So she ground her shoe on her discarded cigarette and hurried back to the house. Once inside she moved quickly, gathering up her brushes and oils and paints. She found the perspex box she kept them in and, wrapping everything up in a dirty cloth, she placed the bundle inside. She carefully removed the canvas and propped it up against a chair. Then she went upstairs, taking two steps at a time, and yanked all her clothes out of the cupboard, flinging them onto the bed. It was only as she was folding them and piling them up that other issues (such as the fact that her friend was relying on her to look after the house) began to intrude. So she stopped and sat down and lit another cigarette and smoked it so completely that only its filter remained.
Why was she doing this?
The front door slammed.
‘Najette!’ his voice called.
She sat there; she didn’t want to reply, wanted him to think she had already gone. But the presence of the easel ensured he wouldn’t, though he noticed the packed perspex box, and, seized with sickening anxiety, realized she was preparing to go, so he darted in and out of all the rooms until he reached the bedroom. She was hiding behind the curtains now and he called out her name but she didn’t reply; and he noticed the dresses and the sight of them reinforced his fear and then he walked downstairs sadly and sat down and waited for her return.
He waited and tried to just thank God or Najette or whoever it was who’d allowed them to come together for this idyll, as though to have expected anything more was foolish. But he couldn’t just sit back and look on that time as an amorous gift thrown his way, because he was tied to her; because how could he even remotely conceive of her in terms of disposability, of transience? And as she crept out from the curtains and sat down on the bed, very quietly, so quietly she hardly breathed she thought about what he’d said in the pub and tried to work out how it had led her to this point. But sometimes just one chance remark altered all, as if the world was no longer perceived in color but sepia.
He sat there, studying his watch – how long was it now since they’d quarreled?
Then he heard a voice, her voice, far off, brittle.
‘“I’ve no ambition, I’m the humblest yet of a humble set, I only want to rule the world.”’
He stood up, filled with sudden joy, transported back in time to the moment before their clash, and it was as if through those quirky, accidental lyrics she was expressing regret or devotion. He followed the intangible strain, climbed the stairs, entered the bedroom, she was there, on the bed, singing.
‘“I only...want...to rule the world.”’
For a moment she looked embarrassed. Her face fell and her hair flopped downwards, a fibrous shield.
‘You were here all along,’ he said.
‘I was hiding,’ she whispered.
‘But why?’
‘I needed to, I needed to send all that transparency packing, needed to get some mystery back. That’s my fear, Oscar, that one day there’ll be no mystery left between us; that one day we’ll fart in front of one another, turn into two wrecks arguing about the milk.’
‘Why the wistful song? Were you taking a break between packing?’
‘You ask too many questions, Oscar. Too many questions; you wear me out.’
‘I can’t help it; I have to learn from you. I’ve centuries of catching up to do.’
‘Stop it, Oscar! Stop making me out to be special; I’m not special. I’m just this person, I’m just trying to...just trying to do my thing, I’m not...I’m not remarkable...anyway, I’ve stopped packing, I’ve stopped because...the cases didn’t need to be packed...but you have to promise me we won’t see each other through roses, won’t accuse each other, because I don’t want to start biting and stinging; that’s the beginning of the end, because I am a romantic, see, and if it’s less than perfect, then it’s just a big zero. See?’
‘I understand; I understand that...that thing...that perfection thing.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘I thought...I thought I’d lost you.’
‘No, I’m here; I’m here.’
She walked over to him and very quietly put her arms around him, letting her head sink into his chest. He held her very tightly.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘No, it’s I who should apologize. I’m volatile, sometimes. It’s in the cell structure, the packaging.’
She tried to break away but he wouldn’t let her, pinning her to him.
‘What was it before,’ he began in a tender, tentative voice, ‘that was upsetting you; you know, before we – ’
In interrupting him the tone of her voice lightened.
