by Geoff Ryman
‘Except perhaps for making sure than no exhibitor would show Gilot’s work after she left you?’
Picasso kept smiling undisturbed. ‘Is that what she said? Has it occurred to you that she was exhibited only because of me? And perhaps her work is not all that good?’
They were negotiating. ‘Might it interest you to find out how I am able to raise the dead?’
Picasso sipped his wine. ‘It interests me to be alive again. And relatively young.’
He lowered his gaze at Michael, like a bull lowering his head to charge. He took a contemplative sup from his cigarette, his eyes appraising Michael. Then he ground out the cigarette, stood, walked across the room and grabbed hold of Michael’s face. He pushed Michael’s lips out of shape, into a parody of a Boucher mouth, and he shook Michael’s jaws.
‘I fuck you. You never touch me as a woman, ever.’
Picasso relinquished Michael’s mouth, but kept a hand hovering as if to slap him.
‘That’s all the same to me,’ said Michael.
The hand was lowered and it unbuttoned the front of Picasso’s trousers, and Picasso indicated what he wanted Michael to do. The tiny brown penis was erect, straight up and hard against his belly, as it was almost every time Michael saw it. Michael knelt and swallowed. Picasso kept drinking his wine. The penis was spicy; it reminded Michael of nutmeg, in its colour and scent.
Picasso grew tired of standing. ‘It’s late, we go to bed now,’ said Picasso, patting Michael affectionately on the top of his head.
Picasso claimed Michael’s side of the bed and snatched up the newspapers, and began to read, lips moving, eyes burning through them.
‘Je ne peux pas lire l’anglais facilement. Traduisez,’ he demanded, pushing the papers at Michael.
So Michael found himself reading laboriously through British politics in bad French.
‘So there was a socialist revolution in Britain?’
‘Of a kind. They unelected it thirty-five years later.’
‘Tuh. That is why English medicine for warts does not work. They have never had a real revolution. I hate England. The stupidest things about my work are all written in English. My friends translate them for me. I’m tired.’
Without asking, Picasso nipped sideways and turned off the light. Quick as blinking, it was dark, and Picasso had somehow enveloped Michael in his tiny arms, thick short legs. Picasso twisted Michael’s head around and kissed him with a passion that bewildered Michael. This was a man who basically preferred women. His breath was heavy and scented with cloves and he sucked in Michael’s spittle. Before Michael could quite adjust to being so swept up, he was hoisted onto all fours and found himself, with no preliminaries – cream or tentative, gentle penetration – being fucked.
The penis was the right size. It was so small and comfortable that Michael tightened his arse around it, to hold it, caress it. Suddenly impatient, Picasso unfurled and reared up, balancing on the balls of his feet, and began to thrust himself in and out of Michael’s body with a speed Michael had never encountered before or even imagined. Picasso was otherwise silent. He came quite quickly and then collapsed. Michael, bewildered, had by accident come at the same time, into his own hand. Picasso rolled off him and looked at Michael and said, ‘If you were a woman I could have really fucked you.’
Then he kissed Michael on his nose. ‘You make a funny creator, my friend.’
And, just as instantly, he was asleep.
Picasso snored, loudly and incessantly, as if he had an appetite for it, as if he claimed space by doing it, as if he snored to proclaim his genius.
He grew suddenly affectionate in his sleep, and clamped Michael from behind, and snored like a camel directly into Michael’s ear. Michael fought his way free. Picasso snorted and then chuckled. In his sleep he began to laugh, continuously, uproariously.
‘Are you awake?’ Michael asked, feeling battered.
Picasso grunted and rolled onto Michael again. His dick was hard, and Michael was surprised at his own compliance. His arse wasn’t sore, and he made no protest. The penis entered him again, and this time it was gentle. It lapped inside him like waves. Michael was to discover that the only way to stop Picasso snoring was to let himself be screwed. And then together, like a boat untethered, they could drift away together.
Michael woke up and it was still dark, and Picasso was still inside him, and around him. Picasso had been inside him all night.
‘Hmm,’ said Picasso and began to rock inside him. He nuzzled and then chewed Michael’s ear. ‘You are life,’ he said. ‘You give me life. I will give you life in return.’
And this time the fucking, though slow, was hard and slamming. Picasso’s flat belly thumped into Michael’s backside. The penis went all the way out and all the way back in with one thrust. Michael began to make noises he had never made before: he couldn’t stop himself. He groaned and grunted and sighed like a bad actress in a porno movie. Picasso seized hold of his long hair and pulled back hard on it, like reins. Michael came before Picasso did, whinnying like a horse.
Picasso finished, slapped Michael’s buttocks, and hopped out of bed. ‘You are dirty, wash,’ he said.
He commandeered Michael’s kitchen to make coffee. Michael padded dazed and flushed from the bathroom. Picasso was wearing a pair of Michael’s best long grey knickers, but he used one of his ties to make a kind of pirate sash around his waist. He was so short he had to lunge forward on tiptoe to reach things on top of the counter.
‘We will move,’ Picasso announced.
‘I’m sorry?’ burbled Michael.
‘This apartment faces east, good, but it is low down and has trees in front that block the light. And it is too small. I cannot paint here. We will move.’
Michael felt a jumble of feelings. No other Angel, no other man had ever made the decision so quickly and simply to live with him. No other man had demanded that Michael sell his flat after the first date.
Michael said, ‘I like the trees. This flat is worth money because it faces a garden.’
‘Humph,’ grunted Picasso, unimpressed.
‘It’s not that easy.’
‘I will make it easy.’ Picasso turned and his expression surprised Michael. Picasso was smiling, affectionately, gently and sweetly. Life is ours, the smile said. We can do with it what we want. It was a smile that promised: no harm can come. Michael found that he would do anything to make that smile continue.
Picasso passed him a tiny cup of what looked like tar. ‘You cannot make coffee. I can tell.’ He led Michael out to the sitting room, in front of the bay window. It was only just beginning to get light and everything was grey, as if wrapped in cushioning plastic. They sat at the table in the bay window.
‘My friend,’ Picasso said. ‘You give me life, and I am grateful. You are like a mother to me. You are like a physician who asks only kindness in payment. It is easy to be kind, that is why I don’t trust it. But I will be kind to you. You are a sweet man. So understand. I will give you kindness and love, but I will want to screw women, so I will bring them back. Don’t try to stop me; that would make me mad. If you are a jealous man, that will be a pain in your heart, not mine, so learn not to be jealous. All right?’ Picasso’s own eyes were kind, and stroked Michael’s knee.
‘All right,’ agreed Michael.
‘All right,’ said Picasso, grinning and slapping his knee. ‘So now we look for a new place to live. How do we do that?’
‘I don’t know,’ Michael admitted. ‘When I first came here to live, I rented, and then they sold it to me for a low price. So I don’t know how to find houses, or get another mortgage.’
Picasso tutted. ‘You are a child. Are you poor in spirit to stay here without thinking? For how long have you lived here?’
‘Thirteen years.’
‘You need a new life?’
Michael found that the answer was, ‘Yes.’
It was a trifle. ‘We move,’ said Picasso. He stood up abruptly, walked away, and
came back with heaps of newspapers that looked like an unmade bed. He pushed these at Michael, and growled, ‘My baby boy. My baby boy needs to grow up.’
It could get awfully tiring living with somebody who went straight to the truth without passing Go.
‘Here. They have ads for houses? You read the ads, I will go get us bread to dunk in the coffee.’
Michael began to look. Everything seemed to start at £200,000. Picasso came back from the shops with croissants. He flung the grease-spotted bag on the table, dunked a croissant in Michael’s cup and demanded, his mouth full, ‘You have found somewhere?’
‘It’s not that easy.’
‘And that one there?’
‘I’ve already looked.’
Picasso seized the newspaper and read out loud in criminal English: ‘Two-bedroom apartment three floor roof garden? Garden. Camden Town. One hundred eighty thousand. Sounds OK!’ he declared and pushed the billows of newspaper back down onto the table.
‘Sounds good,’ repeated Michael, mystified, and picked up the newspaper again to look again at the page of ads to make sure it was actually there, and try to understand how he could have missed it.
‘We have to make an offer quickly, if it is a bargain, yes?’
‘I think so. But I have to go to work today.’
‘No you don’t. No one has to do anything. They choose to do it. You choose not to work today, so that we can buy this apartment.’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t do that.’
‘Hmm.’ Picasso looked suddenly worried and concerned, and he swallowed. ‘My friend,’ he said and took Michael’s knee again. ‘Look at me. Look at me in the eyes. I am hungry to paint. If I think you are stopping me painting, I will go evil. Do you believe me?’
Michael rang in sick.
Picasso sang while he washed up, and Michael looked at his pay slips and his bank balance and tried to find ads for apartments similar to his own to see how much it might be worth. He only earned £35,000 a year, partly from the lab project and partly from teaching. The bank would be nervous about the temporary nature of the project, but even so, he should be able to get a mortgage for about £99,000. If you called the study a bedroom, this was a two-bedroom flat. One of those in a mansion block around the corner was selling for £350,000.
He could do it. He could do it and make money.
Michael looked at the sunlight streaming in through the bay window, on the old sand-coloured carpet, the old sofa, and the old wallpaper. There was a butterfly fluttering inside him that made him smile. It was time to go. It was time to find somewhere new.
Picasso had them down into Goodge Street tube station by 8.15 AM. He breathed in the stench of the trains and strutted up and down the platform, taking possession. He looked at the posters and beamed.
‘I was right,’ he said. ‘This is my world. I made it.’
He pointed to a poster for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. A computer-distorted Johnny Depp grimaced out of a field of white, amid Gerald Scarfe-like splashes of black. ‘That is a photograph, yes? What did that to a photograph?’
‘It’s a computer graphic. Ordinateur. Oh shit.’ Michael took a deep breath and tried to explain computers in French. He knew none of the words. He got across the idea that it was a machine that could add and subtract, and could turn anything into numbers, even images. So by changing the numbers, you changed the images.
‘You can make anything.’ Picasso looked impressed.
‘They made dinosaurs.’
‘Tuh. They did that in King Kong.’
‘These looked real. They can make people look real.’
Picasso’s jaw thrust outwards. ‘You have one of these ordinateurs?’
‘I use them at work. I also have one at home.’
‘You have one at home? Do many people have these things at home?’
‘Yes.’
Picasso laughed aloud and did a little dance. ‘I am in the future. You have brought me into the future, my friend.’ His eyes were sparkling.
The apartment looked unprepossessing. It was on a corner over a shoe shop, with a battered multi-locked door on a side street facing a recently closed ex-supermarket. Picasso rang the buzzer and then shouted up, ‘Hallo. Hallo. We want to buy your apartment!’
A woman looked out from the top of the wall. Evidently, she was sipping coffee on the roof. ‘I’m sorry, but you will have to talk to the estate agent first, if you want to see the property.’ She had what might pass for an American accent. She did not look at all offended. If anything, she was rather amused.
‘Estate agent, qu’est-ce que c’est?’ Picasso demanded of Michael.
‘Hold on, I’ll be down,’ the woman said.
Michael tutted. ‘It is not possible to arrive at people’s apartments at this hour of the morning.’ They heard footsteps. The door was opened by a tall woman, grey-haired in a blue-patterned kimono. She explained. ‘Estate agents sont agents immobiliers.’
‘Uh, estate agents!’ huffed Picasso. ‘They are only after your money. It is us who want to buy your apartment.’
The woman chuckled. ‘Well, OK, come in.’
She spoke French and was Canadian and her name was Mirielle. Mirielle led them up a staircase that was crammed with bicycles. On the landing there was a toilet in a kind of booth that had been jammed against a sloping roof. It looked like a set from an early German Expressionist movie like the Cabinet of Dr Caligari.
Past more banisters and they were in one huge room. One wall was lined with kitchen sink and encrusted cooker. Two other sides were crowded with bookcases, desks and sofas. All along one wall arched windows faced east, dancing with light. Picasso was overjoyed. He turned and rubbed the top of his head in a circle against Michael’s chest.
Mirielle led them through a door out onto a flat rooftop, lined with big red pots holding giant ferns, bamboo and evergreens. ‘This is the garden. We would sell the plants with the flat. Do you like gardens?’
‘He does,’ said Picasso and pointed to Michael.
The banisters led up a staircase that smelled of sawdust, to two bedrooms. One was long and dark with a sloping roof, and the other was a garret with another huge window. It was full of canvases lined up like cards in an index file. Picasso rifled through them. His cheeks rose up like buns. There were Goths with facial tattoos, cross cut on the same canvas with the backs of turtles. Magicians in top hats were under the sea, but the seabed was an aerial map of New York. ‘You are one of my children,’ Picasso said.
‘Oh really,’ chuckled Mirielle. ‘And what is your name?’
‘Pablo Picasso,’ he announced. Um, thought Michael, that might be a mistake.
‘Funny,’ said Mirielle, without missing a beat. ‘That’s my name too.’
‘We will buy your flat,’ Picasso said, airily as if it were nothing.
‘For my asking price?’
‘Is anyone else asking?’
‘Now,’ said Mirielle, ‘we need the estate agent.’
‘And a glass of wine, to celebrate. My friend has a bottle,’ said Picasso and winked at Michael, and Michael for once was quick on the uptake. Out came another bottle of 60-year-old wine. Mirielle looked at its old-fashioned label, with its plain black print. Mis en bouteille 1932. It was too perfect, so she laughed, and brought out glasses.
‘I will work here,’ Picasso announced to Michael. ‘I am your new life.’
There was just one problem: who would buy Michael’s flat?
Michael remembered his Polish neighbours downstairs. The husband had been made redundant and they needed to sell their larger flat with its Council Tax and ground rent. They had a buyer for their place: but they had been gazumped on the flat they wanted to buy. They had nowhere to move to.
Mr Miazga was alone in the apartment, still dressed as if for his work: a neat grey shirt of some interesting fabric, black slacks and black jacket. Yes, yes, it would be ideal.
‘My wife, you see, works at the School of Eastern European
Studies, which is just near here, so she can walk to work. That is why we are here in England.’ He had a neat, quiet way of walking and talking, as if he were continually picking lint from his suit. His eyes never quite met yours.
Picasso began to slump and look about the walls, and huff. Shy quiet people made him impatient.
The Miazgas were shy but talented. The wife was doing a thesis on the pre-Christian Balkans. Mr Miazga had until recently worked in an architects’ office as a programmer.
‘That means he writes programs … uh…’ Michael searched for the word in French.
‘… logiciels,’ Mr Miazga said, with his unfaltering, mild smile.
‘Computers.’ Picasso sat up. ‘You work on those things?’
‘Well,’ said Mr Miazga, ‘I write the instructions that make them work.’ He glanced sideways at Michael: how is it that this man has only just heard about computers?
Picasso kept pushing. ‘You know how they work. You write down the numbers.’
‘That is one way of putting it, yes.’
‘Do you have one? You could show me how it works?’
Mr Miazga did not want to teach this bumptious man anything, but he was trapped by his own good manners. He avoided answering. ‘The architects ask me to use the computer to show our clients how the buildings will look.’ He used the present tense as if he still had a job.
Michael offered compromise. ‘Why don’t you just show us something you’ve worked on?’
Mr Miazga showed them a virtual shopping mall that was to be built along the A40. He guided them down the covered walkway, past the Pizza Shack and Ameriburger franchise and into the bowling alley. There was the sound of a strike and the clatter of falling pins.
The father of Cubism saw: this was the real way to display all sides of an object. He leaned forward and irresistibly took control of the mouse. He scowled, his eyes widened; the whites of his black eyes were illuminated like a glass of milk with a light bulb in it.
Mr Miazga explained, ‘This way, the client feels work has begun on his project. While the surveyors are still specifying the materials and checking our estimates, we have something to show.’
