Brick Lane (15 page)

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.'

CHAPTER FOUR

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!