Authors: Monica Ali
Nazneen struggled to her feet. She reminded Razia to take her hat. She suddenly had a picture of Hasina with short hair, striding about in a pair of men's trousers and smoking a cigarette with bright, painted lips.
'Do you know why I'm going to learn English?' said Razia as she was leaving. 'So that when my children start telling dirty jokes behind my back, I'll be able to whip their backsides.'
Chanu, cross-legged on the bed. Bald knees pointing blindly at the walls. Stomach growing goitre-like over his privates. Hands tucked beneath the belly folds, exploring, weighing. Thin dark arms, a cluster of pimples over the right elbow. Shoulders that are slender, correctly held, almost graceful. Above, a round, plump face. On another man, such a face would look content.
Chanu was thinking. His mouth twitched. It slid over to the left. Back over to the right, high this time, pushing up the cheek, twisting the nostril, closing the eye. For a second, the lips relaxed, and then parted, stretched, rejected a word. The eyes took over. They narrowed in concentration, parted in surprise, squinted in evaluation. They made the eyebrows work, and they gathered the marching lines at the temples to do their part. If Chanu was awake, he was thinking, and his thoughts were written on his face. He is like a child, thought Nazneen, who has learned to read but must mouth the words.
'You see . . .' He chewed for a while, as if tasting his thoughts. He cleared his throat, brought his hands out from under his stomach. 'You see, Azad was implying a deception on my part, a fraud. Yes, he definitely inferred that a malpractice had taken place. That is not on. It simply isn't on.'
Nazneen handed him pyjamas. She slung his trousers on a hanger, without folding them properly, and put them in the wardrobe. He did not notice the dirty socks, the crumpled trousers. Her rebellions passed undetected. She was irritated by his lack of interest; she was pleased by her subtlety.
Chanu looked at his pyjamas as if there were something surprising or unfamiliar about the flowered material. 'But, you see, the point of the inserted clause was not deviousness but clarification. Naturally, I would be in charge of running the mobile library. Who else would do it? It was my idea, my petition, my baby, so to speak. No one could be better suited than I to bring the great world of literature to this humble estate.
'Of course, there wouldn't be much to start off with in the way of Bengali books. But I could go to Dhaka. To Calcutta, to scour the bookstalls around the university. On a sort of literary mission, I suppose.' He made a satisfied noise, as though he had just finished a meal. Then his face became animated once more. He raised a finger and his voice. 'But Azad said, not in so many words, that I had done something underhand. I told him, "Look, Azad (7
was there! Don't you remember? I was there, and you always call him Dr),
I asked you to sign my petition and you signed. You agreed with the idea of a mobile library for the estate. I believe you used the word 'splendid'. Are you now telling me that if I am in charge it will turn from splendid to sordid? (
No, you didn't. You didn't say that.)
And I hardly need to point out to you that amending the wording of the petition was an act of correction, not corruption." And he kept quiet.' Chanu put on his pyjama top. He smiled. 'I think that says a lot.'
'When will you get it, the library?'
'Ah, it's a funding issue of course. The cost of a van, the books, petrol. All these things. Anyway, I haven't yet finished collecting signatures.'
'How many signatures do you have?'
Chanu made some reckonings, leaning his head this way and that. 'Altogether, I'd say seven or eight. But I am aiming for more. Do you think Azad will put out that copy in his surgery?'
'I don't know,' said Nazneen. 'Maybe.' She looked at the man in the yellow-flowered pyjama top, with his bald knees splayed on the pink bedspread. She looked up at the massive black shiny wardrobe and the gold zigzag design that you could pick off with a fingernail. She looked at the brown carpet, at the patch worn through to the webbed plastic that held it together. She looked at the ceiling light that lit up the dust on the shade and bent shadows across the walls. She looked at her stomach that hid her feet and forced her to lean back to counter its weight. She looked and she saw that she was trapped inside this body, inside this room, inside this flat, inside this concrete slab of entombed humanity. They had nothing to do with her. For a couple of beats, she closed her eyes and smelled the jasmine that grew close to the well, heard the chickens scratching in the hot earth, felt the sunlight that warmed her cheeks and made dancing patterns on her eyelids.
