He nodded.
‘I remember a happening,’ he said, ‘sometime in the late Sixties. It was the first time I saw an artist destroy his own work. A funny guy, very mild-mannered, really. Wolfgang Stoerchle, he drove a car over his own work, his paintings. Died quite suddenly. Otherwise . . . well. It’s fuck-you-work, in fact. About ten years ago the guys from the Survival Research Lab did a show at Joshua Tree. They blew up things in the landscape, accompanied by deafening music from Einstürzende Neubauten. A bit of a failure, really. A pile of debris went “blooey”, and that was pretty much it. Mark Pauline still likes to blow up things, he even lost a hand in an explosion, but that was by accident. I don’t know whether Schultz saw the stuff at Joshua Tree, whether that gave him the idea. And, of course, you’ve also got Roman Singer’s Action Sculptures . . .’
‘The Chinese,’ the girl behind him said without looking up from her terminal. ‘The Chinese do explosions, too.’
‘Fuck-you-work, all of it,’ the man said. ‘But anything like Schultz, there’s never been anything quite so, so grand. And so malicious.’
‘You think it’s malicious?’
‘Oh yes, definitely. No doubt about it.’
I thanked him for his time and said I was going to watch the film again.
‘No problem.’
I parted the tarps for the second time and went in. Sitting on the front bench, bathed in blue light, was an older couple. Again I submitted myself to his prophetic rage, cryptic as a language without vowels. The camera homed in on the workers far below as they carried off stones, the wind rasped in the mike. He ridiculed them.
‘Created for obeisance. To have gods above them, not to be gods. The radical imperative. Every man is an abyss . . . but the audacity needed to be someone else’s abyss . . . Unflinchingly. That’s what it is to have backbone, to be someone else’s abyss . . .’
He began making his way down, gray sky above, the exhausted greenery lurching below. Schultz was humming, you could hear the gravel crunch beneath his shoes. He sang a line of the song, repeated it at intervals. Denn alle Lust will Ewigkeit, will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit. He stopped, aimed the camera at a higher spot. The lens slid across the lesions.
‘All that remains is what is gone. Deep, deep eternity. But they want a Creator. To have their existence confirmed. Oh, the cowardly sanctification of Creation. The emotion! The ideals! The piss-ants! Their mysterium tremendum! But destruction is the only thing with permanence. The future belongs only to the anti-Creator.’
The laughter of someone who has been alone too long. I felt like running away or weeping, how could this jousting with the gods and with people end in anything but self-destruction? I didn’t run, however, I remained seated until the film came back to the moment where I had arrived the day before, the explosion of the mountain’s face; only then did I leave the Ka’abah.
The street didn’t help me catch my breath. This man, and I was his son. Abgrund rolled you in the coils of a man’s inner world and squeezed the life out of you. Now I had two parents in need of saving.
My life of nights began. The symbiosis. Nights during which her face beneath me against the white sheet flowed into other, all-too-familiar faces. Perhaps it was the fatigue, perhaps the ecstasy, but I often saw those faces rise up through hers like air bubbles – when we made love, or afterwards, when I lay on her like a gravestone and felt her heartbeat gradually diminish. Before my eyes, as they searched for a grip in the dusky darkness, I saw my drawing teacher Eve Prescott appear, and once, to my surprise, that of Daisy Farnsworth, a homely girl from my class. I closed my eyes to Paula Loyd, when she came swimming towards me through the milk of the night; when I opened them again it was Sarah looking at me. Let me be frank and admit that sometimes it was my mother’s face as well, and that I was powerless when it came to my brain’s nocturnal projections.
And so we drowned in each other, and were washed up at the first light of day in that little room somewhere in the world.
‘I have to get going,’ she said. ‘Stay as long as you want.’
She sat straight up in bed. She looked at me, the smile of someone still halfway in the dream. I had become a stammerer, someone who said, ‘You, your back, nice.’
My fingertips slid over the curve of muscle beneath her skin.
‘What are you going to demonstrate against today?’
A little sound of protest.
