The Buddha of Suburbia

by Hanif Kureishi

Like a fool, I’d forgotten that Dad thought honesty a virtue. He was a compassionate man, Dad, but never at the expense of drawing attention to his own opinions.

  ‘Bloody half-cocked business,’ he said. ‘That bloody fucker Mr Kipling pretending to whity he knew something about India! And an awful performance by my boy looking like a Black and White Minstrel!’

  Eva restrained Dad. ‘Karim was assured,’ she said firmly, patting my arm.

  Fortunately, Changez had chuckled all through the show. ‘Good entertainment,’ he said. ‘Take me again, eh?’

  Before we sat down in the restaurant Jamila took me aside and kissed me on the mouth. I felt Changez’s eyes on me.

  ‘You looked wonderful,’ she said, as if she were speaking to a ten-year-old after a school play. ‘So innocent and young, showing off your pretty body, so thin and perfectly formed. But no doubt about it, the play is completely neo-fascist – ’

  ‘Jammie –’

  ‘And it was disgusting, the accent and the shit you had smeared over you. You were just pandering to prejudices – ’

  ‘Jammie –’

  ‘And clichés about Indians. And the accent – my God, how could you do it? I expect you’re ashamed, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am, actually.’

  But she didn’t pity me; she mimicked my accent in the play. ‘Actually, you’ve got no morality, have you? You’ll get it later, I expect, when you can afford it.’

  ‘You’re going too far, Jamila,’ I said, and turned my back on her. I went and sat with Changez.

  The only other significant event of the evening was something that happened between Eva and Shadwell at the far end of the restaurant, beside the toilet. Shadwell was leaning back against the wall and Eva was angry with him, making hard gestures with her fists. Many bitter shades of disgust and pain and dejection passed over his face. At one point Eva turned and gesticulated towards me, as if she were taking him to task for something he’d done to me. Yes, Shadwell had let her down. But I knew that nothing would ever discourage him; he’d never give up wanting to be a director, and he’d never be any good.

  So that was it. The Jungle Book was not mentioned again by any of them, as if they weren’t ready to see me as an actor but preferred me in my old role as a useless boy. Yet the play did good business, especially with schools, and I started to relax on stage, and to enjoy acting. I sent up the accent and made the audience laugh by suddenly relapsing into cockney at odd times. ‘Leave it out, Bagheera,’ I’d say. I liked being recognized in the pub afterwards, and made myself conspicuous in case anyone wanted my autograph.

  Sometimes Shad well came in to watch the show, and one day he started being nice to me. I asked Terry why this was. ‘I’m baffled too,’ he said. Then Shadwell took me to Joe Allen’s and offered me a part in his next production, which would be Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Terry, whose gentleness of heart so melted my own that I helped him sell his newspapers outside factories, on picket lines and outside East End tube stations at seven-thirty in the morning, was encouraging. ‘Accept it,’ he said. ‘It’ll do you good. ‘Course, it’s crap for actors, but it’s experience for you.’

  Unlike the other actors – they’d been in the business much longer than I had – I had no idea what work I could get. So I accepted. Shadwell and I embraced. Eva said nothing about it.

  ‘What about you, Terry?’ I asked one evening. ‘Have you got any work lined up?’

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing precisely,’ he said. ‘But I’m waiting for the call.’

  ‘What call?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that, Karim. But I can say confidently that the call is going to come.’

  When I turned up at the theatre and Terry and I got changed next to each other, I frequently made a point of saying to him, ‘Well, Terry, has the call come yet? Has Peter Brook rung?’

  Or one of us would rush into the dressing room just before curtain-up and tell Terry there was someone who urgently needed to talk to him on the phone. Twice he fell for it, running half-dressed out of the room and instructing everyone to hold the show for a few minutes. He wasn’t thrown by our malice. ‘I’m not bothered by your childish games. I know the call’s going to come. It’s not something that makes me anxious at all. I’m going to wait patiently.’

