Even the luckiest man only glimpses heaven a few times in his life, and the prospect that something of mine might appear in the NRF, with its sublime red logo and hallowed list of authors (bar Proust, of course, whom Gide turned down for publication the first time round), appears to me like a permanent portal on to paradise, leading more or less inevitably to other distinguished publishers in London and New York soon falling over themselves to secure whatever now in this potential blaze of glory flows effortlessly from my pen. This is more alluring than any pie-in-the-sky publication project for an art gallery and I waste no time in choosing and blending various extracts into a desirable whole while realizing that without the agreement of the book’s hero the entire venture will founder. So having neatly typed out my offering on onion-skin paper, I call Francis to let him know, without any further indication, that I’ll be in London next week and he immediately suggests dinner at Claridge’s on the evening I arrive.
I can’t pretend I’m not nervous when I get there slightly late and sweaty, clutching the extracts with their snatches of drunken talk in an incongruous brown envelope, and try to adapt to the calm, softly lit and slightly perfumed atmosphere of the hotel. I can hear a Viennese waltz being played and when I enter the salon where Francis is sitting alone with his drink the violinist, bald and wearing a Bavarian jacket, turns towards me and strikes up a livelier tune as if to welcome the arrival at last of someone new. Disconcertingly, it has the opposite effect on me, I want to bolt, envelope in my clammy hand, back out into the anonymous night, but to my relief Francis waves smilingly in my direction and looks pleased to see me. I know I’ll have only one shot at getting his agreement to having the extracts published, so I decide to bring the matter up before the smiles fade.
‘You’re looking so well, Francis,’ I say as I sit down opposite him, wedging the cumbersome envelope under my thigh. He’s wearing one of the very bright silk shirts, with swirls of colour like a sunset, that he must buy by the dozen because every time I’ve seen him over the past few months he has a new one on.
‘I couldn’t look well after all the drink of the last few days I’m afraid,’ he says, smoothing the side of his head with a pleased gesture. ‘But it’s nice of you to say so.’
A very old couple, both with canes, have started making their way across the room. The violinist swivels in their direction with an encouraging flourish, and a footman in knee-breeches hurries over towards them to offer the lady his arm. She shrugs it off, but the footman stays in attendance as they slowly proceed, step by step. The quartet acknowledges their progress with a more stately air.
Francis seems entranced by the spectacle.
‘I suppose Russia must have been a bit like this just before the Revolution,’ he remarks with a short laugh. ‘I sometimes think I’ll move into a hotel like this, though I don’t know whether I could put up with seeing all these rich old things dragging themselves from place to place like that. I’m sure they won’t bother to tip that young man who’s trying to help them because I just know they’re mean as well as rich. Well, there it is. Very rich and very mean, and that’s why you have revolutions.’
A white-gloved hand has set a flute of champagne before me.
‘How have you been, Michael?’ Francis asks. He’s clearly forgotten, or is pretending to forget, the Coupole incident.
‘I’ve been alright, Francis. I’ve been trying to do more writing. More “writing for myself”, as they say.’
‘Ah, well that’s marvellous,’ Francis says, giving me a quick, keen look. ‘I know very little about it, but I imagine writing must have become very difficult now, after people like Proust and Joyce. In the same way that painting has become more difficult.’
That’s just the opening I’d hoped for. I feel dizzy and slightly sick, but I have to go for it.
‘I don’t know whether it’s generally difficult, but for me it seems pretty near impossible,’ I carry on awkwardly. ‘It’s ridiculous. I mean, I’ve been sitting over a blank piece of paper since I was sixteen waiting for something I could really write about.’
‘Well, it’s true that a real subject, something that really obsesses you, is terribly difficult to find. I didn’t find what I wanted to paint until terribly late.’
‘No, I remember your saying,’ I reply, wondering how I might bring the conversation round. I wish I’d mentioned the book earlier now because it’ll look as though I’ve been doing it behind his back.
‘It’s marvellous you’ve found a subject now,’ Francis pursues evenly.
