Gravity's Chain

by Alan Goodwin

  ‘Where’s my dance?’

  ‘Any time, I’m all yours.’

  ‘I hope so.’ She raised an eyebrow and smiled.

  I was entering dangerous shark-infested waters. This was the time to turn back, the time to hang on to the last outcrop of land before I was swept away.

  Caroline cocked her head, like a dog listening for a master’s whistle. ‘This should do.’ Frankie Goes to Hollywood, ‘The Power of Love’, filtered from the dance room, which was only half full now. The lights were low and I tried to hold her at a respectable distance, but she moved closer, placing her hands on my shoulder. ‘So tell me, Einstein, what’s it actually like to be a genius?’

  ‘Oh, you know.’

  ‘No I don’t actually, that’s why I asked and yes, before you say it, I’m interested, really interested. I mean it must be weird talking to people all the time who are just, well, you know, a whole lot more stupid than you.’

  ‘It doesn’t really work like that.’

  ‘Oh come on, it must do. Don’t be shy, I can take the truth. I mean we all have different gifts, we can’t all be brilliant at everything.’

  ‘What are you good at?’

  ‘Painting, actually. I paint and I think I’m pretty good. Do you paint?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any good at drawing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, there you go then. You’re crap at art and I’m good. I’m crap at maths and you’re good. Doesn’t really matter though, does it? So go on, be honest.’

  ‘I’m not sure I really follow.’

  ‘Shit, nor do I. I’m just trying to get you to talk to me about life as a fucking genius.’

  ‘Most of the time it’s fine, really.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But there are times when it’s frustrating, times when I yearn for someone to share thoughts with, to talk to about the sheer creative joy of physics.’

  ‘Joy?’

  ‘Yes, joy, the excitement of thinking at the edge, you know, of stepping right up to the boundary of human knowledge and then going beyond it. There can be nothing as exhilarating, as passionate, as creative as that moment. Who understands that, though, without knowing quantum physics or relativity or event horizons?’

  ‘Hey, I can’t pretend to know what those things are like, but I know about the joy of creation. When I’m painting and I catch the essence of what I’m searching for, there are no words that can explain that feeling and, like you say, all I want is to share the moment, to be with someone who understands that feeling without having to put it into words.’

  ‘My God, you understand what I mean. Essence, I like that, it’s a wonderful word.’

  ‘I may not be as smart as you, Jack, but I fucking know how you feel.’

  We danced for a moment without further words. ‘What sort of painting do you do?’

  ‘Slightly abstract, but ideas rooted in the everyday that transcend what you’d normally expect. Not unlike what you do in a way—trying to look at well-known things in a new way, trying to push the boundaries of the usual understating of an object. Why don’t you come round and have a look sometime.’

  ‘I’d love to.’

  Two days later I visited Caroline in her Titirangi home. It was set back from other houses with bush surrounding it on all sides. Once off the road it felt as though I was swallowed by greenery. The paving stones of the driveway were cracked and uneven, the encroaching trees of the bush out of control. A wooden deck encircled the house. It started on the driveway side of the building, but the land fell away so steeply at the rear that when I stood at the back rail the grass was more than four metres below. Now I was above the bush that only seconds before had engulfed me. There was a clear view of the city some fifteen kilometres away. Cicadas sang below and the smell of the trees was fresh. The back of the house had sliding doors, which were open, and I could see Caroline kneeling on the floor, hunched over paper on which she was drawing with a charcoal stick, her arms rotating in sweeps. She moved with urgency, but she was graceful, as though her drawing was in itself an artistic performance. Her hair, once tied up, had started to slip and strands of gold fell to her cheeks. As she worked, a spare hand pushed the strands behind her ears, but they soon came loose again. Suddenly she stopped working and stepped back to appraise the drawing. Her head was cocked to one side in the same way as when she stood on the terrace at the wedding just a couple of days before. Reluctantly I let the moment go and knocked on the window. Without hesitation, as though expecting my visit, she waved me inside. It was hot and there was a strong smell of smoke and dope in the room.

