Pilgrims Way

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  Daud watched as Brian Close and John Edrich played the West Indian fast bowlers. It was as if they were the last two Englishmen on the walls of Khartoum or the beaches of Dunkirk, refusing even to duck or evade the ball. They were demonstrating their moral superiority over their torturers. Britons nevernevernever shall be slaves. Holding, Roberts and Daniel, the West Indian bowlers, seemed incensed by this display and bowled even fiercer bouncers. They were determined to make the England batsmen grovel, to make them eat the words of their Captain. The harder they tried, the prouder stood the England batsmen, and the more triumphant became the voices of the commentators. Daud was sorry to see the boys goaded into a frenzy in this way. Even Lloyd was sitting with his mouth open, and Daud could sense him stirring with patriotic passion. Oh, I say, look at these brutes running amok. Surely! Surely!

  He went into the kitchen to clear the decks for the meal, and to escape the outburst that he could see Lloyd puffing himself up for. The kitchen was a narrow ante-room to his rotting shower, cold and damp in all weather but becoming uninhabitable once the cooking was under way. A back door led into a garden which was littered with broken paving-stones. He kept the door open when it was warm, to air the cubicle and rid it of the smell of damp bricks.

  ‘This is savagery!’ Lloyd called out from the other room. ‘It’s nothing to do with sport now. Those bowlers are looking to kill. Christ, this Daniel looks mad. If I was one of those batsmen I’d walk down the track and wrap my bat round his neck.’ Daud exchanged a chortling grin with a saucepan. He felt sure that Daniel would have no difficulty in dealing with such a challenge. BRING ME HE BLOOD!

  ‘You’d burst into tears before you even got to the wicket,’ Daud went into the living room to tell him. ‘You don’t even know what those two men are facing out there . . . but I’ll tell you. They’re suffering for the sins of a cruel leader, who could not resist blustering when the West Indian boys were being humiliated by those demented Aussies. Now he’s waiting up there in the dressing room while the brave infantry are getting slaughtered. This match is over now. All that’s left is to humiliate England, and that’s what those two old men out there are resisting. Even in defeat they want to conduct themselves with honour. It’s that big-mouth that those bowlers want. You wait, they’ll make him suffer before this series is over.’ As he spoke Daud saw Close turn his back on a ball that thudded into his shoulder with the crump of distant, heavy artillery. The camera zoomed on his face, which showed hardly a wince. The old pro’s loving it, he thought. He knows he’s won this one. He’s made them look foolish. Even if they get him out now, he’s looked them in the eye and said You’ve done your worst and I’m still here. You ran amok, lost your rag and ranted and raved all over the park but I’m still here, bruised but still grinning at you.

  Karta arrived during the last few minutes of play and made a face when he saw that the cricket was still on. He clasped Daud’s hand and pulled him forward into a half-embrace, but he did not even glance at Lloyd. He was wearing skin-tight red trousers and a grey shirt, carrying a zipper jacket in one hand. He put the other hand on his hip and took up a pose. Daud looked him up and down, as he was supposed to. ‘Up to your usual standard,’ he said as Karta turned this way and that to demonstrate his new clothes. Karta laughed and reached past Lloyd without saying a word to him. He helped himself to a beer while Lloyd looked indignant. It was a moment or two before Karta realised what was happening at the cricket. ‘Knock that old honky’s block off,’ he encouraged the glowering Roberts.

  Lloyd was worried about the rate at which Karta was consuming the beer, and he glanced at Daud, looking for support. He picked up the cans to take them to the kitchen. Karta watched his retreating back with loathing. ‘Kill the white man!’ he shouted, and grinned as Lloyd’s back winced. ‘What’s on the menu, bro? You know, it’s one of the highlights of Saturday evening, coming round here for a meal. It’s one of the few things I’ll remember from this place.’

  ‘Coming round here on the scrounge?’ asked Daud. ‘I don’t think I’ll forget it either.’

  ‘African hospitality!’ Karta admonished him. ‘Where’s your African brotherhood? Don’t show yourself up in front of foreigners. Anyway, I know this came in the form of development aid from the Englishman.’

