NW by Zadie Smith Read Free Book Online

still. Not pretending anything. Which makes it all much harder.
    –How’s your mother, your sisters? You remember Leah. She’s married now.
    –Is it. That’s good, yeah.
    He smiles shyly at Leah. Aged ten he had a smile! Nathan Bogle: the very definition of desire for girls who had previously only felt that way about certain fragrant erasers. A smile to destroy the resolve of even the strictest teachers, other people’s parents. At ten she would have done anything, anything! Now she sees ten-year-olds and cannot believe they have inside them what she had inside her at the same age.
    –Long time.
    –Yes.
    Longer for him. About once a year she sees him on the high road. She ducks into a shop, or crosses, or gets on a bus. Now missing a tooth here and there and there. Devastated eyes. What should be white is yellow. Red veins breaking out all over.
    –Here’s that pound. You take care of yourself now. Remember me to your mother.
    Quickly through the barrier, bumping into each other in their haste, and then quickly up the stairs.
    –That was horrible.
    –His poor mother! I should stop in on her one of these days. So sad. I’d heard, but I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.
    The train pulls in and Leah watches Pauline regard it calmly, step forward to the yellow line. This realm of Pauline’s—the realm of the so sad—is immutable and inevitable, like hurricanes and tsunamis. No particular angst is attached to it. Normally, this is bearable; today it is obscene. So sad is too distant from Pauline’s existence, which is only disappointing. It makes disappointing look like a blessing. This must be why news of it is always so welcome, so satisfying.
    –You carried a torch for him, I remember. Went inside for a few years, later on, I think. He’s not the one who killed somebody, now, no, that was somebody else. Sectioned, was he? At one point? Beat his father to a pulp, that much I’m sure of. Though that man had it coming or something like it.
    Leah lifts two free papers from the pile as the train pulls out because reading is silent. She tries to read an article. It is about an actress walking her dog in a park. But Pauline wants to read an article about a man who was not really who he said he was, and she wants to talk about it, too.
    –Well, if you will claim to be infallible! Say what you like about our lot but least we don’t claim to be infallible. Men of God, are they? Those poor children. Lives ruined. And they call it religion! Well, let’s hope that’s an end to the whole business once and for all.
    Seeing as how they are speaking to the whole carriage, Leah mounts a mild defense, thinking of the smell of the censer, the voluptuous putti babies, the gold sunburst, cold marble floor, dark wood carved and plaited, women kneeling whispering lighting candles InterRailing nineteen ninety-three.
    –Wish we had confession. Wish I could confess.
    –Oh grow up, Leah, will you?
    Pauline turns the page with violence. The window logs Kilburn’s skyline. Ungentrified, ungentrifiable. Boom and bust never come here. Here bust is permanent. Empty State Empire, empty Odeon, graffiti-streaked sidings rising and falling like a rickety rollercoaster. Higgledy piggledy rooftops and chimneys, some high, some low, packed tightly, shaken fags in a box. Behind the opposite window, retreating Willesden. Number 37. In the 1880s or thereabouts the whole thing went up at once—houses, churches, schools, cemeteries—an optimistic vision of Metroland. Little terraces, faux-Tudor piles. All the mod cons! Indoor toilet, hot water. Well-appointed country living for those tired of the city. Fast forward. Disappointed city living for those tired of their countries.
    –Vol-can-ic air-borne ash man-i-fest-a-tion?
    Pauline enunciates each syllable carefully, doubtful of its reality, and brings the photo too close to her daughter’s nose. Leah can make out only a great swirl of gray. Maybe this is all there is to see. The matter is