White Teeth (9 page)

Alsana says, “Nobody's complaining, let's get that straight. Children are a blessing, the more the merrier. But I tell you, when I turned my head and saw that fancy ultra-business thingummybob . . .”

“Ultra
sound,
” corrects Clara, through a mouthful of rice.

“Yes, I almost had the heart attack to finish me off! Two! Feeding one is enough!”

Clara laughs and says she can imagine Samad's face when he saw it.

“No, dearie.” Alsana is reproving, tucking her large feet underneath the folds of her sari. “He didn't see anything. He wasn't there. I am not letting him see things like that. A woman has to have the private things—a husband needn't be involved in body-business, in a lady's
. . . parts.
”

Niece-of-Shame, who is sitting between them, sucks her teeth.

“Bloody hell, Alsi, he must've been involved in your parts sometime, or is this the immaculate bloody conception?”

“So rude,” says Alsana to Clara in a snooty, English way. “Too old to be so rude and too young to know any better.”

And then Clara and Alsana, with the accidental mirroring that happens when two people are sharing the same experience, both lay their hands on their bulges.

Neena, to redeem herself: “Yeah . . . well . . . How are you doing on names? Any ideas?”

Alsana is decisive. “Meena and Mala¯na¯, if they are girls. If boys: Magid and Millat. Ems are good. Ems are strong. Mahatma, Muhammad, that funny Mr. Morecambe, from Morecambe and Wise—letter you can trust.”

But Clara is more cautious, because naming seems to her a fearful responsibility, a godlike task for a mere mortal. “If it's a girl, I tink I like
Irie.
It patois. Means everything
OK, cool, peaceful,
you know?”

Alsana is horrified before the sentence is finished: “ ‘OK?' This is a name for a child? You might as well call her
‘Wouldsirlikeanypoppadumswiththat?'
or
‘Niceweatherwearehaving.'
”

“—And Archie likes
Sarah.
Well, dere not much you can argue wid in Sarah, but dere's not much to get happy 'bout either. I suppose if it was good enough for the wife of Abraham—”

“Ibra¯him,” Alsana corrects, out of instinct more than Qur
nic pedantry, “popping out babies when she was a hundred years old, by the grace of Allah.”

And then Neena, groaning at the turn the conversation is taking: “Well, I
like
Irie. It's funky. It's different.”

Alsana
loves
this. “For pity's sake, what does Archibald know about
funky.
Or
different.
If I were you, dearie,” she says, patting Clara's knee, “I'd choose Sarah and let that be an end to it. Sometimes you have to let these men have it their way. Anything for a little—how do you say it in the English? For a little”—she puts her finger over tightly pursed lips, like a guard at the gate—
“shush.”

But in response Niece-of-Shame puts on the thick accent, bats her voluminous eyelashes, wraps her college scarf round her head like purdah. “Oh yes, Auntie, yes, the little
submissive
Indian woman. You don't talk to him, he talks
at
you. You scream and shout at each other, but there's no communication. And in the end he wins anyway because he does whatever he likes, when he likes. You don't even know where he is, what he does, what he
feels,
half the time. It's 1975, Alsi. You can't conduct relationships like that anymore. It's not like back home. There's got to be communication between men and women in the West, they've got to listen to each other, otherwise . . .” Neena mimes a small mushroom cloud going off in her hand.

“What a load of the codswallop,” says Alsana sonorously, closing her eyes, shaking her head, “it is you who do not listen. By Allah, I will always give as good as I get. But you presume I
care
what he does. You presume I want to
know.
The truth is, for a marriage to survive you don't need all this talk, talk, talk; all this ‘I am this' and ‘I am really like this' like in the papers, all this
revelation—
especially when your husband is old, when he is wrinkly and falling apart—you do not
want
to know what is slimy underneath the bed and rattling in the wardrobe.”

Neena frowns, Clara cannot raise serious objection, and the rice is handed around once more.

“Moreover,” says Alsana after a pause, folding her dimpled arms underneath her breasts, pleased to be holding forth on a subject close to this formidable bosom, “when you are from families such as ours you should have learned that
silence,
what is
not
said, is the very
best
recipe for family life.”

For all three have been brought up in strict, religious families, houses where God appeared at every meal, infiltrated every childhood game, and sat in the lotus position under the bedclothes with a torch to check nothing untoward was occurring.

“So let me get this straight,” says Neena derisively. “You're saying that a good dose of repression keeps a marriage healthy.”

And as if someone had pressed a button, Alsana is outraged. “Repression! Nonsense silly-billy word! I'm just talking about common sense. What is my husband? What is yours?” she says, pointing to Clara. “Twenty-five years they live before we are even
born.
What are they? What are they capable of? What blood do they have on their hands? What is sticky and smelly in their private areas? Who knows?” She throws her hands up, releasing the questions into the unhealthy Kilburn air, sending a troupe of sparrows up with them.

“What you don't understand, my Niece-of-Shame, what none of your generation understands . . .”

At which point Neena cannot stop a piece of onion escaping from her mouth due to the sheer strength of her objection. “My
generation
? For fuckssake, you're two years older than me, Alsi.”

But Alsana continues regardless, miming a knife slicing through the Niece-of-Shame tongue-of-obscenity, “. . . is that not everybody wants to see into everybody else's sweaty, secret parts.”

“But Auntie,” begs Neena, raising her voice, because this is what she really wants to argue about, the largest sticking point between the two of them, Alsana's arranged marriage. “How can you
bear
to live with somebody you don't know from Adam?”

