The Buddha of Suburbia

by Hanif Kureishi

  I wanted to think about Eleanor, and how painful it was to see her every day when all I wanted was to be back with her. I know I had hoped that my indifference would revive her interest in me, that she missed me and would ask me back to her place for more steamed cabbage and a last kiss of her thighs. But in my letter I’d asked her to keep away from me; that’s exactly what she was doing, and it didn’t seem to bother her. Perhaps I would try and talk to her one last time.

  My curiosity about the person behind me was too much to bear, so further along the river I concealed myself in a pub doorway and jumped out, half naked, on the creature, shouting, ‘Who are you? Why are you following me!’ When I let her go she was unperturbed, unafraid and smiling.

  ‘I admired your performance,’ she said as we walked along. ‘You made me laugh. I just wanted to tell you. And you have the nicest face. Those lips. Wow.’

  ‘Yeah? You like me?’

  ‘Yes, and I wanted to be with you a few minutes. You don’t mind me following you, do you? I could see you wanted to leave. You looked terrified. Angry. What a state: phew. You don’t want to be alone now, do you?’

  ‘Don’t worry about anything – it’s good to have a friend.’

  God, I sounded a fool. But she took my arm and we walked along the river, past William Morris’s house and towards Hogarth’s Tomb.

  ‘It’s odd that someone else had the same idea as me,’ said the woman, whose name was Hilary.

  ‘What idea?’

  ‘To follow you,’ she said.

  I turned, and saw Heater standing there, not making any effort to conceal himself. I greeted him with a scream which rose from my stomach and flew across the air like a jet. Janov himself would have applauded.

  ‘What d’you want, Heater! Why don’t you fuck off and die of cancer, you fat, ugly, pseudy cunt?’

  He adjusted his position so that he stood solidly with his feet apart, his weight evenly distributed. He was ready for me. He wanted to fight.

  ‘I’m coming for you, Paki cunt! I don’t like ya! An’ you lot have been playing with my Eleanor. You an’ that Pyke.’

  Hilary took my hand. She was calm. ‘Why don’t we just run?’ she said.

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ I said. ‘OΚ.’

  ‘Let’s go, then.’

  I ran towards Heater and mounted him by stepping on his knee, grabbing him by the lapels and using the velocity to bounce my forehead against his nose in the way I’d been taught at school. Thank God for education. He wheeled away, holding his nose on to his face. Then Hilary and I were running and shouting; we were holding each other and kissing, and it seemed that blood was everywhere; it was just pouring off us. I’d forgotten that Heater had learned at school never to go anywhere without razor-blades sewn into the back of his lapels.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The theatre was full every night, and on Fridays and Saturdays, to our pleasure, people were turned away. We were going to do extra shows. The play was on my mind all day. How could it not be? It was a big event to get through every evening. It was impossible to do it and only half concentrate, as I saw one night, after finding myself stranded on stage, looking at Eleanor, having forgotten which act of the play we were in. I found that the best way to avoid having my day ruined by the show in the evening was to move the hours around, getting up at three or four in the afternoon so that the play took place in the morning, as it were, and you had hours afterwards in which to forget it.

  After the show we went out into the restaurant area, where looks would linger on us. People pointed us out to each other. They bought us drinks; they felt privileged to meet us. They required us urgently at their parties, to spice them up. We went to them, turning up at midnight with our arms full of beer and wine. Once there we were offered drugs. I had sex with several women; all that was easier now. I got an agent, too. I was offered a small part in a television film, playing a taxi-driver. I had some money to play with. One night Pyke came by and asked us if we wanted to take the show to New York. There’d been an offer from a small but prestigious theatre there. Did we really want to go? ‘Let me know if you can be bothered,’ he said casually. ‘It’s up to you all.’

  Pyke gave us some notes after the show, and then I asked him if I could visit him that weekend. He smiled and patted my arse. ‘Any time,’ he said. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Sit down,’ he said when I got there, ready to ask him for money. An old woman in a pink nylon housecoat came into the room with a duster. ‘Later, Mavis,’ he said.

