In the Kitchen

by Monica Ali

  Gabe tipped his head to the purple sky as if to acknowledge an answered prayer. He felt no jealousy and for that, if for nothing else, he was deeply grateful. He risked another glance at Pasha to make sure he wasn’t mistaken. The square head, the purplish lips, it had to be him. The driver had started the head count again. Gabriel stayed in line. He’d get a ride up to the Imperial and talk to Pasha there in private. It would only cause a commotion if he tried to explain himself here.

  The group began to board. Gabe stepped up and took a place at the back. For a few minutes he watched the splattered lights of the city rush towards him as hushed conversation pattered down like rain, and then he succumbed to the hum of the engine, the well-worn air, the roll and rattle of the seat. He closed his eyes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  THE HEADLIGHTS SHIVERED OVER HEDGEROWS AND GABRIEL, AT the back of the bus, shivered too. The harder he tried to stare out of the window the more his own reflection got in the way. He wiped his hand across the glass and then turned his head to look at his fellow passengers. Of the three seats at the back, one was taken by Gabriel, another by bags and the third by the man who had been coughing as they lined up. He wore a black and red anorak which rode up over his face, and the sleeves had eaten his hands. From the angle at which he leaned into the corner, Gabriel judged him asleep. Several others were also slumped but most seemed intent on scrutinizing the dark world beyond the glass, quietly taking leave of each new section of road.

  They weren’t in London but where they were or how much time had passed, Gabriel did not know. He could see the back of Pasha’s head, packed in a black beanie hat, towards the front of the bus. The seat next to him was occupied, much to Gabe’s relief. He was going to talk to Pasha but thank God there was no possibility of doing it now. He needed some time to think. Pasha would ask a hundred questions and Gabe wanted his answers prepared.

  SWAFFHAM, said the road sign, 5 MILES. What the hell was an Imperial Hotel minibus doing in Norfolk? Gabriel’s stomach clenched. He didn’t belong on this bus, with these people, he wasn’t one of them. He wanted to shout to the driver to stop and let him off but forced himself to stay quiet. He hummed a tune in his head, some nursery rhyme, and it calmed him. It was all OK, no one had kidnapped him, and there was a reason why he was here even if he did not know exactly where he was. He couldn’t get off in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, with no money and no phone. For now he’d go along with everything, find out what was going on, and in the morning it would all be different when he told them who he was. For a while he stared at the back of Pasha’s head, and then he dozed again.

  He was woken either by the smell of manure or the epileptic fits and starts of the motor as the bus stalled its way down the dirt track. In the pallid dark he saw a dog chasing down a moonbeam across a stubbled field. The bus pulled into a yard in front of a long row of animal sheds. Leaving the headlights on and the motor running, the driver got off and closed the doors behind him. Inside the bus there was a general shifting and stirring, the sound of things not being said. Gabriel pressed his face against the window and got a better look at the sheds, which now appeared more like army barracks, flat-roofed, metal-shuttered, purposeful, comfortless. On a line strung between building and tree the defeated washing hung like a warning, echoed in the scrawling cracks of the plasterwork, a fate written into the dead shape of things.

  From somewhere out of the gloom a second man joined the driver and they entered through one of the three doors. Light leaked from behind the shutters, voices were raised, shouts went up, something or other crashed down. Gabriel gripped his rucksack as if his life were contained in it. He watched as the men emerged from the low chamber and stood uncertainly in the yard. They formed a ragged line. They were tall and wiry, dark, unshaven, foreign, Afghans or Kurds, and the contents poked out of their hastily packed bags. They stood in silence. One of them ran over to the washing line and began to stuff the clothes into a plastic sack. The others remained in the glare of the headlights as if facing a firing squad.

  Gabe tried to exchange glances with his fellow passengers but no one, it seemed, would look at anyone else for fear of confirming what they saw. The Afghans’ small stores of resistance had been spent and now they were resigned. Gabriel felt the same way. There was nothing for it but to see how this played itself out. Even if he spoke, would anyone understand? If they understood, would they listen? If they listened, would they care? In the kitchen, he spoke and others obeyed. But if he got up and started talking now, what difference would it make?

