On Beauty by Zadie Smith Page A

suggest you get the right end of it before you walk into my father’s house, you understand? Jerome is just not the thing at all, at all .’
    Michael began to walk off at speed, still shaking his head, with Howard angled to his right, trying to keep up. This was interspersed with frequent side glances at Howard and more of this head-shaking, until Howard was considerably wound up.
    â€˜Look, excuse me – I’m not exactly overjoyed here, right? Jerome’s whack bam in the middle of his studies – and anyway, if and when the time comes I imagine he’s expecting a woman of similar – how do you want me to say this – intellectual – and not the first woman he happens to have got his end away with. Look, I don’t want to fall out with you as well – we agree , that’s fine – you and I both know that Jerome’s a baby –’
    Howard, who had matched Michael’s pace at last, halted him once more by laying a firm hand on his shoulder. Michael turned his head quite slowly to look at the hand, until Howard felt compelled to retract it.
    â€˜What was that?’ said Michael, and Howard noticed a slip in his accent, to something a little rougher, a little more familiar with the street than with the office. ‘Excuse me? Get your hands off me, all right? My sister is a virgin , yeah? You get me? That’s how she was brought up, yeah? Mate, I don’t even know what your son has been telling you –’
    This medieval turn to the conversation was too much for Howard. ‘Michael – I don’t want to . . . we’re on the same side here – no one’s saying a marriage isn’t completely ridiculous – look at my lips, I’m saying completely ridiculous, completely – no one’s disputing your sister’s honour , really . . . no need for swords at dawn . . . duel to the . . . or any of that – look, of course I know you and your family have “beliefs”,’ began Howard uneasily, as if ‘beliefs’ were a kind of condition, like oral herpes. ‘You know . . . and I completely and utterly respect and tolerate that – I didn’t realize this was a surprise to you –’
    â€˜Well, it is, yeah? It’s a fucking surprise!’ cried Michael, turning about him and whispering the swear word, as if in fear of being overheard.
    â€˜So, OK . . . it’s a surprise, I appreciate that . . . Michael, please . . . I didn’t come here to have a row – let’s take it down a notch –’
    â€˜If he’s touched –’ began Michael, and Howard, over and above the madness of the conversation itself, began to feel genuinely afraid of him. The flight from the rational, which was everywhere in evidence in the new century, none of it had surprised Howard as it had surprised others, but each new example he came across – on the television, in the street and now in this young man – weakened him somehow. His desire to be involved in the argument, in the culture, fell off. The energy to fight the philistines, this is what fades. Now Howard’s eyes turned to the ground, in some expectation of being thumped or otherwise verbally abused. He listened to a sudden curve of wind swoop around the corner they were standing on and rustle the trees.
    â€˜Michael –’
    â€˜I don’t believe this.’
    The nobility Howard had first thought he detected in Michael’s face was rapidly being replaced by a hardening, the nonchalant manner supplanted by its exact opposite, as if some fluid poisonous to his system had been swapped for the blood in his veins. His head whipped back round; now Howard seemed no longer to exist for him. He began to walk with speed, almost to jog, down the street. Howard called out to him. Michael increased his pace, took a sudden, jerky right and kicked open an