A/N: This was originally the first scene of a longer chapter, but I split it up because it was just getting too long. To recap on our main story, Alex is having dinner at his friends' house – Harmeet is his roommate, and Harmeet's twin sister Melody has caught the glazzy of Our Hypocritical Narrator - but will their younger brother Jay be trouble? Next chappy will take us into shadier places than suburbia, I promise... Thanks, merci, danke, arigato and shukriya to my readers and reviewers!

5. The Singh Family

I'd taken the autobus with Harmy Harmony—O very well, Harmeet—down to a more dorogoy and bourgeois part of town. Along the streets were red brick or stone houses with malenky flower gardens in front. We ittied out of the autobus at a corner store called The Corner Store. Harm's domy was just down this street. It was like a malenky stone cottage, but with an extra floor. There was no garage but two cars sat in the driveway—one a starry faded blue sedan, the other a horrorshow black convertible.

I rang the collocol, but Harmeet like pushed me aside and opened the door. From inside came the von of warm pishcha, chicken and other veshches. A middle-sized cheena in a sparkly yellow dress—Mrs. Singh, it must be—rushed forward, flashed a zooby smile, and wrapped her rookers around Harm in a hug. Then she viddied Your Humble Narrator, still grin-grinning away, and shook my hand very vigorously up and down. "Delighted to meet you, Alex," she said in an accent that was more Bee Bee See than Arabian or Indian. "Come in. Sit down. Supper is almost ready—I let Melody and Jaydeep prepare it."

We all sat down in a like sitting room with couches, rocking chairs, an upright piano, and a real fireplace (though not lit). I was startled by a groaning shoom, but it was only Harmeet saying with great dramatics, "You let Jay cook? Jay? He'll burn the bloody place down."

"Now Har-meet," his mother began, with a stern smot, when we heard a loud creech from the kitchen. A young male voloss creeched a few not-so-proper words. Another shoom, that of running water. Then Melody's beautiful though rather flushed litso appeared in the doorway.

"Sorry 'bout that, Mum. Jay just bumped his elbow on the stove by accident. Burned himself slightly."

Harm let out a guff. "Huh. Exactly what he deserves."

Melody's dark glazzies looked kind of disapproving, but then she viddied me. "Oh, hi Alex," she smiled. "Survive the first day?"

Why did my gorlo feel like sandpaper? "Er, yes," I squeaked.

"Effin' soomka, get back here!" came the voloss of Jaydeep Singh from the kitchen. Soomka, now—that was a nadsat word. Where on Bog's earth did he get that from? Clearly not his Em or his brother or sister.

"Effin' what?" Mel called back, annoyed. "If you want to swear, swear fucking properly!"

Mrs. Singh looked like she wanted to faint and tolchock her daughter at the same time. "Melody Singh! Is that how we speak in front of guests?"

Melody flushed. "Please, Mum. Sorry."

Amidst this noise and commotion, the collocol rang again.

"It must be Omar," said Mrs. Singh.

Mel opened the door to a tall bearded veck, also with spectacles on his glazzies. "Dad! You're just in time for supper. Jay's busy cooking himself, and when he's done we'll eat him."

"Jaydeep's in the kitchen?" Mr. Singh looked alarmed. He took off his sabogs and hurried away to save his molodoy son.

Mel sat down with a grin. "I always say the proper place for men is the kitchen."

Harm grunted and rocked his rocking chair back and forth. "Yeah? I guess I'm just effeminate then."

"Effemi-what?" I asked. There were too many veshches going on at once, so I didn't notice Mrs. Singh trying to catch my glazzy.

She was shaking her head. "I am sorry, Alex, that we are not more organized. Your parents must be very different, I'm sure."

"Oh, they are that, missus. Different. ...Or maybe they are not very different." I could not speak, brothers. I could not govoreet as well as polite Mrs. Bee Bee See Singh or smecking Melody or cool-as-ice Harmeet. I thought of my Pee and Em ittying off to their rabbit at the grocery store, but they did not seem very interessovating as a subject of conversation.

"Everybody's different," said Harm like philosophically, nodding his gulliver.

His mother reached out and patted him on that same gulliver, saying, "Harmeet is my good child. Even if he did quit his piano lessons for computer music."

"Mum, I'm eighteen," he said, pulling away from his mother's patting hand. "And I'm done all my lessons. I still teach piano to Aunty Suri's kids... and Sonya from school, of course."

His mother beamed another zooby smile. "Ah yes, Sonietta Keyes. Such a nice girl. A brilliant child. And she's only, what, fifteen? But so sad about her eyes..."

