Alice Can Wait

It was tea-time. Saleem, because he was not born English, but had to learn to be it, took his tea strong and brewed in the pot. Bryce, on the other hand, was free to take his tea any way he liked it. His idea of a good cup of tea was hot water into which he dipped a teabag (any kind, he wasn't fussy) for about 2 seconds and then immediately took it out again, leaving about half the water a brownish colour.
These habits had been observed in the lounge of the five-star hotel where Saleem and Bryce, together with a dozen other prominent authors, were staying. Observed, that is, by other authors, not by outsiders – for the comings and goings of some of the world's most prolific writers assembled under the auspices of "The Adelaide Writers Festival" passed relatively unnoticed by the local population. The year was 1984 and the presence of Saleem and Bryce was the highlight of the festival. Their books Noon Children and In Santa Cruz were invariably forced to share the display table, the news, the camera. What happened next can thus best be explained through the process of osmosis. After a week of forced association and constant comparison, the creators of these two novels decided, like their characters had before them, to embark on a journey. At the end of the week the two men rented a 4-wheel drive land rover, bought supplies, and set out into the desert north-west of Adelaide.

Bryce was fidgety. He had been planning this trip to the Simpson Desert ever since he first began his study on nomads several years earlier in Africa. Not that he objected to Saleem as a person, but he was averse towards company in general. He liked to travel alone, finding it easier to bond with those he met (other travellers, locals, eccentrics) when he didn't have to worry about someone else. Worrying was what you did when you had company and he didn't like the way it slowed him down. Of course, Saleem was a first-class migrant, a professional wanderer. Bryce only hoped that they wouldn't have to talk books the way writers tend to do when they are together; especially not Saleem's book since he would then have to admit that he hadn't actually read Noon Children. He felt awfully embarrassed about it and could provide no excuse except the usual – too little time, etc.
He needn't have worried: Saleem wasn't going to talk books if he could help it. He was fed up with books and the whole circus he had come to associate with it. Not that the book-world didn't have certain advantages. Being a famous author brought about lots of things that would otherwise never come his way, or at any rate not in such abundance. Money was one such thing, women was another. But these two accessories had made it quite difficult for Saleem to find the time to write and think. One day he was a migrant from India, and the next he was a trophy of the empire. The West had seduced him – made him into nothing short of a rock-god. To ensure his unfailing commitment to the East, he had sworn to do something different next time. Something a little less cutesy: Islam. His agent was against the idea. She said religion never sold, particularly not that kind. Saleem won her over, got his advance and all he needed now was a place of peace and quiet.

After a whole day on the road they stopped at a small crossroads to rest. Bryce, showing no signs of fatigue, wrote in a black notebook made out of moleskin. Meanwhile, Saleem prepared the fire. They wanted to get to Alice by nightfall the following day so after having shared a meal consisting of tinned beans and grilled meat, they laid under the stars, and fell asleep.
When Saleem woke up the following morning, Bryce was already consulting his notebooks.
-Are you working on your new book? he wanted to know, feeling the familiar pang of agony and envy that came with seeing another author at work.
-Well, several really. I'm nearly finished researching Aboriginal cartography. I was hoping to talk to a couple of fellows in Alice, but it's going to be difficult. They don't like strangers.
-You mean they don't like white men?
He had to ask. And then he felt another pang in his stomach. Could it be that Bryce was bringing him along to soften up the "black fellas"?
-White men, black men, yellow men. They don't like any strangers whatever colour.
Bryce went to clean up their plates from last night. He used leaves from the ground as a brush. Saleem followed Bryce's movements. Watch out for the snakes, he wanted to shout, but thought better of it at the last moment. Bryce was like a local: competent, practical, unafraid. For the first time that he could recall, Saleem wished he wasn't so English. It made him feel like a fraud now that he was in the company of an Englishman who was more like a bushman at heart. Bryce turned to tell Saleem to smother the fire they had made to boil water for their tea. Within ten minutes they were back in the land rover leaving behind them a cloud of dust, some burnt gum tree, and a pile of chewed bones.

