Zadie Smith - NW

41. Parenthetical

(Much later in life, while taking a long walk through North West London, it occurred to Keisha Blake that the young man she had turned into a comic anecdote to be told at dinner parties was in many ways himself a miracle of self-invention, a young man with a tremendous will, far out-stripping her own.)

42. Good place/No place

The Baijan told Keisha Blake and Rodney Banks they must have a plan. All three were aware that Marcia Blake had her own plan: enrollment in a one-year Business Administration course at “Coles Academy,” really just a corridor of office space above the old Woolworths on the Kilburn High Road. A racket, an unaccredited institution, taught by some Nairobi acquaintance of Pastor Akinwande, and requiring no move away from home.

43. Contra

The careers officer from Barbados chose five institutions for Keisha Blake and Rodney Banks — the same five; they had decided they could not be parted — and showed them how to fill in the necessary forms. She wrote to Marcia on Leah’s behalf. It won’t cost any money. She’ll get a full council grant. There’s a church. The train goes straight there, she’ll be safe, she won’t be the only one. Keisha Blake was advised to carry on this campaign of reassurance through the winter. Rodney was told to do the same with his mother, Christine. Keisha did not expect these campaigns to succeed. Marcia had been to the “countryside” and did not consider it a safe environment, preferring London where at least you knew what you were up against. Then in April, that “poor defenseless boy”—Marcia invariably called him that — was stabbed at an Eltham bus stop, overwhelmed by “a pack of animals.” Keisha Blake, Marcia Blake, Augustus Blake, Cheryl Blake and Jayden Blake gathered round the television to watch the white boys walk free from court, swinging punches at the photographers. The boy’s body was taken to Jamaica, buried in Marcia’s parish.

44. Brideshead Unvisited

The front door was on the latch. Rodney walked straight through into Keisha and Cheryl Blake’s bedroom and said, “Where is it?” and Keisha said, “On the bed,” and Rodney said, “Let me see it,” and Keisha showed him the strange letter stamped with a coat of arms and said, “But if you’re not going, I’m not,” and Rodney said, “Just let me read it,” and Keisha said, “It’s only the interview offer. I’m not going to go. Anyway, it must be big money,” and Rodney said, “If you get in, government pays for it. Don’t you even know that?” and Cheryl said, “You two better shut up, man, baby’s sleeping!” and Keisha said, “I don’t even want to go!” and Rodney said, “Can I just read it please!” and after he read it, he did not mention it again, and neither did Keisha Blake. That night they went to the Swiss Cottage Odeon to see a film about a man dressed as a woman so that he could keep an eye on his children for reasons Keisha found herself too distracted to even begin to comprehend.

45. Economics

The interviews for Manchester were scheduled between ten and eleven a.m. To reach Manchester from London’s Euston station would require taking a train that left well before 9:30 a.m. These trains cost one hundred and three pounds return. A similar — even more expensive — problem ruled out Edinburgh.

46. Pause for an abstract idea

In households all over the world, in many languages, this sentence usually emerges, eventually: “I don’t know you anymore.” It was always there, hiding in some private corner of the house, biding its time. Stacked with the cups, or squeezed between the DVDs or another terminal format. “I don’t know you anymore!”

47. A further pause

In popular science magazines they give the biological example, the regeneration of cells. Many years after the events presently being recounted, at a dinner in her own house, a philosopher sitting to the right of our heroine suggested she undertake a thought experiment: what if your brain cells were replaced individually with the brain cells of another person? At what point would you cease to be yourself? At what point would you become another person? His breath was nasty. He put his hand on her knee, which she didn’t remove, not wanting to make a fuss in front of his wife. Mrs. Blake had become by that point quite extraordinarily well-behaved. The wife of the philosopher was a gray-haired QC. In the philosopher’s brilliant mind she was too old to conceivably still be his wife. And yet.

48. Residents’ meeting

At a meeting of the Caldwell residents’ committee — at which Leah and Keisha, compelled by their parents, were the only young people in attendance — Keisha saw a seat free next to Leah but did not go toward it. Afterward, she tried to get away without being noticed but Leah Hanwell called from across the room and Keisha turned and found the familiar open face smiling at her, unaffected by Keisha Blake’s own attempts to imaginatively traduce it.

“Hey,” said Leah Hanwell.

“All right,” said Keisha Blake.

They spoke of the boredom of the meeting, and of Cheryl’s baby, but the other subject could not be repressed for very long.

“What did you think of Manchester? Did you see Michael Konstantinou? He was your day. But he’s for Media Studies.”

“We’re not going there, anymore,” said Keisha Blake. She put a deliberate emphasis on the plural pronoun. “It’s either Bristol or Hull.”

“I see Rodney in history. Never speaks a word.”

Keisha, hearing this comment as a personal insult, began defending Rodney robustly. Leah looked confused and fiddled with the three rings that hung from the upper cartilage of her ear.

“No, I meant: he’s got no questions, he knows it all already. Silent but deadly. You two will just fly through for sure. At least you can say C in maths. Mine’s a U. A lot of them won’t even consider your A levels if you failed your maths. I’m on a wing and a prayer at this point.”

Keisha tried to backpedal from her overreaction by suggesting her old friend Leah Hanwell join Keisha and her new boyfriend for study sessions.

“I reckon I need to just get down to it and concentrate. It’ll be OK. Would be good to see you soon, though, before the move. Pauline’s loving it. I don’t care, I’ll be in Edinburgh by September anyway — we pray. She’s acting like she’s given me some big present. A new life. ‘It’s practically Maida Vale. Better late than never, I suppose.’” This last was done in Pauline’s voice.

49. Mobility

The Hanwells were moving into a maisonette. Practically in Maida Vale. Keisha had already heard all about it from Marcia; the shared garden, the three bedrooms. Something called a “study.”

50. Rodney makes a note

“Our pre-eminence: we live in the age of comparison” (Nietzsche).

51. Undercover

Rodney Banks didn’t cause chaos in class nor did he speak and the combination made him invisible, anonymous. Keisha Blake asked him why he never spoke to the teachers. He said it was a strategy. He, like Keisha, was fond of strategies. This was one of the things they had in common, though it should be noted that the substance of their strategies was quite different. Keisha meant to charm her way through the front door. Rodney intended to slip through the back, unnoticed. Rodney Banks highlighted so many passages in Machiavelli’s The Prince it became one block of yellow and he didn’t dare return it to the library. “The difficult situation and the newness of my kingdom force me to do these things, and guard my borders everywhere.” He always seemed to have this book with him, along with the King James, a combination in which he saw no contradiction.