Brick Lane (25 page)

'Who?'

'My relatives. They will have to know. Come clean. Stop the hypocrisy.'

'Your relatives? Why should they know?'

Chanu smiled, his fat cheeks dimpled. His eyes darted here and there, looking for an escape route from this inappropriate face. He explained as if to a child. 'All this time they thought I was rich. Why should I stay here in this foreign land, if it did not make me rich? I let them think it. It suited them and it suited me. Actually, I told them some things that are not true, have never been true. Made myself a big man. Here I am only a small man, but there . . .' The smile vanished. 'I could be big. Big Man. That's how it happened.' He sighed and placed his hands atop his stomach. 'So when the begging letters come and I blame left and I blame right, what I should be blaming is this, right here.' He moved his hands up over his chest, to show how his heart, his pride, had betrayed him.

Sinking, sinking, drinking water. When everyone in the village was fasting a long month, when not a grain, not a drop of water passed between the parched lips of any able-bodied man, woman or child over ten, when the sun was hotter than the cooking pot and dusk was just a febrile wish, the hypocrite went down to the pond to duck his head, to dive and sink, to drink and sink a little lower.

'No,' she said. 'It is not a matter for blame.'

'Action, then. It is a matter for action. All matters, in fact, are matters for action. Talking is finished. From now on, I act.' He cleared his throat, a little like the old, talking Chanu. 'Something else to tell you. I resigned today.'

'What do you mean, resigned?'

'What do I mean? Are you against it? Have I not warned you repeatedly of my intention? I warned Dalloway and I warned you also.'

'So. You did it then.'

'There were some surprised faces, I can tell you.' His own face looked ambushed, raided by dacoits. All this action was taking its toll. He chewed again on his lip and a split appeared, stained with a little red. 'I'm clearing my desk in the morning.'

'They can spare you so soon?'

He coughed and hawked, and Nazneen feared he would spit on the floor. He swallowed. 'Of course not. But when I decide to do something, it is done. That's the way I am. From now on.' He waggled his head and blinked slowly to show there was no turning back. 'If who repents?'

'What are you saying?'

'You said, "If she truly repents".'

'I don't think so.' An orderly came by, pushing a bucket along with a mop. He whistled loudly, but not loudly enough to cover his dejection. 'I think they've finished his room. Let's go.' The cleaner raised one corner of his mouth as she passed and made a noise that said he really didn't know what the world was coming to, when he was the one to be standing there with a bucket and mop while everyone else enjoyed themselves. She turned to see Chanu marching after her, his head swivelling, eyes uselessly scanning, feet knocking over the bucket, and the cleaner – propped up by his mop – shaking his head in the dignified manner of a man deeply wronged.

Raqib was awake. 'Bah,' he said. Enough of this nonsense. He lifted his hands in front of his face and regarded them sternly. He made pincers, tested them for strength and flexibility and was satisfied. They were released. He rolled his head to the side. Nazneen cooed as he looked at her. She stroked the back of his head where the hair matted together, soft as cashmere. With a little finger she rubbed at his swollen gums, was pleased to be bitten by his little pearl teeth. Soon they would be home and he would stagger around the sitting room like a ship's deck, clinging on, undaunted by the invisible storm that buffeted him from sofa to chair to table and back again.

'Going to buy an encyclopaedia for you.' Chanu leaned over his son and touched his leg. 'Going to buy it for myself before you start asking too many difficult questions.'

'I'll go home tomorrow. Make everything ready.'

'Damn clever, this boy. See it in the size of the head.'

'Encyclopaedias are expensive.'

'Not too expensive for this boy. Let's call it an investment. All books are investments. Can't you see what a good student he's going to be?' He began to hum, then broke into song.

'We are the strength, we are the force The Band of Students that we are! Under the pitch dark night, we stir out Barefooted across the road With obstacles strewn. The soil stiff We render red with our crimson blood . . .'

He broke off. 'All right. All right. No need for faces. We used to sing that at Dhaka University. It's a respectable song.' He continued the tune, humming this time.

