by Alain Elkann
That day at Wilton’s we were relaxed and talked of our affairs in great intimacy, as happens between husband and wife. The delightful thing about marriage is that there’s no need to hurry. There is none of the stress of having to take leave of each other, of not knowing when you will see each other again. There is a tenderness, recreated every day, every night in bed and that is the basis of marriage. Sometimes you have to part, but this is followed by a return and you love each other even more. Disagreements lose their edge because neither of the two wishes to ruin a relationship made up of friends, habits common to both and a strength inherent to the couple. Husband and wife are united by many small things, such as, in our case, lunching at Wilton’s and eating the same things every time, hoping that there will always be the same grilled sole, the same black bread, the puréed spinach, the chilled Chablis, a piece of Stilton to eat with celery and a glass of port. Marriage is not about novelty, and even the most curious people don’t want novelty all the time. We grow fond of things that have been used, mended, resoled, repaired, because they have become truly ours.
That’s why I like to be alone with Rossa. Looking at her, I realise that even though time has left its mark on her face, it is as if her beauty has grown, become more precious, more real.
We went to the Royal Academy, where there was a Matisse exhibition: pictures, drawings and fabrics. I knew that Rossa had a weakness for Matisse.
That evening Sole had organised a dinner, she wanted to introduce us to her friends. It was a sweet thought on her part. I like it when she includes us in her life. I know that growing up hadn’t been easy for her, that my divorce from her mother had made her suffer very much. Rossa too felt that it had always been hard for her to win acceptance in life and gets furious when she feels that people don’t appreciate her, or take her for granted. Rossa and Sole became friends, they understand and respect each other. They are both aware of their charm, but also insecure. And it is that insecurity that makes them so attractive.
Although I intend to shelve my obsession for Sax, I wonder why I am so drawn to painters and painting. Perhaps it’s because they remind me of love stories. The most awful things can occur all around us, savage wars can break out, but a passionate affair lives beyond all laws because it has its own special laws. And the same holds for art. The First World War breaks out, there is the terrible battle of Verdun with its millions of dead and Matisse paints pictures that remind him of his winters in Tangiers, bowls of goldfish, piano lessons and portraits. During the Second World War, the photographer Brassaï used to go every day to Picasso’s studio in rue des Grands-Augustins, while the city was under German occupation. In his diary he describes Picasso’s chaotic habits, his secretary Sabartés, the cafés of Saint-Germain, Dora Maar—who had taken over from Marie-Thérèse Walter in his life—and a great exhibition of Matisse’s work. You never sense the presence of the Nazis. The conversation is only about painting, models, friends and ideas, as if there were no war going on. Picasso had painted Guernica in that same studio.
Somewhat similarly, Sax lives and works indifferent to the world around him, except for his family and a handful of friends. He is immersed in his pictures and in his relations with his models, male and female alike. He works in extremely long sessions, with brief pauses. He portrays a humanity that is deformed, devastated, suffering, all fat and wrinkles.
I too would like to be a great artist and paint Rossa’s portrait. I’d like to stay in the studio for hours looking at her, trying to discover her, interpret her. Perhaps I would arrive at a better understanding of that cheerful, elusive woman who loves to be alone and seems to prefer animals above all other things. A portrait with a black cat in her lap or nude with stray dogs. Every so often there would be breaks in which to make love and satisfy the intense desire that would have been aroused by my looking at her. I’m not very sure I know what love is. In men, Rossa looks for the security she lost when her parents died. I don’t know if she has abandoned all her men and if she is truly in love with me. I don’t know why she decided to marry me of all people, as I am not a powerful or reassuring man. I am not a genius who could immortalise her forever. This is why I envy Sax. Through his work, he can dominate any woman: the most sophisticated, the most cultured, or the coarsest, who on seeing herself portrayed reacts with either love or hate, but in both cases feels mastered and flattered. Literature today no longer has that power.
“Would you have liked to be Amélie, Matisse’s wife?” I asked Rossa.
“No, I’m happy to be your wife.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, it was my choice and I’m fine like this. I want to be with you.”
Rossa couldn’t care less for all my fantasies about Sax, she doesn’t give them a thought. Women are hard to decipher because they love strength, but weakness too. They want to be reassured, but also to reassure, they want to dominate but also to be dominated. A man can never really penetrate the mystery that is woman, understand all her fears, disappointments, hopes; he can never bridge the gap and does not have that mysterious and unpredictable je ne sais quoi that makes the heart beat faster and lends music to life. Perhaps the best way to live with a woman is to let yourself go, without trying to understand. No pleasure can be greater than the profound feeling of a love shared.
PART FOUR
TOWARDS ENVY
1
LONDON
I CAN’T GET SAX OUT OF MY MIND. If I ever write about him, I’d like my book to become as important as one of his paintings, I would like critics all over the world to discuss it. I would like it to arouse the curiosity of readers, who would say to themselves “It’s a masterpiece!”
Taking advantage of the fact that Rossa wakes up late, the day after our arrival in London I went to Tony’s early in the morning, without even knowing why, as if it were a ritual.
