Black Bread White Beer. Niven Govinden
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far reaches. It is the unwritten rule of twenty-first-century gift-giving, that a guest should never arrive without a token for the garden. They have more pots than they know what to do with, filled with plants that need little maintenance, woody herbs and tall reedy bamboos, and neatly patterned around the plot, like a super-sized, organic solitaire. The unwanted remainder should be dumped in the garage by rights, a job that continues to escape his mind, until the point when he’s hiding and retrieving fags. Claud often jokes that they should recycle them as gifts, if only they knew which person had given which pot.
Ordinarily, when hopes are not being lost he smokes one, two cigarettes a day. It helps. He likes to think that he’s unashamed of needing a crutch, but still goes to pains to conceal it, not wanting her to think that he hasn’t agreed whole-heartedly with her plans: organic food, chemical-free detergents, regular, moderate exercise. Conception is something to be taken seriously, needing as much preparation as a marathon.
‘We’re in our thirties, Amal. I’ve messed-up my periods with over-dieting. Your metabolism is slowing to a stop with all that pizza. We’re not single people any more. We have to get a grip of ourselves, make changes.’
He has read the many printouts she leaves on the kitchen counter, that say an abundance of fish, and Brazil nuts are good for his sperm. Many cloves of raw garlic, too. His breath is pungent enough to wither vine fruits, forcing a dependency on extra-strong mints in the office. Other than red wine, alcohol, particularly beer, is banned. So is masturbation. Bread is gluten free, dairy limited. A glass of water must be drunk every hour; supplements are taken twice a day: a multi-vitamin, iron, selenium, omega 3, and aspirin. His piss is sent off for analysis, his stools discussed most mornings whilst he cleans his teeth, something he never thought he would be doing with a white woman. They spend four weeks on this treadmill before she lets him near her, the time it takes to convince that they have eliminated the worst of their collective toxins. Penance for their self-absorbed, shag-around twenties. He leaves her printouts too, which go unread: studies which show how excessive ejaculation can lead to prostate cancer.
‘We can worry about your prostate later. We can leave it to our kids to take care of us.’
All that matters is the here and now: the diet, sticking to the plan. She wants to make a baby with the best cellular development, with the cleanest, tox-free constituent elements. She does not want to leave anything to chance.
Now, while he waits for ten o’clock, he is intent on toxing-up, filling his boots with carcinogens. Fag in mouth as he finally shifts the pots into the garage like she has been asking for weeks, months. Do your bit, boy. Move your arse. The clean way has not worked, so maybe this will be better. Even before she returns, he feels the disappointment, self-blame, hanging in the air, but it does not seem irreparable. It is nothing that faith cannot fix.
He is parking up at the hospital when Hari calls him. It is close to ten and there has been no word from the hospital. He figures he should muscle in on the ward so he can be present when the doctor arrives. He has pulled himself together. Looks respectable. His shoulder is steady, ready to take her weight.
‘You’ll have to be quick, mate. I’m about to go into a meeting.’
The work brush-off is a default setting they are attuned to, nothing that can be picked up on. His tone is curt, and vaguely irritated. They all behave like this between nine and six.
‘Oh. I thought you’d be at the hospital.’
‘Why would I be at the hospital?’
‘Because of Claud. You called me last night, remember?’
It feels as if someone has drawn a curtain, making the hint of a secondary unease – headache to a bellyache – tangible. He remembers the close noise of the steakhouse restaurant, a birthday party on the table next to him, of having to move towards the revolving doors and still shouting to be heard. He remembers gabbling about how scared he was. Crying. What he cannot recall is Hari’s voice, or pulling up his number. He could have been talking to anyone.
‘I probably shouldn’t even be calling, but I just wanted to see if you guys were ok. If there’s anything I can do.’
Men do not have best friends the way women do. It is too co-dependent a state, one that can overwhelm the basic masculine need for secrets and freedoms. But if pushed, he would admit that Hari falls somewhere in that area, solid and omnipotent. Hari brought him and Claud together in the first place. Match-made his new work colleague with his university buddy, something that seems to have given him a vested interest in their marriage. Makes him wonder now, about the crying, whether it was actually Hari’s he remembers, and not his?
He showered Hari with thanks in those early days. Thanks for working with this amazing woman he couldn’t keep his hands off. You’re a mate. Thanks for weaning him off those shady nightclub girls he fruitlessly chased for most of his twenties. He gave thanks for every time she laughed at him and his badly constructed jokes which still remain all incidentals and no punch-line. When she applauded his cooking, and for not assuming he made curry every night of the week.
He thanked her for the pawing and growling that came after dinner, and often before. For the little sounds she made. The little sounds he made. For being obsessed with her red hair, especially the way it looked when it caught the lamplight in the bedroom, deep, concentrated, as if her head had already been cast in bronze, timeless and luminescent. For not wanting to be away from her, for needing to catch every word she said, whether flighty stream of consciousness or good, plain sense. He thanked him for hooking him up with a girl who was cleverer, who was on a faster career path and earned more. Who spoke with experience when she said that it was better to sit things out with his firm than look to be the big fish in smaller ponds. Who did not shy away from talking about money, but equally did not allow it to become the elephant in the room. Thanked him for the energy, the whirlwind. Days speeding past towards languid, dreamy weekends, a perfect mix of domesticity and fantasy. Thanked him for her silliness, that she was a goofball for all her careerist seriousness. That she was always up for a spontaneous water fight, and karaoke, but drew the line at descending into sickly baby voices with him. But most of all, he thanked Hari for putting her in his universe, wondering how he could have previously existed without her. He was soppy with love, then.
When he was finishing his master’s during his early twenties, he was smacked around the head by a group of kids at the bus stop, suffering a broken nose and fractured eye socket. The kids hauled a mere twelve pounds and a prehistoric mobile phone, which he was about to get rid of anyway. He thinks about the phone call he made to Hari from the hospital, his voice as cracked as his face, and the discomfort this brewed in him. He does not want to be viewed with compassionate eyes for a second time, nor any further prying into the state of their marriage. They do not need help. They are fine.
Privacy is needed. Ignorance. Hari’s compassion is simply the first wave, the ripple along the surf. They will be drowned many times over before others have finished expressing their sympathy.
‘Does anyone else know?’
‘I haven’t had time to think. Not even our parents know yet.’
‘I can ring around if it’ll make things easier.’
‘No. This is Claud’s shout. Something we need to keep to ourselves for the time being.’
He has a feeling when the signal fails, fortuitously, the phone masts banished from the hospital’s immediate radius, that he will be avoiding Hari for a very long time, now seeing the point of distance between friends.
This is not the plan. She has already been discharged. He sees her, unexpectedly, as he walks up the ramp towards the entrance and works hard to keep his face from crumbling. She is sitting on a bench, reading a leaflet, her overnight bag wedged between her feet. Even from this distance he sees what change the night has brought, how she seems to have shrunk by degrees, her wraparound coat, a recent prized