Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

On the way here I stopped off for a couple of drinks, otherwise I’d never have come through the door, and now I’m sipping wine and discussing the latest films not too facetiously and my hands aren’t shaking and my little girl is down the table smiling at me warm and encouraging. Everything is normal, you see, except for this gut ache, which is getting worse, you know how it is when you’ve got to go. But I won’t get upset, I’ll have a crap, feel better and then eat.

I ask one of the sisters where the bathroom is and kindly she points at a door. It must be the nearest, thank Christ, and I get across the room stooping a little but no way the family’s gonna see me as a hunchback.

I sit down concerned they’re gonna hear every splash but it’s too late: the knotty little head is already pushing out, a flower coming through the earth, but thick and long and I’m not even straining, I can feel its soft motion through my gut, in one piece. It’s been awaiting its moment the way things do, like love. I close my eyes and appreciate the relief as the corpse of days past slides into its watery grave.

When I’m finished I can’t resist glancing down — even the Queen does this — and the turd is complete, wide as an aubergine and purplish too. It’s flecked with carrot, I notice, taking a closer look, but, ah, probably that’s tomato, I remember now, practically the only thing I’ve eaten in twenty-four hours.

I flush the toilet and check my look. Tired and greying I am now, with a cut above my eye and a bruise on my cheek, but I’ve shaved and feel as okay as I ever will, still with the boyish smile that says I can’t harm you. And waiting is the girl who loves me, the last of many, I hope, who sends me vibrations of confidence.

My hand is on the door when I glance down and see the prow of the turd turning the bend. Oh no, it’s floating in the pan again and I’m bending over for a better look. It’s one of the biggest turds I’ve ever seen. The flushing downpour has rinsed it and there is no doubt that as turds go it is exquisite, flecked and inlaid like a mosaic depicting, perhaps, a historical scene. I can make out large figures going at one another in argument. The faces I’m sure I’ve seen before. I can see some words but I haven’t got my glasses to hand.

I could have photographed the turd, had I brought a camera, had I ever owned one. But now I can’t hang around, the trout must be cooling and they’re too polite to start eating without me. The problem is, the turd is bobbing.

I’m waiting for the cistern to refill and every drip is an eternity, I can feel the moments stretching out, and outside I can hear the murmuring voices of my love’s family but I can’t leave that submarine there for the mother to go in and see it wobbling about. She knows I’ve been in the clinic and can see I’m drinking again; I’ve been watching my consumption, as they say, but I can’t stop and she’s gonna take her daughter to one side and …

I’ve been injecting my little girl. ‘What a lovely way to take drugs,’ she says sweetly. She wants to try everything. I don’t argue with that and I won’t patronise her. Anyhow, she’s a determined little blonde thing, and for her friends it’s fashionably exciting. I can tell she’s made up her mind to become an addict.

It took me days to hunt out the best stuff for her, pharmaceutical. It’s been five years for me, but I took it with her to ensure she didn’t make a mistake. Except an ex-boyfriend caught up with us, took me into a doorway and split my face for corrupting her. Yet she skips school to be with me and we take in Kensington Market and Chelsea. I explain their history of fashion and music. The records I tell her to listen to, the books I hold out, the bands I’ve played with, the creative people I tell her of, the deep talks we have, are worth as much as anything she hears at school, I know that.

At last I flush it again.

Girls like her … it is easy to speak of exploitation, and people do. But it is time and encouragement I give them. I know from experience, oh yes, how critical and diminishing parents can be, and I say try, I say yes, attempt anything. And I, in my turn, am someone for them to care for. It breaks my heart but I’ve got, maybe, two years with her before she sees I can’t be helped and she will pass beyond me into attractive worlds I cannot enter.

I pray only that she isn’t pulling up her sleeve and stroking her tracks, imagining her friends being impressed by those mascots, the self-inflicted scars of experience; those girls are dedicated to the truth, and like to show their parents how defiant they can be.

I’m reaching for the door, the water is clear and I imagine the turd swimming towards Ramsgate. But no, no, no, don’t look down, what’s that, the brown bomber must have an aversion to the open sea. The monstrous turd is going nowhere and nor am I while it remains an eternal recurrence. I flush it again and wait but it won’t leave its port and what am I going to do, this must be an existential moment and all my days have converged here. I’m trembling and running with sweat but not yet lost.

I’m rolling up the sleeve of my Italian suit, it’s an old suit, but it’s my best jacket. I don’t have a lot of clothes, I wear what people give me, what I find in the places I end up in, and what I steal.

I’m crying inside too, you know, but what can I do but stick my hand down the pan, into the pissy water, that’s right, oh dark, dark, dark, and fish around until my fingers sink into the turd, get a muddy grip and yank it from the water. For a moment it seems to come alive, wriggling like a fish.

My instinct is to calm it down, and I look around the bathroom for a place to bash it, but not if it’s going to splatter everywhere, I wouldn’t want them imagining I’m on some sort of dirty protest.

By now they must have started eating. And what am I doing but standing here with a giant turd in my fist? Not only that, my fingers seem to adhere to the turd; bits of my flesh are pulled away and my hand is turning brown. I must have eaten something unusual, because my nails and the palms are turning the colour of gravy.

My love’s radiant eyes, her loving softness. But in all ways she is a demanding girl. She insists on trying other drugs, and in the afternoons we play like children, dressing up and inventing characters, until my compass no longer points to reality. I am her assistant as she tests the limits of the world. How far out can she go and still be home in time for tea? I have to try and keep up, for she is my comfort. With her I am living my life again, but too quickly and all at once.

And in the end, to get clear, to live her life, she will leave me; or, to give her a chance, I must leave her. I dream, though, of marriage and of putting the children to bed. But I am told it is already too late for all that. How soon things become too late, and before one has acclimatised!

I glance at the turd and notice little teeth in its velvet head, and a little mouth opening. It’s smiling at me, oh no, it’s smiling and what’s that, it’s winking, yes, the piece of shit is winking up at me, and what’s that at the other end, a sort of tail, it’s moving, yes, it’s moving, and oh Jesus, it’s trying to say something, to speak, no, no, I think it wants to sing. Even though it is somewhere stated that truth may be found anywhere, and the universe of dirt may send strange messengers to speak to us, the last thing I want, right now in my life, is a singing turd.

I want to smash the turd back down into the water and hold it under and run out of there, but the mother — when the mother comes in and I’m scoffing the trout and she’s taking down her drawers I’m gonna worry that the turd lurking around the bend’s gonna flip up like a piranha and attach itself to her cunt, maybe after singing a sarcastic ditty, and she’s going to have an impression of me that I don’t want.