‘You know, some people have to hold down a job too, Ludwig.’
A few mornings a week she went to La Cienega to raise her voice against Schultz’s work. I had been waiting for the right moment to tell her, but the longer I put it off the more of a secret it became. I feared what might come of it. Euphoria and dread were never far apart, they took turns racing like relay runners. I was going to tell her. Soon. She would understand that I wasn’t him, that his hateful, pitch-black visions were not hereditary. I asked myself why I didn’t tell her right away. Was it because I wasn’t entirely sure of how they, Schultz and my mother, manifested themselves in me? Mightn’t the perversion and violence smolder on in me, Caesarion, the confluence of those two egos who had sought to reproduce themselves?
Sarah sighed and climbed out of bed, picking from among the things lying on the floor what she would wear that day.
The afternoon after seeing Abgrund for the second time, I went to Venice to wait for evening. A bar at beachside, a hamburger and a Coke, please (I’m in America, goddamn it, I’ll bloody well eat whatever I like), and inside me the certainty that I will go in search of him. Not now, not right away, but I would find him, as soon as my mother and I once again had solid ground beneath our feet. What makes me think that he longs for me the way I do for him? What makes me think that I can comfort him? That I am the only one who can enter the cage without him devouring me? In my thoughts he is always Schultz, never Father or Papa. Papa sounds preposterous, like sticking your tongue in someone’s ear the moment you meet them. I whisper Papa to him, a few times in a row, Papapapa, and can’t help laughing, it sounds more taunting than intimate.
‘Your Coke, sir. Hamburger’s on its way.’
Schultz was right, eternity belongs to that which is gone. In the same way that he, his running away, has established the course of our lives. We have lived around his absence. And then, clear as can be, the insight that she, Marthe Unger, has re-entered the light in order to be seen by him. She shows herself to the world in the hope that, somewhere in that world, his eye will fall on her. The splendor of her body, which she has kept for him, and now given back to the marketplace. The marketplace she had left because she loved him – a sacrifice he hadn’t asked for and perhaps hadn’t even wanted. Had it excited him to possess the woman who elicited such boundless desire? Was his interest, his fire, extinguished once she had given up that role for him? There had been no great crises, no drawn-out arguments poisoning the relationship, nothing had occurred that might have justified his leaving. Perhaps, when he came up to her in New York and introduced himself, he had assumed the desire of all those others, perhaps it had fed his love for her, and he had realized his mistake only on Rue Mahmoud Abou El Ela, once the others were no longer around; they were alone together now, they had only each other to fall back on.
A ragged procession of joggers, cyclists and skaters moved past the restaurant patio. I read free tabloids till the afternoon was over. Suddenly there was the encirclement of mist. The temperature dropped sharply. I paid the tab and walked into the cloud, which seemed to drip lightly, a bedewed spider’s web. I followed the trail back. I was a man on his way to claim his prize. The sensation of being able to look through walls, to see their little lives. I padded lightly down their streets, the shadow of an unstoppable predator sliding across the house fronts.
The little car was parked in front of her house, one wheel up on the curb. Two steps at a time I ascended to her castle in the air and barged into her world with a bang.
‘Jesus, Ludwig!’
Candles, incense.
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‘I’ve been running all day,’ I said. ‘All I can do is run. I don’t know what it is.’
She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, wearing a white undershirt with wide armholes.
She said, ‘I spent ninety minutes in traffic and sang real loud along with Lenny Kravitz. So don’t I deserve a kiss?’
Yes, that and more. We rolled around on the bed like young cats, at the center of that little galaxy. At the head of the bed a votive candle was burning in front of a photo I hadn’t noticed before. Disentangling myself, I leaned on the mattress in order to get a better look. Two hands cupped to form a shallow bowl, in them something unformed, a slimy wad, black, tarlike. I exhaled loudly and said, ‘What is that for a mess?’
