The Last Gift

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  ‘I thought he was a very gracious man, though,’ Lena replied, joining in the joke. ‘Apart from his style of saying goodbye. He had a very clear way of speaking, don’t you think? A kind of eloquence.’

  ‘What do you think he does?’ Lisa asked. ‘Or did, rather. I should think he’s retired now, wouldn’t you?’

  Lena shrugged. ‘Jamal was poking around like a detective. I don’t know if he picked up any clues. Jamal, what was that book he had on the table? That should tell us something.’

  ‘The Essays of Montaigne,’ Jamal said, and laughed out loud at their stunned silence. ‘I don’t know what book he had on the table! I just wondered what you would make of the possibility that he might be reading Montaigne.’

  ‘I think he’s a writer,’ Lena said later, when they were on their own. Jamal looked sceptical. ‘Just the way he spoke, and all the things he knew about Irish literature.’

  That night they heard the banging and the shouting again next door as they lay in bed. Jamal got up and started to dress, but the noises stopped before he had his shoes on, and after a moment of tense silence, Lena called his name and he went back to bed. The next afternoon, Jamal knocked on Harun’s door.

  ‘I heard shouting and banging last night,’ he said, standing on the pavement outside Harun’s house. ‘You should call the police.’

  ‘I have called the police, but they tell me there is nothing they can do,’ Harun said wearily. ‘It has been like this since Pat died. They never used to do this when she was here. I have seen these young people. At least I think it’s them, some youths that I see down this street. I don’t know if they all live around here or just come to make mischief, but I have seen a group of them and seen their grins as I walk past them. I think they are the ones who come and do all the shouting. But listen, I’ll survive. They are probably more frightened about what they are doing than I am. I have seen enough in my life not to be frightened by children shouting abuse.’

  Jamal could imagine his Ba saying the same thing. Me, I’m not afraid of these children. I’m more afraid of the police. But Jamal had no faith in children and did not think they could be disarmed by being ignored. They were as evil as everyone else. Just think for a moment of the tortures child soldiers were committing in African wars. He did not want to insist with Harun when he had come to offer sympathy, so after a moment he asked: ‘Have you read Montaigne?’

  ‘Yes, some years ago,’ Harun said, surprised. ‘With some pleasure, I must say. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh I just wondered. I heard someone talking about Montaigne on the radio the other day, someone working on a new edition of the essays,’ Jamal lied. ‘I just wondered if you had read him. I haven’t, but I think I will.’

  ‘You’ll enjoy him, I’m sure. He is very entertaining, and wise. When I read him for the first time, I was taken completely by surprise. The style was quite unexpected, so accessible and intelligent and frank, not always something you expect when you read a writer from another century and one who you think will have a different view of the world. Come in, let’s have a talk about Montaigne,’ Harun said, opening the front door wide and standing back.

  ‘Well, I’ll read him first and then we can talk,’ Jamal said, grinning.

  ‘Come in anyway, let’s not stand here at the door like strangers.’

  Inside, Jamal’s eyes were drawn to the photograph of the woman on the bureau, and without hesitation he asked if that was his wife. Pat. Harun shook his head and motioned for Jamal to sit while he took the chair by the window.

  ‘I don’t know who the woman is,’ he said, smiling, apparently not minding Jamal’s directness. ‘We found the pictures in one of the kitchen drawers when we moved into this house more than twenty years ago. The house was empty when we bought it. All the furniture was cleared out, the floors were bare or covered with bits of broken lino here and there. It felt like a house where someone had lived his or her last days in. Then perhaps a relative or the solicitors cleared the house for sale. Well, whoever cleared the house missed the photographs in the drawer. Pat was for throwing them away but I managed to keep them. Then a year or two ago I put them up on the walls.’

  Harun stopped as if that explained everything.

  ‘Why did you put photographs of people you don’t know on your walls? They are nothing to do with you,’ Jamal said politely.

