20
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Oscar.’
‘Oh. Where are you calling from?’
‘A phone booth. Are you still disgusted with me?’
‘I never said I was. But...before you were a product; now you’ve been promoted, or demoted, depending on how you look at it. You’re a puppet. I can see the strings.’
‘I’m beginning to think the puppetry might have started with the life-modeling.’
‘Are you suggesting it’s my fault?’
‘No, no, no, of course not...no, I just ....Listen, all my life I’ve been no one, and now I feel I have a voice, power...I could give something...’
‘No, Oscar, you listen. You may be a tunnel through which visions pass, but I’m not especially interested in hanging around with a pseudo-messiah. I’m not holy enough. What’s more, I’ve no desire to be. Which hotel is it you’re stranded in?’
‘The Grosvenor.’
‘What’s the food like? Does it come designer-wrapped? Or is that only you? How long do you intend to go on playing this game?’
‘Najette, listen, I’d give it all up for you. The last time I saw you. I remember every tiny detail; I remember things you said. You were so...’
‘Oscar, what’s the use of a good memory when all it does is help you lie to yourself and others?’
‘You’re right, you’re right, I know. Would it make any difference if I told you I didn’t really plan this – it just sort of happened. I just seem to have come under the spell of this man; he’s just sort of taken over my life. I let him. I know, I should have resisted, but I mean, what was the alternative? I couldn’t have gone on projecting films. I hoped the urge to paint would come back, but it didn’t. Every time...every time I’d sit in front of a blank piece of paper or canvas I’d just start panicking. I had so much to say that I couldn’t even begin to say it, and it had to be perfect, and I knew it wouldn’t even be mediocre. It had to be there, clean, with the umbilical cord neatly cut, you know, and I wasn’t prepared to put in the work, the hours, to start and re-start and throw sketches away and then go through the basket looking for what I’d binned. I just don’t have your dedication or talent. I don’t feel good about this situation I’m in. I know I don’t come out of this very well, but would you turn down a hotel when you’d lived in a series of bedsits all your life? Would you turn down the opportunity to have a voice? I could teach, be Daniel’s mouth – I mean – ’
‘How presumptuous to imagine you’ve something to give the world.’
‘You’re right, but it’s not I who’s doing the talking. I can’t explain...imagine I’ve chanced on a treasure trove and I’m its caretaker.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind. Oh God, never mind. It’s just too complicated. I’ll just say that – in a weird way – I feel free...now...because I’m...not free, no, that’s the wrong word...I feel this indifference, a disregard. It’s as though I’m tied to the mast of a ship. It’s on the verge of capsizing in a gale. I’m soaked, but while I’m up there, it’s exhilarating in the way sticking your head out of an express train is exhilarating...and I want to scream at the world.’
‘Oscar, a prophet should be dispassionate, not desperate, and shouldn’t be living in a five-star hotel. He should be poor, not eating gourmet meals. He shouldn’t be looking into the eye of the camera, but into eternity with a beatific smile.’
‘God, it’s so good to talk to you. You talk so much sense, Christ, and all I’ve heard lately is nonsense. Never mind. I mean to say, do you think...I was wondering...you’re right, of course, you’re right, you’re right. Would you mind...could I see you?’
‘Listen, Oscar, I know what you want. You want me to sort you out. That’s it, isn’t it? You rely too much on others. You have to save yourself. I think perhaps it would be best if you didn’t call me again.’
He didn’t say anything. She didn’t say anything. He stood there, clutching the phone, his fingers tightly curled around the handset, as if only this connection with drab plastic was staving off total despair.
Now Oscar was granted a glimpse into eternity but it was comfortless.
Najette murmured, ‘I have to go now,’ and hung up.
A minute later the phone in the booth started ringing but Oscar wasn’t there to pick it up.
Afterwards he walked away sadly, staring hard at the pavement. He thought of the time she’d kissed him.
One kiss.
