Love Your Enemies

by Nicola Barker

  Melissa was very sunny at work and busy with life. She looked forward to seeing John again but wanted a dignified period to pass before she pestered him. Her next visit was on a Saturday afternoon. Steve had agreed to cover for her if she went home early from work. She said she wanted to buy more material for her clothes designs. In fact she went straight to an off licence to buy some wine, then down to the tube.

  John took a good while to answer the door. During the previous week or so this had been his technique for getting rid of frivolous callers. There had only been a couple.

  He had thought about Melissa a great deal over the past eight or nine days, not romantically, although had he been anticipating staying alive for more than the shortest of periods he would almost definitely have attempted to view her in such a light. In his state of violent activity he thought of her in terms of a confidante, an inspirationee, someone he could revitalize with his last dregs of energy.

  When he opened the door he smiled widely and said, ‘It’s great to see you again, come in!’

  Melissa was shocked to see how different he looked. He appeared to be much thinner, more gaunt, but his face was now hidden by the beginnings of a red-tinged shaggy beard. His eyes were grey and his clothes were terribly unkempt. There seemed to be a fine pale sheen that covered him from head to foot; after a moment she realized that this must be a million tiny specks of sawdust.

  John noticed her expression and said at once, ‘I know that I look a mess, it’s just that I get very involved in what I do. I’m driven. I don’t seem to have much energy for anything else.’

  She followed him in and said, ‘You do look a bit like the Wild Man of Borneo.’

  He smiled and took the wine that she offered on the way through to the kitchen.

  No washing-up had been done since her last visit. Everything was dirty, everything had a sawdust sheen. She said, ‘Do you have any clean glasses?’

  He ran a tap and washed a couple. ‘I’m sorry about this. I’ve been really busy.’

  Melissa found a bottle-opener and pulled out the cork. He shook the glasses dry – she was relieved that he didn’t use one of the dusty tea-towels available – and she poured in some wine. She said, ‘I’m glad you were in. It looks like you haven’t left the place since last week. Have you achieved much?’

  He took a sip of wine and smiled as he sighed with gratification. ‘I’ve done so much that I feel bloody reborn. I can’t explain it, I feel so gratified. It’s like magic the way that things just slot together. If they don’t work out you just have to try again, focus all your attention, find endless patience and eventually you attain your goal, no matter how tiny it is. You put in a nail straight or you file something into a perfect curve, make a join that is faultless. It’s fantastic.’

  As he spoke he used his hands like descriptive tools. Melissa hadn’t noticed this before. He looked like Michelangelo to her. She almost felt jealous, he was so much like a child. She said, ‘I can’t believe your enthusiasm. If I were you I’d collapse from exhaustion if I got so excited about every dress that I made. Do you treat every piece like a first?’

  His eyes slitted slightly and he rubbed at his nose with the hand not holding his wine glass. ‘Everything in life is a conquest. Each thing is different. At this moment I believe I’d feel the same excitement in my gut even if I were fifty years older and creating this object for the hundredth time. I feel the sort of sense of achievement that comes from doing something well. That’s enough. It’s enough for me anyway, like a physical empathy with objects. It’s like I’m God and I’ve created a perfect tree or a perfect river. It’s like I now understand what makes the world tick.’

  She couldn’t resist laughing at him. He stared at her, his expression one of surprise.

  Eventually she said, ‘You sound so naïve. It’s really funny. Refreshing too I suppose, but funny.’

  He led her into the living room. Before she entered the room she glanced towards the front door again and said. ‘Why haven’t you opened any of the letters on your doormat? There’s a whole pile of them.’

  He shrugged. ‘No point. I’m too busy. Forget about them.’

  She followed him into the living room and looked around in amazement. The floor was inches deep in chips, slivers, specks and flakes of wood. She said, ‘When I was a kid I had a hamster and it lived in a place like this.’ She felt she was going to sneeze. ‘Doesn’t this stuff get up your nose? Surely you wear a mask while you work? This fine dust could destroy your lungs.’

