‘Go on,’ said Dot.
‘I’d been, well, in a hell of a state with drink. I woke up one morning, some party some junkie had had, I was staggering round Soho, Oxford Street, a real mess, I ended up down Marble Arch, all those big embassy buildings, really fucked up. I heard some music. It was the synagogue, you know the big one down there, it’s got a beautiful dome, I’ll take you there some day, if you like.’
This whole thing seemed impossible to Owen, Saul the hater of religion, the Antichrist. Saul in the desert – had that not been one of Owen’s fantasies?
Dot nodded for Saul to go on.
‘Anyway, this song, my mother used to sing it. I must have staggered into this place. I don’t know what happened but they took me in, this Lubavitcher got me a place to stay. I was fucked up, I don’t know, maybe it was just the guy’s face, like he’d seen people like me before, like he cared. I don’t know. Relinquish, that was the word he used, accept, surrender, words like that. I had to see the desert, he said.’
Owen could hear the quiver in Saul’s voice. Dot gripped his hand. Owen looked out to Molly and the black kid as they headed towards the slide. The mother of the kid looked around for Molly’s mother. Owen made hand signs to her that it was OK for the kids to play there, he was watching. Saul went on.
‘They paid for my ticket, flight, food, everything, got me dried out.’ Saul laughed to himself. ‘I was the oldest student there, in the kibbutz, by far. And it’s hard work, every day the same stupid jobs, like the fucking Stone Age in a tent. And I had to fight it, the naive faith they had. It drove me nuts, you know, made me want to drink and trash it all. But the Lubavitcher, it was like he knew. He’d look at me with these eyes and it’d tear me up. He’d hold my hand and say “I know.”’
Owen heard Dot sniff beside him. He wrapped his arm round her. Saul went on.
‘So one night, it was just, you know, a hundred yards away. I went to the desert. I mean, it’s not what you’d think. Like a beach with no water, but really cold at night. Anyway, I was waiting for this big religious conversion or something. I actually went kind of nuts, you know, screaming at the sky. FUCK YOU, GOD! and all that jazz and of course there’s nothing, it’s just a stupid desert. And I thought, I’m a Jew – what’s wrong with that? A Jew in a desert! I don’t know why, I went crazy, howling and giggling, and the desert, I suppose I expected it to laugh back at me or something. You know, you look into the void and it looks into you. But it was just silly. I mean, hysterical, I was. When the Lubavitcher found me he said I had the divine laughter. So I go to synagogue every Saturday. That’s why I couldn’t help out yesterday. I don’t know why I’m telling you this.’
‘C’mere you.’ Dot burst into laughing tears, reached out for Saul’s hand and brought him closer. Owen sat back and let them hold each other, as Dot hugged and kissed the head of Saul. Saul reached to take Owen’s hand. Something in the movement must have set off the roundabout because they started spinning.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Dot muttered and that set Owen off. All three were spinning on the roundabout holding each other. Owen looked out and the mother by the slide was staring at them as if they were mad, while Molly waved.
Owen could not bring himself to look at the last two tapes. The violence within them. Slaps, blood, screaming. He was at his desk and unable to face the impossible essay. Dot was putting pressure on him about Zurich. She needed the text finished and since the touring childminder situation was, as always impossible, she wanted either him or Saul to come to Switzerland with her.
Down the corridor, they were making houses. Saul had constructed a little tent with sheets thrown over Molly’s bed and had brought her dollies inside. Words only half heard and guessed at but he was sure Saul was asking her all their names, his bare feet peeking out onto her alphabet rug.
Owen couldn’t focus. A tiny gap through the door, down the hall through the sheets, and he was sure he saw Saul being served make-believe cups of tea. And Saul holding his plastic kiddie-cup like an old lady, like Oscar Wilde, his little finger pointed outwards. ‘It’s delicious.’
The child’s laughter and he himself had never found time to play under Molly’s drape. Perhaps Dot was right, the old Saul was dead and we had to get to know the new one. But the inner peace of the new Saul scared him. He was ever-conscious of the lurking messiah.
