Travelers (29 page)

“Yes, I've heard,” Raymond said.

“She told you?” Rao Sahib shifted a little uneasily. “Unfortunately Asha doesn't understand what is going on in the country today. She has no conception of progress.”

“I suppose not.”

But Rao Sahib had. He told Raymond about the young man and his plans for The Retreat. Not that he wanted the house—he was going to tear it down—but he was buying up all the land around there in order to start workshops manufacturing spare parts for mechanized drills. He was a very go-ahead young man.

Lee

At first I thought they were a mirage. They looked like a mirage suddenly appearing on the horizon. The sky, the air, and the earth were all dust colored, and those two were the only figures on the landscape. Evie and Margaret. They were both in white saris. Slowly they came toward me; they were dragging bedrolls
behind them across the dust. They had traveled a long, long way. We hardly greeted each other. Of course I knew why they had come and who had sent them. After the first shock, I wasn't even surprised any more. I took them into the house.

There was something very strange about Margaret. She seemed. . . not there, somehow; disconnected. I think she didn't know where she was, and I also think she didn't recognize me. Her hands were trembling in a peculiar way. But Evie said it was just exhaustion and all she needed was sleep. They both slept throughout that day and through the night. How they slept! Then, the morning after that when I went into their room, I found Evie awake and dressed. She sat on the edge of the bed with her hands folded in her lap. I don't know if she was just waiting or if she was meditating. Margaret was lying on the bed and at first I thought she was still sleeping. But she was breathing in such a strange way and moving her arms as if she were trying to get at herself, trying to remove something from herself and not succeeding. Evie said again it was all right, that Margaret was just exhausted; they had had a very difficult journey because their train had started late and they had had to spend a night on the station platform, and when finally they got on, their carriage was very crowded—of course they had traveled third class—and they couldn't get any place to sit although toward the early hours of the morning Margaret had been able partly to stretch out on a luggage shelf. The bus that had taken them to Maupur had also been overcrowded and it had broken down twice. After that, they could not get any transport to take them to The Retreat and they had had to walk these last miles. So, naturally, they were very very tired—who wouldn't be?

Evie told me all this shortly and rather impatiently, as if it were something irrelevant and she had far more important things to communicate to me. Of course I knew what they were. And I wanted to hear them, there was so much I wanted to hear from her; but when she said, “You know why we've come,” then it was like I was afraid to hear. I quickly went back
to talking about Margaret, and asking about her health and how she had been all this time. Again Evie answered impatiently—she said Margaret had been fine, nothing wrong with her at all; but looking at her, I felt that there
was
something wrong, she was not sleeping normally. “She's tired,” Evie said.

“But she's been all right, quite all right?”

“Yes, yes.” Then she added, “She wasn't quite well on the journey but of course I told you—it was strenuous.” I wanted to ask exactly how had she not been quite well but before I could do so, Evie went on: “In the ashram she's been so well! So happy! Just her usual bit of tummy trouble but that's nothing. She forgets about it every time she's near him.” When she spoke of him, I burned and blushed and she saw me and smiled into herself. She said softly, “You know how it is . . . how we all get . . . near him.”

At that moment Margaret began to make strange sounds. She was talking, I thought it was in her sleep. I shook her, I called her name. She didn't hear me and she didn't wake up—her eyes were not quite shut, the lids had lifted slightly showing her pupils fixed in a frightening way. I tried to make her sit up but she was heavy like a sack partly filled with stones. I called to Evie in panic.

“It's all right,” Evie said, soothing and gentle.

But I knew it was not all right. I rushed out of the room and shouted. Servants came running, doors opened. Asha came out of the drawing room downstairs not only with Raymond and Gopi but Rao Sahib was with her too and one other man whom I didn't know.

Bob

That morning Rao Sahib had brought the prospective purchaser to The Retreat. He brought him straight into the drawing room, where Raymond and Asha and Gopi were playing cards. For Raymond it was a desultory game which he was
playing in the hope—unfulfilled—of relieving his boredom; but for the other two it was completely serious. Asha was winning and she was exultant. She slammed down her winning card with an exclamation of triumph, and at the same moment Gopi flung his remaining cards on the floor and stamped on them. She laughed, and he accused her of cheating. They both turned to Raymond as referee, both shouting and outshouting each other so that he couldn't make out what either of them was saying.

