Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘What?’ said Amit, as if noticing her for the first time. ‘Oh yes, oh yes, that’s certainly true. Here, Lata. Have a plate.’

Although Amit was not too conscientious about his general duties as a host, he tried to make sure that Lata at least was not left stranded during the evening. Varun (who might otherwise have kept her company) had not come to the party; he preferred his Shamshu friends. Meenakshi (who was fond of Lata and normally would have escorted her around) was talking to her parents during a brief respite in their hostly duties, describing the events in the kitchen yesterday afternoon with the Mugh cook and in the drawing room yesterday evening with the Coxes. She had had the Coxes invited this evening as well because she thought it might be good for Arun.

‘But she’s a drab little thing,’ said Meenakshi. ‘Her clothes look as if they’ve been bought off the hook.’

‘She didn’t look all that drab when she introduced herself,’ said her father.

Meenakshi looked around the room casually and started slightly. Patricia Cox was wearing a beautiful green silk dress with a pearl necklace. Her gold-brown hair was short and, under the light of the chandelier, curiously radiant. This was not the mousy Patricia Cox of yesterday. Meenakshi’s expression was not ecstatic.

‘I hope things are well with you, Meenakshi,’ said Mrs Chatterji, reverting for a moment to Bengali.

‘Wonderfully well, Mago,’ replied Meenakshi in English. ‘I’m so much in love.’

This brought an anxious frown to Mrs Chatterji’s face.

‘We’re so worried about Kakoli,’ she said.

‘We?’ said Mr Justice Chatterji. ‘Well, I suppose that’s right.’

‘Your father doesn’t take things seriously enough. First it was that boy at Calcutta University, the, you know, the—’

‘The commie,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji benevolently.

‘Then it was the boy with the deformed hand and the strange sense of humour, what was his name?’

‘Tapan.’

‘Yes, what an unfortunate coincidence.’ Mrs Chatterji glanced at the bar where her own Tapan was still on duty. Poor baby. She must tell him to go to bed soon. Had he had time to snatch a bite to eat?

‘And now?’ asked Meenakshi, looking over at the corner where Kakoli and her friends were nattering and chattering away.

‘Now,’ said her mother, ‘it’s a foreigner. Well, I may as well tell you, it’s that German fellow there.’

‘He’s very good-looking,’ said Meenakshi, who noticed important things first. ‘Why hasn’t Kakoli told me?’

‘She’s quite secretive these days,’ said her mother.

‘On the contrary, she’s very open,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji.

‘It’s the same thing,’ said Mrs Chatterji. ‘We hear about so many friends and special friends that we never really know who the real one is. If indeed there is one at all.’

‘Well, dear,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji to his wife, ‘you worried about the commie and that came to nothing, and about the boy with the hand, and that came to nothing. So why worry? Look at Arun’s mother there, she’s always smiling, she never worries about anything.’

‘Baba,’ said Meenakshi, ‘that’s simply not true, she’s the biggest worrier of all. She worries about everything — no matter how trivial.’

‘Is that so?’ said her father with interest.

‘Anyway,’ continued Meenakshi, ‘how do you know that there is any romantic interest between them?’

‘He keeps inviting her to all these diplomatic functions,’ said her mother. ‘He’s a Second Secretary at the German Consulate General. He even pretends to like Rabindrasangeet. It’s too much.’

‘Darling, you’re not being quite fair,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji. ‘Kakoli too has suddenly evinced an interest in playing the piano parts of Schubert songs. If we’re lucky, we may even hear an impromptu recital tonight.’

‘She says he has a lovely baritone voice, and it makes her swoon. She will completely ruin her reputation,’ said Mrs Chatterji.

‘What’s his name?’ asked Meenakshi.

‘Hans,’ said Mrs Chatterji.

‘Just Hans?’

‘Hans something. Really, Meenakshi, it’s too upsetting. If he’s not serious, it’ll break her heart. And if she marries him she’ll leave India and we’ll never see her again.’

‘Hans Sieber,’ said her father. ‘Incidentally, if you introduce yourself as Mrs Mehra rather than as Miss Chatterji, he is liable to seize your hand and kiss it. I think his family was originally Austrian. Courtesy is something of a disease there.’

‘Really?’ breathed Meenakshi, intrigued.

‘Really. Even Ila was charmed. But it didn’t work with your mother; she considers him a sort of pallid Ravana come to spirit her daughter away to distant wilds.’

The analogy was not apt, but Mr Justice Chatterji, off the bench, relaxed considerably the logical rigour he was renowned for.

‘So you think he might kiss my hand?’

‘Not might, will. But that’s nothing to what he did with mine.’

‘What did he do, Baba?’ Meenakshi fixed her huge eyes on her father.

‘He nearly crushed it to pulp.’ Her father opened his right hand and looked at it for a few seconds.

‘Why did he do that?’ asked Meenakshi, laughing in her tinkling way.

‘I think he wanted to be reassuring,’ said her father. ‘And your husband was similarly reassured a few minutes later. At any rate, I noticed him open his mouth slightly when he was receiving his handshake.’

‘Oh, poor Arun,’ said Meenakshi with unconcern.

She looked across at Hans, who was gazing adoringly at Kakoli surrounded by her circle of jabberers. Then, to her mother’s considerable distress, she repeated:

‘He’s very good-looking. Tall too. What’s wrong with him? Aren’t we Brahmos supposed to be very open-minded? Why shouldn’t we marry Kuku off to a foreigner? It would be rather chic.’

‘Yes, why not?’ said her father. ‘His limbs appear to be intact.’

Mrs Chatterji said: ‘I wish you could dissuade your sister from acting rashly. I should never have let her learn that brutal language from that awful Miss Hebel.’

Meenakshi said: ‘I don’t think anything we say to one another has much effect. Didn’t you want Kuku to dissuade me from marrying Arun a few years ago?’

‘Oh, that was quite different,’ said Mrs Chatterji. ‘And besides, we’re used to Arun now,’ she continued unconvincingly. ‘We’re all one big happy family now.’

The conversation was interrupted by Mr Kohli, a very round teacher of physics who was fond of his drink, and was trying to avoid bumping into his reproving wife on his way to the bar. ‘Hello, judge,’ he said. ‘What do you think of the verdict in the Bandel Road case?’

‘Ah, well, as you know, I can’t comment on it,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji. ‘It might turn up in my court on appeal. And really, I haven’t been following it closely either, though everyone else I know appears to have been.’

Mrs Chatterji had no such compunctions, however. All the newspapers had carried long reports about the progress of the case and everyone had an opinion about it. ‘It really is shocking,’ she said. ‘I can’t see how a mere magistrate has the right—’

‘A Sessions Judge, my dear,’ interjected Mr Justice Chatterji.

‘Yes, well, I don’t see how he can possibly have the right to overturn the verdict of a jury. Is that justice? Twelve good men and true, don’t they say? How dare he set himself up above them?’

‘Nine, dear. It’s nine in Calcutta. As for their goodness and truth—’

‘Yes, well. And to call the verdict perverse — isn’t that what he said—?’