by Preethi Nair
‘So, Foruki, how long have you been in England?’
He said something in Japanese, moved his head forward and copied me.
‘That’s good but maybe don’t exaggerate the gesture as much. Just make it slight. Now at this point you have to wait until I translate whatever you’ve said into English.’
‘How well do you speak Japanese?’ he said.
‘How well do you want me to speak it?’ she flirted.
He glanced down, hoping nobody had spotted his embarrassment, but we all had, especially Mrs Onoro who had hawk eyes. She sat back in her chair and smiled.
‘We’re going to be talking about art and paintings so it doesn’t matter what you say, just how you say it and the body-language thing. Mangetti will just be watching you but listening to what I say and I’ll talk about your – I mean Nina’s – pictures so you don’t have to worry about that. What you do have to do is look at me intensely and nod at me as if you agree with everything. OK, Nina, try the next question.’
Rooney seemed perplexed.
‘It easy, Rooney. You copy way Nina move hand, tell her anything, then you look at Gina, wait, nod and agree,’ Mrs Onoro added.
He knew what he had to do, he just found looking intensely at Gina the tricky part.
‘How do you think Britain influences your work?’
He answered in Japanese.
Gina translated. ‘The contrast in tones and colours are a constant source of inspiration. I can look at a grey building, set in a grey sky, and the luscious green tree standing next to it brings out the warmth of that building, a warmth that one cannot tangibly see. That is what I try to capture in my pictures.’
He nodded away and then said, ‘What a load of bollocks.’
‘What did he really say?’ I asked.
‘Rooney, you no use such bad language. Not in Japanese either,’ Mrs Onoro interrupted.
He said, ‘Well when it’s really cold outside and it’s pissing down, I hurry up and just try and shift more stock so I can go home.’
‘It’s a good answer, it’s how I feel when I’m in the restaurant trying to get rid of the last customers.’
‘You work in a restaurant?’ Rooney asked her.
Fukkus, fukkus, I heard my dad’s voice. ‘Focus,’ I said to both of them. ‘Who or what is your greatest influence?’ I continued.
He copied my gestures and said something else to Gina in Japanese.
‘I’m influenced by the nature of life and death, both seemingly transitory and disconnected. Life is supposed to bring joy, and death sadness, but for me life is death and death is life. They work in union with one another.’
‘Do you really like Clapton?’ Gina asked. ‘Me too.’
‘What has Clapton got to do with anything?’
‘Rooney said his greatest inspiration was music and his greatest influence was Eric Clapton.’
It was working – sort of – if Gina and Rooney didn’t stop every few minutes to ask questions about each other. She was taking the empathy bit slightly too far.
‘And what about me influence you?’ Mrs Onoro asked Rooney.
‘Come here, sweetheart,’ he said cuddling her. ‘And of course there’s you.’
‘See, Gina, how my son is good boy, maybe you want go up and see his shoes?’
‘Haven’t heard that line before,’ she laughed.
‘It’s all right, I’ll bring them down,’ he said, trying not to appear embarrassed.
Rooney went to fetch his shoes. None of them were any good. Gina was thinking of a pair of black and white ones with a crocodile-skin look. ‘We’re going shopping tomorrow for Foruki’s clothes and shoes, come with us and then maybe you and Gina could go to Artusion to get a feel for the paintings,’ I said, sensing if they got all their personal questions out of the way they could focus more on the translating part.
‘OK, I’ll come,’ he said without hesitation.
‘I spread word around in Japanese Association about famous painter called Foruki,’ Mrs Onoro said as we left. ‘Gina, after this all you come back have dinner with us. You too, Nina.’
‘What do you think?’ I asked as we made our way home.
‘You made him sound boring. He isn’t boring. He’s got heaps of potential.’
‘You flirting with him helped.’
‘I did not.’
‘You did and you know you did, Gina.’
‘Maybe just a little but he’s cute, isn’t he? Kinda shy but not, if you know what I mean.’
