White Teeth (26 page)

Second round. Samad slapped Alsana. Alsana right hooked him in the stomach and then followed up with a blow to the left cheekbone. She then made a dash to the back door, but Samad caught her by the waist, rugby-tackled her, dragged her down and elbowed her in the coccyx. Alsana, being heavier than Samad, knelt up, lifting him; flipped him over and dragged him out into the garden, where she kicked him twice as he lay on the floor — two short, fierce jabs to the forehead — but the rubber-cushioned sole did little damage and in a moment he was on his knees again. They made a grab for each other’s hair, Samad determined to pull until he saw blood. But this left Alsana’s knee free and it connected swiftly with Samad’s crotch, forcing him to release the hair and swing a blind flier meant for her mouth but catching her ear. Around this time, the twins emerged half awake from their beds and stood at the long glass kitchen window to watch the fight, while the neighbours’ security lights came on, illuminating the Iqbal garden like a stadium.

‘Abba,’ said Magid, after surveying the state of play for a moment. ‘Definitely Abba.’

‘
Cha
, man. No
way
,’ said Millat, blinking in the light. ‘I bet you two orange lollies Amma’s going to kick the shit out of him.’

‘Ooooooo!’ cried the twins in unison, as if it were a firework display, and then, ‘Aaaaaah!’

Alsana had just ended the fight with a little help from the garden rake.

‘Now maybe
some
of us, who have to
work
in the morning, can get a
decent night’s kip
!
Bloody
Pakis,’ shouted a neighbour.

A few minutes later (because they always
held
each other after these fights, a hug somewhere between affection and collapse) Samad came in from the garden, still mildly concussed and said, ‘Go to bed,’ before brushing a hand through each son’s thick black hair.

As he reached the door, he stopped. ‘You’ll thank me,’ he said, turning to Magid, who smiled faintly, thinking maybe Abba was going to get him that chemistry set after all. ‘You’ll thank me in the end. This country’s no good. We tear each other apart in this country.’

Then he walked up the stairs and phoned Poppy Burt-Jones, waking her up to tell her there would be no more kisses in the afternoon, no more guilty walks, no more furtive taxis. End of affair.

Maybe all the Iqbals were prophets because Alsana’s nose for trouble was more right than it had ever been. Public decapitations, families cremated in their sleep, hanging bodies outside the Kashmir gate, people stumbling around dazed missing pieces of themselves; body parts taken from Muslim by Sikh, from Sikh by Hindu; legs, fingers, noses, toes and teeth, teeth everywhere, scattered throughout the land, mingling with the dust. A thousand people had died by 4 November when Alsana emerged from under the bathwater to hear the crackling voice of Our Man in Delhi telling her about it from the top of the medicine cabinet.

Terrible business. But, as Samad saw it, some of us have the luxury of sitting in the bath and listening to the foreign news while some of us have a living to make, and an affair to forget, and a child to abduct. He squeezed into the white flares, checked the air ticket, phoned Archie to go over the plan, and left for work.

On the tube there was a youngish, prettyish girl, dark, Spanish-looking, mono-browed, crying. Just sitting opposite him, in a pair of big, pink leg-warmers, crying quite openly. Nobody said anything. Nobody did anything. Everybody hoped she was getting off at Kilburn. But she kept on like that, just sitting, crying; West Hampstead, Finchley Road, Swiss Cottage, St John’s Wood. Then at Bond Street she pulled a photo of an unpromising-looking young man out of her rucksack, showed it to Samad and some of the other passengers.

‘Why he leave? He break my heart . . . Neil, he say his name, Neil. Neil,
Neil
.’

At Charing Cross, end of the line, Samad watched her cross the platform and get the train going straight back to Willesden Green. Romantic, in a way. The way she said ‘Neil’ as if it were a word bursting at the seams with past passion, with loss. That kind of flowing, feminine misery. He had expected something similar of Poppy, somehow; he had picked up the phone expecting gentle, rhythmic tears and later on letters, maybe, scented and stained. And in
her
grief
he
would have grown, as Neil was probably doing at this moment; her grief would have been an epiphany bringing him one step closer to his own redemption. But instead he had got only, ‘Fuck you, you fucking
fuck
.’

