Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

‘Not necessarily,’ says Father, spitting foam. ‘I use my imagination. Nadia says eyebrows and I see bushes.’

He says to his servant and indicates me: ‘An Englisher born and bred, eh?’

The servant falls about with the open razor.

‘But you belong with us,’ Dad says. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll put you on the right track. But first there must be a strict course of discipline.’

*

The room is full of dressed-up people sitting around Dad’s bed looking at him lying there in his best clothes. Dad yells out cheerful slanders about the tax evaders, bribe-takers and general scum-bags who can’t make it this evening. Father obviously a most popular man here. It’s better to be entertaining than good. Ma would be drinking bleach by now.

At last Dad gives the order they’ve been waiting for.

‘Bring the booze.’

The servant unlocks the cabinet and brings out the whisky.

‘Give everyone a drink except Nina. She has to get used to the pure way of life!’ he says, and everyone laughs at me.

The people here are tractor dealers (my first tractor dealer!), journalists, landowners and a newspaper tycoon aged thirty-one who inherited a bunch of papers. He’s immensely cultured and massively fat. I suggest you look at him from the front and tell me if he doesn’t look like a flounder. I look up to see my sister standing at the window of Dad’s room, straining her heart’s wet eyes at the Flounder who doesn’t want to marry her because he already has the most pleasant life there is in the world.

Now here’s a message for you fuckers back home. The men here invite Nadia and me to their houses, take us to their club, play tennis with us. They’re chauvinistic as hell, but they put on a great show. They’re funny and spend money and take you to their farms and show you their guns and kill a snake in front of your eyes. They flirt and want to poke their things in you, but they don’t expect it.

Billy slides into the room in his puffy baseball jacket and pink plimsolls and patched jeans. He stands there and puts his hands in his pockets and takes them out again.

‘Hey, Billy, have a drink.’

‘OK. Thanks … Yeah. OK.’

‘Don’t be shy,’ Dad says. ‘Nina’s not shy.’

So the entire room looks at shy Billy and Billy looks at the ground.

‘No, well, I could do with a drink. Just one. Thanks.’

The servant gets Billy a drink. Someone says to someone else: ‘He looks better since he had that break in Lahore.’

‘It did him the whole world of damn good.’

‘Terrible what happened to the boy.’

‘Yes. Yes. Ghastly rotten.’

Billy comes and sits next to me. Their loud talking goes on.

‘I’ve heard about you,’ he says under the talking. ‘They talk about you non-stop.’

‘Goody.’

‘Yeah. Juicy Fruit?’ he says.

*

He sits down on the bed and I open my case and give him all my tapes.

‘Latest stuff from England.’

He goes through them eagerly. ‘You can’t get any of this stuff here. This is the best thing that has ever happened to me.’ He looks at me. ‘Can I? Can I borrow them? Would you mind, you know?’ I nod. ‘My room is on top of the house. I’ll never be far away.’

Oh, kiss me now! Though I can see that’s a little premature, especially in a country where they cut off your arms or something for adultery. I like your black jeans.

‘What’s your accent?’ I say.

‘Canadian.’ He gets up. No, don’t leave now. Not yet. ‘Wanna ride?’ he says.

*

In the drive the chauffeurs smoke and talk. They stop talking. They watch us. Billy puts his baseball cap on my head and touches my hair.

‘Billy, push the bike out into the street so no one hears us leave.’

I ask him about himself. His mother was Canadian. She died. His father was Pakistani, though Billy was brought up in Vancouver. I turn and Moonie is yelling at me. ‘Nina, Nina, it’s late. Your father must see you now about a strict discipline business he has to discuss!’

‘Billy, keep going.’

He just keeps pushing the bike, oblivious of Moonie. He glances at me now and again, as if he can’t believe his luck. I can’t believe mine, baby!

‘So Pop and I came home to live. Home. This place isn’t my home. But he always wanted to come home.’

We push the bike up the street till we get to the main road.

‘This country was a shock after Vancouver,’ he says.

‘Same for me.’

‘Yeah?’ He gets sharp. ‘But I’d been brought here to live. How can you ever understand what that’s like?’

‘I can’t. All right, I fucking can’t.’

He goes on. ‘We were converting a house in ’Pindi, Pop and me. Digging the foundations, plastering the walls, doing the plumbing …’

We get on the bike and I hold him.

‘Out by the beach, Billy.’

‘Yeah. But it’s not simple. You know the cops stop couples and ask to see their wedding certificates.’

It’s true but fuck it. Slowly, stately, the two beige outlaws ride through the city of open fires. I shout an Aretha Franklin song into the night. Men squat by busted cars. Wild maimed pye-dogs run in our path. Traffic careers through dust, past hotels and airline buildings, past students squatting beside traffic lights to read, near where there are terrorist explosions and roads melt like plastic.

To the beach without showing our wedding certificate. It’s more a desert than a beach. There’s just sand: no shops, no hotels, no ice-creamers, no tattooists. Utterly dark. Your eyes search for a light in panic, for safety. But the curtains of the world are well and truly pulled here.

I guide Billy to the Flounder’s beach hut. Hut — this place is bigger than Ma’s flat. We push against the back door and we’re in the large living room. Billy and I dance about and chuck open the shutters. Enter moonlight and the beach as Billy continues his Dad rap.

‘Pop asked me to drill some holes in the kitchen. But I had to empty the wheelbarrow. So he did the drilling. He hit a cable or something. Anyway, he’s dead, isn’t he?’

We kiss for a long time, about forty minutes. There’s not a lot you can do in kissing; half an hour of someone’s tongue in your mouth could seem an eternity, but what there is to do, we do. I take off all my clothes and listen to the sea and almost cry for missing South Africa Road so. But at least there is the light friction of our lips together, barely touching. Harder. I pull the strong bulk of his head towards mine, pressing my tongue to the corner of his mouth. Soon I pass through the mouth’s parting to trace the inside curve of his lips. Suddenly his tongue fills my mouth, invading me, and I clench it with my teeth. Oh, oh, oh. As he withdraws I follow him, sliding my tongue into the oven of his gob and lie there on the bench by the open shutters overlooking the Arabian Sea, connected by tongue and saliva, my fingers in his ears and hair, his finger inside my body, our bodies dissolving until we forget ourselves and think of nothing, thank fuck.

*

It’s still dark and no more than ninety minutes have passed, when I hear a car pulling up outside the hut. I shake Billy awake, push him off me and pull him across the hut and into the kitchen. The fucking door’s warped and won’t shut so we just lie down on the floor next to each other. I clam Billy up with my hand over his gob. There’s a shit smell right next to my nose. I start to giggle. I stuff Billy’s fingers into my mouth. He’s laughing all over the place too. But we shut up sharpish when a couple come into the hut and start to move around. For some reason I imagine we’re going to be shot.

The man says: ‘Curious, indeed. My sister must have left the shutters open last time she came here.’