‘Oh, it’s the art. Always the art. Maybe I’m in the wrong game. Maybe I should be pointing a film camera at a motorway or be hanging around building sites retrieving bits of concrete and exhibiting them.’
‘I think you’re brilliantly talented,’ he insisted.
‘I’m old-fashioned, I’m behind the times, I should be shooting up in alleyways, then shooting the alleyways, I should be finding disused spaces on the Isle of Dogs and persuading Samaritans to talk to me about their childhoods, I should be foaming at the mouth, I should be making sculptures of hamsters, I should be doing photo realism, I should be – ’
‘All that stuff ’s ephemeral – you’re trying to do something which will last.’
‘Ah, the immortality angle – solid, traditional values. Give the world something deep. People don’t have time for deep stuff. Maybe you were being smart all along, Oscar. Playing the game, giving people what they wanted. But as soon as you tell them “this is what you want” they’re bound to say it isn’t.’
He nodded but she didn’t see, her eyes pressed tightly against him.
He wondered how long he’d be able to hold onto her.
*
The dreaminess of the walk along the footpath made conversation pleasantly superfluous. So they just ambled down it. Brushing against a man in plus-fours they came to a locked gate. On climbing it they turned into another path running to the right, virtually swamped by wiry bushes running along either side. This suggested the way was hardly ever used, an impression confirmed by the fact that, during the walk, they didn’t encounter another soul. After half a mile they came upon an open space, heralded by another gate, yawning open. Blackberry bushes sprang up as they entered the wood. Najette picked sporadically at them, her fingers soon colored by their juices. Sun found them only through triangular openings in the roof of leaves above. The light treated the ground as though it was a canvas on which to drip, dappled over violet leaves wedged to the soil and the afternoon resolved, as the rhythm of the walk settled, into a union of light and foliage. The wood grew more variegated, more expansive; it was as if each step they took further prized it open.
After half an hour the trees fell away, revealing a circle in whose core there lay a small lake exposed to the sun and so blindingly irradiated. It was as still as a sheet of glass. Occasionally a bird offered a fragment of song, which didn’t seem to puncture the silence but blend with it.
Saying nothing, they both undressed and sank into the water; it rose and lapped gently against them. Najette swam away from him, her face downturned, and the still surface was hardly disturbed. He watched her float away, her ebony hair turning a darker shade at its moment of contact with the water. The trees around them formed a wall of color. Oscar stared up at them, treading water, held by their delicate symmetries. Now his nostrils detected an aroma creeping from the bank, an unidentifiable, rich perfume which gradually filled his head.
When he reached the other side Najette was nowhere to be seen. It seemed she’d consented to being sucked into uncharted territory. As he ventured into the tangle ahead the sun quickly dried him. He treaded softly, watchful of his surroundings in case he was to lose his way.
In a little while the lake had vanished and he had entered another part of the forest altogether, less busy, with little pathways running off in all directions. He found what looked like
a small temple, crumbling and covered in graffiti. He slumped onto a wooden bench inside, feeling sublimely isolated, but wondering whether he should look for Najette, wondering whether he should make his way back to the lake (an option that seemed problematic as he was not sure he could find it now) and wait for her there. After ten minutes he pushed on and called out her name every now and then.
The heat was overwhelming and everything seemed to sweat because of it. Such heat did not define the moments; rather it threw them together so that time was saturated in sluggishness, and perception lost an edge of clarity. His body sagged and tired. Whereas before he had been keenly aware of sound, color, the forest’s fecund store of pleasing, arresting images, he now succumbed to a numbing, stultifying sense that his mind had departed from his body and hovered somewhere, while his body ploughed on pleasurelessly, slowly being battered into submission.
The solitude increased, the heat deepened; sweat dripped from him. Thinking grew incoherent, snatches of thought repeated and circled, chiming with the rhythm of his steps and jarring with them. The trees encircled, confined him. He stared directly into the sun, until he was blind; on looking away everything was hazy, as if glimpsed through purple filters. Spots of light danced and hovered. He went on. He found a tree and placed himself against its curative bark. Sounds began to register again.