After a couple of hours Saleem was beginning to feel relaxed for the first time in months. Nothing bothered him. He felt more at home in the dust, the distance, the heat, the silence than he had in any city of Europe. He let his imagination take him to other distant and dry lands; to the East of his memory. He imagined the roar of an aeroplane and saw two men falling, falling through space, yes, and they would talk on their way through the sky; a nice Muslim, a young man brought up the English way and an angel who sees the world through the Prophet's eyes, yes.

He was woken up from his reverie by the extraordinary stillness. They were parked in the shade of some rocks. Bryce was watching him, amused.
-How long have I been asleep? asked Saleem. He abhorred the thought of being watched like an insect when he wasn't aware of it, though he himself had done it often enough to lovers on sleepless nights.
-Not long. You nodded off sometime after we turned left off the track.
-What about Alice?
-I'm following the directions an old Aboriginal man gave me in Adelaide. I bought him a few drinks and he told me certain things.
Saleem followed Bryce's movements as he began to collect branches and stones to build the fire. He was wearing shorts and hiking boots.

Later that night, after hours of driving, Bryce was telling Saleem the names of the star constellations above them. Bryce didn't think of himself as a selfish man. He liked the sound of his own voice, but he was also convinced that as long as he had things to impart to other men, it was his duty to do so. Knowledge had to be accumulated and released. Knowledge was compressed energy that had to flow. A mind at rest was a diseased mind, just like a body that didn't move was an unhealthy body. Even Bryce's imagination travelled extensively. It took him to borderless, esoteric landscapes of simmering craters. At times, he longed to suspend time so that he could exchange air and water for these globules of anti-matter. Globetrotting was simply not enough. He longed for the day when it would be possible to traverse time, space, and most of all: the body. Meanwhile, writing novels was as close as he ever got to transcendence. In his youth, he had tried to summon the spirits of dead people; his father's notably, but also his great-uncle's and even the one of his old friend from school who had died in a car crash when he was only nine. None of these sermons had, alas, yielded any success. Thinking back at these embarrassing fiascos, Bryce had the sudden urge to tell Saleem about his desire to travel through life and death. He was sure Saleem would sympathise with his endeavours. With his exotic Eastern background he was bound to see the beauty of such a journey.
-Imagine, he was now in the process of telling Saleem, what impact it would have on our personal lives, and literature too! If infinite transgression determined our approach to everything around us what, if anything, would keep us in the moment?
-Surely there are other needs, other than spiritual I mean, which come into question: hunger, cold...
-Granted, but if the soul and the mind operate under the laws of boundless mobility, they will see that the body is satisfied. The body is the motor of the soul. Nomads wander to feed their stomachs, but above all, the journey satisfies the spiritual needs of these people.
-But don't you find that we don't live enough in the moment and until we do...
-Frankly, no. The present is overrated.
It then crossed Saleem's mind that perhaps the distinguished British author had rather wanted to be alone or at any rate somewhere else or with someone else than the present moment provided. Because that thought permeated him to his very bones, it rendered all further conversation impossible. He pondered how to terminate the discussion without seeming rude. At last he settled for an ill disguised yawn, which had the desired effect of Bryce informing him how tired he was.

When Bryce stretched himself out on the warm ground, he thought he could hear voices. His study of aboriginal customs had made him increasingly aware of the sacredness of the land. How could he be sure that he wasn't violating some unwritten law by camping right here? It was the middle of nowhere, but he had been told that the spirits could be everywhere. That thought made it impossible for Bryce to go to sleep. Unnerved by his own thinking, he was now sure now that the air vibrated with something invisible to the human eye. His instincts told him that tonight would bring them something out of the ordinary. He wanted to share his premonitions with Saleem, but when he looked over to his side he couldn't be sure he wasn't sleeping because his back was turned to him.

