The Calligrapher

by Edward Docx

  Thy firmness makes my circle just,

  And makes me end, where I begun.

  I am returned to my lair and the good news is that my decisions have all been made for me. Not yet six in the morning and I am drinking tea and listening to the Mozart Missae Breves. There were no letters. And my telephone has been as silent as the rest of my furniture. Indeed, my flat isn’t behaving as badly as I thought it might. And I am careful to cross over to the other side of the road when I see my memory heading my way. Also, it is impossible to feel bad in the company of Mozart.

  Following my sojourn at William’s, I newly discover myself a creature of the dawn. I go to bed at nine-thirty with John Donne and wake at five with my fellow London non-believers – the ironic joggers, the smirking, rough-gloved bin men and the calloused vegetable stallers, who shake their heads in incredulity and mutter at satirical parsnips. Dawn is promised. But we’re not so easily persuaded: we will believe it when we see it. Cold, wet, bleak and dark: life, it seems, is one long satire on itself. Gulliver’s Travels without the readership. Tomorrow is November and already the grim slouch towards Christmas has begun. Fat Mammon has kissed the runway tarmac and they’ve checked all the bulbs in the red streetlights.

  But me, I’m going to New York. I am going to New York. Tomorrow.

  I had no choice. I called Saul as soon as I got back and that was it.

  ‘Where have you been, Jasper?’ he said, asthmatic panic wheezing at the back of his voice. ‘The whole of New York is sick with worry and anticipation. We thought you might have had an artistic tantrum or something. Disappeared to Tangiers in a fit of pique.’

  ‘Anticipation?’

  ‘For the opening.’

  ‘The opening?’

  ‘Oh Jasper Jasper Jasper Jasper – if only we could all communicate with you. If only, for heaven’s sake, you would answer the phone or address yourself to the issue of voice mail. Anything.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Saul, I’ve been out of London for a couple of weeks or so – finishing off. What do you mean, the –’

  He interrupted. ‘Well well, Jasper, then it falls to me to tell you.’ He paused for a moment; benign satisfaction hummed like background radiation in the receiver. ‘The charming Mr Wesley, your client and mine, is throwing a very big and very exclusive party – for you and your work. A one-off opening night, a showing, an exhibition, an extravaganza – call it what you will. A happening. On November 1st. At none other than the Ruby Gallery in our very own East Village.’

  ‘That sounds –’

  ‘Cognoscenti, literati and intelligentsia expected in their droves. In their droves. A guest list that reads like the Who’s Who of cultural America. Champagne in the glasses, glitter on the cheek and your work upon the wall. My dear boy, the whole thing will be one long and irresistible selling spree. You walk in an artist; you walk out a millionaire. Clients will be queuing all the way over to Fifth Avenue.’

  ‘I’m not sure I –’

  ‘You know what it’s like here, Jasper, once a thing has been tagged as collectable, once an artist has been recognized, then every aspiring intellectual has got to have one of their works. They’re chronically vulnerable to each other’s opinions. Not an independent thought for three thousand miles. And right now if Gus Wesley says that callig—’ Saul became suddenly and chillingly silent. ‘You have finished, haven’t you? There isn’t a delay?’

  I let it hang for a second just to enjoy the drama. ‘Yes, of course. That’s mainly what I was calling about.’

  Pure relief flooded undiluted across the raging Atlantic. ‘Oh, good man. Good man. Thank God for that. Thank God. And I wager they look absolutely fantastic. Really, I can’t wait to see them.’ He dropped a decibel or two. ‘The thing is, Jasper, between you, me and the gatepost, I had lunch with Gus last week and I rather assured him that … Well, actually, I may have rather planted the exhibition idea – just a touch – and it would have been rather tricky to have to tell him that I –’

  ‘Saul,’ it was my turn to interrupt, ‘I thought the work was a private gift – not for an exhibition or whatever?’