  ‘I can’t be bothered.’ He grimaced, then ran his hand down the base of the coffin, which was now complete, like a big round canoe with flat ends. He looked up at her. ‘What do you think?’

  She frowned. ‘Explain it to me. It seems a strange shape for a coffin.’

  He smiled. ‘Remember when we were chatting last time and I said that I wanted to make something which had a meaning beyond its purpose? Something which satirized death, brought it down to earth and yet celebrated it? Well that’s what this is, that’s what this shape means.’

  Melissa interrupted him. ‘Has someone commissioned this then? They must be very weird. I bet it’ll cost them a fortune.’

  This put John off his stroke. He sipped his wine, ‘Yes, it’s been commissioned. It’s for someone who …’

  He paused. ‘It won’t be too expensive.’

  Melissa put out her hand and touched the wood. ‘God, it feels really smooth, no splinters or anything.’

  He said, ‘I want it to feel as smooth as steel, smooth and cold.’

  Melissa ran her hand around the inside. ‘Well, why didn’t you make it out of steel then?’

  He laughed, frustrated. ‘Because it’s a coffin, stupid. Coffins are made out of wood, that’s the whole point of them. This is a coffin. It will look like something else, it will have an appearance to the contrary, but it will still, intrinsically, be a coffin.’

  She took her hand from the coffin and blew away the fine dust which had accumulated on the tips of her fingers, ‘So how will it look? What will it be, apart from a coffin, that is?’

  John pointed towards the pictures that he’d tacked to the wall, many of which were now rather bedraggled and dog-eared. ‘It will look like a silver can, a tin, a container. I’m using Warhol’s ideas but taking them further. He made art from everyday objects. I’m doing the same thing but my art is functional.’

  Melissa frowned and chewed the corner of her bottom lip for a while. ‘You mean that this coffin is going to look like one of those Campbell’s cans? That’s strange.’

  John shrugged defensively. ‘It’s no stranger in real terms than the outfit which you are wearing today. How is this different?’

  Melissa was wearing a pair of flared tartan trousers and a pink turtleneck top with bell-shaped sleeves. Altogether she looked rather remarkable.

  She shook her head. ‘I’m not sure, but I think fashion’s somehow different. It doesn’t really involve the feelings of other people so much, does it? Your family and friends would all have to be extremely level-headed and dispassionate if they weren’t going to mind seeing you buried in a Campbell’s soup can. It’s a bit of a joke.’

  John was irritated by these comments. He was silent for a moment, disappointed. ‘I thought we’d agreed that already, I don’t know, I thought we’d talked about this and that you understood about how death wasn’t a situation beyond irony, beyond a beauty of a different sort, beyond intellectualization. You sound very conventional all of a sudden.’

  Melissa took a sip of wine, then looked into the glass because she could detect traces of sawdust on her tongue. ‘I’m not being conventional, I’m not a very conventional sort of person. God knows. I wouldn’t dress as I do if I was.’

  John interrupted. ‘That’s just a part of your job though, isn’t it?’

  She shook her head, ‘Well, no, I didn’t have to work where I do. I chose to. Anyway, some people who work in fashion houses aren’t all that bothered about fas
hion.’

  John said, ‘Fuck fashion. I don’t give a shit about that. This coffin is something of great beauty and dignity. It parodies art and it parodies death …’

  ‘In your opinion,’ Melissa interrupted.

  John was furious. ‘Bugger my opinion, that’s what it does. When it’s completed it will be a thing of beauty in its own right. It will be something that pretends to be infinitely disposable – a tin can – but it will be something infinite, it will be the sum total of hours and hours of work and planning and precision and plain sweat.’

  Melissa walked over to the wall on which the illustrations were tacked. She stared at them again and then looked at John. He was touching the handle of his metal plane, making a pattern with his finger in the dust. She could tell by his expression that she had offended him, and that confused her. She said, ‘I didn’t mean to be horrible about your work. It just seems strange to me. I’ve never been a big Warhol fan, maybe that’s the difference between us.’

