The Buddha of Suburbia

by Hanif Kureishi

  During one of these truth sessions in the car after rehearsal, when I was exhaustedly happy with the feeling of having worked hard, Pyke turned to me with one of the generous smiles which I found so insidious. ‘Hey, you should know I’m pleased with your contribution to the show. The character you’ve got going is going to be a big laugh. So I’ve decided to give you a very special present.’

  The sky was passing at a tremendous rate. I looked at him in his clean white T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. His arms were thin and his face had a mean and pinched look; he ran a lot. The soul music I insisted he played was turned up. He especially liked Smokey Robinson’s ‘Going to a Go Go’, and when he liked something he wanted it again and again. But he hadn’t known the Robinson tune before. I was thinking he wasn’t as cool as he should have been when he pulled something so fucking cool I nearly froze to death and overheated at the same time.

  There I was, talking away, saying, ‘But you’ve been so kind to me already, Matthew, just giving me this job. Perhaps you don’t realize what it means.’

  ‘What d’you mean, don’t realize?’ he said, sharply.

  ‘It’s changed my life. Without you plucking me from nowhere I’d still be decorating houses.’

  He grunted. ‘Fuck that. That’s not kind – it’s just a job. Now, your present, that’s really kind. Or, rather: who your present is. Who. Who.’

  ‘Who?’ We were starting to sound like a fucking owl chorus. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s Marlene.’

  ‘Your wife’s name is Marlene, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sure. If you want her, she’s yours. She wants you.’

  ‘Me? Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She wants me? For what?’

  ‘She says you’re the kind of innocent boy that André Gide would have gone for. And, I s’pose, as Gide is no longer alive, you’ll have to be satisfied with her, eh?’

  I wasn’t flattered.

  ‘Matthew,’ I said, ‘I’ve never been so flattered in my life. It’s incredible.’

  ‘Yeah?’ He smiled at me. ‘From me to you, friend. A gift. A token of appreciation.’

  I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but I knew I couldn’t leave it there: I might find myself in an awkward spot in the future. Yet it wouldn’t look too good if I turned down Pyke’s gift. Actors all over the world would give their legs just to talk to him for five minutes, and here I was being invited to fuck his wife. I knew this was privilege. I knew the quality of what I was being given. I was full of appreciation, oh yes. But I had to be very careful. At the same time, in a part of me, in my cock to be precise, I was involved in his offer.

  I said at last, ‘You should know, Matthew, that I’m going out with Eleanor. I’m really keen on her. And she on me, I reckon.’

  ‘Sure, I know that, Karim. I told Eleanor to go for you.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  He glanced at me and nodded.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Pleasure. You’re very good for her. Calming. She was depressed for a long time after her last boyfriend knocked himself off in that terrible way.’

  ‘Was she?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you be?’

  ‘Yeah, man, I would.’

  ‘Just awful,’ he said. ‘And what a man he was.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Handsome, talented, charismatic. Did you know him?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m glad you two are together,’ Pyke said, smiling at me.

  I was devastated by this information about Eleanor. I considered what Pyke had just said, trying to fit it around what I knew of Eleanor and some of the things she’d told me about the past. Did her last boyfriend kill himself in some dreadful way? What way? When did it happen? Why hadn’t she told me? Why hadn’t anyone else told me? What was going on? I was about to ask Pyke about all this but it was too late for that. Pyke would think me an idiot for lying.

  And Pyke wouldn’t stop talking, though I only half heard him. The car had stopped outside West Kensington tube. The commuters piled out of the exit in a mass and virtually ran home. Now Pyke was writing something on a pad on his knee.

  ‘Bring Eleanor along on Saturday. We’re having some people round for supper. It’ll be nice to see you both. I’m sure we can really get into something good.’

  ‘I’m sure we can, too,’ I said.

  I struggled out of the car with Pyke’s address in my hand.

