23
A week earlier Donald Inn had to make an important phone call. He toned up the poshness of his voice by several notches.
‘Yes, I believe you’ve already spoken to my associate Mr. Ryan Rees. I’m ringing in regard to the showcase event to take place in Kensington Gardens on 28 August of this year.’
‘Yes, I have your details. Now, I have to scan through copies of the Health and Safety conditions – vis-a-vis, materials deemed safe, the non-viability of certain kinds of plastic, which, when melted emit toxic fumes. These conditions will have to be met of course by your contractors who will also need to be approved officially, but we can go into that later. You do know, of course, that the Events Office of the Royal Parks Agency will not only require payment of the hire fee in two installments – that’s £30,000 in sterling in total for hire of the gardens from 9 am to midnight on 28 August of this year – but a percentage of any profits which will go toward upkeep of the park and the Royal Bursary?’
‘What percentage?’
‘Twelve percent precisely.’
‘Yes, that’s fine. Now, about the public indemnity insurance – can you – ’
‘Yes – now – the name of the broker is John Smallcorn, I believe. Can you confirm I have that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘With Higgle, Hacking & Hereford?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you have drawn up a policy to cover accidental injury of any member of the audience by faulty seating or collision with any equipment or any other cause, collapsed, rusty seating – ’
‘We won’t require any seat – ’
‘Which might lead to infection, gangrene, necessitating amputation of limbs, etc.; faulty sound and light equipment; freak weather conditions such as an electrical storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, sandstorms – no, we can disregard the latter – hence, electrical storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes; acts of subversive terrorism from terrorists; and, last but not least, sonic bangs, that’s to say damaging pressure waves caused by aircraft traveling at sonic or supersonic speeds passing over the gardens at those times they shall be in use?’
‘Yes.’
‘I shall need to see a copy of the relevant Schedule of Insurance asap to confirm that everything is in order. You can send me a copy or drop one around at your earliest convenience.’
‘My secretary can drop one around.’
‘That’s fine. He or she will need to go to the Old Police House in Hyde Park. Your policy provides cover for a projected maximum audience of how many?’
‘3,000.’
‘3,000. Once the insurance policy has been deemed to be in order I shall send you a copy of the contract of hire and once that’s all up and running, can you make a copy and send me back the original asap? Good. Then all that’s left is for you to hire appropriate contractors. They must be officially approved by the British Contractors’ League. British League-approved contractors’ equipment, seating and lights all come with IS safety seals. We’ll need to see copies of said seals and only then will you be allowed to go ahead with setting up light and sound systems and anything else you require. The area you have requested for hire – the square whose uppermost tip is near the Statue of Physical Energy – will be cordoned off three days before the event. I trust that is satisfactory.’
‘That all seems fine.’
‘I believe you have budgeted for half-houses.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘Could you also furnish me with three copies of said budget as it currently stands, and the breakdown of ticket prices. As I said earlier, the hire fee is to be paid in two installments, half prior to, the rest after the event. You may, if you wish, have the option of paying the second half within a week after the event so as to recoup ticket sales – which will give you time for checks to clear and so forth. And can I remind you of the 12% profit percentage which the parks agency will require from all profits. And other profits are rightfully yours or your organization’s, I should say. Which reminds me, can you confirm that you are a registered charity?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you are known as The O. Babel Showcase?’
‘Yes.’
‘And can you confirm that you do not require any licensed vans, trucks, or booths for the sale of alcoholic beverages, soft drinks or foodstuffs?’
‘Yes.’
‘And can you confirm that once the event is over any scaffolding or seating or lights or equipment, including sound and lighting booths, tents or control towers, and generators will be removed before midnight.’
‘Yes.’
‘I realize of course this is all clearly stated on the contract but it’s as well to go through it all on the phone, don’t you agree Mr. Inn?’
‘I agree.’
‘Well, Mr. Inn, I shall await the contract, and may I wish you and your event the best of luck.’
‘You may.’
*
Inn toned down the poshness of his voice by several notches and dialed again.
‘Ashby Concert Contractors.’