Saleem watched the fire turn to coal until there was nothing left of it but the heat that was spreading out of the stones around it. Then he turned his eyes outwards; towards the sky and beyond. This total abandon to the elements made him think of an episode from when he was a little boy living in Pakistan. He had gone for a picnic with his family near a river. It was a humid and hot afternoon and the rich food had made his parents nod off. He remembered being terrified of the snakes and other animals as he made his way down the hill, but rather than causing him to give up, the fear added to his excitement. By the time he approached the banks of the river, he felt like an explorer who had reached his goal. With a new sense of confidence and pride, he waded out into the water, though it was never his intention to go far, since he couldn't swim. When he got to about one arm's length into the water, he lost contact with the ground.

Bryce was dreaming about water when he was woken up in the middle of the night. He tried to recall what it had been. Someone drowning or maybe a running tap or a leaking bottle? He told himself that it was quite normal to be dreaming of water when you were in the middle of the desert. It was while he was attempting to record his dream in the black notebook, its pages lit by stars, that he saw them. At first they looked like rocks that were slowly gliding towards Saleem and himself. Bryce's initial thought was that they were a sign from his father. At last, he thought, his spirit has come back to communicate with me. He felt no fear, only an intense exhilaration and curiosity. He got on his feet and was about to walk towards them when Saleem woke up and staggered towards Bryce like a sleep-walker.
-Who are they? he whispered.
-I don't know, but I'm going to find out. You stay here. Wait for me.
-I'm coming with you, Bryce.
Bryce didn't want to waste his time by protesting so he just nodded, gave him a torch and the two men proceeded to make their way into the darkness. They walked side by side and kept their eyes on the creatures ahead of them. By now, Bryce could see that they weren't rocks or bushes or anything else out of the landscape. But nor were they human beings. There was a clear space of night air between them and the ground.
Saleem was determined not to let Bryce see his anguish, determined not to be a lesser man, worse, a lesser Englishman than he. By this stage, he too had also realised that these creatures were not ordinary human beings. In a way, he was strangely relieved that they weren't because that meant that combat was out of question. One didn't physically fight ghosts. Ghosts were mind stuff. And Saleem had learned over the years to have supreme confidence in the strength of his mind. After all, he was a writer. He was able to manipulate reality to his liking; give new names to old things and twist and bend the present for the sake of fiction. Nevertheless, the prospect of an encounter with real ghosts was not a pleasing thought. He had to take comfort in the fact that he was in the company of Bryce. Together they would find a way to get around this awkward situation.
When the two men stood opposite the creatures they were struck by the familiarity of their shapes and outlines. But how could that be? they thought as they looked closer. They were a motley crowd, huddled together like extras on a film set. All in all, they were a very bland group, save for the fact that they were floating in the air. In spite of their dullness, however, Saleem and Bryce had the nagging feeling that they knew or at least ought to know some of these characters the way they were bound to recognise even the most distant relatives. Bryce tried to pick a face in the crowd that reminded him of his father's, but no matter how much he looked he couldn't find a single personality trait of his in the dark. Saleem scrutinised the women in the crowd and tried to match a face with that of someone whom he had had lovers' arguments with in the past, thinking that she might now be dead and back to haunt him.
At last, one of them spoke up.
-We've come to remind you of our existence. There was a time you knew us well, you thought about us daily, sometimes for weeks, months even. You knew us intimately. You gave us shape, personality and words to speak. We had something to live for, a purpose, something to do. You gave us a path to follow, people to meet. Things happened to us! And now? What have we become now? Look at us! Take a good look! Do you still not recognise a single one of us?
Intrigued, Bryce did what he had not thought polite to do prior to this little speech and lit up the mass with his torch. Together with Saleem he peered into the group whose faces peered back at them, impervious to the sudden brightness.
-I think I do know that one to the right, he pointed to an old man who stood there scratching his beard absent-mindedly. He looks a little like a character I was thinking of for In Santa Cruz, but it got too crowded towards the end. I simply had to dispense with him. I had no other choice. The plot would have become too contrived with him in it.
-Prick! came a voice from the group.
-But he would only have become a character! protested Bryce.
-Only a character! Some of us dream of becoming only a character. You should know better than that!
-They've turned into bloody parasites, that's for sure, said Bryce under his breath.

