Cairo (10 page)

The lighter popped out, and Max touched it to the end of his cigarette. His profile flared orange and he was wreathed in smoke, which he waved away from his face. ‘Their laws don't apply to us.' He stepped from the car and gathered up his booty. ‘
Allons, mon ami
. Don't fade out on me now.'

And, arms laden with pilfered goods, Max strode across the busted concrete and approached a large steel door set into one of the corrugated-iron fences.

After a few seconds I followed him, almost tripping over an old bike in the darkness.

‘Pull that cord, will you,' he instructed when I joined him.

There came a distant tinkling of a bell from somewhere inside and, presently, the door opened a crack. A beaky nose, sallow cheeks, then those unmistakable blue eyes. Edward Degraves lurched through the door in pursuit of a snuffling black pug that had tried to dart past us.

‘Damn dog is always trying to escape,' he said when he had gathered it up and tossed it inside. ‘Gertrude would kill me if he got out. Kill
you
, I should say,' he told Max.

Although he betrayed no surprise at finding Max ringing his bell at three a.m. — indeed, he was fully dressed in a white shirt and black trousers — I detected Edward was displeased by my presence.

Perhaps picking up on this, Max was effusive on the fundamental excellence of my character and, as we climbed the rickety wooden stairs, he kept repeating what a wonderful person I was. ‘He's a great driver, Edward. Really very good. He even has his own car. We stopped and picked up a few things for breakfast. There's some chips, fresh apples from the health-food Nazis …'

The only sources of light upstairs were a tall, stooping lamp and a flickering television. Although the corners and walls of the warehouse space were almost invisible, I intuited the space was vast, as one might be aware, when camping, of an unruly wilderness stretching out beyond the glow of a camp-fire's light.

Edward clattered about making tea and coffee like a marionette butler, his movements slow but precise. He looked even more extraordinary than the recent morning (was it only yesterday?) when we'd met on the rooftop.

Max introduced me to Edward's wife, Gertrude. She was a tiny creature, with a nest of toffee-coloured hair drizzled about her head. The light from the television played across her pale face.

Gertrude smiled and shook my hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Tom. Why don't you come and sit on the sofa here. We're waiting
for the space shuttle to lift off. Shouldn't be long now.' Although she spoke with rounded vowels that betrayed schooling of some quality, each sentence devolved into a nervous, high-pitched cackle that lent her the air of a rather demented aunt. ‘We can watch it live on television without leaving the couch. Isn't that marvellous? Heh heh.'

Edward stalked over to us with trays of food and coffee. The tips of most of his fingers were discoloured with what I assumed was paint. He and Gertrude bickered over his selection of tea set; he hadn't put out the correct cups, according to Gertrude. Together, they were like the exiled monarchs of a kingdom imagined by Lewis Carroll.

We ate chips and watched the NBC
Today Show
broadcast from New York. The jolly weather guy was in a snow-blasted street somewhere in middle America, wearing ridiculous earmuffs that made him look like an oversized koala bear. Every ten minutes or so the friendly but deeply concerned anchors, Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley, crossed to Cape Canaveral to check on the preparations for the Space Shuttle
Challenger's
lift-off. Much was made of the fact that this time there was a female schoolteacher on board, in addition to the six professional astronauts.

The cameras panned to the crowd gathered to see the takeoff first-hand. A squinting man in a chequered jacket, picnicking families, kids smiling and waving tiny American flags.
And the weather looks terrific there and we should be set for a successful lift-off today. Of course it hasn't been all smooth sailing so far. There have been some problems
 …

‘Damn lift-off keeps getting delayed,' Edward said to no one in particular. ‘It was meant to take off last week but there was a problem with the ship.'

‘The whole thing is a scam,' said Max. ‘Even that moon landing was faked, you know. Filmed in some studio somewhere. I read
an article about it years ago that said Stanley Kubrick directed the whole thing. No one went to the moon. Why on earth would you? It's only a pile of dust.'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' said Edward. ‘Why would they do that?'

Max rolled his eyes. ‘For the money, the prestige, the knowledge that it could be done — the same reasons you fake anything. They won the space race, didn't they? Showed those blasted Russians a thing or two. This whole lift-off is probably faked.'

