The river, broad, swift, swollen, was at this season too dangerous to cross in a boat. One had to walk across the bridge, which was holy and thronged with pilgrims chanting salutations as they crossed. On the other side of the bridge began a cluster of tiny temples, all of them made spruce with silver tinsel, peacock fans, gilt ornaments, and pink paint. The gods inside them were also painted pink—pink cheeks and rosebud lips—and the plump priests who looked after them were immaculately bathed and their skulls were newly shaven and naked except for their one tuft of hair. Worshipers were constantly passing in and out to leave their offerings and obeisances, while the rest houses, which alternated with the temples, were equally well populated, though they offered no amenities beyond a dark, bare room of whitewashed brick. But here anyone was welcome to spread their bedding on the floor and put the children to sleep and light the cooking fires and stir in their cooking vessels, and all the time be very merry and make friends with strangers: for coming like this, here to this holy place in quest of grace, lightened the heart and made it loving to all the world.
Beyond the temples and rest houses came a wood with a path through it; on either side of the path were trees and shrubs and sadhus doing penance. Some of the sadhus were stark naked, some wore animal skins, all had long, matted hair and beards and were immobile, so that it was easy to believe they had been sitting there for centuries, as rooted and moss-grown as the trees and as impervious as they to snakes and any wild animals there might be prowling around. Besides the sadhus, there were beggars, and these were not in the least still or immobile but very lively indeed, especially if someone happened to pass by: then they would set up voluble claims to alms, holding up their palms and pointing out any sores or other disfigurements that might have laid them victim.
Over everything towered the mountains, receding far up into the blue sky to unknown heights of holiness, steppe upon steppe of them, and dissolving from sight at last amid mysterious white veils that may have been mist or snow or, who knew, the emanation of a promised Presence.
It was all, in short, too good to be true; a dream, though better than anything, Daphne felt, she could have dreamed of. The coolie, naked except for a loincloth, walked in front of her and carried her baggage on his head; he was her guide and protector, who cleared a path for her through the crowd of pilgrims, warded off the beggars, and knew exactly where she wanted to go. It was quite a long walk, but Daphne was too entranced to mind; nor did she for one moment doubt that she was being led along the right way. And sure enough, her messenger, like some angel sent direct, brought her at last into the presence she had desired for many weeks now, and when she was there and saw him again, so great was her relief and her happiness that she burst into tears.
“Welcome!” he said to her, and did ever eyes and smile swell the word with such meaning? And then he said, to her tears, “Now what is this? What nonsense?”
“I’m silly,” she said, wiping away at her eyes but unable to check a further gush of tears.
“Yes, very silly,” he said, and turned to the others around him: “Isn’t she? A silly goose?” and all smiled at her, with him, all of them tender, friendly, saying welcome.
One or two of them she recognized, the cheerful, bearded, athletic young men in orange robes who were his permanent disciples and who had been with him in London. She did not know any of the others. They included quite a number of non-Indians, and these she guessed to be people like herself who had followed him out here to undergo an intensive course of spiritual regeneration. In addition there were many casual visitors constantly passing in and out of the room, devotees come to have a sight of him who sat for a while and then got up and went away while others took their place. Daphne was used to seeing him thus in the midst of crowds. It had been the same in London, where he had been constantly surrounded—by women mostly, rich women in smart hats who bustled around him and besieged him with requests uttered in shrill voices; and he so patient, unruffled, eating ice cream in someone’s drawing room, and smiling on them all equally.
Nevertheless it had seemed to Daphne that his smile had in some way been special for her. There was no reason why she should think so, yet she had been convinced of it. When he looked at her, when he spoke to her (though he said nothing that he did not say to others), she felt chosen. She was not by nature a fanciful girl; on the contrary, she had always been known as straightforward and sensible, good at sickbeds, had done history at Oxford, wore tasteful, unobtrusive, English clothes. Yet after she had met Swamiji, she knew without a word being spoken that he meant her to follow him back to India. It was not an easy path. She was fond of traveling in a way, and always spent her summer vacation in France or Italy, and twice she had gone to Greece: but she had never contemplated anything much farther than that. She was quite happy in London—had her few friends, her quite interesting job with a secretarial agency—and though perhaps, if opportunity had knocked that way, she would not have minded a year or two doing some sort of interesting job in America or on the continent, it was not, one would have said, in her nature to go off on a spiritual quest to India.
