On Beauty

by Zadie Smith

  ‘My God,’ said Christian, with that clipped, puzzlingly European inflection he had. He had been raised in Iowa. ‘I’m simply privileged to be invited. It must be a very special occasion for you. What a milestone.’

  Kiki sensed that he hadn’t said any of this to Howard, and indeed Howard’s eyebrows now raised a little, as if he had not heard Christian speak like this before. The banalities, obviously, were saved for Kiki.

  ‘Yeah, I guess . . . and it’s just a nice thing – beginning of the semester and everything . . . shall I get the dog away from you?’

  Christian had been stepping from side to side, trying to lose Murdoch but instead offering him the kind of challenge he adored.

  ‘Oh, well . . . I don’t want to –’

  ‘No trouble, Christian, don’t sweat it.’

  Kiki nudged Murdoch off with her toe, and then gave him another nudge to direct him out of the room. God forbid Christian should get any dog hairs on those fine Italian shoes. No, that was unfair. Christian slicked down his hair with his palm along that severe parting on the left side of his head, a line so straight it seemed marked out with a ruler. And that too was unfair.

  ‘I got me champagne in one hand and chicken in the other,’ said Kiki, excessively jolly as penance for her thoughts. ‘What can I do you for?’

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Christian. He seemed to know a joke should go here but he was constitutionally unable to provide one. ‘Choices, choices.’

  ‘Give them here, darling,’ said Howard, taking only the champagne from his wife. ‘Proper hellos first might be nice – you know Meredith, don’t you?’

  Meredith – if one were to remember two facts about each of one’s guests in order to introduce them to other guests – was interested in Foucault and costume-wear. At various parties Kiki had listened carefully and yet not understood what Meredith was saying while Meredith was dressed as an English punk, a fin de sie `cle dame in a drop-waisted Edwardian gown, a French movie star and, most memorably, a forties war bride, her hair set and curled like Bacall’s, complete with stockings and stays and that compelling black line curving up the back of both her mighty calves. This evening Meredith’s dress was a concoction of pink chiffon, with a wide circle skirt you had to make space for, and a little black mohair cardigan slung over her shoulders. This last was set off by a gigantic diamanté brooch. Her shoes were peep-toe red heels that put at least a three-inch distance between Meredith and her real height as she strode across the room. Meredith stretched out a white kid glove for her hostess to shake. Meredith was twenty-seven years old.

  ‘Of course! Wow, Meredith!’ said Kiki, blinking theatrically. ‘Honey, I don’t even know what to say. I should have some kind of award for best party outfit – I don’t know what I was thinking. You look fine, girl!’

  Kiki whistled, and Meredith, who was still holding one of Kiki’s hands, took the opportunity to do a twirl, holding Kiki’s hand high and describing a small circle beneath it.

  ‘You like? I would so very much like to tell you I just threw it together,’ said Meredith loudly and quickly in her nervous, Californian scream, ‘but it takes me a long, looong time to look this good. Bridges have been built quicker. Whole hermeneutic systems have coalesced with more speed. Just from here to here,’ said Meredith, signalling the space between her eyebrows and her upper lip, ‘that’s like three hours.’

  The bell rang. Howard groaned, as if the present company was more than enough, but went practically skipping off to answer it. Abandoned by their only real connection, the little triangle fell quiet, resorting to smiles. Kiki wondered precisely how far she was from Meredith and Christian’s ideal of a leader’s appropriate consort.

  ‘We made you a thing,’ said Meredith abruptly. ‘Did he tell you? We made you this thing. Maybe it’s crap, I don’t know.’

  ‘No . . . no, I hadn’t yet –’ said Christian, blushing.

  ‘Like a thing – a present. Is that corny? Thirty years and all that? Have we just been corny?’

  ‘I’ll just . . .’ said Christian, crouching down awkwardly to get to his old-fashioned satchel, which rested against the ottoman.

  ‘So we did some half-assed research and it turns out that thirty years is pearl, but, as you know, the average grad income doesn’t really stretch that far, so we weren’t really in the pearl way of things . . .’ Meredith laughed maniacally. ‘And then Chris thought of this poem and then I like did my arts and craft thing and anyway here it is: see it’s like a framed, fabricy, type poem thing – I don’t know.’

  Kiki felt the warm teak frame delivered into her hands and admired the crushed rose petals and broken shells under the glass. The text was sewn in, like a tapestry. It was the most unusual present she could have expected from these two. It was lovely.

  ‘Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made, Those are pearls that were his eyes –’ read Kiki circumspectly, aware that she should know it.

  ‘So, that’s the pearl thing,’ said Meredith. ‘It’s probably stupid.’

  ‘Oh – it’s so gorgeous,’ said Kiki, skim-reading the rest to herself in a quick whisper. ‘Is it Plath? That’s wrong, isn’t it.’