  ‘Oh yes yes yes. That too. The whole thing is an exhibition cum birthday bash cum party cum presentation – but the point is that if Gus Wesley is there, then everybody is there. Obviously he pays all the important journalists’ wages so coverage and photographs are guaranteed – but more than that, he knows all the right people. And I am sure that your work will look magnificent at the Ruby. I am already getting commissions for you merely on the strength of the rumours. How do you feel about the Sermon on the Mount? No – don’t answer that – let’s discuss. When do you expect the finished articles will be here?’

  ‘Well, I’m seeing Gruber and Gruber tom—’

  ‘Ah, they’re the framers we used last time?’

  ‘Yes. They’re the best. I am seeing them tomorrow. It shouldn’t take them more than two weeks. Then I guess they’ll send them special courier. Wesley is OK with the framing and delivery tab – you cleared it with him?’

  ‘Of course of course. Oh it’s so exciting.’ Saul had enough enthusiasm to power New York’s electricity needs for a year. ‘Oh, and Gus has asked me to promise that you will call him on his private line so that he can arrange your flight.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s it then.’ The decision was made.

  ‘You don’t sound too thrilled.’

  ‘Oh no no. I am.’ I wrenched myself back to the conversation in hand. ‘Honestly, I’m just worried about the work getting there OK and not being damaged and so on.’

  ‘Mmm. I do know what you mean.’

  ‘In fact, Saul, I want to wait until I am sure that you have them delivered safely. I don’t really want to leave London until I am certain that they are with you. It’s too risky with the party stuff going on. I’d feel a right fool if I got there and the poems didn’t. In an emergency, I can always take them on the plane myself. I trust the Grubers but I don’t trust couriers.’

  ‘Wise. Very wise. I’m sure Gus will appreciate your concern.’ Something like a diary was flicked open. ‘Now you are also set to have lunch on the same day with me, and I take it you won’t mind if I organize for some journalist friends to come with us. Nothing formal. But you know that a journalist can never resist a free lunch … Also, I would definitely make sure that you stay at least a week because Gus is in town and he will certainly want to see you personally – he’ll cover the hotel, don’t worry about that. And I sense, dear boy, that he may be good for more work, especially if he can hold up any of his friends’ commissions by going straight to the head of the queue – I’ve promised him that – OK with you?’

  ‘It’s all OK with me, Saul. More than OK. And thanks for all of this. I really mean it.’

  Saul chuckled. ‘Least I can do for you, my boy, the very least. And can I also suggest you ring Grace – she’s a little anxious about Christmas.’

  ‘I will.’

  But I cannot bring myself to ring my grandmother. So I am going to write her a letter from New York.

  The framing, as it turned out, was a dose call. I had to wait until yesterday – until I knew for sure that Donne had made it across the Atlantic. Which means that I have left it very late. I leave London tomorrow, early in the morning, and arrive in New York also in the morning, but the exhibition party – tomorrow night – will not begin until gone midnight by my body’s clock. It will be a long day.

  Oh yes: and I have an address.

  Nathalie. Nathalie got it for me. She worked her magic on Lucy. More dishonesty, I’m afraid. (We are all of us, poor humankind, trapped in this double helix of deceit.) But at least Nathalie is cheery about it.

  Since Saul called, therefore, I have written five separate letters. Two long, one short, one short with a two-page postscript, and one so long and wretched that even I couldn’t read it.

  My letters looked beautiful, no doubt, but writing when you’re upset is like writing when you are drunk: it feels
great at the time (profound even) and yet when you read it back in the morning – my God. Even at the most sober of times, words are hardly to be trusted – put two or three of them together and they immediately start revolting, conspiring unintended meanings here, fermenting duplicitous nuances there, and firing off in the wrong directions as and when they please. Of course, what I really would have liked to do was write her something so true, so moving, so elegant, so witty, so insightful, so fine, so direct and so oblique that she could not help but surrender – a poem, perhaps, or a whole cycle entitled ‘Songs and Sonnets’. In the end, though, I found that I could not rely on words at all beyond carrying out their most basic tasks. So I settled for three lines – the postscript from my first effort:

  Madeleine,

  I am coming to New York for work. I’ll be at William’s opening night at the Carnegie on November 6th. Please come. I would like – at least – to talk

  Jasper.