  One night, half-way through the run, the box-office manager excitedly rang through to us back-stage and said that the theatre director Matthew Pyke had booked a ticket for The Jungle Book. Within fifteen minutes everyone in the cast – apart from me – was talking about this. I’d never seen such chatter, nervousness and exhilaration in the dressing room before. But I did know how crucial such visits by hot directors were to actors, who worried constantly about their next job. The Jungle Book they’d forgotten about: it was in the past. Now they sat in the tiny dressing room, their washing hanging on the radiators, eating health food and tirelessly sending information and soft-focus photographs of themselves to directors, theatres, agents, TV companies and producers. And when agents or casting directors deigned to see the show, and stayed to the end, which was rare, the actors crowded around them afterwards, buying them drinks and roaring with laughter at anything they said. They ached to be remembered: upon such memories an actor’s life depended.

  This was why Pyke’s appearance was so exciting. He was our most important visitor ever. He had his own company. You didn’t have to go through him to get to someone who counted: he counted in his own right. But why had he come to see our pissy show? We couldn’t work it out, although I noticed that Terry was being very cool about the whole thing.

  Before the show some of us crowded into the tiny lighting box as Pyke, in his denim dungarees and white T-shirt – he still had long hair – took his seat. He was accompanied by his wife, Marlene, a middle-aged blonde. We watched him consult the programme, turning each page and examining our faces and the oblong patch of biography beneath the photographs.

  The rest of the cast stood outside and waited for their turn to get a look at Pyke. I said nothing, but I had no idea who Pyke was and what he’d done. Was it plays? Films? Opera? Television? Was he American? At last I asked Terry; I knew he wouldn’t be contemptuous of my ignorance. Terry eagerly gave me the whole picture; he seemed to know enough about Pyke to write his biography.

  Pyke was the star of the flourishing alternative theatre scene; he was one of the most original directors around. He’d worked and taught at the Magic Theater in San Francisco; had therapy at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur with Fritz Perls; worked in New York with Chaikin and La Mama. In London, with a couple of contemporaries from Cambridge, he started his own company, the Movable Theatre, for which he did two ravishing productions a year.

  These productions played in London at the end of their well-meant journey around arts centres, youth clubs and studio theatres. Fashionable people attended the London opening: there were bright rock-stars, other actors like Terence Stamp, politicos like Tariq Ali, most of the ordinary acting profession, and even the public. Pyke’s shows were also commended for their fantastic intermissions, dazzling occasions where the fashionable audience came dressed in such style they resembled Chinese peasants, industrial workers (boiler suits) or South American insurgents (berets).

  Naturally Terry had hard-line views on all this, and as we changed for the show on that charged night he proclaimed them to the entire cast, as if he were addressing a meeting.

  ‘Comrades, what is Pyke’s stuff? What is it, after all – just think for a minute – but a lot of reformist and flatulent “left-wing” politics! It’s plump actors pretending to be working class, when their fathers are neuro-surgeons. It’s voluptuous actresses – even more beautiful than you all are – hand-picked and caressed by Pyke! Why do they always perform the whole show in the nude? Ask yourself these questions! It’s fucking crap for actors, comrades. Absolute crap for actors!’

  The other actors shouted Terry down.

  ‘It’s no
t crap for actors!’ they cried. ‘At least it’s decent work after doing The Jungle Bunny and thrillers and beer commercials.’

  Terry had taken off his trousers by now, and two women in the cast were looking through a gap in the curtain as he prepared to propagate his analysis of Pyke. Slowly he hung his trousers on a hanger, which he placed on the communal rail which ran through the dressing room. He liked girls looking at his muscly legs; he liked them hearing his muscly arguments, too.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘You’re right. There’s truth in what you say. It’s better than fuck-all. Much better. That’s why, comrades, I sent Pyke my particulars.’