  The driver returned to open the bus doors and shout instructions. Gabriel followed the others and got down. He listened carefully while the second man shouted more orders as if he might glean something from the intonation, might hear some meaning in the foreign words. Again, he had no option but to fall in with the rest, forming a single line for another headcount. It was as if he had slipped into another dimension. One ride on a bus and he had left the known world behind.

  He was too weary anyway, and in the morning, once he’d spoken to Pasha, he would get out of here.

  They filed into the barracks and squashed into what seemed to be some sort of kitchen, although there was also a mattress on the floor. Gabriel looked over his shoulder as he entered and saw the Afghans in a blur of light, being sucked into the bus.

  The kitchen smelt so strongly of onions and burnt oil and bodies that it made his eyes begin to smart. There was a two-ring hob in the corner, a microwave with a blackened door, a sink full of pots and pans, dirty plates and open cereal packets on the surfaces and, squatting under the window, a chest freezer spattered with rust spots. Gabriel looked at the only two women, their pinched faces and large red hands, standing close together, guarding each other’s space. Gabe’s back-seat companion leaned on a rickety table and succumbed to a coughing fit, making a horrible clacking sound as if shaken to his very bones. There were lines beneath his eyes, thick and black, tattoos of fatigue. The supervisor began to speak. Although nobody said anything he seemed to get angry, his bald red head burning up. He clapped his hands.

  At this signal, one man simply dropped down and lay on the mattress but the others began to disperse into the corridor and divide up among the rooms. Gabriel didn’t see where Pasha went so he followed the coughing man.

  A naked light bulb lit the room, which rightly belonged in the dark. The place was fetid. There were two metal-framed single beds, one made of soft cheap pine, and a fold-out camp bed. A mattress leaned against the wall, a tall cupboard with broken hinges stood in a corner, and a camping fridge masqueraded as a kind of bedside cabinet. Despite the signs of habitation it seemed unlikely that any life form would flourish here, except perhaps the mould that bloomed in large patches along the walls.

  Gabriel ended up with the camp bed and was grateful that he’d avoided the mattress, which was now wedged into the small space left on the floor and would have to be vacated if anyone wanted to open the door. He took off his sweatshirt but kept his jeans and socks and T-shirt on and climbed under the still-warm sheet. Lying on his stomach he watched a silverfish swim across the carpet. The light went off.

  For a while he tried to put together a story for Pasha, but he didn’t know how much to tell or how it should be told. He passed a couple of turbulent hours, unsure if he was awake or asleep, unable to distinguish between reality and dream: a barking dog, a sob, an owl screech, a looming human shape, a crushing weight on his legs, tiny creatures scratching his face. When the light came on again he was glad to crawl out of bed. He queued for the bathroom and in the kitchen ate a slice of thin white bread out of the pack that was passed around. Someone gave him a mug of black tea. Within half an hour, he calculated, he’d be on his way, while these poor sods dug potatoes or sweated in polytunnels, picking lettuces for supermarket shelves.

  Outside, once more they lined up. The supervisor passed down the ranks ticking off names and filling in details. Gabriel couldn’t see Pasha, but he had to
be here somewhere. The moment he spotted Pasha, he would go and talk to him and then he would leave straight away, take Lena’s brother or lover back with him if he would go. Now that it was daylight he was beginning to see clearly again. It was stupid of him to have waited the entire night to approach Pasha. It would be easy. All he had to do was give him Lena’s mobile number and she could tell him whatever she wanted to. Gabe couldn’t tell her story for her. It was up to Lena what she told.

  Gabriel scanned the line again and thankfully saw him this time. At last, he thought, I have done something. I have done something for her. His heart began to race. He slipped out of position and moved down close to Pasha, who immediately looked furious as if telling Gabe to back off. Hoping to draw him discreetly aside, Gabriel put a hand on Pasha’s arm. In a somehow threatening gesture, Pasha removed his hat.

  Was it Pasha? Gabriel was no longer sure. ‘Lena,’ he said. ‘She’s looking for you. I can take you to her.’

