Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

‘Why me?’

She was looking up at him.

‘Why? Brian has run into you with your children. You’re a kind father, a normal man, and you will surely understand what we want.’ Eshan looked at Brian, who had maintained a neutral expression. She said, ‘But … if it’s all too much, let’s forget it.’

It was an idea they’d conceived frivolously. He would give her the chance to drop the whole thing. She should call in the morning.

He thought it over in bed. When Laura made the request, though excited, she hadn’t seemed mad or over-ebullient. It was vanity, of course, but a touching, naive vanity, not a grand one; and he was, more than ever, all for naivety. Laura was, too, a woman anyone would want to look at.

*

An old upright piano and guitar; painted canvases leaning against the wall; club fliers, rolling papers, pills, a razor blade, beer bottles empty and full, standing on a chest of drawers. Leaning against this, a long mirror. The bed, its linen white, was in the centre of the room.

Laura pulled the curtains, and then half-opened them again.

‘Will you have enough light?’

‘I’ll manage,’ Eshan whispered.

Brian went to shave. Then, while Eshan unpacked his things, he plucked at the guitar with his mouth open, and drank beer. The three of them spoke in low voices and were solicitous of one another, as if they were about to do something dangerous but delicate, like planting a bomb.

A young man, covered in spots, wandered into the room.

‘Get out now and go to bed,’ Laura said. ‘You’ve got chickenpox. Everyone here had it?’ she asked.

They all laughed. It was better then. She put a chair against the door. They watched her arrange herself on the bed. Eshan photographed her back; he photographed her face. She took her clothes off. The breeze from the open window caressed her. She stretched out her fingers to Brian.

He walked over to her and they pressed their faces together. Eshan photographed that. She undressed him. Eshan shot his discomfort.

Soon they were taking up different positions, adjusting their heads, putting their hands here and there for each shot. Brian began to smile as if he fancied himself as a model.

‘It’s very sweet, but it ain’t going to work,’ Eshan told them. ‘There’s nothing there. It’s dead.’

‘He might be right,’ Laura told Brian. ‘We’re going to have to pretend he’s not here.’

Eshan said, ‘I’ll put film in the camera now, then.’

*

Eshan didn’t go to bed but carried his things through the dark city back to his studio. He developed the material as quickly as he could and when it was done went home. His wife and children were having breakfast, laughing and arguing as usual. He walked in and his children kept asking him to take off his coat. He felt like a criminal, though the only laws he’d broken were his own, and he wasn’t sure which ones they were.

Unusually he had the pictures with him and he went through them several times as he ate his toast, keeping them away from the children.

‘Please, can I see?’ His wife put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t hide them. It’s a long time since you’ve shown me your work. You live such a secret life.’

‘Do I?’

‘Sometimes I think you’re not doing anything at all over there but just sitting.’

She looked at the photographs and then closed the folder.

‘You stayed out all night without getting in touch. What have you been doing?’

‘Taking pictures.’

‘Don’t talk to me like that. Who are these people, Eshan?’

‘People I met in the pub. They asked me to photograph them.’

They went into the kitchen and she closed the door. She could be very disapproving, and she didn’t like mysteries.

‘And you did this?’

‘You know I like to start somewhere and finish somewhere else. It wasn’t an orgy.’

‘Are you going to publish or sell them?’

‘No. They paid me. And that’s it.’

He got up.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Back to work.’

‘Is this the same kind of thing you’ll be doing today?’

‘Ha ha ha.’

He tried to resume his routine but couldn’t work, or even listen to music or read the papers. He could only look at the pictures. They were not pornography, being too crude and unembellished for that. He had omitted nothing human. All the same, the images gave him a dry mouth, exciting and distressing him at the same time. He wouldn’t be able to start anything else until the material was out of the studio.

He thought Brian would have gone back to his place, but wasn’t certain. However, he couldn’t persuade himself to ring first. He took a chance and walked all the way back there again. He was exhausted but was careful to cross the road where he crossed it before.

She came to the door in her dressing gown, and was surprised to see him. He said he’d brought the stuff round, and proffered the folder as evidence.

He went past her and up the stairs. She tugged her dressing gown around herself, as if he hadn’t seen her body before. Upstairs they sat on the broken sofa. She was reluctant to look at the stuff, but knew she had to. She held up the contact sheets, turning them this way and that, repeatedly.

‘Is that what you wanted?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is that what you do on a good day?’

‘I should thank you for the lovely job you’ve done. I don’t know what I can do in return.’ He looked at her. She said, ‘How about a drum lesson?’

‘Why not?’

She took him into a larger room, where he noticed some of Brian’s gifts. Set before a big window, with a view of the street and the square, was her red spangled kit. She showed him how she played, and demonstrated how he could. Soon this bored her and she made lunch. As he ate she returned to the photographs, glanced through them without comment, and went back to the table. He wasn’t certain that she wanted him there. But she didn’t ask him to go away and seemed to assume that he had nothing better to do. He didn’t know what else he would do anyway, as if something had come to an end.

They started to watch television, but suddenly she switched it off and stood up and sat down. She started agitatedly asking him questions about the people he knew, how many friends he had, what he liked about them, and what they said to one another. At first he answered abruptly, afraid of boring her. But she said she’d never had any guidance, and for the past few years, like everyone else, had only wanted a good time. Now she wanted to find something important to do, wanted a reason to get out of bed before four. He murmured that fucking might be a good excuse for staying in bed, just as the need to wash was an excuse for lying in the bath. She understood that, she said. She hardly knew anyone with a job; London was full of drugged, useless people who didn’t listen to one another but merely thought all the time of how to distract themselves and never spoke of anything serious. She was tired of it; she was even tired of being in love; it had become another narcotic. Now she wanted interesting difficulty, not pleasure or even ease.

‘And look, look at the pictures …’

‘What do they say?’

‘Too much, my friend.’

She hurried from the room. After a time she returned with a bucket which she set down on the carpet. She held the photographs over it and invited him to set fire to them.

‘Are you sure?’ he said.

‘Oh yes.’

They singed the carpet and burned their fingers, and then they threw handfuls of ash out of the window and cheered.

‘Are you going to the pub now?’ she asked as he said goodbye.

‘I don’t think I’ll be going there for a while.’