What Happened?

by Hanif Kureishi

  This was before – before I discovered that far from alienating either viewer or writer, television was the great social integrator. Everyone was watching it. I could talk about it with my mother, my teenage kids and their mates. Visiting friends in whichever country, I learned that, like a secret passion, everyone had their favourite shows, had strong opinions about them and couldn’t wait to hand you your coat so they could continue with series six of The Good Wife. Before you left, they would, however, probe you for your favourites, for something decent that they might be in danger of missing. It could easily provide the most passionate exchange you’d hear all day. You can imagine, now, someone watching television shows for the sole purpose of having something to say at dinner.

  When I was fifteen, a kindly editor at a notable publishing house, finding a novel I wrote promising, would visit me in the suburbs on Sundays to teach me to write. What he emphasised was character. Using an idea derived from E. M. Forster, he taught that writers should make the individuals they created ‘round’ rather than ‘flat’. You’d accomplish that by the addition of details, often contradictory, because that is the way people are, and soon you’d see right through them to their skeleton and they’d move around almost of their own accord.

  The television show is ideal for the exploration of character under pressure because of its duration. I recently watched all eighty-six episodes of The Sopranos, followed by all of Breaking Bad; then I did Gomorrah. I would happily have watched more. The slowness of Mad Men – interestingly, a show derived from literary origins: you cannot help noticing in it the shadows of Fitzgerald, Cheever, Yates and Updike – disoriented and irritated me until I adjusted to its rhythm. You get to see the characters in bed, in the kitchen and at work; you understand how politics and gender division produce them, and, uncannily, how little freedom they have. Length makes for complexity. Seeing Tony Soprano in and out of the toilet with an upset stomach, or taking his beloved daughter to university before murdering an acquaintance with his bare hands, is not something there’d be space for in The Godfather.

  I grasped how far television had advanced, that it had replaced pop as the major creative form, when I noticed that the best writers – from David Chase and Matthew Weiner to Jill Soloway – recognised it as an event. They had long given up on the idea of showing that crime doesn’t pay. They had also kicked out the soft idea that audiences like sympathetic protagonists. Television writers saw that the audience loved to see deceit, manipulation and evil: people doing what they wished they could do, had they been blessed with the balls, greed or stupidity. (Remember, Hitchcock said, ‘The more successful the villain, the more successful the movie.’) And the new television added an extra, brilliant thing: it kicked out the happy, redemptive ending for ever.

  The long-form show is perfect for examining cutthroat capitalism because all these shows are concerned with the amassing of money, which has now come to justify any malfeasance. The only attempt at virtue is the idea that the purpose of the money is to provide security for one’s family. (Never mind other people’s families.) This degree-zero nihilism is central to the beautiful, sadomasochistic horror of Gomorrah, for instance.

  The quality of imagination in any society is directly related to opportunity, to the amount of space it can find, and whether there is belief in the possibility of dreaming, risk and experiment. While the works I’ve discussed are often about the terrible mystery of human destructiveness – as well as about the replacement of humane values with materialistic ones – their existence is a tribute to the writer’s signature.

  As importantly, they are also a compliment to the erotics of collaboration, an appreciation of the work people can do when their imaginations run together. Such television shows employ numerous directors, producers and actors. They are an opportunity for writers – who are being manufactured in creative writing courses, in their dozens – to make a living in popular forms.

  The best art – Hitchcock, the Beatles, Picasso, Miles Davis – combines experiment with popularity, taking the audience from somewhere familiar to somewhere new, exploring the not-yet-said.

  Now I am afraid I have to go. I woke up worrying about Don Draper, and I am more than keen to be back in the office with him.

  An Ice Cream with Isabella

  ‘You can’t have everything,’ my mother used to say. But you can – I learned for myself – have something. And that something can sometimes be something else.

  In the evening, when, like the rest of the population, Isabella and I settle down to watch TV – we are always keen to enjoy a sadistic and lengthy show in our pyjamas – she and I like to share an ice cream. It will be soya, as it happens, because of my diet. It will be covered in thin chocolate. It will be delicious.

  Deputed to fetch it, Isabella soon lies back behind me, and I hear a snappy unwrapping, followed by a pause. I hear breath as a tongue extends. There is a lick followed by an exploratory nibble and, very soon, a strong if not urgent bite into the expanse of thin chocolate dusted with frost.

  This is it: she has begun on the ice cream, right next to my good ear. I am agitated and excited. I begin to feel greedy. She bites again, hard this time, and sighs.

  What an enticing sigh. But I must wait. Eventually, of course, she will hand the ice cream to me. She has never been unreliable, which is a relief. But I am an impatient person, and not improving when it comes to bearing frustration. I can convince myself that my fierce excess of appetite will be too much for me. I could believe that she will forget me now, or that I have temporarily become nothing to her, as I hear a series of little detonations in my ear. What is it?

  She is sucking on the ice cream. She is taking her pleasure without me.

  I don’t go to many dinners or parties and have little desire to explore the world. Happily narrower, I don’t want to know; it seems unimportant now. This is partly out of aged indolence, but mainly because everything I need is here.