Saleem wasn't able to react because at that moment he had discovered a myriad of little brown-faced children in the group who turned their angry faces to him. After a while of hard thinking, he recognised them as the faceless characters that his most recent protagonist had engaged telepathically with. They were the noon children themselves. He tentatively addressed them as such.
-Noon children, why have you come tonight?
-We've come to seek justice. You didn't give us names, not a word!
-But there were a thousand of you! How could I? There was no room... You played a metaphorical role...
-Metaphor or no metaphor, we demand that you give us a place in your next book. We want redemption.
-Hear, hear! came the muffled sound from the crowd.
-Until we find a page to live in, we will wander the earth like homeless souls.
-And what happens if we don't give you one? challenged Bryce.
-Then we will wander your mind and your imagination until you do. You will have no sleep, no rest and write no books until we are finished with you!

As they made their way back to their camp, they were submerged in thoughts. Even as apparitions go, these had been most unusual. At least ghosts had once been the embodiment of a human being at some point in the past, but these had not even made it to the pages of a book! Saleem and Bryce were both intimately aware of the hardship of their profession. Writing was at best gruelling, but as long as they produced something at the end of the day, they considered it worth their while. But that was while they were unaware of these spirits restlessly orbiting the world; these cast-outs, these rejects of the imagination condemned to the junk yard of deserted narrative in the Simpson Desert. Given any other circumstance, their nomadic existence would have appealed to Saleem and Bryce, who themselves had crossed the earth many times over, but this was something else. These spirits were – as much as they were wont to admit it – aborted figments of their imagination and consequently, their responsibility. The mere thought of having to find a home for these poor sods in their future novels wore them out, but both Bryce and Saleem knew they had no other choice if they wished to be left alone. Bryce secretly feared he would never be able to finish his book on nomads and Saleem's only desire was to return to his beloved England where ghosts were confined to attics and basements.
In the end, the two writers decided to cut their journey short and return to Adelaide.
-I'm sorry about Alice old chap, Saleem said.
-Alice can wait, muttered Bryce.

The Samosa or the Betty?

