The Buddha of Suburbia

by Hanif Kureishi

  In the living room there were two armchairs and a table to eat take-aways off. Around it were two steel chairs with putrid white plastic on the seats. Beside it was a low camp-bed covered in brown blankets on which, from the first, Jamila insisted, Changez slept. There was no discussion of this, and Changez didn’t demur at the crucial moment when something could – maybe – have been done. That was how it was going to be between them, just as she made him sleep on the floor beside their honeymoon bed in the Ritz.

  While Jamila worked in her room, Changez lay joyously on the camp-bed, his good arm suspending a paperback above him, one of his ‘specials’, no doubt. ‘This one is very extra-special,’ he’d say, tossing aside yet another Spillane or James Hadley Chase or Harold Robbins. I think a lot of the big trouble which was to happen started with me giving Changez Harold Robbins to read, because it stimulated Changez in a way that Conan Doyle never did. If you think books don’t change people, just look at Changez, because undreamed-of possibilities in the sex line suddenly occurred to him, a man recently married and completely celibate who saw Britain as we saw Sweden: as the goldmine of sexual opportunity.

  But before all the sex trouble got properly into its swing there was all the other trouble brewing between Anwar and Changez. After all, Changez was needed in the shop even more urgently now that Anwar had so enfeebled himself on the Gandhi-diet in order to get Changez to Britain in the first place.

  To start off Changez’s career in the grocery business, Anwar instructed him to work on the till, where you could get by with only one arm and half a brain. And Anwar was very patient with Changez, and spoke to him like a four-year-old, which was the right thing to do. But Changez was far smarter than Anwar. He made sure he was hopeless at wrapping bread and giving change. He couldn’t manage the arithmetic. There were queues at the till, until customers started walking out. Anwar suggested he come back to till-work another time. Anwar would find him something else to do to get him in the grocery mood.

  So Changez’s new job was to sit on a three-legged stool behind the vegetable section and watch for shop-lifters. It was elementary: you saw them stealing and you screamed, ‘Put that back, you fucking thieving tom-cat!’ But Anwar hadn’t catered for the fact that Changez had mastered the supreme art of sleeping sitting up. Jamila told me that one day Anwar came into the shop and discovered Changez snoring as he sat on his stool, while in front of his closed eyes an SL was shoving a jar of herrings down his trousers. Anwar blew up all over the place. He picked up a bunch of bananas and threw them at his son-in-law, hitting him so hard in the chest that Changez toppled off his stool and badly bruised his good arm. Changez lay writhing on the floor, unable to get up. Finally Princess Jeeta had to help Changez leave the shop. Anwar bellowed at Jeeta and Jamila and even yelled at me. I just laughed at Anwar, as we all did, but no one dared say the one true thing: it was all his own fault. I pitied him.

  His despair became obvious. He was moody all the time, with a flashing temper, and when Changez was at home, nursing his bad arm, Anwar came to me as I worked in the store-room. He’d already lost any respect or hope he’d once had for Changez. ‘What’s that fucking fat useless bastard doing now?’ he enquired. ‘Is he better yet?’ ‘He’s recuperating,’ I said. ‘I’ll recuperate his fucking balls with a fucking flame-thrower!’ said Uncle Anwar. ‘Perhaps I will phone the National Front and give them Changez’s name, eh? What a good idea, eh!’

  Meanwhile Changez was getting better and better at lying on camp-beds, reading paperbacks and strolling around town with me. He was always up to any adventure that didn’t involve working at tills or sitting on three-legged stools. And because he was slightly dim, or at least vulnerable and kind and easily led, being one of the few people I could mock and dominate with impunity, we became mates. He’d follow me where I fancied, as I avoided my education.

  Unlike everyone else he thought me quite deviant. He was shocked when I took off my shirt in the street to get some damn sun on my tits. ‘You are very daring and non-conformist, yaar,’ he often said. ‘And look how you dress, like a gypsy vagabond. What does your father say? Doesn’t he discipline you very hard?’

