Hanif Kureishi - Something to Tell You

She showed up at my place on a bicycle, fresh from her allotment. Her hair was halfway down her back, and it was thick and dramatic, unkempt, of course, which spoke to me of a repudiated femininity. Not that I thought she was a lesbian, though she’d tried to be, I’d heard, and failed, as so many do.

She seemed to be carrying three rucksacks and resembled a vertical snail. Her fingernails were dirty, her boots muddy and her all-natural clothing was coming apart. She wore no make-up or decoration. The veins in her face were broken from the harsh weather she liked to endure, and she looked weary, as though she’d been digging for weeks.

It didn’t seem long ago, in February 2003, that she and I and Henry had walked together to Hyde Park on the antiwar march, attended by two million. Now, two years later, we were in the middle of a rotten, long conflict, which hadn’t improved her temper, nor anyone’s. While I made her a nettle tea, we agreed that we lived in a country led by a neurotic chained to an evangelical, imperialistic lunatic. She must have been the only Marxist left in the West, but I liked her passion. That seemed to be the last agreement we were to have.

She said, “The other day I went to see Henry. It was about lunchtime. Sam was in a state because he’d had to move out. You know why.”

I was leaning forward. “I heard the story.”

“And, childishly, Henry refused to give him his things back. The clothes Sam could do without, but the computer had his work on it. I said I’d fetch it for him, whatever it took. I wanted to see Henry.”

She had been let into Henry’s house by one of the other tenants, who were scared of women like her. Henry left his flat unlocked, as the Mule Woman had discovered. To find him, Lisa followed the fetid smell.

“He was more or less unconscious. He had been sick, the basin was full of it. He might have died. I found fetish clothes on the floor and other objects. There was a leather mask. I said to him, ‘What’s this?’”

“And?”

“He said, ‘For the last few centuries these masks have been used for celebratory dances associated with major social rituals.’” I had to put my hand in my mouth and bite it to stop myself laughing. She said, “Yes, another of his jokes, and I hate jokes now. He’d been clubbing. When I asked him what he’d been taking, he said E and Viagra-together!”

Henry was in no state to get up. He said Bushy would bring Miriam around later, and she’d help him.

Lisa said, “Seeing him there groaning, I thought it would have been easier to raise the Titanic than get Henry up.” She looked at me reproach-fully. “I sat down next to the ruin of my father.”

“How ruined was he?”

Apparently Valerie had said Karen had been on to her, arguing that if Henry didn’t finish the actors’ documentary, the project would be abandoned. Not only that, but she, Karen, already in financial trouble herself, would be personally liable. Valerie told Lisa that Henry had been turning down other work too, apart from teaching, claiming that he had “retired” and had “nothing left to say.”

Lisa said, “I asked if he wanted a doctor.”

“Was he really unwell?”

“When he was able to put some words together, he was in good spirits. Perhaps it was the drugs. I’ve never polluted my body with that shit, so I wouldn’t know. Have you?” I said nothing. “But,” she went on, “you know he’s had a heart attack. He almost died. How come your sister’s letting him take amphetamines? Does she want to kill him?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “Henry’s stubborn, isn’t he? He makes his own rules. We like that about him.”

She said, “I think I’ve met your sister at some event or other. I’ve got nothing against her. But let me ask you this. What are they doing together?”

“Miriam is, of course, a Muslim single mother with a history of abuse. She has few taboos, and she sees straight to the centre of things. Your dad-a free, single man-loves that about her.”

Lisa was sitting on the edge of my analytic couch, waiting for these banalities to pass before she went into her rehearsed rap.

“We know better than anyone how to take care of him, while your family has been negligent.” She seemed to hesitate there but I knew she’d hardly started. “But why would you worry about our little problems? I know you spend a lot of time thinking about the dreadful dilemmas of film stars and celebrities. Didn’t they call you, in a newspaper, therapist to the stars?”

I said, “You know it’s not like that, though I have to admit that I’ve used my work to be with people who interest me. Just this morning I was wondering whether Kate Moss might like to see me. How could anyone not envy me that? Anyhow, I didn’t see the thing in the newspaper. Did you?”

“Of course not.”

Over the years several sportsmen had approached me. Having gone to the trouble to learn about their bodies, they assumed their minds could also be trained to obedience. It was when this didn’t work-when, as it were, they became curious about the mind-body relation-that they asked for help.

The incident Lisa was referring to involved a footballer I saw a few times. He had been followed to my place; photographs of him at my door, with half of Maria’s head behind him, had appeared in the papers. His unhappiness was mocked all over. He was called mad.

She said, “The little difficulties of the famous must be hell. But my father has stopped seeing his old friends. They bored him for years, apparently. These people are famous and high up in their field. But they are not pierced. He has resigned from two boards. As for those places he and Miriam go to together-”

“Places?”

“Fetish clubs. They are squalid and the people there riddled with disease. You think the women who go there want to be doing that? It’s rape, their husbands forcing them to have sex with dozens of people.”

Which of Lear’s daughters was she? I wondered how long I’d be able to resist the pleasure of giving her a little verbal slap.

“You’re worrying about your father,” I said. “He’s changed a little. Everything will calm down.”

“Fuck that patronising analyst quackery.”

Her mother’s tongue had been passed on like an heirloom.

I said, “Quackery?”

She was looking at the postcard of Freud I kept on my desk, sent to me by an enthusiastic patient. “Freud’s been discredited over and over. Patient envy-” She stopped. “Penis envy, I mean. Jesus.”

Despite herself, she laughed.

“What a lot of fallacious cock, you mean?” I said, laughing too.

“Jamal, my father loves you. He even listens to you. Valerie too. But my father is not in a good way, and you must take some responsibility.”

That word. Responsibility. When I watched Miriam on her TV “agonies,” it was the most used word, apart from I. Owning your acts. Seeing yourself as an actor rather than a victim. I am all for responsibility; who wouldn’t be? We are all responsible for ourselves. But what are our selves? Where do they begin and how far do they extend?

“Yes,” I said. “He is responsible for what he does. Not me. Certainly not you. Him. Just him. You and I,” I said, getting up and moving towards the door, “are irrelevant here. We must be happy for them both and for the joy they give one another. Let’s hope they marry-or at least live together.”

“Marry? Live together! Are you insane? Those two? Where did you get such an idea from? Is it likely?!”

I was being mischievous. She irritated me; I could only inflame her.

I said, “I like to see others contented.”

She was already gathering her things. She asked me if I minded her taking something home. It was the teabag I’d used earlier, which she wanted to put in her “compost” box. She squeezed it out before dropping it in a pocket of her rucksack.