Lust Or No Harm Done

by Geoff Ryman

  He could do it. He could do it and make money.

  Michael looked at the sunlight streaming in through the bay window, on the old sand-coloured carpet, the old sofa, and the old wallpaper. There was a butterfly fluttering inside him that made him smile. It was time to go. It was time to find somewhere new.

  Picasso had them down into Goodge Street tube station by 8.15 am. He breathed in the stench of the trains and strutted up and down the platform, taking possession. He looked at the posters and beamed.

  'I was right,' he said. 'This is my world. I made it.'

  He pointed to a poster for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. A computer-distorted Johnny Depp grimaced out of a field of white, amid Gerald Scarfe-like splashes of black. 'That is a photograph, yes? What did that to a photograph?'

  'It's a computer graphic. Ordinateur. Oh shit.' Michael took a deep breath and tried to explain computers in French. He knew none of the words. He got across the idea that it was a machine that could add and subtract, and could turn anything into numbers, even images. So by changing the numbers, you changed the images.

  'You can make anything.' Picasso looked impressed.

  'They made dinosaurs.'

  'Tuh. They did that in King Kong.'

  'These looked real. They can make people look real.'

  Picasso's jaw thrust outwards. 'You have one of these ordinateurs?'

  'I use them at work. I also have one at home.'

  'You have one at home? Do many people have these things at home?'

  'Yes.'

  Picasso laughed aloud and did a little dance. 'I am in the future. You have brought me into the future, my friend.' His eyes were sparkling.

  The apartment looked unprepossessing. It was on a corner over a shoe shop, with a battered multi-locked door on a side street facing a recently closed ex-supermarket. Picasso rang the buzzer and then shouted up, 'Hallo. Hallo. We want to buy your apartment!'

  A woman looked out from the top of the wall. Evidently, she was sipping coffee on the roof. 'I'm sorry, but you will have to talk to the estate agent first, if you want to see the property.' She had what might pass for an American accent. She did not look at all offended. If anything, she was rather amused.

  'Estate agent, qu'est-ce que c'est?' Picasso demanded of Michael.

  'Hold on, I'll be down,' the woman said.

  Michael tutted. 'It is not possible to arrive at people's apartments at this hour of the morning.' They heard footsteps. The door was opened by a tall woman, grey-haired in a blue-patterned kimono. She explained. 'Estate agents sont agents immobiliers.'

  'Uh, estate agents!' huffed Picasso. 'They are only after your money. It is us who want to buy your apartment.'

  The woman chuckled. 'Well, OK, come in.'

  She spoke French and was Canadian and her name was Mirielle. Mirielle led them up a staircase that was crammed with bicycles. On the landing there was a toilet in a kind of booth that had been jammed against a sloping roof. It looked like a set from an early German Expressionist movie like the Cabinet of Dr Caligari.

  Past more banisters and they were in one huge room. One wall was lined with kitchen sink and encrusted cooker. Two other sides were crowded with bookcases, desks and sofas. All along one wall arched windows faced east, dancing with light. Picasso was overjoyed. He turned and rubbed the top of his head in a circle against Michael's chest.

  Mirielle led them through a door out onto a flat rooftop, lined with big red pots holding giant ferns, bamboo and evergreens. 'This is the garden. We would sell the plants with the flat. Do you like gardens?'

  'He does,' said Picasso and pointed to Michael.

  The banisters led up a staircase that smelled of sawdust, to two bedrooms. One was long and dark with a sloping roof, and the other was a garret with another huge window. It was full of canvases lined up like cards in an index file. Picasso rifled through them. His cheeks rose up like buns. There were Goths with facial tattoos, cross cut on the same canvas with the backs of turtles. Magicians in top hats were under the sea, but the seabed was an aerial map of New York. 'You are one of my children,' Picasso said.

  'Oh really,' chuckled Mirielle. 'And what is your name?'

  'Pablo Picasso,' he announced. Um, thought Michael, that might be a mistake.

  'Funny,' said Mirielle, without missing a beat. 'That's my name too.'

  'We will buy your flat,' Picasso said, airily as if it were nothing.

  'For my asking price?'

  'Is anyone else asking?'

  'Now,' said Mirielle, 'we need the estate agent.'