  ‘My father’s too busy with the woman he ran off with,’ I replied, ‘to think about me too much.’

  ‘Oh God, this whole country has gone sexually insane,’ he said. ‘Your father should go back home for some years and take you with him. Perhaps to a remote village.’

  Changez’s disgust at everyday things inspired me to show him South London. I wondered how long he’d take to get used to it, to become, in other words, corrupt. I was working on it. We wasted days and days dancing in the Pink Pussy Club, yawning at Fat Mattress at the Croydon Greyhound, ogling strippers on Sunday mornings in a pub, sleeping through Godard and Antonioni films, and enjoying the fighting at Millwall Football Ground, where I forced Changez to wear a bobble-hat over his face in case the lads saw he was a Paki and imagined I was one too.

  Financially Changez was supported by Jamila, who paid for everything by working in the shop in the evenings. And I helped him out with money I got from Dad. Changez’s brother sent him money, too, which was unusual, because it should have been the other way round as Changez made his way in the affluent West, but I was sure celebrations in India at Changez’s departure were still taking place.

  Jamila was soon in the felicitous position of neither liking nor disliking her husband. It amused her to think she carried on as if he weren’t there. But late at night the two of them liked to play cards, and she’d ask him about India. He told her tales of run-away wives, too-small dowries, adultery among the rich of Bombay (which took many evenings) and, most delicious, political corruption. He’d obviously picked up a few tips from the paperbacks, because he spun these stories out like a kid pulling on chewing-gum. He was good at them, linking all the stories together with more gum and spit, reintroducing the characters with, ‘You know that bad bad man who was caught naked in the bathing hut?’, as in a wild soap opera, until he knew that at the end of her day spent sucking on dusty brain juice, her maddening mouth would inevitably say, ‘Hey, Changez, husband or whatever you are, don’t you know any more about that politician geezer that got thrown into jail?’

  In turn he made the polite mistake of asking her what she believed socially and politically. One morning she laid the Prison Notebooks of Gramsci on his chest, not realizing that his addiction to paperbacks wasn’t entirely undiscriminating. ‘Why haven’t you read this if you’re so interested?’ she challenged him weeks later.

  ‘Because I prefer to hear it from your mouth.’ And he did want to hear it from her mouth. He wanted to watch his wife’s mouth move because it was a mouth he’d come to appreciate more and more. It was a mouth he wanted to get to know.

  One day, while we were roaming around junk shops and the Paperback Exchange, Changez took my arm and forced me to face him, which was never a pleasant sight. He made himself say to me at last, after weeks of dithering like a frightened diver on a rock, ‘D’you think my Jammie will ever go in bed with me? She is my wife, after all. I am suggesting no illegality. Please, you’ve known her all your life, what is your true and honest estimation of my chances in this respect?’

  ‘Your wife? In bed with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No chance.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No way, Changez.’

  He couldn’t accept it. I elaborated. ‘She wouldn’t touch you with asbestos gloves on.’

  ‘Why? Please be frank, as you have been until now on every other matter. Even vulgar, Karim, which is your wont.’

  ‘You’re too ugly for her.’

  ‘Really? My face?’

  ‘Your face. Your body. The whole lot. Yuk.’

  ‘Yes?’ At that moment I glimpsed myself in a shop window and was pleased with what I saw. I had no job, no education, and no prospects, but I looked pretty good, oh yes. ‘Jamila’s a quality person, you know that.’

  ‘I would like
to have children with my wife.’

  I shook my head. ‘Out of the question.’

  This children issue was not trivial for Changez the Bubble. There had been a horrible incident recently which must have remained on his mind. Anwar asked Changez and me to wash the floor of the shop, thinking that perhaps I could successfully supervise him. Surely this couldn’t go wrong? I was doing the scrubbing and Changez was miserably holding the bucket in the deserted shop and asking me if I had any more Harold Robbins novels he could borrow. Then Anwar turned up and stood there watching us work. Finally he made up his mind about something: he asked Changez about Jamila and how she was. He asked Changez if Jamila was ‘expecting’.

