by L. S. Hilton
OK, Jovana. Dark web, rapeporn, gotcha.
‘No, not telescopes,’ she continued, ‘those things that make patterns with sand?’
‘Kaleidoscopes?’
‘That’s it. And then we are putting them in the carnival crackers with lots of little toys’ – she leaned forward to demonstrate so that Michael did a jiggly moonwalk above her eyeball – ‘so you are opening them and finding some . . . innocent thing – some very, very nasty.’
‘So – it’s about exploitation and the re-perspectivising of the corrupt?’
‘Good words!’ She paused to take a sip of Coke Zero. ‘You are maybe interested?’
‘Definitely. And I have a couple more ideas for you. One is a reworking of an old piece, the other a film installation. A kind of enactment, sort of a play, with lookalikes. A bit Cindy Sherman.’
‘Sounds good. You have a client?’
‘Two. Well, possibly.’
‘Great. It’ll be super to see you again. Do want to crash here?’
‘Thanks – maybe. It would be good to get a feel for what you’re doing.’
‘Sure, sure. You will be in Belgrade when?’
‘Tomorrow.’
21
As the coach droned across Europe, Timothy slept and stared. I stared. Somewhere just over the Slovenian border, he asked me dully why we were going to Belgrade.
‘Firstly, because it’s the last place that they’ll look for us,’ I told him slowly. I explained that I was going to give a message to a man named Raznatovic, that if I could find him and have him agree, it would convince the people who had killed Guiche that we were serious. ‘And we’re going to make some art!’ I added brightly. I knew that I sounded a total flid, yet the horror of Guiche’s death had induced a sort of waking coma in Timothy, a blank-eyed acceptance that I knew what I was doing.
I told him he wouldn’t need to do much, yet, that his part would come later, once I’d found Raznatovic.
‘Anything I say, just go along with it,’ I warned him, but I couldn’t be sure he’d really taken it in.
*
There wasn’t much else to say about the eighteen-hour journey to Belgrade, except that it was as cramped, uncomfortable, dirty, and hypnotically exhausting as one would expect such a trip to be. When we reached the White Town I parked Timothy in the Square Nine Hotel and told him to get his ass to the gym. Maybe the endorphins would cheer him up. We weren’t due to meet Jovana until ten that evening, so I took myself off for a look at the city. The thin coat I’d packed all the way back in Venice did nothing to keep off the freezing wind brattling up from the Danube, but there was no way I was wearing the hideous English fleece. Full-length mink seemed to be more the look in central Belgrade. I’d never been this far east before, and it did feel different, though at first I couldn’t quite sense why. Many of the buildings were eighteenth- and nineteenth-century standard municipal – grand, with solid-balconied thirties apartments mixed in. I found a hipster coffee-shop, Koffein, on a tree-lined square and drank a macchiato while I located the address of Kazbich’s dealership in the guidebook. The menu was printed on brown paper, offering artisanal Balkan breads and dinky lace-topped Kilner jars of berry preserve. Standard beards, flannel shirts and Macbooks; I could have been in Shoreditch. Walking up to the castle district overlooking the river I wove around nut-faced women in approximations of Balkan folk costume selling embroidered tablecloths and lace mats, and implausibly huge men flogging war memorabilia. But for a capital city in the early evening the streets had an eerie stillness to them. Aside from the vendors, every doorway, every corner was crowded with people just . . . standing, with a strange peon-like patience, the wind burling through thick grey hair or headscarves, as though they had long been awaiting something, but had forgotten what it was. Opposite Kazbich’s building was a smart modern gallery, showing retouched early-twentieth-century photos of dwarfish children, vermilion bows festooning long-dead black curls. In the middle of the road, plywood hoardings concealed a gaping pit, and when I looked up, the corner of a dull grey office block was clearly pitted with bullet scars. The bus stop beneath displayed a poster for the latest series of the Kardashians, as if these people hadn’t suffered enough.
