Leave It to Me - Bharati Mukherjee [56]
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR: Objection! She was no lady, she was a prostitute. Also, in the absence of birth certificates of mother and son, questions of race, ethnicity, et cetera, are lacking evidentiary confirmation.
JUDGE: Objection overruled. Clarification noted, however.
BARRISTER FOR DEFENDANT: Mr. Hawk’s mother took the infant Mr. Hawk to the orphanage with a cock and bull story about having found him under the bar counter. Therefore, I submit, Your Honour, that the East has played a greater part than the West in the life and character formation of Romeo Hawk. The witness was the temptress. She lured her victim, this Fallon fellow, into her hostel room and provided him with fatal enjoyment.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR: But the witness visited the victim in the victim’s room. The victim did not enter, I repeat the victim did not enter, the witness’s room. The wretched truth is, Your Honour, the witness was a hippie from foreign, and not having sufficient funds to pay for food and lodging, she resorted to underhand—please amend that to underbody—methods of bill payment.
BARRISTER FOR DEFENDANT: Is that not further proof, Your Honour, of the witness’s promiscuity? She cannot pay for roof over her head, so she sells sexual favors and pleasures for fiduciary gain.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR: Objection! Sexual exuberance is an illness, not a commodity for barter. My client suffers from the disease of sexual exuberance.
BARRISTER FOR DEFENDANT: If that is an ailment, I thank God that it is an ailment that has not spread its contagion to this subcontinent. I shall not waste more of the court’s time on the West’s moral cancers. The rest of that night’s scenario can be reconstructed by any simpleton. Like most Western youths, the witness is a frequent, if not habitual, consumer of contraband drugs. She was found to be in personal possession of sundry drugs for artificially inducing states of euphoria, aphrodisia and melancholia. I submit that she, the Witness-turned-Approver, slipped a large dosage of sleep-inducive medication, namely Man-drax, into the victim’s alcoholic beverage. Then she executed her carnal designs on the victim’s person. And when the drugged victim was rendered sufficiently drowsy by Mandrax, she garroted him.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR: But how could such a slip of a young lady garrot an adult male with the athletic physique of this Mister Fallon?
BARRISTER FOR DEFENDANT: With her hair ribbon, no less.
PUBLIC PROSECUTOR: Objection! The marks on the victim’s neck were made by human digits. They were not made by satin strings with which pretty ladies bind their tresses. We draw attention to the autopsy report completed on the deceased tourist from Belgium. The autopsy report indicates that severe pressure was applied to victim’s neck and throat by means of exceptionally strong human fingers.
My mother’d committed follies on the other side of the moon, and now a lover or blackmailer was hounding her. It could be any flower child’s story. Ma Jess had seen herself as a missionary; she’d made self-improvement her mission. Ben Franklin, turn over in your grave. She was the perfect daughter of her times: morality an “opinion call,” idealism a means to an end.
All of it made crazy sense to them. None of it made sense to me. Their Asia was excess. My Asia was oppositions in perfect balance.
I felt inspired by Jess. It doesn’t have to be adversarial, Mother. You cracked under pressure; I won’t. That’s where we’re different.
I prowled the office, reaching into backs of drawers I rarely opened. The transcripts didn’t have to be my only heirlooms. You never know: that’s the American way. Discovery, it wouldn’t matter how trivial, would enhance