Pilgrims Way

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  He sighed and was silent. ‘They were very angry when they saw I was crying,’ he said. ‘There were people watching, I know there were. They left them there, the girl spread out on the road with a trickle of blood pulsing out of her and her mother lying nearby.’

  Catherine lay with her face buried in his arm, her head turned downwards, not looking at him. ‘Did you find out about Bossy? Tell me how you found him,’ she said at last.

  He shook his head. ‘There were too many bodies.’

  ‘No.’ She looked at him and grimaced with disgust. ‘You must have found him. What do you mean too many bodies? You did look for him, didn’t you? His mother must’ve looked for him. What did she do? She must’ve looked for him.’

  ‘Do? What do you mean do? Thousands were held in the camps for days. There were killings going on, wiping the slate clean, putting the record straight. For three days there was an orgy, and squalor and humiliation you could not imagine in your wildest dreams. They let us out into a curfew, into empty streets. There were signs of looting everywhere but no signs of fighting. There were no burnt-out houses or fragments of doors that had to be battered down. Nobody had stood up and said you can’t do this to us. We’d allowed ourselves to be treated like contemptible bloodless parasites, to be brushed off as if we truly did not belong there.’

  ‘But Bossy! What happened to Bossy?’ she asked, insisting now, wanting to know, as if this was important to her.

  ‘By the time we were allowed to look for our dead, many of them were beyond recognition. Those that could still be found. We looked for him. We looked where we could . . . and asked where we dared.’

  ‘What did his mother do?’ she asked.

  He shrugged. ‘She prayed. There was no news, nothing that we knew for sure to be true. There was a rumour that a body had been washed up by the golf course. A body that had been in the water for several days, bloated and mutilated by the waves. On its wrist was a watch with a silver strap. There were so many other stories at the time. A naked body washed up on a beach, that was all there was of him. When she went to ask she was told no body had been washed up by the golf course, and if she had any sense she would get lost and stop asking so many questions about bodies. We hardly knew what was true. And our own end seemed so near that one more death, one more threat did not seem to matter such a great deal.’

  She looked at him with a kind of horror, disbelieving him. ‘What’s happened to her?’ she asked.

  ‘She’s probably dead,’ he said, hating himself for his cynicism but not wanting to fall to pieces again. ‘And if she’s still alive she’s probably sick with shame at the way our lives have turned out. They are dead or dying out there and I’m here, struggling from day to day as if there’s some purpose to this endeavour, as if there is any point being here. She used to say I would marry Amina one day. It means nothing, just a way of paying a boy a compliment and embarrassing him a little. Take your betrothed a drink of water, she used to say to Amina and laugh to see me so flustered. Now she’s probably dead and Amina is a prostitute. Bossy’s dead who should have been there to guard them, and I’m here, wondering what could credibly make any of this worth the bother.’

  He looked at her and thought that perhaps she was beginning to become part of the answer. He smiled at her, ruefully acknowledging the melodrama of his despairing talk. They made love with slow care, relishing the pleasure they took in each other. Later, when he rose to go to work, she rose with him. She touched him as he poured himself some tea, leaning against him, made sleepy by fatigue. She sat at the table with him while he ate his bread and butter, dozing a little but not wanting to leave him.

  ‘I’d better go,’ he said, lifting up her wrist to check her watch. ‘Will you be here later?’ he asked.

  She shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t know.’

  He nodded, then leant forward and kissed her. He had thought she would say that. He thought he would have done the same thing too, if this Malcolm was half-way decent. ‘You’re making a terrible mistake,’ he said.

  She shrugged, grinning at his style of wooing. ‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘I have to see him, talk it out with him. Right now I’m going back to bed. And you’d better get going to work or you’ll be late.’

  He was, and Solomon was popping in and out of the changing room to check his arrival. ‘What kind of time do you call this?’ he asked, his eyes sharp with checked anger. ‘There’s a panic on in here, son. Two Staffs are sick and you turn up at this time. Get your finger out, will you? ENT Theatre with Sister Shelton.’

