Three Continents. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

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.

      Michael never made arrangements to meet people again, because he knew he always would. They covered vast tracts of the earth, but they traveled within a narrow route of the same sort of cheap hotels, beaches, and campsites, and spent many nights on the floors of airport lounges or bus terminals. It was in some such place that Michael expected to meet Crishi and his gang again someday; but when he did meet him, it was somewhere so entirely different that he didn’t recognize him. It was in Berkeley Square, in London; Crishi was emerging from an art dealer’s and about to step into a limousine. It was he who recognized Michael; that wasn’t difficult because in those days Michael wore the same sort of clothes wherever he was—jeans, kurta, steel bangle, and one earring. But Crishi himself was transformed, in a velvet jacket and silk scarf tucked into his shirt. He was cordial to Michael but was in a hurry; he offered him a ride, which Michael refused because he was staying nearby. “Where?” Crishi asked. Michael muttered—he hated it to be known that he was staying at the embassy. But Crishi got it out of him, and also that the ambassador was a family friend, and after that everything else about our family; so then Crishi became cordial in a different way, and he invited Michael to come and visit him; and that was how Michael got involved with them all—that is, with the Rawul and Rani and their entourage, and with their Fourth World movement.

      In order to find out more about this movement, I began to join the group under the tree when the Rawul gave his evening talks. It took me some time to get used to his accent. He spoke the way Englishmen themselves no longer speak—in a very upper-class drawly way that made him sound like a stage Englishman. In appearance he was plump and pampered, not a bit like a leader of a new world or redeemer of the old. All the same, these talks under the tree were inspiring. The setting may have had something to do with it—those beautiful summer evenings with the sky gold from the sun melting into it, and behind us the pillared house dark in shadow, and in front of us the lake illuminated by the sunset and reflecting, like an underwater painting, the woods on the opposite bank and the deer that came out to drink. The members of the Rawul’s entourage—those pale messengers—sat enthralled, though they must have heard him a thousand times. Their enthusiasm and reverence affected everyone else—Lindsay and Jean and even Mrs. Schwamm, who came out of her kitchen to listen to the Rawul; and when he had finished, she went back and clattered among her pots and pans, muttering “Good heavens, good heavens,” in sheer wonder at what she had heard. It was then I realized that everyone—everyone in the world, maybe, and not only Michael and me—would like to have something better than they had, and when it was offered to them, were ready to rise to heights one would not have suspected.

      Even Lindsay, our mother—I say “even” because she had never before in her life shown interest in anything except having a good time. When she was young, she had liked to dance and go to parties and sail and ski and whatever else girls like her did. When she got older, she couldn’t understand why things weren’t fun anymore; and before she met Jean, it had been so tough for her that she had been trying out psychiatrists and psychotherapists and people like that. But with the Rawul everything promised to start again—the fun, that is—and she really liked having those people there and the activity; and there was no doubt that the Rawul and Rani were what she called “nice people.” However small his kingdom, the Rawul really was a king—descended, as he explained in his evening talks, from a long line of kings; and the Rani was his consort. Lindsay was fascinated by the Rani—by her wonderful Paris clothes, and her Oriental jewelry, as well as her manner, which was mostly languid and indifferent. She often absented herself from the evening talks, and also from the terrific meals that Mrs. Schwamm cooked with such enthusiasm and the Rawul ate with such relish. The Rani stayed a lot in her room—the master bedroom at the top of the double staircase allotted to her and the Rawul—and when she emerged, she didn’t talk much but yawned often as she moved around in that gliding walk of hers, with her full hips oscillating in silk. Her eyes tended to be half closed, which made her look lazy but also as if she were awaiting what was going to happen, biding her time. Crishi’s eyes gave the same impression—as of someone, though more a magnificent animal than a person, half asleep and yet at the same time alert, and watching.

      Crishi, it was generally understood, was the Rawul and Rani’s adopted son. The Rawul may have been old enough to be his father, but the Rani was certainly not more than a few years, at the most eight or ten, older than Crishi. No one ever went to much trouble to explain the relationship of the three of them, so that anyone who cared to speculate on it was free to do so. Crishi spent a lot of time locked up either with both of them, or with the Rani alone, in their bedroom; but of course they did have a great deal to discuss, all sorts of secret matters of high state—after all, they were leading a world movement; that was what was important, not the personal relationship there might or might not be between them.

      However, personal relationships did play an enormous part within their entourage. The air around us became charged with strong feelings, emanating from an unlikely source: from the pale, devoted followers. One would have thought that they had too selflessly immersed themselves in their cause, and besides, were too anemic to be the victims of such passions. But as the days passed, it became clear that jealousy and rivalry raged among them. It was a matter of the highest importance who slept outside the