  ‘It’s Shakespeare,’ said Christian, wincing slightly. ‘ The Tempest. Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change, Into something rich and strange. Plath stripped it for parts.’

  ‘Shit,’ Kiki laughed. ‘When in doubt, say Shakespeare. And when it’s sport, say Michael Jordan.’

  ‘That is totally my policy,’ agreed Meredith.

  ‘This is really gorgeous. Howard will love it. I don’t think it comes under his representational art ban.’

  ‘No, it’s textual,’ said Christian testily. ‘That’s the point. It’s a textual artifact.’

  Kiki looked at him inquiringly. She wondered sometimes whether Christian was in love with her husband.

  ‘Where is Howard?’ said Kiki, revolving her head absurdly round the empty room. ‘He’ll just love this. He loves to hear that nothing on him doth fade.’

  Meredith laughed again. Howard re-entered the room with a clap of his hands, but then the bell rang once more.

  ‘Bloody hell. Could you excuse us? Like Piccadilly Circus in here. Jerome! Zora?’

  Howard cupped a hand to his ear like a man waiting for a response to his fake bird call.

  ‘Howard,’ tried Kiki, holding up the frame, ‘Howard, look at this.’

  ‘Levi? No? Have to be us, then. Just excuse us one minute.’

  Kiki followed Howard into the hall, where together they opened the door to the Wilcoxes, one of the rare, genuinely moneyed Wellingtonian couples of their acquaintance. The Wilcoxes owned a preppy clothes chain store, gave generously to the college, and looked like the shells of two Atlantic shrimp in evening wear. Right behind them came Howard’s assistant, Smith J. Miller, bearing a home-made apple-pie and dressed like the neat Kentucky gentleman he was. They were all ushered into the kitchen to do their best with the completely unsuitable social pairing of old-school Marxist English professor Joe Rainier and the young woman he was presently dating. There was a New Yorker cartoon on the fridge that Kiki now wished she had taken down. An upscale couple in the back of a limo. Woman saying: Of course they’re clever. They have to be clever. They haven’t got any money.

  ‘Just go through, go through,’ brayed Howard, making the signal for directing sheep across a country road. ‘People in the living room, or the garden’s lovely . . .’

  A few minutes later they were alone once more in the hall.

  ‘I mean, where’s Zora – she’s been going on about the bloody party for weeks and now neither hide nor hair –’

  ‘She’s probably gone to get some smokes or something.’

  ‘I think at least one of them should be present. So people don’t think we keep them in some kind of child sex prison camp in the attic.’

  ‘I’ll go and deal with it, Howie, OK? You just get everybody what they need. Where the hell is
Monique? Wasn’t she meant to be bringing somebody?’

  ‘In the garden jumping up and down on bags of ice,’ said Howard impatiently, as if she might have figured this out for herself. ‘Bloody ice-maker fucked up half an hour ago.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Yes, darling, fuck.’

  Howard pulled his wife towards him and put his nose in between her breasts. ‘Can’t we just have a party here? You and me and the girls?’ he asked, tentatively squeezing the girls. Kiki drew back from him. Although peace had broken out in the Belsey household, sex had not yet returned. In the past month Howard had stepped up his flirtatious campaign. Touching, holding and now squeezing. Howard seemed to think the next step inevitable, but Kiki had not yet decided whether tonight was to be the beginning of the rest of her marriage.

  ‘Uh-uh . . .’ she said softly. ‘Sorry. Turns out they’re not coming.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He pulled her close to him again and rested his head on her shoulder. Kiki let him. Anniversaries will do that. She gripped a clump of her husband’s thick, silky hair in her free hand. The other hand held Christian and Meredith’s present, still waiting to be appreciated. And just like this, with her eyes closed, and with his hair escaping her fingers, they could have been standing in any happy day of any of these thirty years. Kiki was not a fool and recognized the feeling for what it was: a dumb wish to go backwards. Things could not be exactly the same as they had been.

  ‘The girls hate Christian Von Asshole,’ she said finally, teasingly, but let him rest his head on her bosom. ‘They won’t go to anything he goes to. You know how they are. I can’t do a thing about it.’

  The bell rang. Howard sighed lustily.

  ‘Saved by the bell,’ whispered Kiki. ‘Look, I’m going upstairs. I’m going to try to get the kids down. You answer that – and slow down on the drinks, OK? You gotta hold this whole shebang together.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  Howard hurried to the door, but then turned just before he opened it. ‘Oh – Keeks –’ His face was childish, apologetic, completely inadequate. It made Kiki suddenly despair. It was a face that placed them right alongside every other middle-aged couple on the block – the raging wife, the rueful husband. She thought: How did we get to the same place as everybody else?

  ‘Keeks . . . Sorry, darling, just . . . I need to know if you invited them?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who d’you think? The Kippses.’

