We have put a couple of obscure articles on ice, thinking they might come in handy in time of need. One of them – about a series of medieval frescoes recently found in Georgia – was sent our way by Cartier-Bresson, who is full of passing enthusiasms which, I’ve noticed, he communicates with passionate conviction (he is currently very full of Jean Baudrillard’s theories). The frescoes have been surprisingly well conserved and expertly photographed, although not by Cartier himself, in the fastness of their hilltop monastery, so we decide to make a virtue out of necessity by presenting them as a ‘discovery’ in our forthcoming issue, which also contains a whole section devoted to Anselm Kiefer. This will at least show, we fondly think, that the new Art International is quite as wide, if not as quirky, in its editorial scope as in Jim Fitzsimmons’s day.
The main upshot of including such rarefied content is not so much protests from our inner circle of supporters – I rather feared Mariella might exclaim: ‘Why Georgia of all places!’, then hesitate to write out her next, much-needed cheque – but that I spend much more time with HCB (as people tend to call Cartier for brevity’s sake). He’s always been friendly towards me, although I think that’s at least partly because he’s always been very clever at managing his career and has probably made a point of cultivating journalists who might want to write about him; and if he’s grown even friendlier, it may be (as it’s proving to be with a variety of people) that, as owner of an art magazine, I have become more patently useful. Baudrillard and other fashionable philosophers apart, HCB has a big bee in his bonnet at the moment because he’s decided more or less to replace photography by his earlier love for drawing, to which he now devotes most of his time, sketching the huge skeletons at the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle (like his great hero, Giacometti) or close friends like the publisher Tériade. I’ve interviewed HCB a couple of times in his rambling, studentish fifth-floor apartment overlooking the Tuileries Gardens – the view, he informs me, that Monet painted three times from the flat below in 1876, when Victor Choquet, the great collector and champion of Impressionism, lived there. On each occasion HCB insists on talking only about drawing, which he also discusses tirelessly with artist friends like Raymond Mason and Sam Szafran (he even submits his drawings to them for their comments). Whenever we talk, he is very dismissive of photography, coming up with phrases like ‘Photography is instant drawing, really, like instant coffee’, which, I suppose, is all very well if you are the most famous photographer in the world but sounds a bit suspect to me, as if HCB were using his fame as a photographer to boost his career as a draughtsman.
But I enjoy his company and have an innate respect for him (he is also a good forty years my senior), even though I’m still startled by his sudden fits of temper. We were at a large, formal dinner in Paris the other day, with HCB having placed his camera between his feet under the table (as he always does, like a secret weapon he’s keeping in reserve), and the conversation was amiable enough until I saw HCB staring at someone at the top of the table and going redder and redder in the face. ‘What’s the matter, Henri?’ I asked. ‘You can just see what a shit that man is simply by looking at him,’ he replied in an outraged voice, before calming down as quickly and resuming polite tittle-tattle as if nothing had happened. If I’m pleased to be going around with him, it’s not just because HCB is lively company but because he is famous and well connected, which can hardly do me or the magazine any harm (although if I want the portrait he promised he’d take of me, I’ll have to be bolder and try to pin a date down). So when HCB suggests I accompany him to the opening of an exhibition of his drawings at the Mannheimer Kunstverein, I tag along, gossiping about the Paris art world all the way on the train, and watching him at work as he skilfully tries to persuade the German press that while photography was like a first wife to him, she has long been replaced by the second: a lifelong love of drawing.