Everyone was indeed amazed; she herself was, but she knew it was inevitable. No one tried to stand in her way, although of course her mother—a wonderfully energetic lady of middle years prominent on several welfare committees—pointed out quite a few of the drawbacks to her enterprise. But there was nothing she could say that Daphne had not already said to herself: so that the mother, who was tolerant in the best English way and believed in people being allowed to make their own mistakes, had not spoken any further but instead confined herself to bringing forward several aged relatives who had served in India as administrators during the Raj and were thus suited to give Daphne advice on at least such basic questions as to what clothes to take and what diseases to guard against.
Everyone, whatever their private thoughts, had been too tactful outright to warn Daphne of disaster. But if they had done, how triumphantly she could, after some weeks’ stay, have contradicted them! She was supremely happy in the ashram. It was not a very grand place—Swamiji had rented it for a few months for himself and his followers, and it consisted merely of three rows of rooms grouped around a courtyard. The courtyard was triangular in shape, and the apex was formed by Swamiji’s room, which was of course much bigger than all the others and led to a veranda with a view out over the river. The other rooms were all small and ugly, inadequately lit by skylights set so high up on the walls that no one could ever get at them to clean them; the only pieces of furniture were cheap string cots, some of which had the string rotting away. The meals were horrible—unclean, badly cooked, and irregular—and the cooks kept running away and had to be replaced at short notice. There were many flies, which were especially noticeable at mealtimes when they settled in droves on the food and on the lips of people eating it. Daphne rose, with ease, above all this; and she lived only in the beautiful moments engendered by the love they all bore to Swamiji, by the hours of meditation to which he exhorted them, the harmonious rhythm of their selfless days, and the surrounding atmosphere of this place holy for centuries and where God was presumed to be always near.
The door to Swamiji’s room was kept open day and night, and people came and went. He was always the same: cheerful and serene. He sat on the floor, on a mattress covered with a cream-colored silk cloth, and the robe he wore loosely wrapped around himself was of the same silk, and both of them were immaculate. His beard and shoulder-length hair shone in well-oiled waves, and at his feet there lay a heap of flowers among which his fingers often toyed, picking up petals and smelling them and then rubbing them to and fro. He was not a handsome man—he was short and not well built, his features were blunt, his eyes rather small—yet there was an aura of beauty about him that may have been partly due to the flowers and the spotless, creamy, costly silk, but mostly of course to the radiance of his personality.
He was often laughing. The world seemed a gay place to him, and his enthusiasm for it infected those around him so that they also often laughed. They were very jolly together. They had many private jokes and teased each other about their little weaknesses (one person’s inability to get out of bed in the mornings, another’s exploits as a fly-swatter, Swamiji’s fondness for sweets). Often they sat together and just gossiped, like any group of friends, Swamiji himself taking a lively lead; any more serious talk they had was interspersed among the gossip, casually almost, and in the same tone. They were always relaxed about their quest, never overintense: taking their cue from Swamiji himself, they spoke of things spiritual in the most matter-of-fact way—and why not: weren’t they matter-of-fact? the most matter-of-fact things of all?—and hid their basic seriousness under a light, almost flippant manner.
Daphne felt completely at ease with everyone. In England, she had been rather a shy girl, had tended to be awkward with strangers and, at parties or any other such gathering, had always had difficulty in joining in. But not here. It was as if an extra layer of skin, which hitherto had kept her apart from others, had dropped from off her heart, and she felt close and affectionate toward everyone. They were a varied assortment of people, of many different nationalities: a thin boy from Sweden called Klas, two dumpy little Scottish schoolteachers, from Germany a large blond beauty in her thirties called Helga. Helga was the one Daphne shared a room with. Those dark, poky little rooms made proximity very close, and though under different circumstances Daphne might have had difficulty in adjusting to Helga, here she found it easy to be friendly with her.
Helga was, in any case, too unreserved a person herself to allow reserve to anyone else; especially not to anyone she was sharing a room with. She was loud and explicit about everything she did, expressing the most fleeting of her thoughts in words and allowing no action, however trivial, to pass without comment. Every morning on waking she would report on the quality of the sleep she had enjoyed, and thence carry on a continuous stream of commentary as she went about her tasks (“I think I need a new toothbrush.” “These flies—I shall go mad!”). In the morning it was—not a rule, the ashram had no rules, but it was an understanding that everyone should do a stretch of meditation. Somehow Helga quite often missed it, either because she got up too late, or took too long to dress, or something prevented her; and then, as soon as she went into Swamiji’s room, she would make a loud confession of her omission. “Swamiji, I have been a naughty girl again today!” she would announce in her Wagnerian voice. Swamiji smiled, enjoying her misdemeanor as much as she did, and teased her, so that she would throw her hands before her face and squeal in delight, “Swamiji, you’re not to, please, please, you are not to be horrid to me!”
