Kazumi's tale

Dear Hermione

I am writing this letter because there is something I need to get off my chest. I may be writing it to you but it is really intended as a form of catharsis for me; whether you choose to read it or wipe your bottom with it is a matter of supreme indifference to me. I couldn’t give a shit. You will at first ignore this letter; it will annoy you; but I know that, as sure as eggs are eggs, you will read it one day. Even Vincent van Gogh had eventually to contend with the fact that he had sliced off his own ear.

I was bold enough to approach you in person when I was stunned to find that you and I were living in the same hotel in Austin but, you being the callous person you are, gave me the cold shoulder. The fact that we were both grieving the death of a man we dearly loved persuaded me naively to think that we could at least be civil towards one another. I had never before experienced someone looking right through me as if I did not exist – and trust me, 6 years as a boarder at The Cheltenham Ladies’ College brought me in contact with all manner of snobbish types. It is horrible, but if you wish to behave like a child, Hermione, that is your affair. All I said was “please excuse me, I would like to introduce myself to you” but you looked through me and walked away without the slightest hint that you had acknowledged my presence in front of you.

I tried again when I saw you sitting alone at dinner. I knew you would cut me dead again but I approached you with a clear plan in mind. I had paid a waiter to stay close by and eavesdrop on any conversation we might have. Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t any but he managed to hear you utter the words “fucking geisha seductress” as soon as I had left your table.

The past few months have been the most exhilarating but also the most cataclysmic of my 22 year existence. I feel as though I have been through a whirlwind and my mind has not ceased spinning. I feel much like La Marianne in the painting by the Welsh painter, Andrew Vicari.*

I met Malcolm about six months ago on a packed London tube train. It was a very warm day and the underground was very congested. I found myself unable to withstand the conditions and would have passed out had it not been for Malcolm grabbing hold of me under my arms and dragging me out of the train at its next stop. It was the first of many surreal experiences I was to encounter with Malcolm.

As Malcolm tried pushing his way out of the train, he accidentally collided heavily with a large West African woman with very elaborate and colourful headgear.

“Ah, Ah! Ee-dee-yot! Where is your brain-o!” the woman screamed.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Malcolm yelled back.

The woman sucked her teeth loudly. “Eat your sorry!” she cried.

Malcolm ignored her and dragged me to a seat. He stayed with me gently coaxing me to drink sips of water until I felt better. Then he asked if I wanted to join him for a coffee. The thought of saying no to Malcolm did not come anywhere near my thinking. He had this magnetic aura about him that made you want to be with him for as long as was possible.

We spent a long time in the coffee shop and explored pretty much everything there was to learn about one another. Malcolm was an intriguing chap; he had the most quaint way of speaking I had ever heard. He had a relaxed manner and said profound things without emphasis, but somehow, mysteriously, made the words strike home.

“So now that we have restored you to the land of the living, by what name may I call you?”

“Kazumi.”

“Kazumi? Now that’s a fascinating name. Do you know what it means?”

“Yes, it means ‘harmonious beauty’ in Japanese.”

“You’ve got to hand it to parents, haven’t you? How the devil do they work out from looking at a screaming baby that the name they select for her will prove so apposite, so absolutely fitting when she grows up? They don’t always get it right though, let me tell you. My parents called me Malcolm which is supposed to mean someone powerful and influential but, if the regularity with which my girlfriend points out my shortcomings is anything to go by, my parents were probably smoking something a lot stronger than tobacco when they named me!”

“Oh really?”

“Oh yeah. Take this for example. Yesterday, I was sitting on the top deck of a bus deeply concentrating on my book when I suddenly felt myself being violently shoved against the wall of the bus. An enormous beast of a man – about 7 foot tall and 6 foot wide – had sat in the seat next to mine when what he really needed were three seats cobbled together. Add to that the fact that he did not enjoy much familiarity with baths or showers and had long greasy hair which was showering me and my book with copious dandruff each time the bus jerked slightly, and you will see that yours truly did not feel particularly powerful or influential at that time!”

Malcolm was charming his way into my heart and I was sinking rapidly in love with him like a peddle dropped in a deep lake.

Malcolm couldn’t get over the fact that I was studying for a BA in art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art. He said he wished he had done something ‘sensible’ like that instead of becoming ‘yet another lousy, leeching London lawyer’. Throughout our time together he would pepper his statements with witty references to art which he knew that I would understand and find amusing. For instance, he wouldn’t say “I am tired and need to sleep,” he would say instead “I must now surrender myself to the loving caress of Morpheus”. Quite beautiful, really; it always brought the painting by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin to mind.

I don’t need to spell the rest out to you, Hermione. You know that Malcolm and I were lovers from the very start. I gave him credit for never lying to me about your existence and I knew that he needed time to plan his exit from you, so I never gave him grief about you. The annoying thing for me then (and now, I suppose) was that I could tell he would forever cleave to his love for you despite also loving me.

It is now clear to me that Malcolm was in denial about his cancer. Like Lucian Freud refusing to accept his age and frailty in his final years and pretending to himself that he was still a young, adorable, virile man (as can be seen in one of his last creations The Painter Surprised by a Naked Admirer)

You ought to consider yourself extremely lucky that it was not you who had to find Malcolm dead in the bath. It was not you who nearly killed yourself at the thought that Malcolm was no more. You were not there at Malcolm’s cremation, I was, so don’t be calling me a geisha seductress when you know bugger-all, Hermione.

What has kept me sane in the weeks since Malcolm died has been Formula One. I have immersed myself fully in it. It has helped a great deal that I made friends with the delightful Nicole Scherzinger in Tokyo – by an amazing coincidence she was staying at the same hotel as Malcolm and I. Nicole has introduced to me to Lewis Hamilton and I have learned more about cars and racing than I ever thought was possible.

Nicole is a bit edgy at the moment for understandable reasons, so I have not seen her in a little while. I phoned her the other day and realised that I should have thought better of it.

“My chicken-shit boyfriend says he is too busy preparing for Abu Dhabi to take me shopping in Paris. Just one lousy day is too much to ask for! Isn’t that why he bought that fucking jet? How much fucking time does he think I have? I’ve got photo shoots and TV interviews and hairdresser appointments and all he can think of is the fucking race and double-fucking points. I don’t know why I put up with this fucking crock of shit. I really don’t...”

I quietly rang off before listening to much more of that. But Nicole has a fair point. That greedy little runt, Bernie Ecclestone, was so desperate to fill his boots with Arab cash that he agreed to the most ridiculous rule change possible. To stoke up interest in an irrelevant race at a place nobody wants to visit, Ecclestone agreed to award double points at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The man does not care a fig about F1, the watching public or the world championship. All he is intrested in is more and more filthy lucre.

Seeing it from the Arabs’ perspective paying Ecclestone whatever he asked for made sense: they have the cash in abundance but can’t make people watch their race. Solution? Make the race crucial to the world championship.

We now have the farcical situation that a driver who has won ten races this season (an outstanding achievement in itself) could lose the world championship to a driver who has won only half as many. If F1 is about winning races, how can that make any sense? As Nicole keeps saying, if there is bad luck going for a Mercedes driver, it is Hamilton’s, not Rosberg’s.

 

Do yourself a favour, Hermione, and pay tribute to the memory of Malcolm by watching the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Yours sincerely

Kazumi Turnbull, nee Takaichi

Tokyo

16th November 2014

Gitau

London

18^th November 2014
*Thanks for the tip, Simon!