Mala laughed then. Her voice was full of kindness, her eyes bright with
amusement. I had never heard her laugh before. (194–95)Lahiri begins with dialogue, mixes restricted narration with reliable inter-
pretive commentary, and then moves to convergent narration. Once again the
synergy leads to multiple communications, many of which the character nar-
rator is not aware of. Here are the salient features of Lahiri’s communication
up to the character narrator’s utterance of “Splendid!”: (1) Mrs. Croft and the
character narrator, despite all their differences and his having moved out of
her house, converse as old friends. Her use of “boy” in this dialogue has a dif-
ferent tone and force than it did when she first said, “There’s an American flag
on the moon, boy!” He has moved from stranger to something closer to a sur-
rogate son. (2) Mrs. Croft gives the character narrator more credit than during
the previous enactments of the Splendid Ritual: earlier she had prompted him
by asking, “Isn’t it splendid?”; here she asks, “What do you say to that, boy?”
(3). His ability to answer shows how well he knows her (at least in one way), a
demonstration that in turn highlights the gap between him and Mala.
At the end of the passage, Lahiri shifts to convergent narration, as the
character narrator reports, interprets, and evaluates Mala’s response to his per-
formance in a way that both Lahiri and her rhetorical readers warmly endorse.
Just as he has never heard her laugh before, he has also never expressed this
affective and ethical appreciation for her before. That expression deepens the
audience’s affective and ethical bond with him.
As the scene continues, Lahiri continues to build on the bonding effects of
the convergent narration, making it the most affectively and ethically powerful
scene in the story. Finally noticing Mala, Mrs. Croft commands her to stand:
Mala rose to her feet, adjusting the end of her sari over her head and hold-
ing it to her chest, and, for the first time since her arrival, I felt sympathy. I
remembered my first days in London, learning how to take the Tube to Rus-
sell Square, riding an escalator for the first time, being unable to understand
that when the man cried “piper” it meant “paper,” being unable to decipher,
for a whole year, that the conductor said “mind the gap” as the train pulled
away from each station. Like me, Mala had traveled far from home, not
knowing where she was going, or what she would find, for no reason other
than to be my wife. As strange as it seemed, I knew in my heart that one day
her death would affect me, and stranger still, that mine would affect her. I
wanted somehow to explain this to Mrs. Croft, who was still scrutinizing
Mala from top to toe with what seemed to be placid disdain. . . . At last Mrs.
Croft declared, with the equal measures of disbelief and delight I knew well:
“She is a perfect lady!”RELIABILITY, DIALOgUE, AND CROSSOVER EFFECTS • 225