  ‘Oh, right . . . Sure. I spoke to her. She was . . .’ But it was impossible either to make a joke of Mrs Kipps or to give her to Howard in a nutshell, the way he liked people to be served to him. ‘I don’t know if they’ll come, but I invited them.’

  And again with the bell. Kiki went off towards the stairs, leaving the present upon the little table under the mirror. Howard answered the door.

  12

  ‘Hey.’

  Tall, pleased with himself, pretty, too pretty like a conman, sleeveless, tattooed, languid, muscled, a basketball under his arm, black. Howard kept hold of the half-open door.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Carl had been smiling, now he stopped. He’d come from playing ball on Wellington’s big, free, college court (you just walked right in and acted liked you belonged there); midway through the game Levi had called him and said the party was tonight. Strange date to pick for a party, but then each to their own. The brother had sounded kind of funny, like he was pissed about something, but he was definitely real adamant about Carl coming down here. Sent him the address, like, three times. Carl could have gone back home to change first, but that would have been an epic round trip. He’d figured that on a hot night like this, no one would care.

  ‘Hope so. I’m here for the party.’

  Howard watched him put both hands either side of his ball so that the slender, powerful contours of his arms were outlined in the security light.

  ‘Right . . . this is a private party.’

  ‘Your man, Levi? I’m a friend of his.’

  ‘I see . . . um, look, well, he’s . . .’ said Howard, turning and pretending to seek his son in the hallway. ‘He’s not about just now . . . But if you give me your name, I’ll tell him you stopped by . . .’

  Howard jerked back as the boy bounced his ball once, hard on the doorstep.

  ‘Look,’ said Howard rudely, ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but Levi shouldn’t really have been inviting his . . . friends – this is really quite a small affair –’

  ‘Right. For poet poets.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Shit, I don’t know why I even came here – forget it,’ said Carl. He was off immediately down the drive and out the gate, a proud, quick, bouncy walk.

  ‘Wait –’ called Howard after him. He was gone.

  Extraordinary, said Howard to himself, and closed the door. He went into the kitchen in search of wine. He heard the bell go again, and Monique answer, and people come in, and then more people right behind them. He poured his glass – the bell again – Erskine and his wife, Caroline. And then another crowd could be heard relieving themselves of their coats just as Howard thumped the cork back in the bottle. The house was filling up with people he was not related to by blood. Howard began to feel in the party mood. Soon enough he relaxed into his role of life and soul: pressing food upon his guests, pouring their drinks, talking up his reluctant, invisible children, correcting a quotation, weighing in on an argument, introducing people to each other twice or thrice over. During his many three-minute conversations he managed to be committed, curious, supportive, celebratory, laughing before you had finished your funny sentence, refilling your glass even as beaded bubbles still winked at the brim. If he caught you in the action of putting on or looking for your coat, you were treated to a lover’s complaint; you pressed his hand, he pressed yours. You swayed together like sailors. One felt confident to tease him, slightly, about his Rembrandt, and he in turn said something irreverent about your Marxist past or your creative-writing class or your eleven-year-long study of Montaigne, and the goodwill was at such a pitch that you did not take it personally. You placed your coat back on the bed. Finally, when you again persisted with your talk of deadlines and morning starts and made it out of the front door, you closed it with the new and gratifying impression that not only did Howard Belsey not hate you – as you had always previously assumed – but, in fact, the man had long harboured a boundless admiration of you which only his natural English reserve had prevented him from expressing before this night.

  At nine thirty, Howard decided it was time to give a little speech in the garden to the assembled company. This was well received. By ten, the intoxication of all this bon vivant business had reached Howard’s petite ears, which were quite red with joy. It seemed to him an especially successful little party. In truth it was a typical Wellington affair: always threatening to fill up but never quite doing so. The Black Studies Department’s graduate crowd were out in force, mostly because Erskine was well loved by them and they were, anyway, by the far the most socialized people at Wellington, priding themselves on their reputation for being the closest replicas on campus to normal human beings. Along with large talk they had small talk; they had a Black Music Library in their department; they knew, and could speak eloquently of, the latest trash television. They were invited to all the parties and came to all of them too. But the English Department was less well represented tonight: only Claire, that Marxist Joe, Smith and a few female Cult of Claire groupies who, Howard was amused to see, were throwing themselves at Warren, one after another, like lemmings. Warren had clearly joined the list of things of which Claire approved – therefore they wanted him. A circle of strange young anthropologists Howard didn’t think he knew remained in the kitchen all night, hovering by the food, fearful of going anywhere where there was not an abundance of props – glasses, bottles, canapés – with which to fiddle. Howard left them to it and adjourned to the garden. He walked the rim of the pool, happily holding on to his e
mpty glass, as the summer moon passed behind blushing clouds and all about rose the agreeable animal sound of outdoor conversation.

