Hanif Kureishi - Something to Tell You

I managed to get her to shower and dress, and walk to the end of the street before she insisted on returning home.

The next day we walked further, but only a street or so, and she used an umbrella as a stick. She wore dark glasses, looking every inch the widow, in black. I guessed she must have been getting tranquillisers from somewhere: doctors adored to prescribe them, and patients were disappointed if they left the surgery without a prescription. I liked walking slowly with Ajita, looking at the restaurants and at the people. We stopped to drink coffee and have cake, but she wouldn’t eat.

It was not unusual for people to become depressed as they mourned. I wondered, too, whether Wolf’s death reminded her of her father’s death, and how these deaths were connected. However, we didn’t speak much as we took another turn around Soho before she returned to bed.

We were approaching the house and passing an Indian restaurant. She asked, “Did you help kill my father?”

I was silent, but she waited for me. I asked, “When did you know?”

“After you came to watch the documentary. You were upset. But how could I be sure? I went over and over it in my mind, wondering. Then Wolf told me-after the heart attack, I guess he was dying. The ambulance took forever to come. They couldn’t find the street. He said he wanted to ‘confess.’”

“What did he say exactly?”

“He said it was his idea that you, he and Valentin should try to scare Dad so that he would leave me alone. Instead, my father passed away.” She was quiet, and then said, “At least it wasn’t Wolf alone. That would have fucked my head.”

“Does Mustaq know?”

“I have decided not to tell him. He gets so angry.”

“Will he get to know?”

“How would it make his life better to hear how I suffered then and what you went through? He’d just feel guilty. He likes you so much, Jamal. You helped him as a kid.”

“Will you tell him about your father and the abuse?”

“He seems to have guessed. But I’m not ready to go into it. I don’t even like my brother right now.”

I said, “I was a fool not to listen to you at the time. I just wanted to take action, to be a tough guy like the other tough guys.”

She said, “I should have spoken to Mustaq.”

“Ajita, I doubt whether he could have taken on your father at his age, the kid brother.”

“I wish I had told you at the time of the abuse-Jamal, it was all so horrible-that I wanted to kill him myself. I thought all the time about how to do it. Where do you buy poison? How much do you put in? Will it be detected?”

She went on: “Jamal, don’t turn on yourself, when it was me. I killed him, my own father, by encouraging you to get rid of him. When he was raping me, I wished him dead a million times.

“At the time I wondered often if you had hurt him that night. But how could I ask you? I couldn’t even think about it. You were young, and you risked your life for me. You were-what do they say?-chivalrous.

“I asked you once if only there was something you could do, if you would speak to him. But I did warn you that Dad was dangerous. Yet you went ahead and did it. You were brave, you were foolhardy, you were young. Do you regret it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do! I should have stopped Father by threatening him with the police. Or hitting him with something heavy. I shouldn’t have put you in that position. I was a weakling, but you took the action I couldn’t take. I can’t have you punished for risking your life to save me. Dad had been a wrestler, and he’d had people beaten up before. When I see pictures of Saddam Hussein in jail, I think, That’s Dad, what he’d have looked like now.”

“If I’d known that at the time, I’d have been more cautious.”

“Jamal, how can I ever apologise, or make it up to you? Can we be friends? You don’t hate me, do you? You were so cool towards me when we met at my brother’s after so many years. I was ecstatic to see you, but you were reserved.”

“I was nervous,” I said. “I didn’t know what you might mean to me.”

“You were relieved I meant so little to you, I could see that. Few things have hurt me so much, Jamal. I kept asking Wolf, ‘Why is he so cold?’”

I said, “Isn’t Mustaq left in limbo now? The only one who doesn’t know, who will never know?”

“I didn’t say he will never know. We’ll see, won’t we?” She said, “You know what I wanted, all the time it was happening, Dad’s abuse? I fantasised about us running away together. To take a train someplace and find a room there, and work in bars or bookshops or something. We’d never go back but get married and have kids. Would you have done it?”

“Yes,” I said.

But I was thinking: a murder is something it is not possible to recover from. It can never be worked through or forgotten; there will be no resolution.

By now we’d returned to the house. The staff were cleaning it. We went into a little sitting room downstairs, where I noticed something familiar but so uncanny I couldn’t place it.

“What?” she said, looking at me.

“There it is,” I said. It was the Hand, on a table, leaning against the wall. “At last. How did it get here?”

“Why do you ask?”

“That wonderful picture belongs to Henry’s wife-Valerie.”

“It was given to me,” she said. “It was a present.”

“From Wolf?”

“Yes. I love it. I want it in front of me always. I move it around the house where I can see it.”

“It wasn’t his to give, I’m afraid,” I said, picking it up and shoving it in my shoulder bag. It stuck out the top; I’d have to cover it with a plastic bag.

“The best thing he ever gave me was stolen?” she said. She came over and drew it from my bag. I could see she might be minded to smash it.

“Not a good idea,” I said, grasping it firmly, pulling it away from her and replacing it in the bag. I could see the two of us tearing the masterpiece apart.

“How can you do that?” she shouted from the front door. “You’re always taking things from me!”

In Dean Street I got into a taxi and went to Valerie’s, where a uniformed maid opened the door. The hall was crowded with guests in smart clothes.

I put my bag down, took a glass of champagne from a tray, and with the Hand under the other arm, went upstairs to join the others. As far as I could see, the dinner consisted of film and literary people and politicians, with their wives and husbands. Valerie didn’t seem surprised to see either me or the picture. When she took it from me, she put it under a side table and asked me to join everyone at supper.

Before I could sit down, she said she needed to ask me something. I groaned inwardly but could see she was busy, surely it wouldn’t take long.

She said, as we stood together in a corner of the kitchen, “You saw Lisa. Does she need treatment?”

“For what?”

As always, Valerie looked like someone on the verge of a tantrum. “For stealing my damn picture,” she said. “I don’t know. You’re the doctor. But don’t worry about it, there’s something else.” She hesitated. I kept watching her, but she didn’t want to look at me. She said, “Years ago, when Henry and I were going through our difficulties but were still together in some form or other, he said to me, ‘We’ll spend our old age together. We’ll get a place by the sea and we’ll talk and eat and read and paint.’ It’s what I’ve been looking forward to. It’s the only thing I had in mind when I thought of the future, our future.”

“Right.”

“We’re hardly young now,” she said. “And he’s taken up with this woman.”

“My sister, Miriam.”

“Yes, yes. Charming though she is, I’m sure,” she said. “Do you really think it is serious? Do you think it will last? You know him, he’s your best friend. I couldn’t ask anyone else.”