  John didn’t stop making the patterns. ‘Neither have I, that’s not the point. The point is something beyond Warhol, beyond art but about art. I can’t be bothered explaining it again.’

  She tried to smile. ‘It’ll be fun painting it, I bet.’

  John said nothing. He was sulking, but not lightheartedly.

  Melissa continued, ‘I can see now why you thought the material was a good idea, all silvery and glossy. How will you line this thing?’

  He shrugged, uninterested. ‘I suppose with silver-topped wood tacks, all close together on both the top and the bottom.’

  She laughed. ‘I thought it would have to be sewn on or something. That was stupid.’

  His silence confirmed her opinion. After a while he stopped what he was doing and stared at her. She looked such an inappropriate figure in his living room, brightly coloured and frivolous; she looked uncomfortable, and he wished she’d go. Eventually he said, ‘Would you like some more wine?’

  She didn’t answer directly, just shook her head and said, ‘Now you’ve built this thing it’s not just an idea in your head, is it? It’s more than that, it’s also everything that everyone else may happen to think or decide. I suppose that the idea was something very pure but the object … I don’t know.’

  John sighed. ‘I think that line of thought is a waste of time. It’s pointless. I want to get on with my work now. You can stay and watch if you like but there’ll be quite a bit of noise and dust.’

  Melissa put down her glass on the mantelpiece and said, ‘I’d better be going anyway, before it gets dark.’

  John nodded.

  When she had gone he felt very tired. He sat on his sofa with his legs drawn up and didn’t move for several hours. Then he slept with his head resting on his arm.

  Melissa sat on the tube feeling irritated and depressed. It wasn’t just that she had upset John – an artist, a sculptor, someone who made things change, someone who was inspired – it was also that she couldn’t make him understand what she meant. He had mistaken how she was, what she wanted to say, and had twisted it, had made it seem senseless. That wasn’t what she’d wanted at all, not what she’d intended. In her heart she respected John for his determination and purposefulness, and she envied him. She even liked his ideas. But she wanted to see each situation from every angle, to uncover every mystery and to analyse it, to understand things completely. She wanted to be able to appreciate everything, the totality of things. She sat on the tube and thought, ‘Maybe I only want total understanding because there is something wrong with me. Maybe it’s like Steve says, that I think about things too hard, feel things as a kind of excuse for doing nothing. I wonder if that is what Steve says …’ She couldn’t clearly remember.

  At work on Monday Steve questioned Melissa closely about her weekend. She seemed deflated, depleted. First thing in the morning he made her tea and said, ‘You seem depressed again. Any particular reason?’

  Melissa thanked him as she took the proffered mug. ‘Yes … No. I saw John, you know, on Saturday. We had a bit of a row. I think I offended him, but in a way I think he was being a bit pig-headed and stupid.’

  Steve frowned. ‘How did it happen?’

  She paused and looked down for a moment, unsure whether she wanted to discuss it with him. She felt very protective of John, possessive. Eventually she said, ‘If you laugh I’ll be furious. What he’s doing isn’t funny, it’s just that I’m not sure if I think it’s a good idea.’

  Steve interrupted. ‘Don’t analyse in advance before you’ve even told me what this is all about. It doesn’t mean anything to the uninitiated. Tell me.’

  She sighed. ‘Well, he’s making this stupid coffin which is based on some stupid Warhol painting, the Campbell’s soup can thing, you know.’

  ‘Vaguely. You mean he’s making a coffin which looks like one of the old Campbell’s soup cans?’

  He tried not to smile, but she saw his expression and said angrily, ‘I knew I couldn’t trust you. I knew you’d just try and trivialize this.’

  Steve looked indignant. ‘I’m not trivializing anything. I happen to think that it’s an excellent idea, and funny – not funny-stupid – I mean a good idea.’

  Melissa looked away sulkily. He sighed. ‘For God’s sake, Melissa, what’s the big deal? Since when does it matter a jot what you think about his work? Your ideas are your business.’