  ‘They are something to do with me,’ Harun replied, equally politely. ‘I found it comforting to think these were people who may have been part of the life of this house. They look far too grand to have lived in such a humble house, but perhaps they visited here. Possibly the gentry in the pictures were the employers of the people who lived here, or even possibly their relatives who may have fallen on hard times and may have been forced to come down in the world. I enjoyed entertaining all these possibilities, and up there on the walls, they looked benignly on this space that I now occupy. I have grown fond of them, and without their kindly gaze, this would feel a far emptier place than it does.’

  Jamal had heard the a year or two ago, and assumed these photographs replaced others that were there before, perhaps of Pat. He guessed that the pictures were a decoy, a way of obscuring a reality, offering one story instead of another. But obscure it from whom? Who would come to his house to read his life?

  ‘The pictures seem to have put you in deep thought, Jamal,’ Harun said. ‘It is just a frivolity, don’t let it trouble you. Sometimes I pretend that a stranger comes to the house and asks me to reveal the story behind the photographs because he or she assumes they belong to me. I imagine that I say that yes, they are my pictures, but I have forgotten the people and the places in them. Think just how absurd that story would strike anybody who heard it. I wonder if it could ever be true, that you would reach a time when the mementos of your life would say nothing to you, when you could look around you and have no story to tell. It would feel as if you were not there with these nameless and memoryless objects, as if you were no longer present among the bits and pieces of your life, as if you did not exist.’

  Jamal asked. ‘Are you play-acting your non-existence?’

  ‘No, I imagine how it would feel to arrive at that condition, not wish for it,’ Harun said, giving every sign of enjoying the exchange. ‘Not yet, anyway. I don’t think this play with the pictures is a kind of death wish. I lament the passing of each day, as if it is something I have lost. I don’t wish for my days to end yet.’

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ Jamal said, encouraged by his smiles to press for something clearer. ‘What is this drama with the images an enactment of? What does it mean?’

  ‘I am not sure what it means, just a frivolity on my part,’ Harun said again. ‘When the idea occurred to me I was amused by what someone would read from this, like wearing a disguise and walking the streets and seeing how the world looked at you differently. Medieval princes found this very entertaining, for example. But since I did not expect anyone to come and see the drama, it was, as you say, a game I played by myself. And since you are forcing me to think so hard about this little frivolity, which I entered into intuitively, I should confess that the pictures may also have been an evasion.’

  ‘Pat,’ Jamal said, almost involuntarily.

  ‘Yes, Pat,’ Harun replied, and then turned to look out of the window for what seemed to Jamal a long time. He guessed he was running images of her through his mind, remembering her. Then he looked back at Jamal and nodded, smiling wryly in a way he was beginning to recognise. He thought the smile was a courteous rebuke which meant I don’t want to talk about this matter right now, or perhaps this is not something that I can talk about with you when I hardly know you. Another old man hoarding his memories. It made him think of Ba. So much about Harun made him think about Ba, how he might have been.

  ‘I’d better leave you in peace,’ Jamal said. ‘I’m sorry if I intruded, but thank you for talking to me about the pictures.’

  ‘No no, you have not intruded. It gives me pleasure to
talk to you. Like someone I have known for a long time,’ Harun said.

  ‘What was your work?’ Jamal asked.

  ‘Many years ago I was a journalist. Then when we moved here I became a teacher of journalism at the Polytechnic,’ Harun said, waving these matters aside. ‘Now I write stories for children.’

  ‘You are a writer,’ Jamal said, delighted.

  Harun grinned to have made him happy. ‘Well, that is to flatter me. I write children’s versions of great stories, and I make up one or two of my own in the same register, although these are not for publication. I have done episodes from Firdausi’s Shahnameh and some from Homer, and most recently a version of the original Hamlet. They are published in small cheap editions for children and sold in South Asia and Africa. It is work that gives me pleasure.’

  ‘I would love to read them,’ Jamal said.

  ‘Then you shall,’ Harun said. ‘Is that what you want to do? Be a writer?’

  ‘Me?’ Jamal said, quite astounded by this suggestion.

