Zadie Smith: The Embassy of Cambodia

Twenty more laps. Fatou tried to think of the last time she had cried. It was in Rome, but it wasn’t for the boy on the bike. She was cleaning toilets in a Catholic girls’ school. She did not know Jesus then, so it made no difference what kind of school it was — she only knew she was cleaning toilets. At midday, she had a fifteen-minute break. She would go to the little walled garden across the road to smoke a cigarette. One day, she was sitting on a bench near a fountain and spotted something odd in the bushes. A tin of green paint. A gold spray can. A Statue of Liberty costume. An identity card with the name Rajib Devanga. One shoe. An empty wallet. A plastic tub with a slit cut in the top meant for coins and euro notes — empty. A little stain of what looked like blood on this tub. Until that point, she had been envious of the Bengali boys on Via Nazionale. She felt that she, too, could paint herself green and stand still for an hour. But when she tried to find out more the Bengalis would not talk to her. It was a closed shop, for brown men only. Her place was in the toilet stalls. She thought those men had it easy. Then she saw that little sad pile of belongings in the bush and cried; for herself or for Rajib, she wasn’t sure.

Now she turned on to her back in the water for the final two laps, relaxed her arms and kicked her feet out like a frog. Water made her think of more water. ‘When you’re baptized in our church, all sin is wiped, you start again’: Andrew’s promise. She had never told Andrew of the sin precisely, but she knew that he knew she was not a virgin. The day she finally became a Catholic, 6 February 2011, Andrew had taken her, hair still wet, to the Tunisian café and asked her how it felt.

She was joyful! She said, ‘I feel like a new person!’

But happiness like that is hard to hold on to. Back at work the next day, picking Julie’s dirty underwear up off the floor inches from the wicker basket, she had to keep reminding herself of her new relationship with Jesus and how it changed everything. Didn’t it change everything? The following Sunday she expressed some of her doubt, cautiously, to Andrew.

‘But did you think you’d never feel sad again? Never angry or tired or just pissed off — sorry about my language. Come on, Fatou! Wise up, man!’

Was it wrong to hope to be happy?

Lost to these watery thoughts, Fatou got home a little later than usual and was through the door only minutes before Mrs Derawal.

‘How is Asma?’ Fatou asked. She had heard the girl cry out in the night.

‘My goodness, it was just a little marble,’ Mrs Derawal said, and Fatou realized that it was not in her imagination: since Sunday night, neither of the adult Derawals had been able to look her in the eye. ‘What a fuss everybody is making. I have a list for you — it’s on the table.’

Fatou watched Andrew pick his way through the tables in the Tunisian café, holding a tray with a pair of mochas on it and some croissants. He hit the elbow of one man with his backside and then trailed the belt of his long, silly leather coat through the lunch of another, apologizing as he went. You could not say he was an elegant man. But he was generous, he was thoughtful. She stood up to push a teetering croissant back on to its plate. They sat down at the same time, and smiled at each other.

‘A while ago you asked me about Cambodia,’ Andrew said. ‘Well, it’s a very interesting case.’ He tapped the frame of his glasses. ‘If you even wore a pair of these? They would kill you. Glasses meant you thought too much. They had very primitive ideas. They were enemies of logic and progress. They wanted everybody to go back to the country and live like simple people.’

‘But sometimes it’s true that things are simpler in the country.’

‘In some ways. I don’t really know. I’ve never lived in the country.’

I don’t really know. It was good to hear him say that! It was a good sign. She smiled cheekily at him. ‘People are less sinful in the country,’ she said, but he did not seem to see she was flirting with him, and began upon another lecture.

‘That’s true. But you can’t force people to live in the country. That’s what I call a Big Man Policy. I invented this phrase for my dissertation. We know all about Big Man Policies in Nigeria. They come from the top and they crush you. There’s always somebody who wants to be the Big Man, and take everything for themselves, and tell everybody how to think and what to do. When, actually, it’s he who is weak. But if the Big Men see that you see that they are weak they have no choice but to destroy you. That is the real tragedy.’

Fatou sighed. ‘I never met a man who didn’t want to tell everybody how to think and what to do,’ she said.

Andrew laughed. ‘Fatou, you include me? Are you a feminist now, too?’

Fatou brought her mug up to her lips and looked penetratingly at Andrew. There were good and bad kinds of weakness in men, and she had come to the conclusion that the key was to know which kind you were dealing with.

‘Andrew,’ she said, putting her hand on his, ‘would you like to come swimming with me?’

Because Fatou believed that the Derawals’ neighbours had been instructed to spy on her, she would not let Andrew come to the house to pick her up on Monday, instead leaving as she always did, just before ten, carrying misleading Sainsbury’s bags and walking towards the health centre. She spotted him from a long way off — the road was so straight and he had arrived early. He stood shivering in the drizzle. She felt sorry, but also a little prideful: it was the prospect of seeing her body that had raised this big man from his bed. Still, it was a sacrifice, she knew, for her friend to come out to meet her on a weekday morning. He worked all night long and kept the daytime for sleeping. She watched him waving at her from their agreed meeting spot, just on the corner, in front of the Embassy of Cambodia. After a while, he stopped waving — because she was still so far away — and then, a little later, he began waving again. She waved back, and when she finally reached him they surprised each other by holding hands. ‘I’m an excellent badminton player,’ Andrew said, as they passed the Embassy of Cambodia. ‘I would make you weep for mercy! Next time, instead of swimming we should play badminton somewhere.’ Next time, we should go to Paris. Next time, we should go to the moon. He was a dreamer. But there are worse things, Fatou thought, than being a dreamer.

‘So you’re a guest and this is your guest?’ the girl behind the desk asked.

‘I am a guest and this is another guest,’ Fatou replied.

‘Yeah … that’s not really how it works?’

‘Please,’ Fatou said. ‘We’ve come from a long way.’

‘I appreciate that,’ the girl said. ‘But I really shouldn’t let you in, to be honest.’

‘Please,’ Fatou said again. She could think of no other argument.

The girl took out a pen and made a mark on Fatou’s guest pass.

‘This one time. Don’t tell no one I did this, please. One time only! I’ll need to cross off two separate visits.’

For one time only, then, Andrew and Fatou approached the changing rooms together and parted at the doors that led to the men’s and the women’s. In her changing room, Fatou got ready with lightning speed. Yet somehow he was already there on a lounger when she came out, eyes trained on the women’s changing-room door, waiting for her to emerge.

‘Man, this is the life!’ he said, putting his arms behind his head.

‘Are you getting in?’ Fatou asked, and tried to place her hands, casually, in front of her groin.