  Everyone groaned. But with Pyke to impress in the audience we had good reason to spring energetically over the scaffolding. The show was the best it had ever been, and its proper length, for once. Recently we’d been taking ten minutes a night off it in order to have more time in the pub. After this show we changed quickly, without the usual bickering and jokes and attempts to pull each other’s underpants off. Naturally I was the slowest, having the most to remove. There wasn’t a working shower and I had to clean off my make-up with cold-cream and by splashing water from the sink over myself. Terry waited impatiently for me. When I’d finished and it was just the two of us left I put my arms around him and kissed his face.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’ s move. Pyke’s waiting for me.’

  ‘Let’s stay here for a while.’

  ‘Why?’

  I said, ‘I’m thinking of joining the Party. I want to discuss various ideological problems I have.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ he said. He moved away from me. ‘I’m not against this,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Touching.’

  But he was against it.

  ‘It’s just that I have to think about my future right now. My call has come, Karim.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I said. ‘Is this it? Is this the call?’

  ‘Yeah, this is fucking it,’ he said. ‘Please. Come on.’

  ‘Do up my buttons,’ I said.

  ‘Christ. You. You stupid boy. OK. Come on. Pyke’s waiting for me.’

  We hurried to the pub. I’d never seen Terry look so hopeful about anything before. I really wanted him to get the job.

  Pyke was leaning against the bar with Marlene, sipping a half of lager. He didn’t look the drinking type. Three of our company went up to him and chatted briefly. Pyke replied, but barely seemed bothered to move his lips. Then Shadwell came into the pub, saw Pyke, nodded contemptuously at us, and left. Instead of going over to Pyke, Terry led me to a corner table among the old men who drank alone every night, and there he calmly sucked his roll-ups as we sipped our usual pint with a whisky chaser.

  ‘Pyke’s not showing much interest in you,’ I pointed out.

  Terry was confident. ‘He’ll be over. He’s very cold – you know what middle-class people are like. No feelings. I reckon he wants my working-class experience to give his puerile political ideas some authenticity.’

  ‘Say no,’ I advised him.

  ‘I bloody might. Critics always say his work’s “austere” or “puritanical” because he likes bare naked stages and theatres with their brickwork sticking out all over the place and no props. As if my mum and the working class like that. They want comfortable seats, french windows and sweets.’

  Just then Pyke turned towards us and raised his glass a fraction of an inch. Terry smiled back.

  ‘’Course, Pykie’s got his virtues. He’s not self-promoting like those other cunt directors and conductors and producers who just live off other people’s talent. He never does interviews and he never goes on telly. He’s good like that. But,’ said Terry darkly, leaning towards me, ‘this is something you should know, if you’re lucky enough to work with him one day.’

  He told me that Pyke’s private life wasn’t a desert of austere and puritanical practices. If the inevitably deformed critics who admired his work – and the critics who sat with their faces pointing up at us did seem to have the countenances of gargoyles, while the aisles were crammed with their wheelchairs – knew of certain weaknesses – certain indulgences, let us say – they would see Pyke’s work in a different light. ‘Oh yes, a very different light.’

  ‘What kind of light?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘But, Terry, surely we hide nothing from each other?’

  ‘No, no, I can’t say. Sorry.’

  Terry didn’t gossip. He believed that people were made by the impersonal forces of history, not by greed, malice and lust. And besides, Pyke was now walking straight towards us. Terry hurriedly stubbed out his roll-up, pushed his chair back and got up. His hand even went up to flatten his hair. He shook hands with Pyke. Then he introduced us to each other.

  ‘Nice to see you, Terry,’ Pyke said smoothly.

  ‘Yeah, and you, and you.’

  ‘You make an excellent snake.’

  ‘Thank you. But thank God someone’s doing some classy work in this crumby country, eh?’

  ‘Who do you mean?’

  ‘You, Matthew.’

  ‘Oh yes. Me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Pyke looked at me and smiled. ‘Come and have a drink at the bar, Karim.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘OK. See you later, Terry,’ I said.

  As I got up Terry looked at me as if I’d just announced I had a private income. He sank back into his chair as Pyke and I walked away from the table, and tossed the whisky down his throat.

