Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

One day he met a girl who used to play the drums in a trip-hop group. Any subject — the economy, the comparative merits of Paris, Rome or Berlin — would return him to this woman. Every day he went to some trouble to buy her something, even if it was only a pencil. Other times it might be a first-edition Elizabeth David, an art deco lamp from Prague, a tape of Five Easy Pieces, a bootleg of Lennon singing ‘On The Road to Rishikesh’. These things he would anxiously bring to the pub to ask Eshan’s opinion of. Eshan wondered if Brian imagined that because he was a photographer he had taste and judgement, and, being married, had some knowledge of romance.

After a few drinks Eshan would go home and Brian would start phoning to make his plans for the night ahead. In what Eshan considered to be the middle of the night, Brian and Laura would go to a club, to someone’s house, and then on to another club. Eshan learned that there were some places that only opened at nine on Sunday morning.

Lying in bed with his wife as they watched TV and read nineteenth-century novels while drinking camomile tea, Eshan found himself trying to picture what Brian and Laura were doing, what sort of good time they were having. He looked forward to hearing next day where they’d been, what drugs they’d taken, what they wore and how the conversation had gone. He was particularly curious about her reaction to each gift; he wanted to know whether she was demanding more and better gifts, or if she appreciated the merits of each one. And what, Eshan enquired with some concern, was Brian getting in return?

‘Enough,’ Brian inevitably replied.

‘So she’s good to you?’

Unusually, Brian replied that no lover had ever shown him what she had. Then he leaned forward, glanced left and right, and felt compelled to say, despite his loving loyalty, what this was. Her touch, her words, her sensual art, not to mention her murmurs, gasps, cries; and her fine wrists, long fingers and dark fine-haired bush that stood out like a punk’s back-combed mohican — all were an incomparable rapture. Only the previous evening she had taken him by the shoulders and said –

‘Yes?’ Eshan asked.

‘Your face, your hands, you, all of you, you…’

Eshan dried his palms on his trousers. Sighing inwardly, he listened, while signalling a detached approval. He encouraged Brian to repeat everything, like a much-loved story, and Brian was delighted to do so, until they were no longer sure of the facts.

Perhaps Eshan envied Brian his lover and their pleasure, and Brian was beginning to envy Eshan his stability. Whatever it was between them, Brian involved Eshan in his new love. It was, Eshan was pleased to see, agonising. Laura drew out Brian’s best impulses; tenderness, kindness, generosity. He became more fervent as a dealer so as to take her to restaurants most nights; he borrowed money and took her to Budapest for a week.

But in love each moment is magnified, and every gesture, word and syllable is examined like a speech by the President. Solid expectation, unfurled hope, immeasurable disappointment — all are hurled together like a cocktail of random drugs that, quaffed within the hour, make both lovers reel. If she dressed up and went to a party with a male friend, he spent the night catatonic with paranoia; if he saw an old girlfriend, she assumed they would never speak again. And surely she was seeing someone else, someone better in every way? Did she feel about him as he did her? To love her was to fear losing her. Brian would have locked her in a bare room to have everything hold still a minute.

One day when Eshan went to the bar he returned to see that Brian had picked up a folder Eshan had left on the table, opened it, and was holding up the photographs. Brian could be impudent, which was his charm, and Eshan liked charm, because it was rare and good to watch as a talent. But it also exposed Brian as a man who was afraid; his charm was charged with the task of disarming people before they damaged him.

‘Hey,’ said Eshan.

Brian placed his finger on a picture of Doris Lessing. Laura was reading The Golden Notebook ; could he buy it for her? Eshan said, yes, and he wouldn’t charge. But Brian insisted. They agreed on a price and on a black frame. They drank more and wondered what Laura would think. A few days later Brian reported that though Laura would never finish the book — she never finished any book, the satisfaction was too diffuse — she had been delighted by the picture. Could she visit his studio?

‘Studio? If only it was. But yes, bring her over — it’s time we met.’

‘Tomorrow, then.’

They were more than two hours late. Eshan had been meditating, which he did whenever he was tense or angry. You couldn’t beat those Eastern religions for putting the wet blanket on desire. When he was turning out the lights and ready to leave, Brian and Laura arrived at the door with wine. Eshan put out his work for Laura. She looked closely at everything. They smoked the dope he had grown on his balcony from Brian’s seeds, lay on the floor with the tops of their heads touching, and watched a Kenneth Anger film. Brian and Laura rang some people and said they were going out. Would he like to come? Eshan almost agreed. He said he would like to have joined them, but that he got up early to work. And the music, an electronic blizzard of squeaks, bleeps and beats, had nothing human in it.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Laura said. ‘Nothing human there. A bunch of robots on drugs.’

‘You don’t mean that,’ said Brian.

A few days after the visit Brian made the strange request.

‘She enjoyed meeting you,’ he was saying, as Eshan read his newspaper in the pub.

‘And me her,’ Eshan murmured without raising his eyes. ‘Anyone would.’

It cheered Brian to hear her praised. ‘She’s pretty, eh?’

‘No, beautiful.’

‘Yes, that’s it, you’ve got the right word.’

He picked up his phone. ‘She wants to ask you a favour. Can she join us?’

‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Of course, you’ve got to put the kids to bed, but I think you’ll find it an interesting favour.’

Laura arrived within fifteen minutes. She sat down at their table and began.

‘What we want is for you to photograph us.’

Eshan nodded. Laura glanced at Brian. ‘Naked. Or we could wear things. Rings through our belly buttons or something. But anyway — making love.’ Eshan looked at her. ‘You photograph us fucking,’ she concluded. ‘Do you see?’

Eshan didn’t know what to say.

She asked, ‘What about it?’

‘I am not a pornographer.’

It must have sounded pompous. She gave him an amused look.

‘I’ve seen your stuff, and we haven’t the nerve for pornography. It isn’t even beauty we want. And I know you don’t go for that.’

‘No. What is it?’

‘You see, we go to bed and eat crackers and drink wine and caress one another and chatter all day. We’ve both been through terrible things in our lives, you see. Now we want to capture this summer moment — I mean we want you to capture it for us.’

‘To look back on?’

She said, ‘I suppose that is it. We all know love doesn’t last.’

‘Is that right?’ said Eshan.

Brian added, ‘It might be replaced by something else.’

‘But this terrible passion and suspicion … and the intensity of it … will get domesticated.’ She went on, ‘I think that when one has an idea, even if it is a queer one, one should follow it through, don’t you?’

Eshan supposed he agreed with this.

Laura kissed Brian and said to him, ‘Eshan’s up for it.’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Brian.

Eshan had picked up his things, said goodbye and reached the door, before he returned.