  ‘Strange date for it, though,’ he heard somebody say. And then the usual response: ‘Oh, I think it’s a wonderful date for a party. You know it’s their actual anniversary, so . . . And if we don’t reclaim the day, you know . . . then it’s like they’ve won. It’s a reclaiming, absolutely.’ This was the most popular conversation of the night. Howard had had it himself at least four times since the clock struck ten and the wine really kicked in. Before that no one liked to mention it.

  Every twenty seconds or so, Howard admired a pair of feet as they thrust up through the skin of the water; the curved back that followed, and then the slim brown form in the water doing another speedy, almost silent lap. Levi had evidently decided that if he must stay at this party, he might as well get a work-out. Howard could not figure out exactly how long Levi’d been in the pool, but, as his own speech had ended and the applause faded, everyone had noticed at the same time that there was a lone swimmer, and then almost everyone had asked their neighbour whether they recalled Cheever’s story. Academics lack range.

  ‘I should have brought my swimsuit,’ Howard had overhead Claire Malcolm saying loudly to somebody.

  ‘And would you have swum if you had?’ came the sensible reply.

  Without any great urgency, Howard was now looking for Erskine. He wanted Erskine’s opinion on his earlier speech. He sat down on the pretty bench Kiki had installed under their apple tree and looked out on to his party. The wide backs and solid calves of women he didn’t know surrounded him. Friends of Kiki from the hospital, talking among themselves. Nurses, thought Howard definitively, not sexy. And how had his speech gone down with women like this, non-academic, solid, opinionated, Kiki supporters – for that matter, how had it gone down with everyone? It had not been an easy speech to give. It was, in effect, three speeches. One for those who knew, one for those who didn’t know, and one for Kiki, to whom it was addressed and who both did and didn’t know. The people who didn’t know had smiled and whooped and clapped as Howard touched upon the rewards of love; they sighed sweetly when he expanded on the joys of marrying your best friend, also the difficulties. Encouraged by this moonlit attention, Howard had strayed from his prepared script. He segued into Aristotle’s praise of friendship, and from there to some aperçus of his own. He spoke of how friendship expands tolerance. He spoke of the fecklessness of Rembrandt and the forgiveness of his wife, Saskia. This was close to the knuckle, but none of it seemed to be greeted with any undue attention by the majority of his audience. Fewer people knew than he had feared. Kiki had not, after all, told the whole world of what he had done, and tonight he was more grateful for this fact than ever. Speech concluded, the applause had settled snug around him like a comfort blanket. He had hugged the two American children available to him hard around their shoulders, and felt no resistance. So that’s how it was. His infidelity had not ended everything, after all. It had been self-pity to think that, and self-aggrandizement. Life went on. Jerome showed him that first, by having his own romantic cataclysm so soon after Howard’s – the world does not stop for you. At first, he had thought otherwise. At first he had despaired. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before – he had no idea what to do, which move to make. Later on, when he retold the story to Erskine – a veteran of marital infidelity – his friend had gifted him with some belated, obvious advice: Deny everything. This was Erskine’s long-term policy, and he claimed it had never failed him. But Howard had been discovered and confronted in the oldest way – a condom in the pocket of his suit – and she had stood before him holding it between her fingers, alive with a pure contempt he had found almost impossible to bear. He had many choices before him that day, but the truth had simply not been one of them, not if he wanted to retain any semblance of the life he loved. And now he felt vindicated: he had made the right decision. He had not told the truth. Instead he said what he felt he must in order to enable all of this to continue: these friends, these colleagues, this family, this woman. God knows, even the story he ended up giving – a one-night stand with a stranger – had caused terrible damage. It broke that splendid circle of Kiki’s love, within which he had existed for so long, a love (and it was to Howard’s credit that he knew this) that had enabled everything else. How much worse would it have been had he told the truth? It would only have packed misery upon misery. As it stood, a few of his closest friendships had been imperilled: those people Kiki had spoken to were disappointed in him and had told him so. A year later, this party was the test of their respect for him, and now, realizing that he had passed the test, Howard had to restrain himself from crying with relief before each new person who was kind to him. He had made a silly mistake – this was the consensus – and should be allowed (for who among middle-aged academics would dare to throw the first stone?) to remain in possession of that unusual thing, a happy and passionate marriage. How they had loved each other! Everybody thinks they’re in love at twenty, of course; but Howard Belsey had really still been in love at forty – embarrassing but true. He never really got over her face. It gave him so much pleasure. Erskine often joked that only a man who had such pleasure at home could be the kind of theorist Howard was, so against pleasure in his work. Erskine himself was on his second marriage. Almost all the men Howard knew were already divorced, had begun again with new women; they told him things like ‘you get to the end of a woman’, as if their wives had been pieces of string. Is that what happened? Had he finally got to the end of Kiki?