Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi (4 page)

‘It really is, isn't it?’ he said. ‘I don't know why everyone seems to be doing it. But what about you and here? Are you writing about the Biennale for someone?’

‘For
Vogue,’
she said. Well, that was one of the reasons for writing books. You got offered gigs like this. As happened, Jeff's admiration immediately became tinged with jealousy even though, aside from a few details – accommodation, fee, and the nature of the article – they were here for the same purpose, were having the same experience. That was the thing about the Biennale: it was a definitive experience, absolutely fixed, subject only to insignificant individual variation. You came to Venice, you saw a ton of art, you went to parties, you drank up a storm, you talked bollocks for hours on end and went back to London with a cumulative hangover, liver damage, a notebook almost devoid of notes and the first tingle of a cold sore.

They were joined by David Kaiser, a film-maker (i.e., someone who made telly programmes), and Mike Adams, an editor at
Frieze.
Jessica knew them both too. The Kaiser was just back from Saudi Arabia, ‘a truly vile country, worth visiting if only to have an experience of unsurpassable vileness.’ The experience of going without alcohol for a week had had a profound effect on him.

‘It was like being in the desert and seeing a mirage,’ he said. ‘Every few seconds, whatever I was doing, whoever I was talking to, I'd zone out. All I could see was a pint of beer. The climate is very conducive to drinking, obviously, and you can't do it.’ Mike and Jeff shook their heads in disgust, nodded in sympathy. This was a story, evidently, with a strong human-interest angle, even though it wasn't the main point of the story. The main point of the story was how the Kaiser had discovered he was a Muslim. ‘I was confronted by a member of the police or the committee to promote virtue. He didn't say anything, no
“Salaam ali Kuhn”
or anything like that, just “Have you read the Qu'ran?” I said, “Yes, I have.” He said, “Did you read it properly?” I said I thought I had, yes. He said, “Then you are a Muslim. Good.” End of conversation. Implacable logic’

‘And all the time he's speaking to you,’ said Mike, ‘all you're thinking about and seeing is this big, chilled Heineken in a frosted glass, right?’

‘Not necessarily a Heineken. Sometimes a Budvar.’

‘But always a lager? Never a real ale?’

‘It was too hot for real ale. But let's not get bogged down in specifics,’ he said. ‘There's a larger point here.’

‘I thought we were already in receipt of the lager point,’ Jeff quipped. ‘How much bigger can this story get?’

‘The point is that it took this trip to Saudi to make me realize that, all things considered, for the last thirty years, I have loved beer, if not more intensely, then certainly more constantly than anything else in my life.’

The Kaiser was forty-six so that sounded about right. There was no opportunity to dwell on this expression of faith, however. In accordance with the laws of social physics the group of four had begun to draw others into its conversational orbit: Melanie Richardson from the ICA, Nathalie
Porter who worked at
Art Review
, and Scott Thomson, whom Jeff had known, off and on, for more than a decade. During that time, while other people changed jobs and advanced their careers, Scott had continued working at the same undemanding job (interrupted by lengthy periods spent travelling) as a sub at the
Observer.
That was how he earned his living but his true vocation was to be a perpetual convert, every few years embracing a new enthusiasm so wholeheartedly that it completely cancelled out whatever he'd previously set so much store by. His latest craze, though, was the same one he'd been evangelizing eight months ago: Burning Man, the big freak-out in the Nevada desert. He'd been for the first time a couple of years ago and was going again in August. It was, he said now, ‘a life-changing experience.’ Scott had said exactly the same thing the last time Jeff had seen him, at a party for the Frieze Art Fair, and he was happy to take his word for it. Not Mike, though.

‘In my experience,’ he said, ‘the thing about life-changing experiences is that they wear off surprisingly quickly so that after a few weeks you emerge from them pretty much unchanged. Nine times out of ten, in fact, it's precisely the life-changing experience that enables you to come to terms with the
un
changingness of your own life. That's why those novels are so popular, you know, the ones that culminate in a day or an event that will “change all of their lives forever.” It's a fiction.’

