White Teeth (69 page)

Archie lifted his arms until they were in line with the Doctor’s forehead, closed his eyes, and cocked the gun.

The Doctor’s voice jumped an octave. ‘A cigarette?’

And it was at that moment that it started to go wrong. Like it went wrong for Pande. He should have shot the bloke then and there. Probably. But instead he opened his eyes to see his victim struggling to pull out a battered cigarette packet and a box of matches from his top pocket like a human being.

‘Could I — please? Before . . .’

Archie let all the breath he had summoned up to kill a man come out through his nose. ‘Can’t say no to a last request,’ said Archie, because he’d seen the movies. ‘I’ve got a light, if you like.’

The Doctor nodded, Archie struck a match, and the Doctor leaned forward to light up.

‘Well, get on with it,’ said Archie, after a moment; he never
could
resist a pointless debate, ‘if you’ve got something to say, say it. I haven’t got all night.’

‘I can speak? We are to have a conversation?’

‘I didn’t say we were going to have a conversation,’ said Archie sharply. Because this was a tactic of Movie Nazis (and Archie should have known; he spent the first four years of the war watching flickering Movie Nazis at the Brighton Odeon), they try to talk their way out of stuff. ‘I said you were going to talk and then I was going to kill you.’

‘Oh yes, of course.’

The Doctor used his sleeve to wipe his face, and looked at the boy curiously, double-checking to see if he were serious. The boy looked serious.

‘Well, then . . . If I may say so . . .’ The Doctor’s mouth hung open, waiting for Archie to insert a name but none came. ‘Lieutenant . . . if I may say so, Lieutenant, it appears to me you are in something of a . . . a . . . moral quandary.’

Archie didn’t know what quandary meant. It reminded him of coal, metal and Wales, somewhere between quarry and foundry. At a loss, he said what he always said in these situations. ‘I should cocoa!’

‘Er . . . Yes,
yes
,’ said Dr Sick, gaining some confidence; he had not yet been shot and a whole minute had so far passed. ‘It seems to me you have a
dilemma
. On the one hand . . . I do not believe you wish to kill me—’

Archie squared his shoulders. ‘Now look, sunshine—’

‘And on the other, you have promised your overzealous friend that you will. But it is
more
than that.’

The Doctor’s shaking hands tapped his own cigarette inadvertently, and Archie watched the ash fall like grey snow on to his boots.

‘On the one hand, you have an obligation to — to — your country and to what you believe is right. On the other hand, I am a
man
. I am speaking to you. I breathe and I bleed as you do. And you do not know, for certain, what type of a man I am. You have only hearsay. So, I understand your difficulty.’

‘I don’t have a difficulty.
You’re
the one with the difficulty, sunshine.’

‘And yet, though I am not your friend, you have a duty to me, because I am a man. I think you are caught between duties. I think you find yourself in a very interesting situation.’

Archie stepped forward, and put the muzzle two inches from the Doctor’s forehead. ‘You finished?’

The Doctor tried to say
yes
but nothing came except a stutter.

‘Good.’

‘Wait!
Please
. Do you know Sartre?’

Archie sighed, exasperated. ‘No, no, no — we haven’t any friends in common — I know that, because I’ve only got one friend and he’s called Ick-Ball. Look, I’m going to kill you. I’m sorry about it but—’

‘Not a friend. Philosopher. Sartre. Monsieur J. P.’

‘Who?’ said Archie, agitated, suspicious. ‘Sounds French.’

‘He is French. A great Frenchman. I met him briefly in ’41, when he was imprisoned. But when I met him he posed a problem, which is similar, I think, to yours.’

‘Go on,’ said Archie slowly. The fact was he could do with some help.

‘The problem,’ continued Dr Sick, trying to control his hyperventilation, sweating so much there were two little pools in the hollows at the base of his neck, ‘is that of a young French student who ought to care for his sick mother in Paris but at the same time ought to go to England to help the Free French fight the National Socialists. Now, remembering that there are many kinds of
ought
— one
ought
to give to charity, for example, but one doesn’t always do so; it is
ideal
, but it is not
required
— remembering this, what should he do?’

