White Teeth (16 page)

“Well, the Chalfens were behind you—they're such
nice
people
—intellectuals,
” she whispered, as if it were some exotic disease of the tropics. “He's a scientist and she's something in gardening—but both very down to earth with it. I talked to them and they thought you should pursue it. You know, actually,
I
was thinking that maybe we could get together at some point in the next few months and work on a second motion for the September meeting—you know, nearer the actual time, make it a little more coherent, maybe, print out leaflets, that sort of thing. Because you know, I'm really interested in Indian culture. I just think those festivals you mentioned would be so much more . . . colorful, and we could tie it in with artwork, music. It could be
really
exciting,” said Poppy Burt-Jones, getting really excited. “And I think it would be really good, you know, for the kids.”

It was not possible, Samad knew, for this woman to have any erotic interest in him whatsoever. But still he glanced around for Alsana, still he jangled his car keys nervously in his pocket, still he felt a cold thing land on his heart and knew it was fear of his God.

“I'm not actually
from
India, you know,” said Samad, with infinitely more patience than he had ever previously employed the many times he had been required to repeat this sentence since moving to England.

Poppy Burt-Jones looked surprised and disappointed. “You're not?”

“No. I'm from Bangladesh.”

“Bangladesh . . .”

“Previously Pakistan. Previous to that, Bengal.”

“Oh, right. Same sort of ball-park, then.”

“Just about the same stadium, yes.”

There was a bit of a difficult pause, in which Samad saw clearly that he wanted her more than any woman he had met in the past ten years. Just like that. Desire didn't even bother casing the joint, checking whether the neighbors were in—desire just kicked down the door and made himself at home. He felt queasy. Then he became aware that his face was moving from arousal to horror in a grotesque parody of the movements of his mind, as he weighed up Poppy Burt-Jones and all the physical and metaphysical consequences she suggested. He must speak before it got any worse.

“Well . . . hmm, it is a good idea, retabling the motion,” he said against his will, for something more bestial than his will was now doing the talking. “If you could spare the time.”

“Well, we can talk about it. I'll give you a call about it in a few weeks. We could meet after orchestra, maybe?”

“That would be . . . fine.”

“Great! That's agreed, then. You know, your boys are really adorable—they're very unusual. I was saying it to the Chalfens, and Marcus put his finger on it: he said that Indian children, if you don't mind me saying, are usually a lot more—”

“More?”

“
Quiet.
Beautifully behaved but very, I don't know,
subdued.
”

Samad winced inside, imagining Alsana listening to this.

“And Magid and Millat are just so
. . . loud.
”

Samad tried to smile.

“Magid is so impressive intellectually for a nine-year-old—everybody says so. I mean, he's really remarkable. You must be
so
proud. He's like a little adult. Even his clothes . . . I don't think I've ever known a nine-year-old to dress so—so
severely.
”

Both twins had always been determined to choose their own clothes, but where Millat bullied Alsana into purchases of red-stripe Nikes, OshKosh B'Gosh, and strange jumpers that had patterns on the inside and the out, Magid could be found, whatever the weather, in gray pullover, gray shirt, and black tie with his shiny black shoes and National Health Service specs perched upon his nose, like some dwarf librarian. Alsana would say, “Little man, how about the blue one for Amma, hmm?,” pushing him into the primary colors section of Mothercare. “Just one blue one. Go so nice with your eyes. For Amma, Magid. How can you not care for blue? It's the color of the sky!”

“No, Amma. The sky isn't blue. There's just white light. White light has all of the colors of the rainbow in it, and when it is scattered through the squillions of molecules in the sky, the shortwave colors—blue, violet—they are the ones you see. The sky isn't really blue. It just looks that way. It's called Rayleigh scattering.”

A strange child with a cold intellect.

“You must be
so
proud,” Poppy repeated with a huge smile. “I would be.”

“Sadly,” said Samad sighing, distracted from his erection by the dismal thought of his second son (by two minutes), “Millat is a good-for-nothing.”