‘Hello, this is Donald Inn. Can I speak to Mr. Corby?’
‘Speaking.’
‘Ah, Mr. Corby, I’m ringing about The O. Babel Showcase to take place in Kensington Gardens. Did you get my fax?’
‘Yes, I have it here. Though the second page hasn’t come out. Could you send it through again?’
Donald Inn turned around and called through, ‘Sharon, can you send the fax to Corby at Ashby Contractors through again, but don’t mention it to RR.
‘Fax is on its way, Mr. Corby. So if you and your men can be there at 9 am sharp on 28 August. As you know, there are several entrances to the gardens on Bayswater Road and there are maps situated there. The park manager – Mr. Nathan Griggs – will be waiting for you at the Statue of Physical Energy; that area will be sealed off for your convenience and you’ll have the whole day to fix things up. You’re sure that’s enough time?’
‘Oh, yee-ees, Mr. Inn, more than enough; after all Mr. Rees requested something pretty basic; just a stage with a radio mike, a basic PA and sound booth with cables, amplifiers and six follow spots which may or may not be used depending on light, and one or two states for the lights and the lighting and sound desks.’
‘Now, Mr. Corby, you are certain you’ll have enough time to set things up?’
‘It should be all right, Mr. Inn. But I should just ask again – in regard to seating arrangements – you just want cushions and a ground sheet, is that right? How come you’re not going for tiered seating?’
‘No ground sheet either. Mr. Babel wants it to be very simple, modest. Just cushions and grass.’
‘How many are you hoping for?’
‘Three thousand.’
‘Three thousand! Christ, you might as well hire the bleeding Royal Albert Hall.’
‘Can’t. The Proms are on.’
*
Tickets were sold over the Internet; adverts placed in all the broadsheets; flyers sent off to everyone who had ever come into Ryan Rees’s orbit – journalists, artists, concert promoters, critics, writers. Within hours posters appeared along the Great Western, Westbourne Park, Talgarth and Portobello roads. Flyers were dropped off in university cafes; at performance venues; left in phone booths; slid under front doors in Notting Hill, Bayswater, Chelsea, Kennington, and Shoreditch; stuffed under cars’ windscreen wipers. The timing couldn’t really have been better – columnists were still writing about Oscar; the Internet was swelling with opinions and speculation about him; the texts of the Imagures were being avidly consumed. Even some of the tabloids carried pieces – interviews with his detractors.
As yet Oscar had never actually spoken in front of a sizable audience. His early appearances had been for the television cameras; the Duchamp Prize hadn’t been available to the general public; the Imagures were for a few select journalists. It was precisely the fact that Oscar had, until now, been perceived through an elliptical prism which ma
de him such a tantalizing figure. So although people had been reading about him, seeing his photograph in papers and on the Internet; though he was already a fixture in the public’s consciousness, he still smacked of something fabular. He had about him a touch of the Abominable Snowman or the Loch Ness monster – he was thought to exist but perhaps only in a mythical, inaccessible realm. How many people had really heard his famed eloquence in the flesh? Now there was the chance to be given solid proof that this orator really existed. This factor, allied to an interest in Oscar’s philosophy and the promise of a better world liberated from the empire of suffering and conflict, combined to make the public curious. But beyond any of these explanations for the fact that all three thousand tickets were sold there was another phenomenon at work. While commentators dismissed him as lightweight, superficial, bogus, the public found that the intelligentsia’s readiness to pour scorn on Oscar naturally awakened their sympathy for him; so he came to embody not only a sense of otherworldly elusiveness but at the same time assumed the mantle of the heroic underdog, who may be being lambasted but nevertheless has a hearty audience cheering him on.
