Hanif Kureishi - The Last Word

Harry said, ‘I need to ask you something. Are you sure I can’t see his letters to you? Could I copy them? I could photograph them with my phone. I could help you arrange for them to be purchased by an American university. It goes without saying that you could do well out of them.’

She laughed. ‘I’m aware of that and I need the money badly for health care. I’m not so stupid, Harry. This material will make a chapter in your account. I’m hanging onto it for now because for me it will be an entire book. Mine will be far more spicy, passionate and vulgar than yours. I know the other women involved and they will back me up with their recollections, while remaining anonymous. And I have started my book. Are you and I racing?’

He said, ‘Coming from me, this will sound a bit rich, but why would you want to expose this private material?’

‘Suppose Flaubert’s lover had written a book about him? Or Kafka’s fiancée? What would it be like to be a writer’s companion? After my story of my life with him, he and I will be side by side forever.’ She added, ‘He loved and exploited me. Now I can do the same to him!’

‘Very tabloid.’

‘Isn’t it usually the women’s voices which are suppressed? You envy him, and will never know what it is like to love him. I will give the view from the bedroom, the intimate picture. If you want to know a man, see how he is in love. Isn’t that where the truth lies?’

‘Yes, the truth always lies. It might be in the complexity of the work.’

‘That’s the cover story.’

He said, ‘And if he wanted you back?’

‘I’d be there like a shot, even now. Will you say that to him? He was cruel, handsome and brilliant, everything a man should be. Harry, will you say my name in front of him and watch his face? He knows very well that he is still mine, that he will not escape me.’

At the door she put her face up to his. He kissed her cheek, and saw she wanted to give him her mouth. Perhaps it would be her last kiss. For a short time he gave her his mouth. Why not? She tried to pull him towards her, but he removed her hands from his body.

‘I still have physical feeling,’ she said. ‘If you help me, I’ll show you the letters.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m tired. Come back tomorrow? Would you — for one more day? I will have something important.’

The next day he learned that he could read some of the letters on her bed, where she would lie next to him. He would wear a T-shirt and trousers, and she would be permitted to touch his upper body only: chest, shoulders, head and hair. He didn’t object to her caresses; he believed he was glad to be of use, and he was, anyway, tense for a number of good reasons.

As her hands worked on him, Harry took in the material: they were love letters, with requests for assignations disguised as wishes for others to accompany them ‘on walks’. Despite her promises, and sentences about how much ‘the other evening’ had meant to him at his time of life, and how ‘revived’ and ‘interested’ he was, once more, in what he referred to as ‘the human scene’, there was nothing substantial to count as confirmation.

All Harry could do was thank Marion, kiss her, and say goodbye. He would write to her if he needed anything else.

‘Please come back again — whenever you like,’ she said, taking his hands. He wondered if she’d ever let him go. ‘Please, I’ll try to find other pictures and notes. Tell me, do you pity me, an old woman alone, with nothing except a few memories of a writer?’

‘I admire you, Marion.’

‘For what?’

‘For being a fundamentalist, for giving up everything for one idea — love. And you still live it.’

‘Would you have sacrificed so much?’

‘For me the world’s full of women. Many of them — too many — are nice.’

‘The serial loves keep you safe, and that’s the most dangerous thing of all. You never miss anyone, and if there’s no sacrifice, there’s no love.’

He asked her how she read her love now, as devotion, or the siren call of masochism?

‘Until you said it, I thought it was the first. Now you tell me.’

Self-sacrifice would be the hardest addiction to shift. He said, ‘Mamoon felt uneasy, with all that relentless love and possessiveness coming at him.’

‘That’s what you would feel. I know some puny men are afraid of women. But why would you say that about him?’

‘He fled.’

‘So he’s the victim here, after all.’

He said, ‘I guess it’s wonderful to fall in love, but falling out of it, losing the illusion — now there’s a necessary art, which might profitably be learned.’

‘I suppose that is what you will write. I must do my book then.’ She sighed. ‘I seem to have ruined my life, and you appear to have saved yours.’

‘Not so fast,’ he said. ‘My girlfriend and I did a test back in London, and she’s having a child. We talked about children, but never agreed on anything definite. Myself, I still feel I’m an adolescent.’

‘You’re mis-recognising yourself,’ she said. ‘That is very dangerous.’

‘How to see straight?’

‘That is the thing.’

‘How, how?’

‘It’s been done already, the straight seeing,’ she said. ‘You’ve seen. Now you cover it up. You hide yourself from yourself.’ She kissed him. ‘Don’t forget, conventionally, you actually have what most people want. Send me a picture of the little one.’

Harry guessed there was something wrong with Rob when, the afternoon after his return to London, Rob suggested they meet in the frantic bar of a railway station. It was not the case that Rob was intending to take a journey: he said he only liked ‘anonymous places’ or ‘non-spaces’ now. As soon as they met, Rob commented on the number of anxious bodies rushing around them, saying how the limbs had lost contact with their owners and resembled electrified stumps.

Rob had been drinking and was sweaty and shaking excessively, even for him. He appeared to have shoved most of his clothes in a kit bag that didn’t close, and Harry could see a slew of manuscripts, Bulgarian, Albanian and Tunisian novels, and poetry books. As there was the stench of the grave about the editor, Harry got down from his stool, saying it was awkward, and insisted they sit at a table where Rob was further away.

‘Don’t I look a hundred per cent?’ said Rob. His eyes widened and he glanced around furtively, as if he were about to be attacked. Harry remembered how gentle his father was with paranoiacs, speaking to them quietly, and without intrusive questions, often just repeating what they said in a whisper. He managed this until Rob informed him that he was intending to accompany him to Mamoon’s place in the country.

‘You are? Why?’ asked Harry.

‘Don’t you think it would be a good place to detox? We can talk through the material while strolling about the woods. I can help you organise it.’

‘Rob, I’m not ready for that,’ said Harry. ‘All you need to know is that India was terrific.’

‘And America?’

‘I had to beg for it, but finally it turned out to be good stuff, with Marion. She’s very similar to Liana in her brashness and confidence. Mamoon must know that people go for the same types without seeing it. But she’s more intelligent and shrewder than Liana. She knows him better. However, it turns out she loved the curmudgeonly old cunt non-stop for years, and still does, remarkably enough. She even fetched other women for him.’

‘There’s no accounting for taste. Particularly with literary giants, Harry, you will find that the women fling themselves into the fire head first. We fans are on the wrong side of literature.’