by Alain Elkann
ALAIN ELKANN
ENVY
Translated from the Italian
by Alastair McEwen
To Leone
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
PART ONE: CHANCE ENCOUNTERS
1: LONDON
2: MADRID
3: NEW YORK
4: ROME
5: LONDON
6: ROME
7: LONDON
PART TWO: THE BIRTH OF AN OBSESSION
1: LONDON
2: TONY’S
PART THREE: WOMEN
1: NEW YORK
2: LONDON
3: PROVENCE
4: ROSSA
PART FOUR: TOWARDS ENVY
1: LONDON
2: SAX
3: THE SUNDAY TIMES
PART FIVE: THE GENESIS OF A NOVEL
1: LONDON
2: VENICE
3: NEW YORK
4: ROSSA
PART SIX: LISA AND TED
1: PARIS
2: CAPRI
3: LONDON
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Also Available from Pushkin Press
Pushkin Press
Copyright
PART ONE
CHANCE ENCOUNTERS
1
LONDON
THE FIRST TIME I SAW JULIAN SAX he was having dinner with Damian Oxfordshire in a restaurant on Brompton Road and I noticed how the two men seemed satisfied to be in each other’s company. I don’t know why that blurred image has remained impressed on my memory.
2
MADRID
AT THE ITALIAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE, a run-down building only a short distance from the Cathedral, one evening I ate with Matteo Esse and Charles Bloom, who was in Madrid to make a documentary on Velázquez. Matteo Esse is an influential man in the world of Italian culture. An intransigent, excitable controversialist, he was suggesting with great insistence that Bloom take on the artistic direction of the Venice Biennale. Bloom was noncommittal, but it was clear that he was gratified by the idea and he let Matteo Esse flatter him as he drank glass after glass of Spanish red. At a certain point, I don’t exactly remember why, the conversation moved on to Julian Sax. They talked about him enthusiastically; both of them thought he was the greatest living artist and felt that it would be only right to organise an exhibition of Sax’s work in Venice as soon as possible. It could be presented as an exceptional event within the context of the Biennale. I must say that I was curious and even amazed at how seriously Bloom took Esse’s proposal to direct the Biennale. Perhaps he had already thought of this position on other occasions. He became so absorbed by this prospect that he even reeled off a list of practical problems that might have hampered the project. Matteo Esse listened to these arguments with indifference; Bloom’s practical requirements didn’t strike him as important because he knew that solutions could be found. The main thing was that Bloom be selected to direct the Biennale. It would have been a fantastic coup because his was a most authoritative and intelligent voice in the field of contemporary art, a solitary voice and one averse to passing fashions. The two men got along well and thought highly of each other precisely because they detested the fashionable and the commonplace. Both were hot-blooded and subject to unpredictable mood swings.
3
NEW YORK
A FEW MONTHS LATER, we went with Matteo Esse to visit Bloom in his Soho apartment. It was a large loft furnished only with bookshelves and piles of books scattered about, two sofas upholstered in white canvas and a table with two chairs. Charles, dressed in white, was in high spirits and said openly that he was ready to come to Italy. But things had gone otherwise and at the Biennale they had appointed another director whose idea of contemporary art was poles apart from that of Charles Bloom and Matteo Esse. So, despite repeated telephone calls and messages, for a long time Charles Bloom took no further part in our lives and became inaccessible. Perhaps he had taken umbrage or perhaps he had forgotten about it, throwing himself into another project. Matteo Esse continued to deplore the failure to choose Bloom as a terrible shame and lack of vision.
4
ROME
I HAD A VISIT FROM PAUL, an English friend and a well known journalist who had to write a piece on Italian politics and wanted some advice on how to go about things and whom to meet. I asked him:
“How are you? How’s life?”
“Great, I have a young wife and a little boy. At my age it’s all terribly exciting.”
“When did you get married?”
“Two years ago, with Lidia Sax. Maybe you met her when she lived in Italy.”
“Yes, she’s Julian’s daughter. Do you know her father well?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been hearing a lot about him recently and I felt like interviewing him.”
“I don’t think that’ll be too easy, he hates giving interviews.”
“Could you help me out?”
“Yes, of course, I’ll tell Lidia as soon as I get back to London.”
5
LONDON
I CALLED PAUL, but he had given me a wrong number. The people who answered were strange, ill at ease, as if they knew and didn’t want to say anything. I felt I had been deliberately misled, until a mutual friend gave me the right number. I spoke with Paul and Lidia, who suggested I write a letter to her father. She would take it to him, but she told me straight off that she could guarantee me nothing. Then she asked me kindly:
“Would you like to have lunch with Paul and me tomorrow?”
I accepted because I felt like spending time with them and because I wanted to get a better idea of who Julian Sax really was. But then Lidia called me again late that evening:
“I’m sorry, but it won’t be possible to meet up because I have to go to Brighton with my son. We’ll do it another time. I’ll let you know if my father replies, but as I told you I wouldn’t get your hopes up. He avoids interviews and in any case he never has the time.”
