Hand on the screen, weeping, the whole sordid deal.
Oh yeah.
‘Adair?’
This is worse than when he caught me wanking over a muted-out Judge Judy.
The gavel.
And at least she was female.
He pours me a stiff bourbon. He runs me a bath. He makes me dinner. He hires Amores Perreros on video and makes me watch it with him.
Sunday, I get a text from Jalisa of all people.
‘Read his Dream Manifesto,’ it says, ‘esp. no. 13.’
I haul the Blaine book out again.
The Manifesto…It’s right at the back. Here we go:
Okay…blah blah…Don’t overindulge, respect all life, take a trip to the sea, love yourself, read more, listen more, learn from your mistakes…
All very obvious, very sensible, very straightforward stuff.
Then my eye drops to no. 13, the last of the bunch:
‘Don’t create a robot that’s superior to human beings or it will wipe out the human race.’
O-kay.
Let’s move right on, shall we?
Monday. While I’m out at work, we receive a delivery. I find it blocking up the hallway when I get back that evening.
The Chair. And Shane. And a message (stuck to the seat, on that so-familiar notepaper, in that so-familiar hand) which says:
‘Bols, you cunt.
And this is a fucking Mies van der Rohe–
Don’t you (or your skinny arse) know anything?’
Skinny arse?
Skinny arse?
So did I ever even hint that Furniture Design was my forte?
Did I?
And here’s another thing: to consciously choose to abuse the very booze you were christened in?
No bloody wonder that arty-farty SOB didn’t want to let on.
Bols?!
What’s wrong with Remy Martin?
The next day, on the dawning of Day 40, I bump into Hilary. He’s standing on the park steps, by the wire, casually perusing a poster of Leonardo Di Caprio (which some imbecile has hung up there), his Fortune Reading sign tucked under one arm, that infernal headscarf tossed around his neck. And he’s clutching two cups of coffee in a plastic holder. One bun. He’s obviously waiting for somebody. I clamber up and join him.
‘Quiet, isn’t it?’ I say, glancing around (nobody about but a couple of guards, and the usual straggle of suited city-folk scurrying to work).
‘Yup.’
Blaine is still asleep.
We both stare up at him. We’re the only two people around (strange, eh? That an event can be so huge in one moment, yet so very intimate the next?).
‘Got some bad news for you,’ he says, clearing his throat.
‘Oh yeah?’
(For a moment I think it’s going to be something about Aphra. But it’s not. What am I even thinking? Of course it won’t be.)
‘You’re gonna get the sack. Tomorrow.’
He turns and offers me a coffee.
‘I got you this,’ he says. ‘Sorry.’
And he smiles.
So what can I do? I take the cup.
‘Could only afford one bun,’ he says.
(Hmmn. Now here’s an interesting social dilemma…)
It’s during this small, almost domestic interlude that Blaine suddenly awakens. One second he’s fast asleep, lying flat, totally comatose. The next, he’s rocketed up. With an awful gasp. His eyes staring. His mouth hanging open.
(The fluidity of movement. The momentum. The panic.)
Then he turns–in that brief instant–he turns, still jolted, and he stares straight at me.
One
Two
Three
Then, ‘Oh. It’s you,’ his face seems to say, and it relaxes (his expression relieved yet irritable, like I’m some sickly, needy dog who happens to’ve wandered into view). A weak smile. He lifts up his hand, automatically.
David Blaine–the David Blaine–waves at me.
Without prompting.
Good God.
(Do I wave back, you’re wondering. Of course I don’t. I can’t. I’m holding the damn coffee carton in one hand, see? And in the other I’m holding the bloody bun Hilary gave me.)
He turns and grabs his notebook (like Aphra said he would, just like she said) and he scratches his curly head with the end of his pencil. He calms himself down. He slowly realigns his celebrity mantle (a little to the left. Okay. Now a little to the right…I’m actually a multi-multimillionaire. Did you happen to know that?). Then he sighs and he begins to write…
I blink. I hide my confusion by sipping the coffee. It’s almost cold. ‘Coffee’s almost cold,’ I gripe.
Wednesday, I get the sack.
Hey! Mayor Ken Livingstone? You can suck my fat cock.
Thursday, Bly pops around to see me and casually lets slip how Hilary got his job back.
But in my department.
Did the fucking interview Monday.
Yup. That’s how they get’cha.
(Aw. And there was you idly thinking how there was gonna be some kind of life-affirming romance between Bly and me once that dirty hussy Aphra was out of the picture…
That bitch got me fired.
So pull your damn horns in.)
Three days and counting…
Everything speeds up.
And everything slows down.
Concurrently.
Funny how life can do that.
Bly and I actually stroll down there together–companionably, if you must know–that last Thursday night. And its packed with mums and with dads, with teens and with kids. And there’s this twenty-four-hour homeless singing marathon (A bunch of students determined to use their charitable instincts to drive the poor bastard round the bend again). A blonde cockney girl with a grating voice is banging relentlessly on her tambourine and hollering. And Blaine’s there, exhausted-seeming–lying on his side–his hood pulled up, like a bemused King of Siam, welcoming a hotch-potch of eccentric foreigners to his wayward fiefdom.