  So: how delicious it will be, that soya ice cream, when I have waited, when it is my turn. It is all I want.

  In the mornings I think about the Beatles. I do it most days. It is a lifetime’s work. How they worked together, along with George Martin and Brian Epstein, to become the perfect, more-or-less leaderless example of a collaborating unit. Those brilliant young men, hooked up to one another, doing something together they could never do apart. A constellation of characters, you could call it, or a working circle. People with technical minds use the words ‘horizontal unit’. You could add: it would have been a necessary but terrible – and sometimes unbearable – dependence.

  I could, of course, go solo and have my own ice cream, as the Beatles eventually did. There are more ice creams in the fridge and many more in the world, and I could scoff as many as I like alone and out of sight. However, you could make a phrase of it and say: it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, as long as you are doing it with someone else. You can’t make yourself laugh, after all. Or pat yourself on the back. Eating an ice cream alone could be a lovely liberation or it could seem like a dismal thing.

  Since I am known to be dangerous with ice creams, Isabella will, as a precaution, have already brought me a paper napkin and jammed it under my chins so that when my turn finally comes I will not smear up the sofa or my clothes. As the chocolate begins to flake, I will be able to pick up the crumbs from the napkin and lay them on my tongue to melt.

  She is still nibbling. How can she do that, when she knows I have always been anxious about food: whether it will ever arrive and if there will be enough, or if I will be left wanting more? I was brought up in the 1950s, after all; not a great decade for food. This could become tense.

  As children ice cream was our favourite treat, and on Saturdays our parents would take us to the newly opened and very modern Wimpy Bar on Bromley High Street. Our second treat was to wait in our living room for the new Beatles record to be played on the radio. It still makes me sad to know I’ll never hear a new Beatles record for the first time again. T
he Beatles, whom we worshipped, gave up one another and the supernatural thing only they could do together for other lovers. They must have become claustrophobic in that cocoon and wondered if they were as talented as people made out, or if it was really down to the other guys, the friends waiting in the studio who could mock or improve you. It was time for monologues rather than conversation. And, after a time, faithful to themselves, they found other partners.

  Isabella passes the ice cream to me, and, having enjoyed it, I pass it back, but she says I can finish it. At last I wipe my mouth and settle back with my eyes closed, like the sated infant I want to be, in this burrow of love. Soon we will be asleep.

  Sometimes, as Wallace Stevens wrote, the world is ugly and the people are sad. It’s not always easy to enjoy. After many years of idiocy and waste – and several crooked diversions – sharing an ice cream with Isabella is enough to convince me that everything I have ever wanted and needed has culminated in this moment, where there are no fears or terrors.

  Tomorrow I will listen to the Beatles again. Tomorrow there will be more talk with Isabella; more licking, biting and ice cream. If I am lucky, there will be more the day after that.

  Eating an ice cream: a simple thing which has turned into a beautiful collaboration. It is everything I have ever hoped for or wanted.

  The Billionaire Comes to Supper

  It wasn’t until they had to paint the living room wall that they realised the Billionaire was a billionaire.

  Both Luna and Shiv had been leaning their bicycles against the wall, and when the flat’s owner, a good friend, informed them he was coming back to repossess the place at the end of the month, they thought it would be courteous to repaint the scuffed surface before they left.

  Shiv used the living room to teach, and the painting work was not finished when the Billionaire arrived for his lesson. He was learning Led Zeppelin’s ‘When the Levee Breaks’. He looked at the empty white surface and said, ‘I should get you something for that space.’

  Pupils often brought wine, biscuits, oranges or flowers. But the next time the Billionaire came, his driver accompanied him into the flat with a large framed and excitingly dramatic photograph of Jimmy Page, signed by the photographer.

  The Billionaire took it from the driver and handed it to Shiv. ‘This is for your wall, with gratitude and apologies for all the bum notes you’ve had to endure.’

  Shiv thanked him, leaned the photograph against the wall and completed the lesson. When the Billionaire left, Shiv looked at the picture for a long time, shifting it here and there. He texted the Billionaire his amazement, saying it was the loveliest thing he had owned.

  Luna taught piano in schools around the area; Shiv mostly taught in the large flat they’d had for a low rent the past year, owned by a guitarist who was on tour with a musical. Shiv had had good fortune in recruiting a significant number of private pupils from nearby. If the students were young, he went to their houses.

  Several parents – bankers, surgeons and executives – had also asked for lessons; one of them had recommended him to the man who became known as the Billionaire. The Billionaire had grown up loving the blues and R ’n’ B, and needed someone to help him improve. He had been Shiv’s student for a couple of months, sometimes coming twice a week.

  The flat had a garden which attracted birds, foxes, squirrels and local cats, and they liked to breakfast outside. It was situated in a wealthy area, where there was a park with a lake nearby and excellent transport. Shiv was impressed by size of the houses and the affluence of the families he visited, with their gardeners, cleaners, au pairs, other tutors and obligatory personal trainers.

