Hanif Kureishi - Midnight All Day

From a certain point of view the world was ashes. You could also convert it to dust by burning away all hope, appetite, desire. But to live was, in some sense, to believe in the future. You couldn’t keep returning to the same dirty place.

He ran up the steps to the house. The light was on. He knew things would be all right if she were wearing the dressing gown he had given her.

In the kitchen she was heating a quiche and making salad. She looked at him without hostility. Not that she spoke; he didn’t either. He watched her, but was determined not go to her. He believed that if he could cut his desire for her out of himself, he could survive. At the same time he knew that without desire there was nothing.

Sitting there, he thought that he had never before realised that life could be so painful. He understood, too, that no amount of drink, drugs or meditation could make things better for good. He recalled a phrase from Socrates he had learned at university: ‘A good man cannot suffer any evil, either in life or after death.’ Wittgenstein, commenting on this, talked of feeling ‘absolutely safe’. He would look it up. Maybe there was something in it for him, some final ‘inner safety’.

They changed into their night clothes and at last got into his favourite place, their bed. Opening her dressing gown he put his hand on her stomach and caressed her. For a short while she lay in his arms as he touched her. Then she touched him a little, before turning over and falling asleep.

He started to think of his sleeping son, as he always did at this time, wondering if Mikey had woken up and was talking to him ‘through the floor’. He wanted to go and kiss his son goodnight, as other fathers did. Perhaps he would have another son, and it would be different. He looked around the room. There wasn’t enough space for a wardrobe; their clothes were piled at the end of the bed. On a chair next to him, illuminated by a tilting lamp, was a copy of Great Expectations, a bottle of massage oil encrusted with greasy dust, his reading glasses, a glass with a splash of wine in it, and a notebook.

His life and mind had been so busy that the idea of sitting in bed to write in his journal, or even to read, seemed an outlandish luxury, the representation of an impossible peace. But also, that kind of solitude seemed too much like waiting for something to start. He had wanted to be disturbed; and he had been.

He knew their resentments went deep and continued to grow. But he and Melanie were afraid rather than wicked. In their own, clumsy way, they were each fighting to preserve themselves. Love could be torn down in a minute, like taking a stick to a spider’s web. But love was an admixture; it never came pure. He knew there was sufficient love and tenderness between them; and that no love should go wasted.

Alfie was having breakfast with his wife at the kitchen table.

He couldn’t have slept for more than three hours, having been out the previous night. He was a cutter — a hairdresser — and had to get to work. Once there, as well as having to endure the noise and queues of customers, he had to make conversation all day.

‘Did you have a good time last night?’ his wife asked.

They had got married a year ago in Las Vegas.

‘I think so,’ he said.

‘Where did you go?’ She was looking at him. ‘Don’t you know?’

‘I can remember the early part of the evening. We all met in the pub. Then there was a club and a lot of people. Later there was a porn film.’

‘Was it good?’

‘It wasn’t human. It was like a butcher’s shop. After that … it gets a little vague.’

His wife looked at him in surprise.

‘That’s never happened before. You always like to tell me what you’ve been doing. I hope it’s not the start of something.’

‘It’s not,’ said Alfie. ‘Wait a minute. I’ll tell you what I did.’

He pulled his jacket from where he had left it, over the back of a chair.

He would examine his wallet and see how much money he had spent, whether he had any cocaine left, or if he had collected phone numbers, business cards or taxi receipts that might jog his memory.

He was fumbling in his inside pocket when he found something strange.

He pulled it out.

‘What’s that?’ his wife said. She came closer. ‘It’s a penis,’ she said. ‘You’ve come home with a man’s penis — complete with balls and pubic hair — in your pocket. Where did you get it?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘You better tell me,’ she said.

He put it down on the table.

‘I don’t make a habit of picking up stray penises.’ He added, ‘It’s not erect.’

‘Suppose it does start to get hard? It’s big enough as it is.’ She looked more closely. ‘Bigger than yours. Bigger than most I’ve seen.’

‘That’s enough,’ he said hurriedly. ‘I don’t think we should keep looking at it. Let’s wrap it in something. Get some kitchen roll and a plastic bag.’

When it wriggled they were both staring at it.

‘Get that thing off my kitchen table!’ she said. She was about to become hysterical. ‘My mother’s coming for lunch! Get it out of here!’

‘I think I will do that,’ he said.

A few minutes later, to his surprise, he was walking down the street with a penis in his pocket.

His instinct was to drop it in a dustbin and go straight to work, but after a few minutes’ consideration he thought he would take it to an artist whose hair he cut, a sculptor who usually worked in faeces and blood. The sculptor used to work in body parts, but had got into trouble with the authorities. Nevertheless, he might find the opportunity to work with a penis irresistible. The art dealers, who yearned for more and more horrible effects, would be fascinated. Alfie would get paid. His wife had told him that he should become more ‘business minded’. More than anything she wanted him to appear on television.

Alfie was heading in the direction of his friend’s house when he saw a policeman walking towards him. Quickly, he pulled the wrapped penis out of his pocket and let it fall to the ground. People threw litter down all the time. It wasn’t a serious crime.

He had scarcely gone a few more yards when a schoolgirl ran up behind him, waving the bag and telling him he had dropped his breakfast. Thanking her, he stuffed it back in his pocket.

His teeth were chattering. He didn’t want the ‘thing’ in his pocket one more second.

He turned a corner and found himself crossing the river. Making sure no one was watching, he tossed the penis over the side of the bridge and watched it fall.

Then he noticed that under the bridge a passing cruiser was taking tourists down the river. A voice was commenting through a megaphone: ‘On the left we can see … and on your right there is a particularly interesting historic monument.’

Meanwhile, the penis, coming loose from its covering, was hurtling towards the upper deck.

Alfie fled.

*

Less than a mile away, Doug, an actor, got out of bed and strolled into his new bathroom. He was in his early forties, but looked superb.

The next day he was about to start work on the biggest film of his life. It was a costume drama, a classy production, which meant he didn’t have to take his prick out of his breeches until the tenth minute. The director was excellent and Doug had chosen his female co-stars himself, for their talent as well as their size. Doug had intended to spend the day in the gym. After he would get his hair and nails done, before retiring early to bed with the script.

It wasn’t until he passed the mirror on the way to the shower, and looked at himself for the first time that day, that he realised his penis was missing. The whole thing had gone, penis, scrotum, even his pubic hair.