The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai [63]
Lola: “But don’t you find them very simple people?”
Mrs. Sen: “No hang-ups, na, very friendly.”
“But a fake friendliness I’ve heard, hi-bye and no meaning to it.”
“Better than England, ji, where they laugh at you behind your back—”
Perhaps England and America didn’t know they were in a fight to the death, but it was being fought on their behalf, anyway, by these two spirited widows of Kalimpong.
“Mun Mun has no hassles in America, nobody cares where you’re from—”
“Well, if you’re going to call ignorance freedom! And don’t tell me that nobody cares. Everybody knows,” Lola said bitterly as if it actually mattered to her, “how they treat the Negroes.”
“At least they believe you can be happy, baba”
“And the kind of patriotism they go in for turns monkey into donkey phata-phat—just give them a hot dog on a stick, they begin to wave it at the flag and—”
“So, what’s wrong with enjoying yourself—”
______
“Tell us your news, Sai,” pleaded Noni, desperate to change the topic again. “Come on, cheer us up, that much you young people should be good for.”
“No news,” Sai lied and went red thinking of herself and Gyan. Companionship had increased the sensation of fluidity she’d felt before the mirror, that reduction to malleable form, the endless possibility for reinvention.
The three ladies gave her a hard look. She seemed out of focus, they couldn’t read her expression clearly, and she was squirming oddly in her chair.
“So,” said Lola, redirecting her frustration with Mrs. Sen, “no boyfriends yet? Why not, why not? We used to be so adventurous in the old days. Always giving Mummy-Daddy the slip.”
“Let her be. She’s a good girl,” said Noni.
“Better do it now,” said Mrs. Sen, making a mysterious expression. “Wait too long and the craze will go. That’s what I told Mun Mun.”
“Perhaps you have worms,” said Lola.
Noni rummaged in a jumble-filled bowl and came up with a strip of medicine. “Here—take a deworming pill. We got some for Mustafa. Caught him rubbing his bottom on the floor. Sure sign.”
Mrs. Sen looked at the tuberoses on the table. “You know,” she said, “just put a few drops of food coloring and you can make your flowers any color you like, red, blue, orange. Years ago we used to have fun in parties like that.”
Sai stopped petting Mustafa and that spiteful cat bit her.
“Mustafa!” Lola warned, “if you don’t behave yourself, we’ll turn you into katty kebabs!”
Twenty-two
Brigitte’s, in New York’s financial district, was a restaurant all of mirrors so the diners might observe exactly how enviable they were as they ate. It was named for the owners’ dog, the tallest, flattest creature you ever saw; like paper, you could see her properly only from the side.
In the morning, as Biju and the rest of the staff began bustling about, the owners, Odessa and Baz, drank Tailors of Harrowgate darjeeling at a corner table. Colonial India, free India—the tea was the same, but the romance was gone, and it was best sold on the word of the past. They drank tea and diligently they read the New York Times together, including the international news. It was overwhelming.
Former slaves and natives. Eskimos and Hiroshima people, Amazonian Indians and Chiapas Indians and Chilean Indians and American Indians and Indian Indians. Australian aborigines, Guatemalans and Colombians and Brazilians and Argentineans, Nigerians, Burmese, Angolans, Peruvians, Ecuadorians, Bolivians, Afghans, Cambodians, Rwan-dans, Filipinos, Indonesians, Liberians, Borneoans, Papua New Guineans, South Africans, Iraqis, Iranians, Turks, Armenians, Palestinians, French Guyanese, Dutch Guyanese, Surinamese, Sierra Leonese, Malagasys, Senegalese, Maldivians,