Archie scoffed, ‘That’s a bloody stupid question.
Think about it
.’ He gesticulated with the gun, moving it from the Doctor’s face and tapping his own temple with it. ‘At the end of the day, he’ll do the one he cares about more. Either he loves his country or his old mum.’

‘But what if he cares about both options, equally? I mean, country and “old mum”. What if he is obligated to do both?’

Archie was unimpressed. ‘Well, he better just do one and get on with it.’

‘The Frenchman agrees with you,’ said the Doctor, attempting a smile. ‘If neither imperative can be overridden, then choose one, and as you say, get on with it. Man makes himself, after all. And he is responsible for what he makes.’

‘There you are, then. End of conversation.’

Archie placed his legs apart, spread his weight, ready to take the kick-back — and cocked the gun once more.

‘But — but — think — please, my friend — try to think — ’ The Doctor fell to his knees, sending up a cloud of dust that rose and fell like a sigh.

‘Get up,’ gulped Archie, horrified by the streams of eye-blood, the hand on his leg and then the mouth on his shoe. ‘Please — there’s no need for—’

But the Doctor grabbed the back of Archie’s knees. ‘Think — please — anything may happen . . . I may yet redeem myself in your eyes . . . or you may be mistaken — your decision may come back to you as Oedipus’s returned to him, horrible and mutilated! You cannot say for sure!’

Archie grabbed the Doctor by his skinny arm, hauled him upright and began yelling, ‘Look, mate. You’ve upset me now. I’m not a bloody fortune-teller. The world might end tomorrow for all I know. But I’ve got to do this
now
. Sam’s
waiting
for me. Please,’ said Archie, because his hand was shaking and his resolve was doing a runner, ‘
please
stop talking. I’m not a fortune-teller.’

But the Doctor collapsed once more, like a jack-in-the-box. ‘No . . . no . . . we are not fortune-tellers. I could never have predicted my life would end up in the hands of a child . . . Corinthians I, chapter thirteen, verse eight:
Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away
.
For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away
. But when will it come? For myself, I became tired of waiting. It is such a terrible thing, to know only in part. A terrible thing not to have perfection, human perfection, when it is so readily available.’ The Doctor lifted himself up, and tried to reach out to Archie just as Archie backed away. ‘If only we were brave enough to make the decisions that must be made . . . between those worth saving and the rest . . . Is it a crime to want—’

‘Please,
please
,’ said Archie, ashamed to find himself crying, not red tears like the Doctor’s, but thick and translucent and salty. ‘Stay there. Please stop talking.
Please
.’

‘And then I think of the perverse German, Friedrich. Imagine the world with no beginning or end, boy.’ He spat this last word,
boy
, and it was a thief that changed the balance of power between them, stealing whatever strength was left in Archie and dispersing it on the wind. ‘Imagine, if you
can
, events in the world happening repeatedly, endlessly, in the way they always have . . .’

‘Stay where you fucking are!’

‘Imagine this war over and over a million times . . .’

‘No thanks,’ said Archie, choking on snot. ‘ ’Sbad enough the first time.’

‘It is not a serious proposition. It is a test. Only those who are sufficiently strong and well disposed to life to affirm it — even if it will just keep on repeating — have what it takes to endure the worst blackness. I could see the things I have done repeated infinitely. I am one of the confident ones. But you are not one of them . . .’

‘Please, just stop talking,
please
, so I can—’

‘The decision you make, Archie,’ said Dr Sick, betraying a knowledge that he had possessed from the start, the boy’s name, which he had been waiting to employ when it would have the most power, ‘could you see it repeated again and again, through eternity? Could you?’

‘I’ve got a coin!’ yelled Archie,
screamed
it with joy, because he had just remembered it. ‘I’ve got a coin!’

Dr Sick looked confused, and stopped his stumbling steps forward.

‘Ha! I have a coin, you bastard. Ha! So balls to you!’

Then another step. His hands reaching out, palms up, innocent.

‘Stay back. Stay where you are. Right. This is what we’re going to do. Enough talking. I’m going to put my gun down here . . . slowly . . .
here
.’

Archie crouched and placed it on the floor, roughly between the two of them. ‘That’s so you can trust me. I’ll stand by my word. And now I’m going to throw this coin. And if it’s heads, I’m going to kill you.’

