Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘Well,’ said Kurilla, ‘they’re better than anything you or I could make.’

‘I’ve promised him a foreman’s job,’ said Havel.

‘You can’t do that,’ said Novak. ‘Everyone starts on the floor.’

‘I’ve promised him a foreman’s job, and he will get one. I don’t want to lose a man like this. What do you think Mr K will say?’

Though Khandelwal had appeared indifferent to Haresh’s fate, he had in fact (as Haresh was later to learn) been very tough with the Czechs. After looking at Haresh’s papers he had said to Havel: ‘Show me any other applicants, Czech or Indian, who have the same qualifications.’ Havel had not been able to. Even Kurilla, the head of Leather, though he had himself graduated from the Middlehampton College of Technology many years earlier, had not had the distinction, as Haresh had had, of standing first. Mr Khandelwal had then said: ‘I forbid you to recruit any person below this man’s qualifications until he is first offered a job.’ Havel had tried to dissuade Khandelwal from this drastic veto, but had not succeeded. He had tried to persuade Haresh to withdraw, but had not succeeded. He had then set him a task that he had not remotely imagined he could succeed in. But Haresh’s shoes were as good as anything he had seen. Pavel Havel, whatever he thought about Indians, would never again speak slightingly about people’s thumbs.

The Goodyear Welted shoes were to lie in Havel’s office for over a year, and he was to point them out on various occasions to visitors whenever he wanted to discuss fine workmanship.

Haresh was called in.

‘Sit, sit, sit,’ said Havel.

Haresh sat down.

‘Excellent, excellent!’ said Havel.

Haresh knew how good his shoes were, but he could not help looking delighted. His eyes disappeared in his smile.

‘So I keep my part of the bargain. You get the job. Eighty rupees a week. Starting on Monday. Yes, Kurilla?’

‘Yes.’

‘Novak?’

Novak nodded, unsmilingly. His right hand was moving over the edge of one of the shoes. ‘A good pair,’ he said quietly.

‘Then good,’ said Havel. ‘You accept?’

‘The salary is too low,’ said Haresh. ‘Compared both to what I was getting before and what I have been offered.’

‘We will put you on probation for six months, and then reconsider the salary. You do not realize, Khanna, how far we go to accommodate you, to make you a Prahaman.’

Haresh said: ‘I am grateful. I accept these terms, but there is one thing I will not compromise on. I must live inside the colony and be able to use the Officers’ Club.’

He realized that, however momentous in terms of the Praha culture was his direct entry at the supervisory level, he would be fatally disadvantaged in social terms if he was not seen — by Lata and her mother and her much-vaunted Calcutta brother, for example — to be on easy terms with the managers of his company.

‘No, no, no—’ said Pavel Havel. He looked thoroughly worried.

‘Impossible,’ said Novak, his eyes boring into Haresh, willing him to give in.

Kurilla did not say anything. He looked at the pair of shoes. He knew that no supervisor — and only one Indian — had been allocated a place among the forty or so houses in the walled compound. But he was glad to see the excellence of the training of his old college vindicated by Haresh. Among his Praha colleagues, most of whom had learned their skills on the job, Kurilla’s technical training was often treated as something of a joke.

Haresh too had found out from Havel’s Indian assistant that only one Indian had so far gained admittance into the hallowed colony — a manager from the Accounts Department.

He sensed Kurilla’s sympathy and Havel’s hesitancy. Even the icy Novak had a little earlier — and most uncharacteristically for him — praised his work in three brief syllables. So there appeared to be hope.

‘I want above everything else to work for Praha,’ said Haresh with feeling. ‘You can see how much I care for quality. That is what has drawn me to your company. I have been an officer at the Cawnpore Leather and Footwear Company, and I was offered a manager’s, an officer’s grade at James Hawley, so my living in the compound would not be so extraordinary. I cannot take the job otherwise. I am sorry. I want to work here so much that I am willing to compromise on salary and on status. Keep me as a foreman, a supervisor, if you wish, and pay me less than I was getting before. But please compromise on this small matter of accommodation.’

There was a confabulation in Czech. The Managing Director was out of the country and could not be consulted. More importantly, the Chairman, who sometimes treated the Czechs as brusquely as they treated Indians, would not be sympathetic to what he would see as their exclusivism. If Haresh refused the job after all this, there would be hell to pay.

Like a litigant listening to legal incomprehensibilities in court, incomprehensibilities that would decide his fortune, Haresh listened to the three men, sensing from their tones and gestures and the occasional word—‘colony’, ‘club’, ‘Khandelwal’, ‘Middlehampton’, ‘Jan Tomin’ and so on — that Kurilla had persuaded Havel and that both were now bearing down on Novak. Novak’s replies were brief, trenchant, entrenched, consisting only rarely of more than five or six syllables. Then, quite suddenly, Novak made an expressive gesture — he half shrugged, he half threw up his hands. He did not utter a word or even a nod of assent, but there was no further dissent from him either.

Pavel Havel turned to Haresh with a broad smile.

‘Welcome — welcome to Praha!’ he said, as if he were offering Haresh the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

Haresh beamed with pleasure, as if indeed he were.

And everyone civilly shook hands.

Arun Mehra and his friend Billy Irani were sitting on the verandah of the Calcutta Club overlooking the lawn. It was lunchtime. The waiter had not yet come around to take his order for a drink. Arun, however, did not wish to press the little brass bell at his white cane table. As a waiter walked past a few yards away, Arun got his attention by patting the top of his left hand with his right.

‘Abdar!’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘What’ll you have, Billy?’

‘A gimlet.’

‘One gimlet and one Tom Collins.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

The drinks came around in due course. Both of them ordered grilled fish for lunch.

They were still on their drinks when Arun, looking around, said: ‘That’s Khandelwal sitting there by himself — the Praha chap.’

Billy’s comment was relaxed: ‘These Marwaris — there was a time when membership in this club meant something.’

They had both on several occasions noted with distaste Khandelwal’s drinking habits. Being limited at home by the powerful Mrs Khandelwal to one drink in the evening, Khandelwal made it his business to get in as many as possible during the day.

But Arun today found nothing much to object to in Khandelwal’s presence, particularly in the fact that he was sitting alone and drinking his fourth Scotch. Mrs Rupa Mehra had written to Arun, ordering him to acquaint himself with Haresh Khanna and to write to her telling her what he thought of him. Haresh apparently had got some job or other in Praha and lived and worked in Prahapore.

It would have been too demeaning for Arun to approach him directly, and he had been wondering how to go about it. But yes, he could certainly mention the matter to the Chairman of Praha and perhaps inveigle a common invitation to tea — on neutral grounds. Here was an excellent opportunity.

Billy was continuing: ‘It’s remarkable. He no sooner finishes one than another’s at his elbow. He never knows when to stop.’