White Teeth (20 page)

WE WON’T SPEAK IF YOU DON’T LET US GO. WE WON’T SPEAK
EVER
,
EVER
,
EVER
,
EVER
AGAIN. WHEN WE DIE EVERYONE WILL SAY IT WAS YOU. YOU YOU YOU.

Great
, thought Samad,
more blood and sticky guilt on my one good hand
.

Samad didn’t know anything about conducting, but he knew what he liked. True, it probably wasn’t very complex, the way she did it, just a simple three/four, just a one-dimensional metronome drawn in the air with her index finger — but
aaah
, what a joy it was to watch her do it! Her back to him; her bare feet lifting — on every third beat — out of her slip-on shoes; her backside protruding ever so slightly, pressing up against the jeans each time she lunged forward for one of the orchestra’s ham-fisted crescendos — what a joy it was! What a
vision
! It was all he could do to stop himself rushing at her and carrying her off; it frightened him, the extent to which he
could not take his eyes off her
. But he had to rationalize: the orchestra needed her — God knows they were never going to get through this adaptation of
Swan Lake
(more reminiscent of ducks waddling through an oil slick) without her. Yet what a terrific
waste
it seemed — akin to watching a toddler on a bus mindlessly grabbing the breast of the stranger sitting next to him — what a
waste
, that something of such beauty should be at the disposal of those too young to know what to do with it. The second he tasted this thought he brought it back up:
Samad Miah . . . surely a man has reached his lowest when he is jealous of the child at a woman’s breast, when he is jealous of the young, of the future
 . . . And then, not for the first time that afternoon, as Poppy Burt-Jones lifted out of her shoes once more and the ducks finally succumbed to the environmental disaster, he asked himself:
Why, in the name of Allah, am I here
? And the answer returned once more with the persistence of vomit:
Because I simply cannot be anywhere else
.

Tic, tic, tic. Samad was thankful for the sound of baton hitting on music-stand, which interrupted him from these thoughts, these thoughts that were something close to delirium.

‘Now, kids, kids. Stop.
Shhh
, quieten down. Mouths away from instruments, bows down.
Down
, Anita. That’s it,
yes
, right on the floor.
Thank
you. Now: you’ve probably noticed we have a visitor today.’ She turned to him and he tried hard to find some part of her on which to focus, some inch that did not heat his troubled blood. ‘This is Mr Iqbal, Magid’s and Millat’s father.’

Samad stood up as if he’d been called to attention, draped his wide-lapelled overcoat carefully over his volatile crotch, waved rather lamely, sat back down.

‘Say “Hello, Mr Iqbal.” ’

‘HELLO, MR ICK-BALL,’ came the resounding chorus from all but two of the musicians.

‘Now: don’t we want to play thrice as well because we have an audience?’

‘YES, MISS BURT-JONES.’

‘And not only is Mr Iqbal our audience for today, but he’s a very
special
audience. It’s because of Mr Iqbal that next week we won’t be playing
Swan Lake
any more.’

A great roar met this announcement, accompanied by a stray chorus of trumpet hoots, drum rolls, a cymbal.

‘All right, all right, enough. I didn’t expect
quite
so much joyous approval.’

Samad smiled. She had humour, then. There was wit there, a bit of sharpness — but why think the
more
reasons there were to sin, the
smaller
the sin was? He was thinking like a Christian again; he was saying
Can’t say fairer than that
to the Creator.

‘Instruments down. Yes,
you
, Marvin.
Thank you
very much.’

‘What’ll we be doin’ instead, then, Miss?’

‘Well . . .’ began Poppy Burt-Jones, the same half-coy, half-daring smile he had noticed before. ‘Something
very
exciting. Next week I want to try to experiment with some
Indian
music.’

The cymbal player, dubious of what place he would occupy in such a radical change of genre, took it upon himself to be the first to ridicule the scheme. ‘What, you mean that Eeeee E E E A A aaaa E E E eeee A A O oooo music?’ he said, doing a creditable impression of the strains to be found at the beginning of a Hindi musical, or in the back-room of an ‘Indian’ restaurant, along with attendant head movements. The class let out a blast of laughter as loud as the brass section and echoed the gag en masse:
Eeee Eaaaoo O O O Aaaah Eeee O O O iiiiiiii
 . . . This, along with screeching parodic violins, penetrated Samad’s deep, erotic half-slumber and sent his imagination into a garden, a garden encased in marble where he found himself dressed in white and hiding behind a large tree, spying on a be-saried, bindi-wearing Poppy Burt-Jones, as she wound flirtatiously in and out of some fountains; sometimes visible, sometimes not.

