Meanwhile Changez was getting better and better at lying on camp-beds, reading paperbacks and strolling around town with me. He was always up to any adventure that didn’t involve working at tills or sitting on three-legged stools. And because he was slightly dim, or at least vulnerable and kind and easily led, being one of the few people I could mock and dominate with impunity, we became mates. He’d follow me where I fancied, as I avoided my education.
Unlike everyone else he thought me quite deviant. He was shocked when I took off my shirt in the street to get some damn sun on my tits. ‘You are very daring and non-conformist, yaar,’ he often said. ‘And look how you dress, like a gypsy vagabond. What does your father say? Doesn’t he discipline you very hard?’
‘My father’s too busy with the woman he ran off with,’ I replied, ‘to think about me too much.’
‘Oh God, this whole country has gone sexually insane,’ he said. ‘Your father should go back home for some years and take you with him. Perhaps to a remote village.’
Changez’s disgust at everyday things inspired me to show him South London. I wondered how long he’d take to get used to it, to become, in other words, corrupt. I was working on it. We wasted days and days dancing in the Pink Pussy Club, yawning at Fat Mattress at the Croydon Greyhound, ogling strippers on Sunday mornings in a pub, sleeping through Godard and Antonioni films, and enjoying the fighting at Millwall Football Ground, where I forced Changez to wear a bobble-hat over his face in case the lads saw he was a Paki and imagined I was one too.
Financially Changez was supported by Jamila, who paid for everything by working in the shop in the evenings. And I helped him out with money I got from Dad. Changez’s brother sent him money, too, which was unusual, because it should have been the other way round as Changez made his way in the affluent West, but I was sure celebrations in India at Changez’s departure were still taking place.
Jamila was soon in the felicitous position of neither liking nor disliking her husband. It amused her to think she carried on as if he weren’t there. But late at night the two of them liked to play cards, and she’d ask him about India. He told her tales of run-away wives, too-small dowries, adultery among the rich of Bombay (which took many evenings) and, most delicious, political corruption. He’d obviously picked up a few tips from the paperbacks, because he spun these stories out like a kid pulling on chewing-gum. He was good at them, linking all the stories together with more gum and spit, reintroducing the characters with, ‘You know that bad bad man who was caught naked in the bathing hut?’, as in a wild soap opera, until he knew that at the end of her day spent sucking on dusty brain juice, her maddening mouth would inevitably say, ‘Hey, Changez, husband or whatever you are, don’t you know any more about that politician geezer that got thrown into jail?’
In turn he made the polite mistake of asking her what she believed socially and politically. One morning she laid the Prison Notebooks of Gramsci on his chest, not realizing that his addiction to paperbacks wasn’t entirely undiscriminating. ‘Why haven’t you read this if you’re so interested?’ she challenged him weeks later.
‘Because I prefer to hear it from your mouth.’ And he did want to hear it from her mouth. He wanted to watch his wife’s mouth move because it was a mouth he’d come to appreciate more and more. It was a mouth he wanted to get to know.
One day, while we were roaming around junk shops and the Paperback Exchange, Changez took my arm and forced me to face him, which was never a pleasant sight. He made himself say to me at last, after weeks of dithering like a frightened diver on a rock, ‘D’you think my Jammie will ever go in bed with me? She is my wife, after all. I am suggesting no illegality. Please, you’ve known her all your life, what is your true and honest estimation of my chances in this respect?’
‘Your wife? In bed with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘No chance.’
‘What?’
‘No way, Changez.’
He couldn’t accept it. I elaborated. ‘She wouldn’t touch you with asbestos gloves on.’
‘Why? Please be frank, as you have been until now on every other matter. Even vulgar, Karim, which is your wont.’
‘You’re too ugly for her.’
‘Really? My face?’
‘Your face. Your body. The whole lot. Yuk.’
‘Yes?’ At that moment I glimpsed myself in a shop window and was pleased with what I saw. I had no job, no education, and no prospects, but I looked pretty good, oh yes. ‘Jamila’s a quality person, you know that.’
‘I would like to have children with my wife.’
I shook my head. ‘Out of the question.’
This children issue was not trivial for Changez the Bubble. There had been a horrible incident recently which must have remained on his mind. Anwar asked Changez and me to wash the floor of the shop, thinking that perhaps I could successfully supervise him. Surely this couldn’t go wrong? I was doing the scrubbing and Changez was miserably holding the bucket in the deserted shop and asking me if I had any more Harold Robbins novels he could borrow. Then Anwar turned up and stood there watching us work. Finally he made up his mind about something: he asked Changez about Jamila and how she was. He asked Changez if Jamila was ‘expecting’.
‘Expecting what?’ said Changez.
‘My bloody grandson!’ said Anwar. Changez said nothing, but shuffled backwards, away from the fire of Anwar’s blazing contempt, which was fuelled by bottomless disappointment.
‘Surely,’ said Anwar to me, ‘surely there must be something between this donkey’s legs?’
At this Changez started to explode from the centre of his vast stomach. Waves of anger jolted through him and his face seemed suddenly magnified while it flattened like a jellyfish. Even his bad arm visibly throbbed, until Bubble’s whole body shuddered with fury and humiliation and incomprehension.
He shouted, ‘Yes, there is more between this donkey’s legs than there is between that donkey’s ears!’
And he lunged at Anwar with a carrot that was lying to hand. Jeeta, who had heard everything, rushed over. Some strength or recklessness seemed to have been released in her by recent events; she had increased as Anwar had diminished. Her nose had become beaked and hawked, too. Now she placed the obstacle of her nose between Anwar and Changez so that neither could get at the other. And she gave Anwar a mouthful. I’d never heard her speak like this before. She was fearless. She could have shrivelled Gulliver with her breath. Anwar turned and went away, cursing. She sent Changez and me out.
Now Bubble, who hadn’t had much time to reflect on his England-experience, was obviously starting to think over his position. Conjugal rights were being denied him; human rights were being suspended at times; unnecessary inconvenience was happening everywhere; abuse was flying around his head like a spit-shower – and he was an important man from a considerable Bombay family! What was going on? Action would be taken! But first things first. Changez was searching in his pockets for something. He eventually hoiked out a piece of paper with a phone-number on it. ‘In that case –’
‘In what case?’
‘Of the ugliness you so helpfully mention. There is something I must do.’
Changez telephoned someone. It was very mysterious. Then I had to take him to a big detached house divided into flats. An old woman opened the door – she seemed to be expecting him – and as he went in he turned and instructed me to wait. So I stood around like a fool for twenty minutes. When he emerged I saw behind him at the door a small, black-haired, middle-aged Japanese woman in a red kimono.