Brick Lane (46 page)

'My arm,' shouted Nazneen. 'Break my arm. Break them both.' She held her arms out, until she began to feel foolish.

Slowly, Mrs Islam swung her feet down and sat up on the sofa. Her hair had been dragged apart and it hung in thick swathes around her neck. She glared at Nazneen with her hot-coal eyes. Nazneen took it and she turned it round. A minute passed. The television crowd applauded with muffled enthusiasm. Music came and went, and the lunatic scramble of advertisements. Mrs Islam stood up.

'There are some things a wife does not want a husband to know.'

Nazneen burned. She did not look away.

'Fresh start,' said Mrs Islam. 'New life, back home. You don't want anything to spoil it.'

'My husband,' said Nazneen slowly, 'knows everything. He'll come soon. Why don't you ask him?'

The impossible happened. Mrs Islam looked surprised.

Nazneen, strengthened, said, 'Swear on the Qur'an. That's all you have to do.'

Mrs Islam picked up the ankle bells from the back of the sofa. She placed them on the coffee table. 'For the girls,' she said.

She walked over to Son Number Two and picked up her bag.

Son Number Two nodded, as if everything had happened just as he expected.

'Let's go,' he said. 'They paid too much anyway.' He gave a good-natured laugh.

Mrs Islam let out a cry, a low animal noise of despair. With both hands she raised her medicine bag and swung it at her son's shoulder. It bounced off. She swung at his head and missed. She made another cry; shrill this time, as if she had been cut. Son Number Two moved leisurely towards the door. He put his hands up to shield his head. Mrs Islam followed. As she passed, Nazneen saw the tears flood her eyes and pour down her cheeks. She wielded the bag once more and struck Son Number Two on the back. She made a sound in the back of her throat that Nazneen remembered for days.

Son Number One was still at his station behind the sofa. He looked around, trying to decide something. Then he walked over to the ruins of the showcase and levelled a kick at the one remaining door. The door twanged and vibrated and came to rest intact. Son Number One shrugged. With the tip of his shoe he toppled a few boxes, and then he left.

Nazneen fetched the dustpan and brush. She wrapped the large pieces of glass in newspaper and began to sweep up the rest. Nothing at all came to her mind. As she squatted in the debris, everything inside was peaceful. She stopped working and slipped into the moment like a hot bath. Gradually, a thought began to form. God provided a way. Nazneen smiled. God provided a way, and I found it.

She walked down Brick Lane to get to the tube station at Whitechapel. Days of the Raj restaurant had a new statue in the window: Ganesh seated against a rising sun, his trunk curling playfully on his breast. The Lancer already displayed Radha-Krishna; Popadum went with Saraswati; and Sweet Lassi covered all the options with a black-tongued, evil-eyed Kali and a torpid soapstone Buddha. 'Hindus?' said Nazneen when the trend first started. 'Here?' Chanu patted his stomach. 'Not Hindus. Marketing. Biggest god of all.' The white people liked to see the gods. 'For authenticity,' said Chanu.

Outside the station a little lad, maybe ten or twelve years old, walked back and forth across the entrance. He had headphones round his neck and springs in his heels. A boy came galloping up the steps and banged into him.

'Watch it,' said the little lad.

'You all right? Didn't see you there.' The boy was older; old enough perhaps that he called himself a man.

'Clear off,' said the small one. 'Or else.'

'Or else?' The boy was amused. 'Or else what, little brother?'

'You fucking-bloody-bastard,' said the lad calmly.

The boy raised his hands, smiling. He shook his head. 'Shouldn't you be at school?'

No answer. The little brother put his headphones on.

The boy began to walk away, still shaking his head.

'Don't come around here again,' the little one shouted. 'If I see you again, you're dead.'

Nazneen reached the entrance. She stopped in front of the little brother and pulled off his headphones. 'Fanu Rahman! Does your mother know where you are? Get yourself off to school this second.'

As she bought her ticket, she wondered what she should tell Nazma about her fifth and most precious son. Then she remembered that Nazma was not speaking to her.