  ‘Jack, how wonderful to see you.’ She half ran to me and planted a wet lingering kiss on my cheek, just millimetres from the corner of my mouth. Beautiful and erotic, she smelt of perfume and sweat, drink and smoke. Smudges of charcoal marked her face and a loose shirt revealed most of her braless breasts. When she walked they moved playfully, excited to be free, delighted to be so gorgeous. ‘Come and see.’ She took my hand and led me to the picture on the floor. It was large, a metre and a half square. In one corner she had drawn a dish with fruit, in another a fish and in the middle a goblet. They all rested on an abstract table. ‘It’s a Last Supper representation. What do you think?’

  ‘Great.’ I wasn’t sure. I mean, the drawing was good, but it was just a bowl of fruit, a fish and a cup. It seemed a long way from the Last Supper, or any supper for that matter.

  ‘It represents the simplicity of the early church in contrast to the great edifice built by the early church fathers—as represented by the Da Vinci Last Supper, which I’ll incorporate in miniature somewhere, just not sure where yet.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’

  ‘You don’t like it, do you?’

  ‘I do like it. Yes I like it very much. I think once you get the miniature on it will clarify its meaning better.’

  ‘Fancy a drink?’

  ‘Love one, thank you.’

  ‘What’s your tipple then, Jack? What do geniuses drink?’

  ‘You choose.’

  ‘Now you might regret that.’ She scurried off to the kitchen where I heard her opening and shutting cupboards with some gusto. I looked again at the picture, conjuring again the sight of her working. Scattered all over the floor, on chairs and beside the drawing, were open art books. I squatted to look, but Caroline was back from the kitchen before I turned any pages.

  ‘Here.’

  I took the glass and drank. ‘Wow, what the hell is that?’ I coughed with the bite of the liquor on the back of my throat. I looked at the clear liquid as ice broke in the glass.

  ‘Tequila.’

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘Good, it’s the drink of the artist.’ She nodded to the books on the floor, her head to one side in her now familiar pose. ‘I like working with great pictures around me—Raphael, Da Vinci, Van Gogh.’ She paused and moaned as she looked at a picture of a Van Gogh wheat field, ‘Man, I love him. I know you may find this hard to understand, but sometimes I feel this kind of…wind blowing off them and it engulfs me in this creative storm. There are times I don’t even draw, I just sit and surrender myself. I close my eyes and I’m in Florence, or Paris, or Rome, walking the streets, modelling naked for the masters, painting, laughing with the artists, fucking them and sharing all their joys and sadness, success and failure.’ She closed her eyes as though she was half there already.

  Her words touched my core. I thought such feelings were mine alone, but now I’d learnt she shared them. ‘I know just what you mean. Christ, it’s just like at the wedding—you seem to really know some truths. Where does it come from, Caroline?’

  She touched her heart. ‘Do you ever feel like that?’

  ‘When I went to Cambridge and started walking through the old colleges I just felt this amazing resonance from the walls, as though the intelligence of everyone who had been there before me had soaked into them. And when I saw Newton’s old rooms at Trinity, it was as though a sha
dow of the man was burnt onto the walls. I cried, you know, to be there, where he worked and lived. I felt the same as you described, as if there was this…not so much wind, more a force entering my head, and I glimpsed something indefinable, some basic creative essence. Your word again.’

  ‘It’s weird to hear you talking about creativity. I never think of scientists as being creative—it runs against the grain of the image of the scientist poring over his experiment.’

  ‘Great science is at heart truly creative. All the great scientific masterworks: gravity, relativity, quantum theory—they’re all works of beauty, beautiful in their basic simplicity, in their power to affect our lives, to change us all. If only I could do the same. In my quiet moments I dream of touching that greatness.’

  ‘Does Mary understand what you yearn for?’

  ‘To be honest, no.’

  ‘Let’s drink some more tequila. Let’s seal our new-found understanding.’

