Read Online Three Continents by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - Free Book Online Page B

the clear pure air of this land of freedom. His audience listened in silence; it was difficult to know how he was being received—they were such a diverse group, it was impossible to think of them as united in anything. Certainly, everyone stood very still—there was no fidgeting, no movement at all anywhere except for the light breeze fluttering around among the tops of the trees. The local people looked solemn the way they were used to looking in church and at other Fourth of July or generally patriotic gatherings. Great principles were nothing new to them. What was surprising to me was the sight of my parents. Not by design, I’m sure, but accidentally, in the forming of the group, they had got next to each other. They both stood very straight—both had fine, tall figures—and with their chins raised, they looked ready to dedicate themselves to something higher than themselves. Their eyes—and these, in spite of everything they had done or left undone, had remained very clear—were fixed on the Rawul; or it may have been on the Rani, who stood a few paces behind him. She too looked solemn—in a practiced way, as though she were used to putting on this expression whenever necessary.
    Three followers carrying instruments struck up as the Rawul hoisted the two flags. The music must have sounded strange to everyone except the Rawul’s party, for it was a most original mixture of baroque, Oriental, and atonal. Its main purpose was to stir and rouse, and it certainly did that to the three players themselves. I had seen them often but never noticed them much: two young men and a girl, pale, blond, undernourished—I would have said anemic, but therewas nothing bloodless in the way they played. One strummed, one blew, one played a kind of drum—all three of them giving it everything they had, pouring themselves into the music as they swayed and swung and bent and rose with it; and when the flags went up the staff, they seemed to go with them—actually rose on tiptoe: until it wasn’t possible to go up any farther, and the music stopped in that abrupt way a certain kind of music does, as if recognizing its own limits. Complete silence followed, except for the birds in the trees, which carried on as usual, and everyone looked up to see where the two flags—the Stars and Stripes and the wheel-within-the-diamond of the Fourth World—had taken off in the breeze and flew together side by side. It was the perfect gesture or symbol the Rawul had intended—or would have been if it hadn’t been slightly marred by those two unhappy figures in the distance, Jean and Barbara, watching the proceedings from the porch and making them seem dubious.
    The flag-raising ceremony was the climax of the party but not the end of it, for the guests stayed on. Perhaps they were reluctant to leave our beautiful house and grounds; or perhaps they were waiting for something more to happen. I had always been aware that our household raised expectations, and that people speculated about us. When I was still quite small and biked over to the farm produce store for their homemade caramels, the old Mrs. Walters who was then in charge of it would keep me talking, trying to extract some information about “your folk up there in the house, your mom and dad,” though she knew perfectly well that Manton had moved out years ago. Before he did, in the brief time that he and Lindsay had been together, it was said that what went on at Propinquity outdid the most squalid area of the town, down on Fourth Street, where wives were calling nightly for the police as protection against their husbands, and sometimes for the ambulance as well. After Manton left, there was a lull for a while. The house was empty, and people used to look at it longingly, wanting for it to come alive again. They were only partly satisfied when Lindsay stayed for weekends with different lovers and finally moved in with