I recognized my mistake right away, saw how she answered my disgust with even more disgust. She rolled away from under me and was standing beside the bed in the same motion. Moving to the little window, she stood there, her arms crossed, ponderous, silent. This was what I had been afraid of, the wrong word, the evil charm that signaled the start of the destruction. I gasped for air, for words. I had to undo something, but didn’t know what I’d done.
‘Sarah, what’s wrong?’
‘Don’t say anything.’
Disaster was flying in on huge wings, the message it croaked was the inconstancy of all happiness. One wrong move and you find yourself irrevocably out of love. I stammered apologies and climbed off the bed. Across the twilight-blue room the severity fell from her slowly, like dry husks. The picture behind the candle, I saw now, was like a domestic altar. On the shelf there was incense, a silver rattle, something that looked a pile of herbs.
‘That,’ she said at last in a voice that didn’t seem like hers, ‘is Dylan.’
She took a deep breath. Her shoulders sagged.
‘Dylan was born four months prematurely.’
The ground opened up beneath me.
‘Afterwards, Denzel left me.’
‘His swimming trunks,’ I mumbled. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.’
The gratitude when she glanced at me again. The life that may have been coming back.
‘Denzel,’ I said, ‘was he black?’
‘Afro-American, yeah.’
I knew nothing about the world, a rank beginner. She was a lifetime ahead of me.
Days later, when she had closed the door behind her early in the morning and left me there alone, I blushed again when I thought back on that moment. I turned onto my side and looked at the black fetus in his cloak of blood and slime.
‘Hi, Dylan,’ I said.
I didn’t know whose hands were holding him. White hands, maybe hers. After a while she had started going out with men again, some of them became lovers, with none of them had it become anything more than that.
At night she said, ‘You have soft skin. Like a girl’s.’
‘So do you.’
A man and a woman laugh quietly in the dark. The words: We were together. I have forgotten about the rest. She took my hand and pushed it between her legs. The coarse hair, the slipperiness of her cunt.
‘Another one,’ she groaned, and twisted her body until four fingers were in her.
They moved slowly inside her, I barely had to do a thing. She breathed loudly through her nose and made little noises, the air burst from her lungs when she came. I had never been so hard, and slid right into her – I could smell my fingers beside her face, the slight sourness, the hint of iron.
We slept between thin sheets. Our bodies slid across each other, dry and cool, sometimes half awake, the delicious sense of being alive, of feeling joy at the existence of someone else, of then sinking back into the darkness of sleep.
*
I called the hotel to see if my mother was there, and was put through. She answered. I said I’d be there in an hour.
‘Oh, and Ludwig, could you pick up some sandwiches for us?’
I walked to Loews, bought sandwiches and soft drinks along the way. She knew I was spending my time with a girl these days, and no longer asked about it. I visited her a few times a week. When I asked what she was up to, she remained noncommittal. I had the impression that Rollo Liban’s publicity campaign was working: I saw her in the newspapers and sometimes, when I stopped somewhere for a sandwich, she would suddenly appear on the TV above the counter, in some talk show with an exuberant host who asked her about things to which I closed my ears. Let her go her godless way.
She was sitting on the balcony, wearing a big pair of sunglasses, her head tilted back to catch the sun.
‘So, here I am,’ I said.
It was supposed to be a hint to her to cover herself; she was wearing nothing but a pair of black panties and a hotel bathrobe that was hanging open. I saw her breasts, and felt embarrassed. She smiled.
‘Ah, room service! Get a bottle of Chardonnay from the fridge, would you, sweetheart?’
Once I was back in the room, she shouted after me, ‘I had them slide the beds together again, you never sleep here anyway these days.’
The room showed signs of more permanent habitation. There was an electric kettle now and a tray with different kinds of tea. On the windowsill was a wooden plank, inlaid with mother of pearl – the white ash told me she used it to burn her incense. There was a smoking ban at Loews, but she paid it no heed. The pictures of the men with beards had followed her from the house on Kings Ness; she had them arranged beside the mirror, so that every time she looked at herself she could see them too, and perhaps be reminded of their philosophy. In the minibar I found a little bottle of white wine with a twist-off top and took two glasses from the bathroom.