‘Well, I think I have. The thing is, I thought I might be able to do something around knowing you – I mean, the conversations we’ve had, the places I’ve been to and the people I’ve met through you . . .’
I’m holding on to the satin arm rests of my chair as if at any moment I might slide off.
‘And, you know, the effect all that’s had on me, how it’s marked my attitude to life and, well, my whole growing up in a sense.’
Francis is gazing intently into the middle of the room, as if he’d heard nothing or was listening to another, quite distant voice.
‘I mean, the idea of inventing whole situations and plots and characters seems absurd, outdated. It might simply point to a limitation in me,’ I plunge on wobbily, ‘but the less fictional, in the sense of made up, a piece of writing is, the closer it is to lived facts, the more interesting and convincing it can be made, I think. Well, to a large extent, I got that from you.’
Francis smiles faintly, stroking his lower lip with his thumbnail. He’s still staring straight past me into the emptiness of the salon, raptly, like someone to whom a vision has appeared.
He must have heard, I say to myself, he must have heard. The absence of any reaction makes me panicky. Drops of sweat are snaking down my sides. My abrupt confession seems to have vanished into thin air.
‘Of course I can understand you might be offended by a thing like this,’ I continue miserably. ‘It’s bound to be indiscreet and perhaps betray—’
‘I should think the more indiscreet it is the better,’ Francis suddenly says, completely focused.
‘Well, naturally, the last thing I should want is for it to affect our friendship,’ I say, gushing relief.
‘I don’t think things like that need alter friendship at all,’ Francis says, slowly and deliberately. ‘The thing is, really, how can one present those kinds of stories? Unless they’re presented in a certain way, they can be very embarrassing, it’s true. They wouldn’t embarrass me, but there are still one or two people alive who might be offended if certain things were told. Because I think, in that sense, if you’re going to tell the story, only the whole story is worth telling.’
‘I agree. To the extent that you can ever tell the whole story. I mean, one can hardly help seeing it partially and differently from others. It’s just like a portrait. It’s bound to contain just as much of the artist as the sitter. A good deal more, perhaps nothing but the artist, in the greatest portraits.’
‘I know. It would of course be fascinating to know everything about another person, the whole of the private life and so on. I think that’s what probably interests other people most nowadays – other people’s private lives. And, as you know, people just adore talking about themselves, I don’t know why, after all, it’s always the same old story. The only thing that matters, in the end, is the way it’s told.’
‘Absolutely,’ I say. I think back to my complete typescript, lying in an inert pile on the shelf beneath the window, then shift in embarrassment as I imagine Francis running his cold pale eye over its shortcomings.
‘Here they come again, they can’t seem to keep still,’ Francis says.
He’s focused like a cat preparing to spring on the elderly couple as they hesitate before a return journey across the salon. They begin tottering towards us, and I notice the man has long white hair pulled back into a straggly ponytail. He’s also wearing a Texan tie.
‘I don’t know why those ghas
tly old things let their hair grow long and wear blue jeans and things,’ Francis says acidly. ‘It just makes them look even more hideous than they are. I don’t even like long hair and beards on young men, let alone old ones, because I want to see the structure of the face rather than have it camouflaged under all that hair. Old age is horrible. Horrible. Well, you can see – it’s like that. If there was some kind of operation to regain youth, even if it was very unpleasant, I’d have it right away, just as I’d have a facelift if I thought it would really work.
‘There it is, Michael. I’ve spent my life watching youth slip away, hour by hour, but in the end there’s nothing you can do to keep it of course. You’re just condemned to watch over your own deliquescence. I was trying to think the other day what I’d want to happen to my body after death. I think on the whole I’d prefer to be incinerated, but then I thought it would be a terrible bore for people not to have any bones to dig up. I certainly wouldn’t want to deprive them of that pleasure. So I don’t know. In any case, you’re what’s called condemned to watch your life slip away. I remember you told me about marvellous holidays you’d spent by the sea with Alice. And I couldn’t help thinking those days spent by the sea mean less and less as you get older because they are basically about hope, and with age there is less hope. They’re like happiness – which is really a problem you only have when you’re young. But then, if you think about it clearly, happiness itself is a kind of tragedy.’