‘I don’t think — ’ began Poppy Burt-Jones, trying to force her voice above the hoo-hah, then, raising it several decibels, ‘I DON’T THINK IT IS VERY NICE TO — ’ and here her voice slipped back to normal as the class registered the angry tone and quietened down. ‘I don’t think it is very nice to make fun of
somebody else’s culture
.’

The orchestra, unaware that this is what they had been doing, but aware that this was the most heinous crime in the Manor School rule book, looked to their collective feet.

‘Do
you
? Do
you
? How would
you
like it, Sophie, if someone made fun of Queen?’

Sophie, a vaguely retarded twelve-year-old covered from head to toe in that particular rock band’s paraphernalia, glared over a pair of bottle-top spectacles.

‘Wouldn’t like it, Miss.’

‘No, you wouldn’t, would you?’

‘No, Miss.’

‘Because Freddie Mercury is from
your culture
.’

Samad had heard the rumours that ran through the rank and file of the Palace waiters to the effect that this Mercury character was in actual fact a very light-skin Persian called Farookh, whom the head chef remembered from school in Panchgani, near Bombay. But who wished to split hairs? Not wanting to stop the lovely Burt-Jones while she was in something of a flow, Samad kept the information to himself.

‘Sometimes we find other people’s music strange because their culture is different from
ours
,’ said Miss Burt-Jones solemnly. ‘But that doesn’t mean it isn’t equally good, now does it?’

‘NO, MISS.’

‘And we can learn about each other through each other’s culture, can’t we?’

‘YES, MISS.’

For example, what music do you like, Millat?’

Millat thought for a moment, swung his saxophone to his side and began fingering it like a guitar. ‘Bo-orn to ruuun! Da da da da daaa! Bruce Springsteen, Miss! Da da da da daaa! Baby, we were bo-orn—’

‘Umm, nothing — nothing else? Something you listen to
at home
, maybe?’

Millat’s face fell, troubled that his answer did not seem to be the right one. He looked over at his father, who was gesticulating wildly behind the teacher, trying to convey the jerky head and hand movements of bharata natyam, the form of dance Alsana had once enjoyed before sadness weighted her heart, and babies tied down her hands and feet.

‘Thriiiii-ller!’ sang Millat, full throated, believing he had caught his father’s gist. ‘Thriii-ller night! Michael Jackson, Miss! Michael Jackson!’

Samad put his head in his hands. Miss Burt-Jones looked queerly at the small child standing on a chair, gyrating and grabbing his crotch before her. ‘OK, thank you, Millat. Thank you for sharing . . . that.’

Millat grinned. ‘No problem, Miss.’

While the children queued up to exchange twenty pence for two dry digestives and a cup of tasteless squash, Samad followed the light foot of Poppy Burt-Jones like a predator — into the music cupboard, a tiny room, windowless, with no means of escape, and full of instruments, filing cabinets overbrimming with sheetmusic, and a scent Samad had thought hers but now identified as the maturing leather of violin cases mixed with the mellowing odour of cat-gut.

‘This,’ said Samad, spotting a desk beneath a mountain of paper, ‘is where you work?’

Poppy blushed. ‘Tiny, isn’t it? Music budgets get cut every year until this year there was nothing left to cut
from
. It’s got to the point where they’re putting desks in cupboards and calling them offices. If it wasn’t for the GLC, there wouldn’t even be a desk.’

‘It is certainly small,’ said Samad, scanning the room desperately for some spot where he might stand that would put her out of arm’s reach. ‘One might almost say, claustrophobic.’

‘I know, it’s
awful
— but won’t you sit down?’

Samad looked for the chair she might be referring to.

‘Oh God! I’m sorry! It’s
here
.’ She swept paper, books and rubbish on to the floor with one hand, revealing a perilous-looking stool. ‘I made it — but it’s pretty safe.’

‘You excel in carpentry?’ inquired Samad, searching once again for more good reasons to commit a bad sin. ‘An artisan as well as a musician?’

