‘Why are you reluctant?’ I asked.
‘Well, the way I see it, one shouldn’t talk; one should do.’
‘But that’s silly.’
‘It seems to me language butchers the delicate mysteries. Speaking of emotions renders them redundant.’
‘Okay then, I’ve tickets to see flamenco dancing tomorrow night. Care to join me?’
We went along and took our seats half an hour before the show was due to begin. A gaudy auditorium with plush red seats and an even plusher audience. He whispered, close, in my ear, ‘Sometimes I’d like to leave all this, take off in a balloon.’ I tried to ignore these melodramatic flourishes when they came. The supple dancers clicked and clapped. Throughout the performance Oscar’s mind was elsewhere. He was incapable of surrendering to an experience, since he was constantly preoccupied with another problem. An obsessive need to keep a track on everything ripped the heart out of his pleasurable diversions. Since he was always monitoring how cramped a person, situation, or place made him feel, and since one part of his mind was always registering and computing and planning, he could never give in to life, even when alcohol was sabotaging his liver, its capacity for unleashing freedom stymied by Oscar’s self-imposed straitjacket. As the flamenco dancing sped on with greater ferocity, one part of his mind admired the achievement while another registered the ephemeral component of all things running underneath. Like London’s underground system, buried dozens of feet beneath the concrete pavement, invisible but undeniably there. Myself, I have always considered London to be like the mind, and perhaps I’m losing my mind. London lost its long ago. I realize, of course, that art can kill, that metaphors and images are dangerous. By the way, I would not, for one second, dream of using Babel as a platform for my own story. Oh no. I grant you, I have been feeling strange lately and wonder if my skull is turning into a gaseous shell. I am a successful writer, or rather I have had a successful writing career, achieving fame in some form, enjoying the finer things, perusing art galleries, going to parties, sipping vintage wine. But who are all these people I have known, what are these light, watery words I’ve written? It all slips into the void, and I cannot now bear to look at a single fabrication of mine. What’s the point of all this talk? If I have failed, I have failed with honor. This project about my friend is my last sustaining song. I wish it to be truthful. I wish it to have the clear mint of sincerity, ripping through the senses like a salty sea breeze. But perhaps it’s too late for me; perhaps I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. Oscar has his life in front of him. He can still listen to music and pinch women’s bottoms. What am I doing? I’ll tell you: Floating along in middle-age. I only wanted to make a difference. But all I did was make money. Twenty years from now who will read my novels, my popular novels? That label ‘popular’ already seems to consign them to the rubbish tip. I grant you the search for immortality is an idle thing. But some achieve it. Do I envy them? I know I envy someone, but haven’t worked out who that is yet. I should like to rattle humanity a bit, shake it up, hold forth on the eternal verities with weighted words, and make up some new verities of my own. Be a messianic martyr, the fool who tells the truth...Inner peace. No, I certainly have none of that. Inner pieces, yes, clattering away inside me like loose change. And when it comes to love, who can say I have truly loved? I never gave enough of myself. A wife I no longer see, whom I think of rather like a broken trophy perched on my mantelpiece. By the way, before I start to get sentimental about Natalie’s vagina, I must say the time for lust is over. (But perhaps it can be a gateway to the divine, to greater perception.) I will find something bigger and better. But I’m straying from the main point: Oscar. Who cares about him? Do I have to give him everything? Anyway, I’m not myself, things are a bit misty.
Bloch blacked over the last three sentences with a fountain pen, put the manuscript aside, and – suddenly exhausted – dived into his bed. It was three o’clock in the afternoon.
*
On the phone Lilliana apologized for having missed Oscar at the bar. She told him that a new friend of hers had invited them both for lunch the following week.
That following week as he walked, clutching a crumbling A-Z, checking street names, he wondered who this new friend of Lilliana’s might be. As a rule she tended not to make many new friends, which was odd, as she was such an affable person. He had a suspicion that ultimately she preferred her flowers to people.
