Francis Bacon in Your Blood (51 page)

Francis pays the bill, which seems to have quadrupled with the wine we've drunk, but I know he's pleased because he leaves an even larger tip than usual. The waiters, who have gravitated more and more attentively round us in the course of the meal, look pleased too, and the manager comes over with the cloaks lady to add his thanks and as we are helped into our coats and escorted deferentially towards the door I realize that Francis's magic still works, not only on me but on the whole staff of the restaurant where we arrived like wet dogs and are now leaving like top celebrities. I'd like to go back home, while we're still on a high, but I know that's not going to happen because, with Francis, we always have to go too far to go anywhere, and although I'd dearly love a normal night's sleep when I think of all the magazine problems I'll have to face the next day, if I'm truthful the idea of pushing the boundaries excites me too, perversely enough, although I've come to dread the sudden volte-face in Francis that takes him from genial to abusive and wounding in the space of a single glass.

We're silent in the taxi that takes us over the dark river to the Halles, and when we arrive Francis is put out because we're told at the Pied de Cochon that if we only want drinks we should go to a café, so we settle on a dingy, neon-lit bar round the corner where we're offered a sticky-looking bottle of Calvados that looks even more dubious as it's trickled out into cloudy balloon glasses. Francis begins to repeat what he's said earlier, adding odd bitter phrases, ‘Well, that's been cancelled out now, just like the night train between London and Paris. The few things that give people just the slightest bit of comfort have been done away with. That's why I don't travel anywhere any more . . .' He's clearly drunk now, as well as wheezing audibly, and I begin looking for a way out of what I know will be an ever-decreasing
spiral of words, and to bolster my resolve I think about Jill coming to join me soon and say:

‘It's been a fantastic evening, Francis, but I have to get back to check the proofs for the next issue before morning.'

Francis looks taken by surprise. He's about to say something, but checks himself. Then he gives me his sharpest abrupt stare, so that even in the café's gloom I feel I've been suddenly X-rayed down to the bone.

‘You've changed in some way, Michael,' Francis says eventually. ‘I've noticed it all evening. As if you'd gone religious. You haven't gone religious or something, have you?'

Out in the street I make my way against the rain towards the rue Rambuteau, past the late-night scavengers going through the dustbins and the last tired whore standing in a doorway in her blood-red dress and white plastic thigh-boots. I start laughing to myself in little, hysterical bursts. Religious! Francis could have been much more upset by my having fallen so deeply in love and becoming to that extent less under his dominion. Religious! Given how aggressive that realization might have made him, I think as I come out of the rain into the arcades around the Place des Vosges, I've got off very lightly, very lightly indeed – this time at least.

Between financial forecasts and deadlines I've been thinking about
Minotaure
and
Cahiers d'Art
, the great French art magazines of the 1930s, and wondering how they managed to stay afloat. They would of course have attracted the occasional benefactor, as we – to my lasting wonderment – have been lucky enough to find Mariella. But they would also have counted on the support of the artists they championed, from Picasso and Braque, Miró and Giacometti onwards, receiving the odd work from them for sale. Both the publishers and some of the foremost writers, like André Breton and Paul Eluard, bolstered their and the magazines' slender fortunes by doing some picture-dealing on the side (‘with their left hand', as the French say). Things have
changed radically since, however. The art world has grown out of recognition, and the relationship between artists, publishers and writers is far less cosy. There are also much clearer indications as to what constitutes a ‘conflict of interest'. It would be deemed unacceptable if I devoted an issue of the magazine to Dubuffet or Tàpies and financed it by selling a piece of their work. I have avoided any involvement in any aspect of the art market until now, but I realize that the very fact of owning and running an art magazine makes me part of that market – and that, if the whole ship is to avoid capsizing, I'd better rethink my aloof attitude to commerce. For some reason, while I'd feel ill at ease trying to pry paintings out of the more important artists I know in order to boost the magazine's finances, I have no such scruples if it's a question of doing a limited edition of prints with them, possibly because it would be a joint venture with the proceeds shared.