He was cute in the way you appreciate a My Little Pony with all the matching accessories when you’re eight, cute in the way that he had managed to match his hair to the colour of his plums. ‘In a purple, streaky kind of a way,’ I said.
‘There’s more to him, Nina,’ she replied. ‘You’ll see.’
After getting someone to mind his stall, Rooney spent the morning with Gina at Artusion while I went into a café and surfed the Internet. I read every single piece of information I could find about Tastudi Mangetti. What transpired from most of the pages was that he was incredibly well-respected and wielded an enormous amount of power in the art world both in Europe and the States. I knew this but reading it all in black and white made my stomach churn. What were we thinking of doing? If he found out, forget ever trying to exhibit in any sort of gallery, any paintings Gina and I did would be confined to craft fairs in town halls. And then my imagination began to run away. What if Mangetti was linked to the Mafia? What if he sent them to track us down after he found out that we had deceived him?
I imagined the Godfather knocking on the semi’s door.
‘Whatever you’s selling me, I’m not interested, now get off.’ That was my dad’s standard line to strangers who came knocking. It didn’t bear thinking about.
‘We can’t do it,’ I said, meeting Gina and Rooney in Bond Street.
‘Have you spoken to your dad? To Raj?’
‘No, it’s Mangetti.’
‘What, he’s pulled out?’
‘No, we can’t mess with him. Gina, you won’t be able to sell any paintings if he finds out.’
‘I’m not selling any anyway, so what does it matter?’
‘It’s not going to work; and what if he’s got connections?’
‘Connections?’
‘Mafia,’ I blurted.
She began laughing. ‘This is what happens when I leave you for too long on your own. They’re only paintings. It’s not major, major; it’s nothing he wouldn’t do.’
‘What if Mangetti finds out we deceived him and it’s a question of honour?’
‘I’m not even going to answer that. We had a good morning and Rooney really liked his work.’
I felt neurotic and stupid.
‘It’s good stuff. I’m up for it,’ he said.
Up for it? It wasn’t a competition to see who had the best My Little Pony.
‘Rooney, do you know what you’re getting yourself involved in? It’s deceit – out-and-out deceit.’
‘Sometimes it’s best not to know, not to ask too many questions and get on with it. I want to help both of you.’
He was right. I knew what he meant by not asking too many questions. When I was at the firm there were many things that we weren’t technically supposed to do, like hide the provenance of a painting due to tax implications, but we didn’t ask our clients too many questions and just got on with it. It was sort of a similar scenario.
Rooney made it sound so simple, they both did. ‘Take another leap of faith, Nina. We can pull this off if we do a bit more work.’
The only way we could pull it off was if I held my nerve. ‘OK,’ I replied. ‘And we all know what we’re getting into.’
‘Yes, and no more jitters.’
The jitters had to be kept inside – they were putting their faith in me, I had to stay strong. ‘Let’s do it, let’s go and get some clothes for Foruki,’ I said, attempting to sound resolute.
We went mainly to the charity shops
in the best parts of London, finding things that might be appropriate for him. Later, Rooney came back home with us to have dinner and to try on the clothes.
‘I look like an idiot,’ he said coming out of the bathroom.
‘Maybe we can lose the cap but you look great, just great,’ Gina insisted. ‘Those shades look amazing.’
The sunglasses were enormous; they covered most of his face and he was dressed mostly in black, except for his jacket and shoes. The jacket that swayed down to his ankles was purple and the shoes had a snake-skin print. And though he looked the part, there was something missing.
‘Does he need some jewellery?’ I asked.
‘Definitely not,’ Gina replied. ‘He’s Foruki, not Liberace.’
Being loaded up with jewellery for a special occasion was obviously an Indian thing that was embedded in my psyche.
‘I know what it is,’ Gina said. ‘Rooney, you’ve got to let me dye your hair all black. It will just be for a few days and we’ll dye it back. Go on, you’ve been great – I mean, you’ve let us do all this to you without moaning and it’s just one last thing,’ she tried to convince him.
