‘Hans Sieber,’ said her father. ‘Incidentally, if you introduce yourself as Mrs Mehra rather than as Miss Chatterji, he is liable to seize your hand and kiss it. I think his family was originally Austrian. Courtesy is something of a disease there.’
‘Really?’ breathed Meenakshi, intrigued.
‘Really. Even Ila was charmed. But it didn’t work with your mother; she considers him a sort of pallid Ravana come to spirit her daughter away to distant wilds.’
The analogy was not apt, but Mr Justice Chatterji, off the bench, relaxed considerably the logical rigour he was renowned for.
‘So you think he might kiss my hand?’
‘Not might, will. But that’s nothing to what he did with mine.’
‘What did he do, Baba?’ Meenakshi fixed her huge eyes on her father.
‘He nearly crushed it to pulp.’ Her father opened his right hand and looked at it for a few seconds.
‘Why did he do that?’ asked Meenakshi, laughing in her tinkling way.
‘I think he wanted to be reassuring,’ said her father. ‘And your husband was similarly reassured a few minutes later. At any rate, I noticed him open his mouth slightly when he was receiving his handshake.’
‘Oh, poor Arun,’ said Meenakshi with unconcern.
She looked across at Hans, who was gazing adoringly at Kakoli surrounded by her circle of jabberers. Then, to her mother’s considerable distress, she repeated:
‘He’s very good-looking. Tall too. What’s wrong with him? Aren’t we Brahmos supposed to be very open-minded? Why shouldn’t we marry Kuku off to a foreigner? It would be rather chic.’
‘Yes, why not?’ said her father. ‘His limbs appear to be intact.’
Mrs Chatterji said: ‘I wish you could dissuade your sister from acting rashly. I should never have let her learn that brutal language from that awful Miss Hebel.’
Meenakshi said: ‘I don’t think anything we say to one another has much effect. Didn’t you want Kuku to dissuade me from marrying Arun a few years ago?’
‘Oh, that was quite different,’ said Mrs Chatterji. ‘And besides, we’re used to Arun now,’ she continued unconvincingly. ‘We’re all one big happy family now.’
The conversation was interrupted by Mr Kohli, a very round teacher of physics who was fond of his drink, and was trying to avoid bumping into his reproving wife on his way to the bar. ‘Hello, judge,’ he said. ‘What do you think of the verdict in the Bandel Road case?’
‘Ah, well, as you know, I can’t comment on it,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji. ‘It might turn up in my court on appeal. And really, I haven’t been following it closely either, though everyone else I know appears to have been.’
Mrs Chatterji had no such compunctions, however. All the newspapers had carried long reports about the progress of the case and everyone had an opinion about it. ‘It really is shocking,’ she said. ‘I can’t see how a mere magistrate has the right—’
‘A Sessions Judge, my dear,’ interjected Mr Justice Chatterji.
‘Yes, well, I don’t see how he can possibly have the right to overturn the verdict of a jury. Is that justice? Twelve good men and true, don’t they say? How dare he set himself up above them?’
‘Nine, dear. It’s nine in Calcutta. As for their goodness and truth—’
‘Yes, well. And to call the verdict perverse — isn’t that what he said—?’
‘Perverse, unreasonable, manifestly wrong and against the weight of the evidence,’ recited the bald-headed Mr Kohli with a relish he usually reserved for his whisky. His small mouth was half open, a little like that of a meditative fish.
‘Perverse, unreasonably wrong and so on, well, does he have a right to do that? It is so — so undemocratic somehow,’ continued Mrs Chatterji, ‘and, like it or not, we live in democratic times. And democracy is half our trouble. And that’s why we have all these disorders and all this bloodshed, and then we have jury trials — why we still have them in Calcutta when everyone else in India has got rid of them I really don’t know — and someone bribes or intimidates the jury, and they bring in these impossible verdicts. If it weren’t for courageous judges who set these verdicts aside, where would we be? Don’t you agree, dear?’ Mrs Chatterji sounded indignant.
Mr Justice Chatterji said, ‘Yes, dear, of course. Well there you are, Mr Kohli; now you know what I think. But your glass is empty.’
Mr Kohli, bewildered, said, ‘Yes, I think I’ll get another.’ He looked quickly around to make sure the coast was clear.
‘And please tell Tapan he should go to bed at once,’ said Mrs Chatterji. ‘Unless he hasn’t eaten. If he hasn’t eaten, he shouldn’t go to bed at once. He should eat first.’
‘Do you know, Meenakshi,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji, ‘that your mother and I were arguing with each other so convincingly one day last week that the next day by breakfast we had convinced ourselves of each other’s points of view and argued just as fiercely as before?’
‘What were you arguing about?’ said Meenakshi. ‘I miss our breakfast parliaments.’
‘I can’t remember,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji. ‘Can you? Wasn’t it something to do with Biswas Babu?’
‘It was something to do with Cuddles,’ said Mrs Chatterji.
‘Was it? I’m not sure it was. I thought it was — well, anyway, Meenakshi, you must come for breakfast one day soon. Sunny Park is almost walking distance from the house.’
‘I know,’ said Meenakshi. ‘But it’s so difficult to get away in the morning. Arun is very particular about things being just so, and Aparna is always so taxing and tedious before eleven. Mago, your cook really saved my life yesterday. Now I think I’ll go and say hello to Hans. And who’s that young man who’s glowering at Hans and Kakoli? He’s not even wearing a bow tie.’
Indeed, the young man was virtually naked: dressed merely in a standard white shirt and white trousers with a regular striped tie. He was a college student.
‘I don’t know, dear,’ said Mrs Chatterji.
‘Another mushroom?’ asked Meenakshi.
Mr Justice Chatterji, who had first coined the phrase when Kakoli’s friends started springing up in profusion, nodded. ‘I’m sure he is,’ he said.
Halfway across the room, Meenakshi bumped into Amit, and repeated the question.
‘He introduced himself to me as Krishnan,’ said Amit. ‘Kakoli knows him very well, it seems.’
‘Oh,’ said Meenakshi. ‘What does he do?’
‘I don’t know. He’s one of her close friends, he says.’
‘One of her closest friends?’
‘Oh no,’ said Amit. ‘He couldn’t be one of her closest friends. She knows the names of those.’
‘Well, I’m going to meet Kuku’s Kraut,’ said Meenakshi with decision. ‘Where’s Luts? She was with you a few minutes ago.’
‘I don’t know. Somewhere there.’ Amit pointed in the direction of the piano, to a dense and voluble section of the crowd. ‘By the way, watch your hands when watching Hans.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Meenakshi. ‘Daddy warned me too. But it’s a safe moment. He’s eating. Surely he won’t set down his plate to seize my hand?’
‘You can never tell,’ said Amit darkly.
‘Too delicious,’ said Meenakshi.
7.11
Meanwhile Lata, who was in the thickest part of the party, felt as if she was swimming in a sea of language. She was quite amazed by the glitter and glory of it all. Sometimes a half-comprehensible English wave would rise, sometimes an incomprehensible Bengali one. Like magpies cackling over baubles — or discovering occasional gems and imagining them to be baubles — the excited guests chattered on. Despite the fact that they were shovelling in a great deal of food, everyone managed to shovel out a great many words.