He stared into space, his eyelids frozen in their opened positions. Everything became blurred. He rubbed his eyes. And on opening them again he discerned little faces and shapes within the patterns of the ground. He tried to focus on the shapes but when he stared at them directly they vanished. When he turned away they appeared again, on the wings, peripheral phantoms, dancing as he persisted with his oblique scrutiny. He closed his eyes for a time. When he opened them the light was different. An orange, ruddy sun was falling out of the sky; clouds juggled feverishly with one another; elsewhere in the sky lines of color drifted like an oil spillage in water. The scorched afternoon was breeding apparitions.
Now the space he stared into was no longer a neutral territory to feed the mind’s calm but a looking glass, an imagistic screen. He shoved his knuckles into his eyes and rubbed them. On moving his fingers away again perspective had been relinquished. The day seemed to be cracking into fragments of a mosaic as he sprinted back in the direction of the lake, overlooking Najette’s fate and aware of a dull pain in his head, the pain a stone might have made if forced into his skull. Darting left and right to avoid the stems, he somehow found his way and tumbled at last onto the bank (he noticed the lake was now grey). He scrambled around for his clothes and huddled into them. Light was harsh, the trees ubiquitous; the wood had turned into a spider’s web and at each step he thrashed about in it. With agonized breaths he reached the borders and found the same gateway he and Najette had entered via. He came out onto a lane and a car sheared past, dangerously close. A hot air balloon was drifting dreamily through the air at that moment.
The evening was gathering now and his walk along deserted roads advanced amid deepening shadows. The sky grew indistinct, the clouds faded and darkness cajoled the stars into appearing.
He found Najette back at the house when he returned. He stared at her and stammered, ‘When did you get here?’
‘A while ago. I was beginning to worry about you.’
‘But...why didn’t you come back to the lake?’
‘I did.’
‘I didn’t see you.’
‘We must have missed each other. Never mind; here we are now, together.’
She kissed him. He felt his thoughts growing heavy and impenetrable. He sat down and, in a cold, impersonal voice, said, ‘You have such sexy teeth.’
‘Why, thank you. Unusual compliment, but it’ll do.’
‘I hope so. I love watching you floss. And I love it when you scribble your appointments on your arm. And I love it when you block the sink. I love your hairy arms.’
‘Oscar, would you mind telling me what you’re talking about? I think the sun’s got to you. I don’t scribble my appointments on my non-existent hairy arms. And I’ve never blocked the sink, at least not intentionally. What’s up?’
‘That’s a very good question. I hope to find out soon. What indeed is up? I know what is down. I am. I have never really understood what the hell is up. Who is up? Who enjoys up?’
She stared at him in astonishment. She suspected he was sick; she touched his forehead.
‘Oscar, I think you need to lie down. You’re burning up. Here, take my hand; I’m putting you to bed.’
She led the way and he followed, bereft of energy and slouching as though papier maché rather than bones propped up his body. She gently held his hand as he languished on the bed. In a parched voice, he whispered, ‘Who will water me?’
His eyes were fathomless, the dark pupils outlines of emptiness, reminders that he was a ghost poised between life and death and struggling to make sense of what lay in between.
His eyelids closed and he fell into a dank, uneasy sleep. She kissed him softly on his forehead, as if her kiss might kill the fever. Taking care not to disturb him she tiptoed out of the room.
Oscar’s mind churned. He did not dream; he was not immersed in some autonomous world, he was too close to consciousness for that. He hovered between sleep and waking, and his mind was rendered shapeless. It was as though an intricate metal structure had been reduced to its original, formless state through the action of heat. Thoughts were running in a giddy chain. Bloch’s words joined the stream. He roused himself into waking; the residual thoughts wouldn’t disperse. He rubbed his eyes and saw Bloch’s face looming. He couldn’t get rid of it; it fixed itself onto the far wall as if projected there. He stared at the bloated, unreal features, the lips two yards long, the eyes as big as clocks, the sallow complexion transparent enough to discern the wallpaper beyond. It wouldn’t go away.