There were two other people on the platform. Nazneen stood close to the edge, watching the mice twitch in and out of the tracks and looking out for the eye of the train in the black tunnel. She willed the train to come. Two hours ago, she had dialled his number and felt her skin prickle at the sound of his voice. Since then, she wanted to knock down walls, banish distance, abolish time, to get to him. What she had to say to him could not wait. The electronic noticeboard said four minutes until the next train. Then it blinked and added another couple of minutes.

Somebody passed behind her on the platform. She turned round. A young woman in high-heeled boots and jeans, a denim jacket pegged on her fingers and slung over her shoulder, stalked towards the free bench. Her footsteps rang like declarations.

Nazneen fell in line behind her. The way the woman walked was fascinating. Nazneen watched her and stepped as she stepped. How much could it say? One step in front of the other. Could it say,
I am this
and
I am not this?
Could a walk tell lies? Could it change you?

The woman reached the bench. Nazneen almost collided with her. 'Sorry,' said the woman. 'Sorry,' said Nazneen. They both sat down.

The train took her to King's Cross. She had to change to the Piccadilly Line. Karim had explained it all. She got lost and walked for miles through tunnels and up steps and down escalators, across ticket halls, past shops and barriers and through more tunnels. A couple of times she was close to tears. She challenged the tears to come and they backed down. Eventually, she found the platform and entered the train. By the time she sat down she was sweating. She tried to think about what she would say to Karim. The urgency inside her began to fade. Only three more stations to go. There was not enough time.

A picture of him came into her mind. Karim in his jeans and trainers, sitting at her table, bouncing his leg. Karim with a magazine, feeding her slices of the world. Karim in his white shirt, rubbing his smooth jaw, telling her all the things that lay hidden just outside her window. He knew about the world and his place in the world. That was how she liked to remember him.

It was never so. Apart from where it mattered, in her head. He was who he was. Question and answer. The same as her. Maybe not even that. Karim had never even been to Bangladesh. Nazneen felt a stab of pity. Karim was born a foreigner. When he spoke in Bengali, he stammered. Why had it puzzled her? She saw only what she wanted to see. Karim did not have his place in the world. That was why he defended it.

At Covent Garden the carriage emptied. Nazneen rode in the lift. She saw Karim across the street immediately she came out. He waited by a clothes shop, as they had arranged. She did not pass the barrier but stood to the side and watched. A burger van greased the air with fatty smells. Cars jammed the road and people weaved in and out. On a plinth, a man who seemed to have been dipped in white paint stood still as a rock while a child poked his leg and was pulled away by her mother. A gaggle of girls walked with their arms folded beneath their breasts, clutching their purses and cackling at each other. As they walked they knocked shoulders, a friendship ritual. Two men came out of a pub and made a show of tucking their shirts into their trousers, trying to get back into shape after a long lunch. Nazneen watched Karim watching the people. He leaned against a strip of wall between two shop windows, and rested a foot up against the brickwork. Behind the plate glass white lights heated the faceless mannequins. It had rained, and the slick brown pavements bore a liquid print of the light inside and carried it down to the gutter.

People passed in front of Karim. The street was busy. All day long, people passed each other. Nobody spared a glance for the boy in the panjabi-pyjama and expensive brown fleece. Karim bounced his leg. He looked at his watch. She had seen what she wanted to see. She had looked at him and seen only his possibilities. Now she looked again and saw that the disappointments of his life, which would shape him, had yet to happen. It gave her pain. She almost changed her mind.

'What is it?' he said, as soon as she came near. 'I've got about one thousand things to do.'

'Let's walk.' He still smelled of limes. It made saliva come into her mouth. It made her feel that before she had been sleepy, and now she was awake.

They went towards the market and turned right into the square. A juggler collected his batons from the ground while a small group of Japanese clapped in a half-hearted way.

'Shall we watch?' said Nazneen. It occurred to her that they could have done this before.

'Are you going to tell me?'

'Yes,' she said. But she looked ahead, and said nothing more. It had been Karim's idea to meet here when she said she had to see him. Chanu was going to be at home. 'We'll have to go out of the village,' Karim had said. He sounded almost like her husband.

'Well.' He looked at his watch. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked at that. 'I've got to go now.' He began to turn.