Swamiji had a very simple and beautiful message to the world. It was only this: meditate; look into yourself and so, by looking, cleanse yourself; harmony and happiness will inevitably follow. This philosophy, simple as its end-product appeared to be, he had forged after many, many solitary years of thought and penance in some icy Himalayan retreat. Now he had come down into the world of men to deliver his message, planning to return to his mountain solitude as soon as his task here was achieved. It might, however, take longer than he had reckoned on, for men were stubborn and tended to be blind to Truth. But he would wait, patiently, and toil till his work was done. Certainly, it was evident that the world urgently needed his message, especially the Western world where both inner and outer harmony were in a state of complete disruption. Hence his frequent travels abroad, to England and other countries, and next he was planning a big trip to America, to California, where a group of would-be disciples eagerly awaited him. His method was to go to these places, make contacts, give lectures and informal talks, and then return with a number of disciples whom he had selected for more intensive training. He had, of course, his little nucleus of permanent disciples—those silent, bearded young men in orange robes who accompanied him everywhere and looked after his simple needs—but the people he brought with him from abroad, such as Daphne and Helga and the others, were expected to stay with him for only a limited time. During that time he trained them in methods of meditation and generally untangled their tangled souls, so that they could return home, made healthy and whole, and disseminate his teaching among their respective countrymen. In this way, the Word would spread to all corners of the earth, and to accelerate the process, he was also writing a book, called Vital Principle of Living, to be published in the first place in English and then to be translated into all the languages of the world.
Daphne was fortunate enough to be chosen as his secretary in this undertaking. Hitherto, she had observed, his method of writing had been very strange, not to say wonderful: he would sit there on his silken couch, surrounded by people, talk with them, laugh with them, and at the same time he would be covering, effortlessly and in a large flowing hand, sheets of paper with his writing. When he chose her as his secretary, he presented these sheets to her and told her to rewrite them in any way she wanted. “My English is very poor, I know,” he said, which made Helga exclaim, “Swamiji! Your English! Poor? Oh if I could only speak one tiniest bit as well, how conceited I would become!” And it was true, he did speak well: very fluently in his soft voice and with a lilting Indian accent; it was a pleasure to hear him. Daphne sometimes wondered where he could have learned to speak so well. Surely not in his mountain cave? She did not know, no one knew, where he had been or what he had done before that.
Strangely enough, when she got down to looking through his papers, she found that he had not been unduly modest. He did not write English well. When he spoke, he was clear and precise, but when he wrote, his sentences were turgid, often naive, grammatically incorrect. And his spelling was decidedly shaky. In spite of herself, Daphne’s Oxford-trained mind rose at once, as she read, in judgment; and her feelings, in face of this judgment, were ones of embarrassment, even shame for Swamiji. Yet a moment later, as she raised her burning cheeks from his incriminating manuscript, she realized that it was not for him she need be ashamed but for herself. How narrow was her mind, how tight and snug it sat in the strait-jacket her education had provided for it! Her sole, pitiful criterion was conventional form, whereas what she was coming into contact with here was something so infinitely above conventional form that it could never be contained in it. And that was precisely why he had chosen her: so that she could express him (whose glory it was to be inexpressible) in words accessible to minds that lived in the same narrow confines as her own. Her limitation, she realized in all humility, had been her only recommendation.
She worked hard, and he was pleased with her and made her work harder. All day she sat by his side and took down the words that he dictated to her in between talking to his disciples and to his other numerous visitors; at night she would sit by the dim bulb in the little room she shared with Helga to write up these notes and put them into shape. Helga would be fast asleep, but if she opened her eyes for a moment, she would grumble about the light disturbing her. “Just one minute,” Daphne would plead, but by that time Helga had tossed her big body to its other side and, if she was still grumbling, it was only in her sleep. Very often Daphne herself did not get to sleep before three or four in the morning, and then she would be too tired to get up early enough for her meditation.
She could not take this failure as lightly as Helga took her own. When Helga boasted to Swamiji, “Today I’ve been naughty again,” Daphne would hang her head and keep silent, unable to confess. Once, though, Helga told on her—not in malice, but rather in an excess of good humor. Having just owned up to her own fault and been playfully scolded for it by Swamiji, she was brimming with fun and her eyes danced as she looked around for further amusement; they came to rest on Daphne, and suddenly she shot out her finger to point: “There’s another one just as bad!” and when she saw Daphne blush and turn away, rallied her gaily, “No pretending, I saw you lie snug in bed, old lazybones!”