Owen was on his feet, walking towards that small tent of whisperings. But then, stopping before the sheets, he heard words from inside.
‘Tea is a funny thing,’ Saul said, ‘just some crushed leaves from India.’
‘What’s India?’ Molly asked.
‘Well, I’ll tell you in a minute. But milk comes from England and sugar from Jamaica. It’s all very strange and wonderful this thing called a cup of tea.’
Owen had to step away, there were things going on in there the like of which a normal four-year-old would never have heard. The deconstruction of colonialism, and Saul, his voice in whispers, his fingers maybe drawing maps in the air, telling Molly about the world. As Owen made it back to his room there was an understanding of Saul’s new place in the order of things. On one level it was tragic that he’d had to find a four-year-old as his new student, but on another, just imagine, to be that child and for that adult to take that cup with its imagined tea and for him to tell you of holy Hindu cows and how to milk a teat and how sugar boiled down from cut vines in the West Indies. And to see this man’s eyes, wide open, as he again teaches himself the wonder of words he had once found predictable. For the most cynical man in the world to find joy in the eyes of a child who waits on his next word. A word that might redeem him. If only he could live with them under that little makeshift tent. If only there was no essay and no Zurich, no career to build and no homes to find. No tomorrow to fear.
*
To be three is the one for me.
To be two, would you?
It makes me sick and it makes me spew.
To be one is no fun, unless you like sticking things –
– up your bum. Up your bum (or sitting alone with a bottle of rum)
We were all drunk and Dot had made up a song with Saul playing along on his beaten-up guitar, as we brainstormed threes: three strands in DNA, green, red and blue make white light. Three for two in the off-licence with Sauvignon Blanc. The third term of Tory rule. Three hours to Goldsmiths and back. Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him three times. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. We live in 3D. Bad luck comes in threes.
Three wise men, let’s say it again.
Three is company, two is a crowd. Gonna shout it loud.
As Saul struck the final chord he collapsed, drunken into the depths of his wardrobe.
We were high on our threeness, floating on vast quantities of alcohol. Our lovemaking in that month had drifted into a somnambulist semi-waking sensuality, in which we never knew or admitted we knew who was touching who. Our limbs and mouths dissolved into each other, but still not a word had any of us said about what we were really doing. Dot thought we had finally become a work of art, that art and love could be bedfellows. But neither art nor love can thrive without the silent third element and that is social reality, and it was rushing at us, fast.
It was the second week of May and only a week till Dot’s premiere in Bug. The problems with electricity and lighting and her choice of tape had been solved: she was going to exhibit our slapping kissing tape on a TV on a plinth somewhere. Everyone told her she was headed for success but there was an electric air of restlessness around her. She could not sit still for a second. She’d shoplifted a bodice and bowler hat to wear to her opening. Her lipstick was black or was maybe eyeliner, or possibly permanent marker. I hoped not. She wanted to film everything, all the time.
Saul had already drunk two boxes of sherry on the day when it happened, and his snoring was filling the flat. Dot asked me to come with her to his room and for us all to sleep together, for once, deliberately, eyes wide open.
— You�
��re right, she said, it’s silly to keep on pretending like this.
I suggested it may not be such a good idea to wake Saul and expect him to be happy about it.
— Perhaps we should bring him a coffee and some ibuprofen before our discussion?
— A discussion? She laughed, quoting an old Saulism back at me. — Must you always explain away the fabulous?
She had her video camera with her. — Come on, she kept saying, as she pulled me through Saul’s doorway, over his piles of unwashed clothes.
— I can see it in my head, she said, — a thing of beauty, to make all humanity weep.
— Pardon?
— Get in beside him, I want to film us sleeping.
It made sense, we had filmed everything else we’d done, what would be the harm in it? I decided to keep my pants on, and when Saul woke, to sit and quietly discuss our situation.
I was woken by screaming. I tried to keep the peace but they were both in hysterics. Dot was picking up her camera, the lens seemed broken. Saul yelled: — How dare you? Get the fuck out!
