In Search of Love and Beauty (14 page)

They communicated in a mixture of Hindi, English, and common feeling. Sujata told her about her beginnings as a singer when she had been taught by her grandmother. She remembered her grandmother as very old—though actually she couldn't have been much older than Sujata was now. Her voice had been too cracked for her to sing, but she had retained her sharp mind, her sharp ear, and an exquisite sensibility to the finest nuances of music. This made her an excellent though very exacting and impatient teacher, and all the girls in the house tried to hide when it was time for their lesson with her. Sujata also tried to hide, but her grandmother always found her and dragged her out and then those terrible lessons began. But slowly Sujata began to realize that, terrible though they were, full of blows, curses, and tears, she wanted them; and once, when her grandmother had failed to find her hiding place, she had come out on her own to have her lesson. For there were those moments of pitch and intensity when suddenly she got something right—she never knew how, but suddenly she was in some higher place she hadn't suspected was there, though her grandmother seemed to know all the time that it was: and when it happened, her
grandmother gave out a cry and pressed Sujata's head into her lap, so that forever afterward when—unexpectedly, always unexpectedly—she reached some highest moment of her art, her feelings of rapture and recognition became mixed up with the memory of her grandmother's lap and the darkness there and smell of unwashed clothes and tobacco and betel.

Marietta saw a lot of little old women around the house, former singing and dancing girls who could no longer practice their profession and had to be taken care of. One of these was Sujata's mother. Weak, silly, and pleasure-loving, she had not played much of a part in her daughter's early life—there were always plenty of others to look after children in the household—so that Sujata had hardly been aware that she
was
her mother. Until the grandmother died: then, while that frail, tough old corpse lay on her bier, smothered in flowers and with her jaw tied up, at that moment of grief and loss, Sujata's mother had remembered that she had a daughter, and clinging to Sujata, stifling her in her embrace, she had screeched that now only her daughter was left to her and all her hopes and life lay in her. And Sujata, holding the plump, aging little courtesan in her arms, had accepted the charge; and along with her, that of all the others whom her grandmother had ruled over—the light-minded girls and the equally light-minded and even more carefree little old women that they became—Sujata understood that now it was her turn to protect and provide for them.

Sujata also had a daughter—a low-spirited, discontented girl who wanted nothing to do with the family profession and was certainly unfit to learn any of its arts. Ambitious for her to have an education, Sujata had sent her away to boarding school and afterward to college. Only the girl wasn't smart enough for so much higher education, and for this she blamed her mother and Sujata also blamed herself. The daughter was the result of a relationship Sujata had had with a rich businessman who had been her protector for many years. Sujata
had respected but not loved him, and now it was as if all the love she hadn't had for the father was lavished on the daughter—who looked exactly like him, with the same muddy complexion and flabby features of his merchant caste. Sujata felt she could not do enough for this girl, she wanted her to have everything in the world there was to enjoy; but the girl suffered from bad digestion and enjoyed nothing, and the more the mother tried to do for her, the more surly she became and even sometimes seemed to hate her; but that only spurred Sujata on to further feats of loving and giving and she spent much time thinking up what more she could possibly do for her to make her happy.

Love: Sujata lived for it. Not one love but many, and of many different kinds, shading off into each other so that it was difficult to know where one ended and another began. There was her son—a different story altogether from her daughter. Her son's father had been a pimp and occasionally a pickpocket, an unworthy youth in every way—but what charm, what sweetness and tenderness and delicacy! Of course he had disappeared long ago—evaporated like a drop of dew, except that here he was again in the son he didn't know existed. The boy was a replica of his father: playful, beautiful, irresponsible—Sujata hated these qualities in him and also hated herself for being nevertheless unable not to adore them in him as she had in his father. It was all just a vicious circle she had got herself into—of boundless love where she was as ready to die for this feckless boy as she had been for his father (and nearly had when he left her).