As a result, after much soul-searching, I've decided to publish a numbered edition of engravings with Tàpies while devoting part of an issue to his work, in which the prints will be put on sale at a special, advantageous price for our subscribers. This, I hope, will supplement our other income and help the magazine survive. We have several other major artists on our hit list, with of course Francis in the number-one slot. I'm not sure how he would react to a request of this kind, although I suspect that, unlike Tàpies and most artists, he would waive any financial benefit for himself because of our friendship. I dither for several months, uncomfortable with the idea of asking a favour from someone who has shown me so much generosity. But when the magazine's finances dip alarmingly into debt and the bank starts raking in a hefty commission on it, I allow desperation plus a couple of bottles of expensive wine to take the lead and put it to him bluntly over dinner.

‘Of course I will,' Francis says unhesitatingly. ‘You should have asked before. But why bother to do just one image? Why don't we do a complete triptych? It would make a more interesting lithograph and you should be able to get a better price for it.'

I make up for lost time and go from magazine publisher to fine-art publisher overnight. Printed on Arches paper, trial sheets of each of the
Three Studies of the Male Back
have been seen and corrected by Francis, and now the full edition, with separate
épreuve d'artiste
and
hors commerce
suites, has been delivered in large portfolios to the office. They sit there, numbered but unsigned, awaiting the alchemist's touch to transmute them into gold. A large table has been cleared, numerous graphite pencils sharpened and several bottles of Cristal stowed away in our ancient, wheezing fridge. When Francis arrives, he has several hundred sheets to sign. Consummately professional, he gets down to work, refusing a drink until later. His hand races over sheet after outsize sheet, and he pauses only once to say, in a distracted voice, ‘I can hardly remember what my name is,' before the whole edition has been signed. Our staff gathers round, cheered by the prospect of a celebration, and the champagne corks are popped. They confidently expect him to say ‘Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends,' but instead he toasts them all individually by name, thereby winning their vote for ever. The large salmon that Eli has poached is brought to the table and consumed amid merriment with a cucumber-and-yoghurt salad and a big, sunny Rhône wine.

The next day Francis and I have a lunch appointment with Michel Leiris. I am always delighted to attend, whether the occasion takes place at a very grand restaurant like Taillevent or the Tour d'Argent or somewhere more modest, and more easy-going, like L'Escargot in the Halles or Le Petit Zinc. Yet often I wonder why Francis bothers to take me along since, although he'll ask me for the odd word or phrase, he speaks French too well to really need my interpreting skills. Francis has actually become very much himself in French, moulding certain expressions to his own needs and bolstering his opinions with a few choice idioms. He says ‘
au fond
 ' the whole time, as if unearthing new depths of meaning in the phrase that follows, and he likes to make what he thinks of as self-evident truths
about life even more self-evident with a very emphatic, sibilant ‘
bien sûr
'. So apart from being younger and enthusiastic, I don't feel I'm contributing much to the proceedings. We go to the Petit Zinc where Francis expatiates so fulsomely on the silvery zinc bar that I wonder whether he isn't thinking of incorporating it into a picture as he has already done with a similar structure he admired in the casino at Monte Carlo. Michel, resplendent in a recently broken-in Savile Row suit, is as punctual as we are. The conversation is fairly stilted until the first few bottles have been drunk, but then Michel opens up with almost alarming cordiality, laughing immoderately, attentive to every allusion and double-entendre, his face wrinkling and unwrinkling like a piece of pastry kneaded and smoothed. Suddenly Francis cuts across the conversation to say something that has been on his mind for a good while now:

‘
C'est horrible la vieillesse, n'est-ce pas?
'

‘
Oui
,' says Leiris. ‘
C'est horrible et c'est sans remède
.'

‘
Voilà
,' Francis repeats triumphantly, as if old age had at last been nailed down into a definition. ‘
C'est horrible et sans remède
. Ghastly and irremediable.'