Daphne felt awkward and embarrassed and wondered what Swamiji would say: whatever it was, she dreaded it, for unlike Helga she took no pride in her shortcomings nor did she have a taste for being teased. And, of course, Swamiji knew it. Without even glancing at Daphne, he went on talking to Helga: “If you manage to do your morning meditation three days running,” he told her, “I shall give you a good conduct prize.” “Swamiji! A prize! Oh lucky lucky girl I am!”
But the next time they were alone together—not really alone, of course, only comparatively so: there were just a few visitors and they sat at a respectful distance and were content with looking at and being near him—as Daphne sat cross-legged on the floor, taking dictation from him, her notebook perched on her knee, he interrupted his fluent flow of wisdom to say to her in a lower voice: “You know that private meditation is the—how shall I say?—the foundation, the cornerstone of our whole system?”
After a short pause, she brought out, “It was only that I was—” she had been about to say “tired,” but checked herself in time: feeling how ridiculous it would be for her to bring forward her tiredness, the fact that she had sat up working till the early hours of the morning, to him who was busy from earliest morning till latest night, talking to people and helping them and writing his book and a hundred and one things, without ever showing any sign of fatigue but always fresh and bright as a bridegroom. So she checked herself and said, “I was lazy, that’s all,” and waited, pencil poised, hoping for a resumed dictation.
“Look at me,” he said instead.
She was too surprised to do so at first, so he repeated it in a soft voice of command, and she turned her head, blushing scarlet, and lifted her eyes—and found herself looking into his. Her heart beat up high and she was full of sensations. She would have liked to look away again, but he compelled her not to.
“What’s the matter?” he said softly. He took a petal from the pile of flowers lying at his feet and held it up to his nose. “Why are you like that?” he asked. She remained silent, looking into his face. Now he was crushing the petal between his fingers, and the smell of it, pungent, oversweet, rose into the air. “You must relax. You must trust and love. Give,” he said and he smiled at her and his eyes brimmed with love. “Give yourself. Be generous.” He held her for a moment longer, and then allowed her at last to look away from him; and at once he continued his dictation which she endeavored to take down, though her hands were trembling.
After that she was no longer sure of herself. She was an honest girl and had no desire to cheat herself, any more than she would have desired to cheat anyone else. She felt now that she was here under false pretenses, and that her state of elation was due not, as she had thought, to a mystic communion with some great force outside herself, but rather to her proximity to Swamiji, for whom her feelings were very much more personal than she had hitherto allowed herself to suspect. Yet even after she admitted this, the elation persisted. There was no getting away from the fact that she was happy to be there, to be near him, working with him, constantly with him: that in itself was satisfaction so entire that it filled and rounded and illumined her days. She felt herself to be like a fruit hanging on a bough, ripening in his sunshine and rich with juices from within. And so it was, not only with her, but with everyone else there too. All had come seeking something outside of themselves and their daily preoccupations, and all had found it in or through him. Daphne noticed how their faces lit up the moment they came into his presence—she noticed it with Klas, a very fair, rather unattractive boy with thin lips and thin hair and pink-rimmed eyes; and the two Scottish schoolteachers, dumpy, dowdy little women who, before meeting Swamiji, had long since given up any expectations they might ever have had—all of them bloomed under his smile, his caressing gaze, his constant good humor. “Life,” he once dictated to Daphne, “is a fountain of joy from which the lips must learn to drink with relish as is also taught by our sages from the olden times.” (She rewrote this later.) He was the fountain of joy from which they all drank with relish.
She was working too hard, and though she would never have admitted it, he was quick to notice. One day, though she sat there ready with notebook and pencil, he said, “Off with you for a walk.” Her protests were in vain. Not only did he insist, but he even instructed her for how long she was to walk and in what direction. “And when you come back,” he said, “I want to see roses in your cheeks.” So dutifully she walked and where he had told her to: this was away from the populated areas, from the throng of pilgrims and sadhus, out into a little wilderness where there was nothing except rocky ledges and shrubs and, here and there, small piles of faded bricks where once some building scheme had been begun and soon abandoned. But she did not look around her much; she was only concerned with reckoning the time he had told her to walk, and then getting back quickly to the ashram, to his room, to sit beside him and take down his dictation. As soon as she came in, he looked at her, critically: “Hm, not enough roses yet, I think,” he commented, and ordered her to take an hour-long walk in that same direction every day.
