Harry was reminded who he was. His brothers weren’t impressed or intimidated by Mamoon. There was a cold severity in Mamoon’s work, and, because he had never written a book the title of which everyone could recognise, and he rarely appeared on television, they didn’t give a damn who he was. What they didn’t like was their little brother being run ragged by a manic egotist who wanted a flattering portrait of his big head. Harry saw that, in the shadow of Mamoon’s personality, he had allowed his identity to be attacked; Liana and Mamoon seemed to be able to do or say anything they liked to him. And his father had said, ‘So far you’ve been the mirror he needs, Harry, and why wouldn’t he be happy?’
‘He’s benign.’
‘Are you sure? Why don’t you mess with his mind a little, twist his penis, confront him, and see what happens? Sometimes a little disorder can be creative.’
Harry and Alice went to Paris for the flim-flam of the fashion shows, before taking the overnight train to Venice — Harry’s mother’s favourite city — where Alice had never been. When he and Alice woke up in the morning, in the bunks of the sleeper, it was a hop, skip and jump to the Grand Canal. They were barely off the vaporetto, exploring. Harry was keen to see Alice seeing things, to watch her as the world unfolded. One evening she took his hand. She had taken a pregnancy test. It was positive. They hadn’t exactly planned things, but they had discussed them a little, and she was pleased; was he?
Yes, yes, and maybe. They were joined for good now. He was shocked, and confused and afraid. Suddenly the future had a shape and an inevitability. There would be duties. He would become a different sort of person, and they would know one another in a new way. ‘Christ,’ he said to his father. ‘I’m done for.’
‘About time. Welcome to the world,’ Father said. ‘Do you know how to think about it?’
‘No. . Not yet.’
‘Does she?’
‘She has her friends. They are gossiping and planning already. I feel alone.’
‘It will join you to the world, Harry. You can’t run all your life. I love being a father, and I suspect you will too. You’re a better man than you believe you are.’
After a few days, Alice went back to work, and Harry, with this new knowledge growing in him, flew to India to look at the places Mamoon had lived as a child.
For two and a half weeks he met family members and acquaintances of the old man, along with those Mamoon had supposedly snubbed, insulted, exploited, or fucked. He discovered what a good scholarship boy Mamoon had been, as well as the fact he’d been aloof and appeared to consider himself superior to those around him. ‘The cut and strut of him in his blazer with shining buttons!’ Harry was told. ‘The looking down of it!’ He heard from several older people that Mamoon had not been a ‘real’ Indian, and was as alienated on the subcontinent as he would be in Britain. He spoke English at home, except with the servants, read only English and French literature, knew little about Islam or Hinduism, both of which he considered to be the opium of the masses, and had rarely visited the countryside.
Mamoon’s mother was religious, and stayed in her room praying, leaving only to consult experts on the Qur’an. The father had sponsored the boy’s ambition, Harry believed, but not his pleasure, which he opposed. He had had no intention of producing a womanising, hard-drinking, cosmopolitan playboy, sitting in the cafes of European capital cities in worn shoes, borrowing money, stewing in self-pity and debt while discussing Bernard Shaw and Trotsky.
But the father hadn’t entirely succeeded. Harry heard, from a decent source, something stranger and more intriguing, and began to see what the father had been up against. Mamoon had been a seductive teenager, apparently pulling both older men and women — the mothers of school friends; the school nurse; a policeman’s wife, and, it was said, the policeman himself — into his sphere.
Like many Indian patriarchs, Mamoon’s father, in his pride and hope, was determined from the start to send his son to the hated mother country to be educated. The son remained the father’s dream, though, and the father had only a little idea of how wrenching the move would be for Mamoon, and what snobbery, contempt and difficulty he would face. The father couldn’t think of his despairing son wandering the London streets evening after evening, nearly mad with loneliness and anxiety, relieved occasionally by a beer and a whore. Even if it was a bit tough, it wouldn’t be for long, since the boy would return home a better man, and continue to be his lonely father’s prop, his mirror, his chamcha. ‘Remember me,’ reminds the father, endlessly, colonising the son’s mind. And not only that, ‘live with me.’ Mamoon refused. In his suffering, Mamoon wanted to join ‘the larger or complete civilisation’, as he put it later. He dismissed his dad and never lived at home again. The father ensured his own death through grief because of it.
It might appear now that Mamoon always knew what he was doing, that his progress was almost inevitable. Harry learned what determination and strength Mamoon showed, not only in remaining in inhospitable Britain to earn money by his pen, but to make himself into an original writer, one not seen before, speaking from the position of a colonial subject or subaltern, but one without hatred, and with fascination if not identification with the colonisers’ culture. Eschewing contemporary causes and attitudes, Mamoon fashioned himself into a considerable and successful artist from a background which had enabled few before. For a time he did an essential thing, bringing the new into culture, speaking from where no one had spoken. He was rewarded too, and not only that. Any fool would recognise that a successful ‘bolter’ would always inspire recrimination and the radiation of envy. But, at home in India, Mamoon’s rise and achievement was accompanied by a level of resentment, scrutiny and criticism which could have bewildered if not destroyed a lesser man.
Some of it was self-engineered: Mamoon’s insolence, arrogance and the insanity of some of his statements were no secret. But much of this envy was born of bitterness towards the white man. His former friends and allies believed that Mamoon had become ‘white’. For them any betterment was betrayal. Those he left behind said he had made a pact with the devil and violated his forebears and family. ‘I hope that turns out to be true,’ Mamoon remarked to a friend, waving goodbye. ‘Particularly the violation.’
Harry had learned much about all this in India, and had also had time to study the notebooks Julia had given him. With renewed enthusiasm for his subject — how do you write such complication? — he flew with some relief to New York. After three days he went to see Mamoon’s former lover Marion, who lived in a small flat in Portland.
Characteristically, Rob hadn’t exactly ‘organised things’. For the last few weeks Marion had been making it difficult for Harry, cancelling proposed meetings, phoning to ask him more questions, and generally acting like a coquette. All the while she ensured that he was aware she had something valuable to give him, and that there would be a price, though he hadn’t been told what it was. She also insisted on various agents and publishers vouching for his good intentions and honesty. It wasn’t until Mamoon had spoken to Rob, and Rob to her, that Marion gave him a firm appointment. At last he could go to her flat.
The door opened.
With long white hair halfway down her back, and moving slowly and unsteadily on sticks, Marion led Harry into the small, overheated apartment. Relieved to meet her, Harry had tried to take her hand but she insisted on pushing her face towards his, and he kissed her cheeks. She gripped his hand as if she’d touched no one for some time.