White Teeth

through this adaptation of Swan Lake (more reminiscent of ducks waddling through an oil slick) without her. Yet what a terrific waste it seemed – akin to watching a toddler on a bus mindlessly grabbing the breast of the stranger sitting next to him – what a waste, that something of such beauty should be at the disposal of those too young to know what to do with it. The second he tasted this thought he brought it back up: Samad Miah… surely a man has reached his lowest when he is jealous of the child at a woman’s breast, when he is jealous of the young, of the future… And then, not for the first time that afternoon, as Poppy Burt-Jones lifted out of her shoes once more and the ducks finally succumbed to the environmental disaster, he asked himself: Why, in the name of Allah, am I here? And the answer returned once more with the persistence of vomit: Because I simply cannot be anywhere else.

Tic, tic, tic. Samad was thankful for the sound of baton hitting on music-stand, which interrupted him from these thoughts, these thoughts that were something close to delirium.

‘Now, kids, kids. Stop. Shhh, quieten down. Mouths away from instruments, bows down. Down, Anita. That’s it, yes, right on the floor. Thank you. Now: you’ve probably noticed we have a visitor today.’ She turned to him and he tried hard to find some part of her on which to focus, some inch that did not heat his troubled blood. ‘This is Mr Iqbal, Magid’s and Millat’s father.’

Samad stood up as if he’d been called to attention, draped his wide-lapelled overcoat carefully over his volatile crotch, waved rather lamely, sat back down.

‘Say “Hello, Mr Iqbal.” ’

‘HELLO, MR ICK-BALL,’ came the resounding chorus from all but two of the musicians.

‘Now: don’t we want to play thrice as well because we have an audience?’

‘YES, MISS BURT-JONES.’

‘And not only is Mr Iqbal our audience for today, but he’s a very special audience. It’s because of Mr Iqbal that next week we won’t be playing Swan Lake any more.’

A great roar met this announcement, accompanied by a stray chorus of trumpet hoots, drum rolls, a cymbal.

‘All right, all right, enough. I didn’t expect quite so much joyous approval.’

Samad smiled. She had humour, then. There was wit there, a bit of sharpness – but why think the more reasons there were to sin, the smaller the sin was? He was thinking like a Christian again; he was saying Can’t say fairer than that to the Creator.

‘Instruments down. Yes, you, Marvin. Thank you very much.’

‘What’ll we be doin’ instead, then, Miss?’

‘Well…’ began Poppy Burt-Jones, the same half-coy, half-daring smile he had noticed before. ‘Something very exciting. Next week I want to try to experiment with some Indian music.’

The cymbal player, dubious of what place he would occupy in such a radical change of genre, took it upon himself to be the first to ridicule the scheme. ‘What, you mean that Eeeee E E E A A aaaa E E E eeee A A O oooo music?’ he said, doing a creditable impression of the strains to be found at the beginning of a Hindi musical, or in the back-room of an ‘Indian’ restaurant, along with attendant head movements. The class let out a blast of laughter as loud as the brass section and echoed the gag en masse: Eeee Eaaaoo O O O Aaaah Eeee O O O iiiiiiii… This, along with screeching parodic violins, penetrated Samad’s deep, erotic half-slumber and sent his imagination into a garden, a garden encased in marble where he found himself dressed in white and hiding behind a large tree, spying on a be-saried, bindi-wearing Poppy Burt-Jones, as she wound flirtatiously in and out of some fountains; sometimes visible, sometimes not.

‘I don’t think – ’ began Poppy Burt-Jones, trying to force her voice above the hoo-hah, then, raising it several decibels, ‘I DON’T THINK IT IS VERY NICE TO – ’ and here her voice slipped back to normal as the class registered the angry tone and quietened down. ‘I don’t think it is very nice to make fun of somebody else’s culture.’

The orchestra, unaware that this is what they had been doing, but aware that this was the most heinous crime in the Manor School rule book, looked to their collective feet.

‘Do you? Do you? How would you like it, Sophie, if someone made fun of Queen?’

Sophie, a vaguely retarded twelve-year-old covered from head to toe in that particular rock band’s paraphernalia, glared over a pair of bottle-top spectacles.

‘Wouldn’t like it, Miss.’

‘No, you wouldn’t, would you?’

‘No, Miss.’

‘Because Freddie Mercury is from your culture.’

Samad had heard the rumours that ran through the rank and file of the Palace waiters to the effect that this Mercury character was in actual fact a very light-skin Persian called Farookh, whom the head chef remembered from school in Panchgani, near Bombay. But who wished to split hairs? Not wanting to stop the lovely Burt-Jones while she was in something of a flow, Samad kept the information to himself.

‘Sometimes we find other people’s music strange because their culture is different from ours,’ said Miss Burt-Jones solemnly. ‘But that doesn’t mean it isn’t equally good, now does it?’

‘NO, MISS.’

‘And we can learn about each other through each other’s culture, can’t we?’

‘YES, MISS.’

For example, what music do you like, Millat?’

Millat thought for a moment, swung his saxophone to his side and began fingering it like a guitar. ‘Bo-orn to ruuun! Da da da da daaa! Bruce Springsteen, Miss! Da da da da daaa! Baby, we were bo- orn-’

‘Umm, nothing – nothing else? Something you listen to at home, maybe?’

Millat’s face fell, troubled that his answer did not seem to be the right one. He looked over at his father, who was gesticulating wildly behind the teacher, trying to convey the jerky head and hand movements of bharata natyam, the form of dance Alsana had once enjoyed before sadness weighted her heart, and babies tied down her hands and feet.

‘Thriiiii-ller!’ sang Millat, full throated, believing he had caught his father’s gist. ‘Thriii-ller night! Michael Jackson, Miss! Michael Jackson!’

Samad put his head in his hands. Miss Burt-Jones looked queerly at the small child standing on a chair, gyrating and grabbing his crotch before her. ‘OK, thank you, Millat. Thank you for sharing… that.’

Millat grinned. ‘No problem, Miss.’

While the children queued up to exchange twenty pence for two dry digestives and a cup of tasteless squash, Samad followed the light foot of Poppy Burt-Jones like a predator – into the music cupboard, a tiny room, windowless, with no means of escape, and full of instruments, filing cabinets overbrimming with sheetmusic, and a scent Samad had thought hers but now identified as the maturing leather of violin cases mixed with the mellowing odour of cat-gut.

‘This,’ said Samad, spotting a desk beneath a mountain of paper, ‘is where you work?’

Poppy blushed. ‘Tiny, isn’t it? Music budgets get cut every year until this year there was nothing left to cut from. It’s got to the point where they’re putting desks in cupboards and calling them offices. If it wasn’t for the GLC, there wouldn’t even be a desk.’

‘It is certainly small,’ said Samad, scanning the room desperately for some spot where he