  When I got to the house, which was half ripped up since Ted had started work on it, Dad was sitting writing: he was working on a book about his childhood in India. Later he’d be doing a meditation class in a local hall. Eva was out. Sometimes I dreaded seeing Dad. If you weren’t in the mood for him, or able to fend him off, his personality could club you down. He could start pinching your cheeks and tweaking your nose and stuff he thought was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. Or he’d pull up his jumper and slap out a tune on his bare stomach, urging you to guess whether it was ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ or ‘The Mighty Quinn’ in the Manfred Mann version. I swear he examined his pregnant gut five times a day, patting his belly, squeezing his tyres, discussing them with Eva as if they were the ninth wonder of the world, or trying to persuade her to bite them.

  ‘Indian men have lower centres of gravity than Accidental men,’ he claimed. ‘We are more centred. We live from the correct place – the stomach. From the guts, not from the head.’

  Eva endured it all; it made her laugh. But he wasn’t my boyfriend. I’d also begun to see Dad not as my father but as a separate person with characteristics that were contingent. He was part of the world now, not the source of it; in one way, to my distress, he was just another individual. And ever since Eva had been working so hard, I’d begun to wonder at Dad’s helplessness. He didn’t know how to make a bed or how to wash and iron his clothes. He couldn’t cook; he didn’t even know how to make tea or coffee.

  Recently, when I was lying down learning my lines, I’d asked Dad to make me some tea and toast. When eventually I followed him into the kitchen I saw that he’d cut open the teabag with scissors and poured the loose tea into a cup. He handled a piece of bread as if it were a rare object he’d obtained on an archaeological dig. Women had always looked after him, and he’d exploited them. I despised him for it now. I began to think that the admiration I’d had for him as a kid was baseless. What could he do? What qualities did he have? Why had he treated Mum as he had? I no longer wanted to be like him. I was angry. He’d let me down in some way.

  ‘Come here, gloomy face,’ he said to me now. ‘How’s the show?’

  ‘Good.’

  He started going on.

  ‘Yes, but make sure they don’t neglect you. Listen to me! Tell them you want the lead part or nothing. You can’t climb down – you’ve already climbed up as a leading Mowgli actor in the theatre! You are the product of my number-one seed, aren’t you?’

  I imitated him. ‘Number-one seed, number-one seed.’ Then I said, ‘Why don’t you stop talking so much fucking crap, you wanker.’ And went out.

  I went to the Nashville, which was quiet at this time of day. I had a couple of pints of Ruddles and a bag of chicken-flavoured crisps, and sat there wondering why pubs had to be so gloomy, full of dark wood and heavy uncomfortable furniture, and lit by such crummy lighting you could barely see five yards through the poisoned air. I thought about Eleanor and kept wanting to cry out of pity for her. I also knew that if I sat in the pub long enough the feeling would pass. Eleanor obviously didn’t want to talk about her last boyfriend, even if he had killed himself in some terrible way. She’d certainly never mentioned it directly to me. I’d been shut out of an important area of her life. It made me doubt how keen she really was on me.

  In my life I was generally getting into some weird things; solid ground was moving beneath me. Take supper. I looked at the piece of paper on which Pyke had written his address. The word ‘supper’ itself confused and irritated me. They called everyt
hing by the wrong name, these London people. Dinner was lunch, tea was supper, breakfast was brunch, afters was pudding.

  I had to discuss things with my friends. It would help me straighten out my head. But when, anxiously, I told Eva of the invitation to Pyke’s (but not about his ‘gift’), she had no insight into my fears and confusion. She thought it was a terrific chance. She knew precisely how elevated Pyke was, and she regarded me admiringly as if I’d won a swimming cup. ‘You must invite Matthew over here some time in the next couple of weeks,’ was her response. Next, I rang Jamila. She would be a different proposition. I was beginning to see how scared I was of her, of her ‘sexuality’, as they called fucking these days; of the power of her feelings and the strength of her opinions. Passion was at a premium in South London. ‘Well?’ I asked. ‘What d’you think?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Creamy. You always do what you want anyway. You listen to no one. But myself, I couldn’t go to his place. I’m worried that they’re taking you over, these people. You’re moving away from the real world.’

  ‘What real world? There is no real world, is there?’

  She said patiently, ‘Yes, the world of ordinary people and the shit they have to deal with – unemployment, bad housing, boredom. Soon you won’t understand anything about the essential stuff.’

