Admiring Silence

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  ‘I’ve been out to lunch with a publisher and didn’t bother going back,’ she said. She looked as if she’d had a good lunch, her eyes were shiny and her cheeks were a little flushed. I felt a pang of jealousy which I struggled to suppress, a surge of envy which I knew I would not be able to keep quiet about. ‘Is Amelia home yet?’

  ‘No, so we have the house all to ourselves,’ I said, flashing eyebrows at her. She snorted dismissively and smiled with what seemed like friendly disdain, or perhaps mild contempt, I forget now, then went off to shower and change. It was impossible to talk to her when she came in with those slightly sickening aromas of rich food on her breath and that glint in her eye.

  ‘I went to see the doctor this morning,’ I told her when she came back, pausing briefly to get a decent bit of tension going. ‘He told me my heart was buggered.’

  She stood very still for a moment, waiting. ‘What do you mean, buggered?’

  ‘That’s what the doctor said. Perhaps we should look it up in a medical dictionary. I just assumed he meant it was defective in some important way.’

  ‘But didn’t he say what was wrong?’ she asked, looking quite distraught. That was nice.

  ‘He told me not to worry because Afro-Caribbean people have dickey hearts, so my condition was perfectly predictable,’ I said, looking forward to an outburst from her in defence of my traduced brethren. It was the kind of thing you could usually rely on from Emma, and sometimes it was quite fun when invective and indignation burst out of her. But she wasn’t in the mood.

  ‘What? But you’re not Afro-Caribbean. Did he say what was wrong?’

  ‘More tests before they can say for sure. In the meantime, no rum and no cigarettes.’

  ‘I should think not,’ she said, looking almost shocked. ‘But didn’t he even give you an idea of what was wrong?’

  ‘He did,’ I said, feeling that I had once again disappointed her with my feebleness in the face of officials and authority, in the face of life. ‘He said it was buggered.’

  ‘Stop saying that. That doctor is useless, and so are you. I bet you didn’t even ask him to explain what was wrong. You’d better go and see someone else.’

  ‘I’ll wait for the specialist,’ I said.

  She started to say something and then stopped with a little shrug. It’s your life. Perhaps I shouldn’t have told her about the rum. ‘You’ll have to be careful from now on,’ she said. ‘At least until we know for sure.’

  ‘Anyway,’ I said, before she got too interested and began drawing up a list of life’s small pleasures that would now be denied me, ‘I also had a letter from home.’

  Her eyes lit up with new attention when I said that. It was a rare event and that was reason enough to look alert, but my mother’s letters always perturbed her, as if she expected them to contain blame and demands, as if she was about to be troubled unfairly, as if she had been reminded of something shameful and long-past. I’m guessing, because whenever I asked her she always said, ‘Nonsense, I worry for you. Her letters always seem to upset you.’ I saw her watching me with a poised attentiveness, a look I knew well, as if she saw more hazard in this new information than that about my poor buggered heart. So I smiled and began to talk in what I hoped was a genial and friendly voice, but as soon as I started I could hear resonances of my teacher tones: informative, seeking to persuade, holding things back. I pressed on. I was a teacher, that was what I was. I was unfulfilled.

  ‘I told you there’s been a change of government – well, a change of a few people at the top,’ I said. ‘New president, new vice-president, new prime minister, new deputy prime minister, new ambassador to the United Nations, new director of protocol, that kind of thing, but the same old crowd below them screwing everything up and menacing everyone. This new government is trying to loosen things up, get rid of the more spiteful decrees of their predecessors. They came in on a wave of popular disgust against the previous president, who had foolishly or maybe vaingloriously opened the airwaves to citizens with grievances, promising that no one need fear reprisal. So the letters poured into the radio station and the announcers gleefully read out every single one. It was such scathing, furious stuff that the president began to fear for his authority over his band of jolly knights, and must have suspected that one of them was going to use the opportunity to get him locked up or worse. That he was going to be roasted over a fire of clove-wood and served up as the main dish at a state banquet. In any case, he got into his private jet and fled to the neighbouring country, making speeches when he got there about the ingratitude of his people. The new government came in on this wave of popular triumph and they wisely began reversing or tempering some of the things their predecessor had been most reviled for. They spoke a rhetoric of austerity and public integrity, emptied the jails, and among other things they have declared an amnesty on those people who left the country illegally over the years. If this is for real, then I can go back . . . whenever I want.’

