Authors: Monica Ali

Brick Lane (46 page)

Dr Azad pronounced his daughter healthy. He took advantage of Charm's overstuffed mouth to launch his own line of enquiry, his own method of point scoring. It was the usual. 'I've been meaning to ask, how many signatures have you succeeded in amassing now? Are we far from the new dawn of a mobile library?'

Chanu leaned his wrists on the edge of the table. He pressed down the tip of one finger after another, all on the left hand and two on the right. 'Only seven this week.' He squeezed a bit of lemon and appeared saddened by his calculation.

The doctor's wife and daughter were steadfastly healthy. There was nothing to report except the inevitable absence of the wife on visits to the daughter (married now with children of her own) or to other relatives. Chanu's petition gathered new names without ever leaving the drawer. It no longer amazed Nazneen that these fictions should be so elaborately maintained. What worried her now was the possibility of their collapse. The fence that they formed, though rotten, was better than nothing.

The girls came in to say goodnight. Chanu held his arm out. 'Come on. Come, I'll feed you from my plate.'

Shahana flinched, sucking in her cheeks. Chanu glanced at Dr Azad. He smiled and his arm became more expansive still. 'Come, don't be shy.'

Bibi went to him and he pulled her onto his lap. 'Prawn and marrow. Delicious.' He fed her, as promised, from his plate and patted her gingerly on the back, as if she were an unknown dog and might bite his fingers.

Bibi got down and stood next to Shahana.

'Very good girls,' said Chanu. He looked around the room, seeking proof. It came to him. 'Shahana, what is the name of our national poet?'

She felt the carpet with her toes. The smile died on Chanu's face although the corners of his mouth held their position. 'Tagore,' she said.

'Not your favourite poet, Shahana. National poet. Quick.'

She swayed slightly. Her face was blank, as if she had entered a trance.

Nazneen chewed her tongue. She watched Chanu. His face began to twitch.

'Kazi Nazrul Islam,' said Bibi. Her face popped with tension, as though a weight had been placed across her windpipe.

'Shahana, would you like to recite something by your favourite poet for our guest?'

Nazneen stood up. She would say it was too late. She would go with the girls and help them get ready for bed.

'Another time, perhaps,' said Dr Azad. The girls are tired after their homework.'

'Yes, yes.' Chanu waggled his head. 'Studying, studying all the time. Very good girls. Come now and kiss Abba before you go to bed.'

Bibi went first and Shahana followed. She squashed her lips inside her mouth before brushing it briefly against her father's cheek. But Chanu was satisfied. When the girls had gone he appeared exhausted but relieved, as if a tornado had spun him once or twice around the city and deposited him by some miracle in his chair.

Chanu and the doctor began their main business of the evening. They did what friends do, talked. From time to time their conversational paths intersected. More frequently, they walked around each other.

'It's really quite alarming,' said the doctor, 'that the rate of increase of heroin abuse in our community should have exploded, and yet the elders are giving no leadership. And the funding for counsellors and outreach workers and so forth is totally inadequate.'

'This is the tragedy. When you expect to be so-called integrated. But you will never get the same treatment. Never.'

'I am making quite a study of the situation, preparing a paper for publication. You could call it an epidemic. Even a few girls are getting hooked.'

Chanu's left hand was busy beneath his shirt, massaging his meal into place. 'You see, I myself have struggled for a long time. But now I am simply taking money out. "Every rupee of profit made by an Englishman is lost forever to India." That is how I am playing them at their own game now.'

'If we get funding we will set up a specialist clinic. But the main thing is education. The parents are so ashamed they don't know what to do. Sometimes they send the child back home, where the heroin is really cheap.' The doctor's neck had grown thin. It failed to fill his spotless collar. His lustrous black hair, cut still in the same sharp flat fringe, refused to accord him the dignity of age. It looked like a mockery, like a wig. Nazneen felt for him. It would, she thought, be troublesome to be set upon all day by this reminder of a youth long gone.

Chanu sighed. He cleared his throat. 'Educate the parents and they must educate the children. I myself am teaching the children, many things about history and politics and art.'

'It is absolutely and fundamentally the key,' said the doctor, and Nazneen marvelled at the way this all worked so smoothly: how these two men could find themselves in vehement agreement over their separate topics. 'Teach them to spot the signs in their own children. Tiny pupils, shallow breathing, constipation, constant need for money, becoming withdrawn, secretive. Sometimes I wonder how the parents fail to see it.'

Nazneen opened her mouth and sucked breath. She thought of Razia's son. Every time Razia mentioned Tariq, she talked about money. The men looked at her. She began to clear some plates.

'The parents can become preoccupied,' said Chanu, who had known no other state. 'But we must think of our children first. God knows what they are teaching them in these English schools.'

'Do you know, some of my patients have never so much as smoked a cigarette, and heroin is the first drug they touch.'

'In all my life, I feel this is the best decision I have made – to take my daughters back home. I am preparing them. You see, to go forward you must first look back. We are taking some stock of the glorious British Empire. When I was in school, do you know what we learned? The English gave us the railways. As if we should get down on our knees for this.' He appealed now to his public. 'Do you think they would have brought the railway if they did not want to sell their steel or their locomotives? Do you think that they brought us railways from the goodness of their hearts? We needed irrigation systems, not trains.'

'Good, good,' said Dr Azad. Chanu had strayed too far from the point of their intersection. The rules of the conversation, to the doctor's mind, had been breached. He fingered the sacs beneath his eyes.

Chanu was oblivious. Nazneen reached across him for a dish but he picked it up before she could get it. They rose: Chanu, the bowl, his voice. 'They bequeathed us law and democracy. That's what they think. And never a word of the truth – that they beggared us, that they brought Bengal to its knees, that. . .' The speech left him at a dead end. 'Here,' he said to Nazneen, and held out the dish. 'Do you want this?'

'It was bad enough when it was alcohol,' said the doctor. 'Now I wish it was only alcohol. We need two things. More drugs counsellors and more jobs for the young people.'

'They will never make jobs for us,' said Chanu, sitting down again. 'Look to history. When the English went into Bengal. . .'

'I have read the literature.' Dr Azad checked his watch and stood up. 'How is your . . . job? I forget which one.'

Chanu blew hard. 'Driving job. Doesn't matter how it is. I just take the money, that's all. How is your son-in-law? All this time, and we still have not met him. You must bring him around here. Next time you come.'

'Of course,' said Dr Azad, and though he gave his peculiar smile and took care to walk with energy and not let his shoulders hang, Nazneen could see that it was her husband who had made the final score.

Shahana heard the letterbox and went to the hallway. She sat on the edge of the coffee table and read the leaflet.

'How many times do I tell you not to sit on there?' said Chanu. He sat in front of the showcase on the red and orange rug. His stomach appeared to be balanced on a mound of books.