Jessie never thought of it as "losing my virginity." To her it was more like "losing my religion" as in R.E.M and bashing yourself up against a padded wall in an MTV studio. Ever since the age of twelve when her mother passed on a dog-eared copy of Fear of Flying, Jessie has sworn a silent oath never to stand on tippy-toe for any man, let alone get horizontal with him. Both feet planted securely on the ground, Jessie followed the pastel-coloured-boy-meets-girl-dramas of her classmates with the interest of a reformed addict whose guide to moral welfare is popular music. That is why when Sam, complete with her Cure regalia, introduced herself in the corridor between classes, Jessie agreed to extend the introduction.
From beneath her black, shiny hair, Jessie glimpsed dark eyeliner, purple lipstick, and a layer of white powder. "Look, sorry to bother you like this," she said, "but my brother is like really keen on you and maybe you'd consider meeting him. I know it's silly, and I wouldn't normally do this to you or any other woman, but he's getting on me fucking nerves," she blurted out and pulled at the split ends of her fringe to reveal more black, purple and white.
Sam was the first ever to have called Jessie a "woman." There was no one else in her limited circle of friends who had made the connection between Jessie's widening hips, enlarged chest and womanhood. Jessie always thought it would have been another ball game altogether had there been a father to share the responsibilities of child rearing with her mother. It wouldn't even have to be a father in the biological sense. Jessie wasn't fussed; she knew what decade she was living in. Just a male around the house would have made all the difference. As it was, Jessie's mother shunned the opposite sex and as far as she was concerned there hadn't been a male involved from the start, not even during conception. But Jessie's mum had been no Mary. In her distant youth, Jessie's mother had been a prostitute. She was now an organic food retailer. That was her joke. Her cracking the ice. Trafficking dead meat had made her a vegetarian. Something along those lines. Jessie usually got nauseous at that point of her mother's narrative and turned up the volume on her Walkman for lyrical support.
On their way to the smoking pit, Sam pointed out the obvious: "I hope you're not racist or anything. This isn't suntan." Jessie was about to reply something equally obvious when Sam added, "And if you think I'm dark you should see my brother! Me dad's from India and mum's a Yank, but we both got dad's colour. And, yeah, we've got a corner store, but here's where we are different 'cause we don't sell groceries, we're into videos – mostly porn, Packie-porn with sing-song music and women hiding behind the trees. My brother's not into that kind of music though. He plays the guitar and fancies himself a bit of a rock star..."
Halfway through that bit of genealogy, Jessie and Sam found themselves in the smoking pit getting assessed by the smokers. One of them isolated himself from the group and approached them languidly, almost reluctantly. Brother and sister exchanged looks and then brother broke the silence and offered Jessie a cigarette that she had to refuse, not knowing the mechanics.
Blowing a thin circle of smoke over her head, he asked what her name was.
At this point, it must be inserted that Jessie did suffer a terrible blow shortly after her birth that by those inclined to make things out of things like this would definitely constitute branding. She was given the name Jezebel, otherwise known as the Whore of Babylon.
"That's fucking brilliant!" croaked Sam and gave her a tap on the back.
"I'm Johnny," said her brother.
"No it's not!" said Sam with a sadistic smile on her lips. "It just so happens that this guy's ashamed of who he is, isn't that right, Jaweed?"
Jezebel who had been ashamed of who she was for as long as she could remember, lent him a sympathetic smile which was more like something you would find pasted on the face of the chronically ill.
"Let's get the fuck out of here!" said Johnny and flicked the cigarette on the ground.

Johnny was a poet, but until he could make money on his songs, he worked in his father's business. Only sporadically did he go to school. What Sam had said about their father's video shop proved to be somewhat of an understatement. He didn't actually own one shop: he owned a whole chain of them. Together with Johnny Jaweed's uncle, he catered for the movie consumption of the entire Indian community in London. He owned his fortunate disposition to excellent contacts with the production companies in Bombay. Thanks to them, his customers were guaranteed new releases at the same time as their relatives back home. In fact, sometimes they were watching Indian films before they had even been released in India.
Despite or perhaps because of his success, Johnny only referred to his dad in the most derogatory terms as he represented everything that Johnny tried to get away from – his Indian origins and the family enterprise. The lack of communication between his father and himself was fortunately well compensated for through Johnny's relationship with his mother. Vivienne adored her son more than anything else on the face of the earth to the point that she would secretly take money from her husband to support her son's opulent lifestyle. And Johnny Jaweed adored her back, in an angular, robust sort of way.
When asked what it was about his mother that inspired such devotion, Johnny needed only one word: "artist." Her artistry consisted of two achievements: having acted as a body-double for a famous Indian actress in Bombay in the early 70s and having had a song dedicated to her by Billy Joel. As it were, her career was unexpectedly cut short through meeting and falling in love with an assistant director.
When Jessie was first introduced to Vivienne by way of Johnny ushering her into the master bedroom, she thought the woman must have been suffering from a serious illness. Vivienne received her on a bed that was so big that Jessie had to get on it in order to take the hand that was extended to her. She was overweight, very pale, heavily made-up, and dressed in a purple, velvet pyjamas. She addressed her son "my little brown baby" and pouted her lips to him for a kiss that he duly gave her under loud protests, obviously meant for Jessie's benefit.
The master bedroom was the nerve centre of the family. This was where decisions were made, problems discussed, money distributed, and guests entertained. When Jessie was introduced, Vivienne's visiting sister from America happened to be at the other end of the bed.
"That's because there's nothing to see hon," explained Vivienne when Aunt Mazie asked why she hadn't been shown around London.
"Your mother's unbelievable, Johnny! The only place she knows is the milkbar down the street," said Aunt Mazie.
"Wrong, auntie! She has never set her foot there. They actually deliver her daily dose of smokes and cherry chocolates. She's the laziest woman on earth, aren't you mum?" jeered Johnny and squeezed his mother's fat foot that was poking out of the silk doona cover.
"Oh, shut up you two!" said Vivienne. "There, be a good boy and massage my toes a little."
Shortly afterwards, Johnny and Jessie excused themselves. Aunt Mazie gave them a knowing look and whispered something in Vivienne's ear after which they both burst out laughing. It wasn't the easiest place for petting, but you could get away with it, if you didn't mind the jokes and the looks. It was, in any case, considerably better than at Jessie's mum who interrupted every attempt at nudity with a stern knock on the door and the offer of fresh pumpkin muffins.
The walls at Johnny Jaweed's were painted in smoky colours, there were silk cushions to lounge on, embroidered cloths smelling strongly of incense were draped over every piece of furniture, an open fire burned even in the middle of summer, the heavy silk curtains were perpetually drawn, and there was the sound of sitar music occasionally pierced by Sam's melancholic rock.