In the room where they serve breakfast I was caught on the wrong foot straight away. I saw Julian Sax talking to a rather chubby fortyish-looking woman with blondish hair, wearing a creased beige raincoat. She was writing things down in what looked like a school notebook, while he answered her questions. I sat down at the next table, which luckily was free, trying not to be noticed. Her accent said Oxford and an upper-class family background. In low, deliberately disagreeable tones, he was telling her why he had stopped gambling.
“There’s no fun in it. Even if I lose it’s all the same. No frisson.”
“Are you very rich?”
“Very. But I already own two houses, a Bentley. All I do is work. I don’t buy anything. Most of the time I don’t even buy wine, people give it to me. When I was a playboy I gambled, I lost and I had no money. In fact I was in debt.”
“Why did you have so many children?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I like making women pregnant.”
“But that’s irresponsible.”
“Could be.”
“Why do you make women suffer?”
“I don’t know. It’s not that I want to make them suffer. I am always sincere. I fall in love and at first I love them far too much, then I forget them.”
“What, you forget them?”
“It’s not my fault. It happens. At a certain point my attention wanders, love fades and I can no longer paint their portrait.”
“Why? When you love a woman does she always become your model?”
“Usually, but recently I’ve been painting children, grandchildren, dogs and friends.”
“And a very young female model too.”
“Yes.”
“Your paintings provide a detailed picture of a coarse, suffering, repugnant humanity. Fat, soft bodies, wearied by life, worn-out faces. Why?”
“Because that’s how I see them, how I paint them. I don’t need to deform them, make them abstract or grotesque as Picasso did.”
“Wasn’t Picasso a good artist?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Who are the great artists?”
“Velázquez, Goya, Rembrandt.”
“Have you read Bloom’s book on Velázquez?”
“Yes, it says a lot about Bloom and little about Velázquez.”
“Bloom has said that you are the Noel Coward of twentieth-century painting.”
“Maybe because we were both photographed by Cecil Beaton. As a young man Bloom was slim, handsome, a playboy.”
“And now?”
“He drinks, leads a boring life, and he’s forever talking about his children.”
“What relationship do you have with your children?”
“Weren’t we supposed to be discussing my exhibition?”
“So, tell me, why did you choose to hold it in Venice?”
“Someone suggested the idea to my dealer, I’m not involved with such matters. A few months ago my assistant told me that a fellow had come looking for me. He wanted to suggest that I hold an exhibition in Italy. I didn’t feel like talking to him. If I had to choose a place, I would go to Madrid, but I don’t travel any more.”
“Will you go to Venice for the opening?”
“No, that’s quite out of the question. I must work, I have no time.”
“Are you in love with your young female model?”
“No, I am painting her. Now, excuse me, but I have to finish her portrait. It has to be ready for the Venice exhibition.”
As if seized by some fit he got up and went off without even saying goodbye.
With unexpected nonchalance, I went up to the journalist, who was sitting there flabbergasted.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, but was that Julian Sax you were talking to, by any chance?”
“Yes, it was,” she replied, vexed not so much because I was bothering her but for the way in which he had left, indifferent, churlish.
“I was well aware that he is full of himself, a man who thinks he can use other people any way he feels! Luckily I took lots of notes.”
“He is an extraordinary artist.”
“He’s not my type and what’s more he was very cruel to a friend of mine. He is a perverse man, an egotist.”
“But he is a great artist.”
“They say that because he’s the only survivor of his generation.”
“Why did you interview him?”
“My editor asked me to. I didn’t want to, but he persuaded me. I was prejudiced and I was right. I cannot bear ill-mannered, presumptuous people. But if you want to be a real professional then there cannot be any personal discriminations.”
“My wife and daughter don’t like him either.”
“Do you know him?”
“No, but I know a lot about him.”
“How is that?”
“Matteo Esse, an Italian art expert, and the Australian critic Charles Bloom have both talked to me a lot about him. But it’s a long story.”
“Do you know Bloom?”
“Yes, I met him two or three times in Madrid and New York. He is a very talented man with highly personal tastes.”
“Sax just told me that he has become monotonous.”
“I don’t know what he was like before, but he strikes me as a very intelligent man, with original ideas … not to mention an unexpected sentimental streak.”
“Sax says he was a playboy.”
“I wouldn’t know. Matteo Esse wanted him to direct the Venice Biennale, but things didn’t work out that way.”
I was standing and the blonde journalist with her glasses, blue eyes and rather puffy face was looking at me without seeing me. Although her English was deliberately refined, it was as if she were talking to a taxi driver; she didn’t ask me if I wanted to sit down, and I, so as not to interrupt the conversation, pretended I hadn’t noticed her indifference and carried on talking to her as if we knew each other.
“Which paper is running your interview?”
“The Sunday Times.”
“Will you be going to Venice to see the exhibition?”
“I really don’t think so and he’s not going either. He’s right, openings, especially your own, are frightfully boring. Moreover, if you are already the best paid artist in the world, what more could one wish for?”
“I confess that I am terribly envious of him, I’d like to write books as successful as his pictures. But I’ll never succeed.”