  Still I hated it. But I could not go on revising forever. And when, beneath filthy skies, I went into the shop to confiscate the video, I made Roy Junior write her address on my chosen envelope; that way, I reasoned, she wouldn’t be able to recognize my hand and destroy my hard-fought efforts before she read them. She lives – they live?– on the Upper East side.

  I didn’t watch the video. I put it in the bottle bank on the way home before I could think, ensuring that it was impossible to retrieve. (Not that I have a video. Oh no, I have a DVD.) In any case, Roy Junior said that there was nothing to see except ‘Just, like, you know, a bit of messing about.’ His defence: that he too was ‘just messing about’ in the garden and saw them through her patio window ‘totally by accident’ and thought he had better get evidence because otherwise I wouldn’t believe him. Which, in a way, was true: I would not have believed him. But, despite his voyeurism, I bear Roy Junior no ill-will: he will turn into his father soon enough. And you can’t blame a guy for getting his kicks before that happens.

  Lucy, I will not call. Not yet. Nathalie tells me she is back at work and has a new boyfriend … I’ll write to her from Rome over Christmas, I think, when I’m all straightened out. Then maybe we can see each other in the New Year. More than anything, I hope she is OK. I still feel the guilt, of course. (Of all the emotions guilt surely has the longest half-life. Except maybe love – but we’ll see about that.) And I have not forgotten her kindness that night when the world was spinning: call me when it’s over, she said. I will.

  Now I detect that the light is thinning and here comes another Agnus Dei. I have switched off the side-lamp so that I can watch the dawn enter the garden. And sure enough, if I lean out and look further along the ledge, the leaves of my mint plant are slowly turning a silvery grey and there is a pale scar along the edges of the sky. Nothing is moving. But sooner or later a cat is bound to slip across the wet grass in the garden. And with just a little whispering, I can hear winter ushering itself into the orchestra pit. By this time tomorrow I will be on my way. To test a woman’s constancy.

  30. Woman’s Constancy

  Now thou hast loved me one whole day,

  Tomorrow when thou leav’st, what wilt thou say?

  Wilt thou then antedate some new made vow?

  Or say that now

  We are not just those persons, which we were?

  Or, that oaths made in reverential fear

  Of love, and his wrath, any may forswear?

  Or, as true deaths, true marriages untie,

  So lovers’ contracts, images of those,

  Bind but till sleep, death’s image, them unloose?

  Or, your own end to justify,

  For having purposed change, and falsehood, you

  Can have no way but falsehood to be true?

  Vain lunatic, against these ‘scapes I could

  Dispute, and conquer, if I would,

  Which I abstain to do,

  For by tomorrow, I may think so too.

  I took New York off of the ‘red-eye’ through JFK and a yellow cab driven by a Moroccan guy who wanted to know what the fuck the Chinese were doing when the Bible was written. I couldn’t help him on that. But my question right back to him – had I been prescient enough to ask – would have been this: how the fuck does somewhere on the coast get so little fresh air? New York must be the only seaside town on earth that can be freezing cold and still feel grimy, fetid, dusty.

  And man, could this city use some curves. Enough already with the intersections, the right angles, the blocks. How about some real corners and vistas and roads that wind. Enough function. Let’s have some form around here. After lunch with Saul and the journalists, I had to make my excuses and go down to Chinatown tout seul – just because they have a street down there which bends a little.

  Today is November 2nd and I am staying in a minimalist hotel off Times Square, somewhere up in the high forties and around Eighth Avenue. Despite what the staff and the other guests think, it’s not cool at all – just minimal. Minimal space. Minimal comfort.