On her sixteenth birthday, Jessie woke up and got dressed as usual and sauntered down to the kitchen where her mother was assembling barley burgers for lunch that day. The usual constellation of parsnippy women was coming over with their gossip from the latest dream-therapy session and their crushes on kineteologists with albino eyes.
"I've told everyone to bring something edible for you instead of presents. It's such a waste getting things you're not going to like anyway."
"Ta, I'm off to see Johnny," came Jessie's reply.

Wearing a more festive pyjama top, Vivienne had transferred into the kitchen where she was exchanging snippets about her own Sweet Sixteen with Aunt Mazie to whom Sam was dictating how to make samosas. Johnny looked suspiciously at the mixture his sister was enthusiastically filling in the dough.
"This," Sam stuck a sticky piece of dough in his face, "is where you come from!"
Johnny Jaweed duly contemplated the mass and then said: "Give me Betty Crocker anytime."
Vivienne smiled endearingly at her son who like her appreciated the finest of American culinary traditions.
"I can't believe you'd rather eat that filthy shit than something that belongs to your own culture."
Their father now looked equally endearingly at his hot-tempered daughter.
It occurred to Jessie that he and Vivienne rarely had to talk to each other when they had children who were young enough and had the strength to sort out the ethnic dilemmas in their place.
Despite the crudities exchanged, everyone was in a celebratory mood. Johnny's dad had taken the day off to be with his family and even Sam could not hide the softer side of her personality to Jessie who for a moment feared that they had all talked about her virginal predicament in greater detail than she would've wished.
Partly because she had eavesdropped on enough of her mother's conversations with her women's group to know that it only meant something if you yourself instigate it and partly because she wasn't about to repeat the samosa assembling under Sam's critical eye, Jessie took Johnny Jaweed's hand and led him to the bedroom where she stripped him of his clothes and laid him down horizontally on the single bed with the bed sheet made from a print of flying helicopters. It took another ten minutes before she extricated herself from his grip and another five until she was standing in the kitchen again with both feet once again firmly planted on the linoleum floor.
It was Johnny's dad who broke the silence by extending a plate of fried samosas to Jessie and inviting her to sample one. Jessie, for no reason at all, except perhaps relief and a sense of being at the beginning of a new refrain, began to giggle. A chorus broke out, led by Sam's guttural laughter, quickly followed by Aunt Mazie who popped a champagne bottle, and Vivienne who produced a Betty Crocker cupcake out of nowhere with the numbers one and six on it.
After two samosas, one Betty Crocker cupcake, and half a guilty thought about the barley burgers at home, Johnny's dad asked: "Eh, Jessie, what do you like most – the samosa or the Betty?” Vivienne, Sam, and Aunt Mazie looked at her expectantly. Not wanting to be partisan to any domestic cause over another, she was carefully thinking over her options when Johnny Jaweed came to the rescue:
"Can't you morons tell? – She loves them both just as much."