Hari Kunzru - My Revolutions

As they rang the bell for the porter, I hid out of sight. After a minute or two someone came to the door and they disappeared inside. I waited for a long time, crouching behind a pillar box across the street. I began to feel lonely, suspecting that all the earlier discussion at the club had been about how to get rid of me. The stars were faint in a sky that was now turning from black to a washed-out purple-gray. On the other side of the square a car started up and pulled away, its engine sounding loud and hollow in the silence.

I must have been dozing when Freja came back down to let me in, because the first thing I heard was her voice hissing my name. She was standing in the doorway, waving frantically. I ran over and she pulled me up several flights of thickly carpeted stairs to a little room with two single beds and a huge mirrored wardrobe, a looming Formica block that dominated the far wall like a prehistoric monument. The lights were off and the curtains half drawn, letting through a dribble of predawn light that fell across Sofie, just a mound under the covers, pretending to be asleep.

Without looking at me Freja started to undress, stepping out of her skirt and carefully folding it over the back of a chair. Too shy to watch, I turned away and found myself confronted with her double image in the wardrobe doors: the curve of her back, her birdlike shoulders. She unhooked her bra, struggled into a long cotton nightie, and dived into bed. “Hurry up,” she whispered. “Get undressed and get in.”

Gray hands unbuttoned a gray shirt. I was self-conscious: though I couldn’t see her eyes in the half-light, I knew she was watching me. I got down to my underwear and crawled beneath the blankets and we tried to stifle our laughter as we wrapped ourselves around each other. She smelled of sweat and cigarette smoke. I kissed her salty face and her tongue darted out from her hot dry mouth. My body was a single nerve, thrumming with each small urgent movement, each shift in position. Her mouth at my ear. Her exploring hand.

Several times in my life I’ve gone through long periods without sex or any other kind of physical contact. The hunger it produces is deep and low; it’s possible to lose track of it, to forget or fail to perceive how it’s emptied everything out of you and made the world papery and thin. Touch starved, you brush against existence like a stick against dry leaves. You become insubstantial yourself, a hungry ghost.

I found the hard points of her nipples with my mouth, sliding a hand into the extraordinary slipperiness between her legs. Her nightdress rucked up round her waist, then, as I pushed it higher, became a solid wad round her neck. I felt her lift up her arms and snake out of it, a sudden rush of cold air sweeping in as her movement dislodged the blankets. Then her miraculous hand was on my cock, slithering me into her as the covers fell away completely. The cold somehow added to my excitement as I arched myself back and forth. “Don’t squirt your stuff inside me,” she warned, and I pulled out and came copiously onto the sheets. My moan produced a kind of answering sigh in her, a long exhalation that might have been melancholic or relieved or regretful or satisfied,

all or none, I had no idea. I saw Sofie was awake, watching us. Her mouth was slack, her eyes glittering.

We rearranged the blankets and lay silently on the narrow bed. I reached for Freja again but time had somehow passed and her breathing was even and the light coming through the chink in the grubby curtains was hard and strong, strong enough for me to see that Sofie was still watching. “You’ve got to go,” she said. “People will wake up soon, and they can’t find you here.”

My head was swimming with lack of sleep. The daylight made everything complicated; guilt lurked in the corners of the room. I foraged for my clothes on the floor and, with a quick glance at the two girls, one asleep, the other staring, I tiptoed downstairs. From behind the frosted-glass door in Reception came the sound of someone moving around. I fumbled with the front-door latch, and all at once I was standing outside in early-morning London, a place of sunlight and milk floats and street sweepers, tucking my shirt in and realizing that I was miles from home and hadn’t even got enough money for a bus fare.

There was a huge row, of course, but I didn’t much care. I retreated to my bedroom to trace and retrace every minute of my night, the quickly fading loops and whorls of happiness.

There were times like that later on, with Anna. In the squat, in various shared beds and shared houses. Watching and being watched. We had abolished privacy: we hoped guilt would go with it. Watching could become anything. Mechanical or transcendent. It could leave you open-mouthed, touching yourself. It could make you curl up defensively, resenting the selfish animal sounds, the smell of other people on the pillow into which you were pressing your face.