  Today I am the talk of the town. Or rather, I am mentioned in a few gossip columns. And you’re right: I’m feeling better. A whole lot better. It’s eleven-thirty and I have just enjoyed a welcome breakfast of two sunnies with a side of tomatoes. They still don’t seem to have discovered baths here in Manhattan – so it will have to be a shower. After which I intend to locate a writing desk and pen a letter to my grandmother. I have a very happy surprise for her. And I’m sure she won’t mind if I practise my Anglicana Formata.

  I guess there must have been about four hundred people in the Ruby Gallery last night – something like that. The joke (if that is the right word) is that the gallery is situated on Avenue B – hence ‘Rue B’. (I know, I know.) In fact, the place was a converted warehouse, entered through a typically nondescript New York door, which you might have passed a thousand times with never so much as a squeak from your East Village sneakers. My cab driver-not, I sensed, a loquacious man – had never heard of it and didn’t give a fuck that he hadn’t. But, he suggested over his shoulder, ‘There’s a whole bunch of people in coats just gotten out over the street, dude. So I guess you should maybe follow them.’

  Inside, there were two levels, both abounding in stripped wooden floors and neutral walls. (Is it possible, I wonder, to hold an exhibition consisting entirely of art gallery interiors through the ages?) As far as spaces went – I was several times informed – the Ruby Gallery was as prime as anywhere in the world. If ever walls could become desirable, then these were they.

  I tried, hopelessly, to forget about the Carnegie – whether or not she would come – and what I would do if she didn’t. Instead, whenever I was introduced to anyone, I talked with proper attention and concentrated on what Saul had called the important business of winning business without being businesslike.

  ‘Occasions like this,’ he had said, ‘you never know when you could be chatting to your livelihood. So it’s better to assume that everybody you meet is a cheque book waiting to be opened.’

  Around nine, those whom Saul had billed as the East Coast’s most assiduous chatterati (and few people billed them more often than Saul) began to gather in the main room – a long gallery with a high-girdered ceiling and a smallish balcony at one end. They were waiting to hear whatever it was that their host, Gus Wesley, the billion-dollar man himself, had to say.

  Saul had lied, of course: the exhibition was not just of my work – thank Christ. There were four of us. And the whole idea was that we were contemporary artists who declined to pander to the fashions of contemporary art. The other three – Candy, Ezra and Fred Donohue (he refused to be anything less)– were also standing in the long gallery, awkwardly corralled at the far end with me, and just off to one side of our host.

  Wesley, meanwhile, was engrossed with one of his flunkeys, asking about champagne (‘Make sure you got it ready to go, Henry’) and the fire escapes (‘It only opens inside out, Henry, so you gotta wedge it when you go out, right?’) and how many place reserv
ations have been made on his table for afterwards (‘Gotta be more than twenty, Henry, I had already invited twenty, don’t tell me it’s any less, Henry, don’t tell me that …’)

  I watched a lower level flunkey unfold a portable lectern. Then I let my eyes take in the room again. Donne was hanging along both of the long walls. People were still standing in attentive knots around them. The poems felt oddly distant and removed – no longer mine. But there was no denying it, they looked impressive: the austere starkness of the raven ink on the off-white parchment, the blood-red versals, the narrow rosewood frames. Also, for the first time, I saw that there was an unexpected drama in having them hung one after another: unlike reading them singly or even on consecutive pages of a book, they assumed a narrative on the wall that was more powerful, more lordly, more affecting, more resonant, more abiding than I had hitherto understood. Something, I thought, not unlike the Stations of the Cross.

  Still, I felt vaguely specious to be standing up at the front with the other three. They each had their own exhibition room upstairs. And their work was art in its truest sense – paint and canvas. Plus it was for sale. Though flattered to be included, I was privately struggling to understand how Wesley might incorporate four-hundred-year-old poems written in a seven-hundred-year-old hand within even the broadest definition of contemporary art.