  As Pyke got me a half of bitter I stood there regarding the rows of inverted bottles behind the barman’s head, not looking at the other actors in the pub, who I knew were all staring at me. I meditated for a few seconds, concentrating on my breathing, immediately aware of how shallow it was. When we were set up with drinks, Pyke said, ‘Tell me about yourself.’

  I hesitated. I looked at Marlene, who was standing behind us, talking to an actor. ‘I don’t know where to begin.’

  ‘Tell me something you think might interest me.’

  And he looked at me with full concentration. I had no choice. I began to talk rapidly and at random. He said nothing. I went on. I thought: I am being psychoanalysed. I began to imagine that Pyke would understand everything I said. I was glad he was there; there were things it was necessary to say. So I told him things I’d never told anyone – how much I resented Dad for what he’d done to Mum, and how Mum had suffered, how painful the whole thing had been, though I was only now beginning to feel it.

  The other actors, who were now gathered around Terry’s table with jars of yellow beer in front of them, had turned their chairs around to watch me, as if I were a football match. They must have been amazed and resentful that Pyke wanted to listen to me, of all people, someone who was barely an actor. When I faltered as the realization hit me that it wasn’t Mum who’d neglected me, but I who’d neglected Mum, Pyke said gently, ‘I think you may like to be in my next production.’

  I woke from my introspective dream and said, ‘What kind of show will it be?’

  I noticed that when Pyke was about to talk he put his head thoughtfully to one side and looked away into the distance. He used his hands flirtatiously, slowly, not flapping or pointing but caressing and floating, as if wiping his flat hand inches from the surface of a painting. He said, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What kind of part will it be?’

  He shook his head regretfully.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t begin to say.’

  ‘How many people will be in it?’

  There was a long pause. His hand, with the fingers splayed and taut, waved in front of his face.

  ‘Don’t ask me.’

  ‘D’you know what you’re doing?’ I asked, more bravely.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if I want to work in that vague kind of way. I’m inexperienced, you know.’

  Pyke conceded. ‘I think it may revolve around the only subject
there is in England.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked at me as if I were sure of what this was.

  ‘Class,’ he said. ‘Is that OK for you?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  He touched me on the shoulder. ‘Good. Thank you for joining us.’ It was as if I were doing him a big favour.

  I finished my drink, quickly said goodbye to the other actors and got out as fast as I could, not wanting to register their smirks and curiosity. I was walking across the car park when someone jumped on my back. It was Terry.

  ‘Leave it out,’ I said sternly, pushing him off.

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  There were no laughs in his face. He looked very low. He made me feel ashamed of my sudden happiness. I walked to the bus stop in silence with him beside me. It was cold, dark and raining.

  ‘Has Pyke offered you a part?’ he said at last.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Liar!’

  I said nothing. ‘Liar!’ he said. I knew he was so incensed he couldn’t control himself; I couldn’t blame him for the fury which inhabited him. ‘It can’t be true, it can’t be true,’ he said.

  Suddenly I shouted out into the night air. ‘Yes, yes, yes, it is true!’ And now the world had some tension in it; now it twanged and vibrated with meaning and possibility! ‘Yes, yes, fucking yes!’

  When I got to the theatre next day someone had laid a dirty red carpet from the dressing-room door to the spot where I normally changed. ‘Can I help you off with your clothes?’ one actor said. ‘Can I have your autograph?’ said another. I received daffodils, roses and an acting primer. The EST freak, Boyd, said, as he took off his trousers and shook his penis at me, ‘If I weren’t white and middle class I’d have been in Pyke’s show now. Obviously mere talent gets you nowhere these days. Only the disadvantaged are going to succeed in seventies’ England.’

  For a few days I was too cowardly to tell Shadwell of Pyke’s offer, and that I was not going to do the Molière. I was happy and didn’t want the pleasure of anticipation soured by a row with him. So Shitvolumes started preparing his next show as if I were going to be in it, until one day, just before The Jungle Book was about to go up, he came into the dressing room.