Hari Kunzru - My Revolutions

“Jeremy is a pig. Look, I know people, OK? Just because you’re the tortured introvert. Besides, I needed to be out of the house.”

She didn’t have to say anymore. Sean and Saul had been at each other’s throats all day. The pretext was some abstruse point about workers’ councils.

She took a drag on her cigarette. “The sooner he goes to Sweden the better.”

“If you think that, why don’t you just tell him?”

“Because it’s nothing to do with me.”

“Oh, come on, it’s everything to do with you.”

“Not really. If it wasn’t me it would be someone else. Something else. Something.”

Around us the alcohol level was peaking. Voices were raised. Rhetoric flew messily around the kitchen. A woman I recognized from some late-night discussion program on the BBC was holding forth to a little group by the sink. “If you mean that by honoring my feminine side, I’m honoring the divine within myself and elevating nonmaterial values over the consumer culture, then I’d have to say you’re substantially correct.”

“That’s just crap, Maria.”

“But why is it crap?” The woman camped up her incomprehension. “Just tell me why.”

I never knew much about what it was like for Anna when she was married to Jeremy Wilson. East End chancers and aristocratic junkies; everyone up for a free ride. She was only twenty, divorced by twenty-two. I looked at the television woman, at her careful makeup and amber jewelry. In other circumstances, could Anna have turned into her?

We drifted into the main room where the host was fiddling with an expensive hi-fi. Ursula was dancing with a good-looking young man.

“He’s an actor,” Anna told me. “He’s in something somewhere and he’s a great success.”

Ursula looked sulkily over. I was obviously being punished. The actor eyed me warily. “So,” asked Anna, “are you going to do something about it?”

“Like what?”

“I thought you were with that girl. Look at where his hands are.”

“I don’t care. She’s a free person. We’re all free people.”

“You mean you don’t care, or you’re afraid?”

“I’m not afraid of him.”

She laughed, and appraised me. “Yes, you are. Maybe not of him in particular, but of this.”

“Anna. I don’t give a damn. She’s pissing me off anyway.”

“Oh, is she? Poor you. But you’re not taking my point.”

“I don’t know what your point is.”

“I’m saying you respect it too much. This party. These people. These sophisticated people.”

“I’ve got no respect for them at all. They’re smug. They’re bourgeois.”

“You’re lying, Chris. You want them to love you. You follow all their rules. Politeness, acceptable behavior. My mother would adore you.”

“What rules? And I still don’t understand what your problem is. We’re both at this party. We’ve both chosen to come here. It’s just a party.”

“The difference is that you couldn’t step outside it, if you chose. Look at these people. Look at them, Chris. They’re blind. They’re happy to ignore everything around them, just pleased to be having a good time. And, as far as I’m concerned, that makes them culpable. It makes them complicit in everything they’re ignoring. Vietnam, the lot. It makes them pigs.”

“So what? You want to leave? I agree. Let’s get out of here.” “Run away?”

“Christ, Anna! Run away from what?”

“Why not confront them? If they’re pigs, why not tell them to their faces?”

“If they piss you off so much, why don’t you?”

Without a word, Anna went over to a middle-aged man in a velvet jacket, who was talking to the host. As she approached, he smiled reflexively, wondering if he knew her. She leaned forward and tightened his tie until it started to constrict his neck. Then, as he scrabbled ineffectually at his collar, she dashed the wineglass out of his hand and screamed at him, “You pig! You fucking baby-killing pig!” The music was quite loud and not everyone could hear, but the room was instantly energized.

People stared. The man cowered, his hands up, ready to ward off another attack.

Anna turned to me and inclined her head. The blood was pumping in my ears. I felt sick, as if there was a physical weight on my chest. She was right. I was scared of those people. I valued their good opinion. I envied their confidence, their social position.

I took a step forward. Then another. In front of me was the BBC woman. I batted a bowl out of her hand, spraying rice salad over the people around her. I screamed at her, “Pig! Fucking pig!” Anna went up to another woman, spilling wine onto her blouse. I pushed the actor who was dancing with Ursula. For the next few minutes we shouldered through the party performing small acts of transgression, breaking things, screaming obscenities and feeling people up, until the place was in a state of uproar. People shouted at us. One man slapped Anna’s face, the macho movie hero dealing with the hysteric.

I remember Miles’s horrified expression as we were pushed out of the door.

On the street, taxis streamed past, carrying people back to the suburbs. The host was apparently calling the police. We ran off toward the tube station.

When we clattered down the stairs, we found the platform was deserted, and since she was laughing and I was on a high, I pushed her against a pillar and put my face close to hers. I could feel her back, slick with perspiration under her thin T-shirt. She didn’t pull away. When I kissed her, she responded passionately, or so it seemed to me, until I tried to slip my hand between her thighs, at which point she pushed me off and held me at arm’s length, smiling and shaking her head. “Fuck off, Chris,” she panted. “You don’t get to drag me back to your cave. I’m not your reward, your gold star.” Then, while I tried to digest what had just happened, she playfully slapped my cheek and hopped onto a train, waving to me as the carriage doors closed. I watched her take a seat and fish a book out of her jacket pocket as it pulled away.

Was that party the turning point, the most important moment

of my summer? Or was it when Jay came to find me in the pub? I remember he’d acquired a large fedora hat from somewhere. It made him look like a theatrical villain, off for a touch of opium and some white slavery, then home in time for tea.

“There’s a guy in the living room,” he whispered ominously. “You’ve got to come and deal with him. He’s fucking awful, mate. Harshing the vibe. Says he’s your brother.”

By the time I arrived, Brian had been there almost an hour. He’d refused tea. He’d refused to sit down. Fear of contamination? It was hard to say why. Maybe he thought he’d get spiked, believe he could fly. I found him standing at attention by the living room door, like a furious standard lamp.

“Where the hell have you been?” was his greeting. It was months since we’d seen each other.

It wasn’t merely that I hadn’t thought about Brian for a while. I’d blocked him out. But there he was, a presence from another life, a scowling, sandy-haired man whose meaty back and shoulders were hunched inside a shiny gray suit jacket, a tie knotted under his jowl like a big floral noose. My brother. Make the sounds with your mouth and see if they conjure up a feeling.

“Hello, Brian.”

“Christ almighty, it’s taken me three days to track you down.” “I see.”

“What are you doing here? This house is revolting.”

I’d already had enough. “You spent three days looking for me just to tell me you don’t like where I live? If you can’t be friendly, just go, OK?”

“Don’t give me any of your lip. Of course I didn’t come for that.”