Brick Lane (62 page)

Chanu returned balancing a tray across his stomach. 'Make way,' he cried, though nothing but the furniture blocked him. 'I have rice and some potato.' He put the tray on the bottom of the bed. 'Very little spice with the potato,' he told the doctor, as if issuing a warning. 'And a small dish of shon-papri. For energy.'

'Good, good,' said the doctor. He collected his belongings. 'You will be able to get back to work,' he told Chanu. 'The London transport system is breaking down without you.'

Chanu waggled his head. 'Let them go to hell while I look after my wife.' He began to eat the crumbly sweetmeat, but with the first mouthful Nazneen could see that he had remembered it was for her. He put the bowl of shon-papri down again. 'How is your wife?' he asked cheerfully.

'Couldn't be better,' returned the doctor, with equally determined good cheer. 'Any word from the council?'

'Council?'

'About the—'

'Library. Thank you for asking, but as you observe' – he beamed at his girls and his wife – 'I am too busy with my family. Let them go to hell too – ignorant types, readers and illiterates, council as well. Let them all go together.' He sighed with tremendous satisfaction.

'Stay in bed,' Dr Azad told Nazneen. 'As long as you can manage. Call me if you start to feel bad again; I can prescribe something to calm you.'

'Nonsense,' sang Chanu. 'My wife is very, very calm. No one is more calm than my wife. She has nothing to get excited about,' he said, with pride.

'Good, good. I must go. I have rounds to make. For some of us, work will not wait.'

'Yes, you must go,' agreed Chanu. 'Go and heal the sick. And give my regards to your family.'

Nazneen rolled a modest ball of rice between her first two fingers and thumb. She remembered the night, many years ago, when she had first wondered what brought these two men together. Now, what kept them together was clear. The doctor had status and respect and money, the lack of which caused Chanu to suffer. But the doctor had no family; none he could speak of without suffering. Chanu had a proper wife, daughters who behaved themselves. But this clever man, for all his books, was nothing better than a rickshaw wallah. And so they entwined their lives to drink from the pools of each other's sadness. From these special watering holes, each man drew strength.

It was late afternoon when she had decided to open her eyes and participate in her life once again. By way of celebration the girls stayed up long after bedtime, and Chanu became a clown. He gave an account of his mishaps in the kitchen and, in a re-enactment of a slip of the knife, hopped around holding his thumb. At night he had been sleeping on the very edge of the bed to give her 'room to breathe'. He demonstrated just how he had rolled onto the floor on the first night, and his acting out of befuddlement was gifted. Shahana rolled her eyes but she smiled despite herself. Bibi, more formal, applauded. Nazneen smiled and wound her hair into a knot. Her arms felt heavy as she lifted them, and her legs ached. Resting, it seemed, had made her unbearably tired. The feeling returned to her that there was something she ought to be thinking about.

'I'll get up for a while.'

Chanu shook a finger at her. 'Did she not hear the doctor? Bed rest. That's the prescription.'

'But I've been in bed so long. I want to get up.'

'She is disobeying the doctor. What a lot of trouble she will be in.' Chanu smiled so hard that his cheeks were in danger of popping.

Nazneen wondered why her husband spoke of her as 'she'. If she had more energy, she decided, she would find this irritating. She marshalled her resources for getting up, and ignoring Chanu's continued admonishments.

The sitting room crawled with toys, clothes, books and abandoned kitchen utensils. A pack of toilet rolls stood on the table; five tins of baked beans nested on the sofa. Attempts had been made to unpack shopping bags, but at some stage between bag and cupboard each attempt had foundered. If a bag had been emptied, it lay on the floor and gaped at the mess. Emergency rations of food marked the path from door to sofa to table. Nazneen picked her way across the room without comment. It gave her some satisfaction. For years she had felt she must not relax. If she relaxed, things would fall apart. Only the constant vigilance and planning, the low-level, unremarked and unrewarded activity of a woman, kept the household from crumbling.