It took on a frightful sacredness. If only the kiss had been caught on film, if only he could have replayed it, re-lived its intoxication vicariously. No, the kiss was already fading, would fade further, in time would vanish. Could it be affection left no visible traces? Just when a special part of her had started to unravel, like a ribbon twirling in the moonlight, the mood between them had soured. He could not really blame her – she was too defiantly intelligent to tolerate his willing participation in illusion, his compliance in a fabrication which distorted his humanity, blurred the edges of his life, ran the risk of making everything he said and did ridiculously meaningful, or meaningless. What should he do? Could he give up this life which had been thrust upon him? All at once, erasing these questions, came a simple, overwhelming desire: to see her.
So he hailed a taxi to take him to the grand, dilapidated house where she lived. But he managed to land himself a cab whose out-of-control driver (adorned with a grandly fungal beard) tackled speed bumps as he would the level road, causing Oscar’s stomach to dip and soar sickeningly. Not only was he torn between anxiety and hope, but he also had to deal with a man intent on killing them both, as he smashed his foot down on the accelerator like an angry child trying to crush a beetle.
At the end Oscar stepped out warily. He paid the driver, and the cab tore off in search of its next unsuspecting victim. He paced up and down, wondering what he should do now he was here. He walked up, stopping a few yards away from the house, crossed over to the far side, and watched. The large bay window which he remembered glancing out of all those weeks ago (he could picture the young boy learning to cycle) allowed for an unobstructed view of her canvasses and easel. Otherwise the room was bare. He grew more and more agitated. It seemed so easy to go up and ring the doorbell and pour out a stream of words. But he held back. As he stood there she glided in and moved toward the easel, her face turned in profile. (She had had to give up her studio and did all her work at home now.) He was able to study her eyes as they in turn studied her canvas, to follow the taut curve of her arm running toward the precise hand and its sable brush. Without warning she strode off, and returned with a thick glass palette. For some time her back was turned to him and he assumed she was mixing paint. Then, with neither ceremony nor fuss, she resumed her work. She waited, waited for the paint to find its own form and space, to show her the way which was its way. He moved forward a little, now five or six meters off. He was taking an awful risk: if she happened to glance outside there was no doubt she would see him, but while she was still in profile, focused on her work he thought he would be all right. Now as she painted he found the mere sight of her made him happy – he no longer felt the urge to announce himself, recoiling especially at the idea of interrupting her work, which he realized, in watching her, was sacred, more sacred than anything in his own life was to him. It was clear how fired up she was, how engaged she was with her art. Only chains wrapped around her could have dragged her away. In her physical energy he saw a corresponding mental fertility: New ideas flowed; new perspectives and possibilities opened up. So her joy stifled his sadness. He took in the sight of her olive skin, her startlingly long eyelashes, her straight silky hair rearranged every now and then by the hand that was free.
Oscar had caught her at a moment when a study for part of a larger work was showing her how the latter might cohere as a whole. She wanted to find a new way of linking the apprehension of an object with the emotion it evoked. Studies and sketches of the shattered plant pot, its edges distended and swollen
like a heavily pregnant womb, and the elegiac face of Lilliana, gone over in pencil, pencil and crayon, pencil and gouache, powdery charcoal, and finally oil, were the keys. It was her conception of the strange union between Lilliana and the blonde hairdresser in the Sun Well at the start of the summer. In her view the finished work would mark a new departure. For the final painting she planned to use maimeri, an acrylic paint with a high density of pigment, which glowed and sparkled, leapt out of the canvas with its luminosity. She visualized the work as being predominantly a dialogue between blues – ultramarine, cerulean, cobalt.
Now he was daydreaming, constructing scenes of love between them. He imagined her frictionless, unblemished skin, her draping body over his. He imagined her smiling eyes greeting his as he turned toward her in the morning. But the reverie came to an abrupt end as he had to step aside for a passing car. Then he was struck by the realization that he wasn’t worthy of Najette, that her inspired state began where he left off. How right she was, he reflected, when he eventually drifted away, to keep him at a distance; and it was right that he hadn’t tried to bridge that distance by placing his finger on her doorbell.
