Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

As he sat down he said embarrassedly, ‘Have you got any more of that stuff?’

‘If you kiss me,’ she said.

‘Come on,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said, putting her face close to his. ‘Pay for what you want!’

He pushed his face into her warm mouth.

She passed him the envelope. ‘If you don’t leave some I’ll kill you.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said.

‘I will,’ she said. ‘Because I know what saved you — greed.’ She was looking at him. ‘My place? Don’t look at your watch. Just for a little bit, eh?’

*

He could tell from the flat that she hadn’t gone crazy. The furniture wasn’t frayed or stained; there were flowers, a big expensive sofa with books on nutrition balanced on the arm. The records were no longer on the floor. She had CDs now, in racks, alphabetical. As usual there were music papers and magazines on the table. She went to put on a CD. He hoped it wouldn’t be anything he knew.

He went into the bedroom. It was as dark as ever, but he knew where the light switches were. Looking at the familiar Indian wall-hangings, he sank onto the mattress to pull off his shoes. He flung his clothes onto the bare, unvarnished floorboards, covered in threadbare rugs. The smell of her bed he knew. He could reach the opened bottles of wine and the ashtray. He swigged some sour red and reached for the pillows.

She almost fell on him; she knew he liked her weight, and to be pinned down. He closed his eyes. When she tied him quickly and expertly, he remembered the frisson of fear, the helplessness, and the pleasure coming from some rarely lit place. He struggled, giggled, screamed.

When he awoke she was sitting across the room at her table in her black silk dressing gown, surrounded by papers, unguents, tins, boxes, with her hands in front of her, like a pianist looking for a tune. She turned and smiled. The door to the cupboard in which she kept her ‘dressing up’ things was open.

‘Untie me.’

‘In a while. Tomorrow, maybe.’

‘Natasha —’

‘Look.’ She opened her dressing gown and sat over him. How salty she was. ‘Here. If you don’t behave I’ll read to you from your own work.’

He looked up to see her lips pursed in concentration. At last she released him. They were both pleased, a job well done. He started to move quickly in the bed as some inner necessity and accompanying fury led him to desire satisfaction. There was a man he had to meet in a pub, a greedy, unbalanced man with, no doubt, a talent for rapid mathematics. But Nick couldn’t find his clothes amongst the flimsy things flung over the bed.

As it was cold he pulled his clothes on under the sheets as usual. But they smelt musty, as if he’d been wearing them for several days. He turned his sweater inside out.

She pulled him up, holding him in her arms. He lit a cigarette. ‘Natty, I’m off to get the stuff.’

She nodded. ‘Good. Got the money?’

He patted his pocket. ‘You’ll be here when I get back?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said.

He went out into the living room and shook himself, as if he would wake up.

She followed him and said, ‘What’s up?’

‘I’m marked,’ he said, pulling his sleeves up. ‘Christ. Look! My wrists.’

‘So you are,’ she said. ‘A marked man. They’ll fade.’

‘Not tonight.’

She said, ‘I hope I’m pregnant. It’s the right time of the month.’

‘That would be a nuisance to me.’

‘Not to me,’ she said. ‘It would be a good memento. A decent souvenir.’

He said. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’

‘Yes I do. Would you like me to let you know?’

‘No.’

‘That’s up to you.’

He said, ‘I’d forgotten how drugs make the dullest stuff tolerable. I hope everything goes well for you.’

He went out into the street. He was walking quickly but to where he didn’t know. He had emptied his mind out; there were good things but not to hand. If only the drug would stop working. At last he remembered his car and returned for it. He drove fast but carefully. Lolly would have finished at the house. She would be on her way back, singing to the boy in the car. He hoped she was safe. He thought of the pleasure on his wife’s face when she saw him, and the way his son turned to his voice. There was much he had to teach the boy. He thought that pleasures erase themselves as they occur — you can never remember your last cigarette. If happiness accumulates it is not because it remains in the bloodstream but because it is the bloodstream.

He unlocked the house. He still hadn’t become used to the size and brightness of the kitchen, nor to the silence, unusual for London. The freezer was a room in itself. He took the food out and put it on the table. Now he had to get to the supermarket to pick up the champagne.

On the way out he opened the door to his study. He hadn’t been to his desk for a few days. He wanted to think there were other things he liked more, that he wasn’t possessed by it. He went in and quickly scribbled some notes. He couldn’t write now but after supper he would go to bed with his wife and son; when they were asleep he’d get up to work.

Sitting outside in the car, he examined his sore wrists. He pulled his shirt sleeves down. Before, he’d never cover them; he knew some men and many women who would show off their hacked, scarred or cut arms, as important marks.

There was something he wished he’d said to Natasha as he left — he had looked back and seen her face at the window, watching him go up the steps. ‘There are worlds and worlds and worlds inside you.’ But perhaps it wouldn’t mean anything to her.

They got on at Victoria Station and sat together, kissing lightly. As the train pulled away, she took out her Nietzsche tome and began to read. Turning to the man at her side she became amused by his face, which she studied continually. Removing her gloves she picked shaving cream from his ears, sleep from his eyes and crumbs from his mouth, while laughing to herself. The combination of his vanity, mixed with unconscious naivety, usually charmed her.

Nicole hadn’t wanted to visit her mother after all this time but Majid, her older lover — it sounded trite calling him her ‘boyfriend’ — had persuaded her to. He was curious about everything to do with her; it was part of love. He said it would be good for her to ‘reconnect’; she was stronger now. However, during the past year, when Nicole had refused to speak to her, and had ensured her mother didn’t have her address, she had suppressed many tormenting thoughts from the past; ghosts she dreaded returning as a result of this trip.

Couldn’t Majid sense how uneasy she was? Probably he could. She had never had anyone listen to her so attentively or take her so seriously, as if he wanted to occupy every part of her. He had the strongest will of anyone she’d known, apart from her father. He was used to having things his own way, and often disregarded what she wanted. He was afraid she would run away.

He had never met her mother. She might be incoherent, or in one of her furies, or worse. As it was, her mother had cancelled the proposed visit three times, once in a drunken voice that was on the point of becoming spiteful. Nicole didn’t want Majid to think that she — half her mother’s age — would resemble her at fifty. He had recently told Nicole that he considered her to be, in some sense, ‘dark’. Nicole was worried that her mother would find Majid also dark, but in the other sense.

Almost as soon as it left the station, their commuter train crossed the sparkling winter river. It would pass through the suburbs and then the countryside, arriving after two hours at a seaside town. Fortunately, theirs wasn’t a long journey, and next week, they were going to Rome; in January he was taking her to India. He wanted her to see Calcutta. He wouldn’t travel alone any more. His pleasure was only in her.