  Then Harun got up and went to the bureau. He opened the desk doors and Jamal saw him reach into a heavy, battered old bag. He brought out a framed photograph and handed it to him. Pat, he said. There were two of them, standing on a wide beach with their backs to the sea. He recognised a much younger Harun, perhaps in his late thirties with long black hair, and Pat beside him. She wore a short, sleeveless cotton dress, splashes of mauve and white, and on her face was a small intimate smile. Jamal thought she looked beautiful and pleased with herself, as if everything was going according to plan. She was as tall as Harun, and perhaps slightly heavier. It must have been a calm day, because her long black hair lay unruffled round her face.

  ‘That was taken at Sennen Cove in Cornwall,’ Harun said. ‘We went there for a holiday in that wonderful summer of 1976.’

  Jamal looked at the photograph for a moment longer and then handed it back. ‘She looks lovely,’ he said.

  ‘She died, as perhaps you have guessed. She was here with me for so many years and then she was gone, for ever. There used to be a picture of her on the bureau, taken when she was about your age, over there, where the picture of that woman is now. And behind you was that one with the two of us together on holiday in Cornwall. Over there above the television was a picture of me taken when I was a student, just arrived in England. I took them down after Pat died because they made me sad, and forced my mind to think about things that caused me pain. They interfered with the living form of her that I had in my mind. I preferred to have her appear to me in various sudden visions than to have her looking at me in that fixed way. It was so sudden, how after so many years she was gone and there was no one to talk to. Sometimes I’m struck with amazement when I consider exactly how I have found myself here. But then I suppose many people can say that about their lives. It may be that events constantly take us by surprise, or perhaps traces of what is to become of us are present in our past, and we only need to look behind us to see what we have become, and there is really no need for amazement.’

  Harun smiled wryly at Jamal, apologetically, his eyes glistening. ‘You are a very good listener, Jamal. I was watching you in case you fidgeted or looked wearied, so I would know to stop, but you did not. It is a handy skill for an aspiring writer. Now you see, you have indulged the ego of an old man and he has pounced on your sympathy to burden you with these miserable thoughts.’

  ‘You have not burdened me,’ Jamal said, moved by the sight of the grieving old man. They sat silently for a while, and then Jamal said again: ‘You have not burdened me.’

  It was after six when he left, and by then he knew that Harun came from Uganda in 1960 to study journalism. His family were of Yemeni Shia origin, very orthodox in their piety. Yazids, Jamal said. Exactly, Harun said, pleased with him. They did not like it when he met Pat.

  ‘I would love to hear about your time here when you first came,’ Jamal said.

  ‘Do you want to include me in your research?’ Harun asked, teasing him.

  ‘No, no, I love hearing those stories, of how people coped, what it was like,’ Jamal said.

  ‘It was very exciting, coming to London,’ Harun said. ‘After all the things I had read and the pictures I had seen. All those great buildings and the quiet squares. Funnily enough, one of the things that struck me and the thought that comes unbidden when I think of first arrival, is how plump were the chickens in the butchers’ shops and how large were the eggs. The mind preserves the oddest things sometimes. Well, I made friends with one of the lecturers who taught me at the university. His class was quite late in the day, and afterwards we went out for a drink a couple of times. He was only a little older than me and had briefly lived in Cape Town as a child, so he made it seem like we had something in common. We were both Africans, he said. His name was Allan, and I liked his calm unsmiling manner. I think some of the younger students found his manner earnest and unsettling.

  ‘It was through Allan that I met Pat. She was his wife. He invited me to dinner at their flat and a few weeks later I stole her from him. Actually, it was she who stole me. I was very naïve about such things. I was brought up in a family that was very watchful of such matters, and to be truthful, I was a complete novice in love. I had no idea how terrible having an affair with the wife of a friend would feel. It went against everything that friendship implied to me, the treachery, the betrayal of trust, the lying, furtive arrangements. I wished the affair would end, but I also did not want the affair to end. Pat was a beautiful and passionate woman, and I felt undeservedly fortunate to have won her love. She was also very determined and obstinate, and admired herself immensely. She made me see how timorous my scruples were and how self-deluding I was to entertain them as if they were a high ethical conviction. I had a duty to fulfil my desires, she told me, which was a completely new idea to me at the time, but one that became more commonplace in the decades to come.

