The Fabrications

by Baret Magarian

  Layor nodded respectfully. He felt immensely grateful to the firemen, a gratitude that had no borders. Then his eye saw the crumpled note. It lay by the front door, next to some stray leaves. In another moment the flames claimed it.

  From their ladders the firemen directed the jets into the upstairs rooms. People had begun to walk away, though a few remained in a file close to Layor. A woman walked up to him. After glancing at the various faces she could tell from his that he was the owner of the house. So she put her arm around him. He was not at all surprised. The fire freed them both from the straitjacket of etiquette. He looked into her eyes. She looked luminous, not quite of this earth. Neither of them could bring themselves to say anything.

  It was Lilliana.

  17

  Inside the limousine Rees talked incessantly, telling Oscar it was important for him to be noticed at the party they were going to.

  Despite the sound of Rees’s voice – rendered less irritating than usual in the sepulchral calm of the limousine – Oscar had an impression of incredible well-being. He could study the occupants of the cars moving alongside them through tinted windows which ensured his own invisibility. He was surprised to find he was thrilled to be riding in the limousine. There was something vaguely illicit about the experience and he abandoned himself to it. The car’s motion did not actively impress itself on his senses; rather it was felt subliminally, like a tremor, an imagined sound of thunder.

  It was midnight by the time they arrived.

  The limousine turned into a private, sumptuous avenue free of cars and full of some of the grandest houses Oscar had ever seen. The predominant impression the street gave was of whiteness. Every exterior looked as if it had just that moment been painted. The limousine stopped outside a house whose stucco facade was magically lit by golden floodlights. It made Oscar think of a gigantic wedding cake, tier upon tier reaching heavenwards.

  They walked up to the entrance and were greeted by a footman.

  Inside, as Oscar marveled at the grandeur of the hallway, the Bohemian crystal chandeliers and the sumptuous staircase, he was aware of Rees only vaguely as if the latter were locked in a misty bubble from which he emerged from time to time. In the hall a group of Indian men in loincloths were playing sitars and tablas. A few people were scattered about listening, sipping blue, green and pink cocktails. It was sparse, refined music – it did not demand to be listened to, but its recurring patterns, its percussive continuities were calming. Rees and Oscar climbed the stairs, brushing against some of the guests coming down in great droves, and came eventually to a gargantuan ballroom with paneled doors and a ceiling crowded with figures who seemed to have stepped out of Renaissance Florence, their gravitas contrasting, as Oscar thought, with the abandon of the people jostling together in an untamed throng. Outside, a stone balcony looked out onto the silent street. There were more guests gathered there, squeezed between spectacular geraniums. Eerie, otherworldly music was playing in the ballroom. At the far end there was a long, sleek table with a brilliantly polished mirror for its surface. A pyramid of cocaine was piled up on it and various men were crushing it up with credit cards and other flat surfaces. They reminded Oscar of dealers, cutting cards at casinos, and had that same air of skill and bravado. All around the table people were snorting the white powder through little gold tubes and rolled up bank notes.

  No one took any notice of Oscar and Rees as they made their way toward the bar and the small plates of food that sat there, unmolested. Rees was talking, babbling but Oscar refused to listen. He wished he would go away. Oscar needed endless energy to be around him; his every utterance was designed to prove something, to persuade or to sell. The barman poured Oscar a glass of red wine and Rees a Bloody Mary.

  ‘Oscar,’ said Rees, ‘make sure that you get around, sample the different characters. Don’t be shy.’

  And with that he strode brazenly into the crowd. Oscar was as surprised as he was delighted.

  There was a truly astonishing mix of fashions, faces and characters now claiming his attention. Many of the men looked Latinate and wore their hair slicked back, the lines drawn by the comb still intact. Others were less suave, but were uniformly smart, with their starched shirts and immaculate trousers. But it was the women who really held his attention, in their kimonos and embroidered negligees, catsuits and saris; with their predatory, ornate, aggressive footwear; their black onyx beads, gaudy rings and searingly patterned stockings. Oscar found himself thinking of these people not merely as strangers, as he would normally, but rather as individual selves, with rich and complex existences. He wondered what their lives were like, the shape of their histories, what it was they did, who they loved, who they hated. It was thrilling to soak everything up, to speculate on the usually hidden layers of people’s lives, but he was afraid his head would burst like a bubble crammed with too much oxygen.