  ‘Big day tomorrow,’ Daud called out as Solomon was about to disappear out of the changing room door.

  Solomon came back, looking even more irritated than before. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Big day tomorrow,’ Daud said, taking his time. ‘The first day of the Test Match!’

  Solomon looked as if he would burst. ‘Get the fuck in there,’ he yelled and almost ran out of the room.

  Sister Wilhelmina Shelton was gowned and waiting for the first case when he strolled into the theatre. She unclasped her gloved hands and put them symbolically akimbo, allowing them to hover over her hips without touching her gown. ‘I don’t know what you think you’re playing at, my boy. Is this some kind of church social you’re turning up for? Dr Rao’s been waiting to start his list but he has to wait for you, Your Majesty, to wake up out of your sleep.’

  Daud bowed deeply to the Sister, and gave Dr Rao merely a perfunctory genuflection. ‘I didn’t need to wake up out of my sleep since I wasn’t in it,’ he said to the Sister. ‘I didn’t sleep at all last night.’

  She threw her head back and laughed. She liked to think of him as a restless young wolf, and was always tempting him to tell lies about his adventures. ‘All right, I let you off from a real hard time if you tell us what happened,’ she said.

  ‘Big day tomorrow,’ Daud said as the first patient was wheeled in. Dr Rao was a lover of the game as well, and after the patient had been positioned, the microscope brought up, the doctor comfortably seated on his operating stool and the anaesthetist had dropped off to sleep, they settled to a busy but fulfilling morning of cricket talk. The afternoon passed reasonably enough as well, and Daud congratulated himself on having spent such a pleasant day when he might have been miserable.

  He hurried home. He told himself not to expect anything. Face the facts, boy. She’s got herself a young, attractive doctor who’s an Englishman son of an Englishman. He’s rich. And his daddy’s rich. In a couple of weeks’ time they go driving across France. Next year they go flying to Florence. She couldn’t go wrong even if he turns out to be a wife-beater as well. Now look the other way and see what she’s got as competition against that. Say it how you will, it comes to the same thing. A foreigner with a whole chapter and verse of dreadful scars. A sleazy customer, past his best, paint running off him. He lives in a mouldy slum and doesn’t have a penny. His only friends are a couple of idiots who hate each other. For a living he cleans floors in a hospital, and could just as easily have been cleaning car park toilets. Even his father hates him! So face the facts and prepare yourself to take this like a man instead of blubbering all over the place like you ain’t got no black pride. But still he hurried home.

  She had left him her telephone number. That was all. Her telephone number! He wandered round the house looking for other signs of her. He found some hair on his pillow but little else. None the less the house was full of her, and having satisfied himself that her smell filled the air, he sat down to rest and almost immediately fell asleep. When he woke up, he made some food and settled down to eat. It was dark now, past ten. He wondered if it was time to try again to write to his father. He had not mentioned his parents when he told Catherine about Bossy, but he had thought of them. How frantic they had been when he did not turn up that night, gunfire and wild rumours filling the night air. How pleased they had been when he arrived at the detention camp. His father came to look for hi
m, having heard from someone that he had arrived. By then the fever had come over him and he had been taken to the infants’ school where the wounded were dumped. No one attended to them, and if no relative came to remove the seriously wounded, they lay there in their waste and filth. The school rooms were filled with the smell of rotting flesh and vomit. Over the carnage hovered flies in disgusting numbers, bloating themselves to contentment on the filth. His father found him and carried him out, making small encouraging noises while he silently wept. ‘Haya haya, my son. There there, mwanangu.’ His mother tore strips of her dress to wipe and bandage the cuts. She said that she was happy now, that there was nothing they could do to her. She had her family together. When he came to tell them about Bossy, they hardly listened. There were so many dead that day.