She put her hand on his arm. He did not pull free but his arm was tense against her hand, as if he meant to move.

'My husband bought the tickets. The flight is tomorrow.'

His arm went slack. She took her hand away.

'All right,' said Karim. He watched the juggler. The juggler threw gold hoops in the air. Every few seconds he caught one round his neck and his assistant passed him another.

'But I am not going,' said Nazneen. It occurred to her that
she
could have done this before. What kept her tied to the corner of the room? 'The children are not going.'

'All right,' Karim said again. 'We can talk again after the march. I've got ten thousand things to do.'

'I know. I had to tell you.'

The juggler caught his last three hoops about his neck and flung his arms out to receive his ovation. He was a thin man with an enormous mouth. The mouth never stopped smiling.

'Call me on the mobile,' said Karim. 'We shouldn't see each other again before the wedding.'

The mouth was still smiling. It reached all the way up to his ears. He had no coat, just a thin shirt and plum velvet trousers and braces. The juggler spoke to his assistant and shivered. Nazneen wondered if he stopped smiling when he finished the performance. She imagined him at home, sitting in the dark in front of the television, and smiling.

'We can't get married.'

'Not straight away,' said Karim.

He shivered as well. Or perhaps it was just a yawn.

'Not ever.'

'What do you mean "not ever"?' He sounded irritated. He kicked his boot against the ground.

'I don't want to marry you,' said Nazneen, looking at the juggler. 'That's what I mean.'

He stood in front of her and took hold of both her hands. 'Look at me,' he said. 'Look at me now.' She looked at him. The triangle of hair that stood up at the front of his head, his beautiful long-lashed eyes, his straight nose, the beard which buried the little mole on his chin. 'If you mean it, you must tell me again, while you look at me.'

'I don't want to marry you.'

She squeezed at the pain, trying to make it hers, trying to keep it from him.

He let go of her hands.

'Karim—'

'You really don't?'

'It's not that I—'

He put his hands on his hips and leaned his head right back, as if he had a sudden nosebleed. It was unbearable. It was the worst thing she had ever done.

Karim brought his head down. He blew out, long and hard.

'Right,' he said. 'Right, right, right.' He rubbed his hands together.

Was there a little bit of a smile around his lips?

'Why do you keep saying "right"? How many times are you going to just keep saying it?'

'You don't
want
to marry me?'

'Don't you have ten thousand things to do? Didn't I just tell you the answer?'

She curbed herself. She had to remember she had hurt him.

'Right,' said Karim. He blew hard. The juggler took up three blazing clubs from his assistant. Karim clapped wildly, as though the man had suddenly become his hero.

'It would be too difficult,' said Nazneen, 'for us to be together. So I think we had better stop now.'

Karim began to say 'right' again, but caught himself. 'Yes, I see what you mean. With the children and everything.'

'I have to think of them first.'

'Exactly,' said Karim. He sighed.

Nazneen began to understand: how much she had lightened his load.

They watched the show for a while. Nazneen wondered if the man's cheeks ached. She wondered how his face looked when he stopped smiling, whether he looked sad, or just indifferent like everyone else.

'There's a cafe inside the market,' said Karim. 'Let's go and sit down.'

Nazneen wanted a baked potato, though there was no reason to be eating in the middle of the afternoon. The potato was enormous and covered in melted cheese.

'I've never seen you eat before,' said Karim. He put his elbows on the table and leaned over.

'Sit up straight,' she said. 'I'm not part of the show.'

She ate half the potato and worried about the waste of it. 'You eat it,' she told him, and pushed it across.

'It's going to be a good turnout tomorrow. Come if you can. Bring the kids.' He talked about the march, how many would come, what he planned to say in his speech, the route they would take. As he talked Nazneen realized that, though he was speaking Bengali, he was not hesitating. She thought about it and tried to remember if he had stammered the last time she saw him, or the time before that. She wasn't sure. Had he lost his stammer? He had gained control of his speech, but she had lost control of hers. She blurted out, 'But you're not stammering any more?' He widened his eyes, pretending to be shocked at being so rudely cut off. 'When I was a kid, I stammered. Now it only happens when I'm very nervous.'