Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

‘One day, in South America, where he knew other wealthy but somewhat dreary people, he heard a fantastic story from a young man he trusted, a doctor who, like him, was interested in the theatre, in culture. Together — can you imagine? — they put on an amateur production of Endgame . This doctor was moved by the old man’s wish for something unattainable. He confided in him, saying that an amazing thing was taking place. Certain old, rich men and women were having their living brains removed and transplanted into the bodies of the young dead.’

Ralph became quiet here, as if he needed to know my reaction before he could continue.

I said, ‘It seems logical that technology and medical capability only need to catch up with the human imagination or will. I know nothing about science, but isn’t this usually the way?’

Ralph went on, ‘These people might not exactly live for ever, but they would become young again. They could be twenty-year-olds if they wanted. They could live the lives they believed they’d missed out on. They could do what everybody dreams of, have a second chance.’

I murmured, ‘After a bit you realise there’s only one invaluable commodity. Not gold or love, but time.’

‘Who hasn’t asked: why can’t I be someone else? Who, really, wouldn’t want to live again, given the chance?’

‘I’m not convinced of that,’ I said. ‘Please continue. Were there people you met who had done this?’

‘Yes.’

‘What were they like?’

‘Make up your own mind.’ I turned to him again. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Have a good stare.’ He leaned into the light in order to let me see him. ‘Touch me if you want.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said, prissily, after stroking his cheek, which felt like the flesh of any other young man. ‘Go on.’

‘I have followed your life from the beginning, in parallel to my own. I’ve spotted you in restaurants, even asked for your autograph. You have spoken my thoughts. My audition speech at drama school was a piece by you. Adam, I am older than you.’

‘This conversation is difficult to believe,’ I said. ‘Still, I always enjoyed fairy stories.’

He continued, ‘As I told you, I had made money but my time was running out. You know better than me, an actor walks into a room and immediately you see — it’s all you see — he’s too old for the part. Yet one’s store of desire doesn’t diminish with age, with many it increases; the means to fulfil it become weakened. I didn’t want a trim stomach, woven hair or less baggy eyes, or any of those… trivial repairs.’ Here he laughed. It was the first time he hadn’t seemed earnest. ‘What I wanted was another twenty years, at least, of health and youth. I had the operation.’

‘You had your brain removed… to become a younger man?’

‘What I am saying sounds deranged. It is unbelievable.’

‘Let us pretend, for the sake of this enjoyable fantasy, that it really is true. How does it work?’

He said the procedure was terrifying, but physically not as awful as open-heart surgery, which we’d both had. When you come round from the anaesthetic in this case, you feel fit and optimistic. ‘Ready to jump and run’, as he put it. The operation wasn’t exactly common yet. There were only a handful of surgeons who could do it. The procedure had been done hundreds of times, perhaps a thousand, he didn’t know the exact figure, in the last five years. But it was still, as far as he knew, a secret. Now was the time to have it, at the beginning, before there was a rush; when it was still in everyone’s interest to keep the secret.

He went on to say that there were certain people whom he believed needed more time on earth, for whom the benefit to mankind could be immense. To this, I replied that although I didn’t know him, it was his mildness that struck me. He didn’t seem the type to lead some kind of master-race. He wasn’t Stalin, Pol Pot or even Mother Teresa returning for another fifty years.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Needless to say, I don’t include myself in this. I had children and I worked hard. I needed another life in order to catch up on my sleep. If I’m back, it’s for the crack!’

I asked, ‘If you really were one of these women or men, what would you want to do with your new time?’

‘For years, all I’ve wanted is to play Hamlet. Not as a seventy-year-old but as a kid. That is what I’m going to do,’ he said. ‘At drama school, first. It’s already been cast and I’ve got the part. I’ve known the lines for years. In my various factories, I’d walk about, speaking the verse, to keep sane.’

‘I hope you don’t mind me pointing this out, but what’s wrong with Lear or Prospero?’

‘I will approach those pinnacles eventually. Adam, I can do anything now, anything!’

I said, ‘Is that what you are intending to do after you’ve played Hamlet?’

‘I will continue as an actor, which I love. Adam, I have money, experience, health and some intelligence. I’ve got the friends I want. The young people at the school, they’re full of enthusiasm and ardour. Something you wrote influenced me. You said that unlike films, plays don’t take place in the past. The fear, anxiety and skill of the actors is happening now, in front of you. If performing is risky, we identify with the possibility of grandeur and disaster. I want that. I can tell you that what has happened to me is an innovation in the history of humankind. How about joining me?’

I was giggling. ‘I’m no saint, only a scribbler with an interest, sometimes, in how people use one another. I don’t feel entitled to another go at life on the basis of my “nobility”.’

‘You’re creative, contrary and articulate,’ he said. ‘And, in my opinion, you’ve only just started to develop as an artist.’

‘Jesus, and I thought I’d had my say.’

‘You deserve to evolve. Meet me tomorrow morning.’ As he picked up his plate and glass from the floor, the two observing women, who had not lost patience, began to flutter. ‘We’ll take it further then.’

He touched me on the arm, named a place and got up.

‘What’s the rush?’ I said. ‘Can’t we meet in a few days?’

‘There is the security aspect,’ he said. ‘But I also believe the best decisions are taken immediately.’

‘I believe that too,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know about this.’

‘Dream on it,’ he said. ‘You’ve heard enough for one evening. It would be too much for anyone to take in. See you tomorrow. It’s getting late. I really want to dance. I can dance all night, without stimulants.’

He pressed my hand, looked into my eyes as if we already had an understanding, and walked away.

The conversation had ended abruptly but not impolitely. Perhaps he had said all there was to say for the moment. He had certainly left me wanting to know more. Hadn’t I, like everyone else, often thought of how I’d live had I known all that I know now? But wasn’t it a ridiculous idea? If anything made life and feeling possible, it was transience.

I watched Ralph join a group of drama students, his ‘contemporaries’. Like him, presumably, but unlike me, they didn’t think of their own death every day.

I got up and briefly talked to my friends — the old fucks with watery eyes; some of them quite shrunken, their best work long done — finished my drink, and said goodbye to the host.

At the door, when I looked back, Ralph was dancing with a group of young people among whom were the two women who’d been watching him. Walking through the house, I saw the kids I’d met at the front door sitting at a long table drinking, playing with one another’s hair. I was sure I could hear someone saying they preferred the book to the film, or was it the film to the book? Suddenly, I longed for a new world, one in which no one compared the book to the film, or vice versa. Ever.