One evening, in the home of some English friends, I met a gentleman who was a splendidly ironic, inexhaustible conversationalist. On learning that I was Italian and worked in the art field, he asked:
“Do you know Matteo Esse, by any chance?”
“Yes, we’re friends.”
“I haven’t seen him in ages. We met in Venice years ago; he was very young, extraordinary. He took us to see splendid things that aren’t very well known and he had a fascinating way of talking about art. What happened to him?”
“He’s fine, still the same, always engaged in thousands of battles! He wanted Charles Bloom to direct the Biennale and organise an exhibition of Julian Sax’s work, but it didn’t come off.”
“Of course, Sax is a very special artist and an exhibition in Venice would have been marvellous, but with that character of his goodness knows if he would have agreed.”
“Do you know him?”
“Yes, very well.”
“I’d like to meet him, interview him. I tried through his daughter Lidia, but it doesn’t seem easy.”
“I don’t know how much influence Lidia has. I think you should look him up, take him a bottle of fine French red wine. Very expensive wine.”
“But I don’t even know his address!”
“Go to Tony’s, it’s a tea shop near Notting Hill Gate. He’s there every morning at nine.”
“What’s he like?”
“You can’t say he’s an easy man. He has an ambiguous relationship with money and with women. He is very reserved and arrogant too, in a certain sense. But he is undoubtedly an extraordinary artist. He is very capricious and moody, but remember, if you wish to speak with him, the best thing is to take him a bottle of the finest French wine. You’ll see, it’s the only way.”
“But if I don’
t know him, it’ll strike him as odd when I show up with a bottle of wine in a café first thing in the morning!”
“Don’t try to be logical, follow my advice. You’ve nothing to lose, and you’ll see that I’m right.”
I called Damian Oxfordshire, whom I’ve known for years, because I knew that in the past he had shown Sax’s work in his gallery and that they were close friends. I wanted to know if he thought it might be possible to interview Sax. He gave me an evasive reply, saying that he would speak to him but that it wasn’t the best time to do so. Then he asked me to drop in at his gallery and I went with Rossa, who had arrived in London in the meantime. Damian has long, white, rather tousled hair and he was wearing a dark blue cashmere jacket with leather buttons, light grey flannels, and a bright blue shirt that highlighted the colour of his eyes. He greeted us in his affected, ironic way, then, as if shaking off his natural indifference, he enthusiastically showed us a Van Gogh from his Saint-Rémy period, sitting on an easel.
“I’ve just sold it to an American museum. It’s very fine, don’t you think?”
“Yes, it’s wonderful! And that portrait of a woman on the other easel?” I asked him curiously.
“It’s a painting by Julian Sax. Oh, I know that you want to interview him, but I’m not sure if that will be possible. He is very tired and I haven’t seen him for a bit. The next time you come to London we’ll organise a meeting.”
“Who is the woman in the portrait?”
“A model who used to live with him and gave him a lot of problems. Julian left her and fell for a fat, imposing black woman, whose portrait he is doing. I know that they have an excessively active sexual relationship, unwise for a man of his age. It’s odd, because he’s a hypochondriac. But to justify himself to me he says that theirs is first and foremost an intellectual relationship.”
“I’d like to interview him because I don’t think he is sufficiently well known in Italy.”
Damian’s attention had wandered from the conversation, he wasn’t interested in knowing whether Sax was well known or not in Italy. For him it was merely a boring detail. He said goodbye politely but impatiently, as if he had suddenly felt an urgent need to be on his own:
“So, let me know when you’re coming back to London and we can meet up with Julian.”
6
ROME
BY THEN I COULDN’T get the idea of meeting or interviewing Sax out of my mind. I called Damian again to tell him I was coming back to London and to remind him that he had said he would arrange a meeting with Sax.
“I’m sorry but he has had a bad bout of pneumonia and is struggling to get back on his feet. Right now, he’s not seeing anyone.”
“What’s happening with his love affair with the fat woman, the black one?”
“The portrait is finished and so is the affair. The way it always is with him.”
“What’s the portrait like?”
“Julian is pleased with it: I haven’t seen it yet. When are you coming?”
“Next Thursday.”
“Unfortunately I shall be in Jamaica.”
Perhaps it was true, perhaps it was an excuse, but I understood that there was no longer any point in discussing Sax with Damian.
7
LONDON
EARLY IN THE MORNING I WENT to Tony’s, the café where Matteo Esse’s English friend told me I would see Sax. You enter through a baker’s and then go down a flight of stairs that leads to a large room with round tables and light-coloured rattan chairs. There were few people about, I ordered a coffee, read the paper and then I asked a waitress who had a kindly look:
“Have you seen Mr Sax?”
