The Buddha of Suburbia

by Hanif Kureishi

  When she came to our house to pick up Dad to drive him to the Writer’s Circle, she always ran up to my bedroom first thing to sneer at my pictures of Marc Bolan. ‘What are you reading? Show me your new books!’ she’d demand. And once, ‘Why ever do you like Kerouac, you poor virgin? Do you know that brilliant remark Truman Capote made about him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He said, “It’s not writing, it’s typing!”’

  ‘But Eva –’

  To teach her a lesson I read her the last pages of On the Road. ‘Good defence!’ she cried, but murmured – she always had to have the last word: ‘The cruellest thing you can do to Kerouac is reread him at thirty-eight.’ Leaving, she opened her goody bag, as she called it. ‘Here’s something else to read.’ It was Candide. ‘I’ll ring you next Saturday to test you on it!’

  The most thrilling time was when Eva, lying on my bed and listening to the records I wanted to play her, started to get pretty intimate and everything, telling me the secrets of her love life. Her husband hit her, she said. They never made love. She wanted to make love, it was the most ravishing feeling on offer. She used the word ‘fuck’. She wanted to live, she said. She frightened me; she excited me; somehow she had disturbed our whole household from the moment she entered it.

  What was she up to now with Dad? What was going on in her front room?

  Eva had pushed back the furniture. The patterned armchairs and glass-topped tables were up against the pine bookshelves. The curtains were drawn. Four middle-aged men and four middle-aged women, all white, sat cross-legged on the floor, eating peanuts and drinking wine. Sitting apart from these people with his back against the wall was a man of indeterminate age – he could have been anything between twenty-five and forty-five – in a threadbare black corduroy suit and old-fashioned heavy black shoes. His trouser bottoms were stuffed inside his socks. His blond hair was dirty; his pockets bulged with torn paperbacks. He didn’t appear to know anyone else, or if he did he wasn’t prepared to talk to them. He seemed interested, but in a scientific way, as he sat smoking. He was very alert and nervous.

  There was some chanting music going on that reminded me of funerals.

  Charlie murmured, ‘Don’t you just love Bach?’

  ‘It’s not really my bag.’

  ‘Fair ’nough. I think ‘I’ve got something that’s more your bag upstairs.’

  ‘Where’s your dad?’

  ‘He’s having a nervous breakdown.’

  ‘Does that mean he’s not here?’

  ‘He’s gone into a kind of therapy centre where they allow it all to happen.’

  In my family nervous breakdowns were as exotic as New Orleans. I had no idea what they entailed, but Charlie’s dad had seemed the nervous type to me. The only time he came to our house he sat on his own in the kitchen crying as he mended Dad’s fountain pen, while in the living room Eva said she had to buy a motorcycle. This made Mum yawn, I remember.

  Now Dad was sitting on the floor. The talk was of music and books, of names like Dvořák, Krishnamurti and Eclectic. Looking at them closely, I reckoned that the men were in advertising or design or almost artistic jobs like that. Charlie’s dad designed advertisements. But the man in the black corduroy suit I couldn’t work out at all. Whoever these people were, there was a terrific amount of showing off going on – more in this room than in the whole of the rest of southern England put together.

  At home Dad would have laughed at all this. But now, in the thick of it, he looked as if he was having the highest time of his whole life. He led the discussion, talking loudly, interrupting people and touching whoever was nearest. The men and women – except for Corduroy Suit – were slowly gathering in a circle around him on the floor. Why did he save sullenness and resentful grunting for us?

  I noticed that the man sitting near me turned to the man next to him and indicated my father, who was now in full flow about the importance of attaining an empty mind to a woman who was wearing only a man’s long shirt and black tights. The woman was nodding encouragingly at Dad. The man said in a loud whisper to his friend, ‘Why has our Eva brought this brown Indian here? Aren’t we going to get pissed?’

  ‘He’s going to give us a demonstration of the mystic arts!’

  ‘And has he got his camel parked outside?’

  ‘No, he came on a magic carpet.’

  ‘Cyril Lord or Debenhams?’

  I gave the man a sharp kick in the kidney. He looked up.

