Something to Tell You

by Hanif Kureishi

  “I argued with the doctors. I tried to talk the breast surgeon out of insisting on the surgical biopsy. She was doing me a favour by scheduling it so quickly. But I felt I was being drawn into the hospital death trap. I met a woman at the hospital who was having a biopsy too. She was overjoyed. She wouldn’t have the anxiety of not knowing.

  “I was more dishonest. I didn’t understand any of it until they told me in the hospital that I had a tumour of considerable mass.”

  It had begun, my generation had begun to die. One by one we’d be picked off: illness, and then death. More funerals than weddings. Who would be next? I wondered.

  The next death came sooner, and more suddenly, than I could have imagined.

  At the end of supper I helped Karen into a cab. I walked for a while, looking at the city, aware of every person with a bag; every trip on the tube a potential death. Will it be now? Will he be a bomber? Will I be killed? Would I mind, or would it be a good way to exit—suddenly, plucked from the world? I thought of the Mule Woman’s parents. What if it had been Rafi?

  After Karen finally told me what had happened to her, I rang her most days. Even Henry was concerned, in his own way. He began to shoot more material for the actors’ documentary, which on hearing that Karen was ill, he had decided to complete.

  At the Riverside Studios, not far from his flat, he worked with Miriam on the Chekhov scenes. Despite the anxiety which caused her to call me incessantly, Miriam was ecstatic. In rehearsal he took her as seriously as he would any actor, listening to her, watching her, using what was there. “Intuitively, underneath, I was always an actress,” she told me. “Undiscovered, of course—until recently.”

  Henry was directing the scene in several different styles, with different actors, before cutting the material together. He came over with his computer and showed it to me. He’d thought he was “finished,” but his energy was high and the work good. We were on better terms, too, over Lisa.

  I had given her poems to a young Libyan acquaintance I met sometimes in a pub nearby. He was enterprising, with his own small-circulation magazine and a tiny publishing operation. He distributed the work himself, heaving the stuff around bookshops in a suitcase. He agreed to run three of her poems in his magazine. He asked her to write an essay on modern poetry.

  She seemed a little put out that the poems weren’t going to be published in the TLS, but I thought she’d appreciate this young man and his efforts. She agreed to meet him and help him take stuff around the shops.

  I resented the little time Lisa demanded of me. I was working hard. The practice was growing. I was being approached by more potential patients than I could possibly see. God knows, I needed the money. So the new ones I fitted in early.

  It was one morning, in the often frantic ten minutes between sessions, that Maria came in looking more worried than usual, and without my coffee.

  She said that Ajita had called to say Wolf had died during the night, in her house in Soho.

  My first thought was: Will this be my release or my condemnation?

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Mustaq’s office had located Wolf’s sister in Germany and arranged for his body to be flown home. Ajita had informed Mustaq that Wolf had no family in Britain, and that she didn’t want to go to the funeral. Neither of us did, for different reasons.

  “Jesus, sweetie, you look more distressed than me,” she said when I turned up that evening. She was sitting on a sofa in a quiet little private club behind St. Martin’s Lane. “Have something to calm you. This is an awful fucking business.”

  “Ajita, tell me what happened.”

  She said, “We had finished making love. Wolf got up and was standing at the end of the bed in Mustaq’s dressing gown. Suddenly I was struck by how much like my father he looked. A mixture of Mustaq and Dad.

  “I never stopped talking to Wolf about myself, but I didn’t really want to know him. We just did those intense things together. Sometimes I felt I was using him. Not that he would have seen it like that.

  “A while ago outside the club where he was working, a man came at him with a knife and threatened to slash him. Wolf escaped, but he wept about it. I didn’t want to see him like that, a child.” She said, “What about you? Will you miss him at all?”

  “I found him aggressive and needy this time round.”

  “He didn’t like me seeing you. He was pissed off that you hadn’t been warm towards him, that you refused to recognise the friendship you once had.”

  “I had too much else going on.”

  “You shouldn’t do that to people, Jamal,” she said. “But who am I to talk? I was worse, always going on about myself. After he was attacked, he complained of breathlessness and pains in his chest, but I thought they’d pass. How could it not have occurred to me to take him to the doctor?” She went on: “When he was waiting for the ambulance, he asked me to forgive him. I said only God or a priest could do that.”

  “To forgive him for what?” I asked. She shrugged. I thought she was going to say something else to me, but she looked away. I said, “Shall we have supper here? Aren’t there private rooms?”

  To my surprise she said, “Sorry, Jamal, I don’t feel up to it. I need to go home.” Her explanation was “I hate you to see me like this.” She paid the bill and left me there.

  Then I didn’t hear from her. She didn’t return my calls. When I went into Soho and knocked on the door there was either no reply or the staff, barely opening the door, informed me that no one was there.

  Worrying about her, and not knowing what else to do, I rang Mustaq in America. Ajita had told him there was no need for him to return to London; she was “okay.” She knew he was taken up with Alan; he didn’t need any more deaths.

  I asked Mustaq if Ajita was surviving, and he told me, “She’s in the house, but in bed most of the time. She sees no one but the staff, and she doesn’t talk to them. All they do is take her food. I’d be grateful if you could visit, Jamal.”