‘Told you,’ said Shiva, shaking his head and passing Samad a basket of yellow napkins to be shaped like castles. ‘I told you not to fuck with that business, didn’t I? Too much history there, man. You see: it ain’t just you she’s angry with, is it?’

Samad shrugged and began on the turrets.

‘No, man, history, history. It’s all brown man leaving English woman, it’s all Nehru saying See-Ya to Madam Britannia.’ Shiva, in an effort to improve himself, had joined the Open University. ‘It’s all complicated, complicated shit, it’s all about pride. Ten quid says she wanted you as a servant boy, as a wallah peeling the grapes.’

‘No,’ protested Samad. ‘It wasn’t that way. This is not the dark ages, Shiva, this is 1984.’

‘Show’s how much you know. From what you’ve told me, she’s a classic case, mate, classic.’

‘Well, I have other concerns now,’ muttered Samad (privately calculating that his children would by now be safely tucked in at the Joneses’ sleepover, that it was two more hours before Archie would need to wake Magid, leaving Millat to sleep on). ‘Family concerns.’

‘No time!’ cried Ardashir, who had crept up from behind, imperceptibly as ever, to examine the battlements of Samad’s castles. ‘No time for family concerns, cousin. Everyone’s concerned, everybody’s trying to get their family out of that mess back home — I myself am forking out one thousand big ones for a ticket for my big-mouth sister — but I still have to come to work, I still have to get on with things. Busy night tonight, cousin,’ called Ardashir, as he exited the kitchen to pace around the restaurant floor in a black tuxedo. ‘Don’t let me down.’

It was the busiest night in the week, Saturday, the night when the crowds come in waves: pre-theatre, post-theatre, post-pub, post-club; the first polite and conversational, the second humming show-tunes, the third rowdy, the fourth wide-eyed and abusive. The theatre crowds were naturally the favourite of the waiters; they were even tempered and tipped big and inquired after the geography of the food — its Eastern origin, its history — all of which would be happily fabricated by the younger waiters (whose furthest expedition East was the one they made daily, back home to Whitechapel, Smithfield’s, the Isle of Dogs) or rendered faithfully and proudly by the elders in black biro on the back of a pink napkin.

I’ll Bet She Is!
was the show at the National these past few months, a rediscovered mid fifties musical set in the thirties. It was about a rich girl who runs away from her family and meets a poor boy on the road, who is himself off to fight the Civil War in Spain. They fall in love. Even Samad, who had no particular ear for a tune, picked up enough discarded programmes and heard enough tables burst into song to know most of the songs; he liked them, in fact they took his mind off the drudgery (even better — tonight they were sweet relief from worrying whether Archie would manage to get Magid outside the Palace at 1 a.m. on the dot); he murmured them along with the rest of the kitchen in a kind of working rhythm as they chopped and marinaded, sliced and crushed.

I’ve seen the Paris op’ra and the wonders of the East

‘Samad Miah, I’m looking for the Rajah mustard seeds.’

Spent my summers by the Nile and my winters on the piste

‘Mustard seeds . . . I think I saw Muhammed with them.’

I’ve had diamonds, rubies, furs and velvet capes

‘Accusations, accusations . . . I have seen no mustard seeds.’

I’ve had Howard Hughes peel me a grape

‘I’m sorry, Shiva, if the old man doesn’t have them, then I haven’t seen them.’

But what does it mean without love?

‘Then what are these?’ Shiva walked over from his place next to chef and picked up a packet of mustard seeds by Samad’s right elbow. ‘Come on, Sam — get it together. Head in the clouds this evening.’

‘I’m sorry . . . I have a lot on my mind . . .’

‘That lady friend of yours, eh?’

‘Keep your voice down, Shiva.’

‘
They tell me I’m spoilt, a rich broad who means trouble
,’ sang Shiva in the strangest of Hindified transatlantic accents. ‘Oi-oi, my chorus.
But whatever love I’m given I pay it back double
.’

Shiva grabbed a small aquamarine vase and sang his big finale into its upturned end. ‘
But no amount of money, will make my honey mine
 . . . You should take that advice, Samad Miah,’ said Shiva, who was convinced Samad’s recent remortgage was funding his illicit affair, ‘it’s good advice.’

