claims in exchange for a quiet life.



But in the end, Alsana laid down the law. Archie and the rest were going whether they liked it



or not. And they didn't. So now they were taking up half the bus in their attempts to sit alone: Clara



behind Alsana who was behind Archie who was behind Samad who was sitting across from Neena.



Me was sitting next to Archie, but only because there wasn't any more space.



"I was just saying .. . you know," said Archie, attempting the first conversation to broach the



frosty silence since they left Willesden. "It's quite interesting, the amount of information they put



on bus tickets these days. Compared with, you know, the old days. I was just wondering why. It's



quite interesting."



"I have to be honest, Archibald," said Samad with a grimace, "I find it singularly uninteresting.



I find it terminally dull."



"Oh, right," said Archie. "Right you are."



The bus did one of those arching corners where it feels the merest breath will topple it over.



"Umm ... so you wouldn't know why '



"No, Jones, I have no intimate friends at the bus garage nor any inside knowledge of the



progressive decisions that are no doubt made daily within London Transport. But if you are asking



me for my uneducated guess, then I imagine it is part of some huge government monitoring process



to track the every movement of one Archibald Jones, to ascertain where and what he is doing on all



days and at every moment'



"Jesus," Neena cut in irritably, 'why do you have to be such a bullyr



"Excuse me? I was not aware you and I, Neena, were having a conversation."



"He was just asking a question and you have to come over all arsey. I mean, you've been



bullying him for half a century. Haven't you had enough? Why don't you just leave him alone?"



"Neena Begum, I swear if you give me one more instruction today I will personally tear your



tongue out at the root and wear it as a necktie."



"Steady on, Sam," said Archie, perturbed at the fuss he had inadvertently caused, "I was just'



"Don't you threaten my niece," Alsana chimed in from further down the bus. "Don't you take it



out on her just because you'd rather be eating your beans and chips' Ah! (thought Archie, wistfully)



Beans and chips! - 'than going to see your own son actually achieving something and '



"I can't remember you being all that keen," said Clara, adding her twopence worth. "You know,



you have a very convenient way, Alsi, of forgetting what happened two minutes ago."



"This from the woman who lives with Archibald Jones!" scoffed Samad. "I might remind you



that people in glass houses '



"No, Samad," Clara protested. "Don't even begin to start on me. You're the one who had all the



real objections about coming .. . but you never stick to a decision, do you? Always Pandying



around. At least Archie's, well, you know .. ." stumbled Clara, unused to defending her husband and



unsure of the necessary



adjective, 'at least he makes a decision and sticks by it. At least Archie's consistent."



"Oh surely, yes," said Alsana acidly. "The same way that a stone is consistent, the same way my



dear babba is consistent for very simple reason that she's been buried underground for '



"Oh, shut up," said Irie.



Alsana was silenced for a moment, and then the shock subsided and she found her tongue. The



Jones, don't you tell me '



"No, I will tell you," said Irie, going very red in the face, 'actually. Yeah, I will. Shut up. Shut



up, Alsana. And shut up the lot of you. All right? Just shut up. In case you didn't notice, there are,



like, other people on this bus and, believe it or not, not everyone in the universe wants to listen to



you lot. So shut it. Go on. Try it. Silence. Ah." She reached into the air as if trying to touch the



quiet she had created. "Isn't that something? Did you know this is how other families are? They're



quiet. Ask one of these people sitting here. They'll tell you. They've got families. This is how some



families are all the time. And some people like to call these families repressed, or emotionally



stunted or whatever, but do you know what I say?"



The Iqbals and the Joneses, astonished into silence along with the rest of the bus (even the



loud-mouthed Ragga girls on their way to a Brixton dance hall New Year ting), had no answer.



"I say, lucky fuckers. Lucky, lucky fuckers."



The Jones!" cried Clara. "Watch your mouth!" But Irie couldn't be stopped.



"What a peaceful existence. What a joy their lives must be. They open a door and all they've got



behind it is a bathroom or a lounge. Just neutral spaces. And not this endless maze of present rooms



and past rooms and the things said in them years ago and everybody's old historical shit all over the



place. They're not constantly making the same old mistakes. They're not always hearing the same



old shit. They don't do public performances of angst on public transport. Really, these people exist.



I'm telling you. The biggest traumas of their lives are things like re carpeting Bill-paying. Gate-fixing.



They don't mind what their kids do in life as long as they're reasonably, you know, healthy. Happy.



And every single fucking day is not this huge battle between who they are and who they should be,



what they were and what they will be. Go on, ask them. And they'll tell you. No mosque. Maybe a



little church. Hardly any sin. Plenty of forgiveness. No attics. No shit in attics. No skeletons in



cupboards. No great-grandfathers. I will put twenty quid down now that Samad is the only person



in here who knows the inside bloody leg measurement of his great-grandfather. And you know why



they don't know? Because it doesn't fucking matter. As far as they're concerned, it's the past. This is



what it's like in other families. They're not self-indulgent. They don't run around, relishing,



relishing the fact that they are utterly dysfunctional. They don't spend their time trying to find ways



to make their lives more complex. They just get on with it. Lucky bastards. Lucky motherfuckers."



The enormous adrenalin rush that sprang from this peculiar outburst surged through Irie's body,



increased her heart-beat to a gallop and tickled the nerve ends of her unborn child, for Me was eight



weeks pregnant and she knew it. What she didn't know, and what she realized she may never know



(the very moment she saw the ghostly pastel blue lines materialize on the home test, like the face of



the madonna in the zucchini of an Italian housewife), was the identity of the father. No test on earth



would tell her. Same thick black hair. Same twinkling eyes. Same habit of chewing the tops of pens.