  'And a glass of wine, to celebrate. My friend has a bottle,' said Picasso and winked at Michael, and Michael for once was quick on the uptake. Out came another bottle of 60-year-old wine. Mirielle looked at its old-fashioned label, with its plain black print. Mis en bouteille 1932. It was too perfect, so she laughed, and brought out glasses.

  'I will work here,' Picasso announced to Michael. 'I am your new life.'

  There was just one problem: who would buy Michael's flat?

  Michael remembered his Polish neighbours downstairs. The husband had been made redundant and they needed to sell their larger flat with its Council Tax and ground rent. They had a buyer for their place: but they had been gazumped on the flat they wanted to buy. They had nowhere to move to.

  Mr Miazga was alone in the apartment, still dressed as if for his work: a neat grey shirt of some interesting fabric, black slacks and black jacket. Yes, yes, it would be ideal.

  'My wife, you see, works at the School of Eastern European Studies, which is just near here, so she can walk to work. That is why we are here in England.' He had a neat, quiet way of walking and talking, as if he were continually picking lint from his suit. His eyes never quite met yours.

  Picasso began to slump and look about the walls, and huff. Shy quiet people made him impatient.

  The Miazgas were shy but talented. The wife was doing a thesis on the pre-Christian Balkans. Mr Miazga had until recently worked in an architects' office as a programmer.

  'That means he writes programs… uh…' Michael searched for the word in French.

  '…logiciels,' Mr Miazga said, with his unfaltering, mild smile.

  'Computers.' Picasso sat up. 'You work on those things?'

  'Well,' said Mr Miazga, 'I write the instructions that make them work.' He glanced sideways at Michael: how is it that this man has only just heard about computers?

  Picasso kept pushing. 'You know how they work. You write down the numbers.'

  'That is one way of putting it, yes.'

  'Do you have one? You could show me how it works?'

  Mr Miazga did not want to teach this bumptious man anything, but he was trapped by his own good manners. He avoided answering. 'The architects ask me to use the computer to show our clients how the buildings will look.' He used the present tense as if he still had a job.

  Michael offered compromise. 'Why don't you just show us something you've worked on?'

  Mr Miazga showed them a virtual shopping mall that was to be built along the A40. He guided them down the covered walkway, past the Pizza Shack and Ameriburger franchise and into the bowling alley. There was the sound of a strike and the clatter of falling pins.

  The father of Cubism saw: this was the real way to display all sides of an object. He leaned forward and irresistibly took control of the mouse. He scowled, his eyes widened; the whites of his black eyes were illuminated like a glass of milk with a light bulb in it.

  Mr Miazga explained, 'This way, the client feels work has begun on his project. While the surveyors are still specifying the materials and checking our estimates, we have something to show.'

  Picasso only sniffed. He moved forwards and backwards through the design. He tried to scamper across the ceiling upside down. He could not. He chuckled. He drove the mouse straight into a wall and through it and he laughed. 'You are God,' he said. 'You can change the rules.'

  'It can show what the blueprints will look like,' correcte
d Mr Miazga, who detested all overstatement and vulgarity. His black suit and designer shirt would have looked better with a huge gold brooch.

  Picasso ignored him. 'The artist is the one who makes the space. The audience uses it. It is much more like life. But He slapped his thigh and stood up. 'The power of the artist has not changed. It is his world the audience enters. Thank you, Mr Miazga. Please, would you be able to show me more about how this works?'

  'Certainly, if you wish,' said Mr Miazga. He was beginning to rise.

  'You could do it today?' Picasso asked.

  Mr Miazga faltered. He batted his eyelids like an embarrassed girl. 'I… I plainly have nothing else to do.'

  Picasso sat down in his chair. 'Excellent, excellent. You and your wife must come upstairs and have dinner with us tonight. Is that not so, Michael?'

  'Indeed,' Michael began.

  'There will be a lot to celebrate.'

  Mr Miazga could not help but smile. It would indeed be a relief to be able to sell their big flat and move on. He nodded in agreement.

  'Michael, you have things to do with banks and lawyers, yes?'

  Michael was beginning to get a bit peeved at being directed all the time. Picasso looked around at him and suddenly he had a face like a bloodhound: doleful eyes and drooping jaws. 'Don't you have a lot to do? I'm sorry, is it possible that I can help you in any way? I don't speak English. I am weak in such situations.' He was apologetic and undeniable.