But later–after we go–there must’ve been a riot. The following morning the entire pavement is a skating rink of yellow yolk and albumen. The atmosphere is leaden. And there are schoolboys on the bridge, hurling onions at him. A local woman walks by, with her dogs, she stands and stares at them. ‘Shame on you,’ she keeps saying. ‘Shame on you.’
But the boys keep on throwing, their eyes glazed over, like they can’t even see her, like they can’t even see him.
The cockney girl is still there, still hollering, still banging on her tambourine. And she seems to be singing straight at them. She’s plum in the firing line of all those onions (remember that deal with the angle of the bridge and everything?) but she seems actively intent on provoking them further. And I don’t know why. I’m not sure whose side she’s on. And I’m not honestly sure if she knows, either.
It’s been so long.
Soon the fences come down.
They erect a huge screen.
The last day. A Sunday. By early afternoon, gangs of people are starting to line the bridge already. And there are dense crowds on the embankment, including huge Asian families from the East End who are wandering around cheerfully, secure–for once–in the knowledge that they won’t be the people having the fruit thrown at them.
The stairs are jammed. The T-shirts are selling. Strange music is playing over the loudspeaker (dippy, shitty, modern, hippie stuff with a female singer). The angle of the box has been readjusted, to give a larger crowd a much better view of it, and on the massive screen a static image of Blaine is being projected, an unflattering shot, which looks like it might possibly be the passport photo of a down-at-heel worker from the Algerian Embassy.
There is an ambulance.
Blaine has his back to the crowd. He’s talking–through a hatch–to the people in the disabled access / viewing area behind him. It’s a long conversation. But the crowds don’t care. They’re so full of happy anticipation.
Sometimes he lifts up his mattress and peaks out through the glass bottom and interacts with the people directly below him.
He looks wan, and so thin, now. His hair is flattened down over his forehead. And every so often he pulls at the beard on his chin, neurotically, as if he longs to yank the bristle clear out of the skin. But he’s holding it together. In fact he’s finding himself again. Little by little that necessary transition is taking place–from sitting-duck to superstar, from total access to none.
Bly says she’ll come, and even Solomon says he might drop by (you believe that? Then you’ll believe anything). Twenty minutes till lift-off, though, and I’m here all alone, slightly surprised that the bridge isn’t busier.
At the far end–apart from the roasted chestnut stall and the hot-dog seller–it’s still relatively negotiable. Way off in the distance you can see the box–hanging, luminescent–but a tree obscures the big screen where a documentary is being played (this is presumably Korine’s big moment) in which Blaine appears to be pulling out his own heart on a quiet London street, in front of a bemused-looking woman who plainly just wishes he’d shut up and fuck off.
There’s shots of city pigeons, creepy, glockenspiel music, simpletons gazing confusedly at the camera, nudists, red balloons, all subtly intercut with ardent fans making speeches about how Blaine has taught us all something unforgettable about the human spirit.
I walk on, past the ticket kiosk (by the first of the two main towers), squeeze around the corner–things are getting pretty tight here–and see a woman climbing up on to some thick, hazardous-looking grey railings. I follow her lead and clamber up on to the other end. We balance precariously together there.
People of all colours are rushing by. Hasidic Jews in abundance with their hats, their ornate ringlets and their crazy silk attire. Kurds, Turks, Africans, hard-core Muslims, hooded gangs of city urchins. People with prams. Toddlers. An old Indian guy–like an ancient mystic of some kind–with his hair caught up into a bright blue turban, being pushed along in a wheelchair.
And the Pool of London is full of boats (to the foreground of the Belfast, which is lit from below, generating a mess of funnels and geometric shadows, like some kind of lovely, moist, mad-angled Stanley Spencer); they’re mainly police launches (this thing could potentially be a logistical disaster), there’s the fire-rescue launch, and the harbour master…
Has this bridge ever been so full of laughter and bustle?
But we can’t see him (not from here, not with the naked eye), because the TV lights reflect off the box, so he’s just this hunched black shadow, like a fly swatted against the glass, a smear. Only very rarely does the huge screen project live images of him. And when it does, he offers such a strange and violent contrast to the carnival around him. Like one of those videotaped kidnap victims, cruelly manipulated by terrorists to pull his home nation’s heartstrings.
Time passes. The party continues. But tonight we’re ALL to be held to ransom by the TV executives. Forty-four days–to the minute, to the second–comes and goes without incident, and still he remains suspended. Some people are getting emotional, are shouting, ‘Let him down! Let him go!’ A nervous voice over an intercom system tells us that there’s only one more commercial break, and then…
And then finally–finally–it’s time. There’s not a countdown, there’s not a drum roll, just a green crane lowering a perspex box, a smattering of applause, and when it lands, with a thump, he doesn’t climb straight out. He stays in. He seems almost afraid to leave (remember Kafka? ‘The Hunger Artist?’). He’s changed his clothes; still in his trademark black, but wearing a loose robe and a scarf. And there’s something so formal, so poignant, so dressed-up about him.