  ‘You pour, I’ll drink.’

  We drank for an hour. Caroline brought the tequila bottle and a plate of ice from the kitchen and we poured and dipped our hands in the plate like children fishing for sweets at a birthday party. Soon I was drunk, my head spun and I started floating whenever I closed my eyes. Caroline giggled when she stood, half fell and steadied herself by clutching my knee. ‘Let’s have some music, shall we?’ With a little effort she stood in front of a small tapedeck on some shelves opposite the couch where I sat. ‘Ah yes,’ she muttered to herself as she found a tape, dropped the plastic cover on the floor and noisily inserted the tape into the machine. John Lennon’s ‘Woman’ blasted the room.

  ‘Good choice.’

  ‘You like Lennon?’ She turned, her breasts swaying against the flimsy material of her shirt as they pushed to be free. ‘You know, Jack, I don’t think you can like both Lennon and McCartney. I mean, you can like their songs, but not them as people. For me it’s one or the other. Lennon is dangerous and sexy. McCartney is safe, more like a husband asleep on a Saturday afternoon. I’ll take Lennon every time. How about you?’

  ‘When you put it like that I’d have to say Lennon.’

  ‘Do you smoke?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  She pulled a small packet from under the sofa cushion, rolled a joint with great precision and lit it. We relaxed and smoked, neither talking for several minutes.

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you want to try something different?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Caroline placed an old wooden chair with paint smudges all over it in front of the open sliding doors. ‘Sit here,’ she commanded. ‘What do you see?’

  ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘What do you mean “nothing”?’

  ‘There isn’t much there.’

  ‘Come on, Jack, you need to look properly and tell me what you see.’

  ‘Trees. I see trees and bush. I see the sky.’

  ‘What colour is it, Jack?’

  ‘Blue, mostly. There are some clouds, light in front but heavier to the side and their colour deepens to a dirty grey.’ I felt a silk scarf pulled over my eyes.

  ‘What do you see now?’

  ‘Orange.’

  ‘Good. Can you feel the wind on your face?’

  There was a soft breeze on my cheeks and I nodded.

  ‘I want you to imagine you’re somewhere else, another place in some other time. Can you do that, Jack? Can you let yourself go and transport your mind?’

  ‘Will you help me?’

  ‘I’ll help you. I’m always here to help you. Are you willing to try?’

  ‘Ready and willing.’ With sight gone, my senses were already sharpening. I was aware of Caroline now kneeling in front of me and I could feel her breath hot on my thigh.

  ‘I want you to imagine you’re in Florence. It’s the sixteenth century and the Renaissance is blooming all around you. Your friends are thinking differently and releasing themselves from centuries of sterility. You’re a young nobleman, close to the artists of the city for whom you’re a benefactor. Today has been hot, but an afternoon breeze has brought some relief and helped lift the stench of the city. Your home is in the centre of Florence and your rooms on the second floor overlook the old home of Dante. You sit there now, on a chair with the doors of your balcony open, gazing across the red ochre rooftops of the city houses. The heat of the day has abated, bringing out the people who walk and talk in the narrow street below. You can feel the breeze on your face.

  ‘It’s been a wonderful day. You’ve commissioned a picture from Raphael and today you visited him to see its progress. While there you browsed the sketches, canvases and half-completed works in his studio. You felt as though a light stronger than a hundred candles sought out the dark corners of your soul. How you crave to be like him and release passions and forces in others with the mere stroke of a brush. His talent is close enough to breathe.

  ‘One of his favourite models, Francesca, is with you now. She’s been his model for several months and you’ve often admired her body in his paintings or on visits to the studio when she has posed. She was there today. The studio was hot and smelt of paint. Her pose stirred you and you watched the sweat run down her stomach in a little stream.’

  Caroline paused. I could feel her breath on my thigh shorten, then disappear. For a moment there was nothing, no sound, no sensation, and then I felt the lightest brush of warm flesh on my thigh. I knew this was her breast. How I wanted to rip off the blindfold, but she anticipated my impulse. ‘Steady,’ she implored and I relaxed. ‘Francesca lay on cushions arranged on the floor, her long golden hair splayed over her shoulders and breasts.’