After taking a few wrong turns, he finally found the right street – a broad avenue lined with oak trees, whose houses all shared magnificent bay windows. It was so quiet and deserted Oscar had the feeling he was the last man on earth. After establishing the direction in which the numbers ran, he found the right one and rang the bell, which was labelled MERIDIAN. He was standing in front of a grand but slightly dilapidated semi-detached house. After a short wait a woman he took to be in her late twenties emerged. She was wearing a bright yellow dress that fell to below her knees in one piece and sandals revealing bare feet, beautifully manicured toes, and skin as evenly tanned as that of her face and arms. Her sinuous, silky black hair was tied up and set in place by five or six diamanté hair clips. Oscar instantly felt a wave of attraction pass through him like vertigo.
‘You must be Oscar,’ she said pleasantly.
‘I think I am,’ he replied.
She smiled, ignoring this rather cryptic remark. ‘I’m Najette.’
‘Is Lilliana here yet?’
‘She couldn’t make it. She’s not feeling well.’
Oscar began to feel uneasy with the thought that he would have to spend the afternoon with a complete, albeit dazzling, stranger. She ushered him into a spacious front room, filled with china, flowers, various pairs of shoes and medium-sized perspex boxes full of immaculately clean sable brushes and palette knives. The sun streamed in brilliantly through the large bay window and gave the room a light, airy feel, as if it was housed within a hollow diamond. Propped up against the wall were a couple of canvasses of roughly the same size. A beautiful easel stood in the center and a giant sketch pad rested on it. Abstract, cylindrical shapes drawn in charcoal and graphite weaved in and out of each other, with some of the spaces shaded in. It was a delicate, highly refined composition.
‘I’m afraid I didn’t buy any wine,’ he said.
‘That’s all right. I didn’t buy any food.’
‘Oh, but I thought we were going to have lunch.’
‘So did I, but the light was so fantastic this morning I just had to take advantage of it; so I’ve been working all day and haven’t had a chance to go shopping. I hope you understand, as a fellow painter.’
‘Did Lilliana tell you I paint?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I used to.’
‘I see. Why don’t you still?’
‘I’m not sure.’
He began to relax, warming to her, welcoming the chance to study the nuances of her face, solve the enigma of her aura of calm, so that even he might be able to adopt or imitate it.
Najette said, ‘There must be a reason why you stopped.’
‘Oh, yes, I’m sure there were many. You have a very nice house.’
‘It’s not mine. It’s my uncle’s. He’s never here as he’s always going around the world sampling different countries so he can write holiday junk for radio. So I can’t complain.’
Najette smiled slightly mischievously, as if something – or perhaps everything – was amusing her. She lightened the atmosphere, offered a kind of antidote against anxiety.
Oscar, sensing that her work was as striking as she was, muttered tentatively, ‘Could I take a look at those canvasses?’
‘If you like. Just don’t tell me what you think of them, unless it’s positive. But then, that’s stupid, isn’t it, because your silence would reveal that you didn’t like them as much as saying you didn’t like them. Oh, fuck it, just say whatever you like.’
Oscar walked up and knelt down beside them. To Najette it looked like he was about t
o pray. He was vaguely aware of her silent, monitoring gaze.
Both were broadly expressionistic versions of the same subject. In the first a large woman was reclining on a chaise-lounge. Her fluid, ripe hair was defined in a golden arch. In the background, mask-like faces appeared to have escaped from the woman’s mind, amorphous fixtures from her past or possibly future. The expression the woman wore was both ethereal and agonized, her cavernous eyes poised in diamond shapes, indian yellow and framed by glossy black eyebrows. She was naked and the arch of her sloping body conveyed an impression of indolence: perhaps she had just eaten a meal. In the second version the masks had disappeared and in their place were blood-red outlines which subtly echoed the shape of the woman’s body. Her tongue was lashed out insolently against the world, a tongue made of magenta, a vast and incredible gash, a tapestry of flesh.
Oscar was strongly drawn by the paintings, unable to break away. His own desire to paint was momentarily rekindled.
