Gabriel's Gift

by Hanif Kureishi

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘As a free man. He can buy a house in any city in the world. He can look at glaciers and deserts whenever he wants. He can meet any person. Scientists, musicians and psychologists will run to him if he asks. And why is that?’

  ‘Why is it?’

  Ponderously Dad explained that Lester had the one thing that everyone wanted, something rarer than rubies or even the ability to make money, the force at the centre of the world which made precious and important things happen. This was his imagination or talent. This was his gift.

  No one knew, even now, how such abilities or power originated or worked. Like love it couldn’t be forced, bottled, transferred or analysed. Certainly, anyone who could figure out how to make or grow it would be more rewarded than anyone in history. How could Dad and Gabriel not be intimidated?

  ‘What’s wrong, Dad?’

  Dad was looking Gabriel over.

  ‘Tuck your shirt in. Couldn’t you have brought some better clothes?’

  ‘I was only coming to see you.’

  Dad pulled at Gabriel’s hair. ‘Haven’t you even combed this?’

  ‘I never touch it, you know that. I’m superstitious!’

  ‘Comb it!’ said Dad. Gabriel shoved his father’s comb into the matted blond mess and looked up. Dad said, ‘But it doesn’t look any different!’

  ‘You put that joint down,’ said Gabriel. ‘What would Mum say? She’s always warning me against that sort of thing.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Dad, hiding it behind his back. ‘I think we’d better go.’

  They retrieved Dad’s bicycle from where it was chained to nearby railings and Gabriel clambered onto the crossbar, his bag on his back. He had always ridden on Dad’s bicycle, or followed on his own.

  ‘Straight on ’til morning,’ announced Gabriel, as he liked to when the two of them set off together.

  ‘Prepare to lose your moustache!’ Dad replied.

  Gabriel was heavy now and Dad had to stand on the pedals with his head up, like someone trying to look into the far distance. Gabriel thought they might have progressed more rapidly had they reversed their positions, but it wasn’t a good time to risk discouraging his father.

  They heaved through the traffic until they came to a less ragged part of town where the cars were quicker, the buildings more curvaceous, and the people dressed in clothes that fitted, with modern haircuts and expensive bodies.

  Dad secured the bike to a lamp-post at the end of the street. Then they walked, or ‘legged it’ as Dad put it. Dad didn’t want to be seen arriving at Lester’s on a knackered bicycle, though Gabriel wondered who exactly his father imagined might see them. He didn’t think Lester would be standing on the street outside his hotel.

  ‘This is the place.’ Dad’s face changed to wonder. ‘Look. There. I told you.’

  Gabriel followed his father’s glance up the road. There was a crowd on the pavement outside what he presumed was Lester’s hotel.

  ‘Come,’ said his father. ‘Let’s get started.’

  Gabriel noticed, as they got closer, that the throng was composed of many men and women of different ages wearing the clothes Lester had sported more than twenty years before, as if God the cartoonist had had Lester followed, for life, by mocking imitations in order to constrain his pride.

  Less strange but more threatening were the score or so of photographers with bands of equipment strapped to them, some of them standing on boxes to get a sterling view of what looked like a brick wall.

  Although Dad was as surprised by all this as Gabriel, it pleased him, too.

  ‘This was what it was like in the old days, boy.’ They were approaching. ‘Everywhere we went, crowds of people waving and shouting and wanting to touch us.’

  ‘Even you?’

  ‘Even me, I’m afraid, you bloody idiot. I was successful too young. At twenty-five I had everything a kid could use, and a lot a kid couldn’t.’

  Gabriel and his father hesitated at the edge of the crowd. The photographers turned and stared at Gabriel’s father, Nikons and Canons raised, lenses protruding.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Dad.

  No one moved. There was a puzzled pause.

  ‘Is he anyone?’ a voice asked.

  ‘Is he? Is he?’ said other people.

  ‘No, no one,’ was the authoritative reply, at last.

  ‘No one,’ someone echoed.

  ‘No, no one,’

  A sigh of disappointment fluttered through the gathering.