At that moment Jaydeep Singh ittied into the room and I had a good chance to viddy him. He was a shortish malchick of sixteen, wearing black jeans and a bright yellow polo shirt with the collar turned up—very likely the heighth of fashion among nadsats these days. His black voloss was all spiked and he wore no otchkies over his sharp hazel-green glazzies. "Welly welly well," he govoreeted slowly. "Let us not retell the tale of sad little blind Sonya—who is too young for thou, anyway, Harmeet—not in front of our honoured guest Little Alex." His sharp glazzies like stared at me and I looked away. "It is you. I thought it was you by your eemya. I've heard a lot about you."

"Supper is ready," said Mr. Singh behind him, and we all ittied to the dining room (which had a chandelier with real glass, brothers, if not diamonds) but I was suddenly all poogly. I felt I'd been dealt a tolchock to the rot and couldn't speak. What had this malchick heard of me, exactly? And would he govoreet it to his Em and Pee? To Melody? My forehead started to sweat.

I sat down next to Melody and across from Jay. "And where have you heard of me, exactly?" I asked the malchick, trying to give him a look of like warning at the same raz.

Little bratty Jay grinned. "Oh, I seen your picture in the gazettas, like. The newspapers I mean."

Mr. Singh gave him a stern look. "Saw, not seen."

But Mrs. Singh smiled. "The newspapers! Surely because of your brilliant musicianship, right, Alex?"

"Sure sure sure," said Jaydeep.

"The newspapers!" Mrs. Singh was still excited. "Just like Vijay in Vienna! Excuse me, Omar, but I just have to fetch the latest Classical Courier. Vijay is in there with a very flattering write-up." She ittied into the hall.

I sort of smiled at Melody but she averted her glazzies. Strange, very strange. Jay grumble-chumbled, "Not Vijay in Vienna again." Then he reached over to a side-table and poured us all some stew with parsley and lentils. He dished out mine from a separate dish. "Alex DeLarge special," he smecked. It was probably less spicy, brothers, that was probably why.

Now Melody served us all from a heaping dish of chicken and rice. Her arm brushed mine as she goolied around my place. This almost made me think, brothers, of gloopy things like love and harmony and togetherness and all that cal. I thought of the raz when my newish droogies Len, Rick, and Bully had smecked at this picture of a baby I'd kept, just a little malenky photo. I'd though, then, that I didn't want to spend my jeezny with these dim smecking droogs—rather I'd find a devotchka and have real babies. I could just viddy the ones me and Mel would have... her silky black hair and my blue glazzies in a bundle of malenky joy... Maybe I was crazy, brothers. Maybe the warm von of the food was turning my head. In countries of the Far East such as India, I knew they had opium and other druggy veshches, but they didn't put them in food, did they?

Now Mrs. Singh bustled in, grinning like bezoomny and waving a gazetta in her hands. "Sorry to delay you, but I just had to find this. Here's Vijay in the Mozart Revival Concert in Vienna."

Jaydeep snorted. "Nice platties. Very like dashing."

The photo in the paper showed this orchestra, but up close was a young veck of twenty or twenty-two playing a violin. He looked a bit like Harmeet, but taller and handsomer and more serious-looking. But I viddied why Jaydeep said dashing in a sarky goloss: poor Violin Vijay in Vienna had a white pony-tailed wig on his gulliver and ruffly eighteenth-century platties. Nineteenth-century platties would not be so bad, but poor V V looked bezoomny in his Mozart outfit.

"Look, I'll read it to you," Mrs. Singh went, "It says, 'Vijay R. Vimarami, First Violinist, who graduated last year from the Geoffrey Plautus Music Conservatory in England, dazzled the audience by his lithe and supple rendition...' or maybe it's closer to 'flexible' than 'supple'?..."

Jaydeep coughed, not quite by accident, "Horrorshow, Em, but can we eat now?"

Mrs. Singh gave the gazetta to Melody but Melody didn't reach out her rooker to take it. She was looking very sadly at her pishcha. So, brothers, I took the gazetta myself and tried to read it. I blinked once, twice. "These slovos," I blurted out, "they're not in English!"

"Horrorshow, too, Alex," said Jaydeep, taking a big rotful of chicken. "Very intelligent like observation." He set the gazetta on the windowsill. "Mum speaks like seven or eight languages. Let's see: German like that paper, English and Panjabi of course, Hindi, Arabic, French, Spanish, Russian... Russian?"

