Authors: Monica Ali
'Will it be all right for me to go?'
'Where?' He rolled onto his back to look at her. His belly showed.
'To the college. With Razia.'
'What for?'
'For the English lessons.'
'You're going to be a mother.'
Nazneen picked up a glass from the windowsill. Yes, she was going to be a mother.
'Will that not keep you busy enough? And you can't take a baby to college. Babies have to be fed; they have to have their bottoms cleaned. It's not so simple as that. Just to go to college, like that.'
'Yes,' said Nazneen. 'I see that it is not.'
'Good. Now let me read. All this talking, talking, talking.' And he rolled over again.
The fridge hummed like a giant mosquito. In the distance, traffic growled. Nazneen did not turn on the light. Half a moon, gritty tonight, clung to the dark sky. The linoleum shocked her warm feet. She took a tub of yoghurt from the fridge and sprinkled it with sugar. She leaned against the work surface and ate. 'Eat! Eat!' her husband told her at mealtimes. But for him she would not. She showed her self-restraint like this. Her self-denial. She wanted to make it visible. It became a habit, then a pleasure, taking solace in these midnight meals.
Amma used to make yoghurt: thick and sweet and warm. Nothing like these plastic pots from the plastic English cows. But still. With the sugar, it went down. And it was very convenient. When she thought about Gouripur now, she thought about inconvenience. To live without a flushing toilet, to abandon her two sinks (kitchen and bathroom), to make a fire for the oven instead of turning a knob – would these be trades worth making? She tried to imagine Chanu, marching off to the latrine with a heavy book in his hand. He liked to read, sometimes for half an hour or more, while sitting on the toilet. The flies would see him off the latrine.
Chanu had fallen asleep with his face in the book, the page marked with dribble. All that reading was not good for him. It made his mind boil. He could end up like Makku Pagla.
It was a long time since Makku had come to her mind. But when she was small, she used to follow him around. Hasina and Nazneen walked behind him, holding hands and swinging their free arms. Hasina shouted, 'Yee yaw, Makku Pagla! Lend us your umbrella. Be quick, because it's raining.'
People said he was soft in his head because he was always reading. Books had cracked him, and the more cracked he became the more books he read. That was how he earned his name, Makku Pagla, or Lunatic Makku.
It was Hasina who spotted his umbrella in the well. Numerous repairs over the years and patches of different colours had made it famous, and Makku never set foot without it. 'He's killed himself,' screamed Hasina, running back to the house. 'Makku Pagla has killed himself in the well.' Amma began at once to say her prayers, while Abba picked up a rope and sprinted. Nazneen and Hasina walked over on wobbly legs.
Although a stench had been coming from the old well for a few days nobody thought it remarkable – people had begun to tip rubbish down. But now that Makku's umbrella was in there it was only reasonable to assume that he was with it. A crowd quickly gathered. Everyone had an opinion but no one was willing to be lowered into the soup of rubbish and flesh to retrieve the body.
At last, the village council retreated to Nazneen's house. Abba took charge of the meeting. Nazneen and Hasina, waiting outside, heard him say, 'He had an undignified death. Let us give him, at least, a dignified burial.' They repeated the words to each other, whispering behind hands, into ears. Later, they found a cricket, on its back, turning to husk. And they said the words again and dug a shallow grave. It was a game they played over and over, Nazneen solemn as a raven and Hasina faking.
When the council emerged, the offer was made: sixty rupees plus expenses, a large bar of Sunlight soap and a bottle of perfume to the first man to volunteer. A labourer stepped forward and was cheered. He stripped to his nengti and shouted to his wife to bring mustard oil which he rubbed over his body. The equipment was assembled. A large bamboo basket, thick ropes, and two iron balties for clearing the rubbish.
As he was lowered down below the ground the labourer shouted up a running commentary on his activities, his voice distorted and echoing. 'I've secured Makku,' he reported and another cheer went up from the spectators. The assistants began to winch the body up. 'Slowly, slowly,' said the voice in the well. 'Do you want to knock his head off?' Makku's naked body was carefully laid on the ground. It was completely white and there were holes where the flesh had dropped off. When the labourer was lifted from the well, he carried with him an arm which he set gently on Makku's chest. Nazneen and Hasina held each other.
'They've forgotten his umbrella,' said Hasina.
'We shouldn't have teased him,' said Nazneen.
In the evening, Amma was still crying. Her nose was red, her eyes raw. Sometimes she made a sharp call, like a frightened monkey. She put her hand up to cover her mouth because she was ashamed of her teeth, which were shaped like melon seeds. Abba smoked his pipe and sat on his haunches.