Francis’s mood has darkened. We move into the dining room, flanked by the string quartet, and a masterful head waiter ushers us into our seats. As we order, preferring the goujons de sole to the caviare, the duckling to the lobster, Francis returns to his refrain about age, and it becomes the leitmotif for the whole evening, as one delicious dish gives way to another and the costly vintages are kept coming in rapid succession.
‘Baudelaire talks about “l’éternelle tyrannie du bonheur”,’ I remark brightly at one point.
‘That’s a marvellous way of putting it,’ Francis says. ‘But with me, as I’ve got older, I have to say, I think less and less about happiness, because my interest has grown much more for my work than my life.’
We then go into another discourse I know almost by heart about the body not functioning with age and his never expecting to have an intimate relationship again. It’s as if the wine has set Francis going on his groove, and the book fades into the background. I myself feel happy, even if happiness itself is a tragedy, because my explanation for the extracts has been accepted: the book is momentarily out there, a potential reality, and the first hurdle to its being published, in this condensed version at least, has been cleared. But this is only the first hurdle, I realize, and when we leave Claridge’s, heavy with rich food and wine, I remind myself that Francis hasn’t even read the damn thing yet as I carefully stuff the brown envelope into his raincoat pocket, urging him to let me know if there’s anything, anything at all, in the text that he would like altered or cut before it’s sent to the typesetters for some forthcoming issue of the NRF, where in my mind’s eye I see it already, crowding page after glorious page with prophetic black signs.
Since getting back to Paris, I’ve been thinking uneasily about Francis’s reaction to my text. It shouldn’t really be a problem since it consists chiefly of what he himself has told me, which I have carefully reproduced verbatim, right down to the oddities and emphases of his way of talking. But of course he may not like his own words coming back at him, just as people often dislike photographs of themselves, and just because he takes every liberty imaginable when portraying other people does not mean he will be more accepting of this portrait of himself. These fears have proved unfounded, however. Francis has actually posted the typescript back to me – I recognized the slanting handwriting in felt-tip on the envelope right away – with only a couple of changes. One concerns a snide remark about Henry Moore (‘Artists are never satisfied with their work, though I believe Henry Moore is’), and the other the reference to Peter Lacy, whose name he asks me to replace by ‘a friend’ since ‘some of his relatives are still alive’. He has also scrawled on the last page: ‘All this is only half correct, but leave it as it is some of the truth is better than none – please add this paragraph.’
I’m delighted and hugely relieved, of course, and I ask Alice to provide an initial translation of the excerpts which we then go over together until we’re satisfied we’ve got not only the meaning but as far as possible the sound of the original. Francis told me that the translation I did with Michel Leiris made him sound more intelligent in French than in the original English, so I’m hoping for something similar here. Now of course I’m worried that the NRF will find it’s not quite what they’d hoped for, but I seem to be on a roll because they get back right away to say how keen they are to take it. Lambrichs has actually written to me on NRF-headed paper saying that he thinks the excerpts form a ‘texte admirable, saisissant par son accent de vérité’, and confirming he wants to publish it exactly as it stands. I am over the moon, I can hardly believe I’ve got this far; with all the doubt and anxiety along the way, it seems almost too good to be true. I go back to work on the book itself, riding a surge of new confidence, and as I write everything seems to flow and fall into place. If I’m looking for what some character in the book would say or how they look, I only have to wander down the rue Rambuteau to do my daily shopping and a face or a phrase will suddenly come into focus and I’ll have what I want – the throwaway remark, the wizened visage – and all I need do is go back to my Olivetti and hammer out what has been handed to me on a plate. This is the first time in the process of writing that I have ever experienced a state of grace.