  ‘Matthew –’ I began.

  ‘Sit down while I take a shower,’ he said. ‘Are you in a big hurry?’ And he went out again, leaving me alone in that room with the cunt sculpture. As before, I wandered around. I thought maybe I would steal something and Terry could sell it for the Party. Or it could be a kind of trophy. I looked at vases and picked up paperweights, but I had no idea what they were worth. I was about to put a paperweight in my pocket when Marlene came in, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Her hands and arms were spotted with paint. She was decorating. Her flesh was sickly white now, I noticed. How had I kissed and licked it?

  ‘It’s you,’ she said. She showed little of last time’s enthusiasm. Presumably she’d gone off me. These people could go up and down. ‘What are you up to?’ she said. She came over to me. She brightened then. ‘Give us a kiss, Karim.’ She bent forward and closed her eyes. I kissed her lips lightly. She didn’t open her eyes. ‘That’s not a kiss. When I’m kissed I want to stay kissed,’ she said. Her tongue was in my mouth; her mouth was moving on mine; her hands were over me.

  ‘Leave him alone, for Christ’s sake, can’t you?’ said Pyke, coming back into the room. ‘Where’s that sandalwood body shampoo I like?’

  She stood up. ‘How should I know? I’m not vain. I’m not a fucking man. I don’t use it.’

  Pyke went through Marlene’s bag; he went through various drawers, pulling things out. Marlene watched him, standing with her hands on her hips. She waited till he was at the door again before shouting at him, ‘Why are you so arrogant? Don’t talk to me as if I were some floozie actress. Why should I leave my Karim alone? You go out with his girlfriend.’

  Pyke stood there and said, ‘You can fuck him. I don’t care. You know I don’t care. Do exactly what you like, Marlene.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ said Marlene. ‘Fuck freedom, too. Stick it up your arse.’

  ‘Anyway, she’s not his girlfriend,’ said Pyke.

  ‘She’s not his girlfriend?’ Marlene turned to me. ‘Is it true?’ She turned to Pyke. ‘What have you done?’ Pyke said nothing. ‘He’s broken it up, has he, Karim?’

  ‘Yep,’ I said. I got up. Marlene and Pyke looked at each other with hatred. I said, ‘Matthew, I’ve just dropped by to ask you something. It’s a small thing. It won’t take long. Can we deal with it now?’

  ‘I’ll leave you two boys alone, then,’ said Marlene, sarcastically.

  ‘Where’s my body shampoo?’ Pyke asked. ‘Really, where is it?’

  ‘Fuck off,’ Marlene said, going out.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Pyke to me, relaxing.

  I asked him for the money. I told him what it was for. I asked him for three hundred pounds. ‘For politics?’ he asked. ‘For the Party, is that it? Am I right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My, my, Karim. I must have made a mistake about you.’

  I tried to be jaunty. ‘Maybe you did.’

  He looked at me seriously and with kindness, as if he were really seeing me. ‘I didn’t mean to put you down. I just didn’t realize you were so committed.’

  ‘I’m not, really,’ I said. ‘They just asked me to ask you.’

  He fetched his cheque book. ‘I bet they didn’t tell you to say that.’ He picked up his pen. ‘So you’re their postman. You’re a vulnerable kid. Don’t let them use you. Take a cheque.’

  He was charming. He gave me a cheque for five hundred pounds. I
could have talked to him all day, gossiping and chatting as we used to in his car. But once I’d got the money I left; he didn’t particularly want me there and I didn’t want to get into anything with Marlene. When I was going out the front door she ran down the stairs and called out, ‘Karim, Karim,’ and I heard Pyke say to her, ‘He can’t get away from you quick enough,’ as I banged the door behind me.

  I couldn’t bring myself to visit Eleanor’s flat again. So I asked her for money one night at the theatre. I found it hard to talk to her now. It was made more difficult because, while I put it to her, explaining this was business not love, she busied herself with things, with the many objects she had with her in the dressing room: books, cassettes, make-up, photographs, cards, letters, clothes. And she tried on a couple of hats, too, for God’s sake. She did all this because she didn’t want to face me, to sit and look straight at me now. But I also felt that she’d shut me out of her mind. I meant little to her; I hadn’t been an important failure.

