A Theft: My Con Man by Hanif Kureishi – digested read

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/04/a-theft-my-con-man-hanif-kureishi-digested-read

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I met a man who fed a worm into my ear. I staggered about like a dying man. Eventually the truth pressed down and I began to hate this man whom I had only met once and to whom I had handed over £100,000 as an act of charity in the expectation of nothing in return, save for doubling my money in a couple of months. Chandler: my accountant, my lumbricid, whose greed robbed me of the very essence of my artistic being, leaving me an arid husk writhing on an oaken floor.

The transgressive often has a compelling attracting for the bohemian storyteller, and when I first met Chandler, I liked him. The feeling he inspired in me was, as David Bowie so memorably put it in Sound and Vision, “Ooh ooh / Ooh ooh / Doo doo doo doo doo doo / Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo.” There was something about the way he said, “By the way Hanif, if you’ve got a spare couple of hundred grand knocking around down the back of your sofa, I know a bloke who finds himself a bit strapped for the next few months but will give you the whole lot back plus an extra half mill for your trouble no questions asked when his 25-1 shot comes in in the novice chase at Kempton” that had a strange beauty.

It may sound curious that someone of such a refined artistic nobility as myself should have been have so drawn to someone whose quotidian life was so banal and drab: a barely sentient being tied both to his mobile phone and an Albanian fiancee who was quite unused to discussing Dante’s Paradiso over dinner with a few dozen intimes. Yet that is how it was. Indeed, many were the times, on that one occasion that I met Chandler, when I wished I could forsake my tortured life as novelist and intellectual for his much more simple material world of numbers. It was as if I was Mozart and he was Lorenzo da Ponte bringing me his libretto for Don Awaywithyourmanni.

No sooner had I handed over that which those of lesser sensibilities call money, Chandler asked me for my signature and bank details in order that he could release me into the realms of pure aesthetics. Having signed so many books for eager readers in the past, I did so without thought or hesitation. Imagine then my horror and surprise the following day to find my current account had been cleaned out of £80,000. I called Chandler for an explanation. “Someone has been taking the piss and no mistake Hanif,” he said. “Leave it to me and I will find out exactly who impersonated me going in to your bank to empty your account and get it back.”

Reassured that my financial affairs were back in safe hands, I returned to my keyboard for some months to compose several finely balanced sentences. Imagine then my horror and surprise to discover that not only had Chandler not tracked down his doppelganger who had plundered my account, but the man who had promised to win the Kempton novice chase was also proving elusive. “Don’t give me a hard time, Hanif,” he said. “I’ve been having a terrible time. My Albanian fiancee’s mum’s died, my brother has died, my house is on fire, and the cat’s just shat on the carpet.”

“How that reminds me of passages of War and Peace,” I replied. “Me too,” Chandler laughed. “Now if you don’t mind, this phone line from Malaga is costing me a fortune.”

For 12 long months, I writhed in agonies of turmoil, unable to believe that this lifelong friend to whom I had given my money as an act of the highest altruism had betrayed my trust, and uncertain as to whether I should call the police for fear they would laugh at me for being such a greedy mug. Time and again I sought refuge in Abba’s liminal Money, Money, Money, crying myself to sleep on my Siberian goosedown pillow at the verse: “A man like that is hard to find but I can’t get him off my mind / Ain’t it sad / And if he happens to be free / I bet he wouldn’t fancy me.”

At last my vigour returned and, as so often in my life, it was women who saved me. “Any man would have fallen for Chandler, Hanif,” they all said. I resolved to reclaim my mortal self. If I couldn’t get back my £250K then I could steal Chandler’s life by writing about him. And if readers paid £4.99 for the privilege, so much the better.

Digested read, digested: A fool and his money.