On the third day she met him on the way. He had evidently just had his bath, for his hair hung in wet ringlets and his robe was slung around him hastily, leaving one shoulder bare. He always had his bath in the river, briskly pouring water over himself out of a brass vessel, while two of his disciples stood by on the steps with his towel. They were coming behind him now as he—nimbler, sprightlier than they—clambered around ledges and stones and prickly bushes. He waved enthusiastically to Daphne and called to her: “You see, I also am enjoying fresh air and exercise!”
She waited for him to catch up with her. He was radiant: he smiled, his eyes shone, drops of water glistened on his hair and beard. “Beautiful,” he said, and his eyes swept over the landscape, over the rocky plateau on which they stood—the holy town huddled on one side, the sky, immense and blue, melting at one edge into the mountains and at another into the river. “Beautiful, beautiful,” he repeated and shook his head and she looked with him, and it was, everything was, the whole earth, shining and beautiful.
“Did you know we are building an ashram?” he asked her.
“Where?”
“Just here.”
He gave a short sweep of the hand, and she looked around her, puzzled. It did not seem possible for anything to grow in this spot except thistles and shrubs: and as if to prove the point, just a little way off was an abandoned site around which were scattered a few sad, forgotten bricks.
“A tiptop, up-to-date ashram,” he was saying, “with air-conditioned meditation cells and a central dining hall. Of course it will be costly, but in America I shall collect a good deal of funds. There are many rich American ladies who are interested in our movement.” He tilted his head upward and softly swept back his hair with his hand, first one side and then the other, in a peculiarly vain and womanly movement.
She was embarrassed and did not wish to see him like that, so she looked away into the distance and saw the two young men who had accompanied him running off toward the ashram; they looked like two young colts, skipping and gamboling and playfully tripping each other up. Their joyful young voices, receding into the distance, were the only sounds, otherwise it was silent all round, so that one could quite clearly hear the clap of birds’ wings as they flew up from the earth into the balmy, sparkling upper air.
“I have many warm invitations from America,” Swamiji said. “From California especially. Do you know it? No? There is a Mrs. Fisher, Mrs. Gay Fisher, her husband was in shoe business. She often writes to me. She has a very spacious home that she will kindly put at our disposal and also many connections and a large acquaintance among other ladies interested in our movement. She is very anxious for my visit. Why do you make such a face?”
Daphne gave a quick, false laugh and said, “What face?”
“Like you are making. Look at me—why do you always look away as if you are ashamed?” He put his hand under her chin and turned her face toward himself. “Daphne,” he said, tenderly; and then, “It is a pretty name.”
Suddenly, in her embarrassment, she was telling him the story of Daphne: all about Apollo and the laurel tree, and he seemed interested, nodding to her story, and now he was making her walk along with him, the two of them all alone and he leaning lightly on her arm. He was slightly shorter than she was.
“So,” he said, when she had finished, “Daphne was afraid of love . . . I think you are rightly named, what do you say? Because I think—yes, I think this Daphne also is afraid of love.”
He pinched her arm, mischievously, but seeing her battle with stormy feelings, he tactfully changed the subject. Again his eyes shone, again he waved his hand around: “Such a lovely spot for our ashram, isn’t it? Here our foreign friends—from America, like yourself from U.K., Switzerland, Germany, all the countries of the world—here their troubled minds will find peace and slowly they will travel along the path of inner harmony. How beautiful it will be! How inspiring! A new world! Only one thing troubles me, Daphne, and on this question now I want advice from your cool and rational mind.”
Daphne made a modest disclaiming gesture. She felt not in the least cool or rational, on the contrary, she knew herself to have become a creature tossed by passion and wild thoughts.
But “No modesty, please,” he said to her disclaimer. “Who knows that mind of yours better, you or I? Hm? Exactly. So don’t be cheeky.” At which she had to smile: on top of everything else, how nice he was, how terribly, terribly nice. “Now can I ask my question? You see, what is troubling me is, should we have a communal kitchen or should there be a little cooking place attached to each meditation cell? One moment: there are pros and cons to be considered. Listen.”
He took her arm, familiar and friendly, and they walked. Daphne listened, but there were many other thoughts rushing in and out of her head. She was very conscious of his hand holding her arm, and she kept that arm quite still. Above all, she was happy and wanted this to go on forever, he and she walking alone in that deserted place, over shrubs and bricks, the river glistening on one side and the mountains on the other, and above them the sky where the birds with slow, outstretched wings were the only patterns on that unmarred blue.