  Not that I liked her much, either; but I didn’t want to let her go. I didn’t want to be pushed aside, dropped, discarded. Yet I had been. There it was. There was nothing I could do. So I just told her what I wanted. She nodded and held up a book. ‘Have you read this?’ she said. I didn’t even look at it. I didn’t want to get into books now. I asked her again for some money. It would help the Party; and they would change the things that needed changing.

  She said, finally, ‘No, I will not give you five hundred pounds.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about Gene.’

  ‘You’re always thinking about Gene and –’

  ‘Yes. So? Why not?’

  ‘Forget it, Eleanor,’ I said. ‘Let’s stick to this.’

  ‘Gene was –’

  I banged my hand on the table. I was getting fed up. And a line from Bob Dylan kept running through my head: ‘Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again’.

  ‘The Party. They need money. That’s all it is. Nothing else. Nothing about Gene. Nothing about us.’

  She insisted. ‘I’m saying something. You’re not listening to me.’

  ‘You’re rich, aren’t you? Spread it around, darling.’

  ‘You scornful bastard,’ she said. ‘Didn’t we have a good time, you and I?’

  ‘Yes, all right. I enjoyed myself. We went to the theatre. We screwed. And you went out with Pyke.’

  She smiled at me then, and she said, This is the point. They are not a Party for black people. They are an all-honky thing, if you want to know. I’m not giving a bean to that kind of apartheid thing.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, getting up. ‘Thanks anyway.’

  ‘Karim.’ She looked at me. She wanted to say something kind, so she said, ‘Don’t get bitter.’

  On my day off I went to see Terry. He and his mates were squatting a house in Brixton. I got off the tube and walked north, as he’d instructed me, under the railway bridge I’d passed over on the train with Uncle Ted the time he slashed the seats; the time he said ‘them blacks’. It was the same line my father travelled on to work all those years, with his blue dictionary in his briefcase.

  These houses were built for another era, I thought, looking at Terry’s place. They were five-storey places; they overlooked pretty parks; and they were rotting as this part of the city was rotting even as it flourished in the cracks. The kids here were wilder than anywhere else in London. The hair which Charlie had appropriated and elaborated on – black, spiky, sculptural, ornamental, eveningwear not work-wear – had moved on: to the Mohican. The girls and boys wore solid rainbows of hairy colour on their otherwise tonsured skulls. The black kids had dreadlocks half-way down their back, and walking sticks and running shoes. The girls wore trousers which tapered to above the ankle; the boys wore black bondage trousers with flaps and buckles and zips. The area was full of shebeens, squats, lesbian bars, gay pubs, drug pubs, drug organizations, advice centres, and the offices of various radical political organizations. There wasn’t much work going on; people were hanging out; they asked you if you wanted black hash, which I did, but not from them.

  The door of the house was open. The locks had been smashed. I went straight up and caught Terry at it. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt; he was barefoot, and he was working on a long padded seat in front of a large window. He held a weighted bar behind his neck as he stood up and sat down, stood up and sat down, and watched rugby on a black and white TV. He looked at me in amazement. I hunted around for somewhere to sit, an unbroken chair or unstained cushion. It was a dirty place and Terry was a well-off actor. Before I’d sat down he had seized me and hugged me. He smelled good, of sweat.

  ‘Hey, hey, it’s you, it really is you, just turning up like this. Where you been?’

  ‘Sergeant Monty,’ I said.

  ‘Where you been? Tell me. Where, Karim?’

  ‘Raising money for you.’

  ‘Yeah, really,’ Terry said. ‘I believe you.’

  ‘Didn’t you ask me to?’

  ‘yes, but –’ He rolled his eyes.

  ‘You asked me to. You fucking ordered me. Didn’t you? Are you saying you don’t remember?’

  ‘Remember? How could I fucking forget, Karim? That night. Wow. All that money and intelligence. Those smart people. University cunts. Fucking rich cunts. Fucking rot them. It can unsettle a boy like me.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ I said.