*
The day after the lecture, which was a wild success, Rees planned to approach the Verdant Theater with a view to using it as a venue for Oscar to speak at regularly. He was on friendly terms with the Artistic Director. Oscar’s presence in the garden, through ticket sales at £20 a ticket, had recouped the cost of the hire fee, the insurance, and the publicity, had in fact, against the odds, made a healthy profit in the region of £45,000. This augured well for the hire of the Verdant Theater, especially since the latter’s hire fee was a fragment of the Garden’s. Arnold Bateman, his sly accountant, had calculated that the amounts they stood to make were potentially vast, assuming they could get half-houses for a three-week period. Rees viewed any future profits in terms of their paying back the money he had already lavished on his product. He also knew that it was highly likely he would make much more than the expenses he had accumulated to date. In addition, hefty offers from car firms for TV adverts and six-figure advances from publishing houses were thrown Oscar’s way directly after the bizarre triumph of Kensington Gardens.
He went up to Oscar’s hotel suite with Edwin, his stocky henchman, and told him to wait outside. He was clutching half a dozen newspapers which all had pieces discussing last night’s lecture. Rees was feeling unreservedly euphoric. He felt like he was at school again, ruling the roost, undermining the system. He knocked on the door and didn’t wait for an answer.
*
Before the lecture, in the afternoon, Oscar didn’t feel particularly nervous. He rehearsed his speech a few times until it was all right. He listened to Tristan in the dark. In a way he wanted the lecture to go badly, as though a disaster would finally free him, allow him to get off this merry go-round which continued to spin as a result of the agencies of Ryan Rees. Bloch’s words had given him the strength to mount the carousel in the first place, when it was still stationary. Rees had caused it to spin at a sickening speed. He could only get off now by being pushed off.
A week earlier Oscar had asked Rees to get in touch with Cressida again, the designer from Cherubs and Co. He had decided he now quite liked the idea of wearing something theatrical and grand. Perhaps there lay behind this a subtle interest in ridiculing himself or the event.
Cressida rolled into the suite just as she had rolled in before, but this time she was less agitated, less talkative. She was dressed in blue, not purple, but once again the color was everywhere – on her leggings, shirt, skirt, headband, eyelids. She still had her inaudible laugh. She took Oscar’s measurements; together they came up with ideas. Oscar told her he didn’t want to look like a clergyman or like the Bedouin or to wear a Russian carpet. They hit on something mutually agreeable and she said she would come up with it in time for the lecture.
In the end she delivered a gold tunic which reached to his knees and was made of jaspé cloth, a sturdy fabric with a woven texture. Its collar was studded with transparent blue sapphires, creating an effect of great splendor. On his feet he wore decorated sandals.
When Oscar tried the tunic on, Cressida and her assistant surged around him like the billowing petticoats of a Victorian lady, making tiny adjustments. They almost swooned because he looked so striking and regal in it. Oscar spent a few vain moments admiring himself in the mirror. He felt the curves of his torso brought out in its tight, and yet comfortable, embrace. He felt confident and dignified. Highly ornamented patterns were woven into the sleeves and these added to the air of gravitas that hung about the tunic and about him when he was inside it.
He looked like some latter-day Roman nobleman or senator.
*
The sun continued to scorch London, even though it was well on the way to dropping out of sight.
Three thousand people were seated in a dense, tightly packed circle. Collectively there came from their lips a great froth of conversation: overlapping observations, throwaway remarks, more searching, deeply felt meditations on the best way to de-scale a kettle; how, in making a Caesar salad croutons were not absolutely essential. Someone advised someone else about how she should avoid the sun between the hours of midday and two o’clock while in Kovalam; there was an involved discussion about bicycle pumps; a middle-aged man was trying to persuade another middle-aged man to overcome his fear of sushi; a party of young women was trying to establish whether or not the clerk in their office was a homosexual; a teacher was complaining about the lack of wall clocks in his school; an angler was telling someone about bait; an octogenarian sculptor was going on ad nauseam about his infatuation with a French au pair girl; a bus driver was describing a spectacular swerve he had had to make to avoid slamming into a locomotive on Praed Street; a mother of two was complaining about her nanny’s nose stud; a research assistant was thoroughly boring someone with her thoughts on Swinburne’s letters; a backpacker stopping in London for a few days was telling somebody about a mystical experience he had had in Findhorn in Scotland that involved jumping naked into a freezing lake; a young songwriter kept breaking into renditions of “O, Canada” every time his girlfriend brought up the subject of marriage; a general practitioner was recommending the best way of treating oral thrush; a woman was telling another woman about her infatuation with another woman she worked with at Christie’s; a priest was telling another priest about lubricants; an anesthetist was confessing that he was more often drunk than not when he administered anesthetics; a journalist was predicting Oscar Babel’s downfall.
