went to India, except for our ancestor, who had come to the American colonies.

  I hesitated while Grandfather waited, and the Rawul, smiling politely, also waited for me to confirm his statement. Fortunately Sonya rushed in with “And they say the young are not idealists! Darling, give Sonya a kiss!” She held out her cheek to me and I had to go over and kiss it. I tried to get away with brushing that creamed, rouged, and powdered surface with my lips, but she caught my face between her hands and firmly planted her mouth on mine, which made even Grandfather smile, along with the Rawul.

  Sonya and Grandfather usually went to the house on the Island just before the Fourth, but this year they had had to postpone their visit because Grandfather’s heart trouble had started up again. Now he said he was feeling perfectly well and was eager to get to the Island, where he loved to be. Only Sonya could have persuaded him to break their journey and pay us a visit at Propinquity; after meeting the Rawul, she could hardly wait to see the rest of the movement. Their reception was organized on a grand scale. The Rawul and Rani, with Crishi just a little way behind them, stood in welcome on the front porch and led them ceremonially into the drawing room. Here refreshments were served while everyone sat stiffly on chairs—the Rawul and Grandfather on the principal chairs on either side of the fireplace, both of them bolt upright as for an official portrait. It was not unlike a state visit, with no conversation at all except for a few platitudes delivered into the glacial silence. Even Sonya knew to keep quiet. The Rawul and Grandfather, both of them born to state visits, easily assumed the formal dignity expected of them.

  When it was over, we all reverted to our usual selves—this was something that had always surprised me during Grandfather’s embassy days: how quickly everyone became normal again after going through some pompous official ceremony. Sonya tripped excitedly around the house, like one returning to a childhood home, although she hadn’t even visited us here all that often. She really was very sentimental. But it wasn’t put on; she did feel that way and had tears in her eyes as she hugged everyone—Lindsay, Jean, Mrs. Schwamm—and kissed them on the mouth. Michael was her very special favorite—she claimed that she understood him completely—and she greeted him in what was for her a restrained manner, confining herself to standing on tiptoe and kissing his chin.

  She saw at once that Crishi was someone very special too. She stood in front of him, looked up at him, and exhaled a sigh of recognition; perhaps they had met in some previous birth. Sonya was a believer in reincarnation and often came across people she had been close to in other centuries. She held his hand and turned it over a few times and nodded; I don’t know whether she was admiring the shape or reading his palm. He took her in his stride, not putting himself out to charm her but just being his usual self. It was the Rawul who made the greatest effort to impress our guests. An hour or two before the usual evening session, he retired to his room, and when he emerged, it was as if he had charged himself with some new and powerful voltage. He had changed into his native dress and looked imposing in a long shiny tunic with jeweled buttons. And what he said that evening was more impressive, poignant, and more personal than his usual address, as if he had thought and felt it all out again from the beginning.

  Once again he told us how his family, descending from the moon and passing through a series of semidivine incarnations, had established their earthly kin
gdom as far as the Caspian Sea on the one hand, and on the other into the Gangetic plains. His own ancestors, after surging as conquerors over Persia, had been driven back into Rajputana, winning and losing various kingdoms until finally cornered in a northwestern fastness of stony desert. Here they had built their fortress on a rock and defended themselves against all invaders so successfully that they were still there today—the oldest surviving kingdom in the world. They were no longer kings except in lineage; modern democracy had caught up with them. He was glad, the Rawul assured us, even proud: To be part of the modern world meant more to him than all his ancient titles and privileges. However, he could not escape from or deny his own lineage—that he was a descendant of a royal line so long that it reached back beyond antiquity to divinity: yes, to a time when the gods still walked on this earth, or rather, when there was not yet any division between this world and another, higher one. It was a thought that had haunted him as a child—especially when he climbed to the roof of the old palace built on a rock, where he truly felt nearer to heaven than to earth. Such a child would have different thoughts from other children: A different light would shine in his eyes—and here he invited us to look into his eyes. Sonya, who was sitting right by him, did so and exclaimed at the way the Rawul’s light-colored eyes contrasted with his Indian complexion. It came from looking up so much as a child into the sky, he explained, smiling, half-deprecating, inviting us to treat it as a joke if we wanted to. Grandfather said “Hm,” but there was no other comment, only a silence that I believe was rapt.

  Whatever it was he had absorbed into himself up there in the rocky kingdom of the desert did not leave him when he was sent away to school in England: to Harrow, where his father and grandfather had gone before him. Remote and dreamy, he did not prosper in studies, sport, or any other activity. But already his vision was forming, strengthened now by his study of history and civilizations. He came to a conscious realization of everything that lay behind him and was in him: and it was at that time, as a schoolboy in cold damp Middlesex, that he came truly to understand his ancient lineage, his own place in the story of Man, and with it, the responsibility that place conferred on him. Technically, he was no longer a king; there were no more kings; the world today didn’t want kings. What then did it want? the Rawul asked us (Grandfather said “Hm” again). It wanted, the Rawul told him and us, men who were prepared to be kings in spirit: not to conquer and rule kingdoms but, extracting what was best in each, to merge them into one great all-embracing kingdom of this world. This was his dream, he said. This was what had brought him to our shores, here into the heart of America: He looked around at all of us—Lindsay, Jean, Mrs. Schwamm, Michael and me, Sonya and Grandfather—in the hope that we would share his dream and help to bring it to fulfillment. He would not deny that he stood before us as a man with a mission, imposed on him by his birth and kingdom. And if he himself was small and wanting—and he said he was, though he didn’t look it at all, tall and plump, shining in silk and jewels—he invited us not to regard him as a person but as a world spirit seeking to express itself; and to look not at but beyond him, not at what he alone but what all of us together could achieve—and here he waved his hand at where the two flags hung side by side over the lake, and everyone looked up at them except Grandfather, who said “Hm” again.