I don’t see myself as a ruthless social climber but I have noticed that running the magazine has made me very aware of who might be useful for our infinitely expanding need for support of every kind. Whenever certain names crop up – a Rothschild or a David-Weill, an Agnelli, Gund or Rockefeller – I become as alert as a beagle, scenting the kind of sophisticated wealth we need to survive if only we knew how to get our inky little fingers on it. Mariella has already been very generous, and I have tried to respond to this by creating a special title – ‘Directrice des relations publiques’ – with an elegantly designed Art International business card to go with it. What I didn’t expect was that, in return, Mariella would suggest throwing a launch party for our second issue at the very grand Hôtel George V. I’m taken aback by the sheer munificence of the idea, trying not to calculate how much the venue, the champagne and the caviar will cost and how many issues it might pay for, but how much influence, status and even advertising such an event might generate. Our secretary swings into action as if this is the calling she had long been waiting for and draws up ambitious invitee lists in which the Aga Khan stands self-consciously wedged between Madame Claude Pompidou and Johnny Hallyday (billed as the ‘biggest rock star you never heard of’ in the British press), none of whom, I suspect, will actually come. On my side I cobble together the leading art dealers who might be convinced to take out magazine space to announce their shows as well as a sprinkling of artists, museum directors and writers – all of whom will probably come, out of curiosity, since many of them might never have set foot in the higher, perfumed realms of the George V before.
In the event our sumptuous party becomes a comedy of errors. The art dealers are here in force because they think that Mariella, who is exquisitely dressed and bejewelled, will lead them to rich collectors; the rich collectors, of whom there are a few, hope to meet young artists whose work they can snap up for a song; while the artists, none of them young and certainly not cheap, hang around eyeing each other with undisguised venom. The comedy for me is heightened by seeing my erstwhile Polonaise, complete with a new boyfriend and a glittering Cartier watch on her wrist, which she deliberately flashes at me; I disguise my irritation (I can’t think how she was even invited) by ignoring her and lavishing attention on her witless new beau. Mariella, meanwhile, is mobbed by admirers, which is just as I wanted it. The other star of the evening is our cleaner, Eli, who, slim and handsome, has donned a dark suit for the occasion and for all the world looks like an important Asian collector. The dealers pick up on this like a pack of hounds and, having paid their elaborate respects to Mariella, they gather closely round him, proposing various delectable modern and contemporary masterpieces, to all of which Eli responds gracefully but inscrutably, informing the dealers that they need only get in touch with me to finalise the deals, whether the Renoir, the Léger or the Yves Klein. The dealers then cluster round me, clinking glasses as I promise confidentially to have a word with Eli in the morning.
My head still spinning from the multiple promises of support this lavish party has bestowed on us, I go to London to interview four young women for the role of London correspondent, each more fetching than her predecessor, and my last meeting is with Jill Lloyd, who strikes me as much more at ease than she was in Düsseldorf. We try to focus on the serious matter in hand but end up laughing so much and having such a good time that we go on to have dinner together. At that moment, as the first bottle of wine gives way to the second, the flame is lit and burns so hard that we fall into each other’s arms and unerringly into each other’s lives. It is one of life’s great accidents: it could have been a fatal illness or a fatal crash, but it is fatal love, and even though it happens within minutes neither has any doubt that we have both found a new bearing in existence.
I go back to Paris with my head spinning even faster and try to take up the reins at Art International, where everything has accelerated, with advertising doubled and subscriptions pouring in. My recent conquests reappear but, as I note with wonderment, they fade away like ghosts at dawn the moment they sense my new love, leaving the field nice and clear. I inveigle Jil
l over for a weekend, and Paris rushes to my side. It has been raining hard but the sky clears and, as I take Jill on a walk through the Marais, pale gold light falls in soft streams, gilding the winding streets and the fine seventeenth-century palaces, drawing all the magic of this area ever more powerfully to eyes that have been trained on the mysteries of great art. No extra proof is needed, but in the early evening we walk along and across the Seine, while the electric lamps on the bridges throw long strokes of white heightening over its green-grey water. Then at dusk we walk back to the studio along rue de Rivoli as it teems with people coming out of their offices. This is still Baudelaire’s Paris, the great hub of modern life that ‘swarms with innocent monsters’: hundreds of private dreams and secret lusts are abroad, an almost tangible procession of illusion and desire jostling along under these elegant arcades, which I watch reflected and refracted in Jill’s wide-eyed stare. Again, as we stroll against the flow hand in hand, there is no doubt. Jill will come here, risking her tenure as a university lecturer, to join me on a highly precarious adventure where I have the unbelievable good luck to be no longer alone.