He’s posing for photographs. The stretcher is there, the ambulancemen in their fluorescent yellow jackets. Some scales. They take off his coat, his scarf, and weigh him. Weigh him?
He’s lost four stone, they announce.
(So what’re we meant to do now? Cheer? Like he’s Weight-watcher of the Year?)
He seems–it’s hard to tell–quiet? Overwhelmed? Bemused? He suddenly starts shaking. They wrap him up in a blanket. They ask him some questions. He begins to say something, and just as he opens his mouth, a terrible cacophony–or a magnificent one, depending how you look at things–roars out over the river.
Eh?
I spin about on my railings, craning my neck, but can’t see anything. I jump down into the crowd. My T-shirt gets caught and I’m left momentarily dangling. I tear it free, push my way through to the edge of the bridge and peer over.
Ten thousand people have just turned, en masse, to see a tiny, hired boat, crammed to the gills with groovers and Brothers, and on the roof? Three shady figures, one with a mike. In the water around them, a still tinier craft in which a film-maker holds a camera.
It’s Dizzee Rascal, this year’s Mercury Prize Winner! He’s singing his new single. ‘Just a Rascal, Dizzee Rascal…Just a Rascal, Dizzee Rascal.’
He’s making himself a video–using the lights, using the crowds, using the atmosphere…
Wha?!
Can it be possible? That this scraggy, opportunistic East-End scrap is planning to steal the initiative–the limelight–from the world’s greatest illusionist?
If I look closer I can make something else out. Solomon (no word of a lie). He’s waving from the back. He’s beaming, ear to ear.
‘DIZZEE!’ I find myself screaming, when the song reaches its climax and then cuts out.
‘DIZZEE!’
And as one, the people on that boat turn, look up at the bridge, and they cheer.
So what’s the deal with Rasket? Has he come to push everyone’s faces in it?
This sprig of young cum–this cocky afterthought–this shock of vitality?
And Blaine? What would he make of it? Does he notice? Would he care? Is he furious? Is he beyond all that?
I don’t know. But I’m beaming. And the Rasket starts singing again, and the Brothers start dancing, and the boat takes a couple of reckless swerves, and the sound system is blasting back the nets on all those million pound riverside pads and flats…
First the nearly-Jew, starving?
Then the raucous black kid?
What the hell’s happening to this neighbourhood?!
That night I watch the news and Blaine barely figures. The PM’s had heart murmurs. Three soldiers are shot in Iraq. At about eleven I see a short report. They’re saying it was all an anticlimax. They show Blaine, close-up, and it’s a different Blaine from the one I saw on the bridge. It’s a tragic Blaine. He’s choked with emotion. And he’s saying, ‘I just want to thank…’ and then this cry comes out of him. Like the squeal of a baby fox. A bleat. Then they carry him off.
It’s only TV. But I swear to God, in that moment, my heart nearly stops.
Hang on a minute, though…
Listen. Listen closely…
In the background I hear Rasket; the relentless thud of his distinctive bass-line, the jackdaw cackle of his rebellious lyric. It’s him. Yet nobody mentions Rasket’s coup…
Sure, they want him in their colour supplements, and on their cutting-edge radio shows. But they need to squeeze him out of here. He won’t fit here. He just won’t do.
But guess what? Fuck them. Yeah. Fuck the deriders and the egg-throwers and the opinion formers.
Fuck them all!
Because he came, see? And he sang, and he took.
Hmmn. Wonder where he might’ve got that idea from.
So what happened after?
They took Blaine to hospital? They put him on a drip for seven days? They fussed over his electrolyte balance? They waited to see if he’d done himself ‘any permanent damage’? They bid millions for his diaries?
On the BBC radio news, in the morning, they say, ‘Illusionist David Blaine has left his perspex box after forty-four days and nights with apparently no food of any kind.’
Apparently.
Couldn’t even give h
im that.
Isn’t it all about boxes, huh? He arrived an illusionist but he came out something else. He changed (I need to believe it). But the world says you can’t change. You pulled the wool over our eyes once, kid, you played tricks on us before. You made us feel all confused and stupid, and you could do it again, at any moment. We just can’t–we won’t–take you from one neat box and put you into another. No way. Uh-uh.
The following morning, a Monday, I return for the last time to the scene of the crime. And when I get to the point on the bridge where I caught my first glint of him–that initial sighting, that seductive perspex glimmer–there’s just this huge hole in the sky. Even the crane has gone. And when I get to the far end, where all the cars used to honk their horns at him, I see every driver, turning and staring. I see their heads turn, one after the other. And all they see now are clouds and the tops of trees. And seagulls. But their heads still turn, and they look. Car after car after car. And it’s a ballet of I Miss You David.
A Symphony of He’s Gone.
I got the words wrong. No kidding. The opening words. Shane. I said ‘barely as tall as our perimeter fence’ (Remember?), but when I looked–when I checked–I saw that it was actually ‘barely topping the backboard of father’s old chuck-wagon’. Which is better, much better, eh?
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