The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai [141]
Nimi was handed a plate with scrambled eggs and toast, but she didn’t eat because there was too much commotion, too many people, all shouting and arguing. She tried to smile at a baby, who remembered how to work the muscles well after the moment and smiled back when it was too late.
Finally, a voice said, “Hurry up, the train is about to leave, we’d better get to the station,” and most of the crowd poured out of the house again. One of the people left behind had dropped her at her home and that was that.
“We’re part of history being made, Mrs. Patel. Today you saw one of the greatest men in India.”
Which was the one? She couldn’t tell.
______
The judge, returning from tour—five partridge, two quail, one deer, recorded in his hunting diary—had been summoned by the district commissioner on his return and been given the astonishing news that his wife had been part of the Nehru welcoming committee at the Cantonment Railway Station. She had partaken of scrambled eggs and toast with top members of the Congress Party.
It wasn’t the black mark that had been registered against Jemubhai, blocking his promotion, that was of concern to the commissioner, but the embarrassment that would be suffered by the commissioner himself and by the entire civil service that had, he brought down his fist, “A reputation, goddamn it!”
“It couldn’t be true, sir. My wife is a very traditional lady. She is too reserved, as you know, to attend the club. In fact, she never leaves the house.”
“She did this time, oh yes, she did. It’s the traditional types that you have to watch out for, Mr. Patel. Not quite as shy as you would like to claim—it serves as a decoy. I think you will find this trip impossible to disprove, since we have corroboration of it from more than one person. I trust that no member of your family,” he paused, “will do anything to compromise your career again. I’m warning you, Patel, as a friend.”
Unfriendly face. Mr. Singh hated Jemubhai and he hated Gujaratis and, in particular, he hated Patels, always out to seek their own advantage, like jackals.
Jemubhai drove home along the canal road. He knew the efficiency of the spies they employed, but his jaw had clenched and unclenched: How could it be?
“Out of kindness I invited her,” Mrs. Mohan had said when confronted by Jemubhai.
“Out of diabolic slyness,” Jemubhai fumed.
“Out of naughtiness,” Mr. Mohan said, placing a mithai in Mrs. Mohan’s mouth to congratulate his politically astute wife.
But what would Nimi say?
______
His back was to her as she entered. Slowly he fixed himself a drink, poured a cruel shimmer of Scotch, picked up ice cubes with silver pincers in the shape of claws, dropped them into his glass. The ice cracked and smoked.
“What is it?” he asked, swiveling the cubes and turning around, an expression on his face as if he were holding court, preparing to follow a careful rational process.
He swallowed and the whiskey half paralyzed his esophagus. Then the numbness dissipated in a delicious release of heat.
He counted on the fingers of his free hand:
1. “Are you just a country bumpkin?”
Pause.
“Are you a liar?”
Pause.
“Are you playing foolish female games?”
Pause.
“Are you trying deliberately to make me angry?”
Long long pause.
Then, a venomous spat-out sentence:
“Or are you just incredibly stupid?”
When she said nothing, he waited.
“Which of the above? We are not ending this conversation until you reply.”
Longer wait.
“Which? Are you bloody stupid, I ask you?!”
Silence.
“Well, I will have to conclude that it is all of the above. Is it all of the above??”
With fear that grew as she spoke the words, summoning up the same spirit of the powder-puff night, she defied him. To his amazed ears and her own shocked ears, as if waking up to a moment of clarity before death, she said: “You are the one who is stupid.