He wondered if she thought him only a fake indian aristocrat. but how could she judge? though they were all elusives, she had had many happy hours playing an aging chatelaine. and she wasn't that old either- how could she be.
she liked his light malicious brittle banter, never quite stooping to wit or insight. she had outgrown the hecticness of her twenties. she liked unbraiding his moods, she liked that he did not share anything except the most faux maudlin compliments he gave her when he was preoccupied. she liked less and less the sound of the human voice especially if it was not on radio.
she preferred the neat unhappiness to capaciousness of any sort-she thought she was miniaturizing herself into a kind of crystal simplicity. she made lists of lovers and then kept crossing them out, wondering who would stand at the end.
she petted the maharajah's beard- which year, which decade was it, which war. she was ready to sacrifice herself in a trice, but opposed causes made sense to her. she only occasionally wished for the hardening of those heart's muscles.
it was said the maharajah was actually an indian terrorist, that his broodings were over the fate of his people, his country, his gold skinned land. be that as it may. perhaps among his nationalist friends, they would think that in truth he was just the privileged aristocrat- it is a curse to fit so well in opposing camps, and sometimes to forget who you wish to be. she hoped she didn't understand all this too well.
an encroaching grayed out dusk. where does he vanish. he's once said he had to say special prayers at dusk. she wondered of it- scripture and pistol. dusk was her hour to wonder about pillows & house-stuff, the one hour she turned domestic, and covetous of recipes.
is it because there is a war that all the outside had turned so rural. or is it the villagousness that had set the poor to war. she thought of the metopolii all over- did they still sprinkle gold and mirror on the pavement. it had been a long time, months, since she had motored there. were beloved theaters all gutted. she half hoped so too. perhaps the terrorists had taken over, perhaps her father and everyone had been arrested.
she heard the pistol shots of the maharajah- was it the practice. he always forswore it when she asked him and she asked why. what could the poor man be plotting. an air of semifarcical tragedy hovers over him like an aura. when he felt she felt it, he complimented her routinely on her amber hair before he said something teasing and inept, but it was the pale dye of resentful malice that convinced her that their marriage still had some of itself left and wasn't yet a mere comforting bed of boredom. he kissed her earlobe. she liked his small white teeth's luster amid that waterfall of beard.
this two hundred year old wooded wooded house could do with some opened rage. the earth and its handmaiden of gravity had finally wrestled down the sun, it was dark now. her maid informs her, unconvincingly, that its 1931. she wondered if the march of history had been chilled somewhat. weren't the astronomers saying that the universe is expanding at ever accelerating rates. didn't that mean that time was slowing.
but for now he was young and shapely and wired below that beard, with a hint of shoulders almost feminine in its line. often he muttered his was it prayers? or just anxiety in a serene superior unruffled percussive tongue. was he rehearsing arguments with his mysterious friends- or were those friends simply being hanged in some far land; then she wondered if miraculously he was not just young but absurdly so, 21 or 23. she had heard some of that sonorousness in his secretive conversations over the telephone to his mother- she imagined the mother an old mistress, all righteous fineried modesty in a gouged out rectangle of rock in an indian villagy kingdom sitting around a large fire in some moon carpeted desert with an ungainly phone clamped on her ear m magnifying glass reading his letters the foreign languages washing like a turbid river over her ears. there would be groups of women assembled around to ask of what might have happened to this wandering son. but in all this she remembered that to be happy their life may be exquisite, but it must certainly be sparse of gesture, and of types of conversation. her love and education must remain incomplete. she diverted herself by his glossy eyelashes, the garrulous color of his glance at her; she fretted that this weather aged them uncommonly.
was there no end to all this prelude, however pleasingly romantic it was. his unit of thought was rarely more than a season. he was content to fixedly apportion his affectionate- if his voice sometimes seemed to have wings, at other times it was dull lead. outside were ribbons of ice aglitter . they had their daily grapefruit juice her hand still gloved all part of the self harmonizing mood she felt she had to put out or make up but a fine air of nervousness still roamed the lines around her mouth. she sometimes had dreams that she had been poisoned and her blood dripped in a strange calligraphic script while he sat reclining beside, bent of interpreting it as code.
her love felt benumbed, its starwhite dwarfs of doubt cartwheeling. this was not a happy depression meant to build character or learning. she felt insignificant, a sudden curtness railed her brain. perhaps she should spend her days with fussy aunts and older cats- was this not her fate, she who was after all the king's mistresses' grand niece's only child. so thought she thought. what a vastness- and when this night was sugar for love so lovely the floating web of starlight. what brooded him now, why wouldn't he speak. her forehead bulged over with the files of months of suppressed suffering. she determined that all his ethnic contrivances will no more move her.
as she sat limp, inexpectant he rose saying that he must leave, there are revolutions all around asia. he,an itinerant, could not bear the moral bruise of being sedentarised in an enslaving metropolis. there must be waves of arsenic. he looked to her attempting to foil her sorrow and protest but her resolute inertness made him feel a parody. he need that fourth glass. his mind felt disheveled, sinking. her aversion was now almost florid. it seemed his palace of illusion was not only to be shattered but paraded nude in blackface. he pulled her arm suddenly and kissed her wrist, but it was like fishing for herring, feeling almost a light relieved martyrous joy she did not move it away she soon found herself saying : don't sulk eat your dinner...but his sudden feeling of exposure piqued her again
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