Tahmima Anam - The Bones of Grace

I keep my head down. I have debts to pay, I can’t take the chance.

Once, only once, I am tempted. They are going to the cinema — not the cheap, rundown place by the camp, I’m talking a brand-new theatre, air con, seats like pillows. Pahari knows this guy at the ticket stall, been wooing him since day one, going up and talking about home, saying yaar this and my friend that. And finally the guy gave it up, late show on Monday nights usually empty, come in with the cleaning crew and sit at the back. Four people, max. Don’t get me fired or I’ll tell the cops everything, even about the girl.

Pahari has a girlfriend. Not even a darkie or a chink, a proper fair-faced blondie, a shopgirl who sells perfume. He leans over the counter and she smiles like she’s seen a film star. We huddle close to Pahari, trying to catch a whisper of that girl’s smell.

While we’re heaving bags of sand to Groom, Pahari and Malek start arguing about what to see. Malek says it has to be the new Dhoom . But our boy wants to see an English film. ‘What you’re going to do with an English film, you little shit?’ But Pahari’s not thinking about himself, he’s thinking of his girl, moving his hand in the dark, cupping her knee, fingering the edge of her skirt, and what’s going to make her open up, a movie with mummy-daddy and fake kissing and chasing around trees, or real humpty-dumpty, tongues and blonde hair and New York City?

Pahari has a point, but I’m just hauling the sand, keeping my head low. Wife has sent another letter. April and the waters are going up, up. Last week my brother, who works at a weaving mill, came home with a bad leg. Needs an operation. Can I send money? I shove the letter under my mattress.

Send money, send money. All anyone ever wants. I have to ask for an advance, so I crawl to foreman. He’s got a toothpick hanging from the side of his mouth, and he twirls it around and around. ‘You Bangladeshis,’ he says, ‘can’t hold on to your money, na . Look at this.’ He points to a big black book, lines of names. ‘Everyone borrowing, nobody saving. You’re going to drown, all of you.’

He opens his mouth, toothpick falls out, frayed and shining with spit. Should I pick it up? I stare at my feet.

‘How much you want?’

I don’t know why, but I don’t say anything for a long time. Pahari and Malek are going to the movies tonight. He’s going to lean back on that chair and swing his arm over his girl. He’s going to sip Coke through a straw and the music will breeze through him, free and liquid.

Then I say, ‘I have been loyal, sir.’

Foreman leans back. Chair squeaks like a dying mouse.

‘Sure, you never stole.’

‘Yes, sir. I always do what you say.’

I lift my chin a little and he knows what I’m talking about, the little cover-ups, taking a few bags of cement off the truck, losing a little cash. The boss, the sheikh with three wives, always wearing a prayer cap and telling us to call him Master Al-Haj because he goes to Saudi every year and kisses the Prophet’s grave — he wouldn’t miss a few things here and there. A sack of rivets, a few pots of paint were nothing to him.

So you’re telling me what, na , that I should be grateful? Fresh toothpick in his mouth. Now I’m thinking about Megna, her crazy thick river of hair, how she smelled so good and told me I should be a proud man. Nothing to be proud of, I always said.

‘Yes, sir,’ I find myself saying. ‘Loyalty like that, it doesn’t come easy.’

‘And I suppose you want something for your trouble?’ He’s getting up, he’s coming towards me, he’s going to give me something, a little money and a slap on the shoulder, friendly like. You have to ask for it, I think. All you have to do is ask. Foreman’s close now, he takes my chin in his hand, lifts me up so we’re eye to eye, and for a minute I see him staring at my lips and I think he’s going to kiss me. He opens his mouth. And then he spits, toothpick flying out of his mouth, right there on my face.

‘You stinking bitch, fuck off. You blackmailing me?’ He makes a fist, sends it to my cheek. I fall, cursing Megna, her hair and her stupid wisdom. I try to make myself small. He kicks me. I feel his shoe in my stomach. I double up, he kicks me again. My face explodes. A tooth comes loose. I taste blood.

‘Who pulled you out of the shithole you call a country?’

‘You.’

‘Louder!’

‘You!’

‘Who gave you a job when you came crawling?’

‘You.’

‘Say it.’

‘You!’

And then I make the begging sounds, tell him about my brother, about his leg, how they make him sit in those clay pits for eighteen, twenty hours a day, feeding silk into the loom, the cold grabbing his thighs. ‘Please, foreman,’ I say, ‘forgive me.’

‘Piece of shit. Get out.’

Pahari and Malek come back from the cinema with smiles so big I can see their back teeth. I show off my broken face.

‘What happened to you?’ Malek asks.

‘Foreman. What you get for thinking big thoughts.’

‘You?’

‘Ya, me. Surprise.’

Pahari’s looking at my face, my swollen eye.

‘Uglier than ever,’ I say, trying to laugh.

He’s shaking his head. ‘That’s not right. They can’t do that.’

‘They can do whatever the fuck they like. It’s their country.’

‘We’ll go to the police. He can’t just beat you.’

He makes me cheerful with his baby talk. ‘It’s nothing,’ I say. ‘Sit. Tell me about the cinema.’ I pat the bunk. ‘Come, Malek.’ But he’s pacing the tiny corridor between our beds.

‘Bastard, bastard,’ he mutters.

I turn to Pahari. ‘So what did you see?’

‘English film,’ he says, raising his eyebrows. ‘Lots of shooting.’

‘Your girl enjoyed?’

He lies back on the bunk, raises his hands to his face. ‘Shit, man.’

I could almost remember that feeling, the first time I tasted a woman’s mouth. ‘Be careful,’ was all I could say. ‘They put you under a spell and then you’re finished.’

‘So what you’ll do about your brother?’ Malek is squeezing himself onto my bunk.

‘Brother will have to wait.’

‘Let me give you the money.’

‘What do you have?’

‘I have, I have.’

‘No, brother. I won’t eat your rice.’ I can’t help it, my tongue keeps going to the missing tooth, the gap made of jelly. Malek tries to press me but I can’t take his money.

‘Oh, I almost forgot, brother. We brought you a gift.’ Pahari takes a packet of candy out of his pocket. I chew with my good side.

‘Sleep now,’ I say to them both. ‘It will last longer if you dream about it.’

Next day, foreman comes to the camp. ‘I have a job,’ he says.

Bride is almost finished, she just needs her windows cleaned. Sheikh Abdullah Bin-Richistan is coming to cut a ribbon and everything has to be perfect. ‘We’re running out of time and job needs to be done in a hurry.’ ‘I’ll go,’ Pahari says, even though it’s higher, much higher, than he’s ever been, but he wants to take his girl out, proper restaurant this time, with people smiling and asking if he wants ice in his Coke and bringing plates to the table.

‘I want double overtime,’ he says. Foreman smiles and says, ‘All right,’ and then, because I see something in the boss’s eye, I raise my hand too, and before you know it, Malek is watching us drive off in a truck. Foreman takes us into Bride’s lobby, empty and shining, and I give myself a little smile, because I know I put this thing together with my own hands, me and Malek and the other boys, working through the devil’s breath of summer. Pahari is looking around, dreaming of when he’s going to own the whole place. They’ve taken off the elevator on the outside, but there’s another one at the back of the building, where all the cooks and cleaners and guards will come and go, and we’re going up, up, all the way. ‘Wear this,’ foreman says, handing us a pair of hard hats. Then he slides open a big door, and we are on the roof of the building, flat and open to the sky. I wonder if Pahari’s thinking it wasn’t such a good idea after all, but he’s not one to admit it. When I put my hand on his back he shrugs it away, moving with speed to where foreman is pointing, to a little balcony hanging over the edge of the building.