Two large steaks oozing blood and fat are set before us. Francis scans the wine list for a suitable red and orders a Burgundy which clearly impresses the wine waiter and will no doubt treble the bill.
‘The thing is, Michael, as I’ve got older, my interest has grown much more for my work than for my life. It’s inevitable. You see, I don’t want to be like those other old fools and be what’s called playing footsie under the table at seventy. Now that poor George is dead, I know that I will never have a really intimate relationship again. I’m too cynical – or what’s the word? – to believe in that sort of thing any more. In any case, there’s something terribly depressing about old people in love. Well, for one thing, because their bodies no longer function perfectly. I’ve always liked bodies that function perfectly, and of course with age that side of things goes. I don’t believe in love any more, even though I have been in love. Still it’s true that when I look back on those experiences, even though everything about them was disastrous and couldn’t last, they did deepen my feelings about life.
‘Homosexuals become more and more impossible with age, you know. What? Well, I mean in the way they’re so obsessed with the physique. They’re ruthless and precise about appearance because they never stop thinking how they and everybody else look.’
Francis pauses, waiting while our glasses are refilled, as if wondering whether to go on.
‘It’s like an illness, or a defect – homosexuality. It’s like having a limp. Real homosexuality, anyway. Of course the division’s been invented to an extent. So many of the people I’ve known just drift from one sex to the other. Take this new friend of mine. He’s like so many men. He’s married, but it hasn’t worked. He went with me for the money to begin with. Naturally. But now he comes back because for some reason I amuse him. They go with you for the money first, then they come back because you amuse them more. That’s all there is to it.
‘Sometimes I meet these young men who are in such a state not knowing what they are or what to do with themselves, and all you can do is to tell them that nobody cares. After all, who really cares about those things? All you can do is to try to what’s called pull them through their despair. It usually doesn’t help, I’m afraid.
‘You know, I don’t actually like what are called homosexuals, and I hate it when they go on and on about being queer. I actually prefer men who aren’t queer, or who don’t think they are. In the beginning at least. Afterwards, of course, they’re just as boring as the others. I only want extraordinary people now. As I have had one or two extraordinary people in my life, all the others simply bore me. Almost all men are terribly weak, once you get to know them. What I’ve always longed for was someone who was tougher and more intelligent than myself.
‘Most of the time I meet only brutes. I’d love to be with someone I could really talk to – but I’ve never been able to talk to the people I’ve been obsessed by. That whole side of life has been a catastrophe for me. I mean I’ve always thought it would be marvellous to succumb utterly, as they say, to someone. It’s rarely happened to me, and then only for a very short time. I’ve always turned out to be tougher. You might think that’s monstrous. It is monstrous I expect. But there it is.’
Without further ado, Francis pulls out a crushed bundle of notes from his trouser pocket and settles the bill. I sit there, bemused by the amount of information he has suddenly provided me with and anxious that I might not be able to recall all the details and the changing emphasis and intonation of everything he has told me before I can get back to the rue de Braque and actually note it down. We join the bloodied backs at the bar for more drinks. To pay for each round Francis digs deep into his pocket, flashing his expensive gold watch, and pulls out the large money ball, apparently not noticing the odd large note that flutters off into the sawdust on the floor – a performance that several meat porters follow with undisguised interest. We get progressively drunker and Francis begins to repeat virtually everything he has said at dinner, adding a new phrase here – ‘Well, there it is, homosexuality is both more tragic and more banal than what’s called normal love’ – and a different intonation there – ‘I really detest those dreary effeminate queers who drone on and on about being queer’ – until the whole monologue seems to have slipped in on the back of all the wine we’ve had and are still having and starts going round and round my mind unstoppably, a little change here, a new word there, until I’m not so concerned about whether I will remember every last gesture and phrase as much as I am about whether I will ever be able to get the revolving refrains out of my mind and have thoughts of my own again. I long to break free as the sight of so much blood and meat at the bar and the insidious smell of grilled offal and onion soup make my gorge rise and I bid Francis goodnight, leaving him at last there where he wants to stay among the gory porters downing their chops and trotters. And I weave out into the night beside the great caverns filled with dead animals and pyramids of fruit and under the looming buttresses and gargoyles of Saint-Eustache with the smell of death and food stuck in my nostrils and the same words still drumming themselves into my head.
