Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

‘Now — ready?’

He was already walking to his car. I followed. Ralph was so solicitous and optimistic, I felt as comfortable as anyone could in the circumstances. Then I began to look forward to ‘the change’ and fantasised about all that I would do in my new skin.

By now we’d arrived at the ‘hospital’, a run-down warehouse on a bleak, wind-blown industrial estate outside London (he had already explained that ‘things would not be as they seemed’). I noticed from the size of the fence and the number of black-uniformed men that security was tight. Ralph and I showed our passports at the door. We were both searched.

Inside, the place did resemble a small, expensive private hospital. The walls, sofas and pictures were pastel-coloured and the building seemed almost silent, as if it had monumental walls. There were no patients moving about, no visitors with flowers, books and fruit, only the occasional doctor and nurse. When I did glimpse, at the far end of a corridor, a withered old woman in a pink flannel night-gown being pushed in a wheelchair by an orderly, Ralph and I were rapidly ushered into a side office.

Immediately, the surgeon came into the room, a man in his mid-thirties who seemed so serene I could only wonder what kind of yoga or therapy he had had, and for how long.

His assistant ensured the paperwork was rapidly taken care of, and I wrote a cheque. It was for a considerable amount, money that would otherwise have gone to my children. I hoped scarcity would make them inventive and vital. My wife was already provided for. What was bothering me? I couldn’t stop suspecting that this was a confidence trick, that I’d been made a fool of in my most vulnerable areas: my vanity and fear of decline and death. But if it was a hoax, it was a laboured one, and I would have parted with money to hear about it.

The surgeon said, ‘We are delighted to have an artist of your calibre join us.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Have you done anything I might have heard of?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘I think my wife saw one of your plays. She loves comedy and now has the leisure to enjoy herself. Ralph has told me that it’s a short-term body rental you require, initially? The six-months minimum — is that correct?’

‘That is correct,’ I said. ‘After six months I’ll be happy to return to myself again.’

‘I have to warn you, not everyone wants to go back.’

‘I will. I am fascinated by this experiment and want to be involved, but I’m not particularly unhappy with my life.’

‘You might be unhappy with your death.’

‘Not necessarily.’

He countered, ‘I wouldn’t leave it until you’re on your deathbed to find out. Some people, you know, lose the power of speech then. Or it is too late for all kinds of other reasons.’

‘You’re suggesting I won’t want to return to myself?’

‘It’s impossible for either of us to predict how you will feel in six months’ time.’

I nodded.

He noticed me looking at him. ‘You are wondering if —’

‘Of course.’

‘I am,’ he replied, glancing at Ralph. ‘We both are. Newbodies.’

‘And ordinary people going about their business out there’ — I pointed somewhere into the distance — ‘are called Oldbodies?’

‘Perhaps. Yes. Why not?’

‘These are words that will eventually be part of most people’s everyday vocabulary, you think?’

‘Words are your living,’ he said. ‘Bodies are mine. But I would imagine so.’

‘The existence of Newbodies, as you call them, will create considerable confusion, won’t it? How will we know who is new and who old?’

‘The thinking in this area has yet to be done,’ he said. ‘Just as there has been argument over abortion, genetic engineering, cloning and organ transplants, or any other medical advances, so there will be over this.’

‘Surely this is of a different order,’ I said. ‘Parents the same age as their children, or even younger, for instance. What will that mean?’

‘That is for the philosophers, priests, poets and television pundits to say. My work is only to extend life.’

‘As an educated man, you must have thought this over.’

‘How could I work out the implications alone? They can only be lived.’

‘But —’

We batted this subject back and forth until it became clear even to me that I was playing for time.

‘I was just thinking …’ said Ralph. He was smiling. ‘If I were dead we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’

The doctor said, ‘Adam’s is a necessary equivocation.’ He turned to me. ‘You have to make a second important decision.’

I guessed this was coming. ‘It won’t be so difficult, I hope.’

‘Please, follow me.’

The doctor, accompanied by a porter and a young nurse, took me and Ralph down several corridors and through several locked doors. At last we entered what seemed like a broad, low-ceilinged, neon-lit fridge with a tiled floor.

I was shivering as I stood there, and not only because of the temperature. Ralph took my arm and began to murmur in my ear, but I couldn’t hear him. What I saw was unlike anything I had seen before; indeed, unlike anything anyone had ever seen. This was no longer amusing speculation or inquisitiveness. It was where the new world began.

‘Where do you get them?’ I asked. ‘The bodies.’

‘They’re young people who have, unfortunately, passed away,’ said the doctor.

Stupidly, I said, as though I were looking at the result of a massacre, ‘All at once?’

‘At different times, naturally. And in different parts of the world. They’re transported in the same way as organs are now. That’s not difficult to do.’

‘What is difficult about this process now?’

‘It takes time and great expertise. But so does cleaning a great painting. The right person has to do it. There are not many of those people yet. But it can be done. It is, of course, something that was always going to happen.’

Suspended in harnesses, there were rows and rows of bodies: the pale, the dark and the in-between; the mottled, the clear-skinned, the hairy and the hairless, the bearded and the large-breasted; the tall, the broad and the squat. Each had a number in a plastic wallet above the head. Some looked awkward, as though they were asleep, with their heads lolling slightly to one side, their legs at different angles. Others looked as though they were about to go for a run. All the bodies, as far as I could see, were relatively young; some of them looked less like young adults than older children. The oldest were in their early forties. I was reminded of the rows of suits in the tailors I’d visit as a boy with my father. Except these were not cloth coverings but human bodies, born alive from between a woman’s legs.

‘Why don’t you browse?’ said the surgeon, leaving me with the nurse. ‘Choose a short list, perhaps. Write down the numbers you fancy. We can discuss your choices. This is the part I enjoy. You know what I like to do? Guess in advance who I think the person will choose, and wait to see whether I am right. Often I am.’

Shopping for bodies: it was true that I had some idea what I was looking for. I knew, for instance, that I didn’t want to be a fair, blue-eyed blond. People might consider me a beautiful fool.

‘Can I suggest something?’ said Ralph. ‘You might, for a change, want to come back as a young woman.’

I said, ‘A change is as good as a rest, as my mother used to say.’

‘Some men want to give birth. Or they want to have sex as a woman. You do have one of your male characters say that in his sexual fantasies he’s always a woman.’

‘Yes … I see what you mean …’

‘Or you could choose a black body. There’s a few of those,’ he said with an ironic sniff. ‘Think how much you’d learn about society and… all that.’