Something to Tell You

by Hanif Kureishi

  Miriam was two years older than me. Before she immigrated to the far side of eccentricity, Miriam had been the intelligent one, quicker, funnier, more easily able to grasp difficult ideas, and far less nervous and reticent. The reading I hid myself in as a child she considered a waste of time. What was a book compared to experience? Mum and I would sit in the house reading together, but Miriam was more like our father, always with others, talking, kicking people in the legs, making wild dramas.

  These days, however, little that was new or not mundane entered her head; she was weary. I wanted to say that I thought we should go somewhere, to the seaside or to Venice, somewhere to talk, rest and refill ourselves. But I was tired myself—the separation from Josephine weighed on me; how exhausting it is to hate!—and really I didn’t have the energy to travel.

  After I’d eaten the dhal, I asked Miriam to call Rafi down. He always jumped nervously at her voice. When he appeared, he complained that he wanted to stay the night. Things could get riotous among the children even if they were quiet; they’d still be watching Dumb and Dumber or even Blade II at four in the morning. He lived too ordered a life between me and his mother, but I wouldn’t be able to pick him up from Miriam’s at breakfast time. I was seeing my first patient at seven, and I wouldn’t have time to pack his school bag, fill his lunch box and prepare his football gear.

  Before we left, I remembered to ask Miriam about the dope.

  “I have a friend who needs it,” I said. “I’m not telling you who.”

  “It’s Henry then. As it’s him, I’ll have to get up,” she said, ignoring the stuff she kept on the table in a shoebox. “I’m not giving him this; you’d be better off smoking Marmite.”

  I noticed how heavy she was, and getting heavier, as she got to her feet and moved around, holding on to the furniture as she went.

  While she rummaged around in various drawers and bags, sniffing, squishing and shouting at the now absent driver, “Bushy! Bushy—where’s the decent stuff?”, I informed her that Henry was considering a production of Ibsen’s Ghosts. Years ago I’d taken Miriam to see a production of short Beckett pieces Henry had done with students. These end-of-term plays with tyro actors, which he did every couple of years, were highly considered, and packed with other directors, writers and even critics. This particular show had impressed Miriam, or at least I thought so: she’d fallen silent. “What’s Henry doing?” she’d say. “Any more of those sad Becketts we can go and see?”

  “Okay?” Having realised Bushy had left for the Cross Keys, she was holding up a piece of hash the size of a dice. “Why does your friend want this?”

  “I think Henry’s discovered dissipation in his old age,” I said. “He’s taken up drinking, too. He always appreciated wine, but now it’s the effect he’s after.”

  She asked, “Anything else?”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “Does he want any pornos?” She giggled. “Remember when you used to work in that side of things?”

  “Thanks for reminding me. I wish I hadn’t told you.”

  “Don’t you tell me everything?”

  “I try not to.”

  “You didn’t write the films, though, did you?”

  “No, not the films,” I said.

  “That’s where you’d have made the money. You didn’t act in the pornos either, did you?”

  “For God’s sake, Miriam, can you see me acting, particularly without trousers?”

  “Do you talk to your patients about your dodgy past?”

  “No.”

  “There’s a lot about you they don’t know.”

  “They’re not supposed to know. They need me to be a blank screen. As for Henry,” I went on, “he thinks he’s too old for sex, and his body resembles a plate of spaghetti—or a mudslide. Among others, his son is dating a fashion writer. She walks about his flat in mules and a red satin dressing gown, which falls open to expose more shimmering flimsies and worse. Imagine how terrible this is for Henry. He thinks this mule woman can only do this because she doesn’t consider him to be a man but an impotent grandfather.”

  “Poor guy.” Her eyes were tearing into me. “But you like that woman too, don’t you—the mule thingy? You’ve met her around there?”

  “Yes.”

  “What went on?”

  I hesitated. “You are perceptive. I invited her out. We walked together by the river one evening when Henry’s son was out, stopping off at various pubs to drink whisky macs. By the end we were soused. I have to say I’ve never felt so strongly towards anyone before—not even Ajita. For the next week I woke up thinking about her every morning. It was a delirium, like being ducked in madness.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. She didn’t see me like that. Had she given me one word of hope, I’d have followed her anywhere. But I had nothing she wanted.”

