The Nothing

by Hanif Kureishi

  HANIF KUREISHI

  The Nothing

  to Kier Kureishi

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  ONE

  One night, when I am old, sick, right out of semen, and don’t need things to get any worse, I hear the noises again.

  I am sure they are making love in Zenab’s bedroom, which is next to mine.

  I wonder if I am imagining it. But I doubt it. These are not sounds I have heard in this flat before. We live in a large, open-plan lateral place. I never have the door closed in case I need to call for my Zee during the night.

  I remain still and concentrate until I believe I am not delirious or enduring an LSD flashback. There are whispers, sighs and then cries. They sound like her.

  It could be him too. My friend.

  I have been expecting to die any day. The thought of death helps me to live and makes me curious. I can’t see much and I am deafish in one ear, particularly in crowds and where I cannot see people’s faces. But in the mornings, when Zee sleeps in, I lie back and listen. There is a world within this London mansion block. I hear the lift in the corridor outside, the steel doors rattling as they open and close, scraps of conversation in the hall, televisions, radios. Throughout the night I listen to foxes, drunks, police sirens, the distressed calling for relief, the secret life of walls and the buzz of my wife’s vibrator, like a shaver.

  In the morning I hear the birds. In a tree opposite this mansion block sit ten green parakeets, which Zee and I follow with interest. There is building work nearby. This area, Victoria, is constantly being renovated. I will not live to see its new look. I preferred the soot-black, more derelict London, which had some sublimity in its post-war despair. The mad were put in asylums, but the sane are worse off in their offices. This new world seems banal and exhausted. There’s too much money in London. We’ve lived too long.

  I was enjoying my decline and slipping away cheerfully. And now this happens.

  The truth is always a surprise: my eyelids twitch with the effort of listening. My mouth is dry. My hips are ruined and my legs no good. With an effort, I turn my body a little towards the door, dragging myself across the mattress.

  My arm stretches out for the light, and I knock my coffee cup to the floor. It makes a tremendous noise, like a saucepan struck with a hammer.

  I am still.

  Zee calls me a mistrustful husband, sceptical, disbelieving and keen to see the seamy side of things; desire and disease commingling. It is true that I imagine things for a living, and the imagination is the most dangerous place on earth.

  But unless my neighbours have recently taken in pigs – which would be unlikely as they’re Arabs – this new sound is a human one.

  I hold my breath and stare into the dim light in the hallway. I can smell cigarette smoke. I think of how – even last week – Zee would comb my hair, stroke my beard or give me a coconut-oil massage. She would caress my chest and rub my ears. She’d remove my warm Uggs to fondle my legs and toe-toes as I reclined with a thermometer in my gob.

  Unseen but not unheard, the noises don’t diminish. I remain alert despite having taken my pill. Zee made sure I swallowed it. She was zealously kind earlier, surely a sign of unease, since she has been less warm recently. Eddie brought me the water, standing behind her in the door frame smiling with a mute complicity.

  I said, ‘Goodnight, Eddie. How will you get back to Soho? Or is it too late? Will you sleep on the sofa? You’re welcome, of course.’

  I eyed them. They were sure not to look at one another as I offered my kindness. It makes sense now.

  Eddie nodded. ‘Thanks, Waldo, that’s kind of you, as always. I’ll be comfortable on the sofa. See you in the morning. Sleep well, amigo.’

  I sipped my double espresso, as I always do before I sleep. I love the taste of bitter black coffee in my mouth.

  It was an ordinary evening. Now I believe I hear their voices, intertwined, light, cheerful as they lie together – naked, I presume.

  After twenty years of marriage – and with a twenty-two-year age gap – I think this is the first time my devoted Zenab has been unfaithful to me. In fact, I am sure it is. I say: never believe what anyone tells you. But Zee is truthful. She would be appalled at the suggestion of dishonesty. Usually she is quite prim. Apart from one incident in her Indian childhood involving a murder, she was brought up respectably. She was too good for her own good, you might say. With not enough pleasures.

  She has found some. She is making up for lost time. It is never too late. As the voices continue, I am horrified and excited. Sexual feeling might decline, but I have learned that the libido, like Elvis and jealousy, never dies. I know copulators of eighty-five. Who said you need an erection, a body or an orgasm for sex?

  I begin to imagine what they are doing, the positions they adopt. Has she got onto her knees? Are they kissing as they resume their passion? One body, one beast.

  I like to think I can see it. I was always a camera, having made more than twenty movies and documentaries. According to some film magazines, a couple of them stand in the top one hundred ever made. Or was it two hundred? I existed, as a film-maker, to see things. We directors are voyeurs working with exhibitionists. Now, at the end, I continue as an observer.

  Looking keeps the world marvellous. And sex, even while I am immobile, indeed almost a vegetable in a wheelchair, can be intense. I recall the taste and smell of her, my last and only love Zee, the one whose body I enjoyed more than any other. I recall how shameless she became for me, and the games we played.

  Now she is opening her mouth for him. Her fingers tug at his cock. Perhaps he is pulling her hair, as she likes it.