  Mustaq informed the staff I was going to take her out. She was lying down but not unpleased to see me. She asked me to slip into bed beside her, to hold and cuddle her. She didn’t want to be caressed but lay there still and heavy, in my arms.

  I managed to get her to shower and dress, and walk to the end of the street before she insisted on returning home.

  The next day we walked further, but only a street or so, and she used an umbrella as a stick. She wore dark glasses, looking every inch the widow, in black. I guessed she must have been getting tranquillisers from somewhere: doctors adored to prescribe them, and patients were disappointed if they left the surgery without a prescription. I liked walking slowly with Ajita, looking at the restaurants and at the people. We stopped to drink coffee and have cake, but she wouldn’t eat.

  It was not unusual for people to become depressed as they mourned. I wondered, too, whether Wolf’s death reminded her of her father’s death, and how these deaths were connected. However, we didn’t speak much as we took another turn around Soho before she returned to bed.

  We were approaching the house and passing an Indian restaurant. She asked, “Did you help kill my father?”

  I was silent, but she waited for me. I asked, “When did you know?”

  “After you came to watch the documentary. You were upset. But how could I be sure? I went over and over it in my mind, wondering. Then Wolf told me—after the heart attack, I guess he was dying. The ambulance took forever to come. They couldn’t find the street. He said he wanted to ‘confess.’”

  “What did he say exactly?”

  “He said it was his idea that you, he and Valentin should try to scare Dad so that he would leave me alone. Instead, my father passed away.” She was quiet, and then said, “At least it wasn’t Wolf alone. That would have fucked my head.”

  “Does Mustaq know?”

  “I have decided not to tell him. He gets so angry.”

  “Will he get to know?”

  “How would it make his life be
tter to hear how I suffered then and what you went through? He’d just feel guilty. He likes you so much, Jamal. You helped him as a kid.”

  “Will you tell him about your father and the abuse?”

  “He seems to have guessed. But I’m not ready to go into it. I don’t even like my brother right now.”

  I said, “I was a fool not to listen to you at the time. I just wanted to take action, to be a tough guy like the other tough guys.”

  She said, “I should have spoken to Mustaq.”

  “Ajita, I doubt whether he could have taken on your father at his age, the kid brother.”

  “I wish I had told you at the time of the abuse—Jamal, it was all so horrible—that I wanted to kill him myself. I thought all the time about how to do it. Where do you buy poison? How much do you put in? Will it be detected?”

  She went on: “Jamal, don’t turn on yourself, when it was me. I killed him, my own father, by encouraging you to get rid of him. When he was raping me, I wished him dead a million times.

  “At the time I wondered often if you had hurt him that night. But how could I ask you? I couldn’t even think about it. You were young, and you risked your life for me. You were—what do they say?—chivalrous.

  “I asked you once if only there was something you could do, if you would speak to him. But I did warn you that Dad was dangerous. Yet you went ahead and did it. You were brave, you were foolhardy, you were young. Do you regret it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I do! I should have stopped Father by threatening him with the police. Or hitting him with something heavy. I shouldn’t have put you in that position. I was a weakling, but you took the action I couldn’t take. I can’t have you punished for risking your life to save me. Dad had been a wrestler, and he’d had people beaten up before. When I see pictures of Saddam Hussein in jail, I think, That’s Dad, what he’d have looked like now.”

  “If I’d known that at the time, I’d have been more cautious.”

  “Jamal, how can I ever apologise, or make it up to you? Can we be friends? You don’t hate me, do you? You were so cool towards me when we met at my brother’s after so many years. I was ecstatic to see you, but you were reserved.”

  “I was nervous,” I said. “I didn’t know what you might mean to me.”

  “You were relieved I meant so little to you, I could see that. Few things have hurt me so much, Jamal. I kept asking Wolf, ‘Why is he so cold?’”

  I said, “Isn’t Mustaq left in limbo now? The only one who doesn’t know, who will never know?”

  “I didn’t say he will never know. We’ll see, won’t we?” She said, “You know what I wanted, all the time it was happening, Dad’s abuse? I fantasised about us running away together. To take a train someplace and find a room there, and work in bars or bookshops or something. We’d never go back but get married and have kids. Would you have done it?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  But I was thinking: a murder is something it is not possible to recover from. It can never be worked through or forgotten; there will be no resolution.

  By now we’d returned to the house. The staff were cleaning it. We went into a little sitting room downstairs, where I noticed something familiar but so uncanny I couldn’t place it.

  “What?” she said, looking at me.

  “There it is,” I said. It was the Hand, on a table, leaning against the wall. “At last. How did it get here?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “That wonderful picture belongs to Henry’s wife—Valerie.”

  “It was given to me,” she said. “It was a present.”

  “From Wolf?”

  “Yes. I love it. I want it in front of me always. I move it around the house where I can see it.”

  “It wasn’t his to give, I’m afraid,” I said, picking it up and shoving it in my shoulder bag. It stuck out the top; I’d have to cover it with a plastic bag.

  “The best thing he ever gave me was stolen?” she said. She came over and drew it from my bag. I could see she might be minded to smash it.