Unlike the owners of Koffein, Kazbich was clearly wise to the fact that his native city couldn’t afford irony yet. His space was reassuringly plush and old-fashioned; a bay window latticed in dark wood, a simple black velvet drape cushioning a display of two delicate icons, Byzantine Crucifixions framed in silver net either side of a large monochrome canvas of a naked body builder, massive thighs encircling a marble column. Peering through the door, I saw four similar canvases in heavy gilt mounts, interspersed with more icons; they at least looked like the real thing. It was nearly eight, the gallery was closed, but I stepped back towards the mortar pit before snapping off a few rounds of the display with my phone. Jovana would need inspiration for her commission.
*
The squat where Jovana and her crew worked was famously the biggest artist-occupied building in Europe. A twenty-storey ziggurat in chocolate concrete, the edifice was all the more intimidating for its air of the amateur. It had once been the architectural pride of the Serbian civil service, and the tropical mural of giant toucans and orangutans in what had once been the lobby couldn’t quite exorcise the phantoms of grey-toothed bureaucrats in Soviet suits, of beige plastic and ersatz coffee, of joyless, airless artificiality, a fake headquarters for a fake state whose only currency was cruelty. As Elena might have said, it gave me the creep. The collective’s space was on the tenth floor; Jovana had warned me about the broken lifts, and we began to climb.
Timothy was at least looking rather more alert, but the state of the building was clearly bringing on a sulk, even though the slogans on the walls reassured us that punk was not dead. At the end of each flight we traversed a vast, low, graffiti-covered corridor. Why is anarchy always so samey? The silence was all the more oppressive for the faint, strangled wails of electro pulsing from one of the distant floors above. Abruptly, there was a scuffling behind us, and we turned to see a crowd of shapes moving between the scarred concrete walls, hooded figures, running low. Wordlessly we quickened our pace; behind us, the boys speeded up. I shoved my watch further up the sleeve of my arm under my jacket as we rounded another staircase, panting now, feeling them gaining on us.
‘How many of them?’ Timothy hissed.
‘Lots. Run.’
We broke into a sprint, reached the next landing and bolted across yet another piss-stained floor. Would they have knives? The corridor ended in a huge pair of steel doors, padlocked, dripping with red-sprayed rage.
‘Shit!’ We wheeled, panting.
‘Maybe we can get round them. Either side. Quick as you can and then go down?’
They were fifty metres away, twenty, their faces hidden, feral.
‘Wait until they’re really close. Ready?’
And then a door opened off the side and a burst of hip-hop banged off the ceiling. The kids slowed, pushed back their hoods and, grinning, shuffled into the studio. A woman in a neon bomber poked her head out and waved them in. A dance class. They were late for their dance class. One of them gave us the thumbs up and did a little moonwalk in behind his friends. The door closed again, sealing off the music. Jesus.
Timothy was bent double, heaving, head between his knees.
‘I can’t take this.’
‘I know. But it’s our problem. They were just kids.’
‘I mean, I can’t take this. Not anymore.’
I squatted and pulled his face up towards mine. ‘Look, it’s OK. They weren’t going to mug us. We’re just paranoid.’
‘Really? Why would that be?’
I really didn’t have the energy for another pep talk.
‘Don’t be a dick. We’re here for a reason. Just keep it together. You can do that.’
He nodded miserably.
‘Come on then.’
I led us off t
he way we had come, looking for the next stairwell, but I was shaken. Not by the children, that was just silliness, but by the wave of protectiveness I had suddenly felt towards him, the urge to cradle him and tell him it was all going to be fine.
We took a moment to recover before I knocked on the door of the space. A hatch in another steel door, a cheerful face almost hidden beneath a mobile of piercings.
‘Hey. We’re meeting Jovana. Elisabeth.’ I shot Timothy a look, reminding him to keep quiet.
‘Sure. Come in. D’you want a tea? We’ve got mint or violet?’
‘Violet would be lovely, thanks, umm . . .?’
‘Vlado.’
It seemed colder inside the studio than on the wind-scoured boulevard. Divided into cubicles by hanging sheets, I recognised the wire-strewn space from the collective’s website. About twenty people were milling about, most of them dressed in fatigues and metalwork like Vlado, a couple concentrated on canvases propped against the walls, others just smoking and chatting, the majority gathered around a bank of laptops on a large central table. Jovana’s candy-pink dreadlocks glowed in the middle.