He hopped off the bus as it slowed down.
During the journey one or two people recognized him. They weren’t interested in why he was a public figure – just that he was one: The fact of his fame was sufficient and they were drawn to it as by a fire on a cold night. They generated a kind of childish excitement around him, asking for his autograph, which he readily gave. And yet even as he scrawled out his name – the letters scrunched and compressed so as to minimize the time spent in writing it – he felt like he was engaged in an elaborate pretense, a ridiculous game.
He walked quickly as the bus turned into Tottenham Court Road. The evening was cool, and the air was tangy and sharp. He made out a line of cellular phone devotees dotted along the length of the Charing Cross Road. They clutched, cradled, and caressed their phones. They moved with their phones, paced up and down with them, turned with them, waltzed with them. Their phones were their dance partners.
Boisterous groups, solitary men accompanied by canine companions, and giggling couples were headed for the public houses. It was a Friday night. The evening’s task was to imbibe alcohol, the great liberator, the stepping stone to confidence, compliments and the harvests of expediency. Breathing deeply of the healing elixir, sampling the blurring of perception in a joyous haze, succumbing to the disorientation of an overloaded system: These would make up the successive stages of the evening, joined seamlessly through the conduit of beer, wine, cocktails or spirits, as these offered a network of possibility whose lines would terminate in anonymous fumblings in unfamiliar rooms, dreamless sleep, and vomit (colorfully adding life to the drab pavements of West London).
He turned into Old Compton Street, walked to its end, and up Brewer Street, noticed the ghoulish girls in their neon booths trying to egg customers (men) into sampling the strip shows. Soho, with its fruit machines, sex shops, and cosmopolitan bars was like a cluttered, cramped village whose inhabitants were linked not by the familiarity of proximity but by a shared interest in abandon. The faintly rancid smell of this interlocking empire filled his nostrils. Every now and then men, usually with rounded bellies, thinning hair and glasses, stole into certain shops and crept out again, peering around furtively. Regarding these faded individuals Oscar felt a terrible stab of longing for Najette and her feisty, flamboyant embrace of life. As if in reaction to this latest recognition of her loss (which, despite being just another in a series of recognitions, imparted all the devastation of the original, leaving his heart freshly eviscerated), he too was seized with a craving for a drink. He opted for one of the ailing basement bars. Trotting down beer-sodden stairs, he brushed against a man in leather, with long, chalky hair, his jacket strewn with badges, one of which said simply POET - PAINTER - FILMMAKER - ASK. He wore swimming goggles which gave him a sinister appearance. Oscar offered him a tentative smile but the man appeared to be frowning back at him. He had the feeling he was entering some kind of arts performance venue.
The bar’s bleached-brown walls and orange, plastic, shapeless furniture suggested the interior of an abandoned spaceship. The sight of a bass guitarist occupying a ramshackle stage and crooning the odd note at the skeletal audience confirmed that he was indeed there to be entertained. As the erstwhile musician finished his set, his hair flopping over his nose, the compere bounded up and told a joke about a hunter in the Black Forest paid by disgruntled spouses to set ravening wolves on their husbands or wives.
Since the place was so quiet, only one of the two hefty-looking barmen was actually serving while his oversized colleague was busy tossing glasses into the air ostentatiously, darting aside to avoid the flying shards when the conjuring didn’t always go according to plan. A few heads turned to register the periodic, violent smashes. Oscar ordered a double vodka and tonic, made short shrift of it, and ordered another. Tired applause coincided with his location of a seat.
The compere introduced the next act: a scruffy woman who went by the name of “Fierce Fatima.” There were so many rings pierced along her lower lip Oscar could picture the rings holding up a shower curtain, its width interlaced through them.
‘This is called “Fucked Up and Alone Again,”’ she declared, and proceeded to rattle through her monologue as if having some kind of seizure.