They then get down to trying to sum up what ‘realism' means in as few, concise words as possible. This concept has preoccupied them for some time now, because Francis maintains that he is not an Expressionist (‘After all,' he repeats disarmingly, ‘I've got nothing to express') but a realist, in the sense that he attempts in his painting to convey as intensely as possible the ‘reality' – or, as he puts it, the ‘facts' – of life. This is very important for him because he feels that, despite other people's claim to the contrary, he has in no way exaggerated the ‘violence' of life in his work (‘You only have to open a newspaper to see the horror that goes on in the world every day'). Michel agrees with him on this point and has resolved to write an essay that will attempt to pin down the slippery concept of ‘realism' as he has experienced it while studying Francis's paintings. The discussion takes a more problematic turn when Michel suggests that it is almost
impossible to define ‘realism' until one has defined the larger, more amorphous notion of ‘reality'. A further bottle is called for and definitions are batted to and fro, with the ‘realism' of Van Gogh invoked, as well as the stark realism of Shakespearean tragedy. ‘What could be more poignantly realistic than those marvellous lines in
Macbeth
,' Francis remarks, ‘where Shakespeare says that life is “a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing”?'

Much of the lunch is also spent in exchanging volleys of praise about Michel's writings and Francis's pictures. It seems at times like a diplomatic occasion where two powerful countries are exchanging tributes before getting down to the substance of their negotiations. But there is not much substance left. Michel has given his support by writing several prefaces to Francis's exhibitions, from the key Grand Palais event of 1971 to Claude Bernard's show. Francis realizes that his success in France was in part due to Michel's prestigious endorsement, although he no longer needs it. For his part Michel, having been the close writer friend of both Picasso and Giacometti, is conscious that Bacon seems to be the most worthy successor, not least because he himself is a lifelong Anglophile and adores letting himself go in the tolerant pastures of Muriel's Colony Room (to me he has recounted his surprise when one Colony member took him in his arms late at night and asked him longingly: ‘Are you alone?'). But more than anything now, they enjoy exchanging phrases and pithy definitions. ‘One is never disciplined enough,' Francis says. ‘You have to be disciplined even in frivolity, perhaps above all in frivolity.' And both he and Michel agree that ‘art is a métier for the old'.

I don't agree but since the idea clearly appeals to them both I don't say anything. Once Michel has left the restaurant to be taken back home by his chauffeur, Francis says to me: ‘I kept looking at the way those veins stick out on Michel's temples and wondered what would happen if I pricked them with my fork. I suppose they'd just burst.'

This annoys me, a bit drunk as I am on lunchtime wine, because it seems unnecessarily cruel and disloyal.

‘Well, why don't you give it a go, Francis?' I ask.

‘Are you mad?' he says in an aggrieved tone. ‘I was just wondering out aloud.'

I sense a row brewing so I pretext a meeting at the office about the special issue we're planning to do on him. Francis looks at me rather sourly but says he'll call so that we can meet again for lunch before he goes back to London.

People often ask me what Francis is like. I could say he's strung between extremes – very generous with his time and money, for instance, but very critical and unforgiving in his opinions of other people and above all their art; very supportive but also very destructive; very vain and arrogant yet surprisingly realistic and modest. But then I have to go on qualifying all these characteristics, and I need a single phrase, so I say: whenever you're with him, the temperature goes up. And that's just what has happened today. When the two of us meet at Le Duc, it looks like any prosperous, lunchtime gathering in Paris: a mixture of businessmen, staid bourgeois couples and the odd couple of not-so-young and presumably adulterous lovers. Although the fish here is excellent, the restaurant's atmosphere is distinctly formal and dull. The moment Francis arrives, greeting the staff affably and ordering champagne, things change. The manager comes over to say hallo, the waiters move more alertly and the clients begin, very slowly at first, to shake off the conventional torpor that they seem to think is called for in these staid circumstances. The temperature goes up. Francis engages the wine waiter, dark-haired and good-looking, in a spot of banter, then orders a very expensive Bordeaux. The wine waiter compliments him on his choice, at which, once the wine has been decanted, Francis invites him to have a glass of it with us. He would adore to, the wine waiter says, but it would be against house rules, so Francis pours him a large glass which he takes away with him through
the service door. The door then opens several times during our meal, as in a French farce, to reveal the grinning wine waiter toasting us discreetly but enthusiastically from across the room. Somehow this charade and Francis's manic good humour seem to generate a wave of jollity: people begin to laugh, more wine is ordered and what would otherwise have been a good but average lunch eventually turns into a feast.