Read Three Continents for Free Online

so—to snatch my arm away—seemed childish, so I went with him and we sat in rocking chairs. I ought to explain that the porch had always been very handsome, but now the gray-and-white marble floor was polished and the white pillars newly painted; and the lawn it faced had been smoothly mown, and at this moment one of the followers was assiduously watering it to keep it emerald green. A house and grounds like ours did need a large staff, no doubt.
    â€œI know you don’t think too much of all that,” Crishi said, nodding toward the circle under the tree. From this distance, and in a mellow evening light, the scene was dignified and serene. They were all grouped around the Rawul as in a painting of a sage inspiring his disciples with wisdom and high ideals. “He means well, you have to admit,” Crishi said.
    I said “I do admit”—no doubt sounding very uptight, for he cried out, half laughing and half exasperated: “Oh Jesus, Harriet, you sound just like Michael!”
    Well, to me that was a big compliment, but I didn’t carefor his familiarity; he even touched my knee—very very lightly, true, but he did touch it, as one laying a claim. I moved it away and he went on: “You’ve got such lovely principles, both of you, I think it’s wonderful.” I sat upright and stared straight ahead of me; my hands were folded in my lap. I knew I looked like generations of my own grandmothers, and I also felt like them.
    Crishi dropped his voice and spoke more intimately, sharing a secret with me: “But Michael’s changing, you must have noticed. He’s coming around.” When he felt me tense up—“Yes to me, but that’s the least of it. . . . To the Rawul and the Fourth World—yes, okay, I know it can sound quite ridiculous—daft,” he said, fishing out that word from somewhere in his cultural ragbag. “But don’t think it’s all phony; all neti.” When he used that word, I flinched—he could have heard it in our sense only from Michael, who had up till then used it only with me. Crishi said it quite casually, taking possession of it as easily as of our house and everyone in it. “The Rawul really is a ruler and from a dynasty older than any other in the whole world. It’s true,” he said, stretching his eyes wide open so I could see how honest they were. “He’s a direct descendant from the Moon,” he added, and his lips twitched, and he kept on looking at me, encouraging me to smile if I wanted to; and when I didn’t, he went on smiling himself—maybe at me as well as at the Rawul. But he changed his tone: “I like it that you’re skeptical, Harriet. I wish more people were, instead of being so keen to throw themselves into the action. It’s a responsibility when they do that. I don’t mean Michael, of course.”
    All the time his eyes were searching me out—as to what I was thinking, but also in another way, in a quite frankly sexual way. Only strangely it was this latter that was impersonal—it was how he instinctively looked at any girl or woman; whereas the other was much more directed at me, Harriet: what I was thinking and feeling.
    â€œIt’s really nice having Michael with us. He has a good personality. I’m not saying the others don’t—they all do really, including Paul. Paul? You know who you saw me with yesterday? Heard me with?” He laughed ruefully, and for a moment put one hand over his eyes. Then he looked at me,biting his lip: “I have this horrible foul temper making me do things. It’s a liability to me and a shock to other people.” He sounded so contrite that I began to feel I had maybe overreacted.
    If I had known him better—or, at that time, liked him better—I could have told him that it was hardly the first ugly fight I had witnessed. I had grown up with scenes between my parents—when I