‘God,
you
don't change, do you, dude? Cynical as ever.’ Credit where it's due: Scott (who was always calling people ‘dude’) had not taken offence; in fact, he was laughing as he said this whereas Mike, while not being aggressive exactly, had spoken somewhat severely.

The slight tension generated by this exchange was broken by a guy in a blue linen jacket, who backed into Jeff, spilling
his drink. He half-turned round and Jeff instinctively apologized. No self-restraint was required; this was how the aggressive impulse manifested itself. In its way it was a triumph of evolution, of cultivation. Jeff's frustration simmered constantly; confronted with a recalcitrant piece of equipment – a frozen computer, a jammed printer – it boiled over, but in social situations it always transmuted itself, without effort, into its smiling opposite.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder: Jeff recognized him instantly, actually knew him quite well, but his name, for the moment, escaped him. Like a witness scrutinizing a police photo-fit of a suspect, Jeff registered the details of his appearance – broad nose, short brown hair, white shirt emphasizing tanned complexion – but they refused to add up to a name, an identity. Jessica and Melanie were talking to a guy in a blue Bob Marley T-shirt and pale jeans. Mike and the Kaiser had wandered off. The original little group, having acquired a gravitational mass, was dispersing, fragmenting into new groups. Ah, this was Venice, this was a party … A party where there were a lot of nice-looking women, all decked out in their Missoni and Prada dresses.

‘Plenty of nice-looking women here,’ said … What the fuck
was
his name? Before Jeff had started racking his brains, trying to dredge up his name, he'd been thinking exactly the same thing but, said aloud, this completely accurate observation took on a surprisingly coarse quality. It suggested that your life was spent in a woman-less pub, empty except for a few men gazing forlornly into their pints of aptly-named bitter. Blotting out this image, Jeff took a sip of his womanly bellini.

‘There really are,’ he said as they stood there, bellinis in hand, looking. Of course it was nice, being at a party full of nice-looking women, but the real value of this situation – a party full of nice-looking women – was that it meant there
would be one woman who was stunningly gorgeous, who was radiant in a way that only one man in the party – Jeff, hopefully – could properly appreciate. And so it proved.

It was her hair he noticed first: shadow-dark, falling to just below her shoulders. She had her back to him. She was tall. She was wearing a pale yellow dress, sleeveless. Her arms were thin, tanned. She was talking to a shaven-headed man in a striped shirt. The guy whose name Jeff still couldn't remember was talking about an artist he'd not heard of who did these drawings of trees that took forever to do and looked exactly like photographs – that was the
point –
even though they were drawings. Jeff nodded but all his attention was focused on the dark-haired woman in the yellow dress. She was still facing away, still chatting to the shaven-headed guy in the striped shirt, but he knew that when she turned round she would be beautiful. There was so little doubt that he was not even impatient to have this prediction verified. All he had to do was stand and wait. So he stood there, glass in hand. The shaven-headed guy was laughing at something another shaven-headed guy had said. A woman came up to her and touched her on the shoulder. She turned round, smiling when she recognized her friend, whom she kissed on the cheek. Without being able to make out the details of her face, Jeff knew that he had been right. As she stood chatting with her friend he saw her dark eyes and pronounced cheekbones. Her hair, parted in the middle, was almost straight. To the impartial onlooker her face may have appeared too bony, slightly equine; that was it, the flaw that clinched it for him, the flaw that was not a flaw. He was no longer listening to what was being said, just standing there gawping. He tore his gaze away from her, focusing again on his companion, who was no longer talking about the photographs that looked liked drawings of trees or whatever it was. It occurred to Jeff that he had entered
the
vague
phase of his life. He had a vague idea of things, a vague sense of what was happening in the world, a vague sense of having met someone before. It was like being vaguely drunk all the time. The only thing he was not vague about was the woman in the yellow dress, who – he glanced over at her again – was still chatting with her friend. The guy with the maddeningly elusive name was still speaking. Jeff was listening, trying to listen, but he was also calculating how he might introduce himself to the woman in the yellow dress, who, when he looked back to where she had been standing, was nowhere to be seen. The reason for this calamity that was not a calamity was that she and her friend had come over, were saying hello to Frank. Frank! That was his name, Frank Delaney. Of course it was. The woman he
wanted to meet
had just come over and revealed the identity of the person whose name he
wanted to remember.
What was happening? Was this a day when he could not make a false move, when he only had to think of something to cause it to happen? This was the kind of luck that drove people mad, convinced them that God was telling them to do terrible things, to assassinate presidents or celebrities.

