White Teeth (54 page)

‘Yeah, well,’ said the girl, putting the book in her bag. ‘What-
ever
. I’ve got to get to gate 52. It was nice talking to you. But yeah, you should definitely give it a read. I’m a big fan of Surrey T. Banks . . . he writes some freaky shit.’

Marcus watched the girl and her bouncing ponytail progress down the wide walkway until she merged with other dark-haired girls and was lost. Instantly, he felt relieved and remembered with pleasure his own appointment with gate 32 and Magid Iqbal, who was a different kettle of fish, or a blacker kettle, or whatever the phrase was. With fifteen minutes to spare, he abandoned his coffee which had gone rapidly from scalding to lukewarm, and began to walk in the direction of the lower 50s. The phrase ‘a meeting of minds’ was running through his head. He knew this was an absurd thing to think of a seventeen-year-old boy, but still he thought it,
felt
it: a certain elation, maybe equal to the feeling his own mentor experienced when the seventeen-year-old Marcus Chalfen first walked into his poky college office. A certain satisfaction. Marcus was familiar with the mutually beneficial smugness that runs from mentor to protégé and back again (ah, but you are brilliant and deign to spend your time with me! Ah, but I am brilliant and catch your attention above all others!). Still, he indulged himself. And he was glad to be meeting Magid for the first time, alone, though he hoped he was not guilty of planning it that way. It was more a series of fortunate accidents. The Iqbals’ car had broken down, and Marcus’s hatchback was not large. He had persuaded Samad and Alsana that there would not be enough room for Magid’s luggage if they came with him. Millat was in Chester with KEVIN and had been quoted as saying (in language reminiscent of his Mafia video days), ‘I have no brother.’ Irie had an exam in the morning. Joshua refused to get in any car if Marcus was in it; in fact, he generally eschewed cars at present, opting for the environmentally ethical option of two wheels. As far as Josh’s decision went, Marcus felt as he did about all human decisions of this kind. One could neither agree nor disagree with them as
ideas
. There was no rhyme nor reason for so much of what people did. And in his present estrangement from Joshua he felt more powerless than ever. It hurt him that even his own son was not as Chalfenist as he’d hoped. And over the past few months he had built up great expectations of Magid (and this would explain why his pace quickened, gate 28, gate 29, gate 30); maybe he had begun to hope, begun to
believe
, that Magid would be a beacon for right-thinking Chalfenism even as it died a death here in the wilderness. They would
save
each other.
This couldn’t be faith could it, Marcus
? He questioned himself directly on this point as he scurried along. For a gate and a half the question unnerved him. Then it passed and the answer was reassuring. Not faith, no, Marcus, not the kind with no eyes. Something stronger, something firmer.
Intellectual
faith.

So. Gate 32. It would be just the two of them, then, meeting at last, having conquered the gap between continents; the teacher, the willing pupil, and then that first, historic handshake. Marcus did not think for a second it could or would go badly. He was no student of history (and science had taught him that the past was where we did things through a glass, darkly, whereas the future was always brighter, a place where we did things right or at least right-er), he had no stories to scare him concerning a dark man meeting a white man, both with heavy expectations, but only one with the power. He had brought no piece of white cardboard either, some large banner with a name upon it, like the rest of his fellow waiters, and as he looked around gate 32, that concerned him. How would they know each other? Then he remembered he was meeting a twin, and remembering that made him laugh out loud. It was incredible and sublime, even to him, that a boy should walk out of that tunnel with precisely the same genetic code as a boy he already knew, and yet in every conceivable way be different. He would see him and yet not see him. He would recognize him and yet that recognition would be false. Before he had a chance to think what this meant, whether it meant anything, they were coming towards him, the passengers of BA flight 261; a talkative but exhausted brown mob who rushed towards him like a river, turning off at the last minute as if he were the edge of a waterfall.
Nomoskār . . . sālām ā lekum . . . kamon āchō
? This is what they said to each other and their friends on the other side of the barrier; some women in full purdah, some in saris, men in strange mixtures of fabrics, leather, tweed, wool and nylon, with little boat-hats that reminded Marcus of Nehru; children in jumpers made by the Taiwanese and rucksacks of bright reds and yellows; pushing through the doors to the concourse of gate 32; meeting aunts, meeting drivers, meeting children, meeting officials, meeting sun-tanned white-toothed airline representatives . . .