  “Oh, Jamal. Poor Henry, too.” She had resumed bustling about. “If he does want any pornos, they’re in your basement in a cardboard box.”

  “They are?”

  “Just take a couple for yourself and give some to him. You know Jordan?”

  “Never been there.”

  “Not the place, you cunt, the porn star. She’s in some of them, with black men. You don’t know who she is?”

  “You mistake me for an intellectual. Late-night television’s my favourite indulgence,” I went on. “Did I tell you Henry was offered an OBE but turned it down?”

  “Why did he say no?”

  “The respectability of his generation is making him crazy. Once they were hippy ‘heads,’ now they’re all headmasters. Blair himself is a mixture of Boy Scout and Mrs. Thatcher. Henry’s decided to keep the dissident flag flying.”

  Miriam shut the drawer she’d been fiddling in. “Yes or no to Her-fucking-Majesty, this stuff’s not good enough for the likes of Henry. It makes you dumb, like the people around here.”

  “I know you always liked him.”

  “You’re right. He didn’t look down on me, as you did. He liked to explain what he was doing, even though I’m a fat and mad philis—…You know.”

  “Philistine,” I said. “He’s coming for lunch next week.”

  “I’ll get the stuff and have it delivered to your place.” She kissed me. “I love you so much, bro.”

  On the way home Rafi played Beethoven’s Ninth to me on his trembling mouth organ, which always made me laugh, though I was sure to praise the rendition. Then he did his “conversation between an Irishman, a Jamaican and an Indian,” and I almost crashed.

  As we turned the corner, something quick ran across the road, like a collection of brown elbows.

  “A wolf!” said Rafi. “Will it attack us?”

  “It’s a fox,” I said. “There are no wolves around here, apart from the human variety.”

  We were inside; as it was a warm evening, I opened the doors to the garden.

  I would get Rafi into bed and then sit outside for a bit with a glass of wine and the rest of yesterday’s joint. It was still light, and I noticed the cats were on the back wall. Not my grey, who was on my bed with his head in my shoulder bag, but the red-collared black with a white face from next door and the local Tom tabby—gruff, up for it—with a wide head and menacing eyes. They appeared, at the moment, to be tapping one another’s faces with their paws.

  “Hey, Rafi, look at this. I think these cats are about to get married,” I said. “But that wall doesn’t look comfortable.”

  Rafi attended to his Game Boy as well as to the scene in front of him, which was developing quickly. The cats moved down to the little lawn, a few feet from us. The Tom dug his teeth into Red’s neck, threw her down and got on top of her. It didn’t look promising for him, more like thrusting your fingers into a bag full of needles.

  “Is it a rape?” Rafi asked.

  “I’m afraid she likes it.”

  “Are they happy?”

  “Yes, because they’ve forgotten themselves, temporarily.” I pulle
d the door closed to give them privacy. “They were doing it in the same place yesterday. But it is rough sex. It’s wilder than you’d think in this neighbourhood.”

  She was down on her back, and he was on her, concentrating on thrusting, trying for a better position, pushing more while stabbing his paw into her stomach, trying to keep her in place. They spat and hissed at one another.

  “Disgusting,” said Rafi, making a face. “This new game is difficult,” he added relevantly, his toy making a tinny pop sound.

  “The American poet Robert Lowell says something like, ‘But nature is sundrunk with sex.’”

  Rafi said, “Yeah?”

  “Apparently human beings are the only species that don’t like to be looked at while having sex. They are, too, the only animals who bury their dead.” I added, “Did you know the clitoris was discovered in 1559 by Columbus—this was Renald Columbus of Padua, who called it ‘the sweetness of Venus.’”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s true,” I said.

  “I’ve heard all this before, the facts of life and everything. In a book at school. D’you think I’m intelligent for my age?”

  “Yes. Am I?”

  “Yes.”