‘Well, if you really need to.’
Gina was like the Avon lady that came to our house, a person who could just convince anyone to do anything and then make them feel like it was their idea in the first place. Every time the Avon lady came to the door my dad stood with one foot behind it so there was no way she would be let in, but she always managed to get past him and convince him to buy bits and pieces for my mum.
‘Kavitha, why you wasting the money, I know what you looks like,’ he would say as she stared longingly at the Avon lady’s coveted products.
‘Yes, but wouldn’t you like your wife to have a touch of Cilla about her – you know, that glamour,’ the Avon lady would wink at my mum.
‘You saying this is the lipstick that the Cilla buys?’ he would ask, rummaging through her products.
‘Sold the same one to her just last week.’
She used the same line over and over, and he would fall for it over and over again.
I missed them both so much, even their routine and the comments they made to each other. Despite the fact they had their faults there was a safety that they provided. Jana must have found it hard to stay away. Did she just get used to being without us and felt that the best way was to cut everyone off?
It had been a long day. Rooney and Gina were engrossed in conversation. I wanted to leave them to it and go to bed but I didn’t have a bed, just the sofa they were both sitting on, so I fell asleep in the armchair.
Early the next morning I woke up startled and with no recollection of going to sleep on the sofa. This was what my angst was doing to me; making me forget things, making me hallucinate. I had dreamed Raj was really Foruki but then Mangetti had found out Foruki did not exist and was holding a gun to my head. I was frantically pointing at Raj, pleading with him to believe me, but Raj denied it and kept calling me a liar. I couldn’t go back to sleep. It was 5.57 a.m., in a few more hours I was supposed to be getting married. Raj would be feeling devastated today and my parents more so. My mum probably wouldn’t even get out of bed, feigning a bad headache, and my dad would be fiddling with the television sets. Was it worth putting everyone through so much just so I could paint pictures and sleep on someone else’s sofa? The sofa I so feared Gina would ask me if she could sleep on those many months ago at the Tate. She was one of the kindest people I had ever met, and Rooney, I had misjudged him. Why did they believe in me so much? Maybe it was better, as he said, not to ask so many questions; maybe then I could stop oscillating between doubt and fear and just get on with finishing what I had unwittingly started. So that is what I decided to do on the morning I was supposed to be getting married. I pulled myself together and resolved to see it through to the end. If it all went horribly wrong I would accept it, as Mrs Onoro said; I would stand in the centre and accept all of it and at least, deep down, I would know that I had given it my very best.
The phone beeped and I got off the sofa. It was a text message from Raj’s mother that read ‘HOUSIE YOU WILL PAY’. I put thoughts about her, and about my mum sitting with the contents of her jewellery box, to the back of my mind and began making notes on all the things Mangetti could possibly ask and Gina’s possible responses. I scribbled down what Rooney needed to work on and then I made Gina breakfast.
‘Oh God, Nina, it’s the day of the wedding. Are you OK?’
‘Much better. I came to the conclusion that I have two options – to be Raj’s wife or to do something extraordinary. Was it you who put me on the sofa?’
‘Rooney. I took off your shoes and he picked you up and put you there before he left.’
‘He’s a nice guy, isn’t he?’
‘And witty as well,’ she replied, ‘in an understated, not-witty way.’
After finishing on his stall that morning, Rooney came round. Gina dyed his hair and got him to wear Foruki’s clothes again. He appeared convincing.
‘We’ve got to spend some time on refining gestures and mannerisms and you’ll be perfect. When he asks you some questions that you think are difficult, make some erratic hand movements and mutter, like this. That’s what I’ve seen some of these eccentric types do,’ I said.
Rooney laughed. He had a soothing, unruffled laugh.
We sat for hours rehearsing the kind of questions Mangetti would ask and what Foruki would do.