'Don't cry, Amma,' said Hasina, and kissed her with pomegranate lips.
'Your mother is a saint,' said Abba. 'Don't forget that she comes from a family of saints.' He got up and walked away, and he held himself straighter than any man. He did not come back for three days.
'Where does Abba go?' asked Nazneen.
Amma looked towards the heavens. 'Look! Now my child is asking where he goes.'
Nazneen looked up too. The sky was thick with beating brown wings. The ducks were coming, it was the season. They came in hordes, casting great shadows across the rivers and threatening the sun. Amma hugged her fiercely. She took Nazneen's wide face between her two palms and spoke to her: 'If God wanted us to ask questions, he would have made us men.'
The baby was astonishing. He had little cloth ears, floppy as cats. The warmth of his round stomach could heat the world. His head smelled like a sacred flower. And his fists held mysterious, tiny balls of fluff from which he could not bear to be parted.
Nazneen curled around him on the bed. He raised an arm, which reached only halfway up his head. He put it back down. The futility of this exercise appeared to anger him. His face squashed into a purple mess, and he made a noise like a thousand whipped puppies.
'You see,' said Chanu. He sat on a chair, tucked in between the bed and the wall, knees against the bedspread. 'My grandmother's cousin was fair-skinned. She was a beauty. So much so that it caused fights. One man was killed, even. That's how far he was prepared to go to win her hand in marriage. And another man, a labourer with no chance, took his own life. Anyway, that's what I heard. I never saw her myself, except when she was very old and looked like a beetle.'
Nazneen sat up against some pillows and lifted the baby onto her chest. She rubbed his back. Her hands were full of magic. The baby sucked softly on her neck.
'That's where Ruku gets his fair skin.' The baby's name was Mohammad Raqib. Chanu called him Ruku. Raqib's skin was like his aunt's. Hasina was pale as a water lily. Raqib was like shondesh, creamy and sweet, and perfectly edible.
'Mrs Islam is coming again today. If I'm napping, don't wake me.' Mrs Islam was sure to have more advice about the baby.
Chanu shifted in his seat. The chair was his latest acquisition. It was made of metal tubing and canvas. The metal was rusting and the canvas ripped. It was, Chanu had revealed, a modern classic, worthy of restoration. Nazneen refused to sit in it, even when her husband told her not to be a damn fool of a woman and try it. She just refused and that was that.
'She comes from a good family,' said Chanu. 'Good background. Educated. Very respectable. Her husband owned a big business: import-export. I went to him once with a proposal.' His jaw worked silently for a while, as if he were biting an invisible thread. 'Jute products – doormats, bookmarks, baskets. That kind of thing. He was very interested. Very interested. But then he fell sick. It was simply bad timing. I have the proposal somewhere in my papers. It's probably worth digging out. All the figures are there. Costs, revenues and profits, down in black and white. But of course he died, and I never had the capital. What can you do without capital?'
Raqib tried to lift his head from Nazneen's shoulder as if he knew the answer to this difficult question. Overcome with his burden of knowledge, he collapsed instantly into sleep. Squinting down, Nazneen looked at his month-old nose, the sumptuous curve of his cheek, his tight-shut, age-old eyes. She closed her own eyes and hoped that Chanu would let them both alone.
'He's sleeping. Why don't you put him down? They can sleep fourteen or sixteen hours a day. Ruku doesn't sleep that long. Personally, I think it's a question of intelligence. The more intelligent the baby is, the more awake it is. And then the more time it is awake, the more stimulation it has and the more intelligent it becomes. It's a virtuous circle.'
Nazneen kept quiet. Her guts prickled. Her forehead tightened. All he could do was talk. The baby was just another thing to talk about. For Nazneen, the baby's life was more real to her than her own. His life was full of needs: actual and urgent needs, which she could supply. What was her own life, by contrast, but a series of gnawings, ill-defined and impossible to satisfy?
And Chanu just talked. For him the baby was a set of questions, an array of possibilities, a spark for debate and for reflection. He pondered on Raqib. He examined, from a distance, his progress and made plans for his future. The baby opened up new horizons and closed others; he provided a telescope and a looking glass. What did Chanu see when he looked at his son? An empty vessel to be filled with ideas. An avenger: forming, growing. A future business partner. A professor: home-grown. A Chanu: this time with chances seized, not missed.
Nazneen let her lips part and breathed more deeply.
'OK,' said Chanu. 'Sleep now. If Mrs Islam comes I'll wake you.'
