Authors: Bharati Mukherjee
Why is he telling me these things?
she wondered.
He squirmed a bit in the driver's seat, and she prepared herself for whatever was to come, but he only released his seat belt, got out, and took her muddy, battered Samsonite from the trunk. Then he opened her door and took her hand to help her to the curb. He handed her his business card. "You're wondering how you can thank me, aren't you, Miss Bose? Not to worry, let's just forget it for today." He scribbled a cell-phone number on the card. "That's for when Mad Minnie makes life inside hell."
With a mock salute, he strode back to the Daewoo. Angie tried to reconcile Peter Champion's Mrs. Bagehot with Mr. GG's Mad Minnie. She was glad, she decided, that she had his private phone number. No shame in accepting help from people willing, even eager, to assist her. A job is the key to happiness, she calculated. A job brings respect and power. Money brings transformation. Stagnation creates doubt and tyranny. Money transforms a girl from Gauripur into a woman from Bangalore.
Anjali waited by the curb until twelve o'clock. No one had entered or departed the property. Two goats wandered through the untended gate and soon lost themselves in the undergrowth. Finally, she followed the goats, dragging her bag behind her. The carved iron door knocker, surely an original relic, had lost its matching plate. A single horn of the brass ram's head thumped into the door's soft, bare wood like a woodsman's ax into a rotting stump.
A stooped old man with stubbly cheeks and chin opened the door. He wore a frayed service jacket like a railroad porter's, but with the name
BAGEHOT
stitched over an unmended pocket. The elbows were torn and the jacket was not clean.
"I would like to give this to Madam Bagehot," she said in Hindi. The old man, whose first name she later learned was Asoke, silently accepted the torn-off sheet on which Peter Champion had handwritten Minnie Bagehot's name and address and then signed it. He shuffled back inside, leaving the front door slightly open. She took this as permission to enter but then wondered if she should stand and wait on the threshold or take a seat on the long teak bench in the foyer. She stood stiffly by a round hall table with a cracked marble top, keeping her backpack and mud-streaked suitcase close to her for some minutes; then she tiptoed to the bench so she could peek into the hallways and rooms that led off the foyer. The corridors were cluttered with bulky armoires, chests and tall-backed chairs and seemed to stretch endlessly in every direction. She made out a main sitting room and a formal dining room with chandelier. The light was dim and filtered through sun-bleached velvet curtains. A broad stairwell descended from upper floors.
From what she could determine from the foyer, Bagehot House was a storage barn, more a warehouse for unusable possessions than an active residence. In the sitting room a hundred years of carved wood furniture and worn upholstery lay piled in a jumble. The walls were filled with portraits of women in ball gowns and bearded men in belted and braided military uniforms, shoulder pads with tassels and pointed helmets topped with what appeared at a distance to be upside-down banana peels. All available horizontal surfaces had been taken over by silver trays piled with dishes and ivory-handled cutlery. Everything seemed secondhand, even the air. Yet she sensed that every object had once held immense value. For some reason she was suddenly reminded of Peter Champion's words:
every note a symphony.
She was hesitant to wander too far indoors. There were probably house rules against curiosity, and she didn't want to ruin her chances even before getting started. After twenty minutes, however, she wondered if she was not being tested, if Minnie Bagehot was not watching from behind a crack in the door just to see how many liberties she would take if she thought herself unobserved.
At twelve-thirty she heard voices from the second floor. She stood at the bottom of the stairs and smiled broadly. Three girls her own age, two of them dressed more or less as she was, in T-shirts and jeans, the other in a green salwar-kameez, were chattering in English as they came down the stairs. Anjali heard a breathless "I told him no way!" and a passionate rejoinder, "They should fire him on the spot!" They were nearly upon her before she was noticed.
"Well, hi," said the first girl down, the
no way
girl. She had spiked, highlighted hair and was much shorter than Anjali. "I'm Tookie D'Mello—Teresa, formally speaking. So you're the new boarder?" She held out her hand. Her scoop-neck T-shirt revealed deep cleavage and featured the three monkeys named see-no, hear-no, and speak-no, which were circled in red, with red lines struck through them. Where are the stores that sell cheeky T-shirts like the ones Anjali had seen today, cut so deep? Even if she borrowed one, Anjali doubted that she could produce even a shadow of a cleft.
