A few of the reporters laughed, sensing his new easy-going manner.
“You’ll be in Teen Tales before you know it,” someone else called out.
“That’ll be the day,” he retorted.
“How is your model friend affecting you?” a voice asked.
Joshua turned to scrutinize the enquirer. He recognized the moustachioed face and critical gaze of a closeted journalist from Headset, a trendy weekly publication that purported to cover news and culture with a social conscience. He’d been among the first to be down on the band when the press attacked them.
“All my friends affect me,” Joshua retorted, his voice cool and non-committal.
“That’s very touching,” the reporter replied. “But you seem to have developed a special rapport with the Fabiano Boy. That’s not exactly your kind of fashion.”
Warden watched Joshua’s face strain and tighten. “Is that a question?”
The woman journalist inadvertently defused the situation. “What would you say is the difference between London and New York?” she asked, as though she’d cribbed her questions from a Rolling Stone guide to rock interviews.
“About five hours,” Joshua quipped. “I thought everyone knew that.”
More laughter. The activist reporter persisted. “What about charges that Wheel of Fire has sold out?”
“What about them?”
“Fuchsia Schock and Fetish both named you as the face to watch this year. You’ve just made your first recording and now you’re even making videos that have a commercial appeal. For a band with such a strong stance against publicity that adds up to a lot of coverage.”
“I’m this year’s face, am I? And last year some of you wrote that I was the arsehole to watch out for. I’m last year’s this and next year’s that. You’ll have served up the whole of my anatomy before you’re through.”
A reporter laughed nervously. The microphones reached closer.
“Isn’t it all just a wind-up, this evasion of publicity thing?” suggested a journalist. You’re just trying to make yourselves more intriguing. Why don’t you admit that what you’re really after is popularity?”
Joshua turned to face him. “Perhaps that’s how it looks from where you are, but I don’t see it that way at all. You see, we put up with people like you because you help get our ideas across. That’s precisely the point of benefit concerts like today’s. But don’t mistake that for wanting popularity. I don’t want your acceptance.”
“Acceptance clears, Joshua,” someone suggested.
“So does money,” added the mustachioed journalist, smirking at his own wit.
Joshua’s eyes glinted. “How much have you given to AIDS research lately?” he spat out. “I’m sure you’ve had as many friends die as I have.”
A quiet came over the group.
“You see,” Joshua went on, “we’re all just stepping stones in the ultimate revolution of life. Neither you nor I are the end result of any of it. If you don’t like that, you’d better ask for a transfer off the planet.”
The interview over, he brushed past them down the narrow corridors, stepping over wires and discarded equipment. Warden followed. Outside they were greeted by hordes of fans, mostly teenaged boys. Joshua hastily signed a handful of autographs then slipped through the gates with Warden behind him. Neither spoke till they were back at Sanctuary making tea on the gas stove under the harsh electric bulb. Joshua sat at the table smoking.
“They really loved you, all those people tonight,” Warden finally ventured.
“Because they jump up and down and scream and try to look like me? They don’t even know who I am.”
Warden shrugged, placing the teapot on the table. “Imitation is admiration—it’s flattery.”
“Imitation is your business, isn’t it?”
The words cut him. Joshua spoke angrily, as though he saw in Warden’s comment all the lies and hypocrisy emanating from every nook of discreet society, laying bare its academies of sin and the perjury of conformity against which he was constantly waging a private war.
“You’ve got to stop thinking so methodically, Ward. Imitation’s just a cheap attempt to own something that’s not yours. It’s just more consumerism.”
Joshua stared at him across the table, his face inaccessible, refusing to let anything penetrate beyond his principles and beliefs, which to him were inviolable. Joshua held up a hand.
“What have I got here?” he asked.
“A hand.”
“What else?”
“Five fingers.”
“Right—those are your five senses,” he stated. “And if I cut them off what have I got?”
“A stump?” Warden tried to joke.
“Freedom. Rid yourself of the prison of the senses,” he said, curling his hand into a fist. “Then you can fight. Don’t you understand yet? That’s all there is. If you don’t see that, you know nothing.”
He seemed to want to eliminate every hold the world had over him, to resolve the contradictions of flesh in an effortless annihilation of everything outside himself.
Warden spoke. “Why can’t you be happy with what you have, without worrying why it’s there or trying to pick it apart, if only for one day? You live in a world of absolutes, Josh. The rest of us aren’t strong enough to do that.”
Joshua’s face softened. He put his hand on the back of Warden’s neck and smiled in that reassuring way he had of turning worlds around in a single glance.
“I don’t think I was ever really happy until I met you,” he said. “You’ve changed all that. But you don’t know what I’m really like inside. You can’t know. You’re too pure.”
It sounded like censure or a warning more than praise.
“I know who you are,” Warden declared. “I couldn’t love you if I didn’t.”
Joshua’s cool gaze met him across the table. It seemed in that moment that they bridged their incongruous backgrounds till the differences between them were insignificant.
“Anyway,” Joshua said, “what’s important is that you know yourself—how far you’d allow yourself to go. That’s what counts in the end.”