And now, what was worst of all, worse than anything, Sujata was in love again. Yes, and with a boy—her son's friend, the same age as her son—but the way she loved him was not as a son, it was with sex and everything. It was shameful, and she
was
ashamed, knowing perfectly well that the time for all that was past; and in communicating all this to Marietta, Sujata did sometimes cover her face in shame.
But when she raised it again, it was flushed with laughter that became as uncontrollable as the tears falling from her eyes in streams. Then she grew very serious and very seriously she asked Marietta, as though expecting her to have the answer, that if it was so wrong to have these feelings, then why were they sent? Why did they come to a human being—as suddenly, unexpectedly, irresistibly as those notes of perfection, those high moments of highest art that her grandmother had taught her to lie in wait for? If it was wrong, if it was shameful, then why was it there? And why was it so glorious?

In his younger days, Leo had traveled all over the country trying to establish different centers, which usually collapsed once his back was turned. He had spent many years in California and had a whole different life out there that Louise knew nothing about; all she knew was that, at unspecified intervals, he would suddenly appear in the city, in her apartment, and take over his usual bedroom there. Sometimes he stayed a day, sometimes three weeks, and would not be heard from again till he turned up the next time.

It was his habit, when he came on one of these sudden visits, to dash in, unpack, have a bath, dress, telephone, and dash out again. Louise was expected to help him in all these practical chores, and usually she loved to do it, down to scrubbing his back where he sat in the tub. Bruno was also kept busy. It was his task to answer the telephone and take down messages for Leo, and he was as meticulous, not to say fussy, in this as in everything he did. There would have been work for Marietta too, but she locked herself in her own room and practiced modern dance movements to her phonograph played very loudly.

Every now and again, Louise had her moments of rebellion. One morning, when Leo had just got in from Los Angeles and was in a great hurry to be off to a series of appointments, she remained in her bedroom and sat on the
bed and brooded. When Leo called to her from the bathroom to come and scrub his back, she didn't answer but stayed where she was, one elbow supported on her knee, her brow on her clenched fist. He had to call several times more before she would go to him—and then not joyfully as she usually did but with dragging feet.

Leo liked very hot baths and the bathroom seemed to be dissolving in vapors. More hot water was running, making the tub overflow with bubbles out of which Leo emerged pink, plump and naked as a pagan god.

He urged her to hurry; he held out the loofah to her, sticking it out of the bath like a trident. She didn't take it; she said, “No, leave me alone,” and put her hands behind her back. Leo stopped singing; he turned off the tap; he listened in silence and apparently with respect while she broke out: “You don't write, you don't call, you don't even know if I'm alive or dead. I don't know if you are. Weeks and months.”

“I called you—when was it?—in March.”

“From a phone booth, collect.”

“I was on my way somewhere.”

“Yes, you were in a hurry. You must have been at a gas station—”

“Right. On my way to Santa Barbara.”

“—and you jumped out of your car full of other people and dashed in the phone booth and dashed out again so you could drive on and get on your way with all these other people that I don't even know who they are. I'm tired of it,” Louise said; and continued: “And all the time I think, when's he coming? I want it so much that I can't understand why it's not happening. I wait for the mail—I look at the phone and it's all dead and doesn't ring and when it does it's someone else, it's never you. I can't live like that. It's not worth living like that.”

“Yeah,” Leo agreed. He didn't defend himself; he just sat there waiting, still holding the loofah sticking out of the
bubble bath; till at last she approached the tub and sat on the edge of it and took the loofah from him. His back rippled with pleasure as she scrubbed it. She did this thoroughly, and though not sullenly, yet as a heavy duty: as something laid upon her that she couldn't escape.