‘Elisabeth! Great to see you again!’ Her English was comically accented, but perfect. I put my cheek against the swirl of indigo Cyrillic lettering tattooed around her left eye.
‘This is Timothy. He’s my intern. From Paris. Why don’t you help Vlado with the tea, Timothy?’
He looked blank, so I repeated it in French and he shuffled off.
‘So, Jovana. Three things. First, can we take up your offer to stay for a couple of days – from tomorrow? I want to get a feel for the work now I have the chance, and it would be good experience for Timothy. We’ll contribute, of course.’
‘Sure, no problem. It’s not exactly five star though,’ Jovana added doubtfully.
‘It will be an honour, thanks. Two – I have something here. I need you to make me a design – fairly quick. Tomorrow, hopefully. Just mock it up on your laptop, I only need a screenshot. There’s a chance of a commission from a client here in Belgrade,’ I explained grandly.
‘Fantastic!’
There didn’t seem to be much in the way of running water in the studio. But naturally the Wi-Fi was perfect. In a few minutes, Jovana was swinging the shots I had taken of Kazbich’s window display around on her screen.
‘And then I need you to add – something like this?’ I showed her an image of a Venetian icon I’d downloaded at the hotel.
‘No problem.’
‘Before you start though – thank you –’ I paused to take a sip of scalding floral tea from a proffered mug decorated with the Duchess of Cambridge – ‘there’s the third thing. Quite big. An installation for another client, in Switzerland. Kind of thematically linked with your rapeporn stuff.’
‘Cool.’
‘But maybe – toned down a bit?’
‘Why?’
‘It’s pretty extreme, what you were telling me about.’
Jovana gave me an appraising look. ‘The Prada Foundation are showing the Kienholzes’ Jody, Jody, Jody soon, in Milan. Have you seen it?’
I had, in photos. I wished I hadn’t. Child abuse wasn’t my thing, aesthetically.
‘So he made that in, like, 1994. You wanna keep up, you gotta be extreme. Just business.’
When did disgust become a measure of artistic value? No one is really appalled to see shit, used tampons or plastic genitalia any more – what else would one expect to find in a gallery? So it follows that if all you have to offer as an artist is offensiveness, then as soon as it becomes predictable you have to push it further.
‘But this stuff is really obnoxious,’ I objected.
‘Exactly,’ Jovana said placidly. ‘So, do you want to use it?’
‘I suppose so. Are you interested?’
‘Always.’
*
I was back at Kazbich’s gallery at eleven the next day, the first part of Jovana’s work loaded into the phone. My clothes were getting that ratty look of things that have been worn too often, but I couldn’t mind about that – I’d pulled a black cashmere crew-neck over the trusty Miu Miu pants and scraped my hair into a high topknot, simple and serious.
‘Can I help you?’ The girl on the desk looked surprised at a walk-in, quickly shoving a magazine and an ashtray into her desk. She wore a black felt pinafore over a vintage seventies paisley shirt with a pointed collar. Convincing enough, but the bag at her feet was vinyl and her skin was bad. Not a Beograd princess playing curator, most likely a student part-timer.
‘Maybe, I hope so,’ I answered warily. I half expected Kazbich to appear like Nosferatu from behind a door. I handed over one of my Gentileschi business cards. ‘My name is Elisabeth Teerlinc. I have a piece which I think could interest one of your regular clients.’
I clicked on Jovana’s montage and handed it over. The girl gave it a cursory glance, her gaze far more focused on the three hundred-euro notes I’d tucked between the phone and its cover.
‘So, I was hoping that you might be able to contact him for me. I’m only here for a day or so, and I think he would be seriously interested.’ I put the phone and the money firmly back in my bag and let the silence swell between us.
‘What is the client’s name, please?’
‘Dejan Raznatovic,’ I answered, all innocence.
Her features scrambled in dissembled shock.
‘I-I don’t know who you mean.’