  I did a kind of virtual bow when I got to that, inviting her to appreciate the significance of the punch-line.

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ she said, her eyes shining. At first I took the light in her eyes to be pleasure at the thought of my being able to return, but then I imagined I saw a glint of anxiety in it. Did she think I was suggesting that I wanted to go back and live there? After all these years? After all the transformations, the silences?

  ‘For a visit,’ I said, grinning at her. ‘Some time soon. Just for a visit, for a few weeks.’

  ‘Of course you must go,’ she said, rousing herself. ‘It’ll be wonderful for you, to see your people again, and for them to see you. It must be nearly twenty years now. God, you’re full of surprises today.’

  ‘I’m not sure about wonderful. The thought fills me with all kinds of terror. Everything will be different, and I don’t know what they’ll think of me. When I thought about it this morning I had to rush and sit on the toilet for a good few minutes afterwards. But I have to go – soon, I think. My mother says she has been very unwell in recent times. Her diabetes has got worse, what with all the shortages of medicine. I didn’t even know she had diabetes. And she now has problems with her eyes – I am not sure what. They’re probably buggered.’

  ‘Yes, you must go soon,’ Emma said, ignoring my little joke. ‘It would be sad . . . if you could meet and you didn’t go. We can afford it, can’t we? You must do it, and Amelia and I will be fine here.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s just a lot of emotional waffle,’ I said, ‘after all this time. Feeling this attachment out of a kind of habit.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said, her voice bristling with irritation. ‘How many times have I seen you sitting here in tears while you talked about her?’

  I didn’t tell Emma what else the letter said. All these years you have been living in that country on your own, like a ghoul in a ruined house, my Ma declared. You’ll say this is not how it is, that your life is not like that. But when I think of you I see you like that. This has pained me more than I can tell you. I want you to come and see us now that you can, and I want you to marry before you return to that country, if that is your wish. I know you are a grown man, and you may think this is no longer my business, but it will give all of us pleasure and you will have a companion in your life, and God willing, a family of your own. I have already spoken to a nice family you may remember, the Hilalis who used to live in Mnazini, and they are willing.

  A grown man. I’m forty-two years old. You can imagine what Emma would have thought of it all if she knew. That my mother was planning to break up our lives together, that she was arranging a marriage for me with some unfortunate child who had no choice in the matter and who was going to be landed with some old brute with a buggered heart and much else buggered besides. And what was wrong with me that I couldn’t just tell them that I didn’t want to be married to anyone? What was wrong with me? Why was I so spineless? I don’t care if she’s dying. What kind of clumsy, heartless love could make her act l
ike that? You’d better write to her at once and tell her to get stuffed or I’ll do it myself. How dare she!

  Best not to say anything, because to do so would mean . . . oh, having to say so much more, to open up a stinking tomb full of writhing lies and dead stories. It was not the first time my mother had mentioned marriage, nor was it the first time she had described my condition in England as a ghoul in a ruined house, an eater of dead bodies (it must have been one of her childhood dreads), but she had never gone so far as to suggest a someone before, a person, a woman, let alone find her, approach her parents, and probably agree a dowry, plan the festivities and think about the jewellery she would give the bride as a wedding present. Of course, she did not know about Emma, but it still seemed a dynamic move. I wasn’t going to have anything to do with it, needless to say. It was only a matter of deciding how best to deal with it. I could write to her straight away and tell her to drop the whole thing, but why should she listen? It would be the least she would expect of me. She has already spoken to these Hilalis, and is she now to go to them and make a humiliating retreat because of a ritual demurral, or would she think it better to sit tight and wait until I got there? Alternatively, I could say nothing, and then on my arrival tell her in no uncertain terms that this was out of the question – and I guess the only uncertain terms I have in my possession are Emma and Amelia. I would have to tell her about that. I think.