Poppy looked mortified at this. “Oh no! No, I didn't mean that at all . . . I mean, I think he's probably a little intimidated by Magid in that way, but he's such a personality! He's just not so . . . academic. But everybody just
loves
him—such a beautiful boy, as well. Of course,” she said, giving him a wink and a knock on the shoulder, “good genes.”

Good genes?
What did she mean,
good genes
?

“Hullo!” said Archie, who had walked up behind them, giving Samad a strong thud on the back. “Hullo!” he said again, shaking Poppy's hand, with the almost mock-aristocratic manner he used when confronted with educated people. “Archie Jones. Father of Irie, for my sins.”

“Poppy Burt-Jones. I take Irie for—”

“Music, yes, I know. Talks about you constantly. Bit disappointed you passed her over for first violin, though . . . maybe next year, eh? So!” said Archie, looking from Poppy to Samad, who was standing slightly apart from the other two and had a queer look, Archie thought, a bloody queer look on his face. “You've met the notorious Ick-Ball! You were a bit much in that meeting, Samad, eh? Wasn't he, eh?”

“Oh, I don't know,” said Poppy sweetly. “I thought Mr. Iqbal made some good points, actually. I was really impressed by a lot of what he said. I'd like to be that knowledgeable on so many subjects. Sadly, I'm a bit of a one-trick pony. Are you, I don't know, a
professor
of some kind, Mr. Iqbal?”

“No, no,” said Samad, furious that he was unable to lie because of Archie, and finding the word “waiter” stopping in his throat. “No, the fact is I work in a restaurant. I did some study in younger days, but the war came and . . .” Samad shrugged as an end to the sentence, and watched with sinking heart as Poppy Burt-Jones's freckled face contorted into one large, red, perplexed question mark.

“War?” she said, as if he had said wireless or pianola or Victrola. “The Falklands?”

“No,” said Samad flatly. “The Second World.”

“Oh, Mr. Iqbal, you'd never guess. You must have been ever so young.”

“There were tanks there older than us, love,” said Archie with a grin.

“Well, Mr. Iqbal, that is a surprise! But they say dark skin wrinkles less, don't they?”

“Do they?” said Samad, forcing himself to imagine her taut, pink skin, folded over in layer after layer of dead epidermis. “I thought it was children that kept a man young.”

Poppy laughed. “That too, I'd imagine. Well!” she said, looking flushed, coy, and sure of herself, all at the same time. “You look very good on it. I'm sure the Omar Sharif comparison's been made before, Mr. Iqbal.”

“No, no, no, no,” said Samad, glowing with pleasure. “The only comparison lies in our mutual love of bridge. No, no, no . . . And it's Samad,” he added. “Call me Samad, please.”

“You'll have to call him Samad some other time, Miss,” said Archie, who always persisted in calling teachers Miss. “Because we've got to go. Wives waiting in the driveway. Dinner, apparently.”

“Well, it was nice talking to you,” said Poppy, reaching for the wrong hand again, and blushing as he met her with the left.

“Yes. Good-bye.”

“Come on, come on,” said Archie, fielding Samad out of the door and down the sloping driveway to the front gates. “Dear God, fit as a butcher's dog, that one!
Phee-yooo.
Nice, very nice. Dear me, you were trying it on . . . And what were you on about
—mutual love of bridge.
I've known you decades and I've never seen you play bridge. Five-card poker's more your game.”

“Shut up, Archibald.”

“No, no, fair dues, you did very well. It's not like you, though, Samad—having found God and all that—not like you to be distracted by the attractions of the flesh.”

Samad shook Archie's hand from where it was resting on his shoulder. “Why
are
you so irredeemably vulgar?”

“
I
wasn't the one . . .”

But Samad wasn't listening, he was already reciting in his head, repeating two English phrases that he tried hard to believe in, words he had learned these past ten years in England, words he hoped could protect him from the abominable heat in his trousers:

To the pure all things are pure. To the pure all things are pure. To the pure all things are pure.

Can't say fairer than that. Can't say fairer than that. Can't say fairer than that.

But let's rewind a little.