I took my cigarettes from my bag. ‘Go on, it’s all right. You do. It’s OK. Dr Kazbich came to my gallery in Venice. I know he works for Mr Yermolov too. Really.’ I offered her the pack, which happened to contain another two hundred. The average wage in Serbia is just under four hundred euros a month. I removed a cigarette and lit up, handed her the pack. She took one, stowed the pack in her desk and retrieved the ashtray. I waited a couple of drags, then added that I had tried calling Dr Kazbich but been unable to reach him, and since I was in Belgrade visiting my artists at Xaoc Collective, I thought I’d drop in.
‘You know Xaoc?’ Her face brightened.
‘Sure.’ Jovana and co. were pretty big in Serbia, regular rock stars. ‘I’ve just come from their space. They have some pretty crazy parties there.’
‘I guess I could have a look . . .’
‘Of course you could,’ I encouraged her, conspiratorial.
‘If I could just see the – er – piece again?’
I raised an eyebrow and handed her the phone in its case. ‘Naturally.’
She sat back at her desk and began to make a show of running through the gallery’s database.
‘They’re having a thing this weekend,’ I mentioned casually. ‘A secret gig. Vladimir Acic is playing.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. I won’t make it, but I’m sure I could arrange for you to go. Just need your name . . .’
Her eyes narrowed, sliding over me, assessing. Had I overdone it? I pretended to be distracted by one of the Renaissance bodybuilders, setting my bag on the desk next to her and letting it fall open so she could see the label.
‘These are quite nice. Are you an artist yourself?’
‘Yes, I am. Sculpture, mostly.’
Bingo.
‘Really? Then you should definitely meet Jovana.’ I smiled, in what I hoped was a sisterly fashion. Not a look I’d practised much.
‘So . . . er, yes, we do have a Mr Raznatovic.’
‘And you can call him? Don’t forget to write your name down for Jovana.’
*
The assistant made several calls – even though she was speaking Serbian I could tell she was nervous – and fifteen minutes later I had a date with Dejan. Leaving the gallery, I thought I would give her name to Jovana; you never knew, she might turn out to be talented, though I had a feeling that Vladimir might be cancelling his gig.
*
Timothy was less than thrilled about our new quarters, which I felt showed a distinct lack of imagination on his part. At least his sulki
ng was now directed at the grim foam mattresses and sleeping bags that now comprised our bedroom, distracting him from his suffering over Edouard, though I tried to persuade him that documenting the activities at the squat would be a great inspiration for his portfolio for fashion school.
Making my own toilette with the aid of a single cold tap in what had once been an office kitchen was a more immediate preoccupation. I boiled the kettle and took a sponge bath and did my face as best I could with a compact mirror. Eres lingerie in fine black mesh and the one smart outfit my bag contained, a charcoal tussore Lanvin dress with a deep pleat in the back, which I’d had the hotel steam out before we left, did well enough, but I felt irritatingly badly finished. I carried my punched-leather Alaïa sandals barefoot down the nine flights of stairs, and cleaned the soles of my feet with a wet wipe on the faux marble tiles of the lobby before inelegantly drawing my black hold-ups into place. Dejan was nearly fifty, the right generation to respond to stockings.
The restaurant Dejan had named to Kazbich’s assistant was on the curve of the Danube, beneath the walls of Belgrade’s old castle. What had once been wharfs and warehouses had been transformed into a fashionable drag of restaurants and bars overlooking the water. Just before eight, I joined the swarm of girls teetering determinedly along the quay, all of us ungainly on our heels over the wide cobbles. Serbia’s political isolation might have screwed their economy, but it had done wonders on the eugenics front. Most of the girls had runway model figures, hovering around six foot, endless racehorse thighs displayed in clinging minidresses or tiny skirts which paid no due to the weather. They were naturally lovely, at least under the layers of make-up and false eyelashes, but the thing I really noticed was the hair. This was a tough country, and everything that could be done to a hairstyle had been stoically endured. Bleached, blow-dried, backcombed, tongued, teased, spritzed and sprayed, the Cold War might have been long over, but as far as these girls’ do’s were concerned, the Berlin Wall was still intact. Defiant, magnificent: in the competition for happiness, they weren’t going to be bested by a sloppy extension.