  Some of the parents of his pupils spoke to him abruptly if not dismissively, as if he were on a par with the ‘staff’. This was disconcerting: not only was his father a solicitor and his mother a doctor, he had always considered the devil’s music he taught to be classless. He complained to Luna that soon he’d be asked to use the side entrance.

  That night Luna came home and saw the new picture leaning against the white wall. She too was knocked out by the portrait of Jimmy Page in his rock ’n’ roll glory. They opened a bottle of wine, sat in front of the picture and discussed whether they should display it on the freshly painted wall, or wait until they’d found a new flat. If we find anywhere, and if there’s room for it, as Luna put it.

  She stayed up late. Coming to bed, she woke Shiv to say she had incredible news. She’d researched the photograph and found that not only was it an original – which they’d realised – but signed it was worth at least £3,500. Maybe if they sold it, they could get more. Wasn’t that an idea? Didn’t they need the money?

  Shiv wouldn’t sell it; the Billionaire would notice. Not only that, this photograph would stir every student who came by. Anyway, he already adored it. He knew he’d miss it. It could be the start of a collection, a new hobby for them both, if they ever made any money.

  And she had discovered something else important: he was a billionaire. Now in his mid-forties, he had invested in tech early on, bought property and restaurants, and was richer than many of the songwriters and singers they admired. What about that?

  Shiv was surprised but also irritated. What about it indeed? He was too lazy to research the people he taught; it was intrusive. If someone wanted to play ‘Back Door Man’ on the ukulele, what did it matter what their day job was? The fees remained the same.

  But why? Luna asserted that people like them couldn’t afford to miss an opportunity; it would be stupid to be ‘left behind’. Shiv said he didn’t see what the opportunity was. She replied that that was typical of him. How? he asked. How is that typical? And of what? But if he didn’t get it already, she was too tired to explain.

  The next time the Billionaire came for his lesson, Shiv noticed that Luna not only remained in the flat, she was listening if not watching from the kitchen. He caught her head bobbing in the mirror.

  Never do that, Shiv told her later. It was distracting and he thought the Billionaire might have noticed. Do not spy. Your eyes looked mad. He’ll think we’re crazy and he won’t come back. Hey, what is it?

  Come here.

  She was naked in a moment. They made love in front of the picture.

  After, she remarked that the Billionaire wore no jewellery, his phone was old, his jeans and T-shirt ordinary. He might appear polite and modest, and always did his homework, but he was, apparently, notoriously tough and demanding. There had been complaints and law suits from staff. How brilliant and quite strange he must be to have achieved so much. She had found out a whole lot about his family. It was like Dynasty, and …

  Shiv put his hand out. Stop. Stop there. He didn’t want to hear any more. It was pointless.

  But, she continued, she’d noticed the way the Billionaire leaned forward and listened to Shiv, his music mentor, with curiosity and his full attention. He must admire Shiv: his hands, his voice, his calm. Maybe he even loved him. Perhaps he wanted to sleep with him. Are you sure you don’t feel something for him? You can tell me. Don’t be inhibited. Touch me, and let’s explore it. Let’s go there.

  Perhaps you’re interested, Luna. Yes? It is true, I do sometimes love my students, Shiv agreed. They move me. They want something from me, and I want to help them. It’s an exchange, a kind of agape, or objective love. Not sexual at all. Not like that, no. It is a much deeper connection, that of people collaborating and sharing.

  Whatever: Shiv had some kind of hold over him. It was there; it existed. That was something they could work with. There was demand and they were well positioned. Her best friend Winnie, a charity worker, already wanted to know if the Billionaire was interested in learning Pashto, the tango, embroidery or a new sexual position. If she and Shiv didn’t push, others would be clamouring to get to him.

  I’m sure, Shiv said. If this were a noir and we were lucky enough to be no good, Luna my love, we would strangle and knife the Billionaire together, and enjoy our work. We’d wrap him in the rug, d
rag him out, shove him in the rubbish chute and buy champagne and a red car, and have sex. We’d steal his identity or change our names to Bonnie and Clyde. But that would in no way transfer his dough to us. We’d have lost a pupil. We are, unfortunately, in reality.

  So true, she said. You’ve said it. What fucking shit reality is.

  Envy is worse. It is a terrible thing.

  It really isn’t, she said. Not if you use it as a guide to what you want. A map of the future. A direction. A destination to aim at.

  Winnie had asked: why help others to develop when you’re going nowhere? Why do so much for them and nothing for yourselves?

  Shiv, isn’t that a good question?

  They were relaxed, lying down and drinking in front of the photograph. If they turned it, they could see themselves reflected in the glass. They talked as they hadn’t been able to since the miscarriage. For the last few months it was as if they’d been stunned and didn’t know how to move forward. Or whether they wanted to.

  They were frivolous. What a drag it must be, being so rich, with everyone wanting something from you, so that your friends all had to be loaded, until you were isolated with other billionaires. Of course, as isolations went, it would suit her. A villa by the Mediterranean in Italy with sublime views, fine linen, old paintings, good tiles in the bathroom and a home cinema; a little boat, and no anxiety about whether they could meet their costs.