by Max Porter
Take a seat why don’t you.
Cheek.
I still feel ill.
I know, love.
I’ve been a bit lost.
I know, love. Shall we let some women in?
Muriel, have mercy on me, barefoot that I go, punching herself again and again, odalisque made of lamb cutlets, shuck her out onto the tabletop, saddle her, into a sort of funereal Princess Margaret, crop and jodhpur shrew, mutant kangaroo, get a better look at you.
I remember being shoved up against the ripe armpit of my cousin, sardines in a cupboard in Dublin, holding our breath, and I rolled over and reached for something to hold, found a doorknob and held, I was like Diana with no bow, inhaling my Pamela, blissful, and then Boo, Ianthe, Germany, no mama, nurses, teachers, Isabel, Winifred’s rings of flesh like Del Piombo, bracelet, chub, Michelin man sheen in the fever.
Immaculate studio. Not much money.
Six hundred paintings.
Messy studio. Plenty of money.
Lunch at Long Melford. Scarred on the body and lonely.
So do, nightingale, sing full merry,
Bitter chest. Sad old gentleman making bad work, limited vision, shallow as a plate (and other stolen idioms).
The century abandoned me at dusk.
I panicked and added more newsprint.
Crappy friends leaving me,
crappy artists, crappy bitter aphorisms pouring out of me,
plasticky surgery belches,
dapper, bandaged, trashed,
honestly I behaved horribly.
I’ve been lost a bit. It’s just dying, finally.
Pity me, up and lead the dance of fate.
Choose now.
‘Greatest Living Painter’ Francis Bacon Breathes His Last in Madrid, 1992, or The Violent Death of the Painter Francis Bacon, London, 1979?
Ducky thank you, you’re lovely to me, I’m sure I don’t deserve it, melliloquent sister. The fun one, please. Seventy-nine, golly, yes please. Drink? Yes, let’s. What a gas. I’m ready.
Very well, press play.
The Violent Death of the Painter Francis Bacon, London, 1979:
bmtss, bmtss, bmtss, bmtss.
The perfect time of day; the final dreamy evening.
bmtss, bmtss, bmtss, bmtss.
Extremely groovy feeling, no sex-pense spared.
(God help us all he’s cranked it up a notch.)
Much laughter. Daftness. Cruel Afters.
Forty-one Dean Street, then heading a few doors north, very noisy.
Crooks and lovers, after dinner to the French House for dirtier wine.
Cut into the scene a suave tight-fitted Ganymede clutching a brush, with a bit of rough on his arm, stubble, musty, holds a cig like a shiv, scabbed knuckles, nicked a silver plate from the club, nipped to the bogs, came back pink and grinning, perky pig, truffle hunter to the bar, to the bar! Kneel like Mars to kiss the Venus in high heels’ chipolata toes and snaffle a fallen Dunhill. ¡Abrazo! Last night on earth.
Rim shot!
Francis? Still with us?
Yes, marvellous. Lightheaded, happy.
They surprised the painter Bacon and the mood of the piece was authentically violent.
Bag over the head, Payne’s grey middle of the night on his way to piss, sure he didn’t go to sleep alone, punched until dizzy, bigoted insults, couple of cracked ribs and some kidney torment, weeping, winded, almost-nice pain, good to be in the dark for once, down the stairs, into a van, fifteen-minute drive to the river, bag off, knuckles dressed in metal smash his nose and now he’s fast asleep …
He’s fast finale asleep.
He isn’t waking up ever again.
Bits of tooth, cocaine blood and gristle in his whistle.
Calm and quiet, carnal quiet canal smell duck poo paving past caring but surprised.
Sister Honoured.
Francis Deeply humbled and grateful to be afforded such a bespoke ritual, it’s very exciting.
Into a canvas coffin.
It’s not the cough that carries you off …
Sister It’s the coffin they carry you …
Francis (coughing) Sorry, spoilt it.
Into a canvas coffin, anthropoid box of beechwood, primed casket, stapled, measured to fit, no room to flap, room for one, a 3D palace for a furniture maker turned frame tamer, and in he went, grinning stupidly.
The last light. Famous painter’s last rites.
In went turps. In went cadmium powder, bloody mess, rags, two dozen unclean brushes, a comb, tins, jars, a hundred winsors, a hundred newtons, flannels, letrasets, an empty bottle of Krug, three hundred quid in a greasy roll, a lighter, and then they …
Pissed in the box.
Spat in the box.
Spunk, champagne, linseed oil, mixed in the mind. Dashed, toothbrush-smeared and splashed in the box.
Some legacy-delicate work, pentimenti, reaching in and dabbing the palm of the hand with a tiny black spot. Making sure an advert for oral hygiene can be seen in the ripped innards of a magazine.
He’s gurgling like a bathtime baby, past present gloopy future, MORE.
Struggling for breath, broncoespasmo, aire, aire, lovely lads they know what they’re doing, professional lads, they chuck in arrows,
syringes,
table legs,
ligaments,
papers,
light fittings,
a red hand,
a sink, a bull,
all the props he’s used to make a set-up pop.
Then sand.
Gallery-grade, kiln-dried, Perspex-cured, money-no-object sand. Late Style.
Aire. Respirar. Please.
Then powder. Endless coloured powders, open the reflex or gagging hungry idea of his mouth and the pigment fills the throat, into the painter Bacon’s clogged bronchi, into his untidy lungs and then they stand down, get back, see the whole thing, because
his busy hands
have
finally stopped
fidgeting.
Blessed relief.
Que el Señor que te libera del pecado te salve y te resucite.
Last sight isn’t human after all, is pure throb colour on the heart inside.
Get some distance, stand back, six feet, no glass, no label, no price list, no body, no gallerist.
Just the painting.
Seal the lid. Is pure throb colour on the heart inside.
No more.
Is pure throb colour on the heart inside.
Sí. Intenta descansar.
About the Author
Max Porter is the author of Lanny, longlisted for the Booker Prize, and Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize and shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Goldsmiths Prize. He is a recipient of the Sunday Times/Peters Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year award.
By the Same Author
Grief Is the Thing with Feathers
Lanny
Copyright
First published in 2021
by Faber & Faber Limited
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2021
All rights reserved
© Max Porter, 2021
Cover design by Faber
Cover detail from Godong/Alamy Stock Photo
The right of Max Porter to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Two John Berger quotations in section 1 are from Portraits: John Berger on Artists, edited by Tom Overton, Verso, London, 2015.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable c
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ISBN 978–0–571–36652–1