Yet how attentive he used to be. When I was about five, I began to have what several specialists long and unsuccessfully treated as insomnia. Finally it became clear that I simply need less sleep than normal people and can even stay awake for nights on end without adverse consequences. Before that, he left no stone unturned in search of the reason and made up for the subsequent failure with an indeterminate feeling of guilt with genetic or perhaps mythical roots. He seized that guilt with both hands and repented, and in nights like that he’d come in countless times to assure himself that I still wasn’t sleeping. Or he’d stay and play ludo with me all night until dawn and then trudge off to work, all worried and worn, although I assured him that I wasn’t afraid of the dark and would rather be doing things by myself. Parental love seems not to know the borders of reason. It only seems to come in forms you don’t need.
In the tram on the way home (it was nice to use the word ‘home’ even though I didn’t feel I had one of my own) something happened which I needed like I needed a hole in the head: I ran into the professor I’d graduated under. She was sitting exactly opposite the door and our gazes locked; there was no escape. A twitch of unease flitted across her face but was instantly replaced by an almost maternal benevolence.
‘How beautiful you’ve become,’ she exclaimed. ‘The years have done you good! How long has it been since we first…’
‘Thirteen years.’
‘Thirteen? Goodness me, and I remember that girl as if it was yesterday: clumsy and scatty, but with such big eyes, avid for everything…’
Err, yes. And then she had beamed forth and nourished those eyes with light. There was I, pure as mountain dew; and she with her tutor’s cap and shepherd’s crosier led the way, guarding and guiding me around the precipice.
‘How are things?’ I asked.
‘Oh, you know, doctor’s appointments and diagnoses by the bagful. They find much more than they’re looking for! You go in with a minor complaint and they end up putting a whole cohort of colleagues to work on you and turn your body into a building site. You come out sicker than you went in! The diagnoses let you lay a mosaic of your manifold, fatal deformations. Things you didn’t even feel before now become unforgettable once you know what they’re called. It drives out all your other thoughts. Oh, this is my stop… It was really great seeing you. You really should call some time and drop in so we can have a good chat! You haven’t told me your news.’
And with that she was gone. Not a word about the invitations I’d sent her for the exhibitions or everything that had been written about them. As if she herself hadn’t talked about me to whoever wanted to listen for years already, though in a different tone, because someone had pronounced one of my paintings to be better than all of hers. Quite an insignificant someone, but cause enough for her to blast my first portfolio after recognising it as a blatant, outrageously impudent betrayal of all she’d taught me; at the same time it revealed my mediocrity. She didn’t stop at being offended but went to lengths to help curators and grant-giving commissions to bypass my work.
In first year she had really welcomed me and treated me in a motherly way. But rather than that encouraging me, it aroused the envy of others and put me in an awkward position. She made no attempt to conceal that she treated me differently and that I meant more to her than the others in class. She praised my paintings with shouts of enthusiasm; she also showed them to later years as an example of how to apply the paint, how patiently layer after layer had to be done, and above all as proof that effort and perseverance counted for much more than talent.
No doubt she saw in me, or wanted to see in me, a reflection of herself at the start of her career–of what she should or would have become if her cards had been laid a little differently. Fortune smiled on her and she was able to go abroad at an early stage. She had notable exhibitions, received several flattering offers and was awarded a few prizes, and then she got pregnant in the middle of it all. She returned and accepted a job offer at the Academy shortly after the birth of her son. She dedicated herself to him when he was small, to the detriment of her painting. And today they say that she’s transformed the degree course with organisational skill as well as human warmth and the rare inclination to devote herself to her students. When her son was ten, he was hit and killed by a truck on his way home from school.
That probably also attached her to me. There were five or six of us in the class, and we all knew each other’s family situation. She must have sensed my lack of a mother. On her initiative, I used to visit her at home, and we even went out together. She asked me about everything, and like an elder sister she really wanted to be part of my future, as well as my current pursuits and relationships. She acted as if our twenty years’ age difference was irrelevant and showed understanding without being judgemental, even for things I was ashamed of myself. I found that increasingly suffocating as time went by. The portfolio I prepared in secret to surprise and perhaps even amaze her was above all a gasp for air, a way of showing myself that I could breathe without a respirator.
I really didn’t expect her feelings to shift to the opposite extreme. Or that she would cease to be important to me so soon. I even found certain enjoyment in the obstacles she set in my path. It also made me sad, of course. But when something in me dies I can lament as much as I like–there’s no reanimating it.
She’d also returned to painting. And very successfully too, judging by the critiques. She was no longer invited abroad, but television crews came to every exhibition. Her third monograph had been published, and each of them added a little more to the specific weight and universal human depth of her opus, its historical breadth and span. She displayed exceptional sensitivity to relations with the state apparatus and institutional art: parties of both the right and the left commissioned her to produce works on patriotic Croatian themes and crowned her with laurels. She’d already earned herself a posthumous bronze bust in the Academy foyer, beyond any doubt, and could now settle down and occupy herself with her various medical conditions.