Joshua extended his hand across the table. Warden gripped it, reassured.
“You know I’d do anything for you,” he said.
A week later, Warden arrived at Sanctuary to find the band sitting around the performing area. Jah straddled a dilapidated couch across from Joshua, his feet slung over the edge. The others waited, their attention focused on the two original band members.
“It’s all become a sell-out, Josh.” It was Jah speaking. “You can see it for yourself. We promised ourselves we wouldn’t go the way of all commercial bands and that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
Warden sat quietly to one side and listened.
“What do you want, then?” Joshua said.
Jah paused. “I want out. I’ve had an offer to vee-jay for a club in Brixton. I can’t take it any more, Josh. We’re turning into pop idols. We’ve let them take our image and put it in a wrapper for people to buy like some cheap product. It’s exactly what we’ve been against from the very beginning.”
Joshua looked to the remaining members. “What about the rest of you?”
“We’re with you, Josh,” Kareem said, not looking at Jah. The other two nodded their consent.
“All right,” he said. “Looks like we’re still on as a band, then.” He looked back over to Jah. “What about Sanctuary, Jah? Don’t you believe in that any more either?”
“I’ll be leaving soon.” Jah hesitated. “You’re just going to end up becoming a part of everything we’ve stood against.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
Jah stood to leave, glaring at Warden as he went. Joshua turned and saw him sitting there.
“Know any good drummers?” he said.
He seemed to be restraining his feelings in front of the others. Later, when they were alone, Warden sensed his anger over Jah’s defection.
&nbs
p; “He says we’re becoming too popular! What’s the point in having something to say if you don’t let anyone hear it?”
He ran his hand irritably through his hair. He seemed angrier that someone should suggest he’d based his actions on ego or pride than that his oldest friend and associate should be leaving.
“Can’t he see we’re just at the point where it’s all beginning to add up to something?”
He seemed to be questioning his own motives, the contradictions lying beneath his skin like points of vulnerability, while his principles stiffened with each assault. The anger flared up and quickly died again, subverted to a quiet cyncism.
“You know, I’ve never done what I was told,” he said. “When I was a little boy my mother warned me not to look directly at the eclipse of the sun, so of course I just had to,” he said. “Do you know why I did that?”
“No—why?”
“Actually, I was hoping you could tell me. Maybe it was so I could have a cute little dog and learn to read braille.”
25
On Sundays, Rebekah and Ivan hosted an artists salon in their flat. Warden invited Joshua and his brother Troy, who brought a portfolio of his work. Among the pieces was a collage of photographs cut from magazines. In the centre, Warden sat beneath a tree under a malevolent sky with his head split open. The contents of a bottle of Coke and a canister of Chanel poured into it. In the background, a procession of fantastical animals boarded an ark. Troy had titled it “The Mortality of Heroes.”
Warden found it amusing. Rebekah pronounced it “brilliant” and offered to introduce Troy to several important collectors who were always looking for the next up-and-coming young artist and who could include him in their collections. She placed the work on an easel to show it off. Troy was thrilled by the attention. For the first time, Warden saw him looking animated.
A well-heeled crowd filled the flat to capacity. Guests deliberated over wine and hors d’oeuvres passed around on silver trays by immaculate waiters. Joshua sat on the floor by the fireplace away from the others. He cradled a cup of tea in his hands, unsettling the room with his tindery gaze. He had a genius for altering the weight of his presence, to darken or lighten it at will, and use it to affect his surroundings.
Joshua wasn’t swayed by Rebekah’s glamour or her social connections, yet his reputation as artist and cult figure had an effect on her. When she asked curiously about Wheel of Fire and Sanctuary, he answered with surly disinterest. Troy interrupted them.
“You mean that squat with all those oddballs and their social politics? Boring. Just give me the money and I’ll run with it as far as I can get, thanks kindly.”
“Hear! Hear!” cried Rebekah. “Three cheers for the grossest forms of avarice!”
Her voice rose and fell excitedly. For the first time since meeting her, Warden wished she would be quiet. The accusations Joshua had turned aside from the previous week—that he was becoming part of all he despised—weighed heavily on him. There, in the flat, he was surrounded by a reminder of everything he reviled.
He snapped a piece of kindling between his fingers while his eyes stalked the room like a panther. In his threadbare T-shirt and shabby jeans, he looked out of place in the elegant quarters. He suffered the gathering resentfully, a deceptive calm on his features belying the potential eruptions that lay beneath. His mouth tightened at the frivolity around him.
“Why did you bring me here?”
“Don’t worry—we won’t stay long,” Warden said. “I’ll just say hello to everyone and then we can sneak out.”
Rebekah, Ivan and Troy had clustered around an art critic, a paunchy little man who praised Troy’s work in a cultivated accent as though he were a newly discovered prodigy. He discussed the piece in light of a school of work he termed “naïve creativity” and comparing it favourably with artistry of a more formal design.
A woman standing nearby asked if he considered suffering to be all-important to the artist’s vision. The critic laughed, not unkindly, as he fingered his glass of wine.
