Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

About fifteen minutes after the Ambassador was due to arrive at the house for their one-hour talk, Amit was informed by telephone that he would be ‘a little late’. That would be fine, said Amit.

About half an hour after he was due to arrive, Amit was told that he might be a little later still. This annoyed him somewhat, as he could have done some writing in the meantime. ‘Has the Ambassador arrived in Calcutta?’ he asked the man on the phone. ‘Oh, yes,’ said the voice. ‘He arrived yesterday afternoon. He is just running a little late. But he left for your house ten minutes ago. He should be there in the next five minutes.’

Since Biswas Babu was due to arrive soon and Amit did not want to keep the family’s old clerk waiting, he was irritated. But he swallowed his irritation, and muttered something polite.

Fifteen minutes later, Señor Bernardo Lopez arrived at the door in a great black car. He came with a lively young woman whose first name was Anna-Maria. He was extremely apologetic and full of cultural goodwill; she on the other hand was brisk and energetic and extracted a pocketbook from her handbag the moment they sat down.

During the flow of his ponderous and gentle words, all slowly weighed, deliberated and qualified before they could be expressed, the Ambassador looked everywhere but at Amit: he looked at his teacup, at his own flexed or drumming fingers, at Anna-Maria (to whom he nodded reassuringly), and at a globe in a corner of the room. From time to time he would smile. He pronounced ‘very’ with a ‘b’.

Caressing his pointed bald head nervously and gravely, and conscious of the fact that he was an inexcusable forty-five minutes late, he attempted to come straight to the point:

‘Well, Mr Chatterji, Mr Amit Chatterji, if I may make so bold, I am often called upon in my official duties, as you know, being Ambassador and so on, which I have been for about a year now — unfortunately, with us it is not permanent, or indeed definite; there is an element of, I might even say, or it would perhaps not be unfair to say (yes, that is better put, if I might be allowed to praise myself for a locution in another language) that there is an element of arbitrariness in it, in our stay in a particular place, I mean; unlike you writers who. . but anyway, what I meant was that I would like to put to you one question directly, which is to say, forgive me, but as you know I have arrived here forty-five minutes in tardiness and have taken up forty-five minutes of your good time (of your good self, as I notice some say here), partly because I set out very tardily (I came here directly from a friend’s home here in this remarkable city, to which I hope you will come sometime when you are more at leisure — or to Delhi needlessly — by which I mean rather, needless to say, to our own home — though you must of course tell me if I am imposing myself on you) but I asked my secretary to inform you of that (I hope he did, yes?), but partly because our driver led us to Hazra Road, a, I understand, very natural mistake, because the streets are almost parallel and close to each other, where we met a gentleman who was kind enough to redirect us to this beautiful house — I speak as an appreciator of not just the architecture but the way you have preserved its atmosphere, its perhaps ingenuity, no, ingenuousness, even virginity — but as I said I am (to come to the point) late, and indeed forty-five, well, what I must now ask you as I have asked others in the course of my official duties, although this is by no means an official duty but one entirely of pleasure (though I indeed do have something to ask of you, or rather, ask you about), I have to ask you as I ask other officials who have schedules to keep, not that you are official, but, well, a busy man: do you have any appointment after this hour that you have allotted me, or can we perhaps exceed. . yes? Do I make myself clear?’

Amit, terrified that he might have to face more of this, said hastily: ‘Alas, Your Excellency will forgive me, but I have a pressing engagement in fifteen minutes, no, forgive me, five minutes now, with an old colleague of my father’s.’

‘Tomorrow then?’ asked Anna-Maria.

‘No, alas, I am going to Palashnagar tomorrow,’ said Amit, naming the fictitious town in which his novel was set. He reflected that this was no more than the truth.

‘A pity, a pity,’ said Bernardo Lopez. ‘But we still have five minutes, so let me ask simply this, a long puzzlement to me: What is all this about “being” and birds and boats and the river of life — that we find in Indian poetry, the great Tagore unexcluded? But let me say in qualification that by “we” I mean merely we of the West, if the South may be subsumed in the West, and by “find” I mean that which is as if to say that Columbus found America which we know needed no finding, for there were those there for whom “finding” would be more insulting than superfluous, and of course by Indian poetry, I mean such poetry as has been made accessible to us, which is to say, such as has been traduced by translation. In that light, can you enlighten me? Us?’

‘I will try,’ said Amit.

‘You see?’ said Bernardo Lopez with mild triumph to Anna-Maria, who had put down her notebook. ‘The unanswerables are not unanswerable in the lands of the East. Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, and when it is true of a whole nation, it makes one marvel the more. Truly when I came here one year ago I had a sense—’

But Bahadur now entered, and informed Amit that Biswas Babu was waiting for him in his father’s study.

‘Forgive me, Your Excellency,’ said Amit, getting up, ‘it appears as though my father’s colleague has arrived. But I shall give earnest thought to what you have said. And I am deeply honoured and grateful.’

‘And I, young man, though young here is merely to say that the earth has gone around the sun less often since your inception, er, conception, than mine (and is that to say anything at all?), I too will bear in mind the result of this confabulation, and consider it “in vacant or in pensive mood”, as the Poet of the Lake has chosen to express it. Its intensity, the urgings I have felt during this brief interview, which have led me upwards from nescience to science — yet is that in truth an upward movement? Will time even tell us that? Does time tell us anything at all? — such I will cherish.’

‘Yes, we are indebted,’ said Anna-Maria, picking up her notebook.

As the great black car spirited them away, no longer running behind time, Amit stood on the porch step waving slowly.

Though the fluffy white cat Pillow, led on a leash by his grandfather’s servant, crossed his field of vision, Amit did not follow it with his eyes, as he normally did.

He had a headache, and was in no mood to talk to anyone. But Biswas Babu had come specially to see him, probably to make him see sense and take up the law again, and Amit felt that his father’s old clerk, whom everyone treated with great affection and respect, should not be required to sit and cool his heels longer than necessary — or rather, shake his knees, which was a habit with him.

What made matters slightly uncomfortable was that though Amit’s Bengali was fine and Biswas Babu’s spoken English was not, he had insisted — ever since Amit had returned from England ‘laden with laurels’ as he put it — on speaking to him almost exclusively in English. For the others, this privilege was only occasional; Amit had always been Biswas Babu’s favourite, and he deserved a special effort.

Though it was summer, Biswas Babu was dressed in a coat and dhoti. He had an umbrella with him and a black bag. Bahadur had given him a cup of tea, which he was stirring thoughtfully while looking around at the room in which he had worked for so many years — both for Amit’s father and for his grandfather. When Amit entered, he stood up.