  ‘But Jammie, they’re shit-hot powerful people and all.’ Then I made a mistake. ‘Aren’t you even curious to find out how the rich and successful live?’

  She snorted and started laughing. ‘I’m less interested in home furnishings than you, dear. And I don’t want to be anywhere near those people, to be honest. Now, when are you coming to see us? I’ve got a big pot of real hot dal here that’s going uneaten. Even Changez I won’t let near it – I’m saving it for you, my old lover.’

  ‘Thanks, Jammie,’ I said.

  On Friday night, at the end of the week’s workshop, Pyke put his arms around Eleanor and me as we were leaving, kissed us both and said, ‘See you tomorrow then, eh?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘See you then.’

  ‘We’re looking forward to it,’ he said.

  ‘Me too,’ I replied.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sensational, I thought, looking across the carriage of the Bakerloo Line train at my face reflected in the opposite window. You little god. My feet danced and my fingers did the hand-jive to imaginary music – the Velvettes, ‘He was Really Saying Something’ – as the tube train rushed beneath my favourite city, my playground, my home. My baby was humming too. We’d changed at Piccadilly and were heading north-west, to Brainyville, London, a place as remote to me as Marseilles. What reason had I had to go to St John’s Wood before? I looked fit and well; it must have been the vegetables. The press-ups and ‘I must, I must increase my bust’ exercises which Eva had recommended were also achieving their aim of sharpening my profile and increasing my confidence. I’d had a haircut at Sassoon in Sloane Street and my balls, recently talcum-powdered, were as fragrantly dusted and tasty as Turkish Delight. But my clothes were too big as usual, mainly because I was wearing one of Dad’s dark-blue jackets and one of his Bond Street ties over a Ronettes T-shirt, with, obviously, no collar, and a pink jumper of Eva’s on top of this. I was nervy, too, shaken up, I must admit, after Heater had threatened me with a carving knife in Eleanor’s flat about an hour earlier, saying, ‘You look after that woman, eh? If anything happens to her I’ll kill ya!’

  Eleanor sat beside me in a black suit and dark-red silk shirt with a high collar. She’d put her hair up, but a couple of ringlets had escaped, just right for me to slip my finger through. ‘I’ve never seen you looking so beautiful,’ I told her. I meant it. I couldn’t stop kissing her face. I just wanted to hold her all day and stroke her, tickle her, play with her.

  Up we strolled to the mansion, cheerful and excited. The house Pyke shared with Marlene had to be a four-storey place in a quiet street, with a recently watered front garden smothered in flowers, and two sports cars outside, the black and the blue. Then there was the incriminating basement in which lived the nanny who looked after Pyke’s thirteen-year-old son by his first marriage.

  I’d been briefed up to the hilt on all this by Terry, who investigated the crimes of the rich middle class with the vigour of a political Maigret. Terry was now employed; the call had come. He was playing a police sergeant in a police-station drama. This proved ideologically uncomfortable, since he’d always claimed the police were the fascist instrument of class rule. But now, as a policeman, he was pulling a ton of money, much more than I was, more than anyone else in the commune in which he lived, and he was constantly getting recognized in the street. He was also asked to open firework displays, judge play competitions and appear on celebrity game shows. In the street it was like walking around with Charlie, the way people called out to him and turned and stared, except that Terry’s fans didn’t know him as Terry Tapley, but as Sergeant Monty. These ironies made Sergeant Monty especially virulent about Pyke, the man who’d denied him the only job he’d really wanted.

  Terry had taken me to a political meeting recently, after which, in the pub, a girl had spoken about life after the revolution. ‘People will be reading Shakespeare on the bus and learning the clarinet!’ she’d cried. Her commitment and hope impressed me; I wanted to do something myself. But Terry didn’t think I was ready. He gave me a small task first. ‘Keep an eye on Pyke for us,’ he said, ‘as you’re so well in with him. His type are good for cash. There might be something up that street you can do one day. We’ll let you know. But this time just look around – see what we might take him for when the time comes to call him in politically. In the short term you can help us by meeting his son.’