Brian moved out. Mum went back to the hospital, after she had scratched a lot of skin off her arms. While she was away, I moved around the house in a strange cramped dance with Dad, trying never to be in the same room. I could feel he wanted to talk to me, which made me all the more intent on avoiding him. Above all, I didn’t want him to try to make friends, not now that I was finally about to get away.

When my exam results came out, the first people I went to tell were Maggie and Colin. I wanted Maggie to share my happiness: I had my place at the LSE, my ticket out.

When Colin opened the door I waved my results paper at him. “Hi, Colin. Guess where I’m going.”

He just stood there on the doorstep, staring blankly at me. “What do you want?” he asked curtly. He didn’t invite me in.

“I just came over to tell you I got in.” I was hurt by his abruptness. He hadn’t said anything, hadn’t reacted at all to my wonderful news. “And,” I added, trying to be polite, “to — to see how you are.”

“Well, I’m bloody awful, if you’re interested.”

“Where’s Maggie?”

“Where’s Maggie? How the hell should I know?”

I was floored by this response. He had a strange, twisted expression on his face. I couldn’t think of anything to say and it must have shown.

He snorted and let out a humorless staccato laugh. “Sorry to disappoint you, Christopher, but she’s not here. She’s gone and she’s not bloody coming back, or at least that’s what she said in her letter. So now you can turn round and piss off home. I never liked you sniffing round her anyway. All that wide-eyed admiration rubbish.”

“But — I never—”

“Oh, you never, all right. Not for want of trying, you dirty little sod.”

“I didn’t, I swear. . What happened, Colin? Where did she go?”

He mimicked my voice. “Where did she go? She left me, you ass. She buggered off to Ghana or Bongo-Bongo Land or somewhere to go and save the little black babies. So no more CND, no more free food, no more singalongs, no nothing, comprende ? It’s over. Now fuck off and leave me alone.”

And he slammed the door in my face.

I’ve often wondered what happened to Maggie. I can never

picture her. Perhaps she’s still in a classroom in Africa, the headmistress, the director of the orphanage. Perhaps she’s dead. And then there’s Freja and Sofie and all the others my daughter can’t imagine, all the threats to the charmed circle of her-and-Mummyand-me. Which of them am I driving toward now? Is it really just Anna?

* * *

By the time I reach the Paris périphérique I’ve fallen into a trance of headlights and signage. Round I drive. Porte d’Orléans, Port d’Ivry. Blossoming red lights, brake sharply, traffic suddenly filtering in from a hidden slip-road, brake again. The road’s like a go-cart track, one damn thing after another, running in and out of orange-lit tunnels, through billboard-lined trenches and elevations. Was that my exit? My eyes are tired of squinting into the darkness for — what am I looking for? Porte d’Orléans. Didn’t I pass that already? I have no idea of the time: Miranda never set the dashboard clock. Thirty thousand pounds’ worth of high-status German engineering, but she doesn’t set the clock. Round and round. Though I’m dog-tired, I can’t face the complexity involved in turning off and looking for somewhere to sleep. So I carry on, round and round, Porte des Lilas, Porte de Montreuil, right shoulder inward, circumambulating the large stupa at Wat Tham Nok, following the line of chanting monks, the tea light in its little clay bowl warming my hands. Circling in the Aegean, the taste of salt on my lips, blank and free. Round and round. Porte de Charenton. Trudging round the yard at morning exercise. My revolutions: a hundred of us walking, two abreast, inner ring clockwise, outer ring counter-clockwise. Back in the days when Pentonville was the gateway to transportation, the builders constructed an endless double path of flagstones, two snakes eating their own tails, set into the black tar. The regime was designed to isolate prisoners from all human contact. Face masks, enforced silence. Round and round, a folk dance or a fairground ride. Very important, they thought, never to give the scum a sense of achievement.