The baby slept. Nazneen directed her energy towards him and sat perfectly still. Chanu sat with his book. Nazneen thought of asking what they would do for money. What job he would get now. She watched him take off his shoe and his sock. He bent down to examine his corns, squeezed each one in turn and said
ish
under his breath. For a few moments, the book caught his attention again, then he hummed for a while, drummed his fingers, sat looking at the air, the shoe and sock abandoned and forgotten.

She put her hand on Raqib's forehead. Just for the feel of him. To give him strength. Although, of course, only God gave strength. Whatever she did, only God decided. God knows everything. He knows the number of hairs on your head. Don't forget. Amma said that when they went off to school. She called after them, shouting in her strangled voice. 'He sees you. Don't forget. He knows the number of hairs on your head.' She thought about it. No, all that she had done for Raqib was nothing. God decided. She thought about How You Were Left To Your Fate. See! It made no difference. Amma did nothing to save her. And she lived. It was in God's hands. Raqib's chest rose and fell. He stirred and passed wind, which moved her deeply.

At once she was enraged. A mother who did nothing to save her own child! If Nazneen (her husband's part she did not consider) had not brought the baby to hospital at once, he would have died. The doctors said it. It was no lie. Did she kick about at home wailing and wringing her hands? Did she draw attention to her plight with long sighs and ostentatiously hidden weeping? Did she call piously for God to take what he would and leave her with nothing? Did she act, in short, like her mother? A saint?

And something else Amma was wrong about. Childbirth is like indigestion! Yes, if a snake bites like an ant. Exactly the same. Nothing different.

No wonder, she thought and shocked herself by it, no wonder Abba went off for days. The tears flooded him out. They made him angry. Even at the burial he was angry. When he lowered her, legs first, the white winding sheet already spattered with mud while the rain raced to fill the hole, he let her go too soon. Uncle held on and stopped her rolling on her back. Abba smacked his hands together. Blue lightning ripped open the stone sky as the prayer began, thunder took the words from the imam's lips, and the rain filled all their ears and eyes and mouths.

'Go and play,' Mumtaz had said. 'I'll bring you in to see her when I've finished.' Hasina ran off, but Nazneen stayed. 'All right then,' said Mumtaz. 'Make yourself useful. You are a woman now, after all.' She gave Nazneen the brass dish to hold, while she dipped in a cloth and squeezed it damp. She lowered the sheet and washed Amma's face. Forehead, temples, cheeks, chin, over the eyelids, inside the ears, inside the nostrils. Her hand knocked against the top lip and the lip stayed curled and raised, revealing for ever two of the melon-seed teeth that Amma, all her life, was so keen to hide. Sheet raised, she turned to her niece. 'I don't know what your mother would say about it.'

'Fate!' said Nazneen, and pinched the back of her neck.

Mumtaz looked at her. 'About you being here.'

The back of her neck was on fire. 'Oh.'

'Anyway. You are a woman now.' Beneath the sheet she began to wash the right side of the upper body. She pulled out the arm and ran the cloth along it. 'You mustn't think she died alone.'

'Angels.' She wished she had a way with tears. It seemed wrong. No one was crying. The village had lost its best mourner.

'They were with her, and God. The sari is ruined, of course. Her best one. The rest you can share out with Hasina.' She washed the torso. As the sheet lifted, Nazneen saw her mother's breast lolling against her armpit. A rag, brown with blood, plugged the hole just to the left.

When Mumtaz dipped the cloth in the bowl, little blood crusts floated free and congregated round the edges.

Nazneen went to change the water. When she tipped out the bowl she couldn't help thinking it was a shame to be pouring a bit of her mother away.

'She always said,' Mumtaz reflected, 'that everything can be changed, like this.' She snapped her fingers. 'God has made His plans. I told her, "Sister, but until He reveals them we have to get on by ourselves." Well. . .' She sucked her teeth. 'Now the plan is clear. It's come and gone. Puff!'