‘You are Mr Chalfen.’

Meeting minds
. Marcus lifted his head to look at the tall young man standing in front of him. It was Millat’s face, certainly, but it was cleaner cut, and somewhat younger in appearance. The eyes were not so violet, or at least not so violently violet. The hair was floppy in the English public school style and brushed forward. The form was ever so thickly set and healthy. Marcus was no good on clothes, but he could say at least that they were entirely white and that the overall impression was of good materials, well made and soft. And he was handsome, even Marcus could see that. What he lacked in the Byronic charisma of his brother, he seemed to gain in nobility, with a sturdier chin and a dignified jaw. These were all pins in haystacks, however, these were the differences you notice only because the similarity is so striking. They were twins from their broken noses to their huge, ungainly feet. Marcus was conscious of a very faint feeling of disappointment that this was so. But superficial exteriors aside, there was no doubting, Marcus thought, who this boy Magid truly resembled. Hadn’t Magid spotted Marcus from a crowd of many? Hadn’t they recognized each other, just now, at a far deeper, fundamental level? Not twinned like cities or the two halves of a randomly split ovum, but twinned like each side of an equation: logically, essentially, inevitably. As rationalists are wont, Marcus abandoned rationalism for a moment in the face of the sheer wonder of the thing. This instinctive meeting at gate 32 (Magid had strode across the floor and walked directly to him), finding each other like this in a great swell of people, five hundred at least: what were the chances? It seemed as unlikely as the feat of the sperm who conquer the blind passage towards the egg. As magical as that egg splitting in two. Magid and Marcus. Marcus and Magid.

‘Yes! Magid! We finally meet! I feel as if I know you already — well, I do, but then again I don’t — but, bloody hell, how did you know it was me?’

Magid’s face grew radiant and revealed a lopsided smile of much angelic charm. ‘Well, Marcus, my dear man, you are the only white fellow at gate 32.’

The return of Magid Mahfooz Murshed Mubtasim shook the houses of Iqbal, Jones and Chalfen considerably. ‘I don’t recognize him,’ said Alsana to Clara in confidence, after he had spent a few days at home. ‘There is something peculiar about him. When I told him Millat was in Chester, he did not say a word. Just a stiff-upper lip. He hasn’t seen his brother
in eight years
. But not a little squeak, not a whisperoo. Samad says this is some clone, this is not an Iqbal. One hardly likes to touch him. His teeth, he brushes them six times a day. His underwear, he irons them. It is like sitting down to breakfast with David Niven.’

Joyce and Irie viewed the new arrival with equal suspicion. They had loved the one brother so well and thoroughly for so many years, and now suddenly this new, yet familiar face; like switching on your favourite TV soap only to find a beloved character slyly replaced by another actor with a similar haircut. For the first few weeks they simply did not know what to make of him. As for Samad, if he had had his way, he would have hidden the boy away for ever, locked him under the stairs or sent him to Greenland. He dreaded the inevitable visits of all his relatives (the ones he had boasted to, all the tribes who had worshipped at the altar of the framed photograph) when they caught an eye-load of this Iqbal the younger, with his bow-ties and his Adam Smith and his E. M. bloody Forster and his atheism! The only up-side was the change in Alsana. The
A— Z
?
Yes
, Samad Miah, it is in the top right-hand drawer,
yes
, that’s where it is,
yes
. The first time she did it, he almost jumped out of his skin. The curse was lifted. No more
maybe Samad Miah
, no more
possibly Samad Miah
. Yes, yes, yes. No, no, no. The fundamentals. It was a blessed relief, but it wasn’t enough. His sons had failed him. The pain was excruciating. He shuffled through the restaurant with his eyes to the ground. If aunts and uncles phoned, he deflected questions or simply lied. Millat? He is in Birmingham, working in the mosque, yes, renewing his faith. Magid? Yes, he is marrying soon, yes, a very good young man, wants a lovely Bengali girl, yes, upholder of traditions, yes.

