Zadie Smith - NW

163. Architecture as destiny

To Leah it was sitting room , to Natalie living room , to Marcia, lounge . The light was always lovely. And she still liked to stand in the bay and admire her view of park. Looking around at the things she and Frank had bought and placed in this house, Natalie liked to think they told a story about their lives, in which the reality of the house itself was incidental, but it was also of course quite possible that it was the house that was the unimpeachable reality and Natalie, Frank and their daughter just a lot of human shadow-play on the wall. Shadows had been passing over the walls of this house since 1888 sitting, living, lounging. On a good day Natalie prided herself on small differences, between past residents, present neighbors and herself. Look at these African masks. Abstract of a Kingston alleyway. Minimalist table with four throne-like chairs. At other times — especially when the nanny was out with Naomi and she was alone in the living room feeding the baby — she had the defeating sense that her own shadow was identical to all the rest, and to the house next door, and the house next door to that.

All along the street that autumn the sound of babies crying kept the lights on, late into the night. In Natalie’s house on the park, the shock of The Crash dislodged a little plaster in the wall in a shape of a fist and stopped plans for a basement extension. Off work and eager to feel useful, Natalie Blake waited till Spike’s nap, opened a Word document and with a great sense of purpose typed the title

Following the money: A wife’s account

She had a professional gift for expressing herself, and it was infuriating to listen to attacks on the radio and television upon what she thought of as the good character of her husband. As if poor Frank — whose bonus was, proportionally speaking, negligible — were no different in kind to all these epic crooks and fraudsters.

She was keen to engage him on this subject when he came home. He looked up from his take-away.

“You’ve never asked me a single thing about work, ever.”

Natalie denied this, though it was substantively true. In the name of journalism, she pursued her point.

“It shouldn’t be a question of individual morals, should it? It should be a legal question of regulation.”

Frank put his chopsticks down: “Why are we talking about this?”

“It’s history. You’re a part of it.”

Frank denied being a part of history. He returned to his chow mein. Natalie Blake could not be stopped.

“A lot of our tenants write pieces online these days, for the papers. Thought pieces. I should be doing more things like that. At least it’s something I can do from home.”

Frank nodded at the remote control. “Can we watch TV now? I’m tired to death.”

There was no relief to be found on the television.

“Turn it over,” said Frank, after five minutes of the news. Natalie turned it over.

“If the city closed tomorrow,” said Frank, without looking at his wife, “this country would collapse. End of story.”

Upstairs the baby started crying.

Over the next few days Natalie was able to add only two more lines to her attempt at social criticism:

I am very aware that I am not what most people have in mind when they think of a “banker’s wife.” I am a highly educated black woman. I am a successful lawyer.

She blamed her slow progress on Spike, but in fact the child was a good sleeper and Natalie had the Polish woman, Anna. She had plenty of time. A week later, in the course of attending to her e-mail, she caught sight of the document on her desktop and quietly moved it to a part of her computer where she would not easily stumble across it again. She watched TV in the living room and fed her child. The light failed earlier and earlier. The leaves turned brown and orange and gold. The foxes screamed. Sometimes she checked the listings. The young men on television cleared their desks. Walked out with their boxes held in front of them like shields.

164. Semi-detached

Each time she returned to work, the challenge was perfectly clear: make it happen so it seems like it never happened. There was much written about this phenomena in the “Woman” section of Sunday supplements, and Natalie read this material with interest. The key to it all was the management of time. Fortunately, time management was Natalie’s gift. She found a great deal of time was saved by simple ambivalence. She had no strong opinions about what young children ate, wore, watched, listened to, or what kind of beverage holder they utilized to drink milk or something other than milk.

At other times she was surprised to meet herself down a dark alley. It filled her with panic and rage to see her spoiled children sat upon the floor, flicking through past images, moving images, of themselves, on their father’s phone, an experience of self-awareness literally unknown in the history of human existence — outside dream and miracle — until very recently. Until just before just now.

165. Stage directions

Interior. Night. Artificial light.

Left and right back, high, one small window. Closed blind.

Front right, a door, ajar. Bookshelves to the right and left.

Simple desk. Folding chair. Books upon it.

Nat comes through door. Looks up at window. Stands close to window.

Opens blind. Closes blind. Leaves. Returns. Leaves.

A pause.

Returns with urgency, opens blind. Removes books from chair. Sits. Stands.

Walks to door. Returns. Sits. Opens laptop. Closes. Opens.

Types.

FRANK [mechanical tone, out of sight] Bed. Coming? [pause] Coming?

NAT Yes. [types quickly] No. Yes.

166. Time speeds up

Now that there was so much work to do — now that the whole of her life had essentially become work — Natalie Blake felt a calm and contentment she had previously only experienced during the run up to university examinations or during pre-trial. If only she could slow the whole thing down! She had been eight for a hundred years. She was thirty-four for seven minutes. Quite often she thought of a chalk diagram drawn on a blackboard, a long time ago, when things moved at a reasonable pace. A clock-face, meant to signify the history of the universe in a twelve-hour stretch. The big bang came at midday. The dinosaurs arrived mid-afternoon sometime. Everything that concerned humans could be accounted for in the five minutes leading up to midnight.

167. Doubt

Spike began to speak. His favorite thing to say was: “This is my mummy.” The emphasis varied. “This is my mummy. This is my mummy. This is my mummy.”

168. African minimart endgame

She had a new urge for something other than pure forward momentum. She wanted to conserve. To this end, she began going in search of the food of her childhood. On Saturday mornings, straight after visiting the enormous British supermarket, she struggled up the high road with two children in a double buggy and no help to the little African minimart to buy things like yam and salted cod and plantain. It was raining. Horizontal rain. Both children were screaming. Could there be misery loftier than hers?

Naomi threw things in the cart. Natalie threw them out. Naomi threw them in. Spike soiled himself. People looked at Natalie. She looked at them. Back and forth went the looks of paranoia and contempt. It was freezing outside, freezing inside. They managed to join a queue. Just. They only just managed it.

“I’ll tell you a story, Nom-Nom, if you stop that, I’ll tell you a story. Do you want to listen to my story?” asked Natalie Blake.