Francis has really taken to the area. He’s been back a couple of times and when we last had drinks in my place he even said he’d love to find a similar studio space for himself in Paris. It sounds like one of those sudden enthusiasms he gets and we’ll probably hear no more about it, but I’m flattered he likes my flat and the life here so much. On both occasions we ended up at the Halles. The last time nearly turned into a disaster. We’d been lurching from bar to bar and just as we were going to cross the meat market Francis slipped (on what looked like a pool of blood) and just managed to hang on to an open container. I moved instinctively towards him and saw that the container was filled with damp calves’ heads with jellied eyes and neatly severed necks ending in a little ruff of lymph and blood. Rather than bringing the long evening to a close, the near-fall seemed to energize Francis who looked closely at the next container which held a mess of foam-specked tongues. They looked like uprooted screams, and just as I was wondering whether to share that thought Francis wandered down the alleys of meat where the sides of beef were still swaying under their inanimate weight. ‘Life’s just like that,’ Francis said, jabbing his big, meaty finger towards the nearest carcass. ‘We’re all on our way to becoming dead meat. And when you go in that restaurant we went to you see the whole cycle of life and the way everyone lives off everything else. And that’s all there is.’
He’s also been back to the café-bougnat beneath my place and become something of a local hero by buying drinks, as he does in the Colony, for everyone in sight. Both the professeur, still jabbering away, and the man I take to be Marie-Hélène’s lover lapped up the largesse as did several fruit-and-veg sellers from the rue Rambuteau, including a tall, usually taciturn one who is Algerian and who invoked Allah, I think in praise, each time Francis stood a new round. Since Francis seems so at home in the place, I’ve been thinking it might be an idea to do a lunch for him here. The food is fairly basic, but when she puts her mind to it Marie-Hélène can produce a very decent boeuf en daube in the cupboard-like kitchen she has at the back, and I can make sure we’ve got the right wine to wash it down with. Francis would probably go for it, for the same reasons as he was drawn to the East End. He has almost romantic ideas about the working class – that they’re more genuine, closer to their instincts and so on. He’ll also feel that he’s getting closer to la France profonde here than in luxury establishments like Taillevent and the Grand Véfour. That way I’ll be able to repay a tiny bit of hospitality for once. The only problem I can foresee is that the kind of people it would make sense to invite to a lunch for him have probably never even seen a café-bougnat, let alone actually eaten in one.
I choose a date with Marie-Hélène just before Francis is due to go back to London. We plan the meal and choose a very good saucisson she gets sent up from her native Auvergne and a lentil salad that she can prepare in advance. I order in plenty of Côtes
du Rhône which should go well with everything. Bébert usually does the serving and everyone in the café is used to him crashing through the tables in coal-smeared bleus and virtually in blackface from the sacks of coal and coke he carries on his shoulders. In fact I’ve only seen Bébert scrubbed and in freshly pressed overalls once, and then he looked so different I almost didn’t recognize him. Marie-Hélène gets the message (in her case Francis is quite right, she’s uneducated but as smart as a whip) and says she’ll make sure Bébert is at his most élégant for the fancy folk I’ll be inviting. I’m impressed myself by my list of invitees. There’ll be Francis’s prospective new Paris dealer, Claude Bernard Haïm, and his sister Nadine (whom Francis gets on especially well with), Michel and Zette Leiris, of course, and Picasso’s printmaker, Aldo Crommelynck, and his stylish wife, who have gained my vote by inviting me once to a dinner where the only other guest was Catherine Deneuve. All my guests are considerably older and better established than me, and now that the die is cast I’m half convinced this little event will backfire and cost me whatever minor standing I have managed to achieve in the Paris art world.