"I was promised a room, sort of promised—I hope I have a place." Her story—the Gauripur teacher knowing Bagehot House's proprietor and orally guaranteeing that she would be accepted as a boarder—seemed too convoluted an explanation.
"Don't worry, there's always a place," said the second, she of the pale green salwar-kameez. She introduced herself as Husseina Shiraz, from Hyderabad. Her voice was warm and low, a good phone voice and, from what Anjali could tell, a perfect American accent. A Muslim girl from fabled Hyderabad, but no black sack and eye slits for her. She was as tall as Anjali and as fair, with the same green eyes. Anjali repressed her first impulse, which was to say
Did you say Hyderabad? I changed buses there yesterday!
And then she censored a second thought:
We could almost pass for sisters, more than my own sister and I could.
Husseina also seemed to notice that likeness, staring almost to the point of remarking on it, then turned her head.
Sisters,
Anjali thought again,
only if I dressed up in expensive silks.
"Or space will open up," said the third, much shorter and darker, with glasses, dressed in what looked like an old school uniform of gray tunic and white shirt. "Sunita Sampath," she said. She described herself as "a local girl" and named a small town halfway between Mysore and Bangalore.
Whom did she know, to make it into Bagehot House?
Anjali wondered.
"Sunita even speaks this wretched language," Tookie joked.
"I can give you lessons," Sunita offered.
When Anjali gave them her full name, with its unmistakable Bangla identifier, Tookie rattled off the names of half a dozen Bengali women she worked with. Refugees from marital wars, Anjali wondered, or well-heeled adventurers from progressive families, pursuing the perfect match? Tookie was obviously Goan, neutralizing Anjali's sour memory of Fathers Lobo and Pinto, dull teacher-priests back at da Gama. Tookie sounded friendly but flaky as she ran down her list of ethnic stereotypes: Goans are party beasts, Tamils dorky number-crunchers, Pathans burly hotheads, Bengalis flabby eggheads. Then she added, "Maybe not all the Bengali guys I know. There's one exception. One genuine Romeo." Anjali was about to interject
Not the famous Monish Lahiri?
But she was smart. She caught herself in time.
Instead she asked, "Where are you girls off to?"
"Smokes and caffeine," said Husseina. "Then it's hi-ho, hi-ho. Back by midnight."
"After more smokes and booze," said Tookie.
"Actually
I
don't drink," said Husseina. "My fiancé would not approve."
"Nor do I," added Sunita. "Or smoke."
And I never have,
thought Anjali.
But I had a fiancé.
For an hour, at least. It was a frightening word.
Bangalore worked off the American clock. Everything about Bangalore—even its time—was virtual. Call centers ran 24/7; shifts were constantly starting or ending nine to twelve hours ahead of American time. Peter had said some of the girls even kept Los Angeles or New York time on their watches, calibrated to a mythical home base so they wouldn't be trapped in complicated calculations if asked the time. No "Good morning!" when someone was calling at midnight in America. Some white callers liked to play games, she'd heard, "exposing the Indian." And of course there were the lonely Indians in America, like Mukesh Sharma, trying to tease out phone intimacy from call-center girls.
Then she became aware that all three girls seemed to be looking over their shoulder at the front door. Husseina broke away from the group. "Oh-oh, got to go," she whispered. "Ciao, ladies." She pulled open the heavy front door before Asoke could shuffle to it. The other two tittered. Angie spotted a taxi waiting at the curb. She was about to ask Tookie where Husseina was off to when suddenly a black-sheathed wisp of a woman, with close-cropped white hair, moved like fog into the hallway.
Sunita and Tookie mumbled, "G'day, madam," and sidled out of the hallway, leaving Anjali alone with Minnie Bagehot.