Mrs. Singh smiled and said something with "slovo" in it. The rest I didn't quite pony. "I'm afraid my Russian's a little rusty. I had to learn some four years ago for my tutoring but I haven't spoken it much since. It was all the rage at the private schools when the government tried to model itself after the old Soviet Union."

"'Tried' being the operative word," said Mr. Singh. "The actual Soviet Union was worse. But this is the only modern nation, and I include China, that has used the auspices of Communism to increase the gap between the rich and poor with such hypocrisy..."

While Melody's pee and em govoreeted about politics, I started to eat my chicken and rice. Jay and Harm were munching away, glorp glorp glorp, but Melody, next to me, stared away at the wall. "What's wrong?" I asked her, like solicitous.

She shook her head and started eating the stew.

Harmeet looked up. "Oh, it's just Vijay. Don't get all upset about him, Mel. I'm sure you can visit Vienna in the summer."

"No," said Melody, like sharp.

"Not him," said Jay. "Let's not talk about him."

But Mrs. Singh had heard, and she broke off her speech about Economic Relations to sigh, "Vijay Vimarami! Such a nice boy. So polite, so respectful. Always good day, please, thank you, guten tag, s'il vous plait, shukriya... Such a pleasant singing voice, too. And so talented."

"Nadmenny nazz," was Jay's contribution. "So snotty the snot drips out his ookos."

Melody said, in a weak sort of goloss, "He wasn't a snob to like a well-paid position in an Austrian orchestra better than he liked me. Practical, rather."

"Poor Melody, playing second fiddle to a violin," said Jay like merciless.

Now she glared at him. "Piss off."

I viddied it all now, brothers. Violin Vijay was my competition. So polite. So respectful... Grazhny bratchny. Let's hope he stayed in gloopy Vienna where he belonged.

"Melody, be nice," warned her em. But she put a hand on her daughter's rooker. "What about Jatin Parminder from Jazz Studies? He's a nice boy too."

"Nice," said Melody. "Interesting, no."

"Suraj Khan, the flutist?"

Mel shrugged.

"Not even Bobby Lee Chang, from Electronics?"

"Elecroacoustics," corrected Harmeet. "But no chance there. He's as queer as a pink rainbow."

Before Mrs. Singh could ask if that were nice or not, Jaydeep said, very skorry, "And not the sort of queer as in, say, queer as a clockwork orange?"

Brothers, I jumped. I'd been about to take my first rotful of lentil stew, but my spoon fell out of my rooker and into my soup ker-splash. I oosooshed the stain off the tablecloth with my cloth serviette and said, "What do you know about this clockwork orange veshch, Jaydeep Singh?"

"Oh, nothing," he shrugged. "Phrase I picked up somewhere. Don't mind me. Eat your stew."

So I took a bolshy gulp of this stew—glolp. Very flavourful, very very... My gorlo started to burn. My litso felt all firey. Even the insides of my ookos stung and burned. I reached for my glass of water and downed it in two swallows. Coughing kashl kashl kashl, I went "Excuse me," not knowing how to say it in French or German or anything-Jabby, and rushed to the kitchen where I filled up glass after tass after chasha of water. My glazzies watered and my nose dripped. My reflection in the window was all red and sniffly. Oh Bog. Where was the horrorshow fearsome malchick who'd tolchocked vecks twice his size? Probably that grazhny doobidoob Violin Vijay could eat twenty times this much spicy pishcha without blinking.

I walked back in, chin high. No use complaining and platching—they'd only laugh. But Mr. Singh asked, "Are you all right?" while Melody tasted my soup and frowned. Her eyes started to water a little. "Jaydeep Singh!"

Everyone looked at him. He shrugged his pletchoes. "For Bog's sake, it was only a little extra curry. Never killed anyone so far. Sonya Keyes even thought it was funny, that last time..."

"I told you, he's not mature enough to cook," said Mr. to Mrs. Singh.

Jay stood up, his litso red. "I am mature! I'm the one bloody defending this place! If it wasn't for me, you'd have shaikas and bandas all over this domy, trying to get their grazhny malenky rookers on all these bugatty dishes and furniture and cal!"

"I don't understand him," said Mr. to Mrs. Singh. "Do you?"

Jaydeep stomped off, stomp stomp stomp, and I slooshied a door close with a crash. From his room came the shoom of loud music. Bog blast me—it was Beethoven's Third, the Napoleon Symphony. I viddied I had influence, brothers. My tastes were like finally filtering down to the tasteless nadsats of today. Only, when I was molodoy like Jaydeep, surely I wasn't so annoying. Surely I was a better and kinder malchick...