  'No, it's for me to do.' It was just that Michael wished he were doing the driving. It was his money that was buying the flat.

  'I will cook!' Picasso announced, his eyes dancing again.

  Picasso did not cook. He concentrated on a complicated sauce involving cream and tomatoes and basil and berries and apple liqueur and butter and a teaspoon of grated onion. Michael did the shopping. Michael cooked everything else: the boiled potatoes, the salad. The Miazgas rang on the telephone first, to tell them they were on their way: one floor up.

  'Remember,' Michael told him. 'You cannot be called Pablo Picasso. Everybody in the world knows who Pablo Picasso is.' Picasso looked like he was picking his teeth after a good meal. 'You'll need to be called another name. I suggest Ruiz.' Michael paused. 'It will be easy to remember.'

  'It is my father's name.' Picasso curled his lip.

  'That's why it will be easy to remember,' said Michael, backing away to the door. And, he thought, it's your real name.

  The Miazgas came, scrubbed and pressed. Their ageing beauties had been pinned back into place. Mrs Miazga was big and blonde and just the slightest bit blowsy. The academic Laura Ashley dress was so flimsy and pink that it might as well have been Zsa Zsa Gabor chiffon, and strands of her blonde hair kept rising and falling. Mr Miazga looked braced against a further onslaught from Picasso. He had spent the afternoon with this man, and now faced a whole evening of him.

  Picasso bounded up to them and kissed Madame Miazga on both cheeks. His arms enfolded Mr Miazga, and wrenched him down to his height. Picasso kissed him full on the lips.

  'This man is a genius!' Picasso declared of Mr Miazga. Mr Miazga was in the process of recovering from the kiss. 'He has taught me so much.'

  Mr Miazga pulled himself up to his full height, as if to imply that a kiss on the lips would normally follow a proper introduction. He had not come to live in England to be battered by such behaviour. 'May I present my wife, Maria.'

  Marta cooed and offered a tiny, polite hand. Mr Miazga continued, 'Marta this is Mr… Mr…'

  'Luis,' said Picasso. Whose father's name was that? His eyes were on Michael and the whites looked tobacco-stained with knowing. 'Luis Ruiz. It rhymes. It is easy to remember, yes?'

  'I am sure I will have no difficulty remembering your name at all,' said Marta Miazga, who had always been more outgoing than her husband. 'My husband is called Thaddeus, or Thad for short, and so the English call him Tad the Pole.'

  Michael found himself chuckling along with her. Though Picasso could not possibly have understood the joke, he laughed too. Mr Miazga sucked in air thinly between his teeth.

  Over dinner Picasso talked. Michael started to uncork the wine, and Picasso said no, no, no and took the bottle from him. Picasso kept talking as he showed the best way to uncork and pour it. He told Michael where the oven glove was. 'Yes, yes, I put it on the lower shelf where I can reach it, we keep it there from now on.'

  Picasso talked about computer graphics. 'They defy gravity. Things are pasted on them, things are stretched, everything blurs into a dream. It is as if you take the human mind and plug it into the electricity grid. The results have ceased to be entirely human. If not used by artists the results are distinctly unpleasant and alienating. These graphics reveal a desire for perfection. Perfection is for people who want to work and who are scared that they will run out of ideas.'

  Mr Miazga coughed.

  Picasso talked about Monet's water lilies. He enjoyed them in a scanty kind of way, but like all impressionism, its fate was to be used on greetings cards. Its innovations were all technical. Its artistic message was too often merely pretty.

  Marta mentioned the curious art that was now winning awards. A dead sheep in formaldehyde. Picasso laughed, and stomped his foot. 'That is either very good or very bad. It is reaction against computers. Did he enjoy winning his award?'

  'I think so, yes,' replied Marta. Her sentences seemed to wear glass slippers – they tinkled and you were afraid they would break.

  'Ah, then the art will be very bad.' Picasso munched his lamb heartily. They all waited.

  'Why would that be?' Mr Miazga enquired.

  Picasso swallowed. 'There are people who Are and there are people who only Have. The people who Have must be good at getting, and they are polite. The people who Are…' His hand trailed away.