  ‘Come up to my pad, Karim,’ said Charlie, to my relief.

  But before we could get out Eva turned off the standard lamp. Over the one remaining light she draped a large diaphanous neckscarf, leaving the room illuminated only by a pink glow. Her movements had become balletic. One by one people fell silent. Eva smiled at everyone.

  ‘So why don’t we relax?’ she said. They nodded their agreement. The woman in the shirt said, ‘So why don’t we?’ ‘Yes, yes,’ someone else said. One man flapped his hands like loose gloves and opened his mouth as wide as he could, and thrust his tongue out, popping his eyes like a gargoyle.

  Eva turned to my father and bowed to him, Japanese fashion. ‘My good and deep friend Haroon here, he will show us the Way. The Path.’

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ I whispered to Charlie, remembering how Dad couldn’t even find his way to Beckenham.

  ‘Watch, watch closely,’ murmured Charlie, squatting down.

  Dad sat down at the end of the room. Everyone looked keenly and expectantly at him, though the two men near me glanced at each other as if they wanted to laugh. Dad spoke slowly and with confidence. The nervousness he’d shown earlier appeared to have disappeared. He seemed to know he had their attention and that they’d do as he asked. I was sure he’d never done anything like this before. He was going to wing it.

  ‘The things that are going to happen to you this evening are going to do you a lot of good. They may even change you a little, or make you want to change, in order to reach your full potential as human beings. But there is one thing you must not do. You must not resist. If you resist, it will be like driving a car with the handbrake on.’

  He paused. Their eyes were on him.

  ‘We’ll do some floor work. Please sit with your legs apart.’

  They parted their legs.

  ‘Raise your arms.’

  They raised their arms.

  ‘Now, breathing out, stretch down to your right foot.’

  After some basic yoga positions he had them lying on their backs. To his soft commands they were relaxing their fingers one by one, then their wrists, toes, ankles, foreheads and, peculiarly, their ears. Meanwhile Dad wasted no time in removing his shoes and socks, and then – I should have guessed it – his shirt and clean string vest. He padded around the circle of dreamers, lifting a loose arm here, a leg there, testing them for tension. Eva, also lying on her back, had one naughty, slowly enlarging eye open. Had she ever seen such a dark, hard, hairy chest before? When Dad floated past she touched his foot with her hand. The man in black corduroy couldn’t relax at all: he lay there like a bundle of sticks with his legs crossed, a burning cigarette in his fingers, gazing reflectively at the ceiling.

  I hissed to Charlie, ‘Let’s get out of here before we’re hypnotized like these idiots!’

  ‘Isn’t it just fascinating?’

  On the upstairs landing of the house was a ladder which led up to Charlie’s attic. ‘Please remove your watch,’ he said. ‘In my domain time isn’t a factor.’ So I put my watch on the floor and climbed the ladder to the attic, which stretched out across the top of the house. Charlie had the whole space to himself. Mandalas and long-haired heads were painted on the sloping walls and low ceiling. His drum-kit stood in the centre of the floor. His four guitars – two acoustic and two Stratocasters – leaned against the wall in a line. Big cushions were flung about. There were piles of records and the four Beatles in their Sergeant Pepper period were on the wall like gods.

  ‘Heard anything good
lately?’ he asked, lighting a candle.

  ‘Yeah.’

  After the calm and silence of the living room my voice sounded absurdly loud. ‘The new Stones album. I played it at music society today and the lads went crazy. They threw off their jackets and ties and danced. I was on top of my desk! It was like some weird pagan ritual. You shoulda bin there, man.’

  I knew immediately from the look on Charlie’s face that I’d been an animal, a philistine, a child. Charlie threw his shoulder-length hair back, looked at me tolerantly for some time, and then smiled.

  ‘I think it’s time you bathed your ears in something really nourishing, Karim.’

  He put on a record by the Pink Floyd called Ummagumma. I forced myself to listen while Charlie sat opposite me and rolled a joint, sprinkling a dried leaf over the tobacco.

  ‘Your father. He’s the best. He’s wise. D’you do that meditation stuff every morning?’

  I nodded. A nod can’t be a lie, right?

  ‘And chanting, too?’

