Hanif Kureishi - Something to Tell You

He was standing close to me, as he liked to, touching, if not rubbing, my arm. “I know where my father keeps his money. He’s got thick wads of it in an envelope under his socks.”

“What for?”

“He often says we may need to leave in a hurry again. The racists might come for us.”

“You’re the one who wants to leave in a hurry. But why?”

“It’s not much good here, is it?”

He said this with such sadness I’d have kissed him if I hadn’t feared he’d kiss me.

“Why with me?” I asked.

“You’re the most exciting person I’ve met.”

“Look,” I said, startled, “let me give you something-

I went to my college bag. Apart from books on philosophy, I was carrying music magazines, a couple of novels and an anthology of Beat poets. I gave them to him.

“Feed your head, man,” I said. “I know you already have music, but I’ll drop more books and mags off tomorrow. You know what you want to do when you grow up?”

“A fashion designer,” he said. “But don’t tell anyone.”

“Like who? Your sister?”

“She knows already.”

“Your father, then. I think I will tell him.” I pretended to move off.

He grabbed me, “Don’t do that. Keep quiet, please! I’ll do anything for you-”

“Only joking,” I said. “Why are you so afraid? Does he hurt you?”

In the weeks after this conversation, I took a lot of stuff to Mustaq. He read so quickly and gratefully I was soon ransacking my bedroom for books I’d bought in London. It gave me a reason to visit Ajita, to sit around in her house, but Mustaq was so pleased by everything I took him I began to see that helping others was a pleasure.

“Jamal,” he said now, “I am unbelievably angry with Papa. He did an inexcusable thing, and tried to give you a watch in exchange!”

He went on, “But I am not innocent. I have sinned too. I will think of it when I want to hit Papa in the face.”

“What did you do?”

Mustaq was approaching the top of his arc as a drama queen, being both amused and almost rigid with self-pity at the same time, as he compulsively rubbed his eyes and caressed his forehead, his voice an urgent whisper.

“The night Father was killed I was having sex for the first time. One of my cousins, sleeping in the next room, came in to initiate me. I was ashamed it had taken me so long. She thought I should see a pussy, which I was curious about. It did nothing for me, and was like trying to force a slug into a slot machine. Of course I felt guilty. Of all possible nights…why did it have to be that one?

“Ajita and I talked about going home that evening. But she was too tired to make the journey. If we’d returned, we might have caught the murderers at their work. We might have saved Dad. We might even have been killed.”

“Yes.”

“I lost my virginity at last, but not really. Apart from with you, I hadn’t felt a passion for anyone yet. That didn’t happen until later, when we were in India, and the very, very bad thing occurred.”

“What was it?”

“I fell in love with a composer, a songwriter, older than me, in his mid-twenties, well dressed, good-looking, elegant. Jamal, note this: he knew how to be. He made music for films, discos, fashion shows. Really he was a genius. Far more talented than me, writing music as easily as others speak. Like some heterosexuals, he liked being admired by a gay man. I was his groupie, and he enjoyed my questions, my fascination with him. But it went too far…” He went on, “I loved him so much I married his sister.”

“Great idea.”

“It was an astonishing Indian wedding, paid for by my uncle, and went on longer than the marriage. That night, when I tried to make love to the woman, and she was lying there so hot in her desire-women really feel fierce pleasures, don’t they?-I had to think of her brother to make myself hard. The two of them looked similar, and she became a sort of aide-mémoire.” He shivered. “Naturally, she wanted to have sex with me, her husband, and bear children. When I told her the truth, she was devastated, she had a breakdown, she put a rope around her neck and had to be cut down.”

“What were you thinking?”

“That my homosexuality would go away. I didn’t want to be different or unusual. It was a secret.”

As though he had temporarily forgotten where he was, Mustaq stopped to survey the room-his friends, and who they were chatting with. Seeing us talking, they had kept away. Then he touched me on the shoulder and caressed me a little. I could see he was about to become formal again; he had remembered who he had to be.

I looked at him, the awkward, eager, dumpy kid who had rebuilt himself, becoming attractive and glamorous. Of course, just being a famous pop star gave him that hip edge, all the time. He mattered, and was envied, at last. He had become one of those people who knew they were constantly observed. But whether he enjoyed it much now, I couldn’t tell.

“Jamal, I hope you enjoy the weekend. I’m delighted we’re friends again. Please, may I ask you one more thing? Otherwise I will believe I’m mad.”

“Go on.”

“Didn’t you, sometimes, wait outside our house at night? My bedroom was at the front, overlooking the road, and I’d stay up, dancing to the Thin White Duke. Was it you, just standing, looking, a few times?”

“Yes. It was me.”

“Why did you do that? I used to think, which one of us is he in love with? Can it be me?”

“I knew who I wanted.”

“Why were you there?”

“I was a fool in love.”

“Me too. Did you know I wrote ‘Everyone Has Their Heart Torn Apart, Sometime’ when I was still living at home? Years later it went to number one around the world virtually unchanged. I can tell you now where I stole the tune, not that anyone was bright enough to notice.”

“It takes talent to steal the right tune.”

“The song was about you, Jamal.”

He was sitting close to me. At times he took my hand, and I took his, as though we needed to comfort one another while the past rolled through us.

He said, “The only window which overlooked the garden was in my sister’s bedroom. When I was home, I’d sit just behind the curtain, with my elbows on the sill, looking out. You smoked roll-ups all the time, and always wore black. You looked smooth in suits, particularly with the baseball boots.

“But in my view, you looked best with nothing on and your lovely cock out. You were thin then, with a fine tanned body, and boy could you do it a lot-you guys were horny!” He went on. “Other times I’d sit with you in the kitchen when Ajita was upstairs changing or on the phone. I loved it when you talked to me.

“But I couldn’t have expected you to guide me. I should have been a doctor. That’s what my father wanted.”

He was looking at me, smiling; I was trying to take all this in. Then he stood up, gave me a long look, as if wondering himself about the strangeness of our conversation, and excused himself, going to join the others, most of whom had now come into the room.

I watched Ajita with a friend of Mustaq’s, laughing as she used to, putting her hand over her mouth as though she’d just said something outrageous, perching here and there to talk, helping her brother and Alan run the weekend.

When I rejoined the group, I discovered from Alan, who did a good imitation of him, that Omar had decided to drive into town “to see who was around,” adding, “You see, I never lost the common touch!”

It turned out that Omar had rung to say he was “stuck” in town and needed to be rescued. He wouldn’t be able to make it back alone. Alan asked for volunteers “to go in.” Apparently the town, a triumph of postwar socialist planning, was a sewer, full of tattooed beasts and violent zombies, with vomit and blood frothing in the gutters. I couldn’t wait to see it.