  I said, “That’s because I read a lot as a kid.”

  “Poor you, is that all there was to do?”

  The cat sex went on a long time. Rafi opened the doors for a clearer view, fetched a chair and sat down, giggling and gasping. Despite his efforts, the couple were not easily disturbed. When they were done, Red frolicked on her back, celebrating, turning, stretching, while Tom Tabby sat on his haunches, watching her, before lapping at his genitals. At last the two of them strolled off together into other gardens. If they’d had hands, they’d have joined them.

  Rafi wanted to ring his mother, to tell her what he’d seen. Had Rafi described the scene to her, no doubt she’d have chastised me for letting him watch, but her phone was turned off. No doubt she was attempting the same thing, at last.

  When it comes to teaching the art of pleasure, parents and schools can be an obstruction, a disaster even. I looked at the boy and thought about my father, who had passed little knowledge of sex on to me, or even about the place he thought pleasure might take in someone’s life. In my twenties I resented the fact he’d made no attempt to explain what I characterised then as “the truth about sex.”

  But what would I have wanted a father or, indeed, a mother to say? What did sex consist of, and what did my son have to look forward to? I remember wondering about this with Josephine one time, asking her about the variety of sexual experiences that were available, and which of them he might develop a liking for. “As long as it’s nice and loving,” she said, sweetly. Indeed; but as La Rochefoucauld remarked on ghosts and love, “All talk of it, but none have seen it for certain.”

  Her remark stopped me, briefly. I knew my son would learn that there were numerous varieties of sexual expression: promiscuity, prostitution, pornography, perversion, phone sex, one-night stands, cruising, S&M, Internet dating, sex with a wife or husband, sex with someone else’s wife or husband. There was a full menu, as long as a novella. Which would appeal? Freud, the committed monogamist, began his famous Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality with his thoughts about fetishism, homosexuality, exhibitionism, sadism, bestiality, anal sex, bisexuality, masochism and voyeurism. I was reminded of a joke: Which way of being normal would you like to be, neurotically normal, psychotically normal or perversely normal?

  Perhaps my son would, one day, prefer to be blown by a stranger in a toilet, or perhaps he would like to be spanked while being fellated by a Negro transvestite. The side circles of pleasure were manifold, and with an aesthetic edge too: there was smelling, hearing and tasting. And speaking. More than half of sex is speaking. Words ignite desire; if speaking is an erotic art, what could be more erotic than a whisper? However, repetition is a love which doesn’t diminish: in the Marquis de Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom, Mme. de Saint-Ange asserts that in her twelve-year marriage her husband asked for the same thing every day: that she suck his cock while shitting in his mouth.

  I might also add, though it may seem cynical, and it wasn’t something I’d bring up with Josephine, that loving someone, or even liking them, has never brought the slightest improvement to sexual pleasure. In fact, not liking the other, or actively disliking them—even hating them—could free up one’s pleasure considerably. Think of the aggression—violence even—that a good fuck involves.

  What, then, were the pleasures and who could guarantee them? Should I have been guiding the train of his desire towards the ultimate, if tyrannically ideal, destination, what Freud called, somewhat optimistically, “full genital sexuality?” Or should I suggest he stop off at some of the other stations and sidings first? As the great Viennese satirist Karl Kraus noted—a man characterised as a “mad halfwit” by Freud—it is the most tragic thing in the world for the fetishist who wants only a shoe but gets the whole woman.

  One of the “truths” about sex which Rafi would also discover—perhaps early on—would be how problematical sex is, and how much people hate it, as well as how much shame, embarrassment and rage it can encourage. Henry and his generation did a lot to educate us about the nature of desire, but however free we believe ourselves to be—liberated now from the horrors of religious morality—our bodies will always trouble us with their unusual desires and perverse refusals, as though they had a mind of their own, and there was a stranger within us.