  ‘Meeting his son? OK, Sergeant Monty.’

  He went to slap my face.

  ‘Don’t call me that. And ask the boy – in front of all the guests – which school he goes to. And if it isn’t one of the most expensive and exclusive in England, in the whole of the Western world for that matter, I’ll change my name to Disraeli.’

  ‘OK, Sergeant Monty – I mean, Disraeli. But I can’t believe you’re right about this. Pyke’s radical, man.’

  Terry snorted and laughed scornfully. ‘Don’t tell me about these fucking radicals. They’re just liberals’ – practically the worst thing, in his view, anybody could be. ‘And their only use is in giving money to our party.’

  It was the servant, a deferential Irish girl, who let us in. She brought Eleanor and me champagne and disappeared into the kitchen – to make ‘supper’, I presumed. She left us sitting nervously on the leather sofa. Pyke and Marlene were ‘dressing’, we’d been told. ‘Undressing, more like,’ I murmured. There was no one else there. The house was eerily quiet. Where the hell was everyone?

  ‘Isn’t it brilliant that Pyke’s asked us over,’ Eleanor said. ‘D’you think it’s supposed to be a secret? He doesn’t usually hang out with actors, does he? I don’t think he’s invited anyone else from the cast, has he?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why us, then?’

  ‘Because he loves us so much.’

  ‘Well, whatever happens, we mustn’t deny each other experience,’ she said, in a haughty way, as if my whole purpose in life were to try and deny Eleanor experience. And she looked at me as if she wanted to press a hard grain of rice down the end of my penis.

  ‘What experience?’ I said, getting up and pacing around. She wouldn’t reply, but sat there, smoking away. ‘What experience?’ I repeated. Now she was ruining my whole evening and I was getting more and more nervous. I seemed to know nothing, not even the facts of my girlfriend’s life. ‘Maybe the sort of experience you had with your last boyfriend? The one you loved so much. Is that what you mean?’

  ‘Please don’t talk about him,’ she said softly. ‘He’s bloody dead.’

  ‘That’s not a reason not to talk about him.’

  ‘It is to me.’ She got up. ‘I must go to the toilet.’

  ‘Eleanor,’ I
cried for the first time in my life, but not the last. ‘Eleanor, why don’t we talk about this stuff?’

  ‘But you don’t know how to give. You don’t understand other people. It would be dangerous for me to lay myself open to you.’

  And off she went, leaving me that way.

  I looked around. I was being a class detective. And Terry had seriously underestimated the sort of wealth we were dealing with here. I would have to have a word with him about the quality of his snooping sources. It was an impressive house, with dark-red and green walls and modern portraits hanging from them – a couple of Marlene, a photograph of her by Bailey – and 1960s furniture: low coffee tables with Caulfield and Bacon catalogues on them, and the two hard-back volumes of Michael Foot’s biography of Nye Bevan. There were three couches in pastel shades, with Indian friezes on the wall above them; and a plaster sculpture with strings and lightbulbs, also attached to the wall: it looked like a large cunt. Leaning casually against another wall were three of Pyke’s framed awards, and standing on the table were a couple of statuettes and a cut-glass bowl with Pyke’s name on it. There were no posters or photographs from any of his productions. Apart from the awards, an outsider would have no clue to his profession.

  Eleanor returned as the two Ms walked silkily down the wide staircase, Pyke in black jeans and black T-shirt, Marlene more exotic in a short white dress, bare arms and legs, and white ballet shoes. She was glamorous, Marlene, giving off a rough and uncompromising sexuality with her many smiles. But, as my mother would have said, she was no spring chicken.

  The Irish maid served the four of us turkey salad and we sat and ate on our laps and drank more champagne. I was hungry, and had deliberately missed lunch in order to enjoy ‘supper’, but now I couldn’t eat much. Marlene and Matthew didn’t look as if food interested them either. I kept watching the door, expecting more people to turn up, but none did. Pyke had lied. He was quiet and distant tonight, as if he couldn’t be bothered with the performance of conversation. He spoke only in murmured clichés, as if to underline the banality of the evening.