He dragged himself under the covers. She was already on her side, her face turned away so it was now completely impossible to read her thoughts.
‘Are you comfortable?’ he mumbled, trying desperately to postpone the moment at which the light would have to be switched off, and so finally, for once and for all, kill the idea of contact and usher in the temporary death of consciousness.
‘This bed’s delicious. It’s nice having you next to me.’
‘I’m glad. So...can I get you anything? A glass of water? A sandwich? I could ring room service, ask for a sandwich.’
‘A sandwich?’
‘They’ll do you any kind. Bacon, lettuce and tomato, chicken with goat’s cheese; they do a really nice club sandwich actually – ’
‘No thanks.’
‘Right.’
Silence, save for the whirr of a solitary car taking forever to get out of earshot.
‘What about some hot milk? Shall I ask them to send up a glass of nice hot milk?’
‘Oscar, really, I don’t want anything.’
‘Right you are. Oh well. Well, there you have it. Just goes to show, doesn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘Oh...nothing. Oh well, oh well.’
The quilt rustled as she yanked it over to her side, creating an imbalance he had no intention of adjusting.
‘There you have it,’ he said.
Images of the orgy in the park flashed up like a strobe.
‘What about some chocolate? Do you fancy some – ’
‘Oscar! You’re treating me as if I’m pregnant!’ More silence.
‘So I suppose you’ll want me to put the light out now?’ he asked.
‘Do you have any candles? I feel like a candle.’
‘I do; that’s a brilliant idea. Candles, that’s what we need.’
He hopped out, rubbing his hands together, dashed to a drawer, took out a little dish with a solid stump of beeswax stuck to it, lit it, turned off the side-lamp and clambered back under the covers. Shadows came to life dispassionately.
‘That was a very good idea,’ he said.
She said nothing.
But the idea had already exhausted all it had to offer in the way of creating delay.
He moved closer to her, peering at the nape of her neck, letting her scent wash over him. She adjusted herself, her arms curling up toward her chin, her legs bending into a more fetal position.
She wished he would shut up now; she needed some peace and quiet. It came, since he had no more escape routes. He watched the shadows rise and fall as currents disturbed the flame. Beside her, so close to her mysteries he felt a violent rush of happiness. She turned around to face him, her eyelids pressed together. Oscar could hear time’s cogs turning; he felt as though he were inside a giant clock, the second hand ticking with impossible clarity. He pored over her, as if by so doing he could prevent her descent into sleep. Her eyelids were so fine he wondered if they could possibly shut out the light. She looked carnal and peaceful at the same time, her hair a slanted, wavy grille across her eyes and nose. They both settled into spaces of stillness.
Until, obeying an order seeping from exhaustion, from the trance of exhaustion, without really knowing what he was doing, he kissed her. At first her lips did not speak to his but he persisted until she pushed off the heavy rind of sleep and she kissed him back and their heads climbed and turned and succumbed to a mild fervor, pivoted at the join of their mouths. Her eyes opened, her mouth opened, her hands curled around his face, tenderly, tightly; the kiss grew like the liquid wax on top of the candle. At once, without any suggestion of dissonance, they had passed into another kind of understanding, another kind of expression. She whispered could she take this off but before he could say yes she had already reached his top button and something in him also unbuttoned and he stirred at the understatement of her touch, and pleasure coruscated through the suddenly live circuitry of their bodies. Over her head, her guiding hands cast aside her own pyjama top and in a cauterized instant he glimpsed her breasts. In the candlelight, the expressionist light, the quilt slipped slowly onto the floor as upright they supported each other in a searching delicacy. She fell back into the bedsheets and taking her hair, lifting it up, she brushed its length against his face, then letting herself subside the whiteness behind her as she lay back made her magical, her olive skin next to tenebrous twines the whole distilled by the yellow ochre light. He watched her, emptied of words, and leaned to kiss her and she breathed quickly and her eyes tightened and he looked for the moment at which her soul would leap from them and she stroked his neck and back, interrupted by the line which she prized her hand under and found there something which he writhed for, aching to step outside this constraint, though he wasn’t sure she would like him to be naked but then she said huskily I’m hot and she broke away and she was naked suddenly and up till now her beauty had been a rehearsal a fragment of itself now it was dazzling and complete and he was greedily feasting his eyes on her completeness and saying you’re beautiful you’re beautiful and she was kissing him all over now brittle kisses his eyelids even he had never been kissed there and even when she stopped he was bewitched by the knowledge she would start again and when he moved away when he took a moment to pinch himself to keep up with all this pleasure it was enough merely to observe, to lose himself in the form of her and mere perception was life lived to the full and he remembered the speech in the park.
