restricted narration to have the character narrator call attention to the fact
that Mrs. Croft “mentioned nothing about the flag on the moon.”
Then Lahiri again relies on the authorial disclosure across conversations
to signal the significance of the difference in this night’s exchange. It is not
just that “It was very kind of you!” replaces “There is an American flag on
the moon!,” but also that Mrs. Croft pays the compliment twice, presum-
ably because it was so unexpected the first time, the character narrator did
not quite understand what “it” refers to. The larger communication, never
directly expressed by the character narrator,^3 is that he and Mrs. Croft have
now established a personal connection across their many differences, a con-
nection rooted in each’s admirable ethical response to the other. Although the
power hierarchy has not disappeared, it has softened. The benevolent dicta-
tor has become a grateful host, and the subaltern lodger has become a man
worthy of a compliment. Furthermore, these changes loom larger precisely
because they arise out of the deviation from the ritual repetition of “Splen-
did!” and its implicit politics of interpellation. In other words, the character
narrator’s acting on his sense of what is right rather than acquiescing to Mrs.
Croft’s instructions has led her to see him in a different light and that vision,
in turn, gives a new dimension to their relationship.
After the character narrator and Mala have been living together in their
own apartment in Cambridge for a week, they are “still strangers” (192) to one
another. He suggests they take a walk, and “without thinking” (193) he leads
her to Mrs. Croft’s, where they find her lying on the floor.
“I broke my hip!” Mrs. Croft announced, as if no time had passed.
“Oh dear, madame.”
“I fell off the bench!”
“I am so sorry, madame.”
“It was the middle of the night! Do you know what I did, boy?”
I shook my head.
“I called the police!”
She stared up at the ceiling and grinned sedately, exposing a crowded
row of long gray teeth. Not one was missing. “What do you say to that, boy?”
As stunned as I was, I knew what I had to say. With no hesitation at all,
I cried out, “Splendid!”- Some close readers might ask whether we should attribute the larger effects of this pas-
sage not just to Lahiri but also to the character narrator’s deliberate design. While I would not
ar gue strongly against such a reading, I don’t see enough other signs of the character narrator’s
self-consciousness and aesthetic control to make me find it more persuasive than my hypothesis
that Lahiri moves him from one kind of narration to another according to the effects she seeks
at any given point.
224 • CHAPTER 1 1