Brick Lane (71 page)

He looked at it. It was not much. 'I'll speak to him.'

'No!'

Chanu fanned the silence with his look. The silence gave off its fumes, and Nazneen's breath came short.

'Who?' said Chanu. 'Who is it that you do not wish me to speak to?'

'No one. I'll speak to . . . No one. There's no one you shouldn't speak to.'

'I'll talk to him, then.'

'I'll do it.'

'Do what?'

'Talk to him.'

'Who?'

'Why are you doing this?'

Chanu shrugged. 'Me? What am I doing?' He rubbed a finger on his chin. For a long time he looked somewhere, inside rather than outside himself. 'Ask for at least fifty per cent more. Explain that it will only be for a short time. Tell him that your husband has told you to ask, and tell him that it is lucky for you that your husband is an educated man.'

One evening he said, 'Children can adjust to anything. The place is immaterial. They will make their own place
within
the place.'

'Shahana is growing up fast,' she said.

Chanu meditated for a while. 'Too soon ripe is too soon rotten.'

He sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed wearing a yellow vest and checked blue lungi. Nazneen, in her nightdress, sat at the end and brushed her hair. She watched her husband in the mirror. She saw herself being watched by him, and there was no beginning or end to how they were caught up together. The brush travelled down the straight black lines of hair. Her forehead looked heavier than usual and she tried to stick her chin out to balance it.

She thought about her husband. So many years he had talked of going home. And now he was working himself up to do it. The history lessons: they were not, after all, about the past.

'Do you think they will be all right?' said Chanu.

'Only God knows the answer.'

Chanu's face contorted, and for a moment Nazneen thought he was responding and then she saw it was pain.

'What is it?' she said.

'Ulcer is coming again.'

She brushed vigorously on the right-hand side. Chanu watched her. 'It's the right thing to do,' he said. She put the brush down. Hair fell across her cheek. It was dense and rich as treacle and she dipped her fingers in it. Her lips parted and in the mirror she saw a man looking at a woman. The woman's face was soft and full of gentle curves, and though she was not beautiful there was something that would make a man keep looking.

'Are you happy to be going?' Chanu smiled. It made him look sad.

'If it is God's will.'

Chanu shuffled down the bed. He put a hand on the small of her back. She smelled his hair oil and deodorant, absorbed the warmth of his hand. Over their heads, a toilet flushed, a door opened and closed and bedsprings creaked.

'But you want to, don't you?' He rested his chin on her shoulder. Her hair made a curtain between their faces.

She thought, would we sit like this in Dhaka? In a room like this?
And would we sit like this and would it feel just the same and would everything be the same but just in a different place?

Chanu lifted his head from her shoulder. 'But of course you want to go.' He smiled again. 'What kind of sister would you be if you did not? Of course you do want to go.'

The projects stopped. There was only one project and that meant no unnecessary expense could be entertained. No more gadgets for the computer or the car. Even book expenditure was curtailed. Chanu drove for long hours and when he returned he was too tired to talk about the ignorant types who rode in the back. And he was too tired or his ulcer was too troubling for him to relish his meals. He ate a bowl of cereal standing up, or bread that he cut in cubes from a loaf, as if cutting a whole slice would be too much effort. 'Just wait while I heat up the bhazi,' said Nazneen. But she could not persuade him.

He wore the money belt that he had bought as part of his tourist outfit and took it off last thing at night. All the money had to be kept in it and Nazneen only opened the door after careful surveillance. Twice she heard Mrs Islam flay the outer corridor with sharp words. Nazneen stood inside the hallway with her back pressed to the wall.

After a silence, Mrs Islam began again, in her invalid's voice. 'Just a small glass of water is all I beg of you. For an old woman who has climbed so many stairs to see a friend.'

Nazneen stared at the crumbling plaster.

'I know you are in there.'

Then it went quiet again.

Once, after a double shift, Chanu came home in the afternoon while Karim was using the computer.

'Salaam Ale-Koum,' said Karim. He yawned and rubbed his eyes, after a long spell at the screen.

'Walaikum-asalaam.' Chanu put his keys down on top of the showcase. He stood with his arms dangling. His trousers had ridden up and his socks showed, one grey, one black.

Karim stretched his arms. For a few seconds he looked at the screen but then he set about yawning again, as if it were simply impossible to overstate just how tired and relaxed he was feeling. Nazneen dug her fingernails through her cotton sari into her thighs. If she dug hard enough she would be able to cry out and break the room in two. But no sound came from her mouth.

Chanu unzipped his anorak and took it off. Holding it out by the hood, he looked at it as if he had no idea what it was. Then he let go and it fell on the floor, hiding his shoe and his grey sock.

'Is it interesting?' he said.

Karim was in no rush to answer. First he scratched his ear, then he cracked his knuckles. 'Yeah, brother. Islamic web site.' He covered his mouth for yet another yawn. 'Hope you don't mind.'

'Why should I mind?'

Karim shrugged. He looked at his fingernails.

'When I was a young man like you, do you know what I wanted to be? I wanted to be a British civil servant. I was going to sit all the exams and be a High Flyer, Top Earner, Head of Department, Permanent Secretary, Cabinet Secretary, Right-hand Bloody Man of the Bloody Prime Minister.' For the first time, Nazneen saw that his face was capable of growing as serious as his eyes. His face came together. 'I saw no reason why not. That's the truth. Anything is possible.'

Karim's foot jacked up and down, working an invisible pump.

'Anything is possible so everything I wanted was possible,' Chanu went on. 'But what about all the other possibilities? The ones we never see when we are young, but are there all along. One day you wake up and say to yourself, I
didn't choose this.
And then you spend a long time thinking,
but did I?'

'I know what I want,' said Karim. He stared at Chanu, but Chanu seemed to have forgotten him.

Chanu picked up his coat and his keys. He put the keys in his pocket and jangled them.

'I know what I want,' said Karim.

'The thing about getting older,' said Chanu, 'is that you don't need everything to be possible any more, you just need some things to be certain.'

He put on his anorak and, though there was nowhere to go, went out again.

The mela was cancelled. Karim said, 'It don't look right. Think about it. The American President is preparing his Crusade. And we're preparing to party? It's not on.'