  Tucked away in a quiet corner a girl in torn jeans crouched on a chair. She held onto the arching armrests with gangly arms, while her legs were crossed over each other and planted into the large cushion underneath. She was bending her sinewy hands into the shape of binoculars. She fastened them onto her face and peered around through this imagined lens, looking this way and that, making sharp movements with her head, like a robot. Then suddenly her head was swaying wildly, following the rhythms of the music. Then it was hanging limply, her hair flopping about, reaching her knees, a cascade of disarray. She was like a crazed marionette. About her hung a kind of poisoned joie de vivre. She was like a kite torn by thorns. She lit a cigarette and took some puffs in quick succession until she was hidden by smoke clouds.

  Oscar found her mesmerizing and was intent on speaking to her. He walked up to her. She was peering through her hands again.

  ‘What do you see?’ he asked.

  ‘The planets. The stars. Supernovae,’ she muttered.

  She spoke so quietly that Oscar had to strain to hear her. Her face was close to his and he stared into green eyes whose pupils were abnormally dilated. She was indistinct, as if she could only be perceived through tracing paper.

  ‘The planets. The stars,’ she repeated in a colder, shriller voice.

  ‘Can you see that far?’

  ‘No, not really. I’d just like to go that far.’

  She dissolved into sulfurous laughter, and for a moment it yoked back together the splintered fragments of her psyche, but as it died away she was a lost soul again.

  She moved her lips together, as though she had just applied lipstick and was smoothing it over her mouth with a final flourish.

  ‘Do you like the way I look?’ she asked.

  ‘You’re beautiful.’

  She smiled sweetly and once again for its duration she seemed fine. Someone catching her smile would have seen an expression of unbridled joy. Then the smile disappeared without trace and her face became a melancholic mask.

  ‘I think I’m going to leave this party. It’s such a bore.’

  ‘Where will you go?’ Oscar asked.

  ‘Oh, you, you and your questions! You do nothing but ask questions! Well, now I’m going to ask you one.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘By the time this party is over the universe will have expanded in all directions by many miles. How many would you say?’

  ‘I really couldn’t.’

  ‘A billion. A billion fucking miles. Did you ever think about that? Once? We’re on this tiny planet spinning away – and we think we’re so important – we think we’re the cats’ pyjamas. Well, we’re not. And I’m never going to see with my own eyes what’s out there. I’m going to die never having seen the edge of other galaxies, never having seen the final moments of a star’s life as it explodes. I’m going to die never having gone through a wormhole or travelled at the speed of light. Instead I have to be happy with all this.... ’ She pointed to the bacchanalian display around her.

  ‘It doesn’t interest me – this sludge doesn’t interest me. It’s such a fucking bore.’
r />   She walked away with a motion both agitated and natural.

  Then she was gone. When Oscar turned around to find someone else to talk to a woman in a leather skirt and beret was standing nearby, clutching a wine bottle.

  ‘You must be Oscar,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. How did you know?’

  ‘Someone pointed you out. There are some people from the Duchamp Prize here. I would have liked to have heard your speech. I’m sorry I missed it.’

  ‘Please, don’t be.’

  ‘I heard you caused a riot.’

  ‘Does news travel that quickly?’

  ‘The people I spoke to were quite impressed.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to cause a riot. Actually, I’m not sure I did.’

  ‘Relax.’

  A man dressed in tweeds was shuffling past slowly. The woman grabbed his arm and dragged him over.

  ‘This is Oscar and Oscar, this is Malcolm. He’s a lecturer.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Oscar,’ said Malcolm evenly.

  ‘What do you lecture in?’

  ‘Anthropology.’