None of them heard the visitors enter. Raymond saw them first, and it was only when he got to his feet that the other two interrupted their quarrel. The person Rao Sahib had brought was interesting enough to make them forget their card game for a while. He was a young man, well set up and very well dressed in stylish American clothes. Although he had just crossed the desert in a jeep, he looked entirely crisp and fresh. He moved so swiftly and with such decision that he seemed to cut through the air. He shook hands all round the room, pumping arms up and down with genuine pleasure. When Rao Sahib introduced him as Harish Chandra, he said, “Please call me Bob,” and flashed a broad American smile. But his teeth were whiter than an American's.

He sat at his ease on one of the velvet banquettes. His eyes swept round the room: evidently he took it all in—the bar, the bandstand—but if he thought anything odd, he gave no sign. He said “Nice place” and flashed another smile, this time directly at Asha. He took in Asha too in the same way as he had taken in the room. Then his eyes roved on and stopped at Raymond. He shot out his finger. “English—right?”

“Right.”

“I can always tell.” He crossed one leg over the other and was pleased. “I was over there on my way back from the States. I visited London and Oxford. I liked it. Oxford is very impressive. Very traditional.”

Rao Sahib gave a conspiratorial smile toward Raymond. “Mr. Raymond and I are both on the other side. Light Blue. Cambridge,”
he explained. “The light blues and the dark blues are traditional, should we say rivals, Raymond?”

“I suppose we could,” Raymond joked back.

“Is that so,” Bob said with polite interest. “I've heard they're both very fancy places. I was three years at N.Y.U. In business administration. That's a fine course. Some very fine people there.” A bearer offered him a tray with a tall glass of water on it. He drank it off at one draft. He drank it in the Indian way, laying back his head and pouring the liquid down his throat without allowing the glass to touch his lips; the way he held the glass rather daintily between two fingers was also very Indian.

Again his devouring glance went around the drawing room. This time he lingered for a moment on Gopi, but Gopi was of no interest to him and his eyes swept on not only through the room but through the French windows and out into the garden, estimating its size and possibilities. He said, “I guess there isn't too much water.”

Rao Sahib began to explain about the tube wells that had been sunk in his father's time but which had since fallen into disrepair. He said, “You see, no one has been using the place.”

Asha said, “Up till now.”

Rao Sahib silently implored her. She ignored him.

“A man is coming tomorrow to give an estimate for the tube wells. Of course prices have gone up terribly since Papa's time but that can't be helped. I want to get the garden nicely laid out by the winter because many friends from Bombay and other places will be coming to stay with us.”

Rao Sahib was embarrassed, but Bob was already tactfully looking away. He fixed his attention on Raymond, who began to feel aware that Bob was calculating how he fitted into the setup. Suddenly Raymond noticed that he was still holding the cards with which he had joined in Asha's and Gopi's game. Blushing, he made a movement to lay them aside, then checked the movement and blushed more.

Asha said, “It can be very beautiful in the summer too. Once
I get the generators replaced we shall be fully air conditioned and not have to suffer in this beastly heat. What is modern science for? To make people comfortable. That's more important than going to the moon or blowing each other up with atom bombs and such like.” She challenged them to contradict her—but at that moment Lee's cry for help was heard.

Lee

They carried Margaret downstairs and put her in Bob's jeep and Evie and I climbed in with her. Raymond sat in front with the driver and with Bob, who was wearing large sunglasses. It was a horrible journey through miles of sun and dust. Whenever I looked up—which I didn't like to do because of the glare—I saw huge black birds hovering in the sky. They were flying so slowly they didn't seem to be flying at all, but they remained with us all the time. I thought how Margaret and Evie had done this journey on foot two days ago, dragging their bedrolls behind them through the dust, and I wondered if these birds had been following them that time too.