As always Francis is a bit early, but I’m relieved to see him greet Marie-Hélène and a smartly turned-out Bébert warmly and begin to chat to some of the regulars he knows. Claude Bernard and Nadine come next and although they’re surprised by the rustic surroundings they quickly focus on Francis, whom they’re hoping will agree to a show in their gallery. Aldo and his wife, both tall and chic, take the café nonchalantly in their stride. Bébert pours the wine and presents a platter of saucisson with aplomb. Then the Leirises, brought in the Mercedes by their chauffeur, arrive. Zette, in cashmere and pearls, hesitates at the entrance, clearly thinking there must be some mistake, but as Francis hails her cheerfully from our large table she begins slowly to cross the room as if picking her way through a snake-infested jungle, with a puzzled-looking Michel, immaculate in Savile Row suiting, bringing up the rear. Having looked round the café I realize that some of the midday clients haven’t taken kindly to this sudden eruption of le tout Paris, so I quickly ask Bébert to circulate the Côtes on their side too. The atmosphere eases a bit, rather like an aeroplane that’s come through turbulence into temporary steadiness, above all because Francis is clearly in his element, appreciating the roughish wine and praising Marie-Hélène’s lentil salad as if a renowned chef had just set his signature dish before him. Even Zette seems to have thawed a little as Michel and Francis exchange elaborate cordialities and our group provides a clearly differentiated, better-dressed bulwark against the regulars, whose clothes make them look as if they are about to put on a Beckett play. I feel it’s about time Bébert brought the main course and, although I keep topping up the glasses and Francis makes sure the conversation flows, I gesture to Marie-Hélène who gestures back that Bébert has had to go out but will soon be there to serve the daube. To my alarm I then see Bébert come lurching back with his cap askew and vivid coal smears covering his shoulders and face like tribal marks. I can only imagine he has been called out by some old, infirm person in urgent need of fuel, and meanwhile I register all too keenly the look of alarm that flits over Zette’s primly composed features. This, I think, could deal the coup de grâce to what is already a touch-and-go situation, and I can just hear the gossip circulating through the galleries round the rue de Seine (‘Did you hear about Peppiatt’s lunch for Bacon in a coal-hole in the Marais?’ ‘Doesn’t surprise me. After all Bacon’s done for him, you’d think he’d have the style to take him and the Leirises somewhere decent’). I’m just hoping and praying that no one asks to go to the café’s loo, beside which any Auvergnat jakes or Arab latrine would seem pristine. Francis, meanwhile, appears to be enchanted by Bébert’s lumbering, coal-smeared presence, as if it were just the note that the feast had so far lacked, and he pours Bébert a bumper glass of wine and insists on clinking with him, at which point Bébert himself seems transformed and rather than whacking the plates of daube down any old how he adopts the formal guise of a trained maître d’hôtel, straightening the chequered oilcloth, rearranging the cutlery and with a hanky delicately removing the sooty imprints of his fingers from the dishes with which he regales his clients who now are so converted to the café-bougnat style that they wonder out aloud why they have never eaten here before and how from now on they will be back often and with friends. And as one they join Francis in raising their glasses in a toast to Marie-Hélène who has just emerged from her kitchen-cupboard in a flimsy apron with the inwardly glowing grace of a diva ready to receive her rapturous applause.
Francis has called to say that he has something to discuss with me before he goes back to London tomorrow. My first reaction is that I must have put my foot in it one way or the other, even though the lunch turned out against all odds to be a success and I can’t think of anything I might have done to annoy him. We decide to meet at his hotel for a drink and when he gives me the address I realize with a shock that all this time he has been staying at the Hôtel des Saints-Pères where George killed himself. And if he’s there, I suppose once I start thinking about it, he must have booked himself into the very same room they were sharing when he died, macabre though that sounds. Of course it is macabre, and if I were ever stupid enough to ask him about it I’d either get the sharp side of his tongue or he’d fob me off with some blind or other about the manager having been so understanding about George’s death that he couldn’t think of staying anywhere else. I wonder whether his returning repeatedly to the scene like this is a form of self-punishment, a deliberate aggravation of his guilt, or could it be, monstrous as it sounds, a way of absorbing the facts and circumstances of the death more fully, almost like a writer researching or an actor preparing himself for his role, since I know Francis has been working on several pictures directly inspired by the memories he has of George? I’ve seen ektachromes of a couple of them, and they have an extraordinary grandeur to them, both simple and factual, that puts them among the most memorable paintings he has ever done.