  Play stopped with England on 21 without loss. Edrich and Close survived eighty minutes of scary cricket, and long before the commentators had finished the summing up of the day’s play, Lloyd stood up to switch to another channel. Daud collected the meat and vegetables and went to the kitchen to start the meal. Karta followed him to get the last can of beer. As he pulled the ring off Lloyd suddenly stood up.

  ‘Going somewhere?’ Karta asked innocently, the first words he had addressed to him.

  Lloyd made a face and seemed on the point of following this with an obscene gesture but his nerve failed him. ‘I’m going to get some more beer,’ he said, spitting the words angrily to hide the apprehension of the moment. ‘You’ve had three of the four cans I bought, and you’re not touching the next batch.’

  Karta waited until the front door had slammed shut. ‘I’m going to teach that man some manners,’ he said. ‘Why do you let him come? He’s such a stupid, ignorant . . . turd! And he gets on my nerves. I don’t know how you can stand him hanging around you.’ His teeth were gritted with anger, and on his face was a grimace of revulsion. His body shivered with disgust. The first time Daud had seen Karta do that, he had smiled at the melodrama. He soon found out that Karta was not faking, and he was silenced by the intensity of his loathing. Karta clucked angrily, irritated with himself. He looked over his shoulder to catch Daud’s eye. ‘He’s exploiting you, can’t you see that?’ he said, smilingly inviting Daud into the joke.

  Daud moved away from the kitchen door and returned to the cooking. He heard Karta shout from the other room but made no effort to understand. A moment later he heard a sudden burst of applause and laughter as Karta switched to a comedy programme. He heard Karta’s shout above the noises of mad glee. ‘Something smells good, countryman.’

  The neighbours had complained before about the noise. The walls separating the houses were paper-thin and hollow. Sometimes at night he heard what he thought were individual grains of crumbling plaster falling down in the gap. He heard mice walking up and down the walls and between the floor-boards, sometimes stopping to hold a squeaky conversation. When they came into the house, he chased them wildly between the decrepit sticks of furniture. He chased them more for the pleasure of the hunt than because they were unbearable. He had grown up in a house infested with mice and had long lost any fear of them. For some reason, they never appeared upstairs, but only in the living room or the kitchen. The mice he had known as a child were of a hardier and more adventurous stock. They had no difficulties getting about and climbed up and down stairs without any apparent fear.

  The kitchen walls were beginning to stream with condensation. The aromas of cooking were comfortably held in abeyance by the smells of damp bricks and mouldy wood. Every dark corner harboured woodlice and earwigs. The open shelves were rough and splintered, and had shown no gratitude for the coat of paint he had put on them. His antique oven was rancid with grime. He never used the tall wall cupboard because an uncontrollable mould grew in there. He frightened himself that the mould would one day break out of the cupboard and take over the whole house while he was sleeping. What would Catherine make of him when she saw all this filth? Perhaps she would be so distracted with passion that she would not notice. Or perhaps, he guessed with a sinking sense that this one had the ring of truth, she would walk into his hovel, take a couple of sniffs and make her excuses. Phew!

  On one side of him in the terrace lived an old couple. They never spoke to him. If they saw him coming, or caught sight of him in his rock-strewn garden, they went inside the house and shut the door. They seemed frightened of him. He guessed that they were deaf from the way that they shouted at each other, and the volume at which they watched television
. He rarely heard the woman’s voice, but the man sometimes became very angry.

  On the other side lived a young couple. They had been interested in him when they first moved in. He was a student of architecture and she was an assistant in an art gallery in the town. They had invited him to their house, and he had looked with envy at all the clever things they had done with the small space. They had ripped a wall out here, and put in a new window there. Pictures and objects littered the rooms, and plants flourished under the kitchen window. They showed him photographs of their travels and overwhelmed him with their sophistication and wealth. One Sunday they took him out to a country pub in their blue sports car. Daud sat in the passenger seat while Susan perched behind them, her arm on his shoulder and her plump breasts leaning against him.

  Within three weeks of meeting, he was spending several evenings a week with them. Susan came for him as soon as he arrived back from work. Tony told him about wines, and also explained the new plans the council had for pedestrianising the town centre. Some evenings they played records, and once Susan danced with him, clinging to him without shame in front of Tony. She insisted on reading his palm, rubbing it first with gentle pressure and then holding it in both hands while she pored over its mysteries. She told him he would realise his dreams in nine years. Tony smiled at this, as if he was sharing a joke that Daud could not understand.