A few hours later Ardashir appeared once more through the swing doors, breaking up the singing to deliver his second-phase pep-talk. ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen! That is more than enough of that. Now, listen up: it’s ten-thirty. They’ve seen the show. They’re hungry. They got only one pitiful tub of ice-cream in the interval and plenty of Bombay gin, which, as we all know, brings on the need for curry and that, gentlemen, is where we come in. Two tables of fifteen just came in and sat at the back. Now: when they ask for water what do you do? What do you do, Ravind?’

Ravind was brand new, nephew of the chef, sixteen, nervy. ‘You tell them—’

‘No, Ravind, even before you speak, what do you do?’

Ravind bit his lip. ‘I don’t know, Ardashir.’

‘
You shake your head
,’ said Ardashir, shaking his head. ‘Simultaneous with a look of concern and fear for their well-being.’ Ardashir demonstrated the look. ‘And then you say?’

‘ “Water does not help the heat, sir.” ’

‘But what helps the heat, Ravind? What will aid the gentleman with the burning sensation he is presently feeling?’

‘More rice, Ardashir.’

‘And? And?’

Ravind looked stumped and began to sweat. Samad, who had been belittled by Ardashir too many times to enjoy watching someone else play the victim, leant over to whisper the answer in Ravind’s clammy ear.

Ravind’s face lit up in gratitude. ‘More naan bread, Ardashir!’

‘Yes; because it soaks up the chilli and more importantly water is free and naan bread is one pound twenty. Now cousin,’ said Ardashir, turning to Samad and waggling a bony finger, ‘how will the boy learn? Let the boy answer for himself next time. You have your own business: a couple of ladies on table twelve requested the head waiter specifically, to be served only by him, so—’

‘Requested me? But I thought I might stay in the kitchen this evening. Besides, I cannot be requested like some personal butler, there is too much to do — that is not policy, cousin.’

And at this moment Samad feels panicky. His thoughts are so taken up with the 1 a.m. abduction, with the prospect of splitting his twins, that he does not trust himself with hot plates and steaming bowls of dal, with the spitting fat of clay-oven chicken, with all the dangers that accost a one-handed waiter. His head is full of his sons. He is half in dream this evening. He has once again bitten every nail beyond the cuticle and is fast approaching the translucent high-moons, the bleeding hubs.

He is saying, he hears himself saying, ‘Ardashir, I have a million things to do here in the kitchens. And why should—’

And the answer comes, ‘Because the head waiter is the best waiter and naturally they tipped me — us — for the privilege. No quibbling, please, cousin. Table twelve, Samad Miah.’

And perspiring lightly, throwing a white towel over his left arm, Samad begins tunelessly to hum the show-stopper as he pushes through the doors.

What won’t a guy do for a girl? How sweet the scent, how huge the pearl?

It is a long walk to table twelve. Not in distance, it is only twenty metres in distance, but it is a long walk through the thick smells and the loud voices and the demands; through the cries of Englishmen; past table two, where the ashtray is full and must be cupped by another ashtray, lifted silently and switched for the new ashtray with perfect insouciance; stopping at table four, where there is an unidentifiable dish that was not ordered; debating with table five, who wish to be joined with table six, no matter the inconvenience; and table seven wants egg fried rice whether or not it is a Chinese dish; and table eight wobbles and more wine! More beer! It is a long walk if you are to negotiate the jungle; attending to the endless needs and needless ends, the desires, the demands of the pink faces that strike Samad now as pith-helmet-wearing gentlemen, feet up on the table with guns across their laps; as tea-slurping ladies on verandas cooling themselves under the breeze of the brown boys who beat the ostrich feathers—

What lengths won’t he travel, how many hits of the gavel

By Allah, how
thankful
he is (
yes, madam, one moment, madam
), how
gladdened
by the thought that Magid, Magid at least, will, in a matter of four hours, be flying east from this place and its demands, its constant cravings, this place where there exists neither patience nor pity, where the people want what they want
now
, right now (
We’ve been waiting twenty minutes for the vegetables
), expecting their lovers, their children, their friends and even their gods to arrive at little cost and in little time, just as table ten expect their tandoori prawns . . .

At the auction of her choosing, how many Rembrandts, Klimts, De Koonings?

These people who would exchange all faith for sex and all sex for power, who would exchange fear of God for self-pride, knowledge for irony, a covered, respectful head for a long, strident shock of orange hair—