  I felt Caroline’s hair on my legs.

  ‘Her nipples were dark and hard.’

  Caroline touched my knee with her own erect nipple.

  ‘One arm lay along the curve of her waist and hip. She met your gaze when you entered and you know she has no shame for her appearance. At first you tried to avoid her searching eyes, but soon you were strong enough to meet her look.

  ‘When the sitting finished she draped a gown over her shoulders but when the master left the room she allowed it to slip to reveal her breasts again. This was for you. It’s rumoured she is Raphael’s lover. She has been touched by genius and you yearn to touch her as well, to go where he’s gone, to have what he’s had.

  ‘Now she’s in your rooms. You’ve drunk wine and shared fruit. She’s asked you to sit on a seat in front of the open doors and she’s tied a scarf around your eyes. Is this a game the master has played with her?’

  A hand touched my thigh—Caroline or Francesca? I wasn’t sure any more. Both breasts touched my legs as my shorts and underpants were pulled down to my ankles. Fingertips traced the outline of pubic hair without touching me. I thought I might just rip apart. ‘Francesca has you erect before her and you strain, yearn, strain and strain to be touched. “Have you ever come like a God?” she asks you.’

  ‘No,’ I croaked.

  ‘“Raphael taught me this”, and then…and then as though your penis is dipped in honey, Francesca takes you in her mouth.’

  Just a split second before my orgasm Caroline released me. ‘And you come into a void, your seed falling on the streets below. “To come like a God”, Francesca whispers, “is to lay your seed on the people as though you can do what you please and in that moment there are no limits to what you can achieve. To come in the void is to know that anything is possible, that you are, if you want, unstoppable.”’

  Caroline let the blindfold loose and I looked in her eyes. ‘I love you.’

  ‘I know. We were meant to be, Jack. We are one. We can be one. Will you let us be one?’

  ‘I already have.’

  ‘An incredible journey awaits us. Let it begin.’

  ‘It already has.’

  EIGHT

  After Jo left, I tried to work. It was pure diversion, an attempt to keep at bay the memories of Mary and Caroline. It failed,
but even after I’d faced the full fury of my deceit, I hoped to find some solace, some salvation in work.

  When Einstein formulated his General Theory of Relativity he correctly foresaw that a consequence of the equations was an ever-increasing universe. He reasoned this an impossibility and his nerve failed him. To correct the finding he included in the theory a cosmological constant, a force that kept the universe from expanding. When Edwin Hubble confirmed that the universe was indeed growing, Einstein called the constant his biggest mistake and abandoned it. However, the damn thing never completely disappeared and even in the afterglow of Superforce the constant was still a loose thread. I had for some months thought that securely knitting the constant into Superforce would be a good return to work, but all my efforts had failed. And by the end of the morning the pristine paper on my desk was still blank. Nothing—not a word, not a number, not even a letter. As usual, in the end, I simply gave up.

  Fortunately it was then time to leave for the afternoon’s engagements. There was a press conference, a television interview and then the drive to the Aotea Centre and sound checks for the evening show. I chose not to return to the hotel and waited backstage instead. When entering the theatre I’d again sensed someone watching me. I wasn’t going back out there.

  There was quite a spread in the dressing room. From the assortment of cold meats, sandwiches, prawns, dips, spring rolls and breads I chose a miserly mandarin and slowly sucked on the segments one by one. The selection of drinks was even more impressive: soft, hard, medium and indifferent (in other words sherry). There was tequila, of course, but then there’s always tequila wherever I travel. Usually it’s buried in the middle of the inventory sent by the company so as never to raise suspicion of its importance. I drank and sat in an easy chair, but I was far from relaxed and I balanced my glass unsteadily on the arm. There was less than half an hour until the show. Bebe sat opposite, sipping his water bottle like a suckling calf.