“Yes, he was here, but he’s already gone.”
As I left I noticed that next door there was a shop where they sell pretty much everything. I took a look around and to make things look natural I bought a packet of cigarettes. I asked the Indian man who was sitting behind the counter:
“Do you know Julian Sax by any chance?”
“Yes, he always comes here to buy the papers. He’s only just left.”
“Where does he live?”
“Around the corner.”
I set off along the pavement and spotted a crowd coming and going in front of an antique dealer’s where they sold mirrors. I asked:
“Do you know where Mr Sax lives?”
“See those green plants, those clumps of bamboo that hide that dark house?”
“Yes.”
“Right, that’s where he lives.”
I felt intimidated at having attained my goal. Two windows were lit up, one on the ground floor, the other on the first floor. I screwed up my courage, rang the doorbell and shortly after that it was opened by a young man wearing jeans, trainers and a plaid shirt. He had blue eyes and spoke English with an American accent. Looking at me in surprise he asked:
“What do you want?”
“I’d like to talk to Mr Sax.”
“I’m sorry, but who are you and who told you that Mr Sax lives here?”
“The man who works in the antique shop where they sell mirrors, here, on this very street.”
“Mr Sax has no time, he never receives anyone. Speak to his lawyer.”
“I’d like to talk to him, organise an exhibition in Italy for him.”
“That’s not possible right now.”
“I’d like him to hold an exhibition in Venice, he would be supported by two critics who have an unbounded admiration for him, Matteo Esse and Charles Bloom.”
“Just a moment, please.”
The door was left ajar and I understood that the young man had gone into the room on the ground floor where Sax was. I thought of following him, but I didn’t. The boy with the plaid shirt reappeared. He handed me an envelope from the Larry Gagosian Art Gallery on which he had written the name and telephone number of a lawyer to whom I might speak if I needed any information. He said goodbye with a slightly embarrassed smile and closed the black door in my face.
I don’t know if Sax had seen me from the window or not. I was disappointed at having got so close to him and having lacked the courage to assert myself.
PART TWO
THE BIRTH OF AN OBSESSION
1
LONDON
AS SOON AS I GOT BACK to the hotel, I told Rossa right away about all that had happened and then I called the lawyer, who asked me in brusque and suspicious tones to send her a letter with a clear explanation of my proposal.
Later on we went for a stroll in Hyde Park and at a certain point Rossa asked me to take her to see Sax’s house. We passed in front of it in a taxi, then I pointed out Tony’s to her. Without a second’s hesitation Rossa told the taxi driver to stop:
“Let’s go and have lunch there, I bet you we’ll meet him.”
Sax was sitting at a corner table, drinking tea and eating dry biscuits as he chatted with a young, pregnant woman. Feeling euphoric, we sat down at a table almost in front of them. Rossa looked at him and he looked back. Sax had piercing blue eyes and unkempt, short grey hair. He was wearing an ivory-coloured pullover of an unusual shape, too short and too wide, and around his neck he had knotted a small foulard. I didn’t have the courage to get up and go to speak to him. I was intimidated by his presence and wondered, after what had happened a few hours before at his own front door, if he had recognised me. In the meantime he and the young pregnant woman had stood up and were saying goodbye, exchanging a friendly kiss. She wasn’t a lover, perhaps she was one of his daughters.
Rossa was shaken, she told me that Sax was a seductive man with a disturbing gaze.
My daughter Sole, who lives in London, had met him some years before during a weekend in the country and had found him disagreeable, garrulous and petulant. She remembered him as a short man, elegant, a heavy smoker. When Rossa and I told her about our encounter, she gave an ironic smile. I asked her to meet us at eight the next morning for coffee at Tony’s. If Sax were to show up, maybe she could introduce me.
I waited f
or Sole for ten minutes or so, then she came in wearing a dark jacket and a black woollen beret.
She is twenty-five, very pretty, with dark, very expressive eyes. You can tell her state of mind immediately from the look in her eyes.
We went down to the tearoom and ordered coffee. As we waited for Sax we talked about ourselves. She began by saying:
“I know I’m difficult. I like only handsome, weak men. Older men are attracted to me, while I am attracted to younger men. But it’s more difficult with younger men. I intimidate them, or maybe I’m too shy and spoil things before they happen.”
It was the first time my daughter had spoken to me this way. I no longer felt like a father, we were a man and a woman and I was listening to her talk.
Every so often we would glance absently at the stairs, but Sax didn’t appear. Sole said:
“I don’t understand why you’re so interested in him.”
“Maybe because I’m always on the move and he’s always in the same place. Maybe because I fritter away my time and he’s focussed. Maybe because everything he does is over the top and I’m too cautious. What’s more, I’m fascinated by the fact that he is the grandson of Ludwig Sax, the most important scientist of the last century! Maybe I envy him because I would have liked to have his destiny.”