Ханиф Курейши - Best British Short Stories 2020

By the time she finds Ray from Madagascar fixing one leg of the stage at the far end of the beach, Kiru is

Amber nudibranch from the telescope lens have made their way to them but Ray has not spotted this. He is wiry, handsome, a little sweaty from his efforts. He has a brutish slash of a mouth. As if things had accidents there. Other men pass to wander the island’s pathways, mountains and peaks. Some emerge from the beach huts with daylight waning in their eyes. By now the soft-bodied women, her competitors, are gasping for air between conversations, grabbing bits of sand that slide through their fingers.

Can I help you? Kiru tugs down her shift, watching Ray’s head.

No, thanks. Don’t move, though, he instructs. Somehow you standing there is making this task more bearable.

Why are you fixing the stage?

He chuckles, throws her a bemused look. Because if I don’t, some musicians among us might get injured.

You cannot fix all the world’s stages. What do they do when you are not there to help? Injury is part of living.

This is true but I can’t just leave it knowing people could get hurt. Besides, I have a soft spot for musicians. I think I may have been one in a past life.

What are you in this life? She kneels then, sinking into the sand, shallow pockets to catch odd bits of conversation.

The stage is even again. He dusts his hands on his backside. I’m a fisherman.

Something in her turns cold. A thin film of frost finds its way into her insides.

She sees herself dangling from a hook in the ceiling of his shop, bright purple. He is surprised that she has adjusted to the air of the shop despite the hook inside her trying to catch things that take on different forms. Despite the hunger she will spread to other creatures, who do not know what it means to truly be insatiable, dissatisfied. She knows to listen to her visions when they come. Her eyes are patient, understanding. He feels compelled to say, I don’t know what instrument I played in a past life.

I can tell you, she says. She stands. Tiny spots of blood on her shift have dried to a barely noticeable decoration. She begins to make the noise of an instrument that feels familiar, that sounds eerily accurate, like a horn maybe, yet he cannot place it.

They hang around the stage area into the evening, watching a series of performances and fireworks exploding in the sky she imagines assembling into bright lava-filled tongues. Later, they go for a walk.

Tell me how you became a eunuch. She encourages, touching his arm.

Overhead, the carrier pigeons drop blank scrolls in different parts of the island.

I had testicular cancer.

I’m sorry for your cancer.

Don’t be, he says. We killed it.

They hold hands. Intermittently, he tries to guess which instrument she mimicked.

He is unsuccessful.

On her walk back through the trees, the gauzy light, and beneath the knowing bold sky, Kiru eats Ray’s heart naked, mouth smudged red. How could she place her heart, her future, in the hands of a man who didn’t even know what instrument he was destined to play? His heart tastes like a small night tucked in the plain sight of a morning, like standing on a brink with your arms outstretched, like eating a new kind of fruit that bleeds. She notices the soft-bodied women are now in the white trees shrieking.

Over the next four days of Haribas, Kiru eats seven more hearts. By the time she heads back to the shoreline on the last day to sleep in white waters, she is now

She hopes to fall in love one day. For now, she hollers, a call that signifies the end of a mating season for her. A hallowed echo the mountains and mist recognise but sends panic into the crevices of an island rupturing; clusters of uranium erupt, rooftops of huts catch fire; life rafts made from felled trees dot the shoreline, waiting for something dark and sly to hatch on them; moored boats hold the soft-bodied women from the earth, only able to breathe for four days before running out of their allocated air. But the eunuchs are not dead. They are trapped on the island, dazed, meandering around without hearts wondering why the musical instruments buck in the water, why the carrier pigeons are now one-winged and blind, circling scrolls with guidance for the next festival. Kiru leaves St Simeran in this state.

The phone rang. I’ll go, he said. Normally he left the phone to her but they were cross so perhaps he wanted to put himself even more in the right. She remained at the table. This keeps happening lately, she thought. Oh well, what if it does? He came back: It’s for you. – Who is it? – He shrugged: Some man. By the time she came back he had cleared the table, washed the dishes and was watering the beans – his beans – at the far end of the garden. She stood in the conservatory, observing him and trying to make sense of the phone call. A long summer evening, birdsong, everything in the garden doing nicely. But she could tell, or thought she could, that he was watering the beans much as she supposed he had washed the dishes: to be indisputably in the right. She could almost hear the voice in his head, the aggrieved tone. Not really pitying him, nor herself either for that matter, but because she did not want it to go on till bedtime, she walked down the garden and stood by the beans that had grown high and were crimsonly in flower. She smelled the wet earth. He turned and came back from the water butt with another full can. That’s good, she said. He said nothing, but he did nod his head, and she saw that the job, which he loved, was softening him. When he had emptied the can, he said, One more.

She waited, watching him, thinking about the phone call. Over his shoulder, as he finished the row, he asked, Who was it then? Some man, she answered. He said he’d met me twenty years ago, on that course I went on. The husband put down the empty can and looked at her, mildly enough. What course would that be? – The course you gave me for my birthday, the poetry course in the Lake District. You said I’d been rather down in the dumps and a course writing poetry in the Lake District might buck me up. All my friends said what a nice present it was. – Oh, that course, the husband said. And the man who just phoned was on it with you, was he? – Well he says he was, but I can’t for the life of me remember him. I said I could, but that was a fib. – But he remembered you all right, enough to phone you up after twenty years. – To be absolutely honest, I’m not even sure he did remember me, not me myself, if you know what I mean. He said he did, but I’m not so sure.

The husband turned away to put the can back by the water butt where it belonged. She watched, wondering more about the man who had phoned than about her husband and his questions. Did he have a name, this man? he asked, returning. Yes, he did, she answered. He said he was called Alan Egglestone. But I honestly don’t remember anyone of that name on the course. I remember who the tutors were, and two or three of the other students, but I don’t remember an Alan Egglestone. Then the husband said, Well it was a long phone call with a man you can’t remember. You must have discovered you had something in common, to go on so long. Yes, she answered, I’m very sorry I left you with the washing-up. I couldn’t see a way of ending it any sooner. I didn’t have the heart to interrupt him. Now the husband looked at her as though, for some while, he had not been seeing her for what she really was. Don’t look at me like that, Jack, she said. I’m not looking at you like that, he replied. I just don’t know what you could find to talk about with a complete stranger for so long. Perhaps you’ve been on his mind for twenty years. Perhaps he’s been writing you poems for twenty years. I very much doubt it, she answered, beginning to feel tired, and not just of the conversation about a phone call, but, as happened now and then, of everything. Jack must have seen this. It was pretty obvious. Nobody else of his aquaintance lost heart quite so suddenly, quite so visibly, as his wife. I’m not getting at you, Chris, he said. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I was only wondering what this Mr Egglestone had to say to you that took so long.