  In expansive mood he told Daud that he had spent a year in South Africa, working in an architect’s office. He had relatives there and would gladly go back there to live, he said, but there was going to be trouble so why take the risk? When Daud did not challenge him, his narration became warmer and more detailed. He had been surprised by the amount of contact between black and white . . . multi-racial parties, children playing together.

  ‘Like piano keys,’ Daud suggested.

  ‘Absolutely,’ he agreed.

  ‘That’s lovely, Tony, isn’t it?’ Susan asked, squirming on her bean bag and smiling at Daud.

  The best-loved character in the architect’s office, it turned out, was Amos the black messenger. He kept everybody in tucks with his antics. ‘My nephew’s wet-nurse was a black woman,’ Tony declared. ‘Christ, how far can you go to show that you don’t have any racial prejudices? To let your own child be suckled by a black woman!’

  Daud had asked for another helping of the moussaka, and sensed that his reply had disappointed them. They never invited him round again, suspecting him of secretly laughing at them. When he met them now they were barely polite. After a noisy gathering at his house, Tony would come round to see him, to complain about their disturbed sleep. Susan is highly strung and gets very upset if she can’t sleep. So please show some consideration. Once he had come storming round when Karta was noisily demonstrating some new dance steps, and had angrily demanded of Daud that he show some human decency. Daud was a little past his best at the time and had told him to go and suck a black tit. Daud sometimes banged on the wall to irritate them or shouted abuse into an upstairs cupboard that he knew adjoined their bedroom. Go home you Boer fascists.

  Lloyd came back with a large can of beer, and stood in the kitchen, drinking and talking to Daud, leaving Karta to the television. ‘It really smells good,’ he said, feeling pleased with his recent mission of mercy. He talked about William Blake, whose poems he memorised and loved to recite. Daud listened with only half an ear, but he knew that Lloyd spoke Blake’s poems with feeling and love. He was concerned not to overcook the rice.

  They were all more cheerful by the time they sat down to eat. Daud put a jar of chilli sauce on the table for Karta, who licked his lips noisily, exaggerating his anticipation. ‘When are you going to grow up and stop eating chilli sauce with everything?’ Daud asked him.

  He was pleased with his efforts and ate the chicken stew with relish. Eating his own cooking had taken some getting used to. After he moved out of the boarding-house, when he stopped being a student, Ray did most of the cooking. When he did not feel like doing so, they bought some fish and chips. Whenever Daud suggested that he would cook, Ray hooted with laughter and begged him not to. After Ray stopped speaking to him, he ate tinned foods and sandwiches. He was too ashamed to start learning under Ray’s hostile scrutiny. Sometimes he cooked sausages because there was nothing he could do to make them go wrong. When he became sole lord and master of 9 Bishop Street, he allowed himself more licence. His landlord called round one evening to check something and found him in the middle of his latest creation. I’m experimenting, Daud told him. The man had taken pity on him and the next day brought him a battered copy of a cookery book. That had initiated him into the mysteries of lamb chops and boiled cauliflower. None of it tasted like food but it was filling.

  His new skills were too quickly put to the test. He had visitors. A Norwegian couple turned up one evening, asking if he knew where Tony and Susan were. They told him that they had got married that morning, had been travelling all day and now had nowhere to stay the night. The woman was visiting England for the first time. Daud offered them his bed and something to eat. They accepted both. He had bought a chicken earlier that afternoon, intending to cook his most ambitious meal yet: roast chicken, roast potatoes and runner beans, followed by apple crumble and custard. He set about his task self-importantly while the Norwegian couple retired upstairs to make the bed and then try to smash it to pieces, as he could clearly hear. It all ended in disaster. The book did not tell him that he had to thaw out the chicken before roasting it. It did not tell him how big the potatoes should be for roasting, and he had sliced them. When the Norwegian couple appeared after the hour and a half he had suggested to them, they looked sleek and content. His breath smelt of alcohol and she looked round his hovel with some suspicion. They said nothing as he served them bloody meat and soggy slices of potatoes. They pushed the food about for a while and then went back upstairs. He heard them laughing. He cleared the table and sat down to his apple crumble.

