The Friendly Ones. Philip Hensher
felt very much better, and neither of them had said, ‘That’s very interesting,’ at all. Nazia had just got an exercise bike: she had discovered that she could do twenty minutes with no trouble at all, if Sharif came in and started in on whether Bangladesh should be expelled from the Commonwealth.
Aisha had not been allowed to extend her instructions to her aunts and uncles and cousins. ‘That,’ Nazia had said, ‘is too much.’ So Sharif was watching his little-sister’s husband, uninstructed, unseam the Italian from the nave to the chaps with a lot of enjoyment and interest. Tinku’s chosen subject was Italy.
‘There is a lot of corruption in Italy,’ Tinku had begun, and by now he was on to the fons et origo, as he liked to say in his University of Calcutta way, of the problem. ‘If you base everything on who you are related to, or who you know, or that you can give somebody a favour in return for them doing you a favour, then how can this become a modern country?’
‘There are many problems with Italy,’ Enrico said. ‘But there are many problems with every country.’
‘Not insuperable ones,’ Tinku said. ‘Not ones where the problem starts in the home, starts at birth. I have read a lot about Italy, and I think everyone agrees that this is the problem. You are taught that your obligation is to your mother and father, then to your brothers and sisters, then to your aunts and uncles, then to your cousins, then to people called your cousins, then to people you are told to think of as your uncles … The future is in being made to submit to merit, and to discover merit through examination. Not in having uncles.’
‘There are many cultures with this problem,’ Enrico said. He moved his hand as if to pick up the beer that Sharif had poured for him, and then, as if refusing to join in, pushed it away a little on the teak garden table.
‘Ah, you are looking around you,’ Tinku said joyously. He had proceeded by a very familiar method, Sharif recognized: he had laid a trap in the argument by describing an opposing position in terms apparently applicable to his own. If he had been talking to a Bengali, the Bengali, if he had fallen for it, would have said, ‘But you! What about you! You describe yourself when you speak!’ But an Italian would allude with indirect grace, as he fell head first, graciously, into his opponent’s trap. Sharif sat back. It was the first time that Enrico had been led in conversation to start talking about something other than Sicily. It had been done by talking about Sicily, interestingly. ‘You are looking around! You are thinking that a Bengali has no right to point the finger and say that your way of obligation is not the way! But this is the point. We come together and we talk and eat and drink and then – we go away. Tell me, have you ever obtained a job because of someone your father knew? Or your mother?’
‘No, I am certain, no, not at all,’ Enrico said.
‘But, Enrico,’ Aisha said – she had come out of the house with Fanny, was standing in the French windows, her arms folded, taking interest in the conversation, ‘tell us how you avoided military service. There is still military service in Italy, you know.’
‘Ah, that was so terrible,’ Enrico said. ‘I had to go to military camp for one week. I thought I would die, it was so terrible. One of the men there, he was a peasant, a goatherd, he could not be understood in the language he was speaking. And the first night they were lying there in the barracks and talking, talking, talking about the terrible, horrible things they did to their girlfriends as a last thing before they went to the army. I thought, I must come away from this, I cannot stay here for two years. I am an educated person and I do not belong with these people, and I telephoned my parents. But then it turned out that when they examined my chest with an X-ray I had suffered from pulmonary, is that correct, from scar tissues on my lungs from a disease in childhood, and so I could not be considered as fit for military service, and I left after six days. It was a matter of health.’
‘But, Enrico,’ Aisha said. ‘You told me your father remembered that he knew a general in the army, and that he phoned him.’
‘Well, that is not the same thing at all,’ Enrico said. The vice-chancellor spluttered with pleasure at this move in the argument, like a checkmate. Tinku and Sharif were sitting back, with the beginnings of smiles, as of a barrister about to say, ‘Your witness.’ Tinku said nothing: he was going to let Enrico carry on and bluster. ‘There are many other cultures where there are such connections, and worse. How can there be equality of opportunity,’ Enrico went on, winding himself up to the killer point, ‘when your opportunities in life are dictated from birth, by what caste you happen to be born into? There is no opportunity for your untouchables.’
Enrico now reached forward and took his beer. Sharif and Tinku exchanged a worried look. Was it a theatrical worried look? Or were they sincere? When the argument is won or lost by a single error of the opponent, how sincere is the triumph, and how much is the triumph performed? They left it to Aisha, who at least should be allowed to indicate how little her boyfriend had discovered about her, while lengthily explaining about Sicily.
‘We don’t have castes,’ Aisha said. ‘You’re thinking of Hindus. We don’t have a caste. We’re not Hindus. You’re probably thinking of India, too. We’re not from India.’
Enrico appeared confused: his eyes went from face to face, and each of them looked downwards, performing an embarrassment that none of them probably felt. They were people dedicated to moving forward, dynamically, never resting, but they paused quietly, demonstrating what stilled embarrassment might look like if you performed it when other people found themselves in trouble.
9.
The twins were the only ones still left at the fence, and the old man up the ladder had stopped talking. They had eaten twenty loquats each and, without consulting or setting each other a challenge, were going for thirty. It amazed Raja and Omith that other people ate so little, could refuse food. They watched their aunt, their sister too, eat half a piece of cake with a fork, so dainty-dainty, like a bird pecking with its little beak at crumbs, then set her fork down, push away the half-left cake on its plate; they watched this spectacle incredulously, since they had finished their cakes ten minutes before. ‘Don’t wolf,’ people would say to Omith or, especially, to Raja – he was the real gannet, as a teacher had once called him in the dinner hall. Don’t wolf: but how could you not wolf when food was so little and hunger was so enormous? ‘You really will spoil your dinner,’ their mother used to say when she came in, and there they were, making a sandwich home from school, with their favourite mix, Marmite and sandwich spread. But they never had spoiled their dinner.
They knew that Mummy would have their guts for garters if they went over to the table and made a start on what they really fancied, the samosas and pork pies and pickles. And the kitchen was full of people chopping and preparing things and bustling about: there was no way you could get into the fridge to make a sandwich to tide you over. Raja and Omith were absolutely starving. They had no idea what it might be like not to be hungry, almost all the time. They stood by the tree, and picked, and peeled, and stuffed the loquats into their mouths.
‘These are good,’ Raja said. ‘I really like these things.’ He popped another one into his mouth.
‘I really like them,’ Omith said. ‘I’m going to eat these things all summer. I’ve never …’
But he trailed off now, because Raja was making a strange noise from the throat, trying to speak without success. Omith asked what it was, but Raja made glottal, ugly sounds; and bent over violently, as if to make himself sick. On the patio, the others had seen, and were standing up. Omith’s hands fluttered; decisively, he pushed his twin. But the choking continued, and now Raja’s face was darkening, filling with blood.
‘Cough, Raja, cough,’ Omith said. Raja made flapping motions with his arms; he was trying to cough. Omith hit him on the back, gently and then harder. There was no response. The caterers had been starting to cook the meat, but now were watching with curiosity. It must look as if Raja and Omith were fighting, but now Omith remembered something from school. He got behind Raja – he cursed himself for not remembering, not paying attention – and his hands joined together in a double fist, pulled heavily into the pit of Raja’s stomach. Mummy was running towards them,