Hanif Kureishi - Something to Tell You

“What is it?”

“I bin getting itchy fingers. I’m going to play again,” he said. “I got to do it sober, like I got to do everything sober now, otherwise Miriam will cut me off, she already threatened. I had a group, a few years ago, but we fighted onstage. One night they all walk off and only me left there. Since then I done just the one gig. What I want…”

“Yes?”

“Will you come with me? I get nervous, I sweat buckets, my nose starts to run. And you know what it means if that happens.”

“What?”

“With diarrhoea comin’ out me nose? I’ll ’ave to get outta there. I’ll be so embarrassed I could hurt myself. But if you’re there, doctor in the house, I’ll be good.”

If he’d been my patient, I’d have said no, it was something he had to get through himself. Since he wasn’t, I could go and see him play guitar, while drinking and talking with Henry and Miriam.

“Sure,” I said.

“Now you’ve agreed, I’ll arrange it for definite-at the Caramel Sootie.”

“The Kama Sutra?”

“They know me there personally. I never have to give my name: I helped them with their heating. You can imagine, they were grateful.”

“Can’t it be a more ordinary venue? Why not the Cross Keys?”

“It’s dark, innit, at the Sootie? They’re screwing. They won’t be interested in me.”

“Or your nose.”

“That’s it. An’ what’s that Woody Allen joke Henry told me? If sex between two people is great, sex between five people is even better!”

“But what could be worse,” I replied, “than to feel desire and have it satisfied immediately?”

“Shrinky, don’t be alarmed up. It ain’t compulsive to screw if you don’t wanna. Meself, I wouldn’t touch some of them people with asbestos gloves on. But Henry and Miriam rate it better than sex. There’s this twenty-stone guy who lies there, and birds dressed as schoolgirls-”

“They’ve told me about the Sootie, thanks.”

“You’ll do it?”

“I’ll have to ask Henry and Miriam.”

“Let me embrace you, man.”

He held on to me before saying, “You knows you’ll ’ave to look right, dress up an’ all. The only other way they’ll let you in is bollock naked, and I can tell you, there’s draughts in there which will cut you in two. Henry and Miriam will help you. I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “My comeback and your come-out.”

“Indeed.”

He tapped the side of his nose. “You an’ me, eh-pals!”

Luckily, before this humiliation, I’d have a break. Ajita and I had finally decided to go away.

The holiday was Mustaq’s birthday present to her. For a long time Ajita had wanted to go to Venice, and she asked me to accompany her. She was nervous about my response, imagining I would refuse her, that I was still angry about the way she’d deserted me after her father died. Or worse, that I was disappointed with her now she had reappeared. It was more likely, of course, that I had disappointed her.

I could only make three nights away, but I told her I would be delighted. She and I had been talking on the phone regularly-about her brother, my work and what there was for her to see in London-but we’d met only once in the city since finding one another again. I was nervous. During the weekend we spent at Mustaq’s, I’d felt as though she were already interviewing me for a position as her lover, a situation I was incapable of fulfilling with her, or anyone, while Josephine was still on my mind. Perhaps Mustaq was keen to help Ajita find someone, for both their sakes. He often looked irritated with her.

Mustaq’s secretary booked two rooms in the Danieli. Ajita came to the flat to pick me up on the way to the airport. There were two taxis, one for us and the other for her luggage. She made coffee while I finished packing. “You know, I’ve never seen anywhere you’ve lived as an adult,” she said. “Does it smell of toast all the time? It needs work, this flat, it’s coming apart. If you don’t do it, it’ll lose value. I’ll find a builder for you.”

She asked permission before opening drawers, looking in cupboards, picking up things and asking where I’d got them. She wanted to see Josephine’s drawings, as well as photographs of her and of Rafi, which she looked at for a long time.

“A happy family, all of you quite pleased to be together,” she said. “We seem to know each other, you and I, and yet we’re strangers. Who are you really, Mr. K?”

Now the shock of our meeting again had worn off, we were easier with each other. She was less of the care-laden older woman and more as she had been at university, laughing and enthusiastic, expecting the best of the world, despite everything. I, perhaps, was less suspicious.

Having tea in the Danieli is lovely; the view is one of the most calming I have seen. Arm in arm, Ajita and I went on boat trips, consulted guidebooks, visited the Lido and looked at Tiepolos and Tintorettos in deserted churches. It was cold; she wore a fur coat, fur hat and boots, but the sun was bright in the morning. It was the most peace I’d experienced in a long time.

Ajita insisted on buying me new clothes, dressing me up and parading me around expensive shops, informing me my wardrobe needed “help.” We found watches with pictures, on the face, of Nixon meeting Elvis in 1970: Presley in his big collar and huge belt phase, with much bling. Ajita bought me one, as I had, as she put it, “lost the last one.” It was true I hadn’t obtained a new watch; I had the time on my phone, and in my consulting room there was a clock on the shelf above the couch. She got one for Mustaq too, more amused than I by our identical watches.

In the afternoon, when she napped, I wrote in her room and read Tanizaki for the first time, amazed by his view of the tenacity of desire, particularly in the old, whom it can still grasp by the throat, refusing to let them go.

Uncharacteristically, Ajita had brought some grass with her. Not wanting to get kicked out of the hotel, we smoked out of the windows of café toilets, like schoolkids.

“This is fun, Ajita.”

“Isn’t it? As soon as I stopped leading a conventional life, I cheered up. At home, after a smoke, I dance like a madwoman.”

“You mean home in Soho?”

“Yes. My temporary new home in London. The place I’ve absconded to, like the teenage runaway I nearly became.”

We giggled about how well we got on, saying that if we’d stayed together, we’d have married, divorced and become friends like this. I told her about Josephine, and how much there still was between us, saying that the furious disputes I had with her were the ones I preferred.

When I asked Ajita about Mark, her husband, she said he was a good man and a decent liberal American. I guessed his days were numbered.

She said, “Mark and I married when Mustaq was worried about me, when his music career was starting. At the same time, Mark worked hard to build up the business. He manufactured clothes in the Far East, where he spent a lot of time. I brought up the kids in a good apartment in Central Manhattan. One day they were gone. My husband was in L.A., in our other place. I knew I had to return to London, which I’d avoided for years. There was too much there-it was an unhealed wound. But I had to restart my life.”

On the last morning, we were to have brunch in Harry’s Bar. Coming down to the lobby, Ajita cried out: it was under a foot of greasy water. It was not a tsunami; the sea was slowly rising. This happened three times a month.

We were given galoshes and clambered out of the hotel. St. Mark’s was a trembling lake. Submerged tables and chairs stood in the street like objects in an installation, with drowned pigeons bobbing around them. Tourists squeezed past one another on trestles; shopkeepers attempted to pump out their premises. I looked out past the bursting waves towards the Lido, wondering how hobbling Byron swam so far. Even as a kid I wouldn’t have been able to do half that distance.