  Working with sound and my imagination, I envisage the angles and cuts, making the only substantial films I can manage these days, mind movies. I brood constantly about the business of being an artist. I’ve managed several five-minute films recently, and they’re not bad, freer than a lot of the stuff I did before, when I was nervous and there was money involved. I’ll show them to my good pal Anita, next time she’s round. She knows how to be both encouraging and damning.

  Love changes people, they say. Or people fall in love in order to change when they have been disappointed. Or when they are weary of themselves. Here something has altered forever. There will be revision. Who’d have thought it? Years of my life have become different in a moment.

  I will need time to think this through. Time is at a premium for me. But at least I will have the rest of the night to consider it. I can sleep tomorrow.

  *

  In the morning I see there is no coat or hat in the hall. Or animal vapour. Eddie has scarpered.

  As far as I’m aware, he has slept here at least ten times, folded on the couch. Often he is present when I wake up. He likes to stay for breakfast and discuss the news while dressing. He has a rabid appetite and a greasy mouth. He enjoys Zee’s cooking, particularly her spicy masala omelette. He tucks in as if he hasn’t eaten for a while and isn’t sure where his next meal will come from.

  I guess he saves money on lunch, before taking the bus into Soho. Sometimes he washes up and tidies a little before he leaves. In the past few months our flat has become his re
fuge, where he makes his phone calls, removing his shoes and putting his feet up on the sofa while repeatedly listening to the irritatingly uplifting jazz music he likes.

  Now that things are progressing between them, he has made an early exit. He won’t want to see me. Or, rather, have me see him. However, I know him well enough, and he has had a taste of the future. He will be back for another bite. I trust it will be soon.

  Tonight.

  I am keen to see how this new excitement will develop. He is playing with me. What a risk he is taking. I can be wild when aggravated. He has been overtaken by passion. He is not thinking. But I am. I am several moves ahead – at the moment.

  TWO

  The white face of the day.

  Zee enters, throws open the curtains and helps me into my wheelchair. It has been three years since I walked and I still expect to be the man I once was. Impaired I might be, but I can tell you that old men can become more crazed as they age.

  ‘Good night?’

  She checks to see if I’ve pissed the bed.

  ‘I’m not sure, my love. I was unconscious. I was gone.’

  ‘What a mercy, Waldo. I like you unconscious at night.’

  I swoon at the smell of her hair and body as she leans over me, giving me my morning kiss and caress. I like her to open her top and expose her breasts, slowly pull up her dress, or show me her feet while making agreeable female noises. This is how my eyes open to a new day. I prefer her toes to any sunrise. I even smile. She likes to see my eyes dance, my only organs with any gusto.

  This morning she has showered and dressed already. She is efficient and even hums as she helps me into my chair.

  I am keen to ask her what has made her so busy. ‘Are you on a new vitamin?’

  ‘How did you guess?’

  With what is left of my low voice, I compliment her, telling her how fresh and vital she is looking and what an attractive woman she is. In her late fifties, witnessing my decline and suffering, she has been going to the pool, swinging weights, buying more new clothes than usual.

  She is thin as a cigarette and has installed a running machine in my study, a room I rarely use now, but where my most valuable things are kept: diaries, notebooks, posters, storyboards, clapperboards, rare pornographic books, and a photograph of Zee’s veiled mother, resembling a ghost from the Middle Ages. She helped me understand, when she and I sat down to talk about religion and charity, that I was a liberal and a dissident everywhere, even in my own bathroom.

  There are birthday cards from Bowie and Iman, a photograph of me with Joe Strummer; another with Dennis Hopper when we were on the jury at Venice; and me in a dress and make-up with my Pakistani drag artists after I finished The Queens of Karachi. There are letters of praise and abuse from colleagues. And my masks. Once I donned the yellow one in the supermarket when Zee was pushing me – the jagged purple mouth causing consternation if not uproar in the aisles of Waitrose.

  I like Zee panting beside me on her treadmill as I plan films I will never make. I wish, even in this state, that I had a final project, something to fill me with creative hope. Whoever heard of an artist retiring? We become more frantic to fulfil ourselves as we age.

  While Zee studies her horoscope and prepares to go shopping, Maria the kind Brazilian maid comes to dress me.

  After the exhaustion of breakfast, I settle down to look through the photographs and video I shot recently, wondering if there’s anything I can do with them. Then I will make a voice diary. I like the world to know what I am doing. My head is always racing with ideas. I must let off steam before I boil. We artists are like capitalists, appropriating everything, stealing lives.

  Before she leaves for South Kensington, Zee thanks me for my compliments.

  ‘Will you go out for lunch?’ I ask.

  ‘Not today.’

  ‘I hope we’ll see Eddie this evening. He has some gulab jamun and new films for me. He knows I like to be surprised.’

  ‘He will have something obscure.’

  ‘I hope it’s Keyholes Are for Peeping.’

  I reach up to touch her face. She waits for my tremulous hand to make light contact with her skin. I wonder if she’ll move away. She does, but not abruptly.