It was now just a matter of time. Jeff had only to stand there, smiling, holding his empty bellini glass and, in seconds – assuming Frank could remember
his
name – he would be introduced to the person in the room he most wanted to meet. Up close he could see that the yellow dress had a faint pattern. She was wearing no make-up – or at least had applied it so skilfully that it was invisible – and a thin silvery necklace. He guessed that she was in her early thirties. Her eyes – laughing at something Frank was saying – were brown. Frank made the introductions. Her name was Laura, Laura Freeman. He shook her hand, her thin hand. On her middle finger was a large yellow ring, made of perspex. Her friend was called
something that, in his excited state, Jeff forgot the moment it was said. Anxious to make a good impression, he focused his attention on this friend while Laura talked to Frank. How was she enjoying Venice? Where was she from? He asked the questions but was incapable of listening to the answers or of preventing his gaze straying back to Laura, who glanced in his direction, once, while he was looking at her. When Frank said something to the friend, Jeff seized the opportunity to address his first remark to Laura. It didn't matter what this remark was. It could be ditchwater dull. The important thing was to say something, anything, to get the ball rolling. He looked at her but there was only one thing to say. If he said anything else it would be a lie, and since he couldn't say what he wanted to say – you're beautiful and unless you have a voice like David Beckham's, I'm going to be in love with you in less than a minute – he said nothing. She was waiting for him to speak and he just looked at her. She was tall, five-ten, maybe. A couple of inches shorter than Jeff. Beneath the thin strap of her yellow dress he could see the white strap of her bra. She had small breasts. A voice in his head was saying,
Act normal, act normal, say something
normal.
Don't act like a nutter.
She came to his rescue.

‘So, when did you get here, to Venice?’ He watched her form the words. It was the most normal question in the world and, although it didn't break the spell, it at least enabled him to function normally again.

‘Just now, a couple of hours ago. How about you?’

‘Yesterday.’ She was American.

‘Where are you from?’ He was speaking. They were having
a conversation.
This was how it was done: she said something and he said something back. It was easy.

‘Los Angeles,’ she said. He wanted to say
I'll move there tomorrow
, but managed to ask if this was her first Biennale.

‘Second. I came last year. Two years ago.’ He nodded enthusiastically. Two years ago. It was amazing that a simple statement of fact could be so magical, so
interesting.
‘How about you?’

‘I was here once before, four years ago.’ As far as Jeff was concerned, this was just about the most fascinating conversation he'd ever had, but it could not go on like this. At some point he would have to break out of the loop of pleasantries. She looked at him as if she were waiting, possibly for him to say something interesting, and if that did not happen then she would be waiting to find a way of extricating herself from this non-conversation. Without thinking he said, ‘I love your dress.’

The effect was, simultaneously, to relieve the pressure in his head and – since this remark carried a suggestion of sexual appreciation, was so close to a declaration of love for the person inside it – to drastically increase it.

‘Thank you,’ she said. Jeff realized that she was fully aware of the effect she was having on him. Instead of further inhibiting him, it enabled him to relax.

‘It's a great dress,’ he said. ‘But, frankly, it wouldn't be anything without the shoulders. And most importantly of all…’ She raised her eyebrows enquiringly, uncertainly. To have said ‘breasts’ would have been so crude as to have destroyed whatever vibe may have been germinating between them but, though his head routinely swarmed with crudity, he had never intended to say anything other than what he did say: ‘The collarbones.’

She was visibly relieved – he wasn't a complete jerk! – and flattered.

‘Well, thank you again.’ He had spoken honestly. Her shoulders were not wide; they were bony but strong-looking.