She was still sunning herself as blatantly as ever, with those glorious breasts and all. The last time I had seen them was in Lilith, at Selwyn’s house. I stood on the threshold of the balcony, my eyes exploring her body. I looked at her the way Uncle Gerard had once looked at her beside the canal, the sweet gleam of her skin, her slender, elegant limbs.
‘Put something on,’ I said gruffly. ‘I’m not going to eat lunch with you like this.’
She turned her face towards me; behind the dark glasses I couldn’t see her eyes.
‘Why not? I’m your mother, I have nothing to be ashamed of.’
‘I don’t feel like looking at your tits while I eat.’
‘Well then, look somewhere else.’
She nodded towards the sea. I had the uneasy feeling she was challenging me. That she wouldn’t bat an eye if I laid a hand on her breasts, caressed her.
‘Stop acting like some goddamn hippie,’ I said.
‘Oh God, I didn’t know you were so awfully prudish, Ludwig.’
She wrapped her bathrobe around her with a sigh.
‘I brought cheese,’ I said. ‘I hope you like that.’
‘Actually, I’m trying not to eat too many dairy products these days.’
She unwrapped the sandwich.
‘I looked at a little house, no too far from here. I can’t stay here forever, unfortunately. A cute little place, perfect for the two of us.’
‘Where?’
‘Venice.’
‘That’s where Sarah lives.’
She wiggled her toes. Light pink nail polish.
‘Sarah, is that her name?’
‘Sarah Martin.’
‘That’s funny.’
‘What’s so funny about it?’
‘Oh, nothing in particular. It’s just . . . so normal. I mean, that could be anyone’s name. Is she a spy?’
She thought that was humorous. She asked me, ‘So when do I get to meet her? I’ve never seen you so wrapped up in a girl. Are you in love? Bring her over, while I’m still here. Ask her to come tomorrow, we’ll do a high tea. Lovely scones, bonbons, those little tiny cakes. Or isn’t she allowed to eat sweets?’
‘I’m not sure this is her kind of place.’
‘This is one of the finest hotels in town! Of course, she’ll love it!’
She rented the house for the remainder of her time
in Los Angeles, the agent said she could move in on the first of the month. It had two bedrooms, she told me, and a little garden at the front and back. You could open the garden doors to air it out. It was a quiet neighborhood, they had assured her, with none of the violent crime you had in other parts of Venice.
After our lunch I went looking for Berny Suess, the hotel manager, to see whether he needed a pianist – one who could sing as well, a jukebox with fingers. I found him in his office at the end of a dark hallway on the second floor. As soon as I appeared in the doorway, his face went all service-minded. I told him who I was and what I had come for. He came out from behind his desk energetically.
‘So show me your stuff,’ he said. ‘We need someone occasionally, but not real regularly.’
He trotted out in front of me. A wisp of hair had detached itself from the top of his balding scalp and bobbed along at the side of his head. I tried to keep up with him, but he remained one step ahead the whole time.
‘At night we have a guitarist who sings in the bar, maybe you’ve seen him. The only time we need a pianist is for special occasions: private parties, presentations, you know what I mean.’
There was no stool. I fetched a plastic chair from the conference room and sat down at the piano.
‘What would you like to hear?’
‘“Bridge over Troubled Water”,’ Suess said without a moment’s hesitation. ‘The loveliest song I know.’
Fortunately I knew it by heart, and my voice was suited for it.
‘Yes,’ Suess murmured a few times as I was playing.
The song seemed attached to some memory of his, and he was visibly moved by it. When I was finished I launched right into the andante of Mozart’s eleventh sonata, just to show off my eclecticism.
‘Buddy,’ Suess said, ‘where can I get hold of you?’
I grinned.
‘Room 304.’
‘That situation,’ he said. ‘Two people in a single room. Ms. LeSage’s guest. I didn’t want to say anything about it yet. A splendid woman, so friendly I mean, not stuck up or anything. Truly magnificent.’
Little Caesar Page 17