  'Don't need awards,' said Michael.

  Picasso nodded once, firmly. 'The awards are there to make the people who Have feel like the people who Are.'

  Mr Miazga enquired, 'And those who Are, what are they good at?'

  'Whatever they like,' said Picasso with a shrug. 'Defeating others,' he added, shamelessly.

  At the end of the evening, the Poles seemed suddenly to remember it was Michael's flat. They thanked him in English for the meal, for the move. Michael said how that the timing was lucky for all of them. 'The apartment will be ideal for us,' enthused Marta.

  'You know we have been saying,' said Mrs Miazga with a confirming glance at her husband as she took Michael's hand in friendship, 'we have been friends for so long that we don't even remember when we first came to this apartment.'

  About three weeks ago, thought Michael. The Miazgas couldn't remember the Angel monks and the singing at 2:00 am.

  Michael eased them down his hallway. Marta thanked him for Picasso. 'It was wonderful meeting your friend! It was just like meeting…' She sought for someone to measure the impact. 'Matisse.'

  Picasso's smile temporarily lost its balance. The dapper Mr Miazga shook Michael's hand. Marta waved to Pablo. 'Enchante,' Picasso said.

  The door swung shut. Picasso held out both arms, and sighed and spun around. 'I can eat, I can drink, I can read, I can learn, I can work!' he said, and did a little dance. He pulled Michael to him, and looked up, his small round face suddenly like a child's, stretched tight. 'And all I have to do is love you,' he said.

  'Is that difficult for you?'

  'I am a woman's man,' said Picasso proudly.

  'One… one man I brought back, who had been dead. He told me never to do it to anyone else.'

  'He turned down life?' Picasso was incredulous. 'He was a fool.'

  'Mark was no fool. I love your painting because of him.'

  'Now I know he was a fool,' said Picasso. He stood back, to regard Michael as if he were a painting. 'You are not such a price to pay for life. You have beautiful hair and beautiful eyes. You look like a man, you are big and you are strong, and so don't cause comment on the street, and you are smart and soft, soft for me a
nd I like that.'

  Michael advanced; Picasso didn't like being pressed up against him, it revealed too ruthlessly how short he was. Michael dipped down, bending neck and spine, and they kissed. Their tongues seemed to glue to each other. They parted with a smack, and Picasso said what Michael was thinking: 'Delicious.' He reached up and rubbed Michael's neck. 'You want me to fuck you,' he whispered.

  'Yes,' Michael said from a place so deep inside him the words felt as if they came from his stomach.

  Picasso was so short that his arms encircled Michael's ass. 'I take you,' Picasso said, and picked him up from the floor and hugged him into the bedroom. The tips of Michael's toes dragged across the carpet. Picasso let him fall onto the bed and pulled down Michael's trousers so hard they tore.

  'I fuck you face to face,' said Picasso.

  'Face to face,' said Michael, and knew that he was in a kind of love. Throughout the act, he looked into Picasso's eyes.

  The move was upon them before Michael was ready.

  Picasso took charge. The van was to arrive on Thursday. Wednesday evening, they started to pack. Big tea crates arrived: Picasso kept popping out of them like a jack in the box. He thought this was very funny. Michael was not in the mood.

  In fact, Michael was cross. He had wanted to clear things out before he moved; at the same time he also wanted to save everything. There were Phil's old toiletries, bath foams and aftershaves that Michael had bought for him. Michael sniffed the tops and smelled Phil. He started to chuck them, but at the first clinking of glass in a bin, Picasso, wearing nothing but shorts and sandals, flapped into his bedroom.

  'What you throw away?' he demanded. 'This is good, no?' He splashed himself with aftershave: 'Oh, I smell like Monet's lily pond now,' he joked.

  'You smell like Phil,' murmured Michael.

  There were all the old receipts, gas bills addressed to Phil, old photos of trips to Paris. There were books Phil had given him with cards inside showing two cats entwined. There were old socks. There were magazines saved because they recorded the top 100 albums of all time according to New Musical Express in 1990: Pet Sounds at number 1 apparently. There were invitations to Phil's early exhibitions; old clothes: cowboy shirts, torn PVC, Lycra bicycling shorts. Phil's unwanted wardrobe was a history of ill-advised eighties and nineties fashion.