“Yes, isn’t it nice? Families relaxing peacefully, passing the time till the Wheels of Justice grind out their cases. Who would believe that this beautiful locale is really the shabby theatre for rancour and revenge, the splintered stage where tragedies and farces are played out? Out here it looks more like a picnic ground than a battlefield. A few months ago I even witnessed a woman going into labour and giving birth right here, most happily. She didn’t want to go to hospital, didn’t want any more postponements of her case. She was my client. We won.”
“So you are also a practising lawyer?”
“Yes, indeed,” he pointed to the sign. “Fully qualified. But once upon a time, many years ago, when I was in college, in First Year Arts, my friends used to say I didn’t need to study, that I was already an LL.B.”
“How was that?”
“Lord of the Last Bench,” said Mr. Valmik, smiling. “They gave me this honorary degree because I always took the rearmost seat in the classroom — it gave me a good view of things. And I must confess, the location taught me more about human nature and justice than could be learned from the professors’ lectures.”
He touched the sheaf of pens in his shirt pocket as though to make sure they were all present and accounted for. They bristled formidably in their plastic protector, like a quiverful of arrows. “Now here I am, with a new degree: L.BB. — Lord of the Broken Bench. And my education continues.” He laughed, and Dina joined him politely. Their rickety seat shook.
“But why is it, Mr. Valmik, that you are not out in front like the other lawyers, trying to get clients?”
He directed his gaze into the mango tree and said, “I find that kind of behaviour utterly uncouth, quite infra dig.” Quickly he added, “It’s below my dignity,” worried that she might construe the Latinism as a form of snobbery.
“But if you just sit here, how can you make a living?”
“My living makes itself. A little at a time. Eventually people discover me. People like you, who are disgusted with those legal louts and tawdry touts. Of course, they are not all bad characters — just desperate for work.” He waved genially at a passing court clerk and touched his pens again. “Even if I had the temperament for vulgar conduct, my vocal disability would not let me compete in that loud contest. You see, I have a serious throat impediment. If I raise my voice, I lose it altogether.”
“Oh, how unfortunate.”
“No, not really,” Mr. Valmik reassured her. He considered genuine sympathy a precious commodity, and hated to see it squandered. “No, it matters not a jot to me. There is not much call these days for lawyers who can make their voices ring out sonorously through the courtroom, holding judge and jury spellbound in webs of brilliant oratory.” He chuckled. “No demand here for a Clarence Darrow — there are no more Scopes Monkey Trials taking place. Although monkeys there are in plenty, in every courtroom, willing to perform for bananas and peanuts.”
He sighed heavily, and his sarcasm was displaced by grief. “What are we to say, madam, what are we to think about the state of this nation? When the highest court in the land turns the Prime Minister’s guilt into innocence, then all this” — he indicated the imposing stone edifice — “this becomes a museum of cheap tricks, rather than the living, breathing law that strengthens the sinews of society.”
Touched by the weight of his anguish, Dina asked, “Why did the Supreme Court do that?”
“Who knows why, madam. Why is there disease and starvation and suffering? We can only answer the how and the where and the when of it. The Prime Minister cheats in the election, and the relevant law is promptly modified. Ergo, she is not guilty. We poor mortals have to accept that bygone events are beyond our clutch, while the Prime Minister performs juggling acts with time past.”
Mr. Valmik stopped suddenly, realizing that he was rambling while a potential client sat beside him. “But what about your case, madam? You seem like a veteran of this institution.”
“No, I’ve never been to court before.”
“Ah, then you have led a blessed life,” he murmured. “I don’t want to be inquisitive, but is there need for a lawyer?”
“Yes, it’s concerning my flat. The trouble started nineteen years ago, after my husband passed away.” She told him everything, starting with the landlord’s first notice a few months after Rustom’s death on their third wedding anniversary, and about the tailors, the paying guest, the rent-collector’s continuing harassment, the goondas’ threats, Beggarmaster’s protection, and Beggarmaster’s death.
Mr. Valmik steepled his fingertips and listened. He did not move once, not even to caress his beloved pens. She marvelled at how carefully he attended — almost as carefully as he spoke.
She finished, and he put his hands down. Then he said in his soft voice, which was beginning to turn hoarse, “It’s a very difficult situation. You know, madam, sometimes it may appear expeditious to act ex curiar Seeing her quizzical, he added, “That is, out of court. But in the end it leads to more problems. True, there are goondas galore in the wilderness of our time. After all, this is a Goonda Raj. So who can blame you for taking that route? Who would want to enter the soiled Temple of Justice, wherein lies the corpse of Justice, slain by her very guardians? And now her killers make mock of the sacred process, selling replicas of her blind virtue to the highest bidder.”
Dina began to wish Mr. Valmik would stop talking in this high-flown manner. It had been entertaining for a while but was rapidly becoming wearisome. How people loved to make speeches, she thought. Bombast and rhetoric infected the nation, from ministers to lawyers, rent-collectors to hair-collectors.
“So are you saying there is no hope?” she interrupted him.
“There is always hope — hope enough to balance our despair. Or we would be lost.”
Now he took out a writing pad from his briefcase, lovingly selected a pen from the well-stocked pocket, and began making notes. “Perhaps the ghost of Justice is still wandering around, willing to help us. If a decent judge hears our petition and grants the injunction, you will be safe till the case is tried. Your name, madam?”
“Mrs. Dalai. Dina Dalai. But how much do you charge?”
“Whatever you can afford to pay. We’ll worry later about that.” He jotted the landlord’s name and office address, and relevant details about the case history. “My advice to you is, don’t leave the flat unoccupied. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. And goondas are basically cowards. Is it possible to have someone, relatives or friends, stay with you?”
“There is no one.”
“Yes, never is, is there? Forgive my question.” He paused, then broke into a fearful coughing fit. “Excuse me,” he croaked, “I think I have exceeded my throat’s quota of conversation.”
“My goodness,” said Dina, “it sounds really bad.”
“And this is after treatment,” he said, in a tone that sounded like bragging. “You should have heard me a year ago. All I could do was squeak like a mouse.”
“But what was it that damaged your throat so badly? Were you in an accident or something?”
“In a manner of speaking,” he sighed. “After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents — a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life.”
Here he goes again, she thought. But his words did ring true. She tested them against her own experience. Random events controlled everything: her father’s death, when she was twelve. And the tailors’ entire lives. And Maneck — one minute coming back, next minute off to Dubai. She would probably never see him again, or Ishvar and Om. They came from nowhere into her life, and had vanished into nowhere.