“While it’s true suffering builds character,” he conceded, “so too does success in a most extraordinary way. And of the two I can tell you which I would prefer to suffer from.”
The group broke into polite laughter. He seemed to be pointing at the crowd with his neatly trimmed beard as he went on to name a number of artists who’d increased their output of notable works in accordance with their fame and success. Joshua remained by the fire, offence smouldering in his eyes.
Sensing his mood but not the cause, Rebekah attempted to lighten the situation by announcing her plans for a wedding for Joshua and Warden. Joshua looked up at her contemptuously.
“My life is not a social event—stop trying to host it,” he snapped.
Heads lifted and half-turned toward the scene before they resumed their merry buzzing.
The critic continued. “Thus I would urge you to affiliate yourself with a commercial institution,” he told Troy. “They’ll put your talents to good use and make a rich man out of you in no time. Witness van Gogh,” he said. “Had someone promoted his work he’d have been a wealthy man while he was alive, and probably lived a lot longer. Instead, having sold only one painting in his lifetime and been reviled as a madman, he is now seen to be one of the most influential artists of all time.”
Joshua’s eyes glittered weirdly in the crystalline lights. He was standing now. “And he probably would have painted shit for the rest of his life and lived to regret it. The price of art is simply the gauge of someone’s desire to appropriate. And desire is easy to manipulate, as any good hooker or drug peddler will tell you. It has nothing to do with the value of art and less with the worth of any artist, living or dead.”
“You may be right,” the critic said in his clipped phrasing. “But ultimately what it comes down to is who has the money and what that person is interested in purchasing. That’s what most idealists—and I assume you to be one—fail to recognize. We live in a material world. And art is merely a commodity.”
The crowd’s eyes turned to Joshua.
“Given the opportunity, artists can contribute to the social consciousness of their time. Many artists influence the choices made by the next generation by pointing out the mistakes of the present one.”
The little man smiled. “Ah, sadly I must disagree with you. Art that seeks such aims is no longer art but politics or, rather, propaganda. In any case, I’m not here to debate the worth of such causes, as meritorious as they may be. I’m here merely to purchase, which, you will be quick to point out being the intelligent man you’ve shown yourself to be, in days past was called ‘plunder and pillage’, and which now invests itself with the politer, more politic term of ‘commerce.’”
He returned his attention to Troy.
“Which is why, I repeat, you must work in the commercial realm. There’s always room for a good artist in the corporate stables.”
“Hear! Hear!” cried Joshua, raising his teacup to the room. “To sheep everywhere!”
He emptied the cup and set it down on the table. No one moved.
“You may not agree with what I say, but you could at least be a gentleman about it,” said the art expert.
“You mean we should lie to one another and call it good manners?”
Troy glared, angered at having his success spoiled by philosophies he cared nothing for.
“There’s no need to be abusive, Joshua,” Rebekah broke in.
He turned to her. “Excuse me, did you bleat?”
People moved away, turning to stare from a distance.
“You’re all so polite and witty here,” Joshua went on. “How does it feel to know you’re the best that society has to offer?” He singled out Rebekah again. “You with your Miss Dalrymple smile and your pretty manners—who do you think you’re fooling with your upper-class attitudes. You’d tart it up for anybody with money or reputation. ‘Lady,’ indeed.”
Ivan lifted a glass to his lips, his fingers crowne
d with a lacy sleeve. “Now now, dearie—don’t be vulgar. We still have to respect you in the morning, if only for the missus’ sake,” he said.
“And you…” he said, turning to Ivan. “I never know whether to treat you as a man or a woman. Where are your tits?”
Ivan bridled. “I’m not in drag.”
“Not in drag? Oh, thorry—me neither. It must be a hormone deficiency. Period. That’s it—it must be my period.”
He turned to face the room. “You’re all just a product of your class.”
“And what should we be products of?” Rebekah snapped.
“How about your brains?”
Joshua turned and left. The drinking and chattering resumed as people breathed a sigh of relief that the hurricane had passed them by, recovering their lost attitudes and poses like the last of a great era burdened with a social responsibility they had never wanted.
Rebekah reached for Warden’s hand. “It’s all right, go after him—I’ll make apologies for you,” she said, smiling sadly. “People understand what artists are like.”
“I don’t think Joshua would want to be apologized for.”
By the time he reached the street, Joshua was nowhere in sight.
Warden found Joshua at Sanctuary, sitting and smoking on the rehearsal stage. He crouched before him, putting his hand on Joshua’s knee where a rip in the denim left a patch of skin bare to the touch.
“You didn’t wait for me,” he said quietly.
Joshua brought the glowing butt to his mouth before flicking it onto the concrete floor.
“We don’t have to do everything together,” he said.
“No, of course we don’t…” Warden began.
Joshua cut him off. “Stop patronizing me! You sound like those bloody arses back there. ‘Yes, please.’ ‘No, thanks kindly.’ They make me sick with their feigned politeness, as if their stiff little formalities and witty comments made them superior.”
“Yes, you made that quite clear.”
“Jah was right—I am getting sucked right into it, becoming a part of it all.”
A Cage of Bones Page 19