‘But — ’ said Dr Sick. And for the first time Archie saw something like real fear in his eyes, the same fear that Archie felt so thoroughly he could hardly speak.

‘And if it’s tails, I won’t. No, I don’t want to talk about it. I’m not much of a thinker, when you get down to it. That’s the best I can offer. All right, here goes.’

The coin rose and flipped as a coin would rise and flip every time in a perfect world, flashing its light and then revealing its dark enough times to mesmerize a man. Then, at some point in its triumphant ascension, it began to arc, and the arc went wrong, and Archibald realized that it was not coming back to him at all but going behind him, a fair way behind him, and he turned round to watch it fall in the dirt. He was bending to pick it up when a shot rang out, and he felt a blistering pain in his right thigh. He looked down. Blood. The bullet had passed straight through, just missing the bone, but leaving a shard of the cap embedded deep in the flesh. The pain was excruciating and strangely distant at the same time. Archie turned back round to see Dr Sick, half bent over, the gun hanging weakly in his right hand.

‘For fuckssake, why did you do that?’ said Archie furious, grabbing the gun off the Doctor, easily and forcefully. ‘It’s tails. See? It’s tails. Look. Tails. It was tails.’

So Archie is there, there in the trajectory of the bullet, about to do something unusual, even for TV: save the same man twice and with no more reason or rhyme than the first time. And it’s a messy business, this saving people lark. Everybody in the room watches in horror as he takes it in the thigh, right in the femur, spins round with some melodrama and falls right through the mouse’s glass box. Shards of glass all over the gaff. What a performance. If it were TV you would hear the saxophone around now; the credits would be rolling.

But first the endgames
. Because it seems no matter what you think of them, they must be played, even if, like the independence of India or Jamaica, like the signing of peace treaties or the docking of passenger boats, the end is simply the beginning of an even longer story. The same focus group who picked out the colour of this room, the carpet, the font for the posters, the height of the table, would no doubt tick the box that asks to see all these things played to their finish . . . and there is surely a demographic pattern to all those who wish to see the eyewitness statements that identified Magid as many times as Millat, the confusing transcripts, the videotape of uncooperating victim and families, a court case so impossible the judge gave in and issued four hundred hours community service to both twins, which they served, naturally, as gardeners in Joyce’s new project, a huge millennial park by the banks of the Thames . . .

And is it young professional women aged eighteen to thirty-two who would like a snapshot seven years hence of Irie, Joshua and Hortense sitting by a Caribbean sea (for Irie and Joshua become lovers in the end; you can only avoid your fate for so long), while Irie’s fatherless little girl writes affectionate postcards to
Bad Uncle Millat
and
Good Uncle Magid
and feels free as Pinocchio, a puppet clipped of paternal strings? And could it be that it is largely the criminal class and the elderly who find themselves wanting to make bets on the winner of a blackjack game, the one played by Alsana and Samad, Archie and Clara, in O’Connell’s, 31 December 1999, that historic night when Abdul-Mickey finally opened his doors to women?

But surely to tell these tall tales and others like them would be to speed the myth, the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect. And as Archie knows, it’s not like that. It’s never been like that.

It would make an interesting survey (what kind would be your decision) to examine the present and divide the onlookers into two groups: those whose eyes fell upon a bleeding man, slumped across a table, and those who watched the getaway of a small brown rebel mouse. Archie, for one, watched the mouse. He watched it stand very still for a second with a smug look as if it expected nothing less. He watched it scurry away, over his hand. He watched it dash along the table, and through the hands of those who wished to pin it down. He watched it leap off the end and disappear through an air vent.
Go on my son
! thought Archie.

I am grateful to both Lisa and Joshua Appignanesi for contriving between them to get me a room of my own when it was most required. Thanks are due to Tristan Hughes and Yvonne Bailey-Smith for providing two happy homes for this book and its author. I am also indebted to the bright ideas and sharp eyes of the following people: Paul Hilder, friend and sounding-board; Nicholas Laird, fellow
idiot savant
; Donna Poppy, meticulous in everything; Simon Prosser, as judicious an editor as one could hope for; and finally my agent, Georgia Garrett, from whom nothing escapes.