According to the study guide, at least, you could enrol in tertiary studies without having finished high-school, so I tried the first time after finishing year eleven. Although the next year I was just under the cut-off, like everyone who applied to enter those hallowed halls I felt that no genius could make the grade without aid from an insider. Father tried hard to persuade me to give up my attempts. When he saw he was unsuccessful, he asked one of the senior staff at the Academy, an acquaintance from his youth, to take me on for what amounted to private lessons. So I went to his studio for months and painted while he was busy with various other things, drank at the pub across the street or, much more rarely, produced art of his own.
There are intrinsic necessities in the choice of media. The material itself likes to choose the artist and incarnate their soul. My mentor was chosen by polyester at an early age. He fused with it and scorned all other sculptural media. Everything else, even clay, has its firmness, stability and character, but polyester is amorphous–a gooey mass. I personally find it hard to restrain my revulsion when I touch it. Besides, it’s toxic: the fumes had avidly penetrated his brain and eaten away at him, and the end result was spectacular. But that’s how my teacher built his international reputation. When the polyester trend came along, he not only introduced it here but distinguished himself among its proponents around the world. And it didn’t bother him or those who made him chair of the sculpture department that, in spirit, he hadn’t left his native village. Like the majority of Croatian sculptors, he came from rugged limestone country. The natural forms of those landscapes are inspirational: they create an instinct for relief, volume, and shaping things with one’s hands. They sculpt stone patterns in their own image in the artist’s mind. His whole mental world was like a mountain range: immobile and eternal. Albeit cast in polyester resin. Nothing else interested him–neither contemporary developments nor art history.
To what extent that qualified him for ushering me into the
world of art was less important than him agreeing to take me under his wing. At the first of our lessons he tore up the pictures I brought along: how conceited I was, did I think I’d drunk my fill of genius with my mother’s milk? Later I found out that wasn’t particularly original; the greatest shortcoming at the Academy was to know too much beforehand, and only ‘material’ willing to be shaped would be admitted. I fulfilled the desires of my shaper: I said goodbye to my own fantasies for a while and drew still lifes of assembled objects from the studio or copied reproductions of famous portraits. This became wearing and seemed to have little to do with the fame I aspired to. But before moving on, I had to satisfy some of his other desires when he got up the courage to declare them. So it was that I also found myself quite literally under my teacher’s pinions.
By tearing up my pubescent experiments he achieved the status of an unquestioned authority. From that moment of initiation, his knowledge was transmitted spontaneously, mainly in the form of sharp glances cast in passing at whatever I was drawing. Over time he began to make the occasional comment, stand behind me stroking his beard, ever closer, and then lay his hand on mine, only then to return it from its roving. If he’d caused revulsion in me, I would have rejected him. But I felt nothing, except perhaps pity for him as an old man with a corroded brain–what the polyester hadn’t destroyed was washed away by alcohol. It was quite understandable that he salivated over me. I didn’t take it personally.
I went there once a week. The lessons continued into Pygmalionesque extra time whenever he hadn’t had enough to drink. Afterwards, in the mood, he’d recline into his smelly old armchair. First he had to dethrone his blind dog, which whined and later growled when he was aggravated by our sweat and other smells. Not at all ashamed of his geriatric nudity, he would get out his cigarette case and holder and calmly contemplate me getting dressed. He really had a kingly stature, with square shoulders, a grey beard and hair tied back in a plait. The hairs on his broad, inflamed chest were long and grey, and they stood out against his dark red skin. His eyes revealed how satisfied he was with his act and all he’d taught me.
As I gathered together my things, he would sometimes be visited by the muse of inspiration. I had to listen to his meditations on the meaning of art. He considered that art sucked the life out of people instead of giving it to them. In devoteng their creative urges to art, people were transformed into something like sand, which briefly came alive and created the illusion of a surrogate life–a much better life where everything was possible and reachable; but it was all made of sand. By stirring it up and wallowing in it, we came ever closer to turning to sand ourselves.
In short, I made it over the cut-off mark at my third attempt thanks to him.
Of all the subjects at the Academy, my favourite was nude drawing. I was fascinated by the people who sat for us. They made a living from it. Some of them had been doing it for years, for who knows how many generations of students. They sacrificed their bodies for art, and in return it gave them the means of subsistence. You could see on their faces that they found it terribly boring. There’s nothing money can’t do; it can even stir up hatred of sitting nude if that’s how you earn it. A lack of choice clearly doesn’t make compulsion any more bearable.
They were mostly homeless people and retired prostitutes. Their services didn’t overly burden the Academy’s budget. Only on exception were we served a fresh, desirable body. All the others displayed human filth, decay and wretchedness. They all gave empty or scornful glances, had black under their fingernails and flaccid folds of skin. Deflated old breasts, withered mouths with rotten teeth, bloodshot eyes, flab and scabs. Some of the men got erections from gaping at one of us girls. Others shook in feverish anticipation of the moment they would be able to rush to their dealer with the money. One peed on the floor when his bladder packed in. In front of the professor we pretended not to notice such things, but whenever she went out, we’d start a dialogue about them. We exchanged fire over the barricades of art and ignited artificial tension between us. The nudes turned their subordinate, naked position to their advantage, with complete freedom of speech. They called out obscenities to us as they sat or lay spread out before our collective gaze–victims now expertly commenting on their ritual torture. Male models shamelessly offered themselves to the girls. Women provoked the boys, belittling their virility and dimensions. The braver boys went on the attack: one time they ganged up like a pack of hungry dogs to embarrass and offend a humpbacked woman who’d given them absolutely no cause and didn’t even defend herself.