‘In a smoke-free zone I begin to burn I’m a martyr see my stigmata. I’m a dishcloth for men I’m a tea towel for lovers. I’m on stage taking bows deafening APPLAUSE I look left and right how do you do how do you do how do you DO? Scene change. Life change. Touch my soul with your foot my arse with your heart. Night falls like a dead rabbit the moon hurts my eyes I’m moon BLIND. In the cafe I watch a woman slip a sugar CUBE into her mouth. She must be very lonely she has mascara in her ears. I’m a martyr see my stigmata. Boyfriend gets me to sign along the dotted rejection line. Says I’m past my prime that my tits sag like bin liners. My eyes fill with tears but I won’t show, curses fill my veins I’d like to put rat POISON in his sperm but I say nothing smile politely because I’m a martyr so FEEL my stigmata.’
She bounded off the stage and into the compere.
As he tried to clap Oscar thought about how different a drink in his hotel room might have been, in the company of Wagner and the gossamer breeze from his giant opened windows. He thought about the “Imagures” and how silly they were. As he was thinking the man in goggles whom he had encountered on the stairs re-entered and walked stealthily to the bar. The staff seemed reluctant to serve him but eventually one of the barmen started mixing him a drink. While he waited he glanced over at Oscar and Oscar had the distinct impression it was with hostility.
Oscar scrambled around for something to read and found a flyer advertising a play called The Rampant Gardener. He tried to look engrossed so as to deter a potential approach, but the leather clad stranger, his hand curled around his beer bottle, sauntered over to him. The next performer appeared: an asthenic guitarist whose B string snapped two chords into his new song. He battled on heroically until someone threw a peanut at him.
‘Mind if I sit here?’ the man asked in a gruff, smoky voice. Oscar thought he could detect a hint of a mid-Atlantic accent.
‘No.’
‘Then I don’t mind if I fucking do, friend.’
He started laughing, a slow, grim laugh which made Oscar uneasy.
‘Enjoying the show?’ the man demanded, having produced a small pouch of tobacco. He began rolling himself a cigarette with wiry, nicotine-stained fingers. He was edgy, restless.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Think you could do better?’
‘No, that’s not what I meant.’
‘Then what do you mean?’
He lit his sleek roll-up and inhaled deeply, so deeply Oscar could imagine the smoke passing down the length of his lungs, into his stomach, and sinking into his intestines. Blue wisps eventually dribbled out of his nostrils.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Cigarette?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘What are you drinking?’
‘Vodka.’
‘You Russian?’
Again the ashen, disgusted laughter.
‘I’m a poet. Want to hear a poem?’
‘Not especially.’
He took another long, predatory drag. Then his manner altered, his neck tilted, and he began to recite his verse in a curiously ineffective way.
‘What do you look for? / Do you look for a silver lady under a poplar tree? / Do you look for a raven with elegiac eyes? / Do you look for a constant friend? / A house and car? / A life without end? / What do you crave? / A stolen kiss? / A peaceful exchange? / An end to all your pain / I have nothing for you / Except a palm lined with toil / And a heart that’s uncurled.’
Oscar was surprised to find the poem wasn’t as bad as he had expected – though the last two lines grated slightly. He peered at him and said, ‘That was very nice.’
‘Nice? How many hundred-thousand words in the English language and that’s the only adjective you can come up with?’
‘All right; it was simply but powerfully phrased, and poignant.’
‘Better, but still not good enough, my friend.’
‘Please don’t call me your friend.’
‘Problem?’
‘I’m not your friend.’
The poet took another drag, communicating throughout its duration an icy, barely restrained fury.
‘And,’ Oscar continued, ‘I didn’t invite you to join me, and I’m not required to give you an analysis of your poetry.’
‘But surely you can do better than that.’
‘No I can’t. I’ve got to go now, excuse me. It wasn’t very nice talking to you.’
‘Hey man, what are you getting so uptight for? Lighten up, I just want a chat. Let me buy you a drink.’
Oscar stared at him warily, then slowly sunk back into his plastic egg chair.
‘My name’s Vernon. Vernon Lexicon. Poet, painter, film maker.’
The Fabrications Page 30