  Malcolm’s eyes were glazed over and he blinked incessantly. In fact he looked thoroughly exhausted and ill and barely had enough energy, it seemed, to remain standing. Standing next to him Oscar had the feeling that he too would shortly be struck down by exhaustion or paralysis.

  ‘My name’s Kim, by the way. So tell us what you said in your speech. Tell us what caused all the commotion.’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘You can’t have forgotten. It’s barely been that long,’ said Malcolm.

  ‘I really can’t remember. I’ve had a mental block.’

  ‘While you’re thinking about this, perhaps I could ask you something,’ said Malcolm.

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘Are women capable, do you think, of rational thought?’

  Kim gripped his hand tightly, indicating that she didn’t want him to do this, to be intense and contentious with a stranger.

  Oscar considered the question for a moment and then said calmly, ‘Of course, but they don’t ascribe such a high value to it.’

  ‘Oh, I see. They’re in touch with their feelings and all that baloney.’

  ‘Malcolm, do you really have to alienate every new person you meet?’ said Kim.

  ‘No, I don’t, but it saves time, seeing as we’ll be falling out later anyway. Best to get it over and done with before you become friends; then it’s less painful. Don’t you find, Oscar?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘The way I see it, there is no objective friend, a friend you’re destined to meet, no standing-outside-of-time lover, no innately-right partner. We choose who we’re stuck with, who happens to come along. People press a few buttons and – Hey! Presto! – people fall in love, get married. One day they choose Susie, the next Sally. One day they’re with Tom, the next Malcolm.’

  Kim snapped, ‘Then Malcolm’s days are numbered. I’m sorry about this Oscar. Malcolm doesn’t believe in anything and takes every available opportunity to say so. He likes to dress up his nihilism as something else but – ’

  ‘What’s that, my love?’

  ‘As wisdom.’

  ‘Nothing so grand as that, surely.’

  ‘Piss off, Malcolm.’

  ‘You see, Kim likes to see herself as a dominatrix, but she wears slippers instead of boots. Well, how do you see the love thing, Oscar? Are these conclusions of mine misguided?’

  ‘Love’s a snake pit,’ said Oscar evenly, undoubtedly intrigued by Malcolm.

  ‘That’s nicely phrased. Kim and I are in the pit; we’re stuck there and to each other, millstones around each other’s necks.’

  Oscar studied Kim’s face. The whites of her eyes were clouded and murky, her cheeks sallow and sunken.

  Malcolm continued. ‘There’s no time now for this, is there? I have to be light and frothy. I have to forget the world’s ills as I sip cocktails. Never mind; no time, not the right place for this sort of talk, but stick around, Oscar. We might make some progress, you and I. I feel I can confide in you. She accuses me of living in a diseased world and she calls herself an artist. Do you know what’s in that bottle she’s clutching, like her very life depends on it, which it does?’

  ‘Wine?’

  ‘No. But close enough, if you’re a Christian. She thinks she’s Christ you see, and what could be more diseased than that? It’s her blood in there. I repeat, her blood. Her latest project. She’s been drawing her own blood out with hypodermic syringes and filling bottles with it. Her body can’t make blood that fast to replenish the supply so guess what: She’s anaemic. She faints. She loses weight. And why does she do it? So that some gallery in Shoreditch can exhibit bottles of her blood every week. The bottles are meant to accumulate as the weeks go by. But what can I do? What – ’

  Kim slapped his face and screamed, ‘What do you know about me, you shit? You don’t know how I suffer! When I suffer I suffer with my whole body, every nerve ending, every vein, every artery. I’m trying to get my career going and all you can do is pounce on – ’

  ‘You’re killing yourself! I don’t want you to die! I don’t want –’

  ‘If I die, it will be your fault. I’m an artist! I’m trying to alter the parameters! I’m trying to say something!’

  ‘And what’s that?’ Oscar asked politely.