  ‘Expecting what?’ said Changez.

  ‘My bloody grandson!’ said Anwar. Changez said nothing, but shuffled backwards, away from the fire of Anwar’s blazing contempt, which was fuelled by bottomless disappointment.

  ‘Surely,’ said Anwar to me, ‘surely there must be something between this donkey’s legs?’

  At this Changez started to explode from the centre of his vast stomach. Waves of anger jolted through him and his face seemed suddenly magnified while it flattened like a jellyfish. Even his bad arm visibly throbbed, until Bubble’s whole body shuddered with fury and humiliation and incomprehension.

  He shouted, ‘Yes, there is more between this donkey’s legs than there is between that donkey’s ears!’

  And he lunged at Anwar with a carrot that was lying to hand. Jeeta, who had heard everything, rushed over. Some strength or recklessness seemed to have been released in her by recent events; she had increased as Anwar had diminished. Her nose had become beaked and hawked, too. Now she placed the obstacle of her nose between Anwar and Changez so that neither could get at the other. And she gave Anwar a mouthful. I’d never heard her speak like this before. She was fearless. She could have shrivelled Gulliver with her breath. Anwar turned and went away, cursing. She sent Changez and me out.

  Now Bubble, who hadn’t had much time to reflect on his England-experience, was obviously starting to think over his position. Conjugal rights were being denied him; human rights were being suspended at times; unnecessary inconvenience was happening everywhere; abuse was flying around his head like a spit-shower – and he was an important man from a considerable Bombay family! What was going on? Action would be taken! But first things first. Changez was searching in his pockets for something. He eventually hoiked out a piece of paper with a phone-number on it. ‘In that case –’

  ‘In what case?’

  ‘Of the ugliness you so helpfully mention. There is something I must do.’

  Changez telephoned someone. It was very mysterious. Then I had to take him to a big detached house divided into flats. An old woman opened the door – she seemed to be expecting him – and as he went in he turned and instructed me to wait. So I stood around like a fool for twenty minutes. When he emerged I saw behind him at the door a small, black-haired, middle-aged Japanese woman in a red kimono.

  ‘Her name is Shinko,’ he told me happily as we walked back to the flat. The tail of Changez’s shirt was sticking out of his unbuttoned fly like a small white flag. I decided not to inform him of this.

  ‘A prostitute, eh?’

  ‘Don’t be not-nice! A friend now. Another friend in unfriendly cold England for me!’ He looked at me with joy. ‘She did business as described to the Τ by Harold Robbins! Karim, all my entire problems are solved! I can love my wife in the usual way and I can love Shinko in the unusual way! Lend me a pound, will you, please? I want to buy Jamila some chocolates!’

  All this messing around with Changez I enjoyed, and I soon considered him part of my family, a permanent part of my life. But I had a real family to attend to – not Dad, who was preoccupied, but Mum. I rang her every day, but I hadn’t seen her during the time I’d been living at Eva’s; I couldn’t face any of them in that house.

  When I did decide to go to Chislehurst, the streets were quiet and uninhabited after South London, as if the area had been evacuated. The silence was ominous; it seemed piled up and ready to fall on me. Practically the first thing I saw when I got off the train and walked along those roads again was Hairy Back and his dog, the Great Dane. Hairy Back was smoking his pipe and laughing with a neighbour as he stood at his gate. I crossed the road and walked back to examine him. How could he stand there so innocently when he’d abused me? I suddenly felt nauseous with anger and humiliation – none of the things I’d felt at the time. I didn’t know what to do. A powerful urge told me to return to the station and get on the train back to Jamila’s place. So I stood there for at least five minutes, watching Hairy Back and wondering which way to go. But how could I have explained my actions to Mum, having promised to turn up and see her? I had to carry on walking.