He was trying to cover his nakedness, kicking Dot out. He screamed so loud they couldn’t hear me.
— Psycho bitch, you’ve no fucking right!
She was in tears, didn’t understand, saying sorry, sorry, telling him that we looked so beautiful together, her eyes shooting to me for help.
— Tell him, when he sleeps, he’s so –
Saul pushed her back. She fell and banged her head on the stereo, writhing in pain as she clutched her skull. Saul ran from the room, dragging his clothes, screaming back: — CUNT! Never darken my door again!
I was left alone with her. I found that I was more naked than I had thought and searched for my underpants. She wanted to show me what she had filmed, by way of explanation. Saul must have dressed quickly out in the hall and found some boots because I heard the front door slam. I tried to be practical, plugged her camera into the VCR, rewound and hit ‘play’. It was just some footage of Saul and me sleeping, harmless.
— Don’t you see how sweet you are?
I sat and watched. She had woken between us and got her camera. She’d filmed the space between us where she had been. Slowly Saul and I, in our sleeping sense of her lack, rolled over and held each other. Saul was naked, and I wearing only my shirt. Saul muttered, I snuggled up against him. Then he rolled over and I went into spoons, holding him from behind as he curled his hand under his chin like a little kitten.
— So beautiful, she said over and over, as I reached for her hand, my eyes stuck to the screen. She started staring at her upturned hands, chanting sorrys and beautifuls, as if in mantra.
On-screen, the smile on Saul’s face as he nestled his chin into my neck. As his hand reached back and held me closer. The voice from the recorded footage then, the same as the voice beside me, whispering, — So beautiful. Then the face of Saul waking. Then in shock. He lunged for the camera. His eyes flashing furious from between the dark fingers that obliterated the lens.
I realised then what had happened in the mind of Saul.
— What did I do wrong? Dot kept asking, but I could not tell her.
She had broken his one unspoken rule: to keep the repressed repressed. It was not a portrayal but a betrayal. Or maybe something more simple, more base and selfish: he was the only one allowed to make an artwork of his life. She had reduced him to an object in her art. The one thing Saul could never bear was to have his powerlessness exposed.
She wept on my shoulder but I could not hold her, my hand floated by her side. She had plans to buy him presents, to give him sherry, flowers, money, five hundred pounds. She sat on the edge of the bed, inconsolable.
— Will he ever speak to me again?
I lied, said, — Maybe . . . We’ll see, sure. Let me try and smooth things out with him, OK?
— Would you?
— Sure, trust me, it’ll be fine.
But I knew that she had destroyed what we had, because it had been a secret we could not reveal even to each other, and she had filmed it with a video camera, for all the world to see.
Pills. I didn’t think she had any left, thought she had got rid of them all, but she had to take some to calm herself. There were two new large bottles in the bathroom, Valium and something else.
Saul returned with two boxes of sherry, and would not speak to me. I went to his door – it was locked – and whispered through the wood.
— Open up, we have to talk. Please, Saul.
After ten minutes I heard him hiss from the other side.
— We need to need to ditch the bitch! I told you she was sick. Months back and you wouldn’t listen.
— Please, try to be reasonable, and lower your voice.
I waited and waited, then his voice, dark and phlegm-filled: — If you can’t get rid of her, then you’ll be forcing me to take care of the situation myself.
I sat in silence on his doorstep. Then his hissing words came.
— So be it!
I couldn’t wait around worrying or let her worry for a second, so I made myself indispensable and kept us both furiously busy over the next few days, drawing up lists of to-dos, shopping for her, for extension cables and scarts and other video things, reassuring Dot that her TV on a plinth in the midst of the vast warehouse was a great artwork, that the thing with Saul would blow over. The frenzy of exhibition preparation, generated by the many artists fighting over exhibition space, distracted me from the fear of Saul’s smouldering scheming.