  ‘Not chanting every day, no.’

  I thought of the morning in our place: Dad running around the kitchen looking for olive oil to put on his hair; my brother and I wrestling over the Daily Mirror; my mother complaining about having to go to work in the shoe shop.

  Charlie handed me the joint. I pulled on it and handed it back, managing to sprinkle ash down the front of my shirt and burn a small hole in it. I was so excited and dizzy I stood up immediately.

  ‘What’s going down?’

  ‘I have to go to the bog!’

  I flew down the attic ladder. In the Kays’ bathroom there were framed theatre posters for Genet plays. There were bamboo and parchment scrolls with tubby Orientals copulating on them. There was a bidet. As I sat there with my trousers down, taking it all in, I had an extraordinary revelation. I could see my life clearly for the first time: the future and what I wanted to do. I wanted to live always this intensely: mysticism, alcohol, sexual promise, clever people and drugs. I hadn’t come upon it all like this before, and now I wanted nothing else. The door to the future had opened: I could see which way to go.

  And Charlie? My love for him was unusual as love goes: it was not generous. I admired him more than anyone but I didn’t wish him well. It was that I preferred him to me and wanted to be him. I coveted his talents, face, style. I wanted to wake up with them all transferred to me.

  I stood in the upstairs hall. The house was silent except for the distant sound of ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’ coming from the top of the house. Someone was burning incense. I crept down the stairs to the ground floor. The living-room door was open. I peered round it into the dimly lit room. The advertising men and their wives were sitting up, cross-legged, straight-backed, eyes closed, breathing regularly and deeply. The Corduroy Suit was sitting in a chair with his back to everyone, reading and smoking. Neither Eva nor Dad were in the room. Where could they have gone?

  I left the hypnotized Buddhas and went through the house and into the kitchen. The back door was wide open. I stepped out into the darkness. It was a warm evening; the moon was full.

  I got down on my knees. I knew this was the thing to do – I’d gone highly intuitive since Dad’s display. I crawled across the patio. They must have had a barbecue out there recently, because razor-sharp charcoal shards jabbed into my knees, but I reached the edge of the lawn without serious injury. I could see vaguely that at the end of the lawn there was a garden bench. As I crawled closer there was enough moonlight for me to see that Eva was on the bench. She was pulling her kaftan up over her head. If I strained my eyes I could see her chest. And I did strain; I strained until my eyeballs went dry in their sockets. Eventually I knew I was right. Eva had only one breast. Where the other traditionally was, there was nothing, so far as I could see.

  Beneath all this hair and flesh, and virtually concealed from me, was my father. I knew it was Daddio because he was crying out across the Beckenham gardens, with little concern for the neighbours, ‘Oh God, oh my God, oh my God.’ Was I conceived like this, I wondered, in the suburban night air, to the wailing of Christian curses from the mouth of a renegade Muslim masquerading as a Buddhist?

  With a harsh crack, Eva slapped her hand over my father’s mouth. This was a touch peremptory, I thought, and I almost jerked forward to object. But, my God, could Eva bounce! Head back, eyes to stars, kicking up from the grass like a footballer, her hair flying. But what of the crushing weight on Dad’s arse? Surely the impress of the bench would remain for days seared into his poor buttocks, like grill marks on steak?

  Eva released her hand from his mouth. He started to laugh. The happy fucker laughed and laughed. It was the exhilaration of someone I didn’t know, full of greedy pleasure and self. It brought me all the way down.

  I hobbled away. In the kitchen I poured myself a glass of Scotch and threw it down my throat. Corduroy Suit was standing in the corner of the kitchen. His eyes were twitching badly. He stuck out his hand. ‘Shadwell,’ he said.

  Charlie was lying on his back on the attic floor. I took the joint from him, removed my boots and lay down.

  ‘Come and lie beside me,’ he said. ‘Closer.’ He put his hand on my arm. ‘Now, you’re not to take this badly.’

  ‘No, never, whatever it is, Charlie.’

  ‘You’ve got to wear less.’

  ‘Wear less, Charlie?’

  ‘Dress less. Yes.’

  He got up on to one elbow and concentrated on me. His mouth was close. I sunbathed under his face.