  ‘I’m making a statement about the way we live today – it’s about martyrdom, the necessity of sacrifice. I have to sacrifice my blood so that people can see how precious it really is! To make people honor their bodies. Because we don’t – we feed it with shit – with processed shit – with chemicals – with pesticides – and everything becomes interchangeable, valueless, fake. It’s all the same, don’t you see? Of course it’s destructive; it’s meant to be. So is a Buddhist priest burning himself to death.’

  ‘Talk to her, Oscar; tell her she’s spouting incoherent crap.’

  ‘Perhaps Malcolm is right. Perhaps you should think of your health.’

  Kim pulled out a long comb with sharp, gleaming teeth and swiped it across Malcolm’s face viciously. He winced in pain; she had taken some skin off. His hand shot to his cheek.

  Kim stormed off and was instantly swallowed in the vortex that the room was rapidly turning into.

  Oscar pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to Malcolm.

  ‘God, are you all right?’

  ‘That’s nothing,’ he stammered, as he dabbed his face, ‘she’s just teasing.’

  ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t able to – ’

  ‘Forget it. She has to learn on her own. We all have to learn on our own; that’s the thing. Of course I know as well as you do that the social message is baloney. It’s a slow suicide, pure and simple. She gets needles from “acquaintances” of hers and then carries out her ghastly work when I’m not at home. She’s crazy; she needs to be under sedation, so she can’t harm herself, but what can I do? I do love her; I actually do, in my own sick way. She’s been sectioned three times. After the third she refused to see me for a year, a whole year, said I’d betrayed her, said I could have stopped it. I’m at the end of the road myself. And who’s interested in listening to her? It’s just a tiny blip, her inch of gallery space. There were a couple of features in a couple of papers and that was that. The world isn’t bothered. The world will just grind on and she’ll be fucked up somewhere in some hospital. But I have to prevent that from happening. I have to. So many people have tried to stop the world from turning; all they’ve managed to do is toss a cloud into the pathway of the sun. Excuse me.’

  When Oscar’s gaze reverted from Malcolm’s face to the scene around him he was surprised to find that the conversation had been all-absorbing, so the crowds now infringed onto his consciousness as if for the first time. More and more people were spilling into the room. He could see a man and a woman heading over. There seemed to be something joining them together, but Oscar was not sure if he trusted his eyes. He was beg
inning to feel the effects of fatigue. He glanced again at the pair. They wore matching shirts, which revealed navels pierced with large golden rings; a bright chain ran from one ring to the other, connecting them: a silver umbilical cord. He stared for a few more moments and said out loud, ‘Maybe it’s better not to get so attached to people.’ He didn’t think his remark had been heard by anyone, but a man dressed in a single flowing robe glittering with countless sequins turned to meet him. He had intoxicatingly blue eyes, the skin on his face was glowing, but there was something about his appearance that suggested he was not quite real. He smoked the longest cigarette Oscar had ever seen.

  ‘Do you think?’ the stranger asked.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ said Oscar.

  ‘Do you think that it’s better not to get so attached to people?’

  ‘Oh, I was joking; a little dig at that couple over there with the chain.’

  ‘What couple?’

  Oscar looked over but the place where they had been standing was now occupied by someone dressed in an orangutan’s costume.

  ‘What couple?’ the man repeated.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ Oscar said.

  ‘Oh well; they’ll be back and you can tell me all about them. By the way, do you like my face?’

  ‘It’s very nice.’

  ‘Good, it cost me nearly half a million pounds. I presume you’re familiar with the latest developments in plastic surgery?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Let me tell you. In twenty years of course things will be much more sophisticated – now it’s all a little crude. I keep telling my sister to have her breasts enlarged, in the easiest way, which is through the navel. Moving parts of the body around seems like fun too, but it may be a waste of time in the long run to have one’s thigh forming one’s upper lip. I tried that, didn’t like it. But think: Soon everything, organs, blood, skin, muscle – will be replaceable. Isn’t it wonderful?’

  ‘Wonderful. But, on the other hand – and forgive me if I sound old-fashioned – isn’t all this all a little macabre? The body’s a temple. I learned that when I was life modeling.’