  They left early the next morning but came back a week later to take him round to the house they had newly rented. He was surprised by its affluence, which was not unusual. He was surprised by everybody’s affluence. They did not offer him the roast chicken dinner which he had assumed would be the humiliating high point of his outing. After the tour of the house they drove him back without even troubling him to refuse a coffee. He suspected that he was being put in his place in some way.

  Should he tell Karta and Lloyd about Catherine? Not yet, he decided. He watched Karta wolfing down the stew and felt the contentment of the successful cook. ‘Listen bro,’ Karta said, leaning back from the wreckage on his plate and fishing in his jacket pocket for a cigarette. ‘There’s a meeting of the Afro-Asian Society tomorrow. You should come. It’s going to be an interesting one.’

  ‘What exactly does the Afro-Asian Society do?’ Lloyd asked, waving Karta’s smoke away haughtily. ‘Does it plan the revolution?’

  ‘No!’ Karta said, blowing a stream of smoke at Lloyd. ‘We sit in dark corners and try to think of ways of cutting English throats. Usually we sacrifice a chicken or a goat, unless we can find an English virgin, which is rare these days. Then we perform secret rites and do crazy dances and have orgies.’

  ‘Why can’t you be civil for once?’ Lloyd asked, flushing with anger. ‘Don’t you ever stop?’

  ‘I bet your great-grandpappy didn’t stop when some ridiculous old black chief asked him not to take away his people’s land, eh?’ shouted Karta. ‘You don’t like what I say, take your arse out of here! Fuck off!’

  ‘Karta,’ Daud warned.

  ‘Tell him!’ he said, pointing at Lloyd.

  ‘You’re too pathetic for words!’ shouted Lloyd, turning away from the table.

  Karta stood up angrily and switched the television on. Daud gathered the dishes and took them to the kitchen. He washed them immediately, before the cockroaches and mice appeared to feast on the leftovers. The effect of the beer had worn off by the time he returned to the living room. The three of them sat
in a tense silence, watching television and waiting for the football to start.

  He hated the way they bickered like that, Daud thought. Karta was staring stonily at the television, his face puffy and hot with injury. Lloyd was breathing noisily, huffing with indignation. He should get out more, get away from them. If he entered all the competitions that promised holidays in Bali or Rhodes or Hawaii, he would be bound to win one. Then he could escape them for a blissful fortnight of fleshpots and decadence. In the meantime, he should go to the cinema or join an amateur dramatics group. He went with Karta to the Afro-Asian Society once, but the grandiose rhetoric left him numb with boredom and on the brink of tears. He should take a boat on the river, go for picnics in the countryside in the summer, go for a hike along the Pilgrims Way. Take Catherine with him, have fun!

  What a horrible little room, he thought. The paint was grimy and cracked with age. The furniture, which Piano Keys had delivered in an orange station-wagon, was worse than junk. The table was scored and runnelled, as if it had once served as a chopping board. Daud had painted its legs yellow to brighten it up, but only succeeded in making it look more squalid than ever. A small, lumpy settee was wedged under the stairs, kept company by the scabby, brown armchair in which he was sitting. He was the only one who could sit in it since neither Lloyd nor Karta, nor anybody else who had seen it, could contemplate its touch. Daud thought of it as like touching a leper: good for his soul and it made the leper feel good.

  Still, it could have been worse, he reassured himself. The story Karta told of his first few weeks in the hall of residence returned to disgust him. Karta had moved out in the end because he could not stand the smells in the toilets first thing in the morning. It was like a ritual with these English students. They couldn’t use the toilets in the afternoons or the evening, they had to do their crap in the morning. And all the doors had these springs. They shut behind you and sealed up the smell of turds in the corridors. In the end Karta had not even been able to shake hands with anybody without thinking of their turds. When he went for a bath he took his own supply of scouring powder, and used his own bar of soap. He never went near the showers, afraid he might have to get close to one of the maggoty bodies with crumbs of turds still stuck to its hairy arse. To think we allowed these molluscs, these shit-sniffing slugs to rule over us. That was the biggest shame, my bro.