So. First came the musical-living-arrangements, as everybody shifted one place to the right or left. Millat returned at the beginning of October. Thinner, fully bearded and quietly determined not to see his twin on political, religious and personal grounds. ‘If Magid stays,’ said Millat (De Niro, this time), ‘I go.’ And because Millat looked thin and tired and wild-eyed, Samad said Millat could stay, which left no other option but for Magid to stay with the Chalfens (much to Alsana’s chagrin) until the situation could be resolved. Joshua, furious at being displaced in his parents’ affections by yet another Iqbal, went to the Joneses’, while Irie, though ostensibly having returned to her family home (on the concession of a ‘year off’), spent all her time at the Chalfens, organizing Marcus’s affairs so as to earn money for her two bank accounts (
Amazon Jungle Summer ’93
and
Jamaica 2000
), often working deep into the night and sleeping on the couch.

‘The children have left us, they are abroad,’ said Samad over the phone to Archie, in so melancholy a fashion that Archie suspected he was quoting poetry. ‘They are strangers in strange lands.’

‘They’ve run to the bloody hills, more like,’ replied Archie grimly. ‘I tell you, if I had a penny for every time I’ve seen Irie in the past few months . . .’

He’d have about ten pence. She was never home. Irie was stuck between a rock and a hard place, like Ireland, like Israel, like India. A no-win situation. If she stayed home there was Joshua berating her about her involvement with Marcus’s mice. Arguments she had no answer for, nor any stomach:
should living organisms be patented? Is it right to plant pathogens in animals
? Irie didn’t know and so, with her father’s instincts, shut her mouth and kept her distance. But if she was at the Chalfens’, working away at what had become a full-time summer job, she had to deal with Magid. Here, the situation was impossible. Her work for Marcus, which had begun nine months earlier as a little light filing, had increased seven fold; the recent interest in Marcus’s work meant she was required to deal with the calls of the media, sackfuls of post, organize appointments; her pay had likewise increased to that of a secretary. But that was the problem, she was a
secretary
, whereas Magid was a confidant, an apprentice and disciple, accompanying Marcus on trips, observing him in the laboratory. The golden child. The chosen one. Not only was he brilliant, but he was charming. Not only was he charming, but he was generous. For Marcus, he was an answer to prayers. Here was a boy who could weave the most beautiful moral defences with a professionalism that belied his years, who helped Marcus formulate arguments he would not have had the patience to do alone. It was Magid who encouraged him out of the laboratory, taking him by the hand squinting into the sunlit world where people were calling for him. People wanted Marcus and his mouse, and Magid knew how to give it to them. If the
New Statesman
needed two thousand words on the patent debate, Magid would write while Marcus spoke, translating his words into elegant English, turning the bald statements of a scientist disinterested in moral debates into the polished arguments of a philosopher. If
Channel 4 News
wanted an interview, Magid explained how to sit, how to move one’s hands, how to incline one’s head. All this from a boy who had spent the greater proportion of his life in the Chittagong Hills, without television or newspaper. Marcus — even though he had a lifelong hatred of the word, even though he hadn’t used it since his own father clipped his ear for it when he was three — was tempted to call it a
miracle
. Or, at the very least, extremely fortuitous. The boy was changing his life and that was extremely fortuitous. For the first time in his life, Marcus was prepared to concede faults in himself — small ones, mind — but still . . .
faults
. He had been too insular, perhaps, perhaps. He had been aggressive towards public interest in his work, perhaps, perhaps. He saw room for change. And the genius of it, the master stroke, was that Magid never for a moment let Marcus feel that Chalfenism was being compromised in any way whatsoever. He expressed his undying affection and admiration for it every day. All Magid wanted to do, he explained to Marcus, was bring Chalfenism to the people. And you had to give the people what they wanted in a form
they could understand
. There was something so sublime in the way he said it, so soothing, so
true
, that Marcus, who would have spat on such an argument six months before, gave in without protest.

‘There’s room for one more chap this century,’ Magid told him (this guy was a master in flattery), ‘Freud, Einstein, Crick and Watson . . . There is an empty seat, Marcus. The bus is not quite full capacity. Ding! Ding!
Room for one more
 . . .’