‘No, no, no — I went to a few night classes — nothing special. I made that and a foot stool, and the foot stool broke. I’m no — do you know I
can’t
think of a single carpenter!’

‘There is always Jesus.’

‘But I can’t very well say “I’m no Jesus” . . . I mean, obviously I’m not, but for other reasons.’

Samad took his wobbly seat as Poppy Burt-Jones went to sit behind her desk. ‘Meaning you are not a good person?’

Samad saw that he had flustered her with the accidental solemnity of the question; she drew her fingers through her fringe, fiddled with a small tortoiseshell button on her blouse, laughed shakily. ‘I like to think I’m not all bad.’

‘And that is enough?’

‘Well . . . I . . .’

‘Oh my dear, I apologize . . .’ began Samad. ‘I was not being serious, Miss Burt-Jones.’

‘Well . . . Let’s say I’m no
Mr Chippendale
— that’ll do.’

‘Yes,’ said Samad kindly, thinking to himself that she had far better legs than a Queen Anne chair, ‘that will do.’

‘Now: where were we?’

Samad leant a little over the desk, to face her. ‘Were we somewhere, Miss Burt-Jones?’

(He used his eyes; he remembered people used to say that it was his eyes — that new boy in Delhi, Samad Miah, they said, he has
eyes to die for
.)

‘I was looking — looking — I was looking for my notes — where
are
my notes?’

She began rifling through the catastrophe of her desk, and Samad leant back once more on his stool, taking what little satisfaction he could from the fact that her fingers, if he was not mistaken, appeared to be trembling. Had there been
a moment
, just then? He was fifty-seven — it was a good ten years since he’d had a moment — he was not at all sure he would recognize a moment if one came along.
You old man
, he told himself as he dabbed at his face with a handkerchief,
you old fool
. Leave now — leave before you drown in your own guilty excrescence (for he was sweating like a pig),
leave before you make it worse
. But was it possible? Was it possible that this past month — the month that he had been squeezing and spilling, praying and begging, making deals and thinking, thinking always about her — that she had been thinking of
him
?

‘Oh! While I’m looking . . . I remember there was something I wanted to ask you.’

Yes!
said the anthropomorphized voice that had taken up residence in Samad’s right testicle. Whatever the question the answer is
yes yes yes
.
Yes
, we will make love upon this very table,
yes
, we will burn for it, and
yes
, Miss Burt-Jones,
yes
, the answer is inevitably, inescapably,
YES
. Yet somehow, out there where conversation continued, in the rational world four feet above his ball-bag, the answer turned out to be — ‘Wednesday.’

Poppy laughed. ‘No, I don’t mean what day it is — I don’t look that ditsy do I? No, I meant what
day
is it; I mean, for Muslims. Only I saw Magid was in some kind of costume, and when I asked him what it was for he wouldn’t speak. I was terribly worried that I’d offended him somehow.’

Samad frowned. It is odious to be reminded of one’s children when one is calculating the exact shade and rigidity of a nipple that could so assert itself through bra and shirt.

‘Magid? Please do not worry yourself about Magid. I am sure he was not offended.’

‘So I was right,’ said Poppy gleefully. ‘Is it like a type of, I don’t know, vocal fasting?’

‘Er . . . yes, yes,’ stumbled Samad, not wishing to divulge his family dilemma, ‘it is a symbol of the Qur’ān’s . . .
assertion
that the day of reckoning would first strike us all unconscious. Silent, you see. So, so, so the eldest son of the family dresses in black and, umm, disdains speech for a . . . a period of . . . of
time
as a process of — of
purification
.’

Dear
God
.

‘I
see
. That’s just
fascinating
. And Magid is the elder?’

‘By two minutes.’

Poppy smiled. ‘Only just, then.’

‘Two minutes,’ said Samad patiently, because he was speaking to one with no knowledge of the impact such small periods of time had amounted to throughout the history of the Iqbal family, ‘made all the difference.’

‘And does the process have a name?’

‘
Amar durbol lagche
.’

‘What does it mean?’

Literal translation:
I feel weak
. It means, Miss Burt-Jones, that
every strand of me feels weakened by the desire to kiss you
.

‘It means,’ said Samad aloud, without missing a beat, ‘closed-mouth worship of the Creator.’