  “Not a good idea,” I said, grasping it firmly, pulling it away from her and replacing it in the bag. I could see the two of us tearing the masterpiece apart.

  “How can you do that?” she shouted from the front door. “You’re always taking things from me!”

  In Dean Street I got into a taxi and went to Valerie’s, where a uniformed maid opened the door. The hall was crowded with guests in smart clothes.

  I put my bag down, took a glass of champagne from a tray, and with the Hand under the other arm, went upstairs to join the others. As far as I could see, the dinner consisted of film and literary people and politicians, with their wives and husbands. Valerie didn’t seem surprised to see either me or the picture. When she took it from me, she put it under a side table and asked me to join everyone at supper.

  Before I could sit down, she said she needed to ask me something. I groaned inwardly but could see she was busy, surely it wouldn’t take long.

  She said, as we stood together in a corner of the kitchen, “You saw Lisa. Does she need treatment?”

  “For what?”

  As always, Valerie looked like someone on the verge of a tantrum. “For stealing my damn picture,” she said. “I don’t know. You’re the doctor. But don’t worry about it, there’s something else.” She hesitated. I kept watching her, but she didn’t want to look at me. She said, “Years ago, when Henry and I were going through our difficulties but were still together in some form or other, he said to me, ‘We’ll spend our old age together. We’ll get a place by the sea and we’ll talk and eat and read and paint.’ It’s what I’ve been looking forward to. It’s the only thing I had in mind when I thought of the future, our future.”

  “Right.”

  “We’re hardly young now,” she said. “And he’s taken up with this woman.”

  “My sister, Miriam.”

  “Yes, yes. Charming though she is, I’m sure,” she said. “Do you really think it is serious? Do you think it will last? You know him, he’s your best friend. I couldn’t ask anyone else.”

  I said, “You’re asking me if Henry will return to you?” She nodded a fraction, as if she couldn’t bear to show her hope. I went on, “But he is with Miriam now. They’ve been together for more than a year. I believe they love one another.” She was studying me hard. “It might be better to find someone new.” I almost said, “You can never go back,” but didn’t, considering it to be false.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have asked you,” she said. “By the way, without Henry, you’d be nothing in London. You could be more grateful.” Her eyes dropped, and she turned away.

  The table was crowded; there was hardly room for all the chairs around it. I was glad to see Henry’s son, Sam, now going out with the barely dressed daughter of a rock star I’d adulated in the 70s. Sam took Rafi’s mobile number. He and the girl, who apparently sang like Nico, wanted to rehearse some songs they’d written and needed a drummer. Sam had jammed with Rafi before, and rated him. Rafi would slot effortlessly into that world.

  I found myself sitting with a group of women who, when they heard what I did, began to discuss their dreams. Unfortunately, in those circumstances, I’m likely to feel like a doctor on holiday who finds that people insist on telling him their ailments.

  Soon I tuned out and became aware of how bored and dissatisfied I felt. I didn’t want to go home and be alone, nor could I cope with the chaos of Miriam’s.

  I considered visiting the Goddess, but wasn’t in the mood. I was aware of how lonely I was, how far away I was from other people. And I thought I wanted to be in love again, once more, perhaps for the last time. To experience love, at this age, and to see how different it was to the other occasions. I wasn’t ready yet, but I would be ready soon.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  To help him settle in, Rafi was accompanied by his mother on the first three days of his new secondary school, recommended by Mick Jagger.
On the fourth day, I took him. After that, aged twelve and determinedly moving away from us, he’d be on his own.

  The two of us got on the bus at the end of my street. It was seven-thirty and a long time since I’d been out so early. He was anxious. “Dad, Dad, take off the damn hood and shades! Don’t speak!” he hissed.

  The boy suddenly seemed taller, up to my chin now, his tie tight at his throat—I’d taught him to do a Windsor knot, as my father had taught me—his black shoes too big, his keys and phone on a coloured string around his neck, like everyone now.

  Older boys, already bored, crumpled shirts hanging out of their trousers, slouched at the bus stop, smoking, listening to music on their headphones. Soon that would be my son, but now he was afraid, showing me his summer project on the bus, asking if it were okay, photographs of leaves and rocks, drawings of logs, and misspelled words scattered amongst it all.

  We crossed Hammersmith Bridge, the river full, elegant and glittering in the early-morning sunshine, and up the bus lane to Barnes, past playing fields, wealthy houses and a conservation park. London was splendid in this late-summer weather. The large grounds and Richmond Park nearby made Rafi’s new school seem an idyllic ghetto.

  At the gates we stopped. I told him I wish I’d attended such a place. My school had been rough and frequently violent, the teachers hopeless. But I wasn’t sure I’d have rather been segregated from the harsher realities.

  Rafi rushed away, fearing I might try to say something significant or, even worse, attempt to embrace or kiss him. “Thanks, Dad, see you later.”

  To pay for Rafi’s education, I was taking on new patients and beginning to make notes on my “guilt” book. I was looking forward to researching it, not in the Reading Room of the British Museum which I remembered with such ambivalence, but in the new British Library in King’s Cross.