  Amelia astonished me with her response. She was then a brusque and distracted young woman of seventeen, but of course she had not always been like that. Despite all the hours she spent with Mrs Willoughby, she turned out a beauty. By the time she was ten months old she could walk, talk and charm her devoted audience at will. And as she grew a little older, she dealt with most things that came her way with a casual tolerance that would have been impossible to predict from her angry arrival among us. Perhaps Mrs Willoughby was good for her, after all, and passed on some of her capacity for calm without the treacherous spikes she kept hidden under the surface. All was well with Amelia so long as she was not left to play alone, or was not expected to go to bed while there was still a light burning in the flat. She had a handful of peculiar dietary preferences (jam with her fish fingers, for example, and a passionate dislike for the taste of beef, however cleverly disguised), but she took to nursery rhymes with relish and spent hours with crayons and paper, carolling her pleasure in life as she peopled her world. School was fine, her health was fine – except that she peed often –and by the time she was ten she had read dozens of the books on our bookshelves. Some of them she had marked out with wax crayons as a baby, as if she was scenting them for later recognition. Her teachers gloated over her talents for schoolwork, for music, for friendship. She also had a talent for affection which her teachers could not have known about. We reminded ourselves that it was her doing, nothing to do with us, but we still glowed with pride. I suspect I bored my colleagues with all the bulletins of her endless triumphs, and I know that I talked about her to the barbarians I taught, because sometimes they asked for a progress report on some undertaking I had mentioned her being in the midst of.

  I remember a holiday in the Lake District as a kind of high summer of our lives together, the three of us. It was nothing special, just a lot of laughter and uncomplicated meals, and reading the Lake poets aloud late into the night, and disappointment at the absence of daffodils (it was August), and long walks by the banks of the endless beautiful lakes of the region. I have photographs of that time and I know I don’t imagine the impossible contentment they portray.

  Then she grew up, I suppose. She spoke to her mother about things that she must have thought I would not be able to help her with. It was predictable, but it was also oddly painful. She wanted to do things differently, in ways that seemed strange to me, and when I said this to her I felt a distance growing between us. I suppose I was slow to realize that she did not want to be treated as a beloved child any more, who would listen avidly to my wise thoughts and advice and then change her plans accordingly. So the first time she shouted angrily at me, I cried. I remember her distress then, but perhaps there was nothing either of us knew how to do to prevent the distance growing. Maybe it was more my fault than hers, because I was slow to learn to make room for her, to withdraw gracefully and with affection. And the distance grew into a habit, with only moments of wary fondness breaking into the hurtful watchfulness. Perhaps I exaggerate, because as I recall this I cannot restrain the disappointment. I suppose, then, I learned to leave her to herself, except when she overcame my attempts at taking defeat honourably with what seemed like provocation I found impossible to ignore. Yes, I know, all this was predictable too, but at one time it had seemed as if it would not turn out like that.

  Anyway, when she came in I was still sitting in the same chair (longing for a rum), while Emma was in the kitchen cooking. I had told her there was no need – I could just make an omelette for Amelia and myself. Emma had already said she was too full to eat. But she insisted, telling me I needed to rest in my enfeebled state, and she would prepare something appropriate to the occasion. I hoped she would cook a quiche; she did that beautifully. Amelia strolled in in her frayed clothes, her tarty make-up smudged and smeared, probably because she had been mauling someone for the last hour or two. She stopped by the living-room door and gave me the satirical smile that was her usual greeting. Then she unhooked the muddy backpack that masqueraded as a school bag and in which she carried the daily paraphernalia of her degenerate young life, and made off towards her room, dragging the bag along the floor.