  He gestured with his hands and blew hard through his mouth. ‘But I don’t feel too pleased about it.’

  He went off and made some tea, but it was Typhoo and the cup had brown stains on the outside. I put it aside and gave him Pyke’s cheque. He glanced at it; he looked at me. ‘Bloody good work. I thought you were joking. This is terrific. Well done, mate.’

  ‘I only had to ask him. You know what liberals are like.’

  ‘Yeah, they can afford it, the bastards.’ He came over to me again after putting the cheque in his jacket pocket. ‘Listen, there’s other things you can do now for the Party.’

  I said, ‘I’m going to America with Pyke.’

  ‘Fuck that. What for?’ It was good to see Terry keen and eager again. ‘This country’s the place to be. It’s on its knees. You can see that, can’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘’Course you can. Callaghan can’t last. It’ll be our turn.’

  ‘America is OK.’

  ‘Yeah. Great.’ He punched me on the arm. ‘Come on.’ I felt he wanted to touch me or something. Kiss me. He said, ‘Except it’s a fascist, imperialist, racist shithole.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘It’s –’

  I said, ‘Sometimes I feel disgusted by your ignorance. Your fucking stupid blindness to things. America. Where do you think the gay militancy has come from?’ Not that this helped my case. I thought a moment. He was listening, not yet sneering. ‘The women’s movement. Black rebellion. What are you talking about, Terry, when you talk about America? It’s crap! Idiocy! Christ!’

  ‘Don’t shout at me. What am I saying? I’m saying I’ll miss you, that’s all! And I’m saying it’s pretty damn weird, you an’ Pyke being such big close friends after what he’s done to you. Right? Right?’

  ‘What’s he done to me?’ I said.

  ‘You know. You were there.’

  ‘I know? What is it? Tell me.’

  ‘I’ve heard,’ he said. ‘Everybody talks.’

  He turned away. He didn’t want to say any more. Now I’d never know what they were saying about me and Pyke and what he’d done to me.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘You don’t care about anything,’ he said. ‘You’re not attached to anything, not even to the Party. You don’t love. Stay here and fight.’

  I walked around the room. Terry’s sleeping-bag was on the floor; there was a knife beside the bed. It was time to go. I wanted to loaf around this part of London. I wanted to ring Changez and have him walking beside me on his Cha
rlie Chaplin feet. Terry was pacing; I was looking out the window trying to control myself. People who were only ever half right about things drove me mad. I hated the flood of opinion, the certainty, the easy talk about Cuba and Russia and the economy, because beneath the hard structure of words was an abyss of ignorance and not-knowing; and, in a sense, of not wanting to know. Fruitbat-Jones’s lover, Chogyam-Rainbow-Jones, had a rule: he’d only talk about things he had practical experience of, things he’d directly known. It seemed to be a good rule.

  I opened my mouth to tell Terry again what a fool I thought he was, how rigid in his way of seeing he could be, when he said, ‘You can come and live here now that Eleanor’s chucked you out. There’s some good working-class girls in this squat. You won’t go short.’

  ‘I bet,’ I said.

  I went to him and put my hand between his legs. I didn’t think he’d allow himself to like it too much; I didn’t think he’d let me take his cock out, but I reckoned you should try it on with everyone you fancied, just in case. You never knew, they might like it, and if not, so what? Attractive people were a provocation in themselves, I found, when I was in this mood.

  ‘Don’t touch me, Karim,’ he said.

  I kept on rubbing him, pushing into his crotch, digging my nails into his balls, until I glanced up at his face. However angry I was with him, however much I wanted to humiliate Terry, I suddenly saw such humanity in his eyes, and in the way he tried to smile – such innocence in the way he wanted to understand me, and such possibility of pain, along with the implicit assumption that he wouldn’t be harmed – that I pulled away. I went to the other side of the room. I sat staring at the wall. I thought about torture and gratuitous physical pain. How could it be possible to do such things when there’d be certain looks that would cry out to you from the human depths, making you feel so much pity you could weep for a year?