One of the models was actually good-looking, although past his prime. A fellow student of mine even got a crush on him. Perhaps she was taking her inspiration a bit far, or perhaps she did it just to spite her fine upbringing and cultured background because he was a welfare case by vocation and a small-time thief. The affair resulted in a child, and the father disappeared without a trace. With motherhood, her inspiration for her studies vanished. Maybe in the next generation. Art exacts sacrifices but is also mindful of regeneration.
A strange atmosphere reigned at the Academy–a closeness which was often claustrophobic. Something ominous hung in the air, a mutual envy and fear of others’ tongues. A rebuke would sometimes crush a thin-skinned student. The more poisonous a remark was, the faster and louder it spread down the corridors, the better it adhered to its target, and with a little luck even liquidated it. Still, we went out a lot together. There were venues which belonged to us Academy students. Intruders instinctively felt their inferiority. We helped the less sensitive of them with meaningful glances. And with posturing, whose remuneration was better than money: the elevation of our artistic egos. We had to demonstrate our apartness from the rest of the world and our contempt for it at all costs. We stylised every public outing into a performance with provocative slogans, unique mannerisms and filmstarish ways of holding our cigarettes. Or at least with a subversive hairstyle, cynical beardlet or ripped clothes. One or two of us had a serviceable trait in our genetic baggage such as a tradition of epilepsy or schizophrenia. The less privileged compensated for their lack with creativity: they publicly fell into mystical trances, had spectacular nervous breakdowns or plunged into nihilism.
We sustained this elevation with different stimulants depending on our personal preferences. Some were already familiar with uppers and speeders, others did the works to make up for their lack of prior experience. It’s a notorious truth that works of art created without opiates are boring to look at too.
Every Saturday, and sometimes even in the middle of the week, our outings ended at someone’s flat or weekend place out in the country. There was usually an unlimited supply of home-grown grass in jars on the table, and really good hosts used it in pizzas or cakes. More exclusive things took place in the toilet. Stripteases and hallucinations were regular events. One guest took a liking to a bearskin rug and left with it on, having deposited his clothes in exchange. Another managed to convince the whole group that they were sitting on a railway track in front of an oncoming train, and every single one of them jumped off the balcony. Once they fed a cat Ecstasy, and in the end it climbed up onto the china closet and vomited down. When all the bedrooms were occupied people didn’t seclude themselves to have sex. In benign cases, the boys would rustle up an open-minded high-school girl with a love of visual art, and after she’d had a bit of pizza each of them would have a turn with her.
One of them was keen on me, but I just couldn’t give in to passion with him. I suppose I would have been able to handle his ugliness, of the sort which no extravagance could camouflage, if he hadn’t smelt so bad. But he persisted, my refusal evidently spurred him on, and his declarations of love became ever more romantic. At the peak of elation he went yelling down the hallways of the Academy, threw plaster busts down the staircase, and then himself, ending up with both his arms in plaster.
Only one episode of sexual distraction became worthy of description. In the middle of the night, Romeo came up to my windo
w and I let him in without demanding a poem or serenade, only to discover that he was so drunk he could hardly stand. That was his one constant–the way he watered down the rage in himself. He would then discharge it onto his canvases, and it was their central and almost sole content. Painting complete abstractions with just a few bold strokes, he managed to express so much concentrated negative energy that everyone had to feel it: some were in awe, while for most others it made their stomachs turn. He’d been allowed to enrol at the Academy because his exceptional talent could not be overlooked. They kept him at an arm’s length like a possibly brilliant but definitely dangerous mental case and made no attempt to shape him. His fury would surge beyond his canvases again and again. It unfailingly recharged and controlled him like a puppet on strings.
He made a certain degree of effort to control himself. He mixed with people and tried to participate and communicate, but soon the muscles on his face would start to tremble, he would glare and bite his lips, and he proceeded to down glass after glass of booze with visible distress, sweating profusely, and didn’t give in until it made him drop.
Externally, he was the exact opposite of what raged inside him: his body was boyishly weak, smooth like a woman’s, everywhere soft and fragile. He was also under the sway of various allergies which broke out especially in the springtime. Pollen in the air sent him to bed with fever and bouts of choking. He was tirelessly assailed by new and different agents of eczema, scabies and swollen eyes. There were few foods he tolerated, and after a while his allergy extended even to them. In return, it receded from some others, though of course without informing him, so every meal was an experiment. The only thing he could rely on not being allergic to was alcohol, but it bowled him over, knocked him out and put him in dangerous situations. Once he drank himself into a stupor like this and fell asleep on an anthill. At the casualty ward his body swelled up to twice its size and he learnt that nothing gave him a worse allergic reaction than formic acid.
A Handful of Sand Page 14