I always leave enough time to walk wherever I have to go in Paris. It gives me a moment to collect myself, although I often find I’m just as tense and confused when I arrive as before. Even so, it’s always a pleasure to cross the Seine, and I love to see the sun sparkle on the water and light the gold ribs on the glittering dome of the Institut de France, my single favourite building in the city. But I feel apprehensive and I start thinking about George and the other people I have known who are now dead, just plucked out of the air and forever absent unless you chose to bring them back as memories, and in particular of Danielle, the writer I became close to during the ’68 ‘events’ who has, I’ve just discovered with horror and guilt, also killed herself. Strangely she crosses with me over the Pont des Arts and up the little streets, hanging like a shadow in the sunlight as I walk along the Boulevard Saint-Germain and turn up the rue des Saints-Pères.
Francis greets me genially, which is a relief, and he seems filled with energy, although I can hear a slight wheezing as he breathes. He’s drinking a whisky in the lobby of the hotel, and I follow suit.
‘Now listen, Michael,’ he says. ‘You know those interviews that David Sylvester has done? Well, a publisher called Skira has asked whether they can bring them out in French and David has asked Michel whether he would translate them. Now Michel says that he would but he’s not sure that his English is good enough to understand all of what’s called the nuances. I wouldn’t have thought myself that there was much nuance in what I say, but anyway we’ve talked about it and wondered if by any chance you’d have the time to do a kind of literal translation of them for him. I know it might be a bit of a bore . . .’
‘No, of course I’d love to, Francis.’
‘I know it’s a lot to ask so are you sure you wouldn’t mind? I know everybody would be very pleased.’
Thinking of the jobbing reviews I would have to put to one side, my only problem is to disguise quite how delighted and excited I am.
‘It would be a pleasure, Francis,’ I say, taking a measured sip of my whisky. ‘Think what a privilege it would be for me to work with a master of French like Michel.’
‘Well, I’m so glad you think that, Michael,’ Francis says, and we clink glasses.
I’ve done Sylvester’s whole first interview with Francis into basic French and sent it to Michel. It’s not as difficult as I feared, although the exchange does have nuances that are hard to catch in another language and often sound a bit weird since I have to stick to whatever the most literal, word-by-word version would be, even if it’s going to make me look clumsy and uninspired when Michel gets down to transforming the lumpy result into elegant, flowing French. We’ve decided to have our first meeting this morning and Michel has suggested we work for a couple of hours at the Deux Magots and then go somewhere locally for lunch. I’m nervous when I arrive, not least because I feel I have fleetingly joined the ranks of the writers I admire by having a project under way with an eminent former Surrealist in a café where Joyce and Picasso, to say nothing of Sartre and Camus, have sat and worked and argued and generally carried on, somehow changing the course of art and literature as they did so. I don’t think Michel and I are going to change much of anything this morning. He seems particularly buttoned up and formal as we shuffle his version and my version of the interview from side to side. Still, it’s fascinating to see how much my text has changed: there’s an incisiveness and flexibility in the French now that I could never have dreamed of. The only problem is that every once in a while the French conveys something manifestly different from what was intended in the English original. I broach this very gingerly but Michel is adamant, saying that he looked up the word in his Harrap’s French–English and that is one of the meanings given. I try to intimate that, even if Harrap’s says so, I know it’s not what Francis intended but I can almost feel Michel digging his heels into the café floor and realize this is going to be an uphill battle, though I plan later skirmishes because I owe it to Francis to ensure basic accuracy and wonder whether I might eventually have to involve him to persuade Michel to reconsider a few of his renderings.
Francis Bacon in Your Blood Page 25