'Maybe, maybe not,' said Chanu. 'Perhaps I should not get him involved. God knows what he will accuse me of next. A bald man does not walk under the bell-fruit tree twice.' He laughed. 'Although I am not bald quite yet.' He struggled into his pyjama bottoms without leaving the bed, then rolled onto his stomach and picked up a book from the floor. 'This is a very good book.
Sense and Sensibility.'
He said it in English. 'It's difficult to translate. Let me think about it.'
'Razia is going to college to study English.'
'Ah, good.'
'Perhaps I could go with her.'
'Well. Perhaps.' He didn't look up from his book.
'I can go then?'
'You know, I should be reading about politics. Nineteenth-century elections. But they make it so dry. You can learn a lot from novels as well. All sorts of things you can pick up, about society, politics, land reform, social division. And it's not so dry.'
'Will it be all right for me to go?'
'Where?' He rolled onto his back to look at her. His belly showed.
'To the college. With Razia.'
'What for?'
'For the English lessons.'
'You're going to be a mother.'
Nazneen picked up a glass from the windowsill. Yes, she was going to be a mother.
'Will that not keep you busy enough? And you can't take a baby to college. Babies have to be fed; they have to have their bottoms cleaned. It's not so simple as that. Just to go to college, like that.'
'Yes,' said Nazneen. 'I see that it is not.'
'Good. Now let me read. All this talking, talking, talking.' And he rolled over again.
The fridge hummed like a giant mosquito. In the distance, traffic growled. Nazneen did not turn on the light. Half a moon, gritty tonight, clung to the dark sky. The linoleum shocked her warm feet. She took a tub of yoghurt from the fridge and sprinkled it with sugar. She leaned against the work surface and ate. 'Eat! Eat!' her husband told her at mealtimes. But for him she would not. She showed her self-restraint like this. Her self-denial. She wanted to make it visible. It became a habit, then a pleasure, taking solace in these midnight meals.
Amma used to make yoghurt: thick and sweet and warm. Nothing like these plastic pots from the plastic English cows. But still. With the sugar, it went down. And it was very convenient. When she thought about Gouripur now, she thought about inconvenience. To live without a flushing toilet, to abandon her two sinks (kitchen and bathroom), to make a fire for the oven instead of turning a knob – would these be trades worth making? She tried to imagine Chanu, marching off to the latrine with a heavy book in his hand. He liked to read, sometimes for half an hour or more, while sitting on the toilet. The flies would see him off the latrine.
Chanu had fallen asleep with his face in the book, the page marked with dribble. All that reading was not good for him. It made his mind boil. He could end up like Makku Pagla.
It was a long time since Makku had come to her mind. But when she was small, she used to follow him around. Hasina and Nazneen walked behind him, holding hands and swinging their free arms. Hasina shouted, 'Yee yaw, Makku Pagla! Lend us your umbrella. Be quick, because it's raining.'
People said he was soft in his head because he was always reading. Books had cracked him, and the more cracked he became the more books he read. That was how he earned his name, Makku Pagla, or Lunatic Makku.
It was Hasina who spotted his umbrella in the well. Numerous repairs over the years and patches of different colours had made it famous, and Makku never set foot without it. 'He's killed himself,' screamed Hasina, running back to the house. 'Makku Pagla has killed himself in the well.' Amma began at once to say her prayers, while Abba picked up a rope and sprinted. Nazneen and Hasina walked over on wobbly legs.
Although a stench had been coming from the old well for a few days nobody thought it remarkable – people had begun to tip rubbish down. But now that Makku's umbrella was in there it was only reasonable to assume that he was with it. A crowd quickly gathered. Everyone had an opinion but no one was willing to be lowered into the soup of rubbish and flesh to retrieve the body.
At last, the village council retreated to Nazneen's house. Abba took charge of the meeting. Nazneen and Hasina, waiting outside, heard him say, 'He had an undignified death. Let us give him, at least, a dignified burial.' They repeated the words to each other, whispering behind hands, into ears. Later, they found a cricket, on its back, turning to husk. And they said the words again and dug a shallow grave. It was a game they played over and over, Nazneen solemn as a raven and Hasina faking.