In response, an infuriating
wink:
Alsana always likes to appear jovial at the very moment that her interlocutor becomes hot under the collar. “Because,
Miss Smarty-pants,
it is by far the easier option. It was exactly because Eve did not know Adam from Adam that they got on so A-OK. Let me explain. Yes, I was married to Samad Iqbal the same evening of the very day I met him. Yes, I didn't know him from Adam. But I liked him well enough. We met in the breakfast room on a steaming Delhi day and he fanned me with
The Times.
I thought he had a good face, a sweet voice, and his backside was high and well formed for a man of his age. Very good. Now, every time I learn something more about him,
I like him less.
So you see, we were better off the way we were.”

Neena stamps her foot in exasperation at the skewed logic.

“Besides, I will never know him well. Getting anything out of my husband is like trying to squeeze water out when you're stoned.”

Neena laughs despite herself. “Water out of a
stone.
”

“Yes, yes. You think I'm so stupid. But I am wise about things like men. I tell you”—Alsana prepares to deliver her summation as she has seen it done many years previously by the young Delhi lawyers with their slick side partings—“men are the last mystery. God is easy compared with men. Now, enough of the philosophy: samosa?” She peels the lid off the plastic tub and sits fat, pretty, and satisfied on her conclusion.

“Shame that you're having them,” says Neena to her aunt, lighting a fag. “Boys, I mean. Shame that you're going to have boys.”

“What do you mean?”

This is Clara, who is the recipient of a secret (kept secret from Alsana and Archie) lending library of Neena's through which she reads, in a few short months, Greer's
Female Eunuch,
Jong's
Fear of Flying,
and
The Second Sex,
all in a clandestine attempt, on Neena's part, to rid Clara of her “false consciousness.”

“I mean, I just think men have caused enough chaos this century. There's enough fucking men in the world. If I knew I was going to have a boy”—she pauses to prepare her two falsely conscious friends for this new concept—“I'd have to seriously consider abortion.”

Alsana screams, claps her hands over one of her own ears and one of Clara's, and then almost chokes on a piece of eggplant. For some reason the remark simultaneously strikes Clara as funny; hysterically, desperately funny; miserably funny; and the Niece-of-Shame sits between the two, nonplussed, while the two egg-shaped women bend over themselves, one in laughter, the other in horror and asphyxiation.

“Are you all right, ladies?”

It is Sol Jozefowicz, the old guy who back then took it upon himself to police the park (though his job as park keeper had long since been swept away in council cuts), Sol Jozefowicz stands in front of them, ready as always to be of aid.

“We are all going to burn in hell, Mr. Jozefowicz, if you call that being all right,” explains Alsana, pulling herself together.

Niece-of-Shame rolls her eyes. “Speak for yourself.”

But Alsana is faster than any sniper when it comes to firing back. “I do, I do—thankfully Allah has arranged it that way.”

“Good afternoon, Neena, good afternoon, Mrs. Jones,” says Sol, offering a neat bow to each. “Are you sure you are all right? Mrs. Jones?”

Clara cannot stop the tears from squeezing out of the corners of her eyes. She cannot work out, at this moment, whether it is crying or laughing.

“I'm fine . . . fine, sorry to have worried you, Mr. Jozefowicz . . . really, I'm fine.”

“I do not see what's so very funny-funny,” mutters Alsana. “The murder of innocents—is this funny?”

“Not in my experience, Mrs. Iqbal, no,” says Sol Jozefowicz, in the collected manner in which he said everything, passing his handkerchief to Clara. It strikes all three women—the way history will, embarrassingly, without warning, like a blush—what the ex–park keeper's experience might have been. They fall silent.

“Well, as long as you ladies are fine, I'll be getting on,” says Sol, motioning that Clara can keep the handkerchief and replacing the hat he had removed in the old fashion. He bows his neat little bow once more, and sets off slowly, anticlockwise round the park.

Once Sol is out of earshot: “OK, Auntie Alsi, I apologize, I apologize . . . For fuck's sake, what more do you want?”

“Oh, every-bloody-thing,” says Alsana, her voice losing the fight, becoming vulnerable. “The whole bloody universe made clear—in a little nutshell. I cannot understand a thing anymore, and I am just beginning. You understand?”

She sighs, not waiting for an answer, not looking at Neena, but across the way at the hunched, disappearing figure of Sol winding in and out of the yew trees. “You may be right about Samad . . . about many things. Maybe there are no good men, not even the two I might have in this belly . . . and maybe I do not talk enough with mine, maybe I have married a stranger. You might see the truth better than I. What do I know . . . barefoot country girl . . . never went to the universities.”

“Oh, Alsi,” Neena is saying, weaving in and out of Alsana's words like tapestry; feeling bad. “You know I didn't mean it like that.”

“But I cannot be worrying-worrying all the time about the
truth.
I have to worry about the truth that can be
lived with.
And that is the difference between losing your marbles drinking the salty sea, or swallowing the stuff from the streams. My Niece-of-Shame believes in the talking cure, eh?” says Alsana, with something of a grin. “Talk, talk, talk and it will be better. Be honest, slice open your heart and spread the red stuff around. But the past is made of more than words, dearie. We married old men, you see? These bumps”—Alsana pats them both—“they will always have daddy-long-legs for fathers. One leg in the present, one in the past. No talking will change this. Their roots will always be tangled. And roots get dug up. Just look in my garden—birds at the coriander every bloody day . . .”

Just as he reaches the far gate, Sol Jozefowicz turns round to wave, and three women wave back. Clara feels a little theatrical, flying his cream handkerchief above her head. Like she is seeing someone off on a train journey crossing the border of two countries.

“How did they meet?” asks Neena, trying to lift the cloud that has somehow descended on their picnic. “I mean Mr. Jones and Samad Miah.”