Chanu picked up a shoe and a packet of felt-tip pens. He put them on the arm of the chair. 'The girls are on school holiday. What can you do?' He shrugged and shook his head, helpless in the face of this natural disaster.

Nazneen went to the window and looked out at the orange glow of the lamp-posts. The light was sickly; poisonous. She felt a memory gather like a lump in her throat, a thing without substance but with an undeniable presence.

Shahana looked out of the window with her. A group of children, ten or twelve years old, came round the corner and lined up along the wall as if they had taken themselves prisoner.

'There's Aktar,' said Shahana, 'and Ali.'

'What time is it?' said Nazneen.

'Almost eleven o'clock,' Chanu told her. He came up to the window and worked his lips and eyebrows into expressions of disapproval. 'Why do they let their little children roam around like goats?'

'They're not little children,' said Shahana. 'And Ali's got ten brothers and sisters. His parents don't want them all inside all the time.' She tossed her head to get her fringe out of her eyes. 'They'd only get on each other's nerves,' she added, with feeling.

'Ah, it's
Overcrowding,'
said Chanu, dropping in the word in English.
'Overcrowding
is one of the worst problems in our community. Four or five Bangladeshis to one room. That's an official council statistic.'

'Anyway,' said Shahana, 'it's not that late. Most people are allowed to stay up later than this.'

'What? Later than this? Going around in gangs, late at night and not one book between them. What do you think these goats are studying? What are they learning?'

Shahana's face began to shut down. She turned away from the window.

Chanu recalled that this evening was special. He put his arm around his daughter.

'Calm, calm,' he said. 'Doctor's orders. Don't let your mother get excited.'

Eventually, Bibi began to yawn. Chanu sent the girls to bed and lay down on the sofa nursing his belly. Nazneen regarded the room and fought the impulse to tidy up. She sat very still to allow the memory to form.

'I have to go back to work,' said Chanu. 'Does she think she could cope without me?'

Nazneen saw her sewing machine. It was pushed to the back of the table, half hidden behind a pile of books and a cardboard box.

'Oh, work,' she said and jumped up. She looked in the box. A nest of zips, still waiting to be sewn into some jackets.

'She can't work,' cried Chanu, twisting his head round. 'The patient can't work.'

'I was supposed to finish these last week.'

'They'll have to wait.'

Nazneen leaned against the table. She felt dizzy and sick, the same way she felt when she once tried to smoke a cigarette with Razia.

'That's it,' declared Chanu. 'She's going back to bed.'

But it was Chanu who, after further third-person remonstrations, removed himself to bed. Nazneen could not be budged. Memory returned to her like a tidal wave and she had to stay on her feet or else drown. She walked around the room picking up any object, without knowing what it was or where she put it. When the floor was clear she began rearranging the things she had moved, grouping them promiscuously, deranging as she arranged. Karim had been here. He had come and come again until Chanu was suspicious. And the girls. The girls knew. Or Karim had not been. Worse. He had come and
he
had been suspicious. Why would she not see him? He would not come again. This was good. No. It was bad. At least it was an end. But how could it end like that, without her there? And if it had ended, why did it ever begin? If that was all that would happen, then why did it happen at all? He would come again, and she would explain. Or perhaps, she would not explain, and that –
that –
would be the end. She would end it. But she could not. When she saw him, she would not be able. She was not strong enough. And, anyway, it was not for her to choose. When would he come? Would he come?

Exhausted, she collapsed in the cow-dung armchair and picked the stuffing out of a hole. She made herself think more slowly. For each five breaths, she said to herself, you are allowed one thought. She counted them out. Karim was supposed to come on Tuesday, when the girls were going to a friend's house for the afternoon. She blew out each breath as hard as possible. He would have come straight up, because he had another batch of sewing for her. On the in-breaths she filled up her lungs from the bottom until she felt the pressure beneath her collarbone. Or he looked for her in the window, and walked straight past. She raced through her next set, shallow intakes through her nostrils. What did it matter, anyway, what had happened? The important thing was what would happen now. The importance of it stole her breath altogether and she gasped and gulped at the air.