  ‘Levi’s, I suggest, with an open-necked shirt, maybe in pink or purple, and a thick brown belt. Forget the headband.’

  ‘Forget the headband?’

  ‘Forget it.’

  I ripped my headband off and tossed it across the floor.

  ‘For your mum.’

  ‘You see, Karim, you tend to look a bit like a pearly queen.’

  I, who wanted only to be like Charlie – as clever, as cool in every part of my soul – tattooed his words on to my brain. Levi’s, with an open-necked shirt, maybe in a very modest pink or purple. I would never go out in anything else for the rest of my life.

  While I contemplated myself and my wardrobe with loathing, and would willingly have urinated over every garment, Charlie lay back with his eyes closed and real sartorial understanding in his mind. Everyone in the house but me was practically in heaven.

  I laid my hand on Charlie’s thigh. No response. I rested it there for a few minutes until sweat broke out on the ends of my fingers. His eyes remained closed, but in his jeans he was growing. I began to feel confident. I became insane. I dashed for his belt, for his fly, for his cock, and I took him out into the air to cool down. He made a sign! He twitched himself! Through such human electricity we understood each other.

  I had squeezed many penises before, at school. We stroked and rubbed and pinched each other all the time. It broke up the monotony of learning. But I had never kissed a man.

  ‘Where are you, Charlie?’

  I tried to kiss him. He avoided my lips by turning his head to one side. But when he came in my hand it was, I swear, one of the preeminent moments of my earlyish life. There was dancing in my streets. My flags flew, my trumpets blew!

  I was licking my fingers and thinking of where to buy a pink shirt when I heard a sound that was not the Pink Floyd. I turned and saw across the attic Dad’s flaming eyes, nose, neck and his famous chest hoiking itself up through the square hole in the floor. Charlie swiftly put himself away. I leapt up. Dad hurried over to me, followed by smiling Eva. Dad looked from Charlie to me and back again. Eva sniffed the air.

  ‘You naughty boys.’

  ‘What, Eva?’ Charlie said.

  ‘Smoking home-grown.’

  Eva said it was time for her to drive us home. We all climbed backwards down the ladder. Dad, being the first, trod on my watch at the bottom, trampling it to pieces and cutting his foot.

  At the house we got out of the car and I said goodnight to Eva
and walked away. From the porch I could see Eva trying to kiss Dad, while he was trying to shake her hand.

  Our house was dark and cold as we crept in, exhausted. Dad had to get up at six-thirty and I had my paper-round at seven. In the hall Dad raised his hand to slap me. He was drunker than I was stoned and I grabbed the ungrateful bastard.

  ‘What the hell were you doing?’

  ‘Shut up!’ I said, as quietly as I could.

  ‘I saw you, Karim. My God, you’re a bloody pure shitter! A bum-banger! My own son – how did it transpire?’

  He was disappointed in me. He jumped up and down in anguish as if he’d just heard the whole house had been burned to the ground. I didn’t know what to do. So I started to imitate the voice he’d used earlier with the advertisers and Eva.

  ‘Relax, Dad. Relax your whole body from your fingers to your toes and send your mind to a quiet garden where –’

  ‘I’ll send you to a fucking doctor to have your balls examined!’

  I had to stop him yelling before we had Mum out and the neighbours round. I whispered, ‘But I saw you, Dad.’

  ‘You saw nothing.’ he said, with utter contempt. He could be very arrogant. It must have been his upper-class background. But I had him.

  ‘At least my mum has two tits.’

  Dad went into the toilet without shutting the door and started to vomit. I went in behind him and rubbed his back as he threw up his guts. ‘I’ll never mention tonight again,’ I said. ‘And nor will you.’

  ‘Why did you bring him home like this?’ said Mum. She was standing behind us in her dressing-gown, which was so long it almost touched the floor, making her look square. She was tired. She reminded me of the real world. I wanted to shout at her: Take that world away!

  ‘Couldn’t you have looked after him?’ she said. She kept plucking at my arm. ‘I was looking out of the window and waiting for you for hours. Why didn’t you ring?’

  Eventually Dad stood up straight and pushed right past us.