White Teeth by Zadie Smith Page B

secret (kept secret from Alsana and Archie) lending library of Neena’s through which she reads, in a few short months, Greer’s
Female Eunuch
, Jong’s
Fear of Flying
and
The Second Sex
, all in a clandestine attempt, on Neena’s part, to rid Clara of her ‘false consciousness’.
    ‘I mean, I just think men have caused enough chaos this century. There’s enough fucking men in the world. If I knew I was going to have a boy’ — she pauses to prepare her two falsely conscious friends for this new concept — ‘I’d have to seriously consider abortion.’
    Alsana screams, claps her hands over one of her own ears and one of Clara’s, and then almost chokes on a piece of aubergine. For some reason the remark simultaneously strikes Clara as funny; hysterically, desperately funny; miserably funny; and the Niece-of-Shame sits between the two, nonplussed, while the two egg-shaped women bend over themselves, one in laughter, the other in horror and asphyxiation.
    ‘Are you all right, ladies?’
    It is Sol Jozefowicz, the old guy who back then took it upon himself to police the park (though his job as park keeper had long since been swept away in council cuts), Sol Jozefowicz stands in front of them, ready as always to be of aid.
    ‘We are all going to burn in hell, Mr Jozefowicz, if you call that being all right,’ explains Alsana, pulling herself together.
    Niece-of-Shame rolls her eyes. ‘Speak for yourself.’
    But Alsana is faster than any sniper when it comes to firing back. ‘I do, I do — thankfully Allah has arranged it that way.’
    ‘Good afternoon, Neena, good afternoon, Mrs Jones,’ says Sol, offering a neat bow to each. ‘Are you sure you are all right? Mrs Jones?’
    Clara cannot stop the tears from squeezing out of the corners of her eyes. She cannot work out, at this moment, whether it is crying or laughing.
    ‘I’m fine . . . fine, sorry to have worried you, Mr Jozefowicz . . . really, I’m fine.’
    ‘I do not see what’s so very funny-funny,’ mutters Alsana. ‘The murder of innocents — is this funny?’
    ‘Not in my experience, Mrs Iqbal, no,’ says Sol Jozefowicz, in the collected manner in which he said everything, passing his handkerchief to Clara. It strikes all three women — the way history will, embarrassingly, without warning, like a blush — what the ex-park keeper’s experience might have been. They fall silent.
    ‘Well, as long as you ladies are fine, I’ll be getting on,’ says Sol, motioning that Clara can keep the handkerchief and replacing the hat he had removed in the old fashion. He bows his neat little bow once more, and sets off slowly, anti-clockwise round the park.
    Once Sol is out of earshot: ‘OK, Auntie Alsi, I apologize, I apologize . . . For fuck’s sake, what more do you want?’
    ‘Oh, every-bloody-thing,’ says Alsana, her voice losing the fight, becoming vulnerable. ‘The whole bloody universe made clear — in a little nutshell. I cannot understand a thing any more, and I am just beginning. You understand?’
    She sighs, not waiting for an answer, not looking at Neena, but across the way at the hunched, disappearing figure of Sol winding in and out of the yew trees. ‘You may be right about Samad . . . about many things. Maybe there are no good men, not even the two I might have in this belly . . . and maybe I do not talk enough with mine, maybe I have married a stranger. You might see the truth better than I. What do I know . . . barefoot country girl . . . never went to the universities.’
    ‘Oh, Alsi,’ Neena is saying, weaving in and out of Alsana’s words like tapestry; feeling bad. ‘You know I didn’t mean it like that.’
    ‘But I cannot be worrying-worrying all the time about the
truth
. I have to worry about the truth that can be
lived with
. And that is the difference between losing your marbles drinking the salty sea, or swallowing the stuff from the streams. My Niece-of-Shame believes in the talking