“But never enough of one?”
“How could he be? All the time we lived in that house he was anxious about keeping the factory going. He said his only ambition outside work was to walk across Africa. But the strike made him so crazy he started to do weird stuff.”
“What sort?”
“I’d hear him walking about at night. Doors banging, groans, shouts even-”
“Do you know why?”
“He was drinking. Staggering around blotto. He’d drink half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s when he came home after work, and finish the rest by morning. When I opened my door in the morning, he’d be on the floor. I was scared to come out of my room. Ajita and I had to pull off his dressing gown and pyjamas and drag him into the shower. It was hard for her, she had to do everything.” He wiped his eyes. “Did she tell you about it?”
“A little.”
“I’d throw the bottle away before I went to school. No wonder all I learned was how to masturbate. It was worse for Ajita.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Ajita adored her father, Jamal. I’ve never seen two closer people. As a girl she’d wait by the door for him to come home. In the evenings, while Mum was cooking, she’d oil and comb his hair, walk on his back, wash him in the bath. He’d tell her stories about India and Africa. I’m telling you, I was left out. When he was killed, I’ve never seen anyone more devastated. She hardly spoke for three months.”
“And your mother had already gone away.”
“Yes.”
“Had she left your father?”
He said, “No one said that. But how could she be with him? She considered him a failure. He thought if he made enough money she’d come back. One day, according to Father, we’d be free of anxiety, because we’d be rich. Before then he had no time for anything else, for sport, culture, nature-love, even. He didn’t know what we were doing at school.” He leaned towards me. “I had a voodoo doll-of Father-which I stuck little nails into. I was convinced I’d killed him!”
“You wanted all the credit.”
“If he were alive today, he would disapprove of everything about me. I have to be glad he’s dead-which is difficult…”
I said, “You remember when you asked me to go away with you?”
“Oh, Jamal, I’m so embarrassed!”
“Why don’t we run away?” Mustaq said to me the next time I went to the house. Last time we’d wrestled; now he told me there was something he just had to show me in his bedroom. “What is it?” I asked. “My haircut,” he replied. “David Jones would be proud of you,” I said.
He was standing close to me, as he liked to, touching, if not rubbing, my arm. “I know where my father keeps his money. He’s got thick wads of it in an envelope under his socks.”
“What for?”
“He often says we may need to leave in a hurry again. The racists might come for us.”
“You’re the one who wants to leave in a hurry. But why?”
“It’s not much good here, is it?”
He said this with such sadness I’d have kissed him if I hadn’t feared he’d kiss me.
“Why with me?” I asked.
“You’re the most exciting person I’ve met.”
“Look,” I said, startled, “let me give you something-
I went to my college bag. Apart from books on philosophy, I was carrying music magazines, a couple of novels and an anthology of Beat poets. I gave them to him.
“Feed your head, man,” I said. “I know you already have music, but I’ll drop more books and mags off tomorrow. You know what you want to do when you grow up?”
“A fashion designer,” he said. “But don’t tell anyone.”
“Like who? Your sister?”
“She knows already.”
“Your father, then. I think I will tell him.” I pretended to move off.
He grabbed me, “Don’t do that. Keep quiet, please! I’ll do anything for you-”
“Only joking,” I said. “Why are you so afraid? Does he hurt you?”
In the weeks after this conversation, I took a lot of stuff to Mustaq. He read so quickly and gratefully I was soon ransacking my bedroom for books I’d bought in London. It gave me a reason to visit Ajita, to sit around in her house, but Mustaq was so pleased by everything I took him I began to see that helping others was a pleasure.
“Jamal,” he said now, “I am unbelievably angry with Papa. He did an inexcusable thing, and tried to give you a watch in exchange!”
He went on, “But I am not innocent. I have sinned too. I will think of it when I want to hit Papa in the face.”
“What did you do?”
Mustaq was approaching the top of his arc as a drama queen, being both amused and almost rigid with self-pity at the same time, as he compulsively rubbed his eyes and caressed his forehead, his voice an urgent whisper.
“The night Father was killed I was having sex for the first time. One of my cousins, sleeping in the next room, came in to initiate me. I was ashamed it had taken me so long. She thought I should see a pussy, which I was curious about. It did nothing for me, and was like trying to force a slug into a slot machine. Of course I felt guilty. Of all possible nights…why did it have to be that one?
“Ajita and I talked about going home that evening. But she was too tired to make the journey. If we’d returned, we might have caught the murderers at their work. We might have saved Dad. We might even have been killed.”
“Yes.”
“I lost my virginity at last, but not really. Apart from with you, I hadn’t felt a passion for anyone yet. That didn’t happen until later, when we were in India, and the very, very bad thing occurred.”
“What was it?”
“I fell in love with a composer, a songwriter, older than me, in his mid-twenties, well dressed, good-looking, elegant. Jamal, note this: he knew how to be. He made music for films, discos, fashion shows. Really he was a genius. Far more talented than me, writing music as easily as others speak. Like some heterosexuals, he liked being admired by a gay man. I was his groupie, and he enjoyed my questions, my fascination with him. But it went too far…” He went on, “I loved him so much I married his sister.”
“Great idea.”
“It was an astonishing Indian wedding, paid for by my uncle, and went on longer than the marriage. That night, when I tried to make love to the woman, and she was lying there so hot in her desire-women really feel fierce pleasures, don’t they?-I had to think of her brother to make myself hard. The two of them looked similar, and she became a sort of aide-mémoire.” He shivered. “Naturally, she wanted to have sex with me, her husband, and bear children. When I told her the truth, she was devastated, she had a breakdown, she put a rope around her neck and had to be cut down.”
“What were you thinking?”
“That my homosexuality would go away. I didn’t want to be different or unusual. It was a secret.”
As though he had temporarily forgotten where he was, Mustaq stopped to survey the room-his friends, and who they were chatting with. Seeing us talking, they had kept away. Then he touched me on the shoulder and caressed me a little. I could see he was about to become formal again; he had remembered who he had to be.
I looked at him, the awkward, eager, dumpy kid who had rebuilt himself, becoming attractive and glamorous. Of course, just being a famous pop star gave him that hip edge, all the time. He mattered, and was envied, at last. He had become one of those people who knew they were constantly observed. But whether he enjoyed it much now, I couldn’t tell.
“Jamal, I hope you enjoy the weekend. I’m delighted we’re friends again. Please, may I ask you one more thing? Otherwise I will believe I’m mad.”