He was sweating. He slumped back onto the bed and hid under the covers, not daring to look up again. After a scrambled, restless period in which time alternately dilated and contracted he was able to sink into sleep, a real sleep.
When he awoke the face had gone. The house was eerily quiet. He went downstairs, feeling drained. But he noticed his head was cooler. Najette was in the garden. He grabbed a bottle of whiskey and downed a couple of shots. Then, still holding the bottle and glasses he joined her outside. She was sitting reading.
‘I’m fine now. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened to me.’
‘It’s all right. Your imagination was getting the better of you, I expect.’
‘Do you want a drink?’
‘Not for me.’
‘I saw a hot air balloon earlier, or at least I think I did.’
‘Whereabouts was that?’
‘Oh, in the sky, in the sky.’
*
During the waning evenings, the melting time, infusions of feeling spread, tempting language into trying to catch them. They sat in the garden at the table, wine and candles sitting with them, Tristan coming from the house, funereal continuities which erased thought forced them to suppress movement. Above, the stars glimmered, perforating the night sky. Their bare feet slid along the cool, soothing grass. The wine was accomplishing its work of untying the knots in the day. He thought he could hear the antennae of insects shifting. She smoked a cigarette and watched him.
She ran her finger along the carved grooves of the wooden table, submitting to the repose of the barely tangible breeze, the fermented candle light, the silence. Then she began to slip, slip away from him, because at the end of happiness there came that senseless impulse to lash out. Because she had to move on, she could not live with him. Could she live with any man? She felt as though she’d glimpsed a hole from which water was pouring into the bow of their ship. Things couldn’t be the same after that.
The plant was finding its final form, its ruptured belly now unaccountably disquieting, framed by probing shadows. The background’s abstraction was offset by the specificity of life and motion
in the foreground.
The days were shrinking and the light slanting across the floor was of a new, elegiac cast, yellowing and dying imperceptibly.
Oscar began to wonder how long he could stay here. He would have to return to London at some point. But for the moment he cherished the sacraments they exchanged. Intervals of happiness and intrusions of perturbation vied with each other, and the house, the light, the summer’s end, Najette’s face, all became redolent of this mingling.
To Oscar Najette was different; her robes of cynicism, elaborately embroidered and yet at the same time almost ill-fitting, had been discarded. Wit and sophistication had accompanied all her maneuvers with others, disguising the nerves which sped through her, except perhaps in sleep. To Oscar she had always had an edge of inscrutability, unwilling to open doors except to humdrum places, places she nonetheless ended up transforming. But now she seemed loose, malleable. Hadn’t her smile aligned itself more completely with her heart? Didn’t she offer, rather than brilliant worldliness, admissions of ignorance, a touching vulnerability, a sincerity won after tumultuous struggles?
He spent long, hypnotized stretches of time peering into the Zoetrope, as though the cylinder contained something which could unlock the secret of the universe.
He drew more sketches.
He felt a trembling, breathless urge to paint.
He started to paint.
*
‘10 September. Daniel Bloch has been residing at Charing Cross now for two weeks and is still refusing to eat. He has been ripping out his drip, hiding food and generally showing an extreme rigidity of mind. Physically, his condition is deteriorating rapidly and I have noticed he always assumes a fetal position whenever I try and speak with him. I am expecting a visit from two social workers to see whether or not sectioning should go ahead. This is highly likely and I would like to think force feeding will be an option, though this matter is delicate. But if the patient will not comply, what choice do we have? His muscles are now utterly enervated and we are having difficulty in finding veins for his drip as they have all thrombosed. Occasionally he has hinted that someone else is living out his life – further evidence of psychotic ideation.’
The Fabrications Page 42