White Teeth (31 page)

10 November 1989

A wall was coming down. It was something to do with history. It was
an historic occasion
. No one really knew quite who had put it up or who was tearing it down or whether this was good, bad or something else; no one knew how tall it was, how long it was, or why people had died trying to cross it or whether they would stop dying in future, but it was educational all the same; as good an excuse for a get-together as any. It was a Thursday night, Alsana and Clara had cooked, and everybody was watching history on TV.

‘Who’s for more rice?’

Millat and Irie held out their plates, jostling for prime position.

‘What’s happening now?’ asked Clara, rushing back to her seat with a bowl of Jamaican fried dumplings, from which Irie snatched three.

‘Same, man,’ Millat grumbled. ‘Same. Same. Same. Dancing on the wall, smashing it with a hammer. Whatever. I wanna see what else is on, yeah?’

Alsana snatched the remote control and squeezed in between Clara and Archie. ‘Don’t you dare, mister.’

‘It’s
educational
,’ said Clara deliberately, her pad and paper on the arm rest, waiting to leap into action at the suggestion of anything edifying. ‘It’s the kind of thing we all should be watching.’

Alsana nodded and waited for two awkward-shaped bhajis to go down the gullet. ‘That’s what I try and tell the boy. Big business. Tip-top historic occasion. When your own little Iqbals tug at your trousers and ask you where you were when—’

‘I’ll say I was bored shitless watching it on TV.’

Millat got a thwack round the head for ‘shitless’ and another one for the impertinence of the sentiment. Irie, looking strangely like the crowd on top of the wall in her everyday garb of CND badges, graffiti-covered trousers and beaded hair, shook her head in saddened disbelief. She was that
age
. Whatever she said burst like genius into centuries of silence. Whatever she touched was the first stroke of its kind. Whatever she believed was not formed by faith but carved from certainty. Whatever she thought was the first time such a thought had ever been thunk.

‘That’s
totally
your problem, Mill. No interest in the outside world. I think this is
amazing
. They’re all free! After all this time, don’t you think that’s
amazing
? That after years under the dark cloud of Eastern communism they’re coming into the light of Western democracy, united,’ she said, quoting
Newsnight
faithfully. ‘I just think democracy is man’s
greatest
invention.’

Alsana, who felt personally that Clara’s child was becoming impossibly pompous these days, held up the head of a Jamaican fried fish in protest. ‘No, dearie. Don’t make that mistake. Potato peeler is man’s greatest invention. That or Poop-a-Scoop.’

‘What they want,’ said Millat, ‘is to stop pissing around wid dis hammer business and jus’ get some Semtex and blow de djam ting up, if they don’t like it, you get me? Be quicker, innit?’

‘Why do you talk like that?’ snapped Irie, devouring a dumpling. ‘That’s not your voice. You sound ridiculous!’

‘And you want to watch dem dumplings,’ said Millat, patting his belly. ‘Big ain’t beautiful.’

‘Oh, get lost.’

‘You know,’ murmured Archie, munching on a chicken wing, ‘I’m not so sure that it’s such a good thing. I mean, you’ve got to remember, me and Samad,
we were there
. And believe me, there’s a good reason to have it split in two. Divide and conquer, young lady.’

‘Jesus
Christ
, Dad. What are you
on
?’

‘He’s not on anything,’ said Samad severely. ‘You younger people forget why certain things were done, you forget their significance. We were there. Not all of us think fondly upon a united Germany. They were different times, young lady.’

‘What’s wrong with a load of people making some noise about their freedom? Look at them. Look at how
happy
they are.’

Samad looked at the happy people dancing on the wall and felt contempt and something more irritating underneath it that could have been jealousy.

‘It is not that I disagree with rebellious acts
per se
. It is simply that if you are to throw over an old order, you must be sure that you can offer something of substance to replace it; that is what Germany needs to understand. As an example, take my great-grandfather, Mangal Pande—’

Irie sighed the most eloquent sigh that had ever been sighed. ‘I’d rather not, if it’s all the same.’

‘Irie!’ said Clara, because she felt she should.

Irie huffed. And puffed.

‘Well! He goes on like he knows everything. Everything’s always about
him
— and
I’m
trying to talk about now,
today
, Germany. I bet you,’ she said, turning to Samad, ‘I know more about it than you do. Go on. Try me. I’ve been studying it all term. Oh, and by the way: you
weren’t
there. You and Dad left in 1945. They didn’t do the wall until
1961
.’

‘Cold War,’ said Samad sourly, ignoring her. ‘They don’t talk about hot war any more. The kind where men get killed. That’s where I learnt about Europe. It cannot be found in books.’

‘Oi-oi,’ said Archie, trying to diffuse a row. ‘You do know
Last of the Summer Wine
’s on in ten minutes? BBC Two.’

‘Go on,’ persisted Irie, kneeling up and turning around to face Samad. ‘Try me.’

‘The gulf between books and experience,’ intoned Samad solemnly, ‘is a lonely ocean.’

‘Right. You two talk such a load of sh—’

But Clara was too quick with a slap round the ear. ‘Irie!’

Irie sat back down, not so much defeated as exasperated and turned up the TV volume.

The 28-mile-long scar — the ugliest symbol of a divided world, East and West — has no meaning any more. Few people, including this reporter, thought to see it happen in their lifetimes, but last night, at the stroke of midnight, thousands lingering both sides of the wall gave a great roar and began to pour through checkpoints and to climb up and over it.

‘Foolishness. Massive immigration problem to follow,’ said Samad to the television, dipping a dumpling into some ketchup. ‘You just can’t let a million people into a rich country. Recipe for disaster.’

‘And who does he think he is? Mr Churchill-gee?’ laughed Alsana scornfully. ‘Original whitecliffsdover piesnmash jellyeels royalvariety britishbulldog, heh?’