"Cat got your tongue?" the woman snapped. "No greeting? Where are your manners, young lady?" Ten seconds into Anjali's new life at Bagehot House and—from fear or fatigue—she had committed some fatal mistake in etiquette. The old woman turned her back on Anjali and led the way to the dining room. Very straight posture, Anjali noted; Mrs. Bagehot glided rather than walked, the only sound being the clicking of her glasses, suspended on a silver chain, against her strand of pearls. She gripped the carved armrests of a chair at one end of a long, formal dining table and carefully lowered herself into it. She wore white lace gloves without fingertips. Anjali tried not to stare at the bluish tint of the exposed finger pads as they gathered up thin sheets of a handwritten letter. Angie recognized Peter Champion's spidery scrawl.
"G'day, madam," Anjali mumbled.
Should I stand? Should I sit in the chair next to her or across the table from her? My clothes must smell, best not to get too close.
"I can't hear you. Did you wish me good day? Rather late in the day for that. Come closer." It was a command. The old woman indicated that Anjali should seat herself in the chair to her left by rapping the tabletop in front of that chair with the knuckles of both hands.
Seen from inches away, Mrs. Bagehot's forehead, cheeks, and throat were deeply wrinkled, and the wrinkles were spackled with pinkish face powder and orangy rouge. Her eyes were large and brown, her lips so thin they couldn't quite hide stained dentures.
Minnie Bagehot waved a gloved hand at the clutter on the dining table: stacks of floral-patterned, gilt-rimmed china dinner plates, salad plates, soup bowls, soup tureens, platters, tea cups and saucers, cake stands, butter dishes, red glass goblets furry with dust, a couple of tarnished silver trays, and a few pieces of crockery Anjali couldn't identify. "What do you think?"
Anjali was being interviewed by an imperious octogenarian whose good opinion she needed. She didn't have to like Minnie, but she did have to humor her if she wanted a cheap, safe roof over her dazed head.
"I am truly speechless, madam."
"This is a historically important residence, as your former teacher has doubtless informed you. In this very room, on these very plates, a very long time ago, His Majesty Edward VII dined, as well as innumerable minor royalty."
And they haven't been washed since,
she thought.
Minnie's voice was deep, almost masculine, and her accent, so far as Anjali could determine, perfectly British. Unlike earlier generations of Indians, Anjali was too young to have heard a pure English accent or to have experienced the icy rectitude of the British character. Mrs. Bagehot's questions left her defenseless. "May I ask why you have come to Bangalore?"
No problem; she'd already rehearsed it. "My father just died, madam. I have to support myself."
May my lies be forgiven. I am dead to my father; therefore he is dead to me.
Minnie's painted face registered no response. "Will you shame the memory of such company?"
She answered, "I shall never be worthy of royalty, madam."
"But your teacher says you are quite the best English student he has ever had! Is he lying? I must admit I am most fond of that boy. He doubtless told you of our friendship."
"Of course, madam." She lied.
"He wrote his book right here, staying in these rooms, interviewing me and tracking down old pictures. He even made a complete inventory of all the furnishings—their origin, style, provenance, and date of manufacture. It's still somewhere on the premises."
His book? Had the old lady confused Peter with some famous scholar? He didn't just tape village music—he actually wrote a book? She almost laughed out loud:
For a minute, I thought you said he'd written a book!
She knew Peter as a man who read books, but she never imagined knowing a person who'd actually written one. If anything, that knowledge was more wondrous than taking the gift of his money and knowing his sexual secrets. Then she connected the dots: the mysterious American who had written the very special book that Mr. GG had been praising was her own Peter Champion.
She wondered whether she should lower the expectations concerning her English proficiency or add to this praise of Peter Champion. Mrs. Bagehot arched an eyebrow. "My English was judged very good in my school, madam. But ... that was in Bihar." Anjali said it as though she'd uttered a confession. "I've only been in Bangalore a few hours and I've already heard much better English than I'm capable of."
Of which I'm capable?
Minnie frowned, and Angie scrambled for a save. "Better American English, at least."
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."