Hanif Kureishi - Midnight All Day

If Ian was perplexed, it was because that generation, ten years ahead of him, had been a cussed, liberated, dissenting lot. Somehow Thatcher had helped them to power. Following her, they had moved to the right and ended up in the centre. Their left politics had ended up as social tolerance and lack of deference. Otherwise, they smoked cigars and were driven to their country houses on Friday afternoons; sitting with friends overlooking their land, while local women worked in the kitchen, they fretted about their knighthoods. They were as thrilled as teenagers when they saw themselves in the newspapers. They wanted to be prefects.

‘They’ve lost their intellectual daring,’ Ian said.

‘There’s a bit of you that sees all that as the future,’ Marina said.

‘I’m aware that one has to find new things,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know what they should be.’

He looked at her. He felt ready to bring up the subject of his wife.

‘We’ll have to go back to London eventually,’ he said. ‘Quite soon, probably, and … face everything. I want to do that and I don’t want to do it.’

‘Where will we go?’ she said. ‘I’ve got nothing, your money is in your wife’s house, and you haven’t got a job.’

‘Well —’

He believed she trusted him and imagined he might know, despite everything, what he was doing. Looking at her sweet face now, and her long fingers tearing at a croissant, he contemplated her inner dignity. If he thought she was regal, it was not because she was imperious, but because she was still. She never fidgeted; there was nothing unnecessary in anything she did.

They had stopped talking of the future and what they might do to make a life together, as if they had turned into children and wanted to be told. They drifted about Paris, according to some implicit routine, looking at their guidebooks, visiting galleries, museums and parks, going to restaurants in the evening.

If he were to love her, he had to be transformed from a man who could not do this with Jane, to a man who could do it with Marina. And the transformation had to be rapid, before he lost her. If he could not get along with this woman, he couldn’t get along with any of them and he was done for.

‘Shall we go?’ she said.

He helped her into her coat. They crossed the Seine on the wooden bridge with the benches, where they sat facing the Pont Neuf, enjoying the view. He thought, then, that this was a better moment to start to talk about his wife; but he took Marina’s arm, and they moved on.

They knew the eager queue outside the Musée d’Orsay would not take long to go down. He was amazed by the thirst of the crowds, to look at good things.

Inside, Marina was walking somewhere when, adjacent to Rodin’s ‘Gates of Hell’, Ian found himself standing beside the tower of white stone that was ‘Balzac’. Ian had seen it many times since he was a teenager, but on this occasion it made him suddenly laugh. Surely, Balzac had been a flabby and dishevelled figure, obsessed by money rather than the immortality that Rodin had him gazing towards? As far as Ian could remember, Balzac had hurried through life and received little satisfaction; his ambition had been a little ridiculous — or perhaps, narrow and unreflective. Yet this was a man: someone who had taken action, converting experience into something powerful and sensual.

Rodin had certainly made Balzac a forceful figure. Ian was reminded of how afraid his own timid mother had been of his noise and energy; she was forever telling him to ‘calm down’. His being alive at all seemed to alarm her. With Marina, too, Ian had been afraid of his own furies, of his power, and of the damage he believed that being a man might do, and how it might make her withdraw her love. What evil had marauding men caused in the twentieth century! Hadn’t he damaged his wife? And yet, looking at Rodin’s idea of Balzac now, he thought: rather a beast than a castrated angel. If the tragedy of the twentieth century had been fascism and communism, the triumph was that both had been defeated. Without guilt we lose our humanity, but if there is too much of it, nothing can be redeemed!

Leaving the Musée D’Orsay he realised how quickly he was walking, and how revived and stimulated he was. Rodin and Balzac had done him good.

As they entered a restaurant, Marina pointed out that the place looked expensive, but he hurried her in, saying, ‘Let’s just eat — and drink!’

She looked at him questioningly, but he wanted to talk, keeping the Rodin in mind like a talisman, or a reminder of some suppressed childhood ecstasy. He could push against the world, and it would survive. He had probably read too much Beckett as a young man. He would have been better off with Joyce.

‘I know you don’t want to hear about this,’ he said, ‘but my wife …’

‘Yes? What is it?’

He had alarmed her already.

‘She is in hospital. She took pills and alcohol … and passed out. I believe she did it after I told her about the baby. Our baby. You know.’

‘Is she dead?’

‘Perhaps that would seem like a relief. But no. No.’ He went on, ‘It’s a terrible thing to do, to others, to our daughter in particular. I was surprised by it, as Jane never seemed to like me. She must be deranged at the moment. She will have to realise that she can’t cling to me for ever. I don’t want to go on about it. I wanted you to know, that’s all.’

For a time she was silent.

‘I feel sorry for her,’ she said. She started to weep. ‘To have lost a love that you thought would continue for ever, and to have to recover from that. How terrible, terrible, terrible!’

‘Yes, well —’

She said, ‘How do I know you won’t do the same to me?’

‘Sorry?’

‘How do I know you won’t leave me, as you left her?’

‘As if I make a habit of … that sort of thing?’

‘You’ve done it once. Perhaps more. How do I know?’

Outrage stopped his mouth. If he spoke he would say terrible things, and they would not understand one another. But he had to keep speaking to her.

She went on, ‘I fear, constantly, that you will tire of me and go back to her.’

‘I’ll never do that, never. Why should I?’

‘You know one another.’

He said, ‘After a certain age everything happens under the sign of eternity, which is probably the best way to do things. I haven’t got time now, for vacillation.’

‘But you are feeble,’ she said. ‘You don’t fight for yourself. You let people push you around.’

‘Who?’

‘Me. Anthony. Your wife. You were always afraid of her.’

‘That is true,’ he said. ‘I cannot stop wanting to rely on the kindness of others.’

‘You can’t survive on only that.’ She was not looking at him. ‘Your weakness confuses people.’

‘I’m not a fantasy, but a wretched human with weaknesses — and some strengths — like everyone else. But I want to be with you. That I am certain of.’ He paid the bill. ‘I need to go for a walk,’ he said. ‘I want to think about what I’m going to say to Anthony. I’ll see you at the apartment later.’

She took his hand. ‘It would be a shame if your intelligence and wit … if your ideas went to waste. Now kiss me.’

He went out, leaving her with her notebook. He walked about aimlessly in the cold. Soon he was in the café where he was to meet Anthony, an hour before he was due, drinking beer and coffee.

He thought that Anthony would understand the difficulties one might have with a woman. But as a business partner, Ian was not certain that Anthony would be patient. Ian had behaved recklessly; madly even. Anthony had less use for him now. If Ian had jettisoned his own wife, Anthony might do the same to him.