On the night of the opening as Dot and I prepared to leave without him (his door had been close to us for three days), Saul, to our surprise, asked if he could join us. He seemed perfectly benign. He’d even given her some hope, talking politely, about how important Bug must be for her and almost apologising for his mood of late, then excusing himself to get dressed. I tried to encourage her.
— See, he’s over it, it’s just his way. He hates being emotional and never likes picking up his own messes, he’d rather pretend nothing happened at all. Trust me.
His appearance when revealed was resplendent, head to toe in all of his leathers: trousers, waistcoat, gloves, with his overcoat with antique Nazi regalia. I told her it was his way of being funny, his sign of forgiveness, he was, after all, Jewish.
— Let’s just let him shock everyone and steal some posh wine and within the week he’ll have forgotten everything and we’ll be back to day one again.
She was still afraid to talk to him. She did not wear one of her new radical outfits but only jeans and a T-shirt, and it took her three hours to decide on even that. I heard her talking to herself from behind her door.
— It’s OK, it’s going to be OK. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
On the way, in the tube, Saul was silent, sitting across from us. I took Dot’s trembling hand and every time she jabbered her nervous sorry and thanks to him, I gripped her tighter.
— Thanks, Saul . . . You’ve no idea how much this means to . . . You’ll get to meet Sarah Lucas and take the piss out of Hirst if you fancy or . . . It’s not really my art but yours. I mean, you should be taking all the credit.
He simply nodded, staring out at the passing stations.
Inside, he marched ahead of us, up the many dusty stairs. There was a DJ playing a Happy Mondays/James Brown hybrid, and maybe two hundred people. She clung to my hand and so I led her on with encouraging whispers. Apart from her single TV screen showing our cross-dressing tape, the rest of the art was of little consequence: some things that looked like archery targets painted onto the walls; the usual exhibiting of banal consumer objects as if they were some damning indictment of our time, à la Jeff Koons – in this case, a cappuccino maker on a wooden plinth and some slogans on hand-painted cardboard on sticks as if made for a demonstration that said, ironically: ‘DON’T ASK ME’ and ‘I’M WITH STUPID’. There were some packing boxes that I’d seen before, assuming they contained art ready to be unpacked, which turned out to be the art themselves. There was some ta
bleau-vivant diorama of a working-class domestic living room as an installation in the middle of the space, right next to Dot’s TV, which no one had seemed to notice.
— It’s great, I said, — maybe the TV’s a bit too small, but I’m sure folk will look at it later.
But her eyes were scouting around for Saul. Finally she found him and pointed him out to me – in the midst of a crowd at the free bar. Dot wanted to wait for him but I considered it better to mingle and let him find us and that would also be a sign of his forgiveness.
So Dot introduced me to so many artists and gallery owners. Adrian Searle, from the Guardian, was there, looking fashionably knackered but marvellously aloof. Dot got chatting with Tracey Emin about men’s underpants as if discussing Kant’s aesthetics. I wanted to butt in but there were so many people around them and my underpants were not a fit topic of conversation. I glanced over and some girls in seventies retro wedges were touching Saul’s leathers, giggling and whispering in his ear. I told Dot everything was going to be fine and tried to make her laugh. Pointing out the female performance artist walking round wearing nothing but a black plastic bin bag, asking people to give her their empties. Clinking around with empty beer bottles and plastic cups inside. Nipples exposed as the weight of crap increased around her. She was from Northern Ireland, she told everyone, it was an artwork all about the Troubles. Dot got the guts then to leave my hand and within minutes was in the midst of the throng, ranting about Saul’s ideas, how life itself should be an art form. The tall man with the retro glasses, Pierce I assumed, was flirting with her, telling her how wonderful she was and how rumour had it that one of Saatchi’s buyers was here tonight, undercover.
I looked around for Saul but he had abandoned the girlies. I presumed he was downing swift ones at the bar. It was the explosion that located him.
The space cleared rapidly around the commotion. He was standing in Dot’s space, bottle of wine in hand. The TV lay smashed on the ground. The man who must have been Pierce marched over to him.
— Please step away from the art!
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