  ‘Anyway, that was how we met. And after Pat and I moved in together, I fully understood that I had lost control of my life because now I had no choice but to stay. It was a decision that caused me hardship. My father did not reply when I wrote to tell him the reason for my decision. My uncle wrote instead and said that I had best come back and explain myself in person, but I knew that if I did that I would never be able to defy them and leave. They would overwhelm me with my obligations. You do understand what I am describing, don’t you? You don’t find it too intimate and vulgar to hear these things about an old man’s life, do you? I stayed in London, and promised to return some time soon to see them and talk things over, but I never did. Over the years, whenever someone asked me how long I’d been living here, it was as if I had to confess to a crime.’

  On Sunday evening Anna rang her mother as she had every night during that week. Their conversation was brief. No there was no change. He was taking his medication and eating properly, but he was still not talking. It will be a few days yet.

  Oh Ma. She felt sorry about the way she had spoken the previous weekend, not about what she said, but that she was out of control. And she had not listened properly to her mother, and had not offered sympathy when she deserved it. She did not know how to tell her mother these things. Instead she gave her advice, telling her to be firm and not to miss her stint at the Refugee Centre. Oh well, she wasn’t perfect.

  Don’t worry too much about us, miss, her mother said. And don’t worry about him. He’ll come out of it all right. But now I must go before he gets too stressed.

  When she came off the phone, Nick said: ‘Any news of the absconder? You know, I’ve been thinking. I wonder why it doesn’t surprise me that he did that, run away, I mean.’

  It took her by surprise. He had hardly said anything about her father since she came back from Norwich, and now he only spoke to make fun of him. She had done that too, calling him a bigamist, but she could do that if she wanted. He couldn’t. Her Ba was her father, not his. What did he mean it didn’t surprise him? She insisted that he explain what he meant and
he winced at her voice. She saw that he was beginning to get angry, that she had irritated him again, but she was determined that he should explain the insinuation in his remark.

  ‘Please don’t make such a fuss about this. It’s hardly anything serious, just a flippant remark, an exaggeration, forget it,’ he said, conciliatory words spoken through tight lips. She hated the way he did that, as if he could barely control his frustration with her.

  ‘I want you to explain what you meant by it, however unserious it is. What do you mean that it does not surprise you?’

  ‘All right then,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t surprise me because running away is the kind of thing I would have expected him to do.’

  ‘Why would you expect that of him? Because you think he is a weak man. You despise him, don’t you?’ she said.

  He gave her one of his knowing grins. ‘It’s a tough world and no intelligent person has the right to expect sympathy because they hurt. Your father always acts as if he has more right to hurt than anyone else. I didn’t say despise, you did. You are the one putting words in my mouth. Forget it. I’m sorry if I seemed to be making light of what happened to him.’

  He spread his arms out helplessly, in a gesture that was meant to say let’s leave it now. Let’s not argue.

  ‘Anyway, I’ve just had an email from Mum,’ he said, smiling, looking to please. ‘Anthony and Laura have separated. They had a fight and he physically threw her out of the house. It’s not the first time he’s done that. She got in through the back door and he threw her out again. They had scaffolding round the house for roof repairs, and she climbed on that and tried to get in, but he made sure that every window was locked. She spent most of the night on the scaffold, and in the morning he put a couple of suitcases of her things in the drive, gave her her car keys and handbag and told her to disappear. For ever.’

  ‘What a monster! What does that mean? For ever.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nick said. ‘The house belongs to him. He’s a partner in the firm she works for. So I suppose he could be telling her not to return to the house or to work. He is such a beast that she might be just too intimidated to make a fuss.’