Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [53]
Minnie briefly smiled, or twitched her lips. "If you can call that English." She seemed to be taking in everything Anjali had said and for some reason was finding it amusing or not quite relevant. "This residence has ten bedrooms, but only four are kept open. We had a retinue of over one hundred, including drivers, gardeners, cooks, butlers, khid-mugars, chaprasis, bearers, durwans, and jamadars. Now only Asoke is left, and he has worked here for over seventy years. The garage in the back housed twenty motor cars—when I say motor cars, I am referring to Bentleys and Duesenbergs, not the rattletraps Indian people drive. My late husband staged durbars for five hundred guests, nizams and maharajas and the viceroy. For entertainment we knocked croquet balls into the hedges and played badminton under torchlight, and the guests arrived on fabulous elephants decked out in silk brocade, with gold caps on their tusks and wondrously decorated howdahs, making their way in a procession down Oxford Street, which I hope you've noticed is now Bagehot Alley, turning in at Kew Gardens Corner, then up to the porte-cochère. There, each dignitary would disembark down decorated ladders, still stored somewhere on the premises. If you doubt me, there are photographs to prove it."
"I know it is true, madam," she said.
"How so?"
Anjali's talent for spontaneous dissembling never failed her. "I've seen Mr. Champion's book," she said. "Then a photographer named Rabi Chatterjee showed me more pictures. He said there are many wonders in Bangalore, but that Bagehot House is the most important."
"Perhaps you've also seen pictures of my late husband?"
"I don't believe so, no, madam."
She lifted her arm, and Asoke shuffled to her side. "Asoke, album deo," she commanded. Page after page of blurred and faded photos of Raj-era life in Bagehot House had to be admired, awe expressed, weak tea in chipped cups sipped, stale ginger cookies nibbled, and finally Anjali passed the landlady's interview and was admitted as a paying guest with probationary status.
"Unfortunately, no bedrooms are open at the moment," said Minnie, and Anjali must have flinched. But Mr. Champion promised! Where am I to go, then?
"I quite understand, madam," she managed to say.
"No proper bedroom, that is." Anjali detected a softening of tone, and leaned forward. "You might even hesitate—"
Was she being tested? A British game of some sort? A test of her dignity, of her self-respect? Her desperation? Should she grovel?
"I have a shuttered porch, humble but livable, cot, chair, and dresser, two hundred a week, bed tea and one tiffin included."
"That would be most satisfactory, madam." A thousand a month, she calculated, with food, in Bangalore. I can live for months on Peter's gift!
"In England after the war, we would have considered this a very desirable bed-sitter for a single working girl." After assessing Anjali's reaction, she added, "I understand that some ladies in Kent Town are asking for more, with no food," she said, but left the corollary unstated—I am doing a great favor, but if you break house rules, you'll be out on your ear.
Anjali didn't know what the house rules were because Minnie deployed them according to her whim. The only rule she spelled out, in a cross-stitched sampler that hung above the bookcase containing her collection of hardcover romance novels was
ALL GLORY TO THE BAGEHOT NAME
MAY IT NEVER BE DARKENED BY SHAME
Fortunately Tookie D'Mello knew everything and loved to share it.
On Anjali's second day in Bagehot House, Tookie said, "We'll have to go out to Glitzworld some night. I know the bartender. That's my advice to all freshers in Bangalore. Get to know the bartenders."
Everything in the old days had a white version and a black one. It was understood, by Tookie at least, that Minnie could afford the low rents and the weekly arrival of fresh mutton and brandy because of a secret agreement with certain local interests. Rolling off Tookie's tongue, "interests" took on a sinister sibilance.