  The man swore at him with his eyes. Had he even understood what Gabriel had said?

  ‘Lena. You know her? Lena. She’s a friend of mine.’

  The name seemed to make no impact. The man spat on the ground. Gabriel shuffled past and went to the end of the line.

  He looked at a row of silver birches, pretending not to know that everyone was looking at him. Though he stood up straight, inside he was collapsing. He had just about had enough. He could never do anything right. Whatever he tried to do it turned out some other way. He had tried to do something for Lena, but it was hopeless. He was wrong, wrong about everything, from the moment he woke to the moment he fell asleep, and the rest of the time as well. Over and over, he berated himself until all the words became meaningless and he was unable to latch on to a single thought, unable to comprehend a single thing, as if all that he had known had been taken away from him, the whole world revealed as a lie.

  * * *

  The supervisor, at last, reached Gabriel. ‘Im’ia?’ he said.

  Gabe shook his head.

  ‘Im’ia!’ demanded the supervisor. ‘Nazwisko?’

  Gabe watched some men disgorge from the far end of the barracks, six workers who had escaped eviction last night. He envied the sense of purpose with which they climbed into the back of an open truck.

  The supervisor poked Gabe in the chest with a pen. Gabriel shrugged. Everything he did would be wrong so he wouldn’t do anything. The supervisor said something under his breath, crossed the yard and returned with another man who wore a waxed green jacket, green wellies, his hair in a sharp side parting and a look of sparkling contempt in his eyes. If Gabe had seen him a few minutes earlier he would have sworn that he recognized him from somewhere, but now he had given up making judgements like that.

  ‘So,’ said the man, while the supervisor bobbed around deferentially, ‘this the one?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the supervisor, his accent so heavy it clattered on the flagstones, ‘he don’t say nothing.’

  The boss – although Gabriel wished to judge nothing he could not help himself – put out his hand for the clipboard. ‘So this one doesn’t know who he is.’ Briefly, he checked the papers and then gave a tight, smug smile. ‘Only one name left on here, Tymon, my friend. What do I pay you for, eh?’

  Tymon tried to shred Gabriel with a glare.

  ‘Danilo Hetman?’ said the boss, turning away.

  Gabriel said nothing.

  Tymon divided the group into threes and fours and put Gabe together with the coughing man who introduced himself as Olek, and the two women who remained tight-lipped. They walked out past the silver birches and a sign reading Nut Tree Farm, past a tumbledown cottage with brambles growing out of glassless windows, and over a fern-matted stream. The fields stretched to the ends of the earth. Tymon handed out gardening forks. He reached down and dug out a bunch of spring onions and knocked off the earth against the tines, completing the operation in quick, disparaging movements as if this were the easiest work in the world. He looked at the group with one clear message: what are you waiting for?

  The women rapidly arranged themselves either side of the next long green row and, squatting on their haunches, began to break the soil. Gabriel finally opened his mouth. Before he could speak, Olek nudged him in the ribs and then bent down to work. Tymon turned to leave and Gabriel, knowing this had gone on long enough, stepped forward as well, but Olek banged his ankle with his fork in a way that made him stop at once.

  Gabriel stooped and turned over a clod of thick black earth and shook some onions free. He looked at Olek, working further down the row, at how hooded and bruised his eyes appeared. It was touching that Olek, a total stranger, had tried to help him, preventing him from getting into trouble by stepping out of line.

  Gabe swept his hand across the emerald-green onion blades and watched how firmly they sprang back into place. He inhaled the mineral richness of the soil and the vivid succulence of the plants. A breeze tickled the back of his neck. The sun shone weakly in a near-cloudless sky. All the way to the horizon, the fields waved mild and bright. Gabriel set to work.