  ‘Hey, skinhead,’ I called out, ‘I’d like a word with you.’ I called her skinhead because she had recently had her hair cropped, and in some ways she liked the name. It made her feel bad and in touch with the streets. She strolled back and leaned against the door again. ‘That is, if you’re not too busy.’

  ‘What is it?’ she asked with a long-suffering sigh.

  I grinned at her, and she raised her eyebrows in derisive enquiry. ‘Come and sit down. This will take a few minutes,’ I said.

  I told her about the doctor first, and she was silent with astonishment, staring at me with a look of horror and pity. Then she said ‘I’m sorry,’ as if I had just died. ‘Perhaps the specialist will find it’s all a mistake,’ she said. I hadn’t thought of that, and I was grateful for the brief comfort it offered. Then I told her about the letter and she smiled with pleasure and excitement.

  ‘Oh, you can go for a visit,’ she said, standing up and coming towards me. I thought she was going to give me a hug or a kiss or something. That would really have been going too far for her. She hadn’t done anything like that since she was fifteen, and sure enough she managed to control herself and stop a couple of feet away. ‘That’s brilliant news. After all these years . . . after missing your home for so long, and talking so much about it, you’ll be able to go there again. When are you going? Is Emma coming with you? Have you told her yet?’

  With that she rushed off to find her mother, and I could hear her excited voice as she related the brilliant news. ‘Can I come with you?’ she asked when she came back.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Why not? It’s my country too,’ she said. She looked so serious and ardent that I didn’t dare laugh. ‘What are you smiling about? If it’s your country, then it’s mine too.’

  ‘I think I’d better go alone this time, after so long,’ I said. ‘Let me see how things are, first.’

  In the days that followed, and during the weeks of preparation for the trip, while Emma helped with practical details, with shopping for gifts, with reassurance and advice, lending an ear to all the terrors and humiliations I anticipated, it was Amelia who gave my journey a stamp of romance and adventure. She astonished me with her excitement and her selfless joy. Emma looked on with a smile at her daughter’s absurdities but she did not say anything to dispel her fantasies, did not mention anything about the deprivation and want I expected to find there after so many years of chaotic a
nd malevolent rule.

  Mrs Willoughby smiled when she heard the news. ‘Well, that will be nice for your Mum,’ she said. She wasn’t interested, couldn’t care less. Perhaps she would have been more excited if she suspected that I might not return, but she knew well enough by now that I was not capable of anything as decisive as that. Mr couldn’t take it in at first. His hearing had gone and he was rapidly declining. Only his eyes still roved and darted with the old hunger. But when he finally understood that I was returning to the lost Empire, he shook his head sadly at the futility of my mission. ‘Too late,’ he said.

  Whenever Amelia caught me looking pensive (that is, silently panic-stricken) she would say, ‘Hey, what are you thinking about? Remember the trip. Why don’t you think about going back? That will cheer you up. What season will it be there now? Will it be really torrid? I wish I was coming too.’

  ‘Next time.’

  PART TWO

  ‘Your Self’s grown gross, a dog that sleeps and feeds.’

  Farid ud-din Attar,

  The Conference of the Birds (1177)

  1

  After the frenzy of preparation, and all the terrors of anticipation, it was with a subdued and resigned calm that I sat in the departure lounge awaiting the beginning of the journey. It was like the moment before a persecution. There was only the thing itself now. Besides, there were so many other matters to worry about. I had not really travelled much since my first arrival in England: a week’s holiday in France and another week in Spain, in both cases part of a huge, obedient crowd herded together and facing the same direction. In a state of heightened analysis, everything in the departure lounge interested me. There seemed to be many Indian and African travellers, but that may have been the coincidence of the destinations: most of the flights at that time of night seemed to be heading to dark places.