Was this what Bloch was talking about? As he ran his hand along her slender leg and came to rest at the dark mass of hair and touched her breasts with diffident fingers, he asked himself how could such intensity be recreated in the absence of her flesh? And he knew now that all the ideas of the speech were just ideas, suggesting rapture could be extracted from vulnerability, when it was won only through contact with another. And the contact those in the audience had had with each other was too frenzied to allow for the rebirth he now experienced.
The contours of his lover’s body, for she was his lover now, this time had told him (and yet the word, with all its grandeur surprised him) were his to blend into, to sink into, to be swept inside, as a tide sweeps over pebbles and claims them within its foam. The sweet anguish that came to him was entwined in her proximity, the appetite which increased his and satisfied it at the same time, limbs whose secrets were being surrendered. Herself nestling so near he was dissolved, her lips fastened on his neck, her hand against his, fingers slotted together like lattice, time finally rendered meaningless – a reel of film that goes on spinning, forever.
*
The light of the candle flickered. Outside, the odd car still insisted on advertising the power of its engine. And when the sound died away the ensuing silences were unearthly, continually signaling the day’s death knell. They were in a clandestine place, lying there together, a place sealed off from the continuities of normal consciousness. For Oscar, the sweetness of these moments even exceeded what had gone before. He was engulfed in the happiness of proximity, the knowledge that he could, by willing his fingers to move, brush her hair, by willing his arm to move he could reach out to her skin and find in its golden compass the affirmation of life he’d always craved.
He retrieved the quilt from the floor and underneath its cover they held each other for a time, until she sat up and grappled for a cigarette and lit it, webs of smoke twirling, bending back on themselves, breaking up into capillaries of near transparency. She watched this languid display and thought of her studies of the scene from the Sun Well.
She smoked restfully, and passed the cigarette to him. They passed it between them, as if that cigarette were an emblem of ongoing communication, wherein they found another (tiny) place in which to further pursue intimacy.
She said (and the sound of her voice was a shock after their wordlessness), ‘Did you think this would happen?’
‘I think I would have been less surprised if the walls had caved in, or if a jumbo jet had landed inside the living room.’
&
nbsp; ‘Well, there’s nearly enough room for one.’
Then she added, after a pause, ‘I think you’re being a little bit dramatic nonetheless.’
‘Am I? I don’t know about that. It’s strange to finally live out what I’ve dreamt about.’
‘So I made your dreams come true, to invoke the cliché.’
‘You did. And I have to strongly resist the impulse to get down on my knees and build a shrine to you.’
She laughed.
‘I was surprised as well, you know.’
He wanted to say, ‘But not sorry, I hope?’ but managed to stop himself, realizing in time she would recoil from the exposed white skeleton of his insecurities.
‘I’ve got to get some water,’ she said.
She got up, her nakedness an insolent challenge to the world or perhaps to him, walking with leonine abandon. And he was transfixed by her performance, and his eye unashamedly followed the line of her legs, the dark curve of her back and buttocks, the ebony hair shivering in time with her movements, coming to a stop in the small of her back.
She appeared a moment later and in bed downed her glass in one swallow. Then she poured the few remaining drops onto his head and whispered, ‘There, I’ve anointed you.’ Her face was everywhere cognizant of her joke, its silliness, her eyes and lips signaling her relish.
