Out of India. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

There were plenty of places where we could stay for a few days or even weeks. In the evenings there were always many friends and all sat and discussed their ideas, and some of them recited poetry or played the flute, so that sometimes we didn’t go to sleep at all. We never had any worries about money—M. said if one doesn’t think about money, one doesn’t need it, and how true that is. Daddy sent me a check every month, care of the friend who kept the bookshop, and we still had some of my jewelry, which we could sell whenever we wanted; so there was even money to send to Savitri and the children.

      Once I met Rahul, quite by chance. That was at the time when we had just moved out of the exhibition house. M. had to go to one of the ministries to see an under-secretary, and I was taking our bundle to an orphanage, run by a friend of M.’s, where we were going to stay. I was waiting for a bus, holding the bundle; it wasn’t heavy at all anymore, so there was no need to take a tonga. Rahul came out of a music shop with some records that he had just bought (he is very fond of dance records—how often we have danced together to his gramophone!). I called to him and when he didn’t hear me, I went up to him. He lowered his eyes and wouldn’t look at me and hardly greeted me.

      “Rahul,” I said in the stern voice I always use with him when I think he is misbehaving.

      “Why did you do it?” he said. “My family are very angry with you and I’m also angry.” He sulked, but he looked so sweet; he still had his pink cheeks.

      “If you have your car, you can give me a lift,” I said. Rahul is always a gentleman, and he even carried my bundle for me to his car.

      It took us a long time to find the orphanage—it was right at the back of the Fatehpuri mosque somewhere—so there was plenty of time for me to talk to him. He listened quite quietly, driving the car through all that traffic. When at last we found the orphanage and I was ready to get out, he said, “Don’t go yet.” I stayed with him for a while, even though the car was parked very awkwardly in that crowded alleyway, and men with barrows swore at us because they could not get past.

      Soon afterward a friend of M.’s who was in the railways got transferred, and as he lived in a house with a very low rent, it was a good opportunity for us and we took it over from him. There were two rooms and a little yard at the back, and upstairs two families were living. Daddy would send a check for the rent. I cooked for us and cleaned the house and talked with the families upstairs, while M. went out to see people about his ideas. But after a time he began to go out less and less, and he became depressed; he said the world had rejected him because he was not strong enough yet. Now it was his task to purify himself and make himself stronger. He stayed at home and meditated. A strange change came over him. Most of the time he sat in one of our rooms, in a corner of the floor by himself, and he wouldn’t let me come in. Sometimes I heard him singing to himself and shouting—he made such strange noises, almost like an animal. For days he ate nothing at all and, when I tried to coax him, he upset the food I had brought and threw it on the floor. I tried to be patient and bear and understand everything.

      His friends stopped coming and he hardly ever left that little room for two months. Then he started going out by himself—I never knew where and could not ask him. He had an expression on his face as if he were listening for something, so that one felt one couldn’t disturb him. When he talked to me, he talked as if he were someone else and I were someone else. At night I slept in the yard at the back with the families from upstairs, who were always kind to me.

      Then visitors began to come for him—not his old friends, but quite new people whom I had never seen before. They sat with him in the little room and I could hear him talking to them. At first only a few men used to come, but then more and more came, and women too. I also sat in the room sometimes and listened to him talk; he told strange stories about parrots and princes and tigers in the jungle, all of which had some deep meaning. When the people understood the deep meaning, they all exclaimed with pleasure and said God was speaking through his mouth.

      Now they began to bring us gifts of food and money and clothes and even jewelry. M. never took any notice, and I just piled the things in the other room, which was soon very crowded. We ate the food and I also gave it to the families upstairs, but there was still plenty left over, and at night someone used to come from the beggars’ home to take it away. I sent a lot of money to Savitri. The house was always full of people now, and they spilled over into the yard and out into the street. More and more women came—most of them were old but there were some young ones too, and the young ones were even more fervent and religious than the old ones. There was one plump and pretty young widow, who was always dressed very nicely and came every day. She said she was going mad with love of God and needed words of solace and comfort from M. She touched his feet and implored him to relieve her, and when he took no notice of her, she shook him and tugged at his clothes, so that he became quite angry.

      Mama often came to see me. In the beginning she was very disgusted with the house and the way we lived and everything, but afterward, when she saw how many people came and all the things they brought and how they respected M., she kept quiet on that subject. Now she only said, “Who knows what is to become of it all?” Mama is not really a religious person, but she has a lot of superstitions. When holy men come begging to her house, she always gives them something—not because of their holiness, but because she is afraid they will curse her and bring the evil eye on us all. She no longer said anything bad about M., and when she talked about him, she didn’t say, “that one” as she used to, but always “He.” Once or twice she went and sat with the other people in the little room in which he was, and when she came out, she looked so grave and thoughtful that I had to laugh.

      Rahul also visited me. At first he was stiff and sulky, as if he were doing me a favor by coming; but then he began to talk, all about how lonely he was and how his family were trying to persuade him to marry girls he didn’t like. I felt sorry for him—I knew it is always difficult for him to make friends and he has never really had anyone except me. I let him talk, and he kept coming again and again. There was a little space with a roof of asbestos sheet over it in the yard where I did my cooking, and it was here that Rahul and I sat. It was not a very private place because of all the people in the yard, waiting to see M., but Rahul soon got used to it and talked just as he would have done if we had been sitting in Mama’s drawing room. He was very melancholy, and when he had finished telling me about how lonely he was, he only sat and looked at me with big sad eyes. So I let him help me with the cooking—at first he only sifted the rice and lentils, but after a time I let him do some real cooking and he enjoyed it terribly. He would make all sorts of things—fritters and potato cakes and horseradish pancakes—and they were really delicious. We ate some ourselves and the rest we sent to the beggars’ home.

      There were always a few young men who stayed at night and slept outside the door of the room where M. was. I often heard him get up in the night and walk up and down; and sometimes he shouted at the young men sleeping outside his door, “Go home!” and he kicked them with his foot, he was so impatient and angry with them. He was often angry nowadays. I heard him shouting at people and scolding them for coming to pester him. When he scolded them, they said he was right to do so, because they were bad, sinful people; but they did not go away and, on the contrary, even more came.

      One night I felt someone shaking me to wake up. I opened my eyes and it was M. I jumped up at once and we went out into the street together and sat on a doorstep. Here and there people were sleeping on the sidewalk or on the platforms of shuttered shops. It was very dark and quiet. Only sometimes someone coughed in his sleep or there was a watchman’s cry and the tap of his stick. M. said, “Soon I shall have to go away.”

      Then I knew that the time I had always feared was near.

      He said, “It will be best for you to go home again.” He spoke very practically, and with gentleness and great concern for me.

      But I didn’t want to think about what I was going to do. For the moment I wanted it to be only now—always night and people always sleeping and he and I sitting together like this on the doorstep for ever and ever.

      The plump young widow still came every day and every day in a different sari, and she made such scenes that in the end M. forbade her to come any more. So she hung about outside in the yard for