‘You can take one, if you like,’ said Najette, her face expressing perfect candor.
Oscar didn’t hear her at first.
‘Well, would you like one?’
Oscar turned to her and said, ‘I don’t deserve that.’
‘Of course you do. Don’t be so polite. It would make me happy. They obviously please you. Am I right?’
‘Yes. They’re...magnificent.’
As he said this her upturned lips and half-closed eyes somehow conveyed that she already knew this to be true, but at the same time they communicated the sweetness of such an unequivocal confirmation.
‘Well, have one then.’
Oscar was taken aback by her generosity. He was ashamed of his own inability to make similarly spontaneous gestures. Her insistence drew him toward her, and struck him either as evidence of incredible friendliness or – more flatteringly – of the ease she felt in his presence, as if they were actually old friends.
‘I notice you haven’t signed either of these.’
‘So? Are you planning to sell one for pots of cash when I’m famous?’
‘No, no, of course not.’ Oscar was fumbling, panicking.
‘I was only joking. I always sign on the back. I keep most of my stuff in my studio – which is actually a shoebox, off the Great Western Road, and which in fact I will probably have to say goodbye to as the savings are running out and waiting on tables isn’t that lucrative. I was trained as an architect but gave it all up to paint. God help me. So, have you decided which one you’d like?’
‘Maybe...when I can give you something – something of mine – in return, except at the moment I have nothing...’
‘You have to work again, Oscar!’
‘Well, now that I’ve seen your stuff... I don’t know...if I’m inspired or intimidated. But...it’s been so long since I’ve even held a brush.’
‘I know what might get you started again.’
‘What?’
‘Modelling. Nude.’
Oscar lapsed into mystified silence, as if Najette had just suggested that dissecting a frog would help him to paint again.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘No, I didn’t think you would. But when you’re on the other side of the canvas all you want to do is get back in front of it. Or at least that’s what I discovered when I was blocked. A friend said I should do some nude modeling, and when I did I found the passivity, the sense of being a lynch-pin for other people’s creativity, made me anxious to get back to my own work. You see? It might do the same for you. And I think it would loosen you up. You’re a little on the self-conscious side. Though you have a good physique. Your height helps. It would be good to expose yourself without getting...’
Before she could get any further the doorbell rang. Najette floated out into the hallway and Oscar followed hesitantly. It was Nicholas, smiling with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. But when he saw Oscar his face changed.
‘Can I come in?’ he asked, eying Oscar suspiciously.
‘Hello, Nicholas. Come in. This is Oscar,’ said Najette.
‘Ah, the real Oscar?’ Nicholas demanded as he strode in with a proprietorial swagger.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Is Oscar your real name or have you been re-named Oscar, according to Najette’s whims?’
‘No, Oscar is my real name,’ Oscar murmured.
‘So you are the real Oscar, then,’ said Nicholas.
‘I suppose I must be,’ Oscar said weakly, feeling more and more confused.
‘Shall we sit down, instead of standing in the hall like this?’ Najette asked.
‘I won’t stay; I just wanted to fetch my things before they end up in the charity shop.’
‘You know I wouldn’t do that...I’ll go and get them...are you sure you don’t want...’
‘No, I don’t want to break up this cosy scene.’
For a split-second Najette’s face was contorted with barely-suppressed rage, but she wouldn’t rise to the bait and, after a pause, walked off with impressive restraint. Her absence added to Oscar’s discomfort and he felt pinned down in Nicholas’ scrutinizing eyes. As they both shuffled into the front room Oscar had hopes that the increased space might diffuse the tension.
‘Have you known her very long?’ Nicholas asked, in an effort to appear more friendly.
‘Najette? We’ve only just met, this moment.’
‘I’m not sure that means much. When it comes to Najette, the normal rules of friendship don’t apply. She achieves instant intimacy with people, you know. And then discards them. But don’t think you’re anything special. She’s like that with everyone.’
These remarks triggered a pronounced distaste for Nicholas, which Oscar tried to communicate by maintaining an icy silence. Nicholas didn’t notice and carried on regardless, twirling his moustache playfully.