  Josephine liked to be flirted with while pretending to ignore the sub-text. For devoted parents, there were opportunities for such fun. Many of our neighbours had strenuous shared lives organised around the school; lovers could meet at the gates twice a day. If the children were busy with one another, the parents were more so. As Josephine would come to learn, the school playground being an emotional minefield, with the Muslim parents keeping their kids away from white homes. In bed, in the days when we shared one, Josephine would give me the gossip. I was reminded of a book, Updike’s Couples, that Dad had passed on to me and which seemed, at the time, deliciously corrupt in its banal everyday betrayals. As then, it was the betrayals—and the secrets they engendered—which were the most delectable transgressions.

  Of all the perversions, the strangest was celibacy, the desire to cancel all desire, to hate it. Not that you could abolish it once and for all. Desire, like the dead or an unpleasant meal, would keep returning—it was ultimately indigestible. Rafi’s mother had insisted on, indeed clung to, her own innocence. The badness was always only in me. It was, from her point of view, a rational division of labour. What she didn’t see was that the innocent have everything—integrity, respect, moral goodness—except pleasure. Pleasure: vortex and abyss—that which we desire and fear simultaneously. Pleasure implies dirtying your hands and mind, and being threatened; there is fear, disgust, self-loathing and moral failure. Pleasure was hard work; not everyone, perhaps not most people, could bear to find it.

  The sex show was over. The boy threw his clothes down and went to bed. Through the open doors, I could watch him sleep. He was wearing headphones and the music was loud enough for me to experience a familiarity with 50 Cent I could have forfeited. When Rafi’s long lashes fluttered less and less, like a butterfly settling, I turned the music off.

  I sat at my desk with part of my inheritance: Father’s favourite and now mine, a glass of almost frozen vodka and a carton of Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream. A slug and a slurp, and the cat sitting on my papers. I was all set. I would write with a fountain pen before typing everything into my new Apple G4. I could listen to music on it; when I was bored I would look at the photographs and pictures I was currently interested in. Unable to sleep and with bursts of obsessive energy—and this was a new thing with me—I had been thinking of the phrase Henry had quoted from Ibsen, “We sail with a corpse in the cargo.”

  For some reason it made me recall the line which had occurred to me earlier and which I kept hearing in my
head: “She was my first love, but I was not hers.”

  Oh, Ajita, if you are still alive, where are you now? Do you ever think of me?

  CHAPTER THREE

  So, I must begin this story-within-a-story.

  One day a door opened and a girl walked into the room.

  It was the mid-1970s.

  The first time I saw Ajita was in our college classroom, an airless, dry box in the depths of a new building on the Strand, down the street from Trafalgar Square. I was at university in London, reading philosophy and psychology. Ajita was pretty late for the discussion on St. Anselm’s arrow; the class that day was nearly over; anyhow, it had been going for two months. She must have had good reason for them to let her join the course at such a late stage.

  It was as hot in those college classrooms as it was in any hospital, and Ajita’s face was flushed and uneasy as she came in half an hour after the class had started and put down her car keys, cigarettes, lighter and several glossy magazines, none of which had the word philosophy in the title.

  There were about twelve students in the class, mostly hippies, down-at-heel, hardworking academic types—the sort my son would refer to as “geeks”—a Goth, and a couple of punks wearing safety pins and bondage trousers. The hip kids were turning punk; I’d been to school with some of them, and I’d still see them when I was out with my friend Valentin in the Water Rat or the Roebuck, and sometimes the Chelsea Potter in the King’s Road. But I found them dirty and dispirited, thuggish and always spitting. The music was important, but no one would want to listen to it.

  I’d always been a neat kid; talentlessness, to which the punks subscribed as a principle, didn’t inspire me. I knew I was talented—at something or other—and my own look had become black suits and white shirts, which was both counter-hippy and too smooth to be punk, though it might have passed as New Wave. You wouldn’t catch William Burroughs in beads or safety pins.

  Now the Indian girl was at one of those chairs with a swivelling flat piece of wood attached, for writing on. She was pulling off her hat, removing her scarf and trying to lay them on the flat surface. They slid off. I picked them up and put them back; they fell off again. Soon we were smiling at all this. Her coat came off next, followed by her jumper. But where would she put them, and what would be next?