Out of the blue a telegram arrives announcing that Jaime Gil de Biedma, my old friend from Barcelona, will be in Paris and asking me to keep an evening free. I reply, inviting him for dinner at rue des Archives, thinking he might be glad to see that his erstwhile protégé has done well enough in Paris to have a large apartment to entertain in as well as an art magazine to run. I can still recite many of Jaime’s poems by heart, and even though I would be hard put to say what they really mean, his voice is in my ears and the poems’ cadence alone is as important to me as certain passages in Bach or Mozart. Jaime is also my past, the gilded past of the Barcelona bars, long summer evenings and walks by the Mediterranean at night. I cook a boeuf bourguignon, lay in plenty of wine and invite a couple of friends, using an old, blackened bellows to get a log fire going in the small grate of what used to be the dining room at rue des Archives. The desks have been cleared, and both fax and telephone have fallen silent by the time Jaime arrives. I’d hoped to talk about our escapades on the Ramblas and catch up on news about the publisher Carlos Barral, the writer Juan Marsé and other companions who shared those soft, late evenings, laughing and talking, stopping to argue a point or remember a quotation under the street lamps that lit up the green of the plane trees from below. But Jaime tells me without preamble that he’s not been well for some time, that he might have picked up some disease on his frequent trips to the Philippines, and that he is in Paris for tests at the Hôpital des Maladies Tropicales. No one seems to know what is wrong with him. It’s like a very bad flu that just keeps on getting worse. I attempt to infuse a little jollity into the evening, loading stout logs onto the fire and opening more bottles, but Jaime remains totally fixated on his illness, stopping his monologue only to demand extra helpings of new potatoes, which he devours one by one with his fingers, desperately, as if there were a magic substance in these small tubers that might make him well again.
It’s probably just one of those strange viruses, we all tell him.
Bits of the logs drop off through the fire grate in glowing red embers, sending out gusts of heat into the subdued room.
It’s just a virus that will burn itself out, we repeat, burn itself out and disappear…
12
Fallout: 14 rue de Birague, IVe; 16 rue Michel le Comte, IIIe (1990–94)
It has been snowing all night. In the early morning, I walk out over our cobblestone courtyard to the place des Vosges, which is covered with a thick, crisp, white blanket. From under the arch beneath the King’s pavilion, it looks untouched, immaculate, but as I push the iron gate open I see footprints of the handful of people who have got here before me and note the various directions in which they have crossed the square’s bright brilliance. In between the human traces, and far more numerous, there are hundreds of tiny, delicate indentations that have been made by small birds hopping across the surface. Their imprints are precise and fragile, and as they criss-cross and double back, half-obliterating previous signs as if in contradiction or revision, they resemble a vast manuscript, an open scroll constantly corrected and refined, covering the whole park… Perhaps here, and in the clouds ceaselessly changing overhead and on the Seine coursing unseen behind us, is all the real knowledge we have: writ on snow, on sky, on water. In this suspended instant, even the plumes of breath coming from two bystanders staring through the railings at the enclosed snow add significance. All the writing is here, if only we can interpret it: either it disappears instantaneously, like the plumes of breath or a startled sparrow, or it stays frozen for a moment, like the jets of water hanging in thick white braids over the fountain’s iced-over basin. All the meaning is already here, hinted at, half revealed, if only we knew how to read it.
The lime trees’ black branches surrounding the square are highlighted in white, but the horse chestnuts that form a grove around the equestrian statue of Louis XIII are merely dusted with snow, powdered like courtiers clustering around their king. Louis is actually presented as a Roman Emperor, complete with a laurel crown on which a wedge of snow now sits like a wedding cake. I think with pleasure how much excitement this will generate in the schoolchildren who come to play here, and how they will laugh and do their utmost, throwing snowballs or anything else that comes to hand, to dislodge the Emperor’s new hat.
