Out of India. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ sight of God, and that in the sight of God both Savitri and I were married to M., she there and I here. Daddy turned his head away and looked out of the window.

      M. told me that he wanted to start a school and that he could do so if Daddy got him a grant from the Ministry. I thought it was a very exciting idea and we talked a lot about it that night, as we lay together on our beds. He had many wonderful ideas about how a school should be run and said that the children should be taught to follow only their instincts, which would lead them to the highest Good. He talked so beautifully, like a prophet, a saint. I could hardly sleep all night, and first thing in the morning I talked to Daddy. Unfortunately Mama was listening at the door—she has a bad habit of doing that—and suddenly she came bursting in. “Why don’t you leave your father alone?” she cried. “Isn’t it enough that we give you both food and shelter?”

      I said, “Mama please, I’m talking important business with Daddy.”

      She began to say all sorts of things about M. and why he had married me. Daddy tried to keep her quiet but she was beyond herself by that time, so I just covered my ears with my hands and ran out. She came after me, still shouting these horrible things.

      There in the hall was M., and when I tried to run past him, he stopped me and took my hands from my ears and made me listen to everything Mama was saying. She got more and more furious, and then she went into one of her hysterical fits, in which she throws herself down and beats her head on the floor and tears at her clothes. Daddy tried to lift her up, but of course she is too heavy for him. She went on screaming and shouting at M.

      M. said, “Go and get your things,” so I went and wrapped everything up in the sheet again, his things and mine, and he slung the bundle over his shoulder and went out of the house, with me walking behind him.

      I hoped we would go back to Niripat, but he wanted to stay in the city because he had several schemes in mind—there was the school, and he also had hopes of starting a newspaper in which he could print all his ideas. So he had to go around and see a lot of people, in ministries and so on. Sometimes he got quite discouraged because it was so difficult to make people understand. Then he looked tired and the lines on his face became very deep and I felt such love and pity for him. But he had great inner strength, and next day he always started on his rounds again, as fresh and hopeful as before.

      We had no proper home at that time, but lived in several places. There was the sign painter, and another friend had a bookshop in one of the government markets with a little room at the back where we could stay with him; and once we found a model house that was left over from a low-cost housing exhibition, and we lived in that till workmen came to tear it down. 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 СКАЧАТЬ