  ‘We are someone.’ Dad put his hand on Gabriel’s arm. He whispered, ‘If anyone asks us anything … say “No comment”. Right?’

  ‘No comment,’ repeated Gabriel.

  ‘That’s it. And when we actually see him … Lester –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t say too much.’

  ‘Don’t talk?’

  ‘Well, a bit.’ Dad’s skin was bubbling with sweat like the walls of his room. ‘Oh God,’ he moaned. ‘It’s been a long, long time!’

  ‘Is this the hotel?’

  Gabriel saw only a long, dark, high wall with a green door set into it. The brass knocker was in the shape of a monkey’s head.

  ‘Of course it is.’

  They passed through the crowd. Gabriel noticed that the fans had Lester’s face, slightly remodelled, as if Lester had bequeathed them his old faces, having no more use for them.

  ‘No comment,’ Dad intoned.

  ‘No comment,’ Gabriel murmured.

  No one had asked them a question.

  The door opened, a man in grey holding it for them.

  ‘Harold Steptoe?’ said Dad.

  ‘Harold is waiting,’ said the man.

  Dad whispered to Gabriel, ‘That’s the name Lester always uses in hotels.’

  They were taken across the threshold and the door closed behind them.

  Gabriel, with his father beside him, found himself standing in an almost empty space.

  There was a deep hush in the hotel; the place was so stylish that there appeared to be nothing to disfigure the exquisite austerity of nothing piled on nothing, apart from – on an invisible shelf – a white vase containing a single white flower.

  In the distance, little figures in charcoal pyjamas and slippers started to unbend slowly, like Chinese mandarins coming out of hypnosis.

  One of these, a young girl, began to move towards them.

  ‘Lester is waiting for you,’ she said, arriving pale, slightly out of breath and older than when she had started out. ‘This way.’

  As they followed, Gabriel thought how easy it would be to disappear into such an expanse of nullity until he realized she made her way by following a line of little grey pebbles on the ground. Approaching a plain white wall, she turned left suddenly and went through an arch, treading along a corridor where occasionally they saw bodyguards in black, protecting Lester from madmen who wanted him to be a god.

  The girl rapped on a door and was gone.

  Lester opened it himself, wearing a green silk kimono.

  He and Rex embraced.

  ‘How’s the ankle?’ Lester took them into the room. He turned to Gabriel. ‘Did Rex tell you how it happened?’

  ‘Many times.’

  Dad started to hop up and down on one leg. ‘All mended! Strong as a giraffe! Look! I’m ready to tour again!’

  Gabriel took Dad’s hand to calm him.

  ‘Good,’ said Lester. ‘I’m not!’

  His face was as sharp and bright as a blade; he had one brown eye and one blue, with yellow flashes across it.

  Gabriel saw, in another room, a young, bare-legged woman sitting at a mirror having her hair caressed by two men in orange sarongs, their mouths filled with clips.

  Lester directed Dad to a table in the corner.

  ‘Let me pick your long-living brain, maestro,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to do some kind of memoir. The freaks I’ve had in here from the past, doing my remembering for me! Now …
’

  They talked over old times and Lester made notes. Gabriel took out his sketchbook and continued to work on the picture of his father he had started the previous night.

  He kept looking at Lester, secretly and not so secretly.

  How could he write songs that people the world over knew the words to? Why did people continue to buy his records? Why, when he played live, did people queue through the night to see him? How did people acquire such powers? Was it in Lester’s hair, which was certainly magnificent and dyed ruby red? Or was the magic located in his white, long thin fingers with their round, clean nails?

  Meanwhile Lester listened to Dad’s reminiscences, leaning forward at first, and then further and further backwards. Dad had started out on a story about a night in a Northern town that involved someone vomiting in their own suitcase. Lester, who seemed to be erupting inwardly himself, was looking for inspiration.

  ‘Hey! Hey!’ he said suddenly. ‘Listen Rex. You know, I’ve just finished a new record. I think it’s my best one in years.’

  ‘I know all your stuff. Can’t wait to hear this one,’ said Dad.

  ‘Do you want to hear it right now?’

