Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

While I unpacked my few things, Alicia opened a spiral notebook, coughed her soul out, tore at her nails with her teeth, and asked whether I minded hearing her poetry.

‘Why not?’ I said. ‘I haven’t had any contact with poetry since I was at school.’

‘Where were you at school?’

All over the place.’

‘Read anything?’

‘Toilet walls.’

She warned me: her poetry was mostly about things.

‘Things?’

She explained that even here, ‘in the cradle of consecutive thought’, the language of the New Age and of self-help, now beyond parody, had taken over the vocabulary of emotional feeling and exchange. If the language of the self was poisoned, it was disastrous for a poet. This was yet to happen to objects without souls, on which she had decided to concentrate her powers.

‘Give me an example,’ I said.

She began with a poem about kettles and toasters. I liked it, so she followed up with another about her Hoover, and with a further one about music systems, which was unfinished. When I asked her to go on, she told me what the others were to be about — carpets, beds, curtains — and requested suggestions for more.

I changed my shirt, a moment I always enjoyed, and said I thought one about windows would be good.

‘Windows?’ she said. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘What’s wrong with windows?’

She explained that it was ‘too poetic’ a subject. Quoting John Cage, she said she was interested in the ‘white’ emotions rather than the ‘black’ ones. She needed to get past the ‘black’ ones to the ‘white’ ones.

‘D’you see?’

‘Not a word of it. Me, I’m only the cleaner.’

‘That’s who I’m writing for. Cleaners and crooks — I mean cooks. Some poems open only for the ignorant.’

‘I must be your man, then.’

She was looking at me. Her face was pale but unmarked, as though her despair had neglected to invade it. Yet now, one of her eyes was twitching like a trapped butterfly. I wanted to go to her and press my finger against it. But maybe I would have just pulled it off and torn it to pieces. The poor girl must have fallen in love at that moment.

The work I had to do at the Centre was hard. My body was uncomplaining — it liked being stretched and exerted — but my mind kicked up a fuss. In a life devoted to myself, it had been years since I’d been forced to do anything against my will. I’d always been reasonably successful at getting women to look after me. Now I helped with the cooking; it was good to learn to cook. I emptied the bins and carried heavy sacks of food from the vans; I was taught how to build a wall. I swept, cleaned and painted the rooms. I guessed that this was what the world was like for most people, and it didn’t harm me to be reminded of it.

I came to appreciate the simplest things. I grew a beard and learned t’ai chi, yoga and how to play a drum. I swam long distances, sunbathed, read, and listened to the women at meal times and at night, just hanging around them, as I had my mother as a child. I cultivated a reputation for shyness and silence. I might have been a beauty, but direct attention was the last thing I craved. Sometimes I would massage the women, singing to myself. One time, I saw one of the group lying under a tree reading my last play, which was produced five years ago. As I walked past her, I said, ‘Any good?’

‘The play’s not as good as the film.’

I had begun to love the beauty of the island and the peace it gave me. I was almost free of the desire to understand. Agitation and passion seemed less necessary as proofs of life. I wondered whether, when I returned to my old body, my values would be different. I had been certain that I wanted to go back, but it was a question that wouldn’t leave me alone now. There were decent arguments on both sides. What could have been worse? I would put it off for as long as possible.

Patricia usually appeared at breakfast and made a speech about the purpose and aims of the Centre. Once, she told us one of her dreams; then she interpreted it, to prevent any misunderstanding. There was an impressed silence, before she swept away. She uttered few words in my direction but she always looked hard at me as if we were connected in some way, as if she were about to speak. I supposed she looked at everyone like this, now and again, to make them feel part of her community. I no longer believed she understood me, but did I make her particularly curious? She seemed to say: what do you really want? It agitated me. I kept away from her but she remained in my mind, like a question.

Patricia’s workshops were the most popular and intense, and always full. However, as Alicia told me in confidence, they were known more for the quantity of tears shed than for the quality of wisdom transmitted. But I was only a kitchen skivvy and took no part. Taking my father’s advice, I was on a working holiday.

Ten days after I’d started, Patricia came into the kitchen, where I laboured under the regime of an old Greek woman with whom I could barely communicate. I’d never seen Patricia in the kitchen before. Like the obdurate adolescent I wanted her to see me as, I refused to meet her look. She had to tell me to stop peeling potatoes.

‘Just stop now.’

‘Patricia, I wouldn’t feel good about leaving half a potato.’

‘To hell with potatoes! I am about to begin my dream workshop with the new group. I’ve decided that it’s time you joined us.’

‘Me? Why?’

‘I think you should learn something.’

‘Oh, I don’t want to learn. I had years of it and nothing went in, as you pointed out.’ She looked hurt, so I said, ‘What kind of thing is it?’

She sighed. ‘We free-associate around people’s dreams. We might write around them, or paint or draw. Or even dance. I’ve seen you shake your butt, at the disco. The girls were certainly intrigued, as they are when you parade around the place with your shirt off. But you keep away from the workshop members, don’t you?’

‘It goes without saying.’

‘Even that idiot with the ghost?’

‘Ah, yes,’ I said. ‘That damned ghost.’

The ghost always cheered Patricia up.

One of the women who’d recently come to the Centre and been allocated a room in town, as some people were, had stood up at breakfast and told us her room was haunted. Typically, Patricia imagined this was a ruse for the woman to be moved to a superior room with a sea view — not something Patricia could offer or fall for. Instead of moving her, Patricia had deputed me to sit, all night, in the doorway of the woman’s room, keeping an eye out for the revenant.

‘Watching for ghosts is one of your duties,’ Patricia had said to me, barely containing her delight. ‘When the bastard turns up, you deal with it.’

‘Such work wasn’t in my original job description,’ I said. ‘And do ghosts use doors?’

I had told Alicia, ‘Wait ’til they hear this back in London — that I’ve been employed on a ghost-watch.’

That night, I’d stayed awake as long as I could but had, of course, fallen asleep in the chair. The ghosts came. Nothing with a sheet over its head bothered me, but my own internal shades and shadows, by far the most hideous, had become mightily busy. The woman I guarded slept well. By morning, I was in a cold sweat with rings the colour of coal under my eyes. The women at the Centre, when they weren’t being solicitous, found they hadn’t laughed as much since they’d arrived.

‘Particularly not with the ghost-woman,’ I said now to Patricia.

‘Good. You’re not included in the price of the holiday.’ She went on, ‘Now, come along. People pay hundreds of pounds to participate. I want you to see what goes on here. Tell me. Surely you don’t believe that only the rational is real, or that the real is always rational, do you?’