Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

‘You don’t know what it is?’

‘I probably do,’ I said, irritably. ‘I don’t even remember where I got it.’

‘You don’t want to know yourself. You don’t know yourself as well as you know me. I don’t understand that. If you knew yourself you wouldn’t have done what you did with that woman.’

‘I don’t see why we have to know either ourselves or each other.’

‘But what else is there?’

‘Enjoying each other.’

‘Knowing is enjoying, for me.’

These were the sort of wrangles we liked. After, we walked back in silence.

I noticed, out at sea, a large yacht with little boats carrying provisions out to it. I’d forgotten that everyone from the Centre had been invited to a party on it that evening. I hadn’t taken much notice at the time, but there were numerous rumours about the owner. He was either a gangster, film producer or computer magnate. I wasn’t sure which was considered to be worse. I was surprised when Patricia announced at breakfast that we were all going. I was intending to miss it; I couldn’t see that Patricia would even notice my absence. How things had changed since then! Hadn’t she said to me, a couple of hours ago, ‘See you tonight!’

I couldn’t defy Patricia and remain at the Centre. If I was going to leave, I’d have to know where I was going.

I said goodbye to Alicia and went to the roof to think. I discovered myself to be even more furious than before about what Patricia had done to me, and furious with myself for having failed to escape untouched. I would insist on sleeping alone tonight, and leave for Athens by the first boat. I packed my bags in readiness. I was young; I could run.

I went to eat in a taverna in town, reading at the table. After a few pages, I thought ‘I can do this.’ I pulled some paper from my rucksack and started on a story, which offered itself to me. It was something seen, or apprehended as a whole — almost visual — which I felt forced to find words for. My hands were shaking; without literature I couldn’t think, and felt stifled by a swirl of thoughts which took me nowhere new. But writing and the intricacies of its solitude was a habit I needed to break in order to stray from myself. Some artists, in their later life, become so much themselves, they go their own way, that they are no longer open to influence, to being changed or even touched by anyone else, and their work takes on the nature of obsession. Margot once said to me, ‘When you think or feel something important, instead of saying it, you write it down. I’d love it to rain on your computer!’

It did. I put away my pen and paper, paid, and left.

At the Centre the voices, usually so quietly fervent, were almost raucous. Everyone, apart from Patricia, who had yet to appear, had gathered in colourful skirts, dresses and wraps. Some wore bells on their ankles; many wore bras. The night air, invariably sweet, vibrated with clashing female perfumes; jewellery flashed and jingled. Excitement about the party on the yacht was so high that some people were already dancing.

I was wearing my usual shorts and white T-shirt. I’d bought this body because I liked it as it was, a pure fashion item which didn’t require elaboration.

I laughed when I saw that Alicia had attempted to comb her hair, making it look even more frizzy. With the light behind her, she looked as though she had a halo. She also wore lipstick, which I’d never seen on her. It was as if she were trying out being ‘a woman’.

‘I was afraid you wouldn’t come,’ she said.

‘Me too,’ I replied.

‘We’re on the trip, then.’

‘Looks like it.’

Our singularity made us both seem insubordinate, as if we were refusing to enter into the spirit of the evening, which was how, to my regret, I’d been as a young man — rebellion as affectation. Not that anyone seemed to notice. With the arrival of Princess Patricia in a long tie-dyed skirt and with flowers in her hair, the party became impossible to resist.

At Patricia’s entrance, I said to Alicia, ‘I didn’t realise we were attending a film premiere!’

After posing in the door until everyone became silent and took her in, she came to me, kissed me on the lips, patted my face, licked her lips, and refused to acknowledge Alicia.

‘Are we ready?’

She held my arm and pulled me along, telling the others to follow. It was clear: she wanted to go on the cruise because she wanted to show me off.

Patricia and I led what became a kind of procession through the village to the beach. The old men, sitting at café tables watching us pass, seemed not only to be from another era, but appeared to be another kind of species altogether.

On the beach, where other foreigners from the island were gathering, a band greeted us. In the distance, the yacht, the only bright thing in the dark ocean, glittered beneath the emerging stars. Despite Patricia’s attention, I was glad to be there.

Small boats carried us to the yacht. Patricia sat beside me, holding my hand. ‘I’ve been walking on air ever since our love-making. You were just what I needed.’ She kept leaning across me.

‘Patricia …’ I was going to tell her, coyly, that I didn’t want things to ‘move along’ too quickly. ‘I think we —’

She interrupted me. ‘You didn’t even get changed,’ she said. ‘Hold still, then. Let me put this in.’ She was fiddling with my ear. ‘Now we have matching ear-rings.’ She patted my face, sat back and looked at me.

I touched my ear. ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, perplexed. ‘I must have forgotten I’d had it pierced.’

‘There are several holes. What a funny boy you are,’ she said. ‘I’ve watched you dancing. You do it wonderfully. You must have trained somewhere.’

‘I did.’

‘Where?’ She went on, ‘Will you dance with me all night?’

‘Not all night, Patricia.’

She took my hand and slipped it between her thighs. ‘Most of it, then, darling boy.’

We were helped from the boat onto the yacht. The owner, Matte, an excitable young man, greeted us on deck.

‘Thank you, Patricia, for bringing your crew! You are all welcome!’ he said. He waved at the women following us. ‘Come along, girls! Let’s get down!’

As we looked around the boat, Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra in the von Karajan version began playing. I adore Richard Strauss, but am ready to admit how much great music has been turned into kitsch. Where is there to turn for something that sounds fresh today, except to the new or weird? You couldn’t turn Bartók’s quartets or Webern’s meditations into easy listening.

Oddly, though, the Strauss didn’t seem only sententious. Against the sea and sky, in this place, and taken by surprise — which, it seems to me, is often the best way to hear music; walking into a shop one Saturday morning and hearing Callas; tricked into amazement — it thrilled and uplifted me again.

This was what I, as a young man, would have wanted.

Food, drink and sexual possibility appeared to be limitless. Matte’s uniformed staff walked about with trays, some of which held sex toys and condoms. There was a disco and a band. Those people already there appeared to be British, American and European playboys, models, actors, singers, pleasure-seekers, indolent aristocrats. There were also people that even I recognised from the British newspapers, pop stars and their partners, and actors from soap operas. These were people with groovy sun glasses and ideal bodies — I guessed that different parts of their bodies were of different ages and materials — who made it clear they had seen all this before, and liked being looked at.

Alicia nudged me. ‘Someone’s staring at you.’