Gertrude indicated the TV, which was showing footage of a previous shuttle orbiting the Earth. ‘Oh, Max. Don't be daft. How could you fake that?'

‘Did you not see
Star Wars?
It's called special effects. Besides, it's all in the preconditions. Visions of Christ only materialise to those who already believe in that stuff. If people are desperate to believe in something, then they will. You of all people should know that, my dear.'

Gertrude shot Max a sharp glance, and there followed a strained silence. I enquired about the bathroom, and Edward waved a hand towards the dim recesses of the warehouse.

‘There's a cadmium painting there of an angular jester.'

I could hardly make out a thing in the meagre light, only shapes and shadows.

He sighed at my obvious incomprehension. ‘It's
red
. A red painting. The bathroom is to the left of that. Along that hall.'

I felt my way through the cavernous space, my vision adjusting as I went. The sound of the TV fell away behind me.

The spacious bathroom resembled one that might be found in a ruined Venetian palace. There was a dilapidated claw-foot bath on a black-and-white tiled floor, a crystal chandelier (minus a number of its glass droplets) and a couple of ferns tumbling from earthenware pots. A gilded mirror with carved cherubs lounging on its crest was large enough to reflect one's standing self. I went
to the toilet and splashed water on my face to freshen up.

When I came out I noticed another room directly opposite. Through its part-open door spilled a shard of light and the alluring odour of turpentine and oil paint. Across the warehouse, which must have measured twenty metres from end to end, the figures of Edward, Gertrude and Max were deep in discussion, their faces illuminated by the television's jittery light. From that distance they resembled actors on a faraway stage. While I watched, Edward swivelled on his chair to look in my direction, as if ensuring I was still out of earshot. Although there was no way he could have seen me, I instinctively shrank back against the wall.

Unable to contain my curiosity, I peeked into the other room. It had to be Edward's studio. In the centre of the room was an easel supporting what looked like a half-finished work of red and green shapes against a cream background. To my eye, the abstract painting displayed little in the way of technique or imagination, although the colours, juxtaposed as they were, were startling. A reading lamp was tied with wire to the easel. Scattered across a scarred wooden workbench were tubes of paint, rubber stamps, spoons, bottles of liquid, spatulas, brushes, and paint-smeared jars and plates. A hairdryer rested on the bench tangled, squid-like, in its black electrical cord.

On a shelf above the bench were arranged at least twenty cork-stoppered bottles of differing sizes, their labels so smudged and stained that they were hard to read. There was phenol something or other, saffron, gum arabic, linseed oil, gelatine, vinegar. Pinned to the walls were colour charts, postcards and photographs, yellowing hand-written notes in an indecipherable scrawl, chemical formulae. Some looked like they had been there for years. In addition, there were various colour reproductions of artworks torn from magazines or books: a couple of portraits, one of a woman who wore a faint moustache; another showing a pair of
women engaged in beheading a man with a sword, their faces set in expressions of stony pleasure. Only one of the reproductions was familiar to me, that of Pablo Picasso's lurid
Weeping Woman
, a painting much in the press lately on account of the National Gallery of Victoria's decision to purchase it.

Canvases both painted and bare were stacked on the floor against the wall, and there were at least a dozen others under the bench. For an impressionable country boy like me — who had for so long dreamed of an urban, bohemian life — such a studio was utterly compelling: its smell, the spring-loaded energy, a sense that things were created right here. The wonder I felt could not have been more exquisite than that of a surgeon's upon encountering his first wildly beating heart. The pug sidled into the room and began snuffling about my ankles like sea water around an outcrop of rocks.

I was preparing to leave when a painting lying flat on the end of the bench caught my eye. It was a rectangular canvas, taller than it was wide. It was a portrait of a woman seated in front of a wavering blue background with her arms crossed on her stomach. Her hands were lumpen against a dark dress and her face was misshapen, as if hewn from a difficult clay. Her brown hair was an indistinct bob. The woman's pose was defensive and in her eyes there nestled a challenge, as if she had sat for the portrait under sufferance. The paint was thickly applied. I peered at it, then back to the unfinished work on the easel. It was unlikely they were the work of the same hand. Neither was signed, as far as I could see.

