Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

‘I haven’t thought much about it.’

‘Liar!’

‘Why say that?’

‘There’s more to you than you let on! How many kids your age whistle tunes from Figaro while they’re peeling potatoes?’

She strode out, expecting me to follow her, but I’m not the sort to follow anyone, particularly if they want me to.

I looked at the old Greek woman, washing the kitchen floor. This was the kind of reality I was adjusted to: getting a patch of earth the way you want it while thinking of nothing.

However, I left the kitchen and, outside, went up the steps. In the large, bright room, I could see that Patricia, along with the rest of the class, had been waiting for me.

She pointed at the floor. ‘Sit down, then we’ll start.’

Around the group she went, soliciting dreams. What a proliferation of imagination, symbolism and word-play there was in such an ordinary group of people! I stayed for over an hour, at which point there was a break. Breathing freely at last, I hurried out into the heat. I kept going and didn’t return, but went into town, where I had provisions to buy for the Centre.

When I returned, Alicia was waiting under a tree outside, with her notebook. She stood up and waved in my face.

‘Leo, where have you been?’

‘Shopping.’

‘You’ve caused a terrible fuss. You can’t walk out on Patricia like that,’ she said. ‘I kind of admire it. I like it when people are driven to leave my lessons. I know there’s something pretty powerful going on. I don’t like poetry to be helpful. But we masochists are drawn to Patricia. We do what she says. We never, ever leave her sessions.’

‘I had work to do,’ I said. I wasn’t prepared to say that I had left Patricia’s workshop because it had upset me. Dreams had always fascinated me; in London, I wrote mine down, and Margot and I often discussed dreams over breakfast.

My dream on the ‘ghost-watch’ had been this: I was to see my dead parents again, for a final conversation. When I met them — and they had their heads joined together at one ear, making one interrogative head — they failed to recognise me. I tried to explain how I had come to look different, but they were outraged by my claims to be myself. They turned away and walked into eternity before I could convince them — as if I ever could — of who I really was.

The other dream was more of an image: of a man in a white coat with a human brain in his hands, crossing a room between two bodies, each with its skull split open, on little hinges. As he carried the already rotting brain, it dripped. Bits of memory, desire, hope and love, encased in skin-like piping, fell onto the sawdust floor where hungry dogs and cats lapped them up.

Much as I would have liked to, I couldn’t even begin to talk about this with the group. My ‘transformation’ had isolated me. As Ralph could have pointed out, it was the price I had to pay.

I couldn’t either, of course, say this to Alicia, who had become my only real friend at the Centre. She came from a bohemian family. Her father had died in her early teens. At fifteen, her mother took her to live in a sex-crazed commune. It had made her ‘frigid’. She felt as neglected as a starving child. Now, she overlooked herself, eating little but carrying around a bag of carrots, apples or bananas which she’d chop into little pieces with a penknife and devour piece by piece. She only ever ate her own food, and, I noticed, would only eat alone or in front of me.

In the evenings, she and I had begun to talk. Twice a week there were parties for the Centre participants. The drinking and dancing were furious. The women had the determined energy of the not quite defeated. They liked Tamla Motown and Donna Summer; I liked the ballet of their legs kicking in their long skirts. After, it was my job to clear away the glasses, sweep the floor, empty the ashtrays and get the Centre ready for breakfast. I did it well; cleanliness had become like a poem to me. A cigarette butt was a slap in the face. Alicia liked to help me, on her knees, late at night, as the others sat up, confessing.

Alicia had begun to write stories and the beginning of a novel, which she showed me. I thought about what she was doing and commented on it when I thought I could be helpful. I liked being useful; I could see how her confidence failed at times.

In the late evenings, when I’d finished work, sometimes we went to the beach. We’d walk past couples who’d left the bars and discos to copulate in the darkness: French, German, Scandinavian, Dutch bodies, attempting, it seemed, to strangle the life out of one another. Our business seemed more important, to talk about literature. Sex was everywhere; good words were less ubiquitous.

Since my mid-twenties, I’d taught both literature and writing at various universities and usually had a writing workshop in London. I’d been interested by how people got to speak, and to speak up, for themselves, and by the effect this had on all their relationships. When it came to Alicia, some sort of instruction was something I fell into naturally, and liked.

Nevertheless, I tried to speak in young tones, as if I knew only a little; and I tried not to be pompous, as I must have been in my old body. It was quite an effort. I was used to people listening or even writing down what I said. The pomposity was useful, for emphasis, and my authority could seem liberating to some people. Alicia seemed to like the authority I was able to muster, at times. Being older could be useful.

I had to be wary, too, of this thin, anxious girl. If she was the reason I didn’t leave, when she asked me about myself and my education I was evasive, as if I didn’t quite believe my own stories, or, in the end, couldn’t be bothered with them, which frustrated her. She wanted more of me. I could see she knew I was holding a lot back.

‘What have you been writing?’ I asked now, as we walked.

‘A poem about windows.’

‘Everyone knows poems and windows don’t go together.’

‘They’ll have to get along,’ she said. ‘Like us.’ Then she said, ‘Hurry, you’ve got to go and see Patricia.’

‘Now? Is she angry with me?’

She squeezed my hand. ‘I think so.’

Her fear increased mine. I was reminded of all kinds of past transgressions and terrors: of my mother’s furies, of being sent to the headmistress to be smacked on the hand with a ruler. In my youth, all sorts of people were allowed to hit you, and were even praised for doing it; they didn’t thank you if you returned the compliment. Now, as numerous other fears arose, I went into such a spin it took me several moments to remember I was called Leo Adams. I could choose to behave differently, to revise the past, as it were, and not be the scared boy I was then.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Walk with me.’

‘Aren’t you afraid of her?’ Alicia asked.

‘Terrified.’

‘I am, too. Are you going to leave?’

‘Well, I don’t see why I shouldn’t.’

‘Please don’t.’ She went on, ‘But there is something else, too. She heard your joke.’

‘She did? She didn’t mention it to me.’

‘She might now, perhaps.’

‘How did it get round?’

She blushed. ‘These things just do.’

A few days ago I had made a joke, which is not a good idea in institutions. It was not a great joke, but it was on the spot and had made Alicia suddenly laugh in recognition. I had called the Centre a ‘weepeasy’. I used the word several times, as we young people tend to, and that was that. It had entered the bloodstream of the institution.

Now, we walked through the village to Patricia’s. The shops were closed; the place was deserted. Most people were having their siestas, as was Patricia at this time, usually.