Hanif Kureishi - Something to Tell You

My girl and I began to see one another all the time; mostly in London, at college or in Soho. Or we would meet at a bus stop near my house and drive into the city together.

I don’t think I’ve ever stopped seeing London like a small boy. The London I liked was the city of exiles, refugees and immigrants, those for whom the metropolis was extraterrestrial and the English codes unbreakable, people who didn’t have a place and didn’t know who they were. The city from the point of view of my father.

My best friend, Valentin, was Bulgarian and his other best mate, Wolf, was German. Neither of them resembled the average student; they weren’t overgrown public school boys. Wolf was ten years older than me, and Valentin at least five. My father had numerous older brothers, who I idealised. I figured Dad always had someone to look after him, and that’s what I wanted for myself.

Wolf, who was neither employed nor a student, was renting a room in the same house as Valentin. That’s how they had met, and how I got to know him. Wolf wore a Bogart raincoat, black brogues and black leather gloves. The only time he seemed to take off his gloves was when he played tennis on the council courts on Brook Green, not far from where I live now, and where I take Rafi for his tennis lessons with a lithe South African.

Valentin and I would sit on benches outside the pub opposite and laugh as Wolf trounced someone. Wolf didn’t find himself, or the rest of the world, absurd and risible, as Valentin and I did. It would have been too much had we all been like that.

We were amused by the fact that Wolf carried a smart, smooth leather briefcase, which he opened, with a key, against his chest so no one could see in. What did he keep in there? Guns, money, drugs, knives, paperclips? Having half-opened it, he then glanced about suspiciously, to ensure no one was watching, which they were, of course, now that he had engaged their curiosity.

Wolf and Valentin both had rooms in a dank boardinghouse on Gwendwr Road, off North End Road in West London, owned by an old widow. Valentin, who read Kierkegaard and Simone Weil for what he described as “pleasure,” liked to say, winking towards the widow, “Raskolnikov would have felt at home here.”

“Everyone feels at home here,” she’d reply as we laughed.

We’d sit around the kitchen table to debate philosophy, talk about sport, drink beer and smoke weed. There was curling lino and the smell of gas and cat piss. There was an iron stove and oilcloths on the spavined tables. The armchairs were greasy, the sofas seemingly bottomless. The toilets didn’t always flush, the windows didn’t close and it was usually cold; as the oil heaters smelled but didn’t heat, we got used to wearing our coats indoors.

A favourite conversation with Valentin concerned moral absolutes and ideas he’d found in Balzac, Nietzsche, Turgenev and Dostoevsky about nihilism and murder, and how or when it might be legitimate to rid the world of the weak, stupid or evil in order that others might flourish. Who had the right to kill? It was, after all, only the most perversely pacifistic who could not accept killing in any circumstances. To supplement this speculation, Valentin and Wolf watched crime or Sylvester Stallone movies on TV; they’d never miss anything with Steve McQueen in it. “Career guidance,” I called them. Ajita would lie around with us, before running away squealing, “Too many electric chairs!”

“That’s where he’s going to be sitting,” I’d murmur to Valentin, nodding at Wolf, Valentin looking sharp in his dark suit, bow tie and shiny shoes, ready to go to the casino where he worked at night. That must have been where I got my black-suit style from, now I think about it. Val was Eastern European, educated to be a Commie; he had good manners and was worldly, way beyond Western hippy frippery.

Wolf was an adventurer, and his stories-of spanking air hostesses and waitresses, and of fucking Playboy bunnies-never failed to pick me up. I admired his boys’-own style: smuggling diamonds out of South Africa up his arse; seeing Idi Amin and Kim Philby-together-in Tripoli, before being arrested, suspected of being American. Running drugs into Mexico, and being poisoned by a dirty needle when visiting a doctor; discussing the quality of brothels in Ipanema, Brazil. He was a man often suspected of not being a criminal but, worse, a cop!

Like a lot of gangsters, he had a smear-more than that, a large patch-of psychosis. He wasn’t neurotic like me, or most people I knew, but supernormal, rational, intense, convincing, great at lying. He’d be up early in the morning making breakfast for everyone. Or we’d find him doing press-ups and lifting weights. Extra-organised: he loved making plans and getting everyone involved.

In contrast, Valentin liked to be amused. He was attractive; you’d say he was elegant or chic, particularly if he was wearing a dark polo shirt and black jacket. But he was Kierkegaard dark; being so wounded, he lacked Wolf’s endearing self-belief, boastfulness and earnestness.

How I loved being with the unassailable men. Me, the eager little kid, they would patronise as I tried to please them with jokes, tough talk and a swaggering walk. Often Wolf and Valentin spoke in French or German, but so what? I was used to being surrounded by people whose language I didn’t understand.

When Father was in London-he visited at least twice a year and stayed some weeks-it was only occasionally that he would see Miriam and me alone. His many male friends, his “chumchas,” speaking Urdu and Punjabi, in suits or salwar kameez, drinking and telling political jokes, were always with him, in the service flats near Marble Arch or Bayswater which Dad rented.

Sometimes he would take just us out to lunch, and talk politics. He was left-wing, probably a Communist, an anti-imperialist-naturally-and also a supporter of Mao, the Vietcong and students. In India, as a child, Father explained, being the son of a rich landowner, he had felt as alienated from the Indian masses in the villages as he did in any English village. But, having been bullied by his father, an army colonel, he’d always felt some identification with those who were called, in those days, the “downtrodden.”

On the evenings of these visits, when Miriam and I would be thinking of returning to the suburbs on the train (or at least I would; she’d often go to parties in London, staying in the city for a couple of days), Dad’s girlfriends, amazing beauties with brains, would turn up.

I was happy to see Father, whether he was alone or not, but Miriam, either on speed or trancs or both, could feel very disappointed. She had imagined the two of them sitting together for hours, exchanging their secrets and their despair. Her father would want to know her; how could he not be fascinated? His kind words would stop her “acting out.” Not only had he not protected her from racism, it was he who had flung her into it, according to her.

So she waited for Dad to speak, to tell her how proud he was of her. But he was incapable of this kind of relationship with a girl. After leaving him, we’d drift down the King’s Road together, and I would ask her questions I already knew the answers to. “What did Dad say?” “Nothing.” “Really?” “Absolutely nothing.” “Did you tell him you were pregnant?” “Nope.” “Did he ask what you were doing?” “Yes.” “What did you say?” “Nothing much.”

My parents met when Dad was at the LSE, studying international relations. A friend of Mum’s, Billie, had taken her to a dance there, thinking Mum would “get along” better with an intellectual than she did with the local boys. They all went for a meal at the India Club in the Strand. Mum said she’d never met anyone who could talk like Dad, who could so enthrall you with his stories.