White Teeth

The Witness women raise their voices, sending song up into the firmament. ‘Early will I seek thee,’ sings Hortense. ‘My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is…’ Samad watches it all and finds himself, to his surprise, unwilling to silence her. Partly because he is tired. Partly because he is old. But mostly because he would do the same, though in a different name. He knows what it is to seek. He knows the dryness. He has felt the thirst you get in a strange land – horrible, persistent – the thirst that lasts your whole life.

Can’t say fairer than that, he thinks, can’t say fairer than that.

Inside: ‘But I’m still waiting for him to get to the bit about my skin. Ain’t heard nothing yet, have you, Arch?’

‘No, nothing yet. I ’spect he’s got a lot to get through. Revolutionary, all this.’

‘Yeah, naturally… But you pays your money, you gets your choice.’

‘You didn’t pay for your ticket, did you?’

‘No. No, I didn’t. But I’ve still got expectations. The principle’s the same, innit? Oi-oi, shut it a minute… I thought I heard skin just then…’

Mickey did hear skin. Papillomas on the skin, apparently. A good five minutes’ worth. Archie doesn’t understand a word of it. But at the end of it, Mickey looks satisfied, as if he’s got all the information he’s been looking for.

‘Mmm, now that’s why I came, Arch. Very interesting. Great medical breakthrough. Fucking miracle workers, these doctors.’

‘… and in this,’ Marcus is saying, ‘he was elemental and indispensable. Not only is he a personal inspiration, but he laid the foundations for so much of this work, particularly in his seminal paper, which I first heard in…’

Oh, that’s nice. Giving the old bloke some credit. And you can tell, he’s chuffed to hear it. Looks a bit tearful. Didn’t catch his name. Still, nice not to take all the glory for yourself. But then again, you don’t want to overdo it. The way Marcus is going on, sounds like the old bloke did everything.

‘Blimey,’ says Mickey, thinking the same thing, ‘fulsome praise, eh? I thought you said it was this Chalfen who was the Mr Big.’

‘Maybe they’re partners in crime,’ suggests Archie.

‘… pushing the envelope, when work in this area was seriously underfunded and looked to remain in the realms of science fiction. For that reason alone he has been the guiding spirit, if you like, behind the research group, and is, as ever, my mentor, a position he has filled for twenty years now…’

‘You know who my mentor is?’ says Mickey. ‘Muhammad Ali. No question. Integrity of mind, integrity of spirit, integrity of body. Top bloke. Wicked fighter. And when he said he was the greatest, he didn’t just say “the greatest”.’

Archie says, ‘No?’

‘Nah, mate,’ says Mickey, solemn. ‘He said he was the greatest of all times. Past, present, future. He was a cocky bastard, Ali. Definitely my mentor.’

Mentor… thinks Archie. For him, it’s always been Samad. You can’t tell Mickey that, obviously. Sounds daft. Sounds queer. But it’s the truth. Always Sammy. Through thick and thin. Even if the world were ending. Never made a decision without him in forty years. Good old Sam. Sam the man.

‘… and so if any one person deserves the lion’s share of recognition for the marvel you see before you, it is Dr Marc-Pierre Perret. A remarkable man and a very great…’

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories. Archie does recognize the name, faintly, somewhere inside, but he is already twisting in his seat by then, trying to see if Samad is returning. He can’t see Samad. Instead he spots Millat, who looks funny. Who looks decidedly funny. Peculiar rather than ha-ha. He’s swaying ever so slightly in his seat, and Archie can’t catch his eye for a you-all- right-mate-look because his eyes are locked on to something and when Archie follows the path of this stare, he finds himself looking at the same peculiar thing: an old man weeping tiny tears of pride. Red tears. Tears Archie recognizes.

But not before Samad recognizes them; Captain Samad Miah, who has just stepped soundlessly through the modern door with its silent mechanism; Captain Samad Miah, who pauses for a moment on the threshold, peers through his reading glasses, and realizes that he has been lied to by his only friend in the world for fifty years. That the cornerstone of their friendship was made of nothing more firm than marshmallow and soap bubbles. That there is far, far more to Archibald Jones than he had ever imagined. He realizes everything at once like the climax of a bad Hindi musical. And then, with a certain horrid glee, he gets to the fundamental truth of it, the anagnorisis: This incident alone will keep us two old boys going for the next forty years. It is the story to end all stories. It is the gift that keeps on giving.

‘Archibald!’ He turns from the doctor towards his Lieutenant and releases a short, loud, hysterical laugh; he feels like a new bride looking at her groom with perfect recognition just at the moment when everything between the two of them has changed. ‘You two-faced buggering bastard trickster misa mata, bhainchute, shora-baicha, syut-morani, haraam jadda…’

Samad tumbles into the Bengali vernacular, so colourfully populated by liars, sister-fuckers, sons and daughters of pigs, people who give their own mothers oral pleasure…

But even before this, or at least simultaneous with this, while the audience looks on, bemused by this old brown man shouting at this old white man in a foreign tongue, Archie senses something else going on, some movement in this space, potential movement all over the room (the Indian guys at the back, the kids sitting near Josh, Irie looking from Millat to Magid, Magid to Millat, like an umpire) and sees that Millat will get there first; and Millat is reaching like Pande; and Archie has seen TV and he has seen real-life and he knows what such a reach means, so he stands. So he moves.

So as the gun sees the light, he is there, he is there with no coin to help him, he is there before Samad can stop him, he is there with no alibi, he is there between Millat Iqbal’s decision and his target, like the moment between thought and speech, like the split-second intervention of memory or regret.

At some point in the darkness, they stopped walking through the flatlands and Archie pushed the Doctor forward, made him stand just in front, where he could see him.

‘Stay there,’ he said, as the Doctor stepped inadvertently into a moonbeam. ‘Stay right bloody there.’

Because he wanted to see evil, pure evil; the moment of the great recognition, he needed to see it – and then he could proceed as previously arranged. But the Doctor was stooping badly and he looked weak. His face was covered in pale red blood as if the deed had already been done. Archie’d never seen a man so crumpled, so completely vanquished. It kind of took the wind out of his sails. He was tempted to say You look like I feel, for if there was an embodiment of his own pounding headache, of the alcoholic nausea rising from his belly, it was standing opposite him now. But neither man spoke; they just stood there for a while, looking at each other across the loaded gun. Archie had the funny sensation that he could fold this man instead of killing him. Fold him up and put him in his pocket.

‘Look, I’m sorry about it,’ said Archie desperately, after thirty long seconds of silence. ‘War’s over. I’ve nothing against you personal… but my friend, Sam… well, I’m in a bit of a situation. So there it is.’

The Doctor blinked several times and seemed to be struggling to control his breathing. Through lips red with his own blood he said, ‘When we were walking… you said that I might plead…?’

Keeping his hands behind his head, the Doctor made a move to get on his knees, but Archie shook his head and groaned. ‘I know what I said… but there’s no… it’s just better if I – ’ said Archie sadly, miming the pull of the trigger and the kick-back of the gun. ‘Don’t you think? I mean, easier… all round?’

The Doctor opened his mouth as if to say something, but Archie shook his head again. ‘I’ve never done this before and I’m a bit… well, pissed, frankly… I drank quite a bit… and it wouldn’t help… you’d be