She listened for the sound of him leaving. The little creak he made (his lungs, not his bones) when he stood. Even with her lids closed she could see him, hands on knees, eyes scanning and scanning, the hair on the top of his head standing in short, shocked tufts. A man whom Life took unawares. He had not moved. 'Mrs Islam is what you call a respectable type.' Nazneen tried a snore. 'Razia, on the other hand . . .' He cleared his throat and raised his voice, 'Razia, on the other hand, I would not call a respectable type. I'm not saying anything against her. But what is her background? Her husband does some menial sort of job. He is uneducated. He is probably illiterate. Perhaps he can write his name. If he can't write his name, he will put a cross. Razia cuts her hair like a tramp. Perhaps she calls it fashion. I don't know. Her son is roaming around the estate like a vagabond, throwing stones and what have you. When I spoke to him he put his fingers in his nose, like this, and made a face like this.' Nazneen resisted the temptation to look. 'It's OK. He's a little boy. What does it matter?' Here Chanu coughed in a way which suggested to Nazneen that his speech would reach a climax. 'I'll tell you what matters. The little boy is not little for very long. And when he grows, he grows with that very same lack of respect. The boy grows, the lack of respect grows. Then they are disobedient, they start vandalizing, fighting, drinking, chasing women, gambling. You can see where it ends, and how it starts.' He got up, finally. 'Just keep it in mind. I don't forbid you to see Razia, but I ask you to keep it in mind.'
Mrs Islam stretched the baby's legs up so that his feet touched his ears. She pulled his arms down, out to each side and across his body. She took hold of the left leg and pumped it, so that it tucked against his chest and then kicked at the air. Mrs Islam counted to ten. She started again with the right. Nazneen hovered to the side like a scavenger. A smile flickered around her mouth. Twice she darted, and twice she pulled back.
'You must massage the child every day,' said Mrs Islam. 'Or the limbs will seize up. What are you wobbling around there for? Sit down. Or go and make some tea.'
'Let me massage him,' said Nazneen. 'I can do it.'
'You don't do it hard enough. Look! He likes it. It's also essential for their circulation.'
The baby smiled. His entire face was gum. He flapped his arms like a baby bird. Mrs Islam, big as a crow, bent over him and tickled an armpit. The baby spluttered and squealed. Bubbles formed on his lips. Mrs Islam said, 'Chit. Chit.' She poked at him some more and the baby rolled his head from side to side and made such a noise that Nazneen feared he would have a seizure.
She snatched her baby from the carpet and he gasped hard, as if he had been drowning. 'I'll make the tea,' she said, not looking at her visitor.
Nazneen had begun to dread these visits. Raqib was five months old, and still Mrs Islam had not expended all her advice. How much more advice could she give? How much more could Nazneen take? Mrs Islam had started with the obvious things. The baby had to have his head shaved. The hair he was born with was unclean. He must have a thick black smear of kohl round his eyes, because the Devil takes only beautiful babies. (But he was beautiful, even so.) And he was to be rubbed regularly with oil and put in the sun to absorb its goodness. As if Nazneen did not know these things!
Then there were the special things that Mrs Islam's mother had handed down to her. Put a finger up the baby's bottom once a week to purge his system. Suck his nostrils to clear away the snot. Roll the nipple between your thumbs before feeding so the milk is ready for him. Leave him for one hour a day on his belly to strengthen his neck and chest. Make a little pillow of feathers and bay leaves and cloves to help him sleep. Parrot feathers were best. Add some ghee to his bathwater to keep his skin soft. Paste turmeric and aniseed on his chest to cure a cough. Rub his feet with coconut oil to draw out a cold. Never, ever turn him upside down.
Nazneen filled the kettle. She hoisted the baby on her hip. 'Gi-gi,' she said. 'Go-gi.' The baby quivered in anticipation. 'Ga!' she said. 'Gi-ga, gi-ga, gi-ga!' Raqib leaned back, incredulous. His bottom lip hung. Banners of drool proclaimed his adulation. Nazneen jiggled him. Up and down. Up and down. 'Dah,' said the baby, and kicked his fat legs. He stared at her face as if it were a wonder, as if he beheld beauty there. His eyes, unfurled now from the ancient wisdom they brought from the womb, were wide worlds, bright as stars. She put him down on a nest of cushions brought from the sitting room. He was shattered. Betrayed. He howled like a widow.
Nazneen smiled. She poured boiling water on tea bags and made ticking noises with her tongue. Then she picked him up again. 'Do you cry for me? Is it me? Do you cry for me?' And with these words made good his loss.