Not only did it not go on forever, but it had to stop quite soon. Running from the direction of the ashram, stumbling, waving, calling, came a lone, familiar figure: “Yoo-hoo!” shouted Helga. “Wait for me!”
She was out of breath when she caught up with them. Strands of blond hair had straggled into her face, perspiration trickled down her neck into the collar of her pale cerise blouse with mother-of-pearl buttons: her blue eyes glittered like ice as they looked searchingly from Swamiji to Daphne and back. She looked large and menacing.
“Why are you walking like two lovebirds?”
“Because that is what we are,” Swamiji said. One arm was still hooked into Daphne’s and now he hooked the other into Helga’s. “We are talking about kitchens. Let’s hear what you have to advise us.”
“Who cares for me?” said Helga, pouting. “I’m just silly old Helga.”
“Stop thinking about yourself and listen to the problem we are faced with.”
Now there were three of them walking, and Daphne was no longer quite so happy. She didn’t mind Helga’s presence, but she knew that Helga minded hers. Helga’s resentment wafted right across Swamiji, and once or twice she looked over his head (which she could do quite easily) to throw an angry blue glance at Daphne. Daphne looked back at her to ask, what have I done? Swamiji walked between them, talking and smiling and holding an arm of each.
That night there was an unpleasant scene. As usual, Daphne was sitting writing up her notes while Helga lay in bed and from time to time called out, “Turn off the light” before turning around and going back to sleep again. Only tonight she didn’t go back to sleep. Instead she suddenly sat bolt upright and said, “The light is disturbing me.”
“I won’t be a minute,” Daphne said, desperately writing, for she simply had to finish, otherwise tomorrow’s avalanche of notes would be on top of her—Swamiji was so quick, so abundant in his dictation—and she would never be able to catch up.
“Turn it off!” Helga suddenly shouted, and Daphne left off writing and turned around to look at her. From the high thatched roof of their little room, directly over Helga’s bed, dangled a long cord with a bulb at the end: it illumined Helga sitting up in bed in her lemon-yellow nylon nightie, which left her large marble shoulders bare; above them loomed her head covered in curlers, which made her look awesome like Medusa, while her face, flecked with pats of cream, also bore a very furious and frightening expression.
“Always making up to Swamiji,” she was saying in a loud, contemptuous way. “All night you have to sit here and disturb me so tomorrow he will say, ‘You have done so much work, good girl, wonderful girl, Daphne.’ Pah. It is disgusting to see you flirting with him all the time.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Daphne said in a trembly voice.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Helga repeated, making a horrible mimicking face and attempting to reproduce Daphne’s accent but drowning it completely in her German one. “I hate hypocrites. Of course everyone knows you English are all hypocrites, it is a well-known fact all over the world.”
“You’re being terribly unfair, Helga.”
“Turn off the light! Other people want to sleep, even if you are busy being Miss Goody-goody!”
“In a minute,” Daphne said, sounding calm and continuing with her task.
Helga screamed with rage: “Turn it off! Turn it off!” She bounced up and down in her bed with her fists balled. Daphne took no notice whatsoever but went on writing. Helga tossed herself face down into her pillow and pounded it and sobbed and raged from out of there. When Daphne had finished writing, she turned off the light and, undressing in the dark, lay down in her lumpy bed next to Helga, who by that time was asleep, still face downward and her fists clenched and dirty tear marks down her cheeks.
Next morning Helga was up and dressed early, but contrary to her usual custom, she was very quiet and tiptoed around so as not to disturb her roommate. When Daphne finally woke up, Helga greeted her cheerfully and asked whether she had had a good sleep, and then she told her how she had watched poor Klas stepping into a pat of fresh cow dung on his way to meditation. Helga thought this was very funny, she laughed loudly at it and encouraged Daphne to laugh too by giving her shoulder a hearty push. Then she went off to get breakfast for the two of them, and, after they had had it, and stepped outside the room to cross over to Swamiji’s, she suddenly put her arm around Daphne and whispered into her ear: “You won’t tell him anything? No? Daphnelein?” And to seal their friendship, their conspiracy, she planted a big, wet kiss on Daphne’s neck and said, “There. Now it is all well again.”