This is the time, year in, year out, that foreign journalists and their ilk are invited to the Hôtel de Ville to celebrate the New Year with whomever happens to be Mayor of Paris. For the past decade we’ve got used to being greeted by Jacques Chirac, who glad-hands us all amiably and puts on a convincing show of being delighted to have so many old friends raising a glass of distinctly superior champagne to the forthcoming twelvemonth. I’m fascinated by the energy he displays, apparently taking into account a whole spectrum of differing remarks and views about this, that and the other while nodding his head vigorously in assent, proffering a warm, firm handshake to whomever, laughing collusively, winking conspiratorially, back-slapping collaboratively until the whole gruesome charade comes to an end, and he then goes on to further professional duties which require the same high-octane performance; small wonder he’s known familiarly as ‘le bulldozer’. Rumour has it that his love life is much the same, with one of his mistresses describing it drily to the press as ‘Ten minutes, shower included’.
I have a sneaking admiration for Chirac, and I feel his extraordinary cordiality, although turned on for the occasion, makes up for many a slight I have received on the city’s streets. I also enjoy being at the Hôtel de Ville for purely social, rather than dully administrative, reasons. The interiors are not as grandiloquently pompous as the Opéra’s but they exude the same self-satisfaction. Incidentally, and I thought of mentioning it to Monsieur Chirac, the Opéra displays no fewer than ninety sculptures of famous creators by the now little remembered sculptor, Louis Félix Chabaud: on the building’s façade we find Beethoven and Mozart alongside the now less glorious Halévy and Meyerbeer. I have noticed that along the flanks of the Hôtel de Ville there are also innumerable statues of once-famous politicos standing in niches and wonder whether I might joke about it with my new friend Jacques, adding a well-timed ‘sic transit gloria mundi’. Then I notice the strain in his wide-set eyes and decide at the last minute to hold my tongue and merely swallow another of the canapés on offer.
What interests me most about meeting people with ‘name recognition’ is how they compare in person with the image one has unconsciously built up about them as they talk to the press, turn up at a big event or are snapped unawares in their private life. I only eavesdropped on Marlene Dietrich but she came across as numbingly dull for all her glamour, while Sophia Loren, instantly alluring as she was, talked (to me, at least) only about the right way to cook pasta and her worry that her children might get into drugs. Andy Warhol was as deadpan as his legend, with lots of ‘Gee, that’s great’, while Mick Jagger, who was with him w
hen we met, simply grinned. Not long after the annual fête with Chirac, I found myself face to face with François Mitterrand at an exhibition opening. First of all, I was taken aback by how slight he was, then how pale – as pale as his wax effigy at the Musée Grévin, as if his face had been so carefully powdered it was only layer upon layer of powder. But he also exuded extraordinary power, like a Renaissance portrait of a manipulative Pope or a cunning Doge. There was a faint smile at the corner of his lips, and you felt immediately that this was a man with a thousand secrets, not only about other politicians and statesmen, but of course about himself. Rumours about his involvement with the Vichy government or the supposed attack on his life (which turned out to be so politically opportune) have never gone away, like the many other enigmas that have come to characterise him and his career. Yet I felt in the one instant he stood opposite me that, with his calmly regal gaze, Mitterrand considered himself beyond conjecture and, as potentially the longest-serving President of France, already belonging to history.
Parisians celebrate the New Year boisterously, even aggressively. Christmas is basically a festive meal with the family, but the end of the year is seen out with a panoply of cabarets, cruises, gala dinners and fireworks, while kids and others who should know better chuck firecrackers randomly into the crowds. You rarely say ‘Joyeux Noël’ to anyone, but you can say or shout ‘Bonne année’ to all and sundry for no particular reason during the whole of the month of January, which I find increasingly irritating when it comes from a surly postman in search of a tip or a crabby shopkeeper whom you’ve long suspected of gypping you (but is it worth going to the other side of the Bastille in search of one who doesn’t?). After all the festivities are over, a dyspeptic gloom settles over the city and the newspapers seem more than usually filled with bad news.
The Existential Englishman Page 35