'I'll take him back with me this afternoon,' said Mrs Islam. 'Let you catch up on some housework.' She made circles in the air with a finger. Her small black eyes appraised the room. 'My niece is coming. She loves to play with babies.'
Eleven, said Nazneen to herself. There were eleven chairs in the room, not counting the cow-dung armchairs that went with the sofa. How was she supposed to tidy up? There was nowhere to put anything. And Chanu's books and papers grew like weeds. And the dust – it came from nowhere, like a plague, and it could not be cured.
'He's so small,' said Nazneen. 'Send your niece to me.'
'Nonsense. I'll take him.' Mrs Islam slurped at her tea. The bristles around her wart were long today. Soon they would be plucked.
Nazneen busied herself with Raqib. She dabbed at his chin with a tissue. She examined his fingernails. She put him on her shoulder and patted his back to expel some imaginary wind. He made a noise, an experimental sort of sound, which she seized upon as distress and walked with him over to the window. 'There, there,' she said. 'Never mind. Look, look, look.' But she kept him against her shoulder so that it was she who looked out.
The sun is large and sickly. It sweats uncomfortably in a hazy sky, squeezed between slabs of concrete. There is barely enough sky to hold it. Below, the communal bins ring the courtyard like squat metal warriors, competing in foulness, contemplating the stand-off. One has keeled over and spilled its guts. A rat flicks in and out of them. A boy, sixteen, seventeen, walks by. He tests his shoulders this way and that. His head moves in and out like a chicken, strutting. He holds a cigarette in one hand and a radio or a tape player in the other. His friends call out to him from the shelter, next to the entrance to Rosemead. It is their headquarters. The bins have been evicted. Bhangra. That's what they play, Razia tells her. Bhangra and Shakin' Stevens. All hours of the day, and some of the night. The parents are losing control. But some of it is quite good – her eyes slide left, and narrow themselves to two shiny slivers – particularly the Shakin' Stevens.
Rosemead faces her unblinkingly. There are metal frames on the windows. For one week they had sparkled and zinged. They had promised much. They had sung about how neat they were, how new. And then they fell into line. Overnight. The next morning they were subdued. The light did not play with them. The brick, dull red, got its way. The frames are as dirty, as sullen, as their hosts.
You can spread your soul over a paddy field, you can whisper to a mango tree, you can feel the earth beneath your toes and know that this is the place, the place where it begins and ends. But what can you tell to a pile of bricks? The bricks will not be moved.
A television aerial dangles from a window like a suicide. A pile of boxes blockades another window. Razia's place is curtained, and the back of a head bobs around behind the curtain: Shefali or Tariq hiding from Tariq or Shefali. The tattoo lady leans forward, watching the yard and drinking. Her hair slides down the sides of her head like an oil slick. She has dyed it, but it remains unwashed. She is wearing a man's vest. Her breasts, patched with dark ink, flop against it. Her thighs run over the chair. She transfers her can from one hand to the other and back again. How can she just sit and sit? What is she waiting for? What is there to see?
* * *
'You can collect him in a couple of hours. Give him a feed now, and we'll go.' Mrs Islam's voice brought Nazneen back. Her words were sharp as an eyeful of sand. She never raised her voice. It was the kind of voice that never needed to be raised. It cut words to a fine point and launched them decisively.
Nazneen turned round. 'No,' she said. 'He'll feed later.'
Mrs Islam took a handkerchief from her sleeve. She shook it out and wiped along her hairline. Winter and summer she wore the same thing: a cardigan over a sari, black socks, carpet slippers. She would not change for the seasons. They did not bend to her and she would not bend to them.
'You better do it now. I'm ready to go.'
'He's staying here,' said Nazneen. 'With me.'
Her guest looked at her. Her features could not accommodate surprise, but her eyebrows dug themselves a little closer together. Nazneen noticed for the first time how dark they were, untouched by the white that had leached her hair. 'What's that?'
Nazneen trembled, but the warmth of Raqib's body against her chest fired her resolve. 'He's staying here.' She could have added something to soothe. Something to show her respect. She could have said, I'll bring him later. He's not well today. Another day, I'll bring him. He'll be in good hands with you. All she said was, 'He's staying here.'
Mrs Islam gathered herself. She picked up her handbag and sat with it open on her lap. For a moment, Nazneen imagined her grabbing Raqib and stuffing him in the cavernous black leather. But Mrs Islam simply closed it, rubbed the glass clasp with her thumb, and got up. 'The white people,' she said, 'they all do what they want. It's nobody's business.
'If a child is screaming because it is being beaten, they just close the door and the windows. They might make a complaint about noise. But the child is not their business, even if it is being beaten to death.