‘When you don’t know what to say, if nothing comes to you or you think it’s a question that requires much thought, touch your heart, pause, lower your head as if you are thinking, and then answer.’
After dinner Gina was getting out the wineglasses to show him how to hold the glass correctly, should he be offered some, when Rooney spotted her acoustic guitar behind the cabinet.
‘Do you play?’ he asked her.
‘Yeah, just a bit.’
‘Play us something,’ he said going over to it.
She picked up the guitar and then sang a Tracy Chapman song. Rooney asked if he could take the guitar from her and then he started strumming. First it was a chord here, a chord there, nothing spectacular. His fingers pressed firmly on the strings. They didn’t seem like grocers’ fingers, there were no muddy bits under his fingernails, no rough skin. He looked at Gina before tilting his head and then his fingers did their own thing. And the Rooney playing before us didn’t seem like the Rooney who lived with his mum and asked her if his shirts were ironed; when he played he was a mass of potential and possibilities. He could have said he was anyone and we would have believed him. Gina’s jaw dropped.
‘Where the hell did you learn to play like that?’ she asked in amazement.
‘I was doing gigs before …’ he stopped ‘… before my dad died, and then I decided to go back home, take over his stall and look after mum.’
Gina and I looked at each other.
‘What do you feel when you play?’ I asked.
‘There’s just me and the guitar, the rest of the world doesn’t exist.’
He played us some more and we were in awe.
‘It’s bloody fantastic. OK Rooney, when you meet Mangetti, think about what you feel when you’re playing, that it’s just you and your guitar. Forget what I’ve told you about poise and posture; when he’s asking you those questions imagine you’re playing in your head and give him that look,’ Gina said.
By the end of the two days Gina knew every facet of my life; she knew what each of the paintings meant to me, what they would mean to Foruki. We spent hours discussing colours, influences, thoughts and feelings, and potentially what Mangetti might ask and ways of getting around questions. In the evenings Rooney came around and I watched the chemistry between them as I pretended to be Mangetti and asked the questions. He answered all the questions in Japanese, talking about his music or fruit and veg, but Gina skilfully converted his answers and made him sound as if he were an eccentric artist talking passionately about his concepts and in
fluences. By the end of those two days I knew that there was nothing more we could possibly do; we were as ready as we would ever be.
The following morning I could hardly get myself dressed. My hands shook as I fumbled with the buttons on my shirt, trying to fasten them.
Gina was getting dressed in one of my suits.
‘Aren’t you scared, Gina, not even a little bit?’
‘What’s the worst thing that has happened in our lives?’ she asked and then she answered her own question: ‘Death – so this is a drop in the ocean, it’s nothing. OK we might be making someone see something that isn’t there but this guy is responsible for making hundreds of people see things that aren’t there. We’re not hurting anyone. You can’t go through life being scared or fearing what might or might not happen. You know that as well as I do, Nina, you take what comes knowing some things are inevitable. But what you can do is live every moment. The way I see it is that we’ve got a great opportunity here, there’s nothing to be scared about – it’s an adventure and we live it to the max, and whatever happens, happens.’
Ki would have probably said pretty much the same thing. They were both incredibly optimistic, full of life with boundless energy and passion. They careered past obstacles and got on with things. One was looking out for me from somewhere else and the other was here; how could I fail?
Rooney came and we all sat and had breakfast together, though I couldn’t eat anything. He didn’t seem fazed either, it was as if it was just another day and instead of selling fruit and veg he was selling concepts. I sat thinking of all the last minute things we needed to do.
‘OK, when we arrive do your greeting, you don’t have to wait for Mangetti’s prompt to say something if you feel like there needs to be a sentence in there somewhere.’
‘You’ve said that to me three times already, Nina, just chill,’ he replied.
‘OK, but if you get nervous about anything, anything at all, focus on his nose. Stare at it hard. It’s kind of prominent, you can’t miss it, and I’m sure he must have a thing about it.’
‘Damn, we’ve forgotten something,’ Gina interrupted.