Travelers by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Page B

“Again!” cried the Sikhs.
    â€œCome on,” Gopi repeated. The little servant boy also stood waiting. Lee stood up slowly. “I can hardly move ,” she said, holding her stomach again. Gopi followed her closely. He knew all eyes were upon him. He was a hero and he liked it, but he was also rather nervous. To hide this, he gave a jaunty hitch to his pants and walked in a careless, swaggering way.
    They groped up the dark staircase, holding on to both side walls for support. They came to a landing with two doors and the boy opened one of them with his keys. He ushered them in and shut the door on them. The mosque was so close it seemed to be right there in the room with its huge domes and its flight of steps and the booths huddled at the foot of the steps. Lee gave a cry of pleasure and strode to the window. She stayed there looking out, so enraptured by what she saw that she quite forgot about Gopi.
    He didn’t know what to do next. For a while he stood behind her, also looking at the view; but he couldn’t see what was so interesting about it—it was just the usual things. Then he turned back into the room and that wasn’t interesting either. He sat by the side of the bed and eased himself out of his shoes; this was always a luxurious moment for him and he sat wriggling his toes and pulling and cracking them. Next he lay down on the bed. His eyes roved over the ceiling and down the walls; there was nothing to hold his attention except a framed sampler in cross-stitch hanging crooked from a nail. So he looked at Lee standing by the window. How slim and strong she was; her light brown hair trailed down her back. He desired her very much.
    â€œWhat’s that?” she asked. “What are they doing? Gopi, do come here.”
    He got up and joined her again by the window. He looked, but all he saw was the usual cotton-carders working the strings of their machines. Lee watched fascinated as the flakes of cotton rose and fell in fluffy clouds. Gopi put his arm round her and ranhis hand down her hip. “Don’t,” she said and shook him off with an easy practiced movement.
    What next? He felt utterly bewildered. He also felt that he was letting himself down—and not only himself but all the men downstairs whom he knew to be having exciting thoughts about what was going on up here.
    Now Lee’s attention traveled from the cotton-carders to the steps of the mosque. There were people going up or coming down from the mosque, stepping around others who sat there to rest or had stretched themselves out to sleep. Many of them were beggars and some importuned the passers-by while others held out their mutilated limbs in silence. There were some terrible sights down there, but Lee had already seen many like them in the course of her travels. She had begun to accept the fact that it was the fate of many to suffer hunger and disease. Just now the beggars seemed like essential props placed on the steps of the mosque to remind those who were going in to pray of how much there was to pray for.
    Gopi again put his hand where it had been before; again she flicked him off with the same movement as of a practiced hand waving away flies. She really didn’t notice or care; she was too engrossed in what was outside. Now her eyes had traveled up to the great domes hovering against a sky of a cerulean blue which she had before seen only in paintings depicting the birth or death of Christ. At that moment she had what she thought must be a mystic experience: at any rate, she felt a great desire to merge with everything that was happening out there—to become part of it and cease to be herself.
    â€œThen why did you come!” Gopi suddenly shouted. She turned to him in amazement. She saw he was terribly upset.
    â€œWhat happened?”
    Her question, uttered in such innocence and her eyes also so clear and puzzled and innocent, increased his sense of humiliation. Why did she think she