And so it went on. The diverse crowd, its myriad voices creating fragmented structures of meaning, was shaking and vibrating like a pan on the boil. People were geared up in the expectation of a profound experience. It was a giant picnic but without hampers or food or even flies. Or shoes. People had been instructed to take them off at the gates. They were given tickets as their shoes were packaged into chic little plastic bags (stamped with Oscar’s face) and piled into two large tents manned by attendants whose black tee shirts were inscribed with the legend “BABEL IS ABLE!”
From time to time a squirrel darted toward the big trees.
They sat, pressed down on, wriggled around on their cushions and pillows, getting comfortable. From certain quarters the reek of unwashed feet was offered up bounteously to the summer evening.
Seen from above the space comprised a massive circle teeming with people, sealed off with rope. A slotted-together stage forming half an H-shape, about two meters above ground level, pressed heavily into the grass. This stage cut into parts of the audience, a crude pier whose entire length Oscar could utilize if he so desired. Here and there a few sizable oak trees gave those near them some support for their backs. One tree stood somewhat apart from the crowd, just behind the line of rope; it was immense, perhaps fivefeet wide, a gnarled, mighty tree carved with hearts and initials and graffiti. Though the evening was still light, six follow-spots mounted on scaffolding towers were posted around this outdoor auditorium�
�s circumference, aimed at the stage in readiness for the dark. Running alongside them were malignant-looking speakers, and cables fed from them into a raised sound and lighting booth. An enormous, thick cable feeding from the sound booth sloped down past the Albert Memorial, some hundreds of yards off, toward a generator parked opposite the Albert Hall.
Further off, apart from the crowd, there was a caravan; inside it someone was making Oscar up. His hair was gelled back, droplets to make his eyes sparkle and flash were inserted into his corneas. He took a final look at himself in the mirror, made minute adjustments to his charcoal hair. He looked resplendent in his gold tunic and sandals.
He heard words coming from the speakers, spoken by someone in the sound booth.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Oscar Babel.’
He took some deep breaths, stepped outside and was hit by the stultifying heat.
He climbed up the ten or eleven steps to the stage.
Mighty waves of applause crashed into him. What was that for? Then he realized, flabbergasted, that it was for him. He took a few steps forward, faltering. The sapphires in his collar flashed and glittered. Now that he was among them the applause showed no signs of subsiding. He peered tentatively into this bed of humanity, filling the air, beaming at him – three thousand strangers beaming at him. Three thousand people who had come to see him. He felt a violent rush of nausea, and experienced a strong desire to void his bowels. Panic set in. What if he soiled himself? He feared he might lose control of his limbs, disentangle, become an incontinent wreck squelching around on the stage. He looked at the graffiti tree, trying to draw strength from it; he told himself the feeling would pass. He stared dumbly into the audience. For the public you must feed the tenderest cuts, Bloch had said somewhere. Working quickly his brain clicked and computed and he came up with a related image to hang onto, but before he could focus on it he had the distinct feeling his body was being dragged out into space, wafting over the audience, born aloft on mercury wings, in turn touching each body, passing like a ghost through these, as he thought, transparent entities, receptacles to demonstrate he could pirouette into and around consciousness, that he was gaseous, that he was god-like. Then, as he once more coincided with himself, he noticed again that three thousand people had noticed him; and his face, his form, just another face, just another form, was not just another face or form because he was Oscar Babel, because all this life had come and knocked on his door, this audience had requested an audience with him, because he had supremacy, and the just-retrieved image which sustained him, as megalomania simultaneously inflated him, was that he was a zoo attendant at feeding time, tossing out into this arena slices of meat, and though together the animals were frightening, he had something they wanted – these refugees from the middle classes were turning to him for answers, for guidance and illumination. This idea of himself as a purveyor of nourishment calmed him.
The Fabrications Page 33