‘Hey...don’t do that...it’s wet,’ he mumbled.
‘You started it.’
‘How?’
‘With that octopus kiss.’
‘Must we?’
‘We must. You were so ridiculous earlier – asking me if I wanted hot milk and chocolate.’
‘I know.’
The conversation was muted, unhurried. There was something about the exchanges which was full of grace. They sank over each other, and kissed, a different sort of kiss, a slower, thoughtful kiss. Some strands of her hair rested on his chest, parts of her he might keep.
‘I wanted to ask you...did anything come of the show at the Earl Gallery?’ he asked.
‘No, or if it did, Nicholas didn’t let on. I bumped into him in Piccadilly. He seemed to be sorry for being such an arsehole. He said he’d met a dealer who was perfect for me. I told him it was too late for that.’
‘Perhaps you should give him another chance.’
‘No way.’
‘You gave me another chance.’
‘I knew you were going to say that.’
She reached for another cigarette – there was something wonderful about the way she abandoned herself to unheeding hedonism. And it infected him, her imperturbability, the way she brushed aside life’s debris and found something fresh and novel underneath it, as if being with her was like being educated all over again in the ways of living – she was a teacher whose methods were oblique and dazzling.
‘You know, I have a confession to make,’ she said.
‘Oh?’
‘I saw you that time you came to the house, a week ago.’
‘Really?’
‘Sure, out of the corner of my eye. You didn’t exactly conceal yourself very discreetly.’
‘Didn’t I? Didn’t you have any desire to acknowledge me?’
‘No, why should I have? I was angry with you; it didn’t seem very appropriate. Plus I was working.’
‘I would never have known. You, unlike me, concealed yourself – or rather your reactions – impeccably.’
‘I’m used to concealing my reactions. Women have to...much more than men. I’m also used to being spied on.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Yes. I find it quite exciting in a way. It’s a form of flattery really. In the way certain kinds of jealousy are inverted compliments. The spy as admirer.’
‘Doesn’t it depend on who the spy is?’
‘Sometimes. Not always.’
‘So who spied on you?’
‘The past.’
‘That’s enigmatic.’
‘Yes, peering at me with its beady eye.’
‘No – who?’
‘Oh, all sorts; men passing down the street, having to stop and imbibe, stunned by this vision in the bay window; raincoat voyeurs masturbating – ’
‘What?!’
‘It’s okay, they’re just these poor bastards on the whole. What can they do? They’ve got nothing, no-one.’
‘And you’d let them do that in front of your house?’
‘I just went on working.’
‘But isn’t that a terrible act of abuse?’
‘It is for a certain kind of woman, yes. But I can deal with it. Not because I’m strong, but because it doesn’t surprise me. I mean it’s only happened a couple of times.’
‘You’re remarkably philosophical.’
‘That’s not the word for it.’
And then it felt as though he knew nothing about the woman he had just made love to. But then he asked himself: Why should I assume I know anything about Najette? And isn’t it better to be surprised? Wouldn’t it be terribly boring if I knew her so very well? He could see how compelling these revelations of hers – their effects casually disorientating – really made her.
‘I’m going away...again,’ she went on.
‘When and where?’
‘Egham. Tomorrow. It’s in the middle of nowhere. A friend asked me to house sit for a few weeks. Want to come?’
‘Seriously?’
‘Why not? I think you should leave this dead splendor; it’s not meant for you, only for royalty, and they’re mummified already. We could paint.’
‘It’s too late for me. I missed my chance. It’s too late.’
Suddenly there were tears in his eyes; one of them escaped and began running down his cheek. She leaned over and interrupted its progress with her little finger.
‘Don’t cry, Oscar. It’s freedom.’
‘I know, freedom. Of course I’ll go. How could I not? But I’m not sure how I’m going to extricate myself or what I’m going to do for money. You see, Ryan Rees has basically been subsidizing me.’