  Tymon drove up in a battered white truck and unloaded a stack of blue plastic crates, which Olek distributed among the group. Gabriel knelt down to gather his onions and lay them carefully in the first box. He stayed on his knees to dig, trying to disperse the pains that had congregated in his back and shoulders. The damp spread quickly along the legs of his jeans, dark patches reaching up his thighs. He stabbed and twisted with the fork and loosened the next clump of onions. He brushed the soil off with his hand, admiring the pearly skin and delicate curling roots. He fell into a rhythm, pushing, pulling, turning, brushing, his body leading the way, his mind merely following. One time he looked up and saw a curlew, its long brown trunk and the two white bars across its wings, circling overhead, but otherwise he was fully absorbed, his knees sinking into the earth as if he had put down roots of his own. The first crate filled and he began to pack another. As he worked he listened intently to the soft thwack of metal into the soil, cushioned in the stillness all around. He watched a centipede ripple up the handle of his fork, a mighty little military parade, and with one finger laid it tenderly on the ground. He carried on.

  When Olek tapped him on the shoulder and by a simple gesture said it was time for a break, Gabriel was astonished to see that the women had filled four boxes each and Olek was on his fifth, while Gabe had managed only two. All his joints protested as he struggled to his feet. They sat on upturned crates and knocked the soil off their hands. The others had brought knapsacks with bread and cheese and water. Gabe’s mouth filled with saliva. His stomach howled. He walked a little way off and lit a cigarette, not wanting to embarrass the others with his need.

  The cigarette tasted foul and he put it out. He didn’t feel like smoking today.

  Olek came up beside him. ‘Ukrayinets?’

  Gabriel shook his head.

  ‘Polyak?’ Olek coughed and took a packet of tobacco from his pocket. The tips of his fingers were thick and slightly flattened. ‘Serb? Rosiyanyn?’ He found his papers and began to roll.

  Gabriel smiled apologetically. ‘English.’

  Olek started. ‘English?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Olek shrugged and looked into the distance as if they had come out here to admire the view. ‘OK,’ he said. After a couple of moments he reached into the inside pocket of his anorak and took out two plain biscuits which he offered without comment.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Gabriel. He ate them casually, trying to conceal his hunger. ‘Here,’ he said, holding out his pack of cigarettes. ‘I don’t want them. You can have them if you like.’

  Olek nodded and took the cigarettes. ‘Must working,’ he said, as Tymon drove by with the window down and his angry head sticking out.

  At first Gabriel thought that he would not be able to bend his back sufficiently to continue. He managed to get to his knees but then seized up. The pain made him bite on his tongue. He clawed at the earth with his hand
s. He poured all that he had left, his entire being, into pulling up the next bunch and when he succeeded he felt a great sense of accomplishment, as if he had delivered not a handful of salad onions but something of great worth. He ignored the pain by focusing on the rough wooden handle of the fork when he picked it up, the way the tines glinted when the earth slid off, the crisp boldness of the green shoots, the coy lustre of the bulbs. He worked and scarcely looked up for there was so much to see where he knelt, a hundred shades of black in the peat. It was as if until now he had seen the world only in a blur, in fat brushstrokes, unable to distinguish the details. He watched a beetle walk officiously over the back of his hand, he crumbled the soil with his fingertips, he watched the waves of muscular contraction that propelled a worm, shortening and lengthening, across the furrow. He felt the cool touch of the wind on his face, he felt the breath enter and leave his body, he felt alive.

  He worked on, noticing everything and asking no questions so that there was only the flow of one moment into the next and it came to his mind that he had never done this before. All his life had been spent in planning, asking what came next, or looking back at what had already been, so that the present, that infinitesimal slice of now, between a future that never arrives and a past always out of reach, was only a dim possibility, as if life could never be truly lived. He observed the thought but then, instead of filling his head with voices, with arguments for and against, he rubbed the sap from a green shoot between his fingers and filled his lungs with air.

  That night he slept like a king in a four-poster bed, undisturbed by dreams. When he woke, though he could smell his own body and when he stretched his arms and rubbed his eyes he could see the dirt beneath his nails, he was relaxed and fresh. Instead of queuing for the squalid bathroom he went outside to urinate in the field and listen to the birdsong. Gabe’s mind was pleasurably blank. He felt like hugging himself, like a child who has run away out of the back door, immeasurably content to escape from his parents’ latest row. He would have to go home at some point, but he would not go quite yet.