  Dad looked confused. ‘Not before you’re ready. Anyway,’ he continued. ‘Plucky, Twang the guitarist and I had just checked into this bed-and-breakfast and a big consignment of supernova grass had been delivered –’

  Lester said, ‘I’ve never been readier. I’ve got a tape of it – right here!’ He popped the tape into a small machine on the table. ‘There’s no track list.’ He grabbed a piece of paper. ‘I know what: I’ll write down the song title and you jot your thoughts down underneath.’

  ‘Great idea.’

  Dad was starting to get annoyed but what could he do?

  Lester left Dad sitting beside the tape sucking the end of a pencil, and made his way across to Gabriel. This was not straightforward, as the floor was almost concealed by different-sized sheets of paper covered with scribbles, drawings, doodles, and poems in many colours.

  Gabriel remembered, from talking to his father, that Lester had been a painter before he’d been a pop star, and had continued to paint and exhibit.

  ‘Tables aren’t big enough for me,’ said Lester. ‘I prefer floors, where I can get to things.’ Gabriel felt Lester’s different-coloured eyes on him. ‘What were you going to say?’

  Gabriel blushed. ‘I’m thinking that it reminds me of a kid’s bedroom.’

  He expected Lester to be offended. Across the room, Gabriel saw his father’s face twist in embarrassment and fear.

  Lester laughed. ‘Yes, I was brought up to be neat, but I was able to teach myself to be messy and disorganized, noisy and loud. It took some learning! Good boys achieve nothing! This is what I do for a living – cover bits of paper. Look, look!’ Lester got onto his knees and indicated a sheet of paper. ‘I found these new crayons. This is what I was doing last night.’

  Gabriel said, ‘But that’s what I do.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Gabriel jumped up and fetched his sketchbook from where he had put it down. ‘See.’

  Lester looked at the picture. ‘What else do you have there?’

  Gabriel handed him the book. Lester went through it, page by page.

  Gabriel explained, ‘Like you, I’ve been writing on the pictures. Some of them are photographs.’ He showed a page to Lester. ‘I drew these daffodils for Dad and put them next to the photographs. Then I wrote daffodil poems across them in different colours so that Dad would know what I meant. It all went together in my mind –’

  ‘You put it all together in the picture.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Lester went on, ‘I write songs but I don’t know how. When something occurs to me, I write it down and put it in the song. What does an imagination do but see what isn’t there?’

  ‘I get that a lot,’ said Gabriel. ‘Sometimes I think I’m going mad with all the stuff that’s going on.’

  ‘Oh everyone’s mad. But some people can do interesting things with their madness.’ Lester was looking at Gabriel. ‘You’re talented,’ he told him. ‘I’m telling you – and now you know for ever. Hear my voice and carry these words wherever you go.’

  ‘I don’t know. I just sit down everyday and start.’

  ‘That’s how to do it. Talent might be a gift but it still has to be cultivated. The imagination is like a fire or furnace; it has to be stoked, fed and attended to. One thing sets another ablaze. Keep it going.’

  ‘The thing is,’ said Gabriel, blushing, ‘I’ve been copying other artists. I don’t know why … it inspires me, I suppose. Is that wrong?’

  ‘It’s what you make of the stolen objects that’s important. If you take something and use it, then it’s worthwhile. If you just copy it and it stays the same, then nothing’s been done.’

  Gabriel felt excited. ‘How do you start?’

  ‘Like this.’

  Lester took a crayon and made a line on the paper, followed by another line. He wrote a word; more words followed.

  ‘Y?u can’t will a dream or an erection. But you can get into bed, ‘he said.’ Any mad stuff that comes into my mind I put down. Wild pigs, fauns, guitars, faces … in dreams the maddest connections are made! If I know where I’m going, how will I get lost on the way? When I’m doing this I disappear. There’s no me there. I don’t know who I am. I draw and sing to get lost. If I’m not lost how can I do anything? This is how I live twice. I live in the world, and then in memory and imagination. If you listen to the greatest music like “Strawberry Fields” or Cosi Fan Tutte, or read the greatest books, like Hamlet, you’ll see how weird, almost supernatural and dreamlike they are.’