  He would write to him. It was just that he knew his father would not reply. They had saved their money for years, keeping it safe in the rafters under the galvanised roof, thinking that one day it would come in useful. In the good years, as business prospered, they put more away. In the bad years, when the harvests were poor, they tightened their belts. His father was a school teacher but he had bought himself a piece of land with a bequest from a relative. For years he did both, teaching school and working the land for vegetables and eggs. Then Daud had taken the money to go and study. Daud knew he had not been grudged the money. It was him they grudged losing, seeing him running away, perhaps never to return. The money was nothing. Then he came to England and really found out that it was nothing, hardly enough to allow him to survive for a few months. He had hung on for more than a year before everything became too much and he fell to pieces. They thought he had lived it up with the money, their hard-earned savings, and that that was why he had failed. He would write to them, but he did not think they would want to hear now.

  He went out to look for a phone box and try out Catherine’s number. Another woman answered the phone and told him to wait. He had to hold on for a long time. Two men had already walked past and glared into the phone box. A dog urinated against the side while its owner, an old woman whose sons must certainly have roamed the globe slaughtering Muslims, glared at Daud with utter loathing.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ he asked when she came to the phone, unable to keep the terror the old woman had made him feel out of his voice.

  ‘Oh, hello. How nice to hear from you! I’m fine, thank you. And you?’ she asked, speaking with the forced cheerfulness demanded by an unexpected call from a long-abandoned friend or relative.

  ‘Like that, is it? Is the hero there?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It has been a lovely day. We could do with some more of them, couldn’t we? Although it’s been a lovely summer so far, hasn’t it? So, what have you been up to?’

  ‘Shit! I risk life and limb to come out in the middle of the night to ring you. I stand here, exposed and vulnerable while murderers and witches stroll past, feasting their eyes on my luscious body, weaving their fantasies round it and making my skin crawl. You keep me waiting for hours while you pluck up the courage to tear yourself away from your lover boy . . . don’t try to deny it . . . and this is all the welcome I get? Will I see you tonight?’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said laughing. ‘Nothing like that. I wish I could say it was.’

  ‘Why not? Can’t you get rid of him?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Oh, but I’m really pleased that you did manage it. Did your mum like it? I bet she did!’ she said.

  ‘My mum? I don’t have a mum, I have a ma. How can you even remember what you last said? He probably knows exactly what you’re doing, and is only waiting for you to get off the phone before . . .’

  ‘I don’t think so. But thank you for the thought. I think I’ll just send her a card.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me to piss off?’ he asked after a moment of silence.

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Will I see you tomorrow?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘This is a stupid conversation,’ he said. ‘Is he standing beside you or something?’

  She laughed. ‘Well, more or less! But you know how difficult it is to remember dates. I’m really sorry.’

  ‘What kind of creep would do that?’

  ‘Oh no, it’s always nice to hear from you. I won’t forget! I’ll send her a card tomorrow. I’m sure it’ll get there in time. No, of course I didn’t mind. I keep meaning to call you but somehow . . .’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ he said.

  ‘But it’s always nice to hear from you.’

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ he said.

  ‘Bye bye then. And I won’t forget about the card. Bye.’

  He paced his silent living room and tried to chase away the thought of her with the grubby-fingered farmer. He wondered if he had been too easy on her. Should he have thrown a telephone tantrum and insisted on turning up at her door? And although he told himself not to expect her, he stayed up late, straining for her steps on the pavement and fearing the clop of Lloyd’s feet. He gave up in the end, feeling his early excitement turn to irritation and resentment. He knew she would not give up her farmer, but he wanted her to come to him a few more times. There was a limit to the abuse he would put up with, though. She should not leave her telephone number if she did not want him to call. There were plenty more where she came from. He felt, despite his bluster, that there was nothing he could do, that he was at her mercy. If she felt like coming to him again he would welcome her. He thought she would come, perhaps a few more times, before the squalor of the arrangement depressed her and drove her where hard-headed good sense demanded she should go.

