Yet I hoped that his purpose was served. If there was going to be an opening, I’m sure my father would remember Mohon, and that he was ready to be transferred to Calcutta. I forgot to obey Romola’s instructions, and didn’t say anything to Mohon except “Try to cut down on the beer.” He looked at me, the old look of friendship, and sighed, “Yeah, that’s the one thing I must do.”

When he got up to go, heavy, his figure bigger than I could remember, I looked at his limp and expected it to disappear any minute, because it seemed to come from a callus under his foot that was destined to fade.

The Party

The Party

THE DINNER HAD BEEN appointed for, first, Friday, then Saturday night, and already, by the middle of the week, the preparations had begun. They—the small nuclear family of father, mother, and the son who was equal to an army of a hundred—were going to move from this rather equanimous accommodation to a larger flat in another locality in a couple of weeks, so this would probably be the last party Mrs. Sinha-Roy would be hosting in some time. Not that the flat was a small one; in fact, it had spaces they didn’t know what do with. But with Mr. Sinha-Roy’s ascension to head of finance a few months ago, there was the technicality that the flat had only two bedrooms, just a technicality, since the bedrooms were huge, but yet a two-bedroom flat was not quite commensurate with the position of a head of finance and, more practically, his “entertainment” requirements. From now on, he would be expected to throw larger parties.

The young son, Amal, no more than eight years old, lorded it over the servants—the cook, the bearer, the maidservant—as the preparations made progress, now entering the disorderly activity of the kitchen, now rushing past or circling the sari-clad, abstracted figure of Mrs. Sinha-Roy as if she were some kind of portal. There was an enigmatic aura about him that couldn’t be quite pinpointed; as if he weren’t just the head of finance’s son, but as if there resided in him, in some indirect but undeniable way, the hopes and aspirations of the company Mr. Sinha-Roy worked for; as if he were in some way its secret and unacknowledged symbol. It wasn’t enough that the franchise of happiness the company offered lay in the furniture and the flat and the other “perquisites”; and that Mr. Sinha-Roy would, as head of finance, have to negotiate large losses and gains. The boy, too, was part of that loss and gain in a way he didn’t quite understand.