It was a strange fact that the one thing Leo had always found difficult to get out of Louise was money. They had had plenty of scenes and arguments about it, starting from way back when they had first got to know each other. In fact, the subject had come up on his very first visit to Louise. This was a few days after they had been introduced at Regi's. Leo had come to follow up that introduction—not only with Louise but with several of the other ladies he had met there. Although no promises had been exchanged, each of them seemed to expect him; he had that capacity for arousing expectations. So, like the others, Louise was not in the least surprised to see him when he called. He sat with her in her huge salon, under the chandelier hanging down in clusters of swollen grapes, and unfolded his huge plans; and so excited her that she had to hold herself down by clutching the edge of her chair. He talked brilliantly, sometimes flicking his tongue over his lips; he too was excited—by his own plans (he really meant them), by her excitement, and also by her presence. In the same way that his tongue flicked over his lips, his eyes flicked over her—her strong hips and thighs pushing through her dress. They talked on one level, they felt on another. It was all beginning. At the end of a long afternoon, he got up—young, plump Adonis that he then was—and stretched himself and smiled. She too smiled and got up and gave him her hand. He took it and held it and they exchanged looks laden with promise. But when he said he needed a hundred dollars, her expression changed, and she withdrew her hand. He went on smiling.

“Come on,” he said. “Don't disappoint me.” He meant
don't disappoint me in the estimate of your character, but she thought he meant about the hundred dollars.

“It's a lot,” she said cautiously.

That made him laugh: after all he had been saying—after all these plans he had unfolded before her that were going to shake humanity to its foundations, she balked at a paltry sum like that! He took his hat and perched it on his blond curls and then lifted it again in farewell as he turned to leave.

Of course she called him back, but grudgingly; and grudgingly she got her handbag and opened it only enough to draw out her wallet. “I can let you have twenty-five,” she said.

“Fifty?” he said, watching her with amusement as she drew out the notes with cautious, counting fingers. (She was a big generous woman, physically and in every other way, except with hard cash.) She drew out two tens and a five, and when he waited—amused, tender, watching her—she added another ten and then she quickly shut her wallet and slipped it back into her bag and snapped the clasp shut, looking at him defiantly. He pocketed the money cheerfully and patted her hip with a gesture that was already proprietary. Her caution with money appealed to him; it was the same as his own and showed a good housewifely quality to be esteemed in the woman he already instinctively knew would be as much a wife to him as he would ever need.

In the ensuing years, other women opened their purses much wider to him; he took their money and despised them for their carelessness. That didn't mean he let Louise off. He was always making her give more than she wanted to—that ten dollars extra was played over and over again between them. He liked sometimes to tease, sometimes to bully it out of her. What made her madder than anything was when he got it out of Bruno. Bruno was as impressionable as she was; and having been born to money, he was much more generous
with it. All Leo had to do was closet himself with him in the study and, making a very serious face, explain the details of some scheme for which he needed a sizable check. And Bruno, also very serious, would write out that check in his slow, clear hand while Louise listened outside the door. When Leo came out, she would attack him: “What did he give you? Why do you ask him?” Leo showed her the check from just far enough away for her not to be able to read it. When she came closer, he moved off farther, walking backward, and they continued that way through the apartment and out of it to the elevator. With his luck of the devil, the elevator always happened to be just there, waiting for him, and he got into it and the elevator man shut the grille while Leo kissed his fingers at Louise and sank out of sight.

Very much a city person, Bruno had learned late in life to love trees. This may have been because he had so much time and opportunity to be among them. It became his habit to go for long walks, and always in Central Park, crossing the intervening West Side streets as quickly as possible, as though they were hostile territory. But once in the park he seemed happy: he strolled, he sauntered, he sat on benches, he looked at the water. In the winter he wore spats and an overcoat with a fur collar; in the summer lightweight suits of dove-gray and a dove-gray Homburg. When Marietta was small, she sometimes accompanied him; she walked sedately, her white-gloved hand in his. When they met acquaintances—which was rarely—he raised his hat and inclined in a small bow; he encouraged her to curtsy but she felt a fool doing it, so he didn't insist. He pointed out the beauty of the trees to her, and other fine sights; they looked at the animals in the zoo but did not participate in any of the amusements such as pony rides and carousels. When she was with him, Marietta felt such things to be beneath her dignity; she didn't even want any ice cream or popcorn or anything and looked scornfully
at other children eating them and spoiling their clothes.