As stunned as I was, I knew what I had to say. With no hesitation at all, I
cried out, “Splendid!”
Mala laughed then. Her voice was full of kindness, her eyes bright with
amusement. I had never heard her laugh before. (194–95)In depicting Mala’s laughter, Lahiri relies on a crossover effect to create a prob-
able implausibility. Indeed, Lahiri’s crossover effect is, in one sense, even more
radical than Small’s in Stitches (analyzed in chapter 2) because it is not a com-
pressed representation of multiple events but an invented singular event. But,
like Small’s crossover effect, this probable implausibility will probably not be
registered as such by most readers, and it will most likely be approved of by
those who do notice it.
The laughter is not impossible in the sense of “it could never happen,”
but the law of probability and necessity suggests that Mala would be far more
perplexed—and, indeed, further worried about her situation in this strange
place with this strange man—than amused by her husband’s interaction with
Mrs. Croft. It’s not just that she does not know—as Lahiri’s readers do—the
Splendid Ritual. It’s also that she does not know Mrs. Croft from Adam’s off
ox, and she barely knows her husband, let alone why he would answer Mrs.
Croft’s question with “Splendid!” But the implied Lahiri relies on the readerly
dynamics to guide her construction of the scene. Because she knows that her
audience has followed the evolution of the Splendid Ritual, she can deliver
this new variation and rely on her audience to laugh. Indeed, the Meta-Rule of
Dominant Focus helps explain that the audience will initially be more atten-
tive to the Ritual than to anything else in the scene. Once that attention gener-
ates laughter, Lahiri can rely on the Rule of Self-Assurance and simply write,
“Mala laughed.” In other words, Lahiri counts on her audience (a) laughing at
the character narrator’s “Splendid!” and (b) having their laughter cross over
into the textual dynamics so that Mala’s otherwise implausible laughter seems
not just plausible but almost inevitable. Why does Mala laugh? Because Lahi-
ri’s rhetorical readers laugh first.^6
Furthermore, Lahiri’s elaboration of Mala’s response extends the crossover
effect: “Her voice was full of kindness, her eyes bright with amusement.” That
is, the readerly dynamics of the scene generate both amusement and kindness
toward the character narrator and Mrs. Croft as they engage in their playful
- Some readers may object that Mala’s laughter is mimetically plausible without the
crossover from readerly dynamics, contending that there is something intrinsically funny in the
exchange between Mrs. Croft and the character narrator, and the laughter itself characterizes
Mala as the kind of woman who would find humor in that situation. I do not want to dispute
such readings unless they go so far as to deny the crossover effect. I also see them as rooted
in the impulse to “preserve the mimetic,” which I discuss in the introduction to Living to Tell
about It.
RELIABILITY, DIALOgUE, AND CROSSOVER EFFECTS • 227