Neel Mukherjee - A Life Apart

Now, Saeed sits smoking, waiting for the food to be brought to the table. The whole thing may be in Ritwik’s imagination, but Saeed seems to be respectful of him, almost ingratiating in his holding open of doors, letting him enter first, asking him questions about his well-being, asking for permission to smoke, his over-solicitous concern about seat belts, restaurant tables, the food ordered. He assumes it to be the cachet that being friends with Zafar gives him. Ritwik is first baffled, then embarrassed; he finds it difficult to make eye contact with someone who has so unsubtly appointed him, Ritwik, his overlord.

‘I speak with Sheikh. He tells me I give money, any money you ask. I have money with me. You want?’ he says through a cloud of blue smoke soured by his breath.

Ritwik leans back, slightly alarmed at the possibility of Saeed unrolling and handing him soiled banknotes in such a public place. He says hastily, ‘No, no, not now, it can wait wait until later.’

Saeed gives him another look of respectful reappraisal, as if he is seeing the real Ritwik for the first time.

‘You work for Sheikh.’

Ritwik decides to treat this as a statement, not a question, so he doesn’t answer.

‘I work for him many years. Ten, maybe, maybe twelve.’

‘What do you do for him?’

‘I am. . how you say last time. . going middle? No?’

‘Going middle?’ Ritwik asks, puzzled.

Saeed makes a gesture with two hands placed at two opposite sides of the table and then removes one hand to do a walking figure with two fingers while repeating, ‘Going middle, heh? Going middle.’

The penny drops. ‘Ah, go-between.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Saeed nods like a happy child. ‘Go-between, I forget, go between. I go-between for Sheikh.’

‘But between what?’

Saeed takes some time to understand the question so Ritwik mimes his gesture and asks him to name the points on the table between which the to and fro of the go-between happens.

Saeed hesitates before answering. When he does, haltingly, Ritwik immediately understands that he is either lying or evading. ‘People. Big people. Business, lot money. Business clients.’ He repeats the word ‘clients’ several times as if it were a new word he has only recently acquired.

Ritwik wields his newfound power, if it is that at all, and pushes ahead with the questioning. ‘What business?’

Saeed gives him an intensely quizzical look. At that moment the waiter arrives with the first of their dishes. Ritwik watches Saeed’s dogged determination to please and flatter slow down over the sharing out of food — this time, Saeed heaps Ritwik’s plate before serving himself — as he tries to work out the nature of the connection between Zafar and Ritwik, but the blip is thankfully short. Whatever he has deduced, it seems to be in Ritwik’s favour for he reverts to his enervating solicitude.

‘You eat. You too thin. Eat all this food.’

‘I’ll certainly try,’ says Ritwik, smiling. ‘I love this food, you know that.’

Saeed takes this as a personal compliment and preens. Ritwik seizes the opportunity. ‘So, you never said, what business is it that you do with Zafar?’

Saeed takes a long time to spear his kebab, put a piece into his mouth, follow it with a forkful of buttery rice and another of salad, and then a morsel of vinegared chilli, chew it, swallow and address the question.

‘You know. Business. Money. You do same for Sheikh.’

Once again, Ritwik cannot determine if this is query or statement; each has a radically different meaning from the other. His mind is thick with questions: does Saeed know the nature of his contact with Zafar or does he think that he is another of Zafar’s business clients? Surely, given how Saeed has helped him in the recent past, he cannot think Ritwik to be anything other than an illegal immigrant scrabbling to feed himself one meal a day? Has Saeed ever asked himself, or even Zafar, for what services Ritwik is being given a blank cheque? What did Saeed and Zafar talk about? And, noisiest of them all, what work did Saeed do for Zafar? Did he look after Zafar’s money in London? Was he just a low-level handyman for his interests here? What interests?

The air in the restaurant is dense and swooning with smoke. There are blue swirls of it everywhere, barely moving. Ritwik concentrates fiercely on eating and hopes Saeed will not demand a response. The waiter comes with more food and moves plates and bowls around on their table to make space for the new arrivals. He and Saeed talk for a while in Arabic, the waiter laughs, looks at Ritwik, says something to Saeed and leaves for the kitchen.

‘What were you saying to each other?’ Ritwik asks.

‘He say you eat like little bird,’ Saeed replies, smiling, and shows the size of the bird with his hand: it could be a sparrow in the nest of his palm.

The asymmetry of any relationship between Saeed and Zafar strikes Ritwik for the first time: what was a poshly spoken, educated, filthy rich sheikh doing with a criminal who had a line in a mild version of people trafficking and wanted to break out into more serious aspects of it? The chasm that separates the two men seems vast, unbridgeable.

Seems. They have obviously managed to have a long and functional relationship across class boundaries. Clearly, Saeed is no fool if he has managed such a thing with a man who strikes Ritwik as cunning, shady, powerful and disturbing.

‘You still think what I do for Sheikh. Work, I tell you. No worry for you. You don’t think of it.’

Ritwik is surprised at having his mind read. He gives a faint, false smile and asks, ‘Are you saying it’s none of my business?’ He hopes the smile takes the edge off the question.

Saeed plays the same hand. ‘Yes, yes,’ he smiles, ‘not your business, not your business.’ Affable, even friendly, but Ritwik gets the sense that he has just been warned off.

‘How much you want?’

Ah, business again. Ritwik decides to test his limits. ‘How much can I have?’ he asks.

‘Any money. Two hundred, five hundred, you say.’

Ritwik looks steadily at the bright green parsley flecked sparingly with light beige grains of bulgur, the orange oil from the sausages, the broken ball of a falafel, and says, without lifting his eyes, ‘Four hundred now, let’s say. If I need more, I’ll call you.’ He pauses to look up and adds, ‘Not here, please, in the car.’

For some reason he doesn’t go into, Saeed refuses to take him to Ganymede Road and drops him off on Acre Lane, a three-minute drive away from where Ritwik lives. Ritwik reads this too as a sign and tries to keep his voice bleached of any interest when he asks Saeed, ‘Does Zafar know Mr Haq?’

Saeed looks out of the window, spits, counts out four hundred pounds in twenty-pound notes and hands the wad to Ritwik. His jaw muscle throbs under his pale skin. He bares his teeth in what is meant to be a smile, says something under his breath in Arabic then leans sideways to open the door and says, ‘Goodbye’, once in English and again in Arabic.

Ritwik gets out and walks the quarter hour to Ganymede Road, the dirty wad in his pocket an unsightly square bulge chafing and burning his skin. Everyone in the teeming crossroads of Brixton seems to be staring at him. A young, bespectacled man, wearing a white shirt too small for him, stands in the concrete garden in front of the Ritzy cinema and shouts, ‘The Lord said, Come unto me and I shall give you everlasting life. Friends, Jesus has given me a peace I have never known before. Jesus has saved me. Jesus has shown me love above all.’ He clutches a small Bible in his hand and paces an invisible perimeter of about twenty square feet. His eyes are fixed in the middle distance. He repeats the words over and over again, unchanging in tone and delivery. By the time Ritwik leaves the voice behind, he is ready to scream.