  ‘It is pleasant for us to have company in the evening, Zee. Luckily Samreen and the kids will be arriving in a few weeks to provide some distraction for you. We must discuss her itinerary.’ Zee seems to look at me but I wonder if she is absent. ‘I worry that you get bored with my complaints and repetitions. Do you? Please answer me, Zee.’

  ‘I wilted a few months ago when I fainted three times. Remember, you called me “pinched” and “bitter”.’

  ‘I apologise.’

  ‘Oddly, I am content at the moment. Don’t you notice me?’

  ‘I see nothing but you, my Zeena. I want you to be happy.’

  ‘You do? Thank you, Waldo. I will try to be.’

  I search her face; she gives nothing away. If the djinn has returned after many years, secreting discontent if not euphoria, it is now concealed.

  Eddie has been more than an acquaintance and less than a friend for over thirty years. We would have a drink or dinner together, or with pals, two or three times a year. He was good, roguish company, a scamp, ligger and freeloader, up for new adventures. I’ve long admired eccentricity, if not craziness – in others. He adores the famous, he’s a dirty-minded raconteur, and I am a sucker for lubricious dick, cunt and arse stories. Anything involving secrets and weakness. Until recently, however, in the past five years I’ve seen him only intermittently. There are many like him in London, just hanging on, about to go under.

  Eddie has always been evasive and sketchy, if not slippery when it comes to his affairs. I never quite believe anything he says. As far as I’m aware, he is still a movie journalist and goes to screenings and press conferences. I can talk about any movie and he’ll usually have something interesting to say about it. If I want a comedy, which is often necessary, he’ll have a good idea. I like to see a film a day, sometimes two.

  Praise someone once and they are yours forever. Unfortunately, I think I flattered Eddie by mistake. I must have been in a positive phase. He began to visit regularly six months ago. He might be an idiot but he isn’t stupid. He had turned himself into a self-avowed expert on my work and came to see us because of a planned retrospective and lecture at the NFT he was asked to organise. It was a good opportunity for both of us. I liked the idea of him doing my remembering for me.

  So far there’s no hard evidence that the retrospective will go ahead. Brilliant and incompetent, Eddie was charged with the business of locating my early television films, material which was broadcast once and never seen again. I wanted him to find a film I made in the seventies about art schools and pop; another about dance marathons in the north of England, mods in South London; and some crude but lively pop videos from the early eighties. I’d be glad to have them available, but I am not that compelled by the idea. I have been admired plenty, and it is too late for there to be a permanent upswerve in my self-esteem. Dying I might be, but until last night I was reasonably cheerful and I have forsaken any need for the world to be my mirror. It’s a relief to give up.

  I try to follow my own thoughts but I have a scatty mind. This betrayal, this night thievery, this Eddie incident – if it is true, and so far I am not entirely convinced; who, after all, really wants to know what they know? – has awoken and concentrated me.

  I must stay focused.

  Today I sleep as much as I can in order to be awake later. I intend to follow up my investigations. If they enjoyed it last night, the chances are they’ll enjoy it twice as much next time. Isn’t the erotic an ever-increasing hunger which gets off on itself? As their pleasure multiplies they will be less discreet. Aren’t we all looking forward to it? Suffering loses its horror if the victim can find a way to enjoy it.

  It’s a small world here. I don’t leave the flat for days. We have a place in the country but rarely go there
. One night, when I was still on sticks and heading for the garden to meditate, I fell over. I am heavy. And weighed down as I am with oysters, rich pies, summer pudding, goat’s cheese and pistachios – slopping around in a lake of Bloody Marys, wine, brown ale and brandy – Zee couldn’t get me up. We had to wait four hours for an ambulance. I think often of my death and how it will go. I wasn’t keen to die on the floor, where it is difficult to speak. I expect my last words to go into the anthologies.

  There is a buzz at the door. It is eight o’clock.

  At last the exterminating angel comes. The night begins. Eddie arrives smiling, his arms full of packages: films, cheese, chocolate. An orchid for Zee.

  ‘Give me a moment. Let me get changed,’ says Zee.

  Eddie and I watch football. I suspect he patronises me. He doesn’t really like sport, which he thinks is for dolts. But it’s difficult to be sure of anything with him. He wants to please.

  My eyes are half-closed but after an hour I wake up to see Zee come slowly out of her room in her silk kurta pyjamas. Soon they are drinking cheerfully, as am I. Something is going on. He and Zee sit on opposite couches but they play with their phones like teenagers.

  I adjust my fez and sip my wine, which I’ve placed on a coaster on my zebra-skin stool. They are texting one another. I can see her smiling and tossing her head as she looks at her phone. She crosses and uncrosses her legs until her slipper falls from her foot, which pauses like a serpent in a forest. We both look at the eloquent foot. I suspect he wants to pick the slipper up.

  Narcissism is our religion. The selfie stick is our cross, and we must carry it everywhere. Slowly I grasp mine and raise it.

  I film the foot and other material. I am impatient, giddy almost with this descent into voluptuous masochism. Pain is such pleasure, and pleasure such pain. I am sure to be extra-quiet and feeble. Not that they notice.

  I ask to be put to bed. I take a pill which I spit out clandestinely. It’s ineffective anyway: you’d be better off giving an elephant an aspirin.