And yet a niggling doubt persists. I’ve already had an exhibition project based on the sources of Bacon’s art from the Egyptians through Vélazquez and Rembrandt to Picasso at first warmly encouraged by Francis, then, once I’d found the right museum and developed the concept, flatly turned down. And I’ve seen other people’s projects, for shows and books and films, come to grief. I want to be really sure that Francis is also happy with the French version, so I make another quick trip to London where we do an epic tour of the bars with me following him around shoving the translation back into his raincoat pocket every time it falls out as we get out of taxis or climb stairs to a club, and when I leave him around dawn on a street corner in Soho I can’t be quite sure whether the manuscript is still wedged in his coat or has dropped out and got lost in the dark.
I find out soon enough, however, because a telegram arrives stating in no uncertain terms that publication of the text should be stopped. I am appalled. The translation has already been sent to Gallimard, which publishes the NRF, and Lambrichs, the editor, says it’s perfect; he has even decided to accelerate the schedule and include it in the October issue. I don’t know which is worse: calling Francis for an explanation, or calling the NRF to say we can’t go ahead. Or rather I do, it’s calling Francis because there is a great deal more riding on that conversation.
‘I got your telegram, Francis.’
‘Oh good. I do hope you’ll stop publication.’
‘Yes, obviously. But I don’t understand why you’ve changed your mind.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Well, when I gave you the original in English after our dinner at Claridge’s, you sent it back with a couple of changes, which I made, but otherwise you were apparently fine with it. You even said the more indiscreet—’
‘I didn’t know what I was doing. I went on to a few bars after our dinner and someone must have spiked my drink. I was drugged. I had no idea what I was looking at.’
The notion is so outrageous I can’t think what to say, but Francis carries on.
‘In any case, what you’ve written is not at all accurate. You’d have to tell the whole story for it to be accurate. And also I don’t want any of this to come out while I’m alive. You can do what you like when I’m dead, but there are one or two people still alive who would be ve
ry offended if they read what you’ve written. Now if you need money, you only have to let me know and I can get some wired to you.’
I hadn’t seen that one coming at all. I bleat something to the effect that it has nothing to do with money and hang up, totally distraught. I wonder what can have changed. Was it seeing his own words translated? Did someone put the knife into the project? The gallery, thinking it wouldn’t reflect well on their star artist? David Sylvester, who certainly wouldn’t welcome anyone else on what he considers to be his exclusive turf, his Francis? Possibly one, possibly both, but I have to accept that in the end it is Francis’s decision. It’s a crushing blow to all my hopes, but I have always known that the friendship with Francis was more important to me than any ‘project’. The book, along with its various extracts, will have to go into a drawer and stay there, mouldering, perhaps for ever.
Bad as this news is, I have another, more serious problem brewing like a storm on the horizon. I have been with Alice for a good twelve years now: I was just under thirty when we met, and now I am forty-two. She has been a delightful, stimulating mistress, allowing me to continue my relatively carefree, bachelor existence and forgiving my occasional indiscretions. She has also had a maternal presence in my life, making up for the lacks and soothing the wounds left by the unfulfilling relationship I had with my mother. I have loved her more deeply and completely than anyone in my life, and I still love her loyally. We are joined by thousands of tiny threads of shared experience and affection. But there is a growing restlessness in me. I don’t approve of it and I’ve been pretending it doesn’t exist by making sure that my work includes as much foreign travel as possible, since trips in Europe and America to do articles or interviews help to put it out of my mind. I probably would have gone on denying it if I hadn’t had a fling with a Polish painter that has resulted in her wanting the relationship to become more ‘serious’ and insisting that the two of us be seen together at various art events and openings where Alice is likely to turn up too. This has already resulted in my trying to two-time more fully, going away for the weekend with one, then with the other, attending this function with Alice, that cocktail with the Polonaise. Why I have got myself into a triangle again, apart from my ingrained waywardness, I don’t really know, because nothing makes me so unhappy as being duplicitous in love. I fret by day and am tortured at night by the whole sleeping-with-one-to-think-of-the-other syndrome. From relative contentment I now find myself constantly on edge, convinced I’m about to be caught out through some slip of the tongue or a badly told lie.
Francis Bacon in Your Blood Page 31