  She turned back to face him but couldn’t think of how to reply. Eventually she said, ‘I don’t even know. Maybe I’m just jealous or something.’

  Steve smiled incredulously, ‘Of what, for fuck’s sake?’

  She shrugged, ‘Of anything, everything. What do I know?’

  He shook his head, amazed. ‘Not of anything, Melissa, of nothing. You’re not jealous of anything, it’s just a stupid impulse that you’ve had, a pointless display that means nothing. Maybe you do have a reason, but I can’t think what it is. Maybe you’re just contrary by nature.’

  Someone came into the shop and Steve walked over to help them. Melissa regretted having talked to him at all. She felt stupid.

  John awoke early on Sunday morning. It was still dark outside. When he tried to move his body it felt weak and stiff. His mouth was dry and he felt as though his throat was sealed and his lungs were somehow deflated. He struggled to breathe. The atmosphere in the room was very dusty. After a great deal of concentration and self-persuasion he managed to drag himself from the sofa and on to the floor. His body felt as fluid as water, as devoid of energy. He thought, ‘But water is very powerful and I am just one person, a single person whose body is no longer working.’ He didn’t even really understand what was wrong with it.

  He dragged himself along the floor, into the hallway and slowly, inch by inch, upstairs. He crawled into his bedroom and on to the bed. By the time he was on the bed the sun had begun to rise. He felt too tired and lethargic to close his curtains, so closed his eyes instead and drew a sheet over his body and face. The colour inside his head was a red-orange; the colour of the light shining in through the skin, blood and veins of his eyelids.

  He felt sad and resentful, languid. He tried not to think of Melissa but she was all he could think of. It was as though she had violated his great plan, his scheme, his purpose. She had made it into something without meaning, or rather, something too full of the wrong sort of meaning. At the back of his mind he knew that Melissa had merely been facetious and that what she’d said should hardly make any difference. He knew that a small display of conventional disapproval shouldn’t be capable of affecting his purpose and his belief in what he was doing, that in many ways it should rather have reaffirmed the purity of his ambitions, the greatness and originality of his work.

  At the back of his head was a sneaking awareness that his sudden depression and disillusionment were nothing to do with his work, his ambition, his aims. In actuality it was to do with the fact that he was dying, and his body was slowing down, perceptibly slowing down. He didn’t want to think about it so he tri
ed to think about other things as he lay on his bed almost too weak for comprehensive thought, but not quite.

  He lay in bed for a full twenty-four hours and then got up, stumbled downstairs and had three glasses of water before recommencing work.

  Melissa spent the following ten days debating whether to send John a card or a postcard saying sorry. In some ways though she thought it was best just to ignore what had happened on her previous visit and simply to visit again and pretend nothing had gone wrong, or maybe to start off by saying sorry. She decided that it was best to just let things cool off. She was relatively nonchalant and saw the scale of their relationship in terms of the infinite. She saw no reason why they shouldn’t be good friends in the future if she gave things time.

  Steve said nothing to her, but he was convinced that she was in love. In fact she was not in love at all, she was just bored and had nothing else to think about. A general sense of apathy gave specific things in her life more emphasis. Even so, she thought a lot, and often her thoughts were on John.

  John carried on working. It was difficult because his body was no longer dutiful. Often it moved in ways which were of no use to his work at all. It had become a hindrance. But he made progress. After ten days he had completed his coffin’s lid. The shape was perfect and he filed it so that it was as smooth as the flesh on his belly.

  The following few days he spent in a state of half-wakefulness; sleeping on the sofa and only rising to open some tins of beans or spaghetti or soup which he ate cold, or to drink glasses of water. He listened to the radio for company.

  Among the letters on his doormat was one from his mother, who was concerned because she had not heard from him and his telephone number was unobtainable. There was also a letter from his old girlfriend which said that she was thinking of coming home to England for good. Things hadn’t worked out and she needed his advice. John read neither letter. Instead he dreamed of his silver spray can and his pot of varnish. He was nervous about doing the lettering because his hands were now so weak.