"Just a hat? Oh, no, my friend! The Borsalino is more than just a hat. The Borsalino is a work of art! It is brushed ten thousand times, by hand, before it is sold. It was the style expression of first choice by discerning French and Italian gangsters in Milan and Marseilles for many decades. The very name of Borsalino became a synonyme for gangsters. The wild young men of the underworld of Milano and Marseilles were called Borsalinos. Those were the days when gangsters had some style. They understood that if you were to live as an outlaw and steal and shoot people for a living, you had a responsibility to dress with some elegance.
Isn't it so?" "It's the least they could do," I agreed, smiling.
"But of course! Now, sadly, there is all attitude and no style.
It is the mark of the age in which we live that the style becomes the attitude, instead of the attitude becoming the style."
He paused, permitting me a moment to acknowledge the turn of phrase.
"And so," he continued, "the test of a real Borsalino hat is to roll it into a cylinder, roll it up into a very tight tube, and pass it through a wedding ring. If it emerges from this test without permanent creases, and if it springs back to its original shape, and if it is not damaged in the experience, it is a genuine Borsalino."
"And you're saying..."
"Just so!" Didier shouted, slamming a fist down on the table.
We were sitting in Leopold's, near the square arch of the Causeway doors, at eight o'clock. Some foreigners at the next table turned their heads at the noisy outburst, but the staff and the regulars ignored the Frenchman. Didier had been eating and drinking and expostulating at Leopold's for nine years. They all knew there was a line you could cross with him, a limit to his tolerance, and he was a dangerous man if you crossed it. They also knew that the line wasn't drawn in the soft sand of his own life or beliefs or feelings. Didier's line was drawn through the hearts of the people he loved. If you hurt them, in any way, you roused him to a cold and deadly rage. But nothing anyone said or did to him, short of actual bodily harm, ever really offended or angered him.
"Comme %ca! That is my point! Your little friend, Prabaker, has put you through the hat test. He rolled you into a tube, and dragged you through the wedding ring, to see if you are a real Borsalino or not. That was his purpose in taking you on the tour of the bad sights and sounds of the city. It was a Borsalino test."
I sipped my coffee in silence, knowing that he was right-
Prabaker's dark tour had been a kind of test-but not willing to give Didier the trophy of conceding the point.
The evening crowd of tourists from Germany, Switzerland, France, England, Norway, America, Japan, and a dozen other countries thinned out, giving way to the night crowd of Indians and expatriates who called Bombay home. The locals reclaimed places like Leopold's, the Mocambo, Cafe Mondegar, and the Light of Asia every night, when the tourists sought the safety of their hotels.
"If it was a test," I did at last concede, "he must've given me a pass. He invited me to go with him to visit his family, in his village in the north of the state."
Didier raised his eyebrows in theatrical surprise.
"For how long?"
"I don't know. A couple of months, I think. Maybe more."
"Ah, then it is so," he concluded. "Your little friend is beginning to love you."
"I think that's putting it a bit strong," I objected, frowning.
"No, no, you do not understand. You must be careful, here, with the real affection of those you meet. This is not like any other place. This is India. Everyone who comes here falls in love-most of us fall in love many times over. And the Indians, they love most of all. Your little friend may be beginning to love you.
There is nothing strange in this. I say it from a long experience of this country, and especially of this city. It happens often, and easily, for the Indians. That is how they manage to live together, a billion of them, in reasonable peace. They are not perfect, of course. They know how to fight and lie and cheat each other, and all the things that all of us do. But more than any other people in the world, the Indians know how to love one another."
He paused to light a cigarette, and then waved it like a little flagpole until the waiter noticed him and nodded to his request for another glass of vodka.
"India is about six times the size of France," he went on, as the glass of alcohol and a bowl of curried snacks arrived at our table. "But it has almost twenty times the population. Twenty times! Believe me, if there were a billion Frenchmen living in such a crowded space, there would be rivers of blood. Rivers of blood! And, as everyone knows, we French are the most civilised people in Europe. Indeed, in the whole world. No, no, without love, India would be impossible."
Letitia joined us at our table, sitting to my left.