‘Tell me, do you paint as well?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I like that answer. Very much. Did you once paint?’
Oscar said nothing.
‘If it’s failure you’re worried about, it’s highly likely. But give me a call, I might be able to help you. I’m the director of the Earl Gallery, a small but loyally attended establishment. If you’d like to exhibit, I might be interested. I’m feeling generous and I know that real painters are hard to come by. Don’t worry, you won’t have to sleep with me. But before I go, how about a quick sketch? Of me? Otherwise I’ll have nothing to go on. A quick portrait – in return for my offer?’
Oscar wasn’t at all sure he wanted to reciprocate, and he felt an old dread of being revealed as talentless creep up on him.
‘I haven’t drawn anyone for a very long time; I’m not sure I could,’ he said politely.
‘Oscar, I’m instinctive. Impetuous. And I’m vain, and I don’t like to be kept waiting. Think of it as a little gift you’re sending my way, rather than transcendental art.’
Oscar took the time to study Nicholas’ face, trying to fathom his real motives. There was nothing to go on, however. But as Oscar persisted Nicholas responded to his mute look of inquiry and something within Nicholas blurred and shifted. Oscar had the impression for a moment of tremendous emotion, a great release of feeling and then, it was gone, swallowed up once more in his regal bearing, his commanding voice, his expensive clothes. This unexpected moment of clarity, this revelation of Nicholas’ pain magically nudged Oscar into acquiescence and, slowly, he made a few tentative strokes with the pencil, then began in earnest to draw him.
After quarter of an hour Oscar had something to show for his labors; and even he was pleasantly surprised by how good it was.
The portrait was slapdash, yet precise, with sinewy, throwaway lines. Nicholas was genuinely intrigued and impressed.
‘Let me see something else, and I might be able to make the necessary arrangements.’
‘But I don’t really have anything I could show you. It’s all unfinished.’
‘Well, then, finish something. Work. You’ll feel much better.
But in the meantime, thanks. I look raw but refined...your little impromptu sketch is alchemical. I like that. Do you mind if I take a picture of it with my phone?’ He did so. ‘Say goodbye to Najette for me. Oh, by the way, I wouldn’t mention this proposal of mine. Come and see me at the Earl. Bye-bye.’
‘But aren’t you going to pick up your things?’
‘Some other time.’
He left in a whirl.
Oscar waited for Najette. Eventually, after ten minutes, when she still hadn’t materialized, he called out her name. Then he went upstairs. He searched in all the rooms. But he couldn’t find her anywhere. In an undecorated bedroom on a small desk he saw a large teddy bear propped up. A note was taped to its hand:
Dear Oscar,
If you find this please excuse my eccentricity – it’s partly due to the presence of Nicholas. He makes me come out in spots. I’ve just gone for a breath of fresh air via the back door. I was on the point of coming in when I saw you sketching him. Not wishing to disturb you I withdrew. I can leave places without a sound, as I’m not very heavy. In fact I probably don’t even exist. Or perhaps I was once a church mouse, burrowing through the organ loft, scurrying around as the heavy tread of humans went on around me. Anyway, I shall await our next meeting with bated breath. I wish you well in the meantime. The name of the place where you can be stark naked (and not be arrested) is the Mermaid Academy. It’s in South Kensington. Najette.
3
Bloch had invited Oscar to go to a new theater in Islington to see The Voiceless Ones, by a little-known German playwright, August Dinkl, whose works, Bloch speculated, were being re-discovered and championed a century after his death most probably by the same kind of people who had shunned and ridiculed him when he was alive.
The play was about a young shop assistant struggling to make ends meet in fin-de-siecle Paris. She has a love affair with a drifter who eventually murders her. In the second act her ghost returns to haunt the murderer, eventually driving him to suicide. In the end the coroner concludes that they had both killed themselves, and their grisly story becomes a romantic myth dissected by a group of intellectuals in the final act.
The Fabrications Page 4