  As he took two steps and turned he tried to shift his mind from her, but as he moved forward again so his thoughts found her as before, chasing away the images that had appeared while his back was turned. When would Karta come back, he wondered? He needed someone to talk to, someone who would take his mind away from her. Karta’s hurt that his brave deeds against the white oppressor had been found fault with would only last for a week at most, Daud guessed. Perhaps he should go round to Karta’s digs and smooth his coxcomb. He was glad, though, that Karta was not around to advise him, because he thought he could guess what his advice would have been. Ditch the bitch!

  In another place he would have been a candidate for a good whipping by now, perhaps even a blade through the gut or worse. With his own people he could imagine what he had done being thought quite improper. A nice girl with her doctor boyfriend being messed about by a foreign boy who cleaned lavatories. A few brothers would have got a little act together and chased the rat away. He could hear the righteous self-congratulations of the heroes responsible for this deed of communal responsibility. These English boys are the scum of their own people, street-sweepers and sons of prostitutes. Boys from good families don’t behave like that. They think they can come here and treat our women like whores. They have no respect, no manners. But we gave him a small instalment today. If he wants a whore he should go pay for one, not corrupt a decent woman.

  Poor Amina, no one was going to speak of her as a decent woman. When he was let out of detention and had gone to Bossy’s house to see if any word had come, it was little Amina, only six years old, who had opened the door to him, squinting in the strong sunlight. He had followed her into the dark and shuttered house, giving up his hand to her and allowing her to lead him to where her mother sat cross-legged by the back door. They had squatted together and sobbed for their grotesque bereavement. The mother’s sobbing had soon turned to howls and groans for the death and torture of her son, and both Daud and Amina had stepped back to watch with horror as she lamented the dead.

  Even as he told himself not to wait for Catherine, he found himself tensing for the sound of her approach. When he went to bed he found frequent subterfuges to cock an ear for the sound of her hurrying step. He tried to distract himself with the thought of the Test Match, inventing huge scores for his heroes and pathetic collapses for the England team. West Indies 580
for 2, England in reply 21 for 9. Tony Greig, 0 first ball, was last seen grovelling in the dressing room, trying to avoid the wrath and contempt of his team. In the end Daud buried his head under the sheets, disgusted with himself. He woke up feeling sore and thick-headed, and left the house surprised by the dejection he felt and by the way he had allowed his desire for her to enfeeble him. He began to feel that the worst was over, that knowledge of his pathetic behaviour was the beginning of the refusal to play that game. So utterly did he dislike the way he had been the previous night that he resolved to have nothing more to do with Catherine. He would avoid her, tear up the telephone number she had left him.

  At work he found himself in Sister Wilhelmina Shelton’s team again, a fate to be devoutly wished for on Test Match days. Sister Shelton made no concession to the holy calling of healing where cricket was concerned, and brought a transistor radio into the theatre to listen to the ball-by-ball commentary on the day’s play. The boys did not let her down, putting up 437 runs for 9 by the end of play, with centuries for both Fredericks and Greenidge. The consultant was a paid-up member of the MCC, and he cast many reproachful glances at the radio as play progressed. The Sister had no mercy, and could be heard muttering things like Make that man grovel! to encourage the slaughter. Daud had tried to teach her to call him a rascal, but she had failed to see the point, and insisted on calling him that man.

  He went to call on Karta after work, going directly there. Karta lived in a large Victorian building, owned by the university and rented out to postgraduate students. Daud had no idea how large the house really was, but he guessed there were at least a dozen people living in it. The house was in one of the leafy, residential streets near the university that spoke both of prosperity and the cultivation of a relaxed scruffiness. You wouldn’t catch anybody picking up dog turds down this street, he thought. The little pile of turds would be casually skirted until the Council sweeper came by and scraped it away.