the Minister was even more occupied than Sumitra, for besides all the social activities and the official meetings, he was involved in the many secret comings and goings preceding a major cabinet reshuffle. When, at the end of that busy season, he was offered the post he had coveted, Sumitra was the first person he informed of his success. She almost admired him at that moment: he was not a handsome figure—the very opposite, even now after she had done all she could to improve his appearance. But there was something about him in his triumph—an energy, a manliness—that she had known in no other man, not even in Too with all his shining looks and chest full of medals. And where had it all led to, with Too, she thought, shot like a dog by thieves and murderers: and for the first time the tears she shed by herself every night sprang to her eyes in broad daylight and in the presence of another person.
It could not have been the reaction the Minister had expected to his announcement; but it was his life’s business to deal with the vagaries of human psychology and conduct. He scrutinized her face with his eyes that were set too deeply in fat to reveal their penetrating intelligence. Then he joined his palms together like a supplicant and said that there was something she must do for him; that she could not refuse him, must not. He offered her three choices: the high commission in London, the embassy in Washington, and the Indian mission to the UN in New York. He knew it was much too much to ask of her who had already done everything for him, but he needed her more than ever in his new responsibilities, and without her he was helpless as a little child and could proceed no further.
During the following years, Sumitra lived mostly abroad. Although she was already middle-aged during her great years as India’s ambassador to the UN, she had retained her smooth olive skin and her pitch-black hair and sparkling eyes; and she wrapped herself so skillfully in her sari that she appeared merely plump, as she had been, and not fat, as she had become. She had always loved jewelry and now was so laden with it that she resembled a barbaric queen—an impression enhanced by the bolder colors and patterns of her saris, which were of traditional designs adapted to modern tastes. The expression on her face was that of a person used to giving orders to people—in contrast to her manner, her exquisite gestures of courtesy and submission to the point of immolation which were a mark of royal breeding as well as of the courtesan and temple dancer. Her parties were, like herself, an enchanting mixture of east and west. There was always plenty of liquor, but also pomegranate and mango juices and spiced yoghurt drinks; the servants glided around with silver trays of delicacies that were to be found only in the finest Indian homes where they were made from recipes handed down by a grandmother. A visiting Indian musician—always a maestro of the first rank—would entertain after dinner; but for those who had business with each other there were brandy and cigars in the study and doors that could be closed. Sumitra herself closed them, smiling for a moment as she did so with perfect understanding and a promise of privacy for whatever matters of high state had to be discussed.
Now in charge of foreign affairs, the Minister frequently traveled abroad, stopping off in New York whenever he could. She looked forward to his visits. He consulted her about policy and discussed the personalities of the world and national leaders they both had to deal with. She continued to monitor his personal habits, and here too he followed her advice—for instance, he left off using a certain pungent body oil prescribed as beneficial to the flow of blood to the brain and other important organs.
Monica quarreled with her about the Minister, as she quarreled with her on all subjects. Monica traveled between her mother in New York and her father in New Delhi, and it would be difficult to say in which place she was more unhappy. She was undergoing treatment with a New York analyst and was learning far more about herself and her relationship with her mother than was good for either of them. She also learned not to suppress her natural feelings, and whenever the Minister visited, she made no secret of her contempt for him. But even though she tossed her head and flung out of the room without returning his courteous greeting, he smiled tolerantly and reassured Sumitra that the girl was young, a child only. Nevertheless, it was he who suggested matrimony in place of psychiatry (he had just married off his own sixteen-year-old daughter, with two thousand guests consuming five hundred pounds of clarified butter). And it was he who found Monica’s bridegroom: on his return to New Delhi, he made discreet inquiries in his own Ministry, and after personally interviewing several likely candidates, he finally selected Under-Secretary Malhotra. However, Monica always denied that her marriage had been arranged. She claimed she had met Malhotra at a diplomatic party, and had been fool enough to be taken in by him. “It was because I was so unhappy,” she explained to her daughter Kuku. “Because of Mummy and what she had done to me.”
During her years at the UN, Sumitra’s husband Harry also sometimes came to stay with her. Unlike the Minister, he fitted well into her diplomatic salon. Harry had elegant manners and conversed easily in English and with charm. Unfortunately he also got drunk very quickly—and now it only took a drink or two to get him into that state. He was never rowdy or ill-behaved but continued to stand holding his glass with a smile frozen on his face. If anyone spoke to him, he tried sincerely to respond, but so unsuccessfully that people tended to back away and he was left standing by himself, still smiling and still on his feet, though by now supporting one shoulder against a wall. He was very apologetic about his condition, and readily agreed to enter a clinic in Virginia that Sumitra had arranged for him. But he returned after less than a week—“Leave it,” was all he said in answer to Sumitra’s reproaches. That same night he was for the first time noisily drunk and she had to make signs to the servants, while her guests pretended not to notice him being hustled away, loudly declaiming poetry as he went.
Nevertheless, she liked having him there, at least during the few hours of the day when he was sober. He was the one person with whom she could be as she had been. They spoke of old friends—about these also as they had been and not as they were now: some of them were bureaucrats or judges, some were alcoholics like Harry, some dead like Too. They both spoke of Too with loving nostalgia, and it didn’t matter that she was nostalgic for the moonlit nights in the ruined pleasure palace and Harry for the poetry and vodka and chit-chat in his New Delhi garden. It all appeared as remote now as those scenes of royal indulgence depicted in the miniature paintings that hung on Sumitra’s walls. These pictures were just beginning to be recognized at their true value, and she had been among the first to acquire, for a few rupees, a collection that was later auctioned at Christie’s. Harry himself seemed to belong in those paintings, to be one of the long dead princes, from Kulu or Kashmir, shown reclining among little golden drinking vessels and flowers that scintillated like the jewels in their turbans.
Harry’s last visit to New York—he died shortly after his return to India—coincided with one of the Minister’s foreign tours. Both of them were present at a cocktail party given by Sumitra in honor of the Minister, preceding a dinner at the Iraqi embassy, also in his honor. Sumitra had been nervous all day, for Harry was very irritated by the presence of the Milkman (as he still called him), who was living in the house with them. “Well, what should I do?” Sumitra defended herself. “It’s not my house, it’s an official residence belonging to the government of India.”
“Oh yes,” sneered Harry, “he is the government of India. He’s certainly got his dirty hands in the treasury up to the elbows.” He was referring to a major financial scandal that again involved the Minister: this was nothing unusual—rumor as pungent as his body oil clung to him throughout his career.
Sumitra did not try to argue with Harry. Like Too before him, he would never understand. He had no conception of the shifts and makeshifts necessary to hold on to a position of power, and that what appeared to him as bribery and corruption was nothing but a judicious balancing of funds to keep the machinery of government oiled and functioning.
That evening, though performing with her usual accomplishment the role of diplomatic hostess, she glanced more often than ever toward Harry in his corner. It was also second nature for her to keep an eye on the Minister; but this was really no longer necessary, for by now his very defects had turned into assets. His English had remained rudimentary, but that only made people listen to him more attentively, as if fearful of missing something important he was saying. And there was a sort of power in his earthiness—the smell of cow