Margaret remained the same. We made her as comfortable as possible but it was a rough journey at the back of the jeep. All of us were being rattled and shaken from side to side, and Margaret more than any of us because of being utterly limp: more like a thing than a person. We tried to keep at least her head steady, and it lay in Evie's lap with her eyes glinting from between her lids and her mouth dropped open and a trickle of saliva at the corner. From time to time Evie bent down to whisper something into her ear. I could guess that this was the secret mantra given to her by Swamiji. I knew that Evie firmly believed that it would get through to Margaret, that it would pierce her coma and reach her. I don't know if I believed it or not. I wanted to, but it was difficult under present circumstances. Also it was unnerving to see Evie doing this to Margaret's lolling head, and to hear her calling to her so firmly, even
severely. I could see Raymond biting his lip trying to control himself, but finally he turned around and snapped at Evie to stop doing that. Evie looked at him in surprise for a moment and then she smiled in a wan, kind way—sort of in pity for Raymond and his lack of understanding.

It was good Bob was with us because he got things organized very quickly at the hospital. At first we drove to the wrong block, which was very nice and modern but quite empty from inside and smelled of bat droppings. Later we learned that this block had been built with foreign aid, but when it was finished there wasn't any money left for furnishing and equipment, so now they were waiting for more aid. Meanwhile, they carried on in the old buildings. These were very old and rather grim, built partly of stone and partly of brick; inside they needed painting and plastering very badly. The walls were full of those stains you see everywhere in India which at first you think are blood but afterward they turn out to be betel juice that people have spat out. But in a hospital of course they may really be blood. There were an awful, awful lot of people. Not all of them were sick, I knew that—for each patient there were always many members of his family in attendance. I had learned that even from Miss Charlotte's little clinic; but all the same it was difficult to imagine that there could be anywhere in the world enough staff to cope with so much sickness. There certainly weren't enough beds. Everywhere, in all the corridors and along the verandas, patients were lying on the floor so that one had constantly to step around and sometimes over them.

Bob arranged for a little storeroom to be cleared for Margaret. It was a tiny oblong box and there was just room to put a bed. She was carried to this bed and she lay on it with all sorts of tubes stuck into her. From time to time people came to change the tubes and to make her bed and clean her. She only lay there, breathing in a peculiar way. Sometimes she made sounds but they didn't mean anything. Her face didn't mean anything either; it was no longer Margaret's face. There wasn't
any Margaret left really, only this body in a coma being fed with tubes. The doctor said her liver was completely destroyed and that this process must have been going on for a long time.

Evie and I stayed with her. At first Evie still tried to get through to her with her mantra, but obviously it was hopeless. So then Evie lost interest in her and began instead to concentrate on me. We were together day and night, cramped together on the floor of that hot little box, and day and night she spoke to me of him and everything he had done for us and everything we must do for him in return. When I asked her to stop, she smiled in an indulgent way and went on all the same.

She wanted me to meditate with her. I tried to but it was impossible for me to concentrate. Outside the door patients quarreled and some laughed and some groaned and some cried out; rickety trolleys were pushed rattling and shaking through the stone corridors. Inside our room there was Margaret lying up there on her bed gurgling sometimes and mumbling sometimes but otherwise quite still with colorless liquids silently flowing into her. None of it bothered Evie. She sat in the lotus pose and meditated. Then it was like being with two people who were not there—she and Margaret both. Flies settled freely on their faces. Sometimes I chased them off Margaret and all the time I was chasing them off myself. I got irritated, frantic even, and longed to escape.

The only ventilation in that storeroom was from a tiny open grill; someone had hung a piece of sacking in front of it to keep out the heat and glare. When I felt very desperate, I stood on a box and pushed aside that piece of sacking to look out. I looked beyond the hospital grounds—crowded with patients, visitors, cycle rickshaws, and people selling bananas and peanuts—toward the remains of the fort that stood overlooking the town. I liked doing this especially at dusk when the sky went soft as silk and with the strangest lights in it and how beautiful it looked stretched out behind the rugged walls of the fort.