  Lester kept writing, colouring in and sketching, his white hand disappearing into the white page.

  ‘You work quickly.’

  ‘As quickly as I can, these days,’ said Lester, ‘to keep ahead of the rising tide of boredom.’

  With his face close to Gabriel’s, Lester began to talk of himself as a young man, before he was known or successful, and the difficulty of keeping alive self-belief when there was no one to confirm it. This was the hardest time for any artist.

  After a while Gabriel became aware of his father watching them from across the room. Gabriel had been so absorbed he was unaware of how much time had passed.

  Dad got up as though startled from a dream.

  ‘What did you think, Rex?’ said Lester.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Of the new tunes? I’ve been working on them for a long time. I wanted them to be really good. They’re an advance, aren’t they? The same as before, but different enough, don’t you think? I’m sick of people saying it’s not up to what I did when I was twenty-five. Tell me.’

  Gabriel was surprised to see how apprehensive Lester was, as if it were his first record.

  Dad seemed to shake himself. ‘As good as anything you’ve done. If not better. What sounds! Yes!’

  ‘Thanks.’ Lester took the piece of paper, looked at it, and turned it over. ‘You didn’t write anything down.’

  ‘No, no. I was too stunned.’

  ‘By which track in particular?’

  ‘All of them … all stunned me.’

  ‘The third track – the one featuring the trumpet, and later that jumbled piano – is my favourite,’ said Lester. ‘You?’

  Lester was looking at Rex.

  Dad hesitated. ‘I liked them all. The second, the third. The fourth especially. But I think the fifth took the biscuit. I’m still writing myself. You don’t want to hear one of my new songs, by any chance?’

  ‘If only there were world enough and time.’

  ‘Of course. Anyhow, I didn’t bring my guitar. I’ll send you a tape to the usual place.’ He offered Lester his hand. ‘We’d better not take up any more of your time. Thanks for everything.’

  ‘That’s all right, friend. I’ve enjoyed myself. I was going to say – I want to give you something.’

  �
�Really?’ Dad smiled widely. ‘You don’t have to. I know things will pick up after a bit. I myself am working on a bicycle – sorry, I meant cycle – of songs, on the theme of life, death and rebirth. It’s a triptych. Is that how you pronounce it? But I’m sure even someone as successful as you can remember what it’s like to fall on hard times …’

  Lester interrupted: ‘It’s for your son.’

  ‘For the boy? Good, good. What sort of thing is it?’

  Lester picked up a big sheet of paper from the floor. ‘This.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I should give it a title. What do you think, Gabriel?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  Lester wrote ‘Weird Weather’ on the picture, signed and dedicated it, rolled it up, slipped a rubber band around it and slotted it under Gabriel’s arm.

  ‘Put it on your wall or wherever. You might look at it now and again and remember this day. Some of the things I said might be of use. If not, it doesn’t matter.’

  Gabriel said, ‘I’ll remember them.’

  Lester touched Dad on the shoulder. ‘Rex, he’s good, your boy. Do you spend much time with him?’

  ‘I lost one son, a long time ago and I can’t afford to lose another. So we’re together a lot. I’m educating him in politics, astronomy and other stuff like that. He has always followed me around.’

  ‘Until recently,’ said Gabriel.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ asked Lester.

  Dad’s eyes darted about. ‘I’ve had to move out … for a bit.’

  ‘Christ, sorry to hear that. I remember Christine very well. Is that her name? I even kissed her once.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Before your time, of course.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You won’t let him down, will you?’ said Lester. When he saw that Dad was taken aback, he added, ‘I have a daughter, you see. I hardly saw her grow up. I was away too much, working.’

  ‘No chance of that with me,’ said Dad.

  Lester seemed to be pondering something. ‘Sometimes I think I became an artist because it was the only way I could avoid my parents. They argued and I escaped into the back room to read comics and draw and listen to records. Little Richard on 45 – “She’s Got It”.’ Lester sang, ‘“Sweet little girl that lives down the street / I’m crazy but I say she’s sweet … She’s got it!”’