Swamiji was receiving daily letters from America, and he was very merry nowadays and there was a sense of bustle and departure about him. The current meditation course, for which Daphne and Helga and all of them had enrolled, was coming to an end, and soon they would be expected to go home again so that they might radiate their newly acquired spiritual health from there. But when they talked among themselves, none of them seemed in any hurry to go back. The two Scottish schoolteachers were planning a tour of India to see the Taj Mahal and the Ajanta caves and other such places of interest, while Klas wanted to go up to Almora to investigate a spiritual brotherhood he had heard of there. Swamiji encouraged them—“It is such fun to travel,” he said, and obviously he was gleefully looking forward to his own travels, receiving and answering all those airmail letters and studying airline folders, and one of the young men who attended on him had already been sent to Delhi to make preliminary arrangements.
Daphne had no plans. She didn’t even think of going home; it was inconceivable to her that she could go or be anywhere where he was not. The Scottish schoolteachers urged her to join them on their tour, and she halfheartedly agreed, knowing though that she would not go. Helga questioned her continuously as to what she intended to do, and when she said she didn’t know, came forward with suggestions of her own. These always included both of them; Helga had somehow taken it for granted that their destinies were now inseparable. She would sit on the side of Daphne’s bed and say in a sweet, soft voice, “Shall we go to Khajurao? To Cochin? Would you like to visit Ceylon?” and at the same time she would be coaxing and stroking Daphne’s pillow as if she were thereby coaxing and stroking Daphne herself.
All the time Daphne was waiting for him to speak. In London she had been so sure of what he meant her to do, without his ever having to say anything; now she had to wait for him to declare himself. Did he want her to accompany him to America; did he want her to stay behind in India; was she to go home? London, though it held her mother, her father, her job, her friends, all her memories, was dim and remote to her; she could not imagine herself returning there. But if that was what he intended her to do, then she would; propelled not by any will of her own, but by his. And this was somehow a great happiness to her: that she, who had always been so self-reliant in her judgments and actions, should now have succeeded in surrendering not only her trained, English mind but everything else as well—her will, herself, all she was—only to him.
His dictation still continued every day; evidently this was going to be a massive work, for though she had already written out hundreds of foolscap pages, the end was not yet in sight. Beyond this daily dictation, he had nothing special to say to her; she still went on her evening walk, but he did not again come to meet her. In any case, this walk of hers was now never taken alone but always in the company of Helga, whose arm firmly linked hers. Helga saw to it that they did everything together these days: ate, slept, sat with Swamiji, even meditated. She did not trust her alone for a moment, so even if Swamiji had wanted to say anything private to Daphne, Helga would always be there to listen to it.
Daphne wasn’t sure whether it was deep night or very early in the morning when one of the bearded young men came to call her. Helga, innocently asleep, was breathing in and out. Daphne followed the messenger across the courtyard. Everything was sleeping in a sort of gray half-light, and the sky too was gray with some dulled, faint stars in it. Across the river a small, wakeful band of devotees was chanting and praying; they were quite a long way off and yet the sound was very clear in the surrounding silence. There was no light in Swamiji’s room, nor was he in it; her guide led her through the room and out of an opposite door that led to the adjoining veranda, overlooking the river. Here Swamiji sat on a mat, eating a meal by the light of a kerosene lamp. “Ah, Daphne,” he said, beckoning her to sit opposite him on the mat. “There you are at last.”
The bearded youth had withdrawn. Now there were only the two of them. It was so strange. The kerosene lamp stood just next to Swamiji and threw its light over him and over his tray of food. He ate with pleasure and with great speed, his hand darting in and out of the various little bowls of rice, vegetable, lentils, and curds. He also ate very neatly, so that only the very tips of the fingers of his right hand were stained by the food and nothing dropped into his beard. It struck Daphne that this was the first time that she had seen him eat a full meal: during the course of his busy day, he seemed content to nibble at nuts and at his favorite sweetmeats, and now and again drink a tumbler of milk brought to him by one of his young men.
“Can I talk to you?” he asked her. “You won’t turn into a laurel tree?”
He pushed aside his tray and dabbled his hand in a finger bowl and then wiped it on a towel. “I think it would be nice,” he said, “if you come with me to America.”
She said, “I’d like to come.”
“Good.”
He folded the towel neatly and then pressed it flat with his hand. For a time neither of them said anything. The chanting came from across the river; the kerosene lamp cast huge shadows.
“We shall have to finish our book,” he said. “In America we shall have plenty of leisure and comfort for this purpose . . . Mrs. Gay Fisher has made all arrangements.”