  I knew it did me good to be reminded of how much I loathed the suburbs, and that I had to continue my journey into London and a new life, ensuring I got away from people and streets like this.

  Mum had taken to her bed in Jean’s place on the day she left our house, and she hadn’t got up since. But Ted was OK: I was looking forward to seeing him. He had completely changed, Allie told me; Ted had lost his life in order to find it. So Ted was Dad’s triumph; he really was someone Dad had freed.

  Uncle Ted had done absolutely nothing since the day Dad exorcized him as he sat with a record-player in his lap. Now Ted didn’t have a bath or get up until eleven o’clock, when he read the paper until the pubs were open. The afternoons he spent out on long walks or in South London attending classes on meditation. In the evenings he refused to talk – this was a vow of silence – and once a week he fasted for a day. He was happy, or happier, apart from the fact that nothing in life had much meaning for him. But at least he recognized this now and was looking into it. Dad had told him to ‘explore’ this. Dad also told Ted that meaning could take years to emerge, but in the meantime he should live in the present, enjoy the sky, trees, flowers and the taste of good food, and perhaps fix a few things in Eva’s house – maybe Dad’s bedside light and tape-recorder – if he needed any practical therapy. Ted said he’d go fishing if he needed therapy. Anything too technical might catapult him into orbit again. ‘When I see myself,’ Ted said, ‘I am lying in a hammock, just swinging, just swinging.’

  Ted’s whole hammock behaviour, his conversion to Ted-Buddhism, as Dad called it, incensed Auntie Jean. She wanted to cut down his swinging hammock. ‘She’s wild with him,’ said Mum, with relish. This fight between Ted and Jean seemed to be her life’s single pleasure, and who could blame her? Jean raged and argued, and even went so far as to attempt tenderness in her effort to get Ted back to ordinary but working unhappiness. After all, they now had no income. Ted used to boast, ‘I’ve got ten men under me,’ and now he had none. There was nothing under him but thin air and the abyss of bankruptcy. But Ted just smiled and said, ‘This is my last chance to be happy. I can’t muff it, Jeanie.’ Once Auntie Jean did rip through to raw feeling by mentioning the numerous virtues of her former Tory boy, but Ted retaliated by saying (one evening during his vow of silence), ‘That boy soon saw the light as far as you’re concerned, didn’t he?’

  When I got to the house Ted was singing a pub song and he practically bundled me into a cupboard to discuss his favourite subject – Dad. ‘How’s yer father?’ he said in a great whisper. ‘Happy?’ He went on dreamily, as if he were speaking of some Homeric adventure. ‘He just upped and went off with that posh woman. It was incredible. I don’t blame him. I envy him! We all want to do it, don’t we? Just cut and run. But who does it? No one – ‘cept your dad. I’d like to see him. Discuss it in detail. But it’s against the law in this house to see him. You can’t even talk about it.’ As Auntie Jean entered the hall from the living room Ted pressed a finger to his lips. ‘Don’t say a word.’ ‘About what, Uncle?’ ‘About any bloody thing!’

  Even today Auntie Jean was straight-backed and splendid in high heels and a dark-blue dress with a diamond brooch
in the shape of a diving fish pinned to her front. Her nails were perfect little bright shells. She shone so brightly she could have been freshly painted; you were afraid that if you touched her you’d smudge something. She seemed ready to attend one of those cocktail parties where she smeared her lips on cheeks and glasses and cigarettes and napkins and biscuits and cocktail sticks until barely a foot of the room was not decorated in red. But there were no more parties in that house of the half-dead, just the old place containing one transformed and one broken person. Jean was tough and liked to drink; she would endure for a long while yet. But what would she do when she realized that, with things as they were, she was on a life sentence, not just a temporary suspension of essential pleasure?

  ‘It’s you, is it?’ said Auntie Jean.

  ‘I s’pose it is, yeah.’

  ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘At college. That’s why I stay other places. To be near college.’