Same shoe size. Same deoxyribonucleic acid. She could not know her body's decision, what choice







it had made, in the race to the gamete, between the saved and the unsaved. She could not know if



the choice would make any difference. Because whichever brother it was, it was the other one too.



She would never know.



At first this fact seemed ineffably sad to Me; instinctively she sentimentalized the logical" title="a.生物学(上)的">biological



facts, adding her own invalid



Magid, Millat and Marcus 1992, 1999 *



syllogism: if it was not somebody's child, could it be that it was nobody's child? She thought of



those elaborate fictional cartograms that folded out of Joshua's old sci-fi books, his Fantasy



Adventures. That is how her child seemed. A perfectly plotted thing -with no real coordinates. A



map to an imaginary fatherland. But then, after weeping and pacing and rolling it over and over in



her mind, she thought: whatever, you know? Whatever. It was always going to turn out like this, not



precisely like this, but involved like this. This was the Iqbals we were talking about, here. This was



the Joneses. How could she ever have expected anything less?



And so she calmed herself, putting her hand over her palpitating chest and breathing deeply as



the bus approached the square and the pigeons circled. She would tell one of them and not the other;



she -would decide which; she would do it tonight.



"You all right, love?" Archie asked her, after a long period of silence had set in, putting his big



pink hand on her knee, dotted with liver-spots like tea stains. "A lot on your chest, then."



"Fine, Dad. I'm fine."



Archie smiled at her, and tucked a stray hair behind her ear.



"Dad."



"Yes?"



"The thing about the bus tickets." "Yes?"



"One theory goes it's because so many people pay less than they should for their journey. Over



the past few years the bus companies have been suffering from larger and larger deficits. You see



where it says Retain for Inspection! That's so they can check later. It's got all the details there, so



you can't get away with it."



And in the past, Archie wondered, was it just that fewer people cheated? Were they more honest,



and did they leave their front doors open, did they leave their kids with the neighbours, pay social



calls, run up tabs with the butcher? The funny thing about getting old in a country is people always



want to hear that from you. They want to hear it really was once a green and pleasant land. They



need it. Archie wondered if his daughter needed it. She was looking at him funny. Her mouth



down-turned, her eyes almost pleading. But what could he tell her? New Years come and go, but no



amount of resolutions seem to change the fact that there are bad blokes. There were always plenty



of bad blokes.



"When I was a kid," said Irie softly, ringing the bell for their stop, "I used to think they were



little alibis. Bus tickets. I mean, look: they've got the time. The date. The place. And if I was up in



court, and I had to defend myself, and prove I wasn't where they said I was, doing what they said I



did, when they said I did it, I'd pull out one of those."



Archie was silent and Irie, assuming the conversation was over, was surprised when several



minutes later, after they had struggled through the happy New Year crowd and tourists standing



round aimlessly, as they were walking up the steps of the Ferret Institute, her father said, "Now, I



never thought of that. I'll remember that. Because you never know, do you? I mean, do you? Well.



There's a thought. You should pick them up off the street, I suppose. Put 'em all in a jar. An alibi for



every occasion."



And all these people are heading for the same room. The final space. A big room, one of many



in the Perret Institute; a room separate from the exhibition yet called an Exhibition Room; a



corporate place, a clean slate; white/chrome/pure/plain (this was the design brief) used for the



meetings of people who want to meet somewhere neutral at the end of the twentieth century; a



virtual place where their business (be that re branding lingerie or re branding lingerie) can be done



in an emptiness, an uncontaminated cavity; the logical endpoint of a thousand years of



spaces too crowded and bloody. This one is pared down, sterilized, made new every day by a



Nigerian cleaning lady with an industrial Hoover and guarded through the night by Mr. De Winter,



a Polish night watchman (that's what he calls himself his job title is Asset Security Coordinator); he



can be seen protecting the space, walking the borders of the space with a Walkman playing Polish



folk-tunes; you can see him, you can see it through a huge glass front if you walk by the acres of



protected vacuity and a sign with the prices per square foot of these square feet of space of space of



space longer than it is wide and tall enough to fit head-to-toe three Archies and at least half an



Alsana and tonight there are (there will not be tomorrow) two huge, matching posters, slick across



two sides of the room like wallpaper and the text says MILLENNIAL SCIENCE COMMISSION in



a wide variety of fonts ranging from the deliberate archaism of vfKfoq to the modernity of Impact



in order to get a feel of a thousand years in lettering (this was the brief), and all of it in the alternate



colours grey, light blue and dark green because these are the colours research reveals people



associate with 'science and technology' (purples and reds denote the arts, royal blue signifies



'quality and/or approved merchandise'), because fortunately after years of corporate synaesthesia



(salt & vinegar blue cheese & onion green people can finally give the answers required when a



space is being designed, or when something is being re branded a room/furniture/Britain (that was



the brief: a new British room, a space for Britain, Britishness, space of Britain, British industrial



space cultural space space); they know what is meant when asked how matt chrome makes them



feel; and they know what is meant by national identity? symbols? paintings? maps? music?



air-conditioning? smiling black children or smiling Chinese children or [tick the box]? world music?



shag or pile? tile or floorboards? plants? running water?



they know what they want, especially those who've lived this century, forced from one space to



another like Mr. De Winter one



Wojciech), renamed, re branded the answer to every questionnaire nothing nothing space please



just space nothing please nothing space

关键字:White Teeth

生词表: