This is Life

by Dan Rhodes

  In every other city, when the show had finally opened people had always come in large numbers, art-minded curiosity seekers on the whole, which was fine with him, and the overwhelming majority of them seemed to end up appreciating what he was doing, just as he had hoped they would. They would often return, bringing their friends, art-minded or otherwise, and over the course of a run he would attract a diverse audience. With a few predictable exceptions the press would surprise itself by responding with warmth, guaranteeing further ticket sales. Then the hubbub would die down, and the run would continue in relative peace right up until the end, when the media tuned back in, becoming fascinated by how full all the phials had become, and potential visitors realised that there would be no extension and clamoured for the remaining tickets.

  So far, there was nothing to indicate that this run would pan out any differently from the others. He supposed his twelve weeks on stage would pass as they always did.

  Somehow, though it had never been his intention, Life had become a money-spinner, a small industry. When this had begun to happen, he had let it go to his head; for a while he had lost his equilibrium, and his reason for doing what he was doing had slipped out of focus. In those days he had given interviews in which he had appeared arrogant, and said things he ought not to have said. He was ashamed to think of it now, but he had even begun to feel that the money and press that his work was attracting was in some way a validation of its artistic worth.

  Since regaining his perspective, which had happened during a particularly relentless bout of diarrhoea two weeks into the San Francisco staging, his interviews had been more measured, and Life continued to have a very positive, even ecstatic, reception. It had come to be regarded as one of the great recent phenomena of the art world. Perhaps Paris would be the place where this all changed. Maybe his home city would reject him, just as he had rejected it. He was ready for this, and he was also ready for this run to be his final presentation of the work. In some ways he hoped it would be. He was starting to feel he had done enough: to pull down the curtain and move on with his life would be a relief.

  Only when it was all over, when the finished exhibits from the final staging had been shipped off to whichever collector had bought them, and when his body hair had begun to grow back, never to be waxed again, would he be able to talk openly and honestly about Life. If the people who came were to find out why he was doing what he was doing they would bring so many preconceptions that it would come between them and the work. They wouldn’t have the opportunity to read the piece in their own way; they would instead see something else, their minds clouded with words, and he felt strongly that words were the enemy of art.

  If the critics were ever to find out why he did what he did, they would do everything they could to tear him down. He knew exactly what they would say, too: they would say it was sentimental schlock, and they would be half right. It wasn’t schlock, he was sure of that, but it was sentimental. Only he knew this though, and he was well aware that if the truth ever got out it would all be over, because there is nothing that angers the custodians of the art world more than simple feelings expressed in a straightforward manner. And it was simple feelings, expressed in a straightforward manner, that were at the heart of Life.

  The waxing went on and on. He would leave the hair on his head until the last moment. That way he would be able to move around unrecognised. He still had a lot to do. He had put off too many things until the last minute. In addition to all the organisational issues that needed to be dealt with, there were two people he had to see before it all began. He had already made several discreet visits to one of them since his return to the city, but he still needed to see them one last time. The other was somebody with whom he had unfinished business.

  He had been putting off this particular meeting ever since he had arrived back in the city, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to relax on stage unless he had had an opportunity to get what he needed to say off his chest. It was something that had been bothering him for years, and which he had been delaying ever since he had returned to the city: he needed to track down a man called Professor Papavoine.

  The woman continued ripping off strips. He would wait until two hours before the doors were due to open before having his eyebrows waxed off, along with a final full check for any missed body hairs from this session. Last of all, the hair on his head and face would be shaved to the skin. He wanted to be as smooth as an egg for his public. Only his eyelashes would remain, and even these he would collect and display as they moulted over the course of the twelve weeks.

  He thought back to his visit to the venue. It had put his mind at rest. He had been impressed with the space, and was sure he was going to be comfortable there. His last show had been in the round, in a two-thousand seat boxing arena, and he had never quite been able to relax into the surroundings. This production was going to be smaller in terms of capacity, but he and the crew had worked hard to see that it had a good chance of success. His manager had told him that early sales were fairly strong but they still had a long way to go before they would be able to relax. Soon he would be finding out whether or not he had conquered his home city.

  Eugène Carrière’s enlarged baby looked on as Le Machine presented his scrotum for waxing. This was his least favourite part of the procedure. He closed his eyes, and braced himself.

  VIII

  It was almost dark by the time Aurélie and Sylvie started walking down the hill. Sylvie was taking a turn at pushing a drowsy Herbert, and having left Lucien and the Akiyamas eating at the restaurant, they could at last talk freely. Each was impatient to find out what the other had been up to since they had last met. Sylvie told Aurélie about the antics of some of her tormented former lovers and, particularly, their mothers. Sylvie had continuing problems with her ex-boyfriends’ mothers who, it seemed, were as keen to have her as their daughter-in-law as their sons were to have her as their wife.

  In her middle teenage years, when she had dated only troublemakers, this hadn’t been a problem. Her older lovers had never introduced her to their families, preferring to keep her in a dark room and tell her to keep her mouth shut and not go anywhere until they came back, which would often be days, sometimes even weeks, later. When she reached her late teens, she had realised once and for all how quickly things became tedious with bad boys, and stopped bothering with them. She experimented with dating boys of around her age who were more or less normal, and it was then that the mothers had started to come into the picture.

  Each of this second wave of boyfriends had been keen to show off his incredible new girlfriend to his family, who without exception would be instantly won over by her looks and her sunny disposition, and when they began to learn snippets from her unhappy history, the boys’ mothers clung to her. She’ll be looking for a surrogate family, they said to their husbands. Orphans are like that. They were determined to make theirs the surrogate family they were sure she so desperately craved.

  The mothers were right, Sylvie did want a husband so badly because she yearned for the stability of family life. The only person she had ever spoken to about this in any depth was Aurélie. ‘I’m not stupid,’ she had said. ‘I know what’s going on; it’s pretty basic psychology.’ But as much as she wanted the husband and children, she knew that family life with the wrong person would be a lot worse than being alone. She only ever accepted dates from boys she could see herself staying with, boys with an awful lot going for them, but every one had revealed himself to be in some way lacking. Usually it would be nothing obvious, she would just be struck by a feeling that something was not quite right, that he was not the one.

  ‘Maybe it’s just typical orphan behaviour,’ she had told Aurélie. ‘It’s not as if I set out to break their hearts, I set out hoping that I’ll love them.’ That was something she had come to learn was a mistake: hope was not enough. She had pursued the possibility of love, rather than waiting for love to find her, and by the time she accepted that it had failed to materialise
, as had happened with every one of them so far, the boy would be so deeply in thrall to her that she could only abandon him to his misery. Sometimes the romance would have lasted for months, sometimes only a few days, but in all cases the depth of despair she left behind was the same.

  ‘Sometimes I’ll wonder afterwards whether he had been the right one, but I was just so frightened that things would be snatched away that I sabotaged the relationship before it had a chance to be taken away from me.’ She had laughed at herself as she said this, and Aurélie hadn’t known what to say.

  These romances always ended the instant she came to the realisation that the boy was not the one she was going to end up with. She felt this was the right thing to do, that stringing him along for a second beyond this moment of revelation would be dishonest and only make things worse for everybody. She would say, simply, It’s over, I’m sorry, and leave the room. One time the epiphany had struck her halfway through sex, and another time at the Christmas dinner table in front of the boy’s entire extended family. Both had wept, one into the pillow, the other onto his roast goose.

  On every occasion, the mother found Sylvie’s departure difficult to accept. Often they would be the ones who would call her in the middle of the night to tearfully beg her for a reconciliation, and as Sylvie pushed Herbert down rue Ravignan, her impersonation of the latest poor heartbroken woman made Aurélie clutch her sides with guilty laughter: I hope you never find out how it feels to lose a daughter.

  She told Aurélie she was going to avoid these situations as much as possible from now on, that she was sure she had finally got the hang of identifying inappropriate men before even agreeing to go on a date with them. She hadn’t accepted a date for two months, despite having been asked out over fifty times.

  When it was Aurélie’s turn to provide an update, she told Sylvie how much she hated Sébastien, and provided her with a creditable pastiche of his plans to subvert the zeitgeist. Then she told her about the advances of her creepy old professor, and just as she was making a kind of gagging noise to illustrate the extent of her revulsion, something occurred to Sylvie.

  ‘That squelching sound you’re making reminds me – I kept meaning to ask earlier, but never quite got round to it: what’s going on with the baby?’

  ‘I got him this morning.’

  ‘Whose is he?’

  ‘Mine for now, I suppose.’

  ‘How did the poor thing end up with you?’

  ‘I threw a stone at him by mistake, and as a punishment his mother’s making me look after him for a week.’

  ‘I’ve not heard of that happening before.’

  ‘Me neither. But maybe it happens all the time – it might just be one of those things that people never talk about. Next time you see a baby with a bruise on his face, have a look at whoever’s pushing him along and see if you can spot a trace of panic in their eyes. Anyway, I’m just going to have to live with him. It’s been a busy day, but I’m getting the hang of it. I managed to work out how to fold that thing,’ she tapped the buggy, ‘and we came in on the bus. We were a bit early, so we went to a bookshop and I looked to see if they had one called How to Keep a Baby Alive for a Week, but they didn’t. I found this, though.’ She reached into her bag and pulled out a paperback called Your Baby & You. ‘Hopefully it’ll help. Are you any good with children?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I’ve never really looked after one, but I kept a Tamagotchi going for three years when I was in the children’s home, so I reckon I’d manage OK. I’m doing a world-class job of pushing the buggy, anyway.’

  ‘You’re a natural. Hey, I’ve got a great idea – why don’t you keep him for the week? I can see you two have a special bond. You’ve always said you want to have children one day, so it’ll be good practice.’

  ‘Thanks, but no.’

  Aurélie found herself quite relieved. She had only been joking, but even so as the words came out the thought of relinquishing him had made her shudder. Herbert was her responsibility, and besides she had her project to think of. She had become fond of him, too. It was strange, but she really had. Ever since she had seen that the stone was about to hit him in the face she had wanted only the best for him.

  Sylvie carried on. ‘I once heard someone giving someone else a piece of advice about babies, and it seemed to make sense. I can’t remember what it was, though. I’ll let you know if I remember.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll need all the tips I can get my hands on.’

  They reached the neon lights of Pigalle. ‘Hey, look.’ Sylvie pointed at a big banner hanging outside an old porno cinema. ‘Le Machine. Are you going to go?’

  Aurélie shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing what all the fuss is about.’ It had been impossible to escape all the talk about Life, and like so many people they were both inclined to go along so they could make up their own minds about it.

  They stopped for a while. There was a queue at the box office, and busy-looking people, wearing black fleeces with Life written across them in white lettering, were going in and out of the place as they made final preparations for the opening on Friday night, just two days away. Some of them were wearing walkie-talkie headsets. As fond as she had become of Herbert, Aurélie wished she had chosen to do something as simple as shitting in public for her project. It would have saved her a lot of trouble.

  ‘He’s got a good body,’ she said.

  Sylvie nodded. ‘I suppose so.’ But the only body she was interested in was the one that belonged to Toshiro Akiyama. ‘I prefer a man with eyebrows.’ Toshiro Akiyama had eyebrows. ‘So where to now?’

  ‘The shop.’

  ‘You mean you actually want to go shopping?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Baby stuff, mainly. We’re running out. There’s a supermarket around here somewhere. Do they sell baby stuff in supermarkets?’

  ‘I can’t say I’ve ever given it much thought. I suppose they must do. Let’s find out.’

  The three of them carried on, past the sex shops, the peep shows and the sushi bars.

  Before she had applied to go to art college Aurélie had visited it on an open day, in the hope of finding out what it was all about and seeing whether or not she would be happy there. She had come into the city on her own for the first time, and had been nervously milling around the refreshments table, trying to work out whether to have some bread and cheese or a biscuit. She had even begun to wonder whether she could find it within herself to be so daring as to have some bread and cheese and a biscuit, when she had felt a presence by her side. A smiling girl had appeared, and proceeded to stuff her shoulder bag with as much food as she could. Bread, big chunks of cheese and handfuls of biscuits. It all went into a plastic bag within the shoulder bag, as if the girl had planned the heist in advance.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ the girl explained. ‘Well, I’m not actually hungry, but I expect I will be at some point. It’s best to stock up while you can.’

  Aurélie didn’t know what to say. The girl had such an innocent face that it seemed almost surreal to see her doing something so mischievous. The girl zipped her bag shut, and without a word she took Aurélie by the hair. She inspected it, rummaging through it in a way that was so natural that Aurélie didn’t feel affronted or alarmed. There was even something reassuring about her touch.

  ‘Are you checking for lice? I think I’m clear.’

  ‘No, I’m just having a look at your roots. I’m thinking about becoming a hairdresser if I don’t get in here,’ she explained. ‘What would you say your natural colour is?’

  Aurélie had bleached her hair a few weeks earlier, and it was time for a touch-up. ‘Er . . . mousy, I suppose. A kind of nothing colour.’

  ‘No, it’s blonde.’

  ‘No, it’s mousy.’

  ‘Listen to me – I’m the professional. Well, not exactly, but you know what I mean. It’s dark blonde, but still – you’re a natural blonde. What could be better than that?’

 
‘To be a natural light blonde?’

  The girl thought for a while. ‘Yes, I suppose that would be ideal. But still, your hair is a much better colour than you think it is. What’s your name?’

  ‘Aurélie. Aurélie Renard.’

  ‘Sylvie. Sylvie Dupont.’ She extended her hand. Aurélie offered hers in return, and Sylvie pumped it in a businesslike manner. ‘Aurélie . . . that means golden, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s a lucky name for your hair colour. I wouldn’t say your hair is actually golden, let’s not get carried away, but it’s not too far off.’

  ‘Well, that’s good to know.’ Aurélie meant it, too. She resolved to have a long think about her hair; maybe she would even start liking it for the first time in her life. ‘I have a cousin called Blondelle who had the fairest hair when she was born, but by the time she was three it had turned about your colour – really dark brown. Imagine if you were called Blondelle.’

  ‘That would be really funny for everybody else.’

  ‘I know. She never knows what to do with it – I think it’s ruined her life.’

  Sylvie couldn’t help but laugh at this tale of poor Blon-delle’s misfortune, and she and Aurélie spent the rest of the day together, walking around the college, attending talks and looking at the work of the current students. After the open day they went to a bar, and then to save money they headed back to the small hotel room that Aurélie’s dad had booked for her, where they talked, ate their way through Sylvie’s stash of food and drained glasses of cheap red wine.