A cough at my back startled me, and I wheeled around to find Gertrude hovering in the doorway. I had the overwhelming feeling that she had been observing me for several minutes. She was not even five feet tall, flat-chested, her body like that of a child's. Adding to this impression of girlishness was her habit of grasping the sleeves of her white top in her fists. She had worried at them so
much that the sleeves were frayed.

She crouched to pick up the dog and held it to her cheek, whispering to it in a language that sounded alien to my ears. The creature was so fat, it was tricky for her to hold. Its hind legs dangled against her stomach.

I began to apologise, but she waved my words away with a bony hand. ‘Did you meet my precious Buster?' she asked, scratching the pug beneath its chin.

The dog's yellow eyes half closed in ecstasy, and its growl became an insistent throb. It fell asleep. Gertrude looked from me back to the painting I had been inspecting.

‘Max told me Edward was a painter,' I said to explain my intrusion.

She hoisted the dog. ‘Yes, he is.'

I gestured around me at the paint-spattered bench, the walls covered in pictures. ‘It's wonderful. This studio.'

She laughed, somewhat derisively, I thought. ‘This is where it all happens.'

I indicated the portrait lying on the bench. ‘Is that one of Edward's?'

As if on cue, from the far side of the warehouse drifted the raised voices of Edward and Max.

‘No, no, no,' Max was saying. ‘That's where you are wrong, my friend. Oswald was set up all the way.'

‘They're always arguing, those two,' said Gertrude.
‘Men
. Always trying to prove they're right. As if they don't have enough already.'

She pointed at the colourful abstract painting on the easel. ‘That one is Edward's.'

I hmmed in a manner intended to sound both perplexed and appreciative, a vocal equivalent of tilting one's head while touching a finger to one's chin.

‘Tell me, Tom. Do you know much about art?'

‘No. I mean, I studied it a bit at high school, but that's all.'
I thought of old Mr Johnson in his tweed jacket (staring dreamily through a classroom window, as if willing it to transform into those of the Chartres Cathedral), trying to infuse sweaty schoolchildren with admiration for the Renaissance.

‘Which of the two do you prefer? Which do you think is better?'

‘Are those the same things?'

She ducked her head as if to concede my point, but said nothing.

For me — unschooled as I was — there was no question which was the superior work. The abstract painting on the easel seemed to me amateurish and ill-conceived, a jumble of shapes without meaning. The portrait of the woman, on the other hand, bristled with sullen energy. Its clumsiness was its very blood and skin. I suspected, however, that I was on dangerous ground when it came to expressing a preference.

‘I like them both,' I said.

‘I can see you are very diplomatic, Tom. It's a good quality in a person.' She regarded me, and in that light her eyes were like green marbles. ‘The portrait is by a man named Chaim Soutine. It's called
Woman with Arms Folded
.'

‘Is he a friend of yours?'

She laughed, but not unkindly. ‘Not quite. It's an, um, experiment, that's all. What do you think of it?'

‘I think it's amazing. Beautiful.'

I inspected the painting more closely. Its surface was cracked and the canvas was torn at its edges. ‘It looks old.'

She gave a gratified snort. ‘Well, you can have it when we've finished with it.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Oh, nothing. Nothing.'

I surveyed the studio again. ‘What about that abstract painting on the easel. Edward's one. What's that called?'

Gertrude made a scornful gurgle in her throat. ‘Who knows. The actual work is not so important these days.'

She put Buster on the ground and lit a cigarette with a match. Smoke plumed from her nostrils. ‘What matters is those artist statements. As long as you have one of those. Say it's about — I don't know — consumerism or your childhood abuse at the hands of evil nuns, and you will be fine. Mention intertextuality. The claim of what the work is about is more important than the work. Be a one-armed lesbian. Be a one-armed
Palestinian
lesbian. Make sure you're oppressed in some way — it's more authentic. Better still, get someone else to make the work for you. That way, you don't even have to get your hands dirty.'