“I don’t see what there is to envy in a person like that, who respects nothing and nobody. There is a limit even to egotism. Besides, in my view, he is not such a great artist and I’m not at all certain that he will go down in history. Of the English artists, together with Turner or Constable or Gainsborough, only Bacon will be remembered. He was far madder, intriguing and he had a superior talent. Oh, I’m sorry, my name is Tessa Evans.”
“Giacomo Longhi.”
“Are you Italian?”
“Yes.”
“How lucky you are, I love Italy! I hate living here where it rains all the time. I’d like to go back to Rome or Kabul.”
The talk moved on to Kabul, then Sarajevo, Rome. I was still standing, she was still sitting. At a certain point, as if she had suddenly awakened, she said in vexed tones:
“I must go, thanks, see you.”
There is always something repressed about the way the English behave. In conversation they alternate moments of the most enjoyable good humour with sudden bursts of nervous irritability, almost intolerance. Tessa left Tony’s, in a hurry, just as Sax had done shortly before.
I called Rossa on her mobile, but it was switched off, so I took a cab and asked to be taken to Jermyn Street, where I wanted to do some shopping. I chose two shirts, one blue and another with red and white stripes from Turnbull & Asser, and then a pair of black lace-up shoes, very simple, from New & Lingwood. I always buy the same things, as if I were afraid they might stop producing them.
London is a fantastic city for those little luxuries that still survive a great colonial empire. There is a lingering echo of a society that, although less wealthy than before, still cannot manage to forget its privileges.
Perhaps Sax had agreed to be interviewed by Tessa Evans because he was sensible of the fact that she belonged to the social class that had ruled the world a century before.
Basically, Sax was satisfied with his role as a great artist, capricious and irreverent towards anyone, including the royal family, whose portraits he had painted without making any compromises.
Tessa was a journalist from a good family who had chosen not to marry an English or Scottish aristocrat and to end up in a castle with lots of children, but to live independently, while conserving all the affectations of her social background. She didn’t like Sax because, since he made portraits of the royal family, flirted with upper class girls, had millionaire friends and the tastes of a playboy, he wasn’t the kind of man she could fall in love with. She was drawn to uncouth, coarse men who spoke English with a foreign accent and aroused in her the taste for an unconventional and, if possible, dangerous love affair.
Sax was born in Germany, but had become English, an English artist. He was not the real man, the hero, the revolutionary who would have made Tessa fall for him.
Rossa answered the phone, but I didn’t tell her about the meeting with Tessa. All I asked her was if she wanted me to join her.
“Yes, at Emma Hope’s. I’d like to buy some red shoes with really high heels.”
2
SAX
SOLE SAID: “I saw Sax, a few days ago, at Damian’s place. He was in the company of a young woman. We were sitting next to each other. He struck me as less unpleasant and we had a long talk.”
“What does he talk about?”
“Gossip, children, friends.”
“So you don’t look down on him anymore?”
“I never looked down on him. He is an old man and I’m not sure if I like his work.”
“What’s the girl like?”
“Pretty.”
“Do you think she is his girlfriend?”
“I don’t know, I think she’s his model.”
3
THE SUNDAY TIMES
TESSA EVANS’S ARTICLE on Sax came out; it was fun, well written. She described the artist’s work, his life, his family, his snobbery, his Anglophilia and wound up by justifying him because he is a German Jew who had to flee to England as a child with his parents, who had had to give up a glittering life in Berlin to become foreigners in London.
All the fault of Hitler and the race laws. As if that were not enough, Sax is the grandchild of a scientist who made some very important discoveries. Perhaps this is why he is so egocentric, vain and hooked on success, while looking down on everyone and everything at the same time. He has very little contact with his children and began painting their portraits only recently.
Tessa also told the story of the interview and the abrupt, rude way Sax had left. And then, she added: “Something surreal happened, as soon as Sax had left. I was approached by a stranger who asked me hundreds of questions about my interview with Sax. At the time, my thoughts were elsewhere, and I answered until, just as Sax had suddenly broken off his interview with me, I did the same with him. I have discovered that Sax is not only pursued by masochistic women of the English upper classes, but also by very inquisitive men.” And so, Tessa admitted, the interview had been brilliant, given the interest it had aroused in a stranger. Besides, she asked herself at the end: “Who does one write for, if not for readers one doesn’t know?”
To be considered a great writer, as Sax is considered a great artist, and presuming that I do in fact have a talent, I would have to follow his example: renounce my Italian culture, go to live in London or New York, become English or American, and get myself accepted in the English-speaking literary world. But that world doesn’t exist anymore, great writers and great publishers don’t exist anymore, literary society doesn’t exist anymore, and literature isn’t fashionable anymore; the visual, plastic arts, the world of museums, art galleries, the great auctions, are at the centre of attention and attract large sums of money. This is why Sax is inaccessible. By now, although he has always gone against the flow, flying in the face of fashion, he has become a classic, one of the very few great living painters. Sax fascinates me because he is a part of an extinct race, that of the great personalities. Even in politics there are no more stars like Churchill. The last two legends were Mao and Kennedy. Fidel Castro is still alive, the last solitary survivor.