He bent down to adjust the flame of the lamp and now the light fell directly on his face. At that moment Daphne saw very clearly that he was not a good-looking man, nor was there anything noble in his features: on the contrary, they were short, blunt, and common, and his expression, as he smiled to himself in anticipation of America, had something disagreeable in it. But the next moment he had straightened up again, and now his face opposite her was full of shadows and so wise, calm, and beautiful, that she had to look away for a moment, for sheer rapture.
“We shall be staying in her home,” he said. “It is a very large mansion with swimming pool and all amenities—wait, I will show you.” Out of the folds of his gown he drew an envelope, which he had evidently kept ready for her and out of which he extracted some color photographs.
“This is her mansion. It is in Greek style. See how gracious these tall pillars, so majestic. It was built in 1940 by the late Mr. Fisher.” He raised the lamp and brought it near the photograph to enable her to see better. “And this,” he said, handing her another photograph, “is Mrs. Gay Fisher herself.”
He looked up and saw that light had dawned, so he lowered the wick of the lamp and extinguished the flame. Thus it was by the frail light of earliest dawn that Daphne had her first sight of Mrs. Gay Fisher.
“She writes with great impatience,” he said. “She wants us to come at once, straightaway, woof like that, on a magic carpet if possible.” He smiled, tolerant, amused: “She is of a warm, impulsive nature.”
The picture showed a woman in her fifties in a pastel two-piece and thick ankles above dainty shoes. She wore a three-rope pearl necklace and was smiling prettily, her head a little to one side, her hands demurely clasped before her. Her hair was red.
“The climate in California is said to be very beneficial,” Swamiji said. “And wonderful fruits are available. Not to speak of ice cream,” he twinkled, referring to his well-known weakness. “Please try and look a little bit happy, Daphne, or I shall think that you don’t want to come with me at all.”
“I want to,” she said. “I do.”
He collected his photographs from her and put them carefully back into the envelope. There was still chanting on the other side of the river. The river looked a misty silver now and so did the sky and the air and the mountains as slowly, minute by minute, day emerged from out of its veils. The first bird woke up and gave a chirp of pleasure and surprise that everything was still there.
“Go along now,” he said. “Go and meditate.” He put out his hand and placed it for a moment on her head. She felt small, weak, and entirely dependent on him. “Go, go,” he said, pretending impatience, but when she went, he called: “Wait!” She stopped and turned back. “Wake up that sleepy Helga,” he said. “I want to talk to her.” Then he added: “She’s coming with us too.” “To America?” she said, and in such a way that he looked at her and asked, “What’s wrong?” She shook her head. “Then be quick,” he said.
A few days later he sent her a present of a sari. It was of plain mill cloth, white with a thin red border. She put it away but when, later, he saw her in her usual skirt and blouse, he asked her where it was. She understood then that from now on that was what he wanted her to wear, as a distinguishing mark, a uniform almost, the way his bearded young attendants always wore orange robes. She put it on just before her evening walk; it took her a long time to get it on, and when she had, she felt awkward and uncomfortable. She knew she did not look right, her bosom was too flat, her hips too narrow, nor had she learned how to walk in it, and she kept stumbling. But she knew she would have to get used to it, so she persevered; it seemed a very little obstacle to overcome.
Instead of going on her usual route, she turned today in the opposite direction and walked toward the town. First she had to pass all the other ashrams, then she had to go through the little wood where the sadhus did penance, and the beggars stretched pitiful arms toward her and showed her their sores. In these surroundings, it did not seem to matter greatly, not even to herself, what she wore and how she wore it; and when she had crossed the wood, and had got to the temples and bazaars, it still did not matter, for although there were crowds of people, none of them had any time to care for Daphne. The temple bells rang and people bought garlands and incense and sweetmeats to give to their favorite gods. Daphne crossed the holy bridge and, as she did so, folded her hands in homage to the holy river. Once or twice she tripped over her sari, but she didn’t mind, she just hitched it up a bit higher. When she came to the end of the bridge, she turned and walked back over it, again folding her hands and even saying, “Jai Ganga-ji,” only silently to herself and not out loud like everyone else. Then she saw Helga coming toward her, also dressed in a white sari with a red border; Helga waved to her over the heads of people and when they came together, she turned and walked back with Daphne, her arm affectionately around her shoulder. Helga was wearing her sari all wrong, it was too short for her and her feet coming out at the end were enormous. She looked ridiculous, but no one cared; Daphne didn’t either. She was glad to be with Helga, and she thought probably she would be glad to be with Mrs. Gay Fisher as well. She was completely happy to be going to California, and anywhere else he might want her to accompany him.