‘Scar,’ said Clara, noting it down. ‘That’s the right word, isn’t it?’

‘Jesus
Christ
. Can’t any of you understand the enormity of what’s going on here? These are the last days of a regime. Political apocalypse, meltdown. It’s an historic occasion.’

‘So everyone keeps saying,’ said Archie, scouring the
TV Times
. ‘But what about
The Krypton Factor
, ITV? That’s always good, eh? ’Son now.’

‘And stop sayin’ “an historic”,’ said Millat, irritated at all the poncey political talk. ‘Why can’t you just say “a”, like everybody else, man? Why d’you always have to be so la di da?’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ (She loved him, but he was
impossible
.) ‘What possible fucking difference can it make?’

Samad rose out of his seat. ‘Irie! This is my house and you are still a guest. I won’t have that language in it!’

‘Fine! I’ll take it to the streets with the rest of the proletariat.’

‘That girl,’ tutted Alsana as her front door slammed. ‘Swallowed an encyclopedia and a gutter at the same time.’

Millat sucked his teeth at his mother. ‘Don’t
you
start, man. What’s wrong with “a” encyclopedia? Why’s everyone in this house always puttin’ on fuckin’ airs?’

Samad pointed to the door. ‘OK, mister. You don’t speak to your mother like that. You out too.’

‘I don’t think,’ said Clara quietly, after Millat had stormed up to his room, ‘that we should discourage the kids from having an opinion. It’s good that they’re free-thinkers.’

Samad sneered, ‘And you would know . . . what? You do a great deal of free-thinking? In the house all day, watching the television?’

‘Ex
cuse
me?’

‘With respect: the world is complex, Clara. If there’s one thing these children need to understand it is that one needs
rules
to survive it, not
fancy
.’

‘He’s right, you know,’ said Archie earnestly, ashing a fag in an empty curry bowl. ‘Emotional matters — then yes, that’s your department—’

‘Oh — women’s work!’ squealed Alsana, through a mouth full of curry. ‘Thank you
so much
, Archibald.’

Archie struggled to continue. ‘But you can’t beat experience, can you? I mean, you two, you’re young women still, in a way. Whereas
we
, I mean, we are, like,
wells of experience
the children can use, you know, when they feel the need. We’re like encyclopedias. You just can’t offer them what we can. In all fairness.’

Alsana put her palm on Archie’s forehead and stroked it lightly. ‘You
fool
. Don’t you know you’re left behind like carriage and horses, like candlewax? Don’t you know to them you’re old and smelly like yesterday’s fishnchip paper? I’ll be agreeing with your daughter on one matter of importance.’ Alsana stood up, following Clara, who had left at this final insult and marched tearfully into the kitchen. ‘You two gentlemen talk a great deal of the youknowwhat.’

Left alone, Archie and Samad acknowledged the desertion of both families by a mutual rolling of eyes, wry smiles. They sat quietly for a moment while Archie’s thumb flicked adeptly through
An Historic Occasion
,
A Costume Drama Set in Jersey
,
Two Men Trying to Build a Raft in Thirty Seconds
,
A Studio Debate on Abortion
, and back once more to
An Historic Occasion
.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Click.

‘Home? Pub? O’Connell’s?’

Archie was about to reach into his pocket for a shiny ten pence when he realized there was no need.

‘O’Connell’s?’ said Archie.

‘O’Connell’s’ said Samad.

Finally
, O’Connell’s.
Inevitably
, O’Connell’s. Simply because you could be without family in O’Connell’s, without possessions or status, without past glory or future hope — you could walk through that door with nothing and be exactly the same as everybody else in there. It could be 1989 outside, or 1999, or 2009, and you could still be sitting at the counter in the V-neck you wore to your wedding in 1975, 1945, 1935. Nothing changes here, things are only retold, remembered. That’s why old men love it.

It’s all about time. Not just its stillness but the pure, brazen amount of it. Quantity rather than Quality. This is hard to explain. If only there was some equation . . . something like:

Something to rationalize, to explain, why one would keep returning, like Freud’s grandson with his
fort-da
game, to the same miserable scenario. But
time
is what it comes down to. After you’ve spent a certain amount, invested so much of it in one place, your credit rating booms and you feel like breaking the chronological bank. You feel like staying in the place until it pays you back all the time you gave it — even if it never will.

And with the time spent, comes the knowledge, comes the history. It was at O’Connell’s that Samad had suggested Archie’s remarriage, 1974. Underneath table six in a pool of his own vomit, Archie celebrated the birth of Irie, 1975. There is a stain on the corner of the pinball machine where Samad first spilt civilian blood, with a hefty right hook to a racist drunk, 1980. Archie was downstairs the night he watched his fiftieth birthday float up through fathoms of whisky to meet him like an old shipwreck, 1977. And this is where they both came, New Year’s Eve, 1989 (neither the Iqbal nor Jones families having expressed a desire to enter the 90s in their company), happy to take advantage of Mickey’s special New Year fry-up: £2.85 for three eggs, beans, two rounds of toast, mushrooms and a generous slice of seasonal turkey.

The seasonal turkey was a bonus. For Archie and Samad, it was really all about being the witness, being the
expert
. They came here because they
knew
this place. They knew it inside and out. And if you can’t explain to your kid why glass will shatter at certain impacts but not others, if you can’t understand how a balance can be struck between democratic secularism and religious belief within the same state, or you can’t recall the circumstances in which Germany was divided, then it feels good — no, it feels
great
— to know at least one particular place, one particular period, from first-hand experience, eyewitness reports; to be the authority, to have time on your side, for once,
for once
. No better historians, no better experts in the
world
than Archie and Samad when it came to
The Post-War Reconstruction and Growth of O’Connell’s Pool House
.