‘I sold “Butterfly.” I didn’t tell you.’
‘You did? You mean you really sold it?’
‘Yes, that’s why I said, “I sold “Butterfly.””’
‘Who to?’
‘This Russian collector. A friend from Sotheby’s introduced us.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Sergei something. Bordanov or kill-you-off. Gave me a check for £10,000. Just like that. Like it was fifty pence. I’m hoping it won’t bounce. He told me he wants to organize an exhibition for me in Tiflis. Just a lot of hot air, I warrant. Invited me to spend the weekend with him in his Moscow mansion.’
‘I wonder why.’
‘Now, now, calm down. When the check clears I might be able to feed you. But I can’t promise caviar and vodka.’
The candle, having been hovering on the brink of expiry for some time, blew itself out. Moments later, after a silence which they took to be the night’s last, they fell asleep. It was as though sleep was a thought on the point of being lost, which they retrieved just in time.
*
Oscar was awakened by a signal telling him something was different. Najette wasn’t there. He panicked until he found a small folded note by the pillow.
Birds warble, Handel’s Messiah shakes the pillars, etc, etc.
GOOD MORNING!!
It’s a beautiful day...I have to go for a jog, meet my dealer, be serenaded by gypsies, etc.
Dear Oscar,
No...I haven’t deserted you. Oh ye of little faith!!
Do you remember that time I disappeared when you came around for lunch? Here I go again. I have to pack my divine sable antelope brushes (how I love antelopes) and my studies and sea scrolls and maimeri – I love it, I keep it in jam jars, I suck it through a straw. Meet me at Waterloo at 4 this afternoon, at platform one, a nice, wholesome number. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going. I don’t want any “gentlemen” of the press bothering us. Last night we were devils. Today let�
�s be angels. Then we can be devils again. Etc. Etc.
Kisses, kisses (wet and dry)
Najette
He read the note eleven times, lingering especially over the last few sentences, savoring them. He wanted to make sure they were real, that the note wasn’t a forgery of some sort. He slipped on some clothes, then walked across to stare out of the windows. It was a long drop. He noticed the small band of disciples camped outside, tiny figures stirring among blankets.
As he splashed his face with water there was a knock at the door and Ryan Rees tumbled in. He was clutching half a dozen newspapers. He started speaking very rapidly, but not so rapidly that it was a surprise in any way.
‘Oscar, have you seen these? – “Babel’s Crusade Leads to Orgy in the Park” – “Indecent Exposure in the Night ”–“Have the English Finally Lost Repressions Due to Tibet Messiah?” Even The Sun loves you: “Sex Ed – Babel Style.” I’ve printed out three hundred pages of speculation, response and approbation from the Internet which just appeared overnight – let me read you some of this stuff. Some idiot posted footage of the fuck-fest on You Tube – it got two million views before it was removed – don’t worry, we’ll get it back – You Tube can shove its violated terms of service up its well-viewed, welloiled sphincter. Never in my wildest dreams did I think we’d sell out. And let me tell you you were great, really great. Faber & Faber want you to write a book about your philosophy of life. They’ve already suggested a title: The Way of Babel. Cyril Vixen wants to take your portrait for Rogue. I can only assume he’s dropped the lawsuit. Channel 4 want to do a documentary about you. Also: we’ve had an offer from Kazooi-Template, a three-ad deal. For the first one they want you to pose butt naked on the back passenger seat while saying something about what makes life worth living and including in your list the experience of riding in one of their saloons. They’re willing to let you write your own copy...’
‘Before you go on, I need to tell you something.’
‘Yes, of course, keep talking Oscar. Oh, I knew we could do something great with you. My instincts, oh my instincts; I love those flickers of female intuition. This has all been a dress rehearsal, a little appetizer. Torrents of rhetoric, lecture circuits, next stop the United States of Hysterica. Oscar, things happen when you’re around; it’s just weird...you just have this effect on people, it’s...fantastic. The only word for it, my friend.’
The Fabrications Page 38