Hanif Kureishi - Collected Stories

A long-haired, model-like young woman approached the desk, requesting a taxi. Her hip, slightly Hispanic look was so ravishing I must have audibly sighed, because she smiled. It was difficult to tell whether she was in her late teens or early thirties. It occurred to me that we were making a society in which everyone would be the same age. I noticed that the woman was carrying an open bag in which I glimpsed what looked like the corner of a pink flannel night-gown. She sat opposite me, waiting too, nervously. In fact, she seemed to relate strangely to herself, as I must have done, moving different parts of herself experimentally, at first diffidently, and then with some internal celebration. Then she smiled in my direction with such radiant confidence I thought of suggesting we share a cab. What a perfect couple we would make!

But I wanted to be back among ordinary people, those who decayed and were afraid of death. I got up and cancelled the cab. I would enjoy walking. A marathon would be nothing. The nurse seemed to understand.

‘Good luck,’ I said to the woman.

I headed for the main road. I must have walked for five miles, taking considerable strides and loving the steady motion. My new body was taller and heavier than my last ‘vessel’, but I felt lighter and more agile than I could recall, as though I were at the wheel of a luxury car. I could see over the heads of others on the street. People had to look up to me. I’d been bullied as a kid. Now, I could punch people out. Not that a fight would be the best start to my new incarnation.

I found a cheap café and ate a meal. I ate another meal. I checked into a big anonymous hotel where a reservation had already been made. I found a good position in the bar where I could look out for people looking at me. Was that woman smiling in my direction? People did glance at me, but with no more obvious interest than they had before. My mind felt disturbingly clear. What defined edges the world had! It had been a long time since I’d had such undeviating contact with reality. After a couple of drinks, I gained even more clarity along with a touch of ecstasy, but I didn’t want to get blotto on my first day as a Newbody.

I was waiting in the crowded hotel foyer when Ralph hurried in and stood there looking about. It was disconcerting when he didn’t recognise the writer he’d worshipped, whose words he’d memorised, the one he believed deserved immortality! It took him a few distracted moments to pick my body out among the others, and he still wasn’t certain it was me.

I went over. ‘Hi, Ralph, it’s me, Adam.’

He embraced me, running his hands over my shoulders and back; he even patted my stomach.

‘Great hard body, pal. You look superb. I’m proud of you. You’ve got guts. How do you feel?’

‘Never better,’ I said. They were my words, but my voice was strong. ‘Thanks, Ralph, for doing this for me.’

‘By the way,’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Sorry?’

‘You’ll need a new name. You could keep your old name, of course, or a derivative. But it might cause confusion. You’re not really Adam any more. What do you think?’

My instinct was to change my name. It would help me remember that I was a new combination. Anyway, hybrids were hip.

‘What will it be?’ he asked.

‘I’ll be called Leo Raphael Adams,’ I said at last. ‘Does that sound grand enough?’

‘Up to you,’ he said. ‘Good. I’ll tell them. You have money, don’t you?’

‘As you insisted, enough for six months.’

‘I’ll make sure you receive a passport and driving licence in your new name.’

‘That must be illegal,’ I said.

‘Does that worry you?’

‘I’m afraid so. I’m not a good man by any means, but I do tend towards honesty in trivial matters.’

‘That’s the least of it, man. You’re in a place that few other humans have ever been before. You’re a walking laboratory, an experiment. You’re beyond good and evil now.’

‘Right, I see,’ I said. ‘The identity theorists are going to be busy worrying about this one.’

He touched my shoulder. ‘You need to get laid. It works, doesn’t it — your thing?’

‘I can’t tell you how good it feels not to piss in all directions at once or over your own new shoes. As soon as I get an erection, I’ll call.’

‘The first time I had sex in my new body, it all came back. I was with a Russian girl. She was screaming like a pig.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I knew, that night, it had been worth it. That all those years, day after day, watching my wife die, were over. This was moving on in glory.’

‘My wife isn’t dead. I hope she doesn’t die while I’m “away”.’

‘It’s okay to be unfaithful,’ he said. ‘It isn’t you doing it.’

We talked for a bit, but I felt restless and kept bouncing on my toes. I said I wanted to get out and walk, shake my new arse, and show off. Ralph said he had done the same. He would let me go my own way as soon as he could. First, we had to do some shopping. Ralph had brought a suit, shirt, underwear and shoes to the hospital, but I would need more.

‘My son only seems to possess jeans, T-shirts and sunglasses,’ I said. ‘Otherwise I have no idea what twenty-five-year-olds wear.’

‘I will help you,’ he said. ‘I only know twenty-five-year-olds.’

I was photographed for my new passport, and then Ralph took me to a chain-store. Each time I saw myself in the changing-room mirror I thought a stranger was standing in front of me. My feet were an unnecessary distance from my waist. Recently, I’d found it difficult to get my socks on, but I’d never been unfamiliar with the dimensions of my own body before. I’d always known where to find my own balls.

I dressed in black trousers, white shirt and raincoat, nothing fashionable or ostentatious. I had no desire to express myself. Which self would I be expressing? The only thing I did buy, which I’d always wanted but never owned before, was a pair of tight leather trousers. My wife and children would have had hysterics.

Ralph left to go to a rehearsal. He was busy. He was pleased with me and with himself, but his job was done. He wanted to get on with his own new life.

Staring at myself in the mirror again, attempting to get used to my new body, I realised my hair was a little long. Whichever ‘me’ I was, it didn’t suit me. I would customise myself.

There was a hairdresser’s near my house, which I had walked past most days for years, lacking the courage to go in. The people were young, the women with bare pierced bellies, and the noise horrendous. Now, as the girl chopped at my thick hair and chattered, my mind teemed with numerous excitements, wonderments and questions. I had quickly agreed to become a Newbody in order not to vacillate. Since the operation, I had felt euphoric; this second chance, this reprieve, had made me feel well and glad to be alive. Age and illness drain you, but you’re never aware of how much energy you’ve lost, how much mental preparation goes into death.

What I didn’t know, and would soon find out, was what it was like to be young again in a new body. I enjoyed trying out my new persona on the hairdresser, making myself up. I told her I was single, had been brought up in west London and had been a philosophy and psychology student; I had worked in restaurants and bars, and now I was deciding what to do.

‘What do you have in mind?’ she asked.

I told her I was intending to go away; I’d had enough of London and wanted to travel. I would be in the city for only a few more days, before setting off. As I spoke, I felt a surge or great push within, but towards what I had no idea, except that I knew they were pleasures.

Walking out of the hairdresser’s, I saw my wife across the road pulling her shopping trolley on wheels. She looked more tired and frailer than my mental picture of her. Or perhaps I was reverting to the view of the young, that the old are like a race all of whom look the same. Possibly I needed to be reminded that age in itself was not an illness.