Hanif Kureishi - Something to Tell You

I swam a little, looking out for Ajita, but couldn’t see her. While I dried off, Karim, his earnest brown eyes peering out from between the parentheses of his hair, offered me some coke. Although I fancied it, I wanted to sleep tonight. I smoked a joint, then someone gave me a double espresso and a chunk of chocolate. I took a diazepam and decided to go to bed, a relatively early night but with plenty to think about.

I was lying down, wondering what I’d listen to on my iPod-words can go so far, and then there is music-when there was a knock on the door.

“Hello,” I called.

“Can I come in?”

It was Ajita in a satin dressing gown. She came over and sat on the edge of the bed.

I took her hand. “So you found me, then.”

“At last,” she said. “Just you and me. Now we have some time together. All night, I hope. Will you stay awake? Do you want to hear me now?”

“Of course,” I replied. “It’s you I’ve been waiting for.”

She took my hand. “Earlier today, I believed I saw you from the pool. Then I thought, No, it’s a ghost and I’ve gone mad. In New York, Mustaq asked me if I wanted to see you again, but said he couldn’t guarantee that you’d show up. But you did. Was that for me? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

“Your American accent is charming.”

“Oh, don’t say that. I’ve been trying to get rid of it and seem more Indian again, particularly since Indians have become so hip.”

“Yes, there can’t be one of them who hasn’t written a novel.”

“And it’s embarrassing to be American when people my colour are under such constant suspicion. Going through airports is a nightmare for all of us, even for Mustaq. We all feel a step away from Guantánamo. Orange doesn’t suit me.”

“Nor most people.”

“It’s been so bad I’m thinking of staying in London for a while. I loved London, when you would take me about. I haven’t been back since. I couldn’t bear to see it again.” Her hand was on my shoulder. “You don’t need to get up, Jamal. Don’t do anything. We don’t need more light on. I’ll pull the curtains.” She said, “I know you’re there, and that’s all I need. Mustaq told me what he knew of your story, and I have read your books.”

“Did you tell him your story?”

“What d’you mean, mine?” I said nothing. She went on, “Jamal, you’re the person who really knows me. You were always my true love,” she said. “Even my husband knew that. He used to say, ‘There is someone else stopping us from being close.’” She leaned over me, kissing me on each cheek and on the lips, pressing her fingers through my hair. “You’ve hardly changed. Your hair’s grey, but it still stands on end, like a fluffy chick. You’re a little lined and no longer all skin and bone. But you’re distinguished-looking, a man who’s lived an important life.”

“Christ, no!”

She said, “I was watching you at supper. You’re even more good-looking than I remembered. What an attractive, smart man, he is, I thought. One who has been loved and wanted.”

“That is a kind thing to say. If it is true, it means a lot. I will try to be more grateful.”

“I think you probably are,” she said. “Who was the woman sitting opposite me? We were introduced, but I didn’t catch her name. She was observing you like a hawk, when she wasn’t glaring at me. Was she one of your wives?”

“I have been married, but just the once, unusually. Not to her, though. I am still married-or rather, not yet divorced. But I did go out with the woman you’re talking about-Karen-after you went away.”

“Was it a successful love?”

“Not from her point of view. I was still getting over you, I guess. It took a long time-probably because I always thought you’d be coming back in a little while.”

She was quiet. “Jamal?”

“Yes?”

“Please don’t say it’s too late. We’re not old. Or am I too far gone for you? Look.” She stood up and opened her dressing gown, then let it drop to the floor. “This is me. Where I am.”

I looked at her, both familiar and unfamiliar now. “What would your husband say?” I said quietly, before regretting it.

She put her gown on again and lay down on the bed. I stood up and took off my clothes.

While she looked at me, I said, “I don’t know what I want to happen between us. It’s been a long time. All we can do is give it space.”

“There is still time, we have that. I will wait for you, as you waited for me.” She pulled the sheets over her. “How I need to sleep with someone again. After years of trying to get my daughter out of my bed, she will no longer keep me company. My husband and I have our own rooms, in fact our own countries now. So to spend a night with a man…It moves me so.”

We lay there in the dark, not touching. Certainly people of our age, unless they are narcissists, wouldn’t want anyone to see their bodies. I’d seen Ajita in the pool, of course. Her flesh hadn’t aged badly, but she seemed to have shrunk into herself, as though she wanted to make herself smaller, like a younger actress playing the part of an older woman.

“Yes,” she said, “I know I am like an old woman now. I could see that in your eyes. My sexual charm, beauty-all gone.”

“Mine, too. I was just thinking of how much we loved to sunbathe in your garden at the side of the house. You were almost black. Now no one does that. You remember how I had to pretend to be Mushy Peas’s best friend?”

“What I want is that the four of us-you, me, Wolf and Valentin-meet again. Can you organise a reunion?”

“They disappeared soon after you did-to make their fortunes in France.”

“How did they do?”

“They didn’t tell me.”

“What a shame,” she said. “In New York I buy furniture, or clothes. I give something to charity every day, and I buy something new every day. It’s a simple system-in and out.

“I walk in the park, visit friends, and when my brother’s on tour or doing a TV show I design the costumes. It’s a lot of work, a proper job. I do yoga, Kabbalah, anything that doesn’t involve touching. If I don’t feel fabulous within a few weeks, I try something else. All suicides kill others too, I am aware of that, so there is no way out for me. In the end my doctor gave me something-”

“An antidepressant?”

“Whatever. It keeps massive anxiety away. I want to feel normal.”

“It’s more normal to experience anxiety than it is to be blank.”

“What I feel most of the time is dread,” she said. “As though some catastrophe is about to befall me.”

“It has. Do you remember what you told me your father did to you?”

“Why shouldn’t I remember that? I don’t hate him. He was having a terrible time. It’s not your family.”

“At college once you told me how much you loved him. ‘He’s so tender,’ you said.”

She said, “Is that so strange? He always kissed and petted me. He’d lose his temper and call us stupid, but he was never not a fond father.” She was lying back on the pillow. “You wanted me to be a feminist and gave me those books. It was new then. You remember that woman-Fiona? She was one of the organisers against my father. I saw her on the picket line and then at college. She was hugely fat with her breasts wobbling everywhere, wearing dungarees and big earrings.”

“She was on TV last night, defending a bill to keep people without trial.”

“Is she thin? Jamal, did you want me to be a different kind of woman?”

I said, “We were a dissenting generation. People like your father-we called them capitalists then-we hated on principle. In other European cities, people like us were kidnapping and killing capitalists.”