1.
TO THE PURE ALL THINGS ARE PURE

Sex, at least the temptation of sex, had long been a problem. When the fear of God first began to creep into Samad's bones, circa 1976, just after his marriage to the small-palmed, weak-wristed, and uninterested Alsana, he had inquired of an elderly Alim in the mosque in Croydon whether it was permitted that a man might . . . with his hand on his . . .

Before he had got halfway through this tentative mime, the old scholar had silently passed him a leaflet from a pile on a table and drawn his wrinkled digit firmly underneath point number three.

There are nine acts which invalidate fast:

 

 

“And what, Alim,” Samad had inquired, dismayed, “if he is not fasting?”

The old scholar looked grave. “Ibn 'Umar was asked about it and is reported to have answered:
it is nothing except the rubbing of the male member until its water comes out. It is only a nerve that one kneads.
”

Samad had taken heart at this, but the Alim continued. “However, he answered in another report:
it has been forbidden that one should have intercourse with oneself.
”

“But which is the correct belief? Is it halal or haraam? There are some who say . . .” Samad had begun sheepishly, “
To the pure all things are pure.
If one is truthful and firm in oneself, it can harm nobody else, nor offend . . .”

But the Alim laughed at this. “And we know who
they
are. Allah have pity on the Anglicans! Samad, when the male organ of a man stands erect, two thirds of his intellect go away,” said the Alim, shaking his head. “And one third of his religion. There is an hadith of the Prophet Muhammad—peace be upon Him!—it is as follows:
O Allah, I seek refuge in you from the evil of my hearing, of my sight, of my tongue, of my heart, and of my private parts.
”

“But surely . . . surely if the man himself is pure, then—”

“Show me the pure man, Samad! Show me the pure act! Oh, Samad Miah . . . my advice to you is stay away from your right hand.”

Of course, Samad, being Samad, had employed the best of his Western pragmatism, gone home and vigorously tackled the job with his functional left hand, repeating
To the pure all things are pure. To the pure all things are pure,
until orgasm finally arrived: sticky, sad, depressing. And that ritual continued for some five years, in the little bedroom at the top of the house where he slept alone (so as not to wake Alsana) after crawling back from the restaurant at three in the morning each and every morning; secretly, silently; for he was, believe it or not, tortured by it, by this furtive yanking and squeezing and spilling, by the fear that he was not pure, that his acts were not pure, that he would never be pure, and always his God seemed to be sending him small signs, small warnings, small curses (a urethra infection, 1976, castration dream, 1978, dirty, encrusted sheet discovered but misunderstood by Alsana's great-aunt, 1979) until 1980 brought crisis point and Samad heard Allah roaring in his ear like the waves in a conch-shell and it seemed time to make a deal.

2. CAN'T SAY FAIRER THAN THAT

The deal was this: on January 1, 1980, like a New Year dieter who gives up cheese on the condition that he can have chocolate, Samad gave up masturbation so that he might drink. It was a deal, a business proposition, that he had made with God: Samad being the party of the first part, God being the sleeping partner. And since that day Samad had enjoyed relative spiritual peace and many a frothy Guinness with Archibald Jones; he had even developed the habit of taking his last gulp looking up at the sky like a Christian, thinking: I'm basically a good man. I don't slap the salami. Give me a break. I have the odd drink.
Can't say fairer than that . . .

But of course he was in the wrong religion for compromises, deals, pacts, weaknesses, and
can't say fairer than that
s. He was supporting the wrong team if it was empathy and concessions he wanted, if he wanted liberal exegesis, if he wanted to be
given a break.
His God was not
like
that charming white-bearded bungler of the Anglican, Methodist, or Catholic churches. His God was not in the business of
giving people breaks.
The moment Samad set eyes on the pretty redhaired music teacher Poppy Burt-Jones that July of 1984, he knew finally the truth of this. He knew his God was having his revenge, he knew the game was up, he saw that the contract had been broken, and the sanity clause did not, after all, exist, that temptation had been deliberately and maliciously thrown in his path. In short, all deals were off.