Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi (9 page)

‘He was nice. A nice, well-read, well-mannered English boy.’

Jeff said,
‘H to He Who Am the Only One.’

‘Pawn Hearts,’
she said back. He thought she was about to laugh, but she didn't quite.

‘There's another one, but I can't quite remember it.’

‘The Least We Can Do Is Wave to Each Other,’
she said.

‘Of course.’

‘Aerosol Grey Machine.’

‘My,’ said Jeff, ‘you really know your Van der Graaf.’ He had had versions of this conversation – different groups, same format – dozens of times, but always with men. Having it with a woman was a different, altogether more thrilling experience.

As if reading his mind, she said, ‘This is a rather strange interview. Is
Kulchur
with a “k” and a “ch” a progressive rock magazine?’

‘Unfortunately not. Be great if it was, though,’ he said, conscious, suddenly, that he was having a good time. And the interview would turn out fine. Or would have done had she not reached forward and turned off the Dictaphone.

‘Do you like to smoke grass, Jeff?’

‘Sure.’

‘Good. To be honest with you, I'm somewhat of a pothead, though I'd appreciate it if you didn't put that in your piece.’

‘Absolutely.’

She went back in to the apartment, giving Jeff the opportunity to begin slightly regretting that confident ‘Sure.’ Back in the twentieth century he had enjoyed smoking grass, but with the new millennium dominated absolutely by super-strong skunk, he had pretty well given up on it. In the 1980s getting stoned on sensei had been fun, but getting bombed on skunk – and with skunk, there was no possibility of getting anything other than bombed – was a different experience. It was like a conduit to dread, to heebie-jeebies paranoia.

She returned with a bag of grass. Jeff tried not to appear nervous.

‘Uh, one thing,’ he said. ‘I don't smoke tobacco.’

‘Me neither. This is nice Jamaican grass. Not that horrible skunk.’

‘Oh, good,’ he almost shouted with relief. ‘I hate that.’ What an amazing time he was having in Venice. Everything was working out so well.

‘It's terrible, isn't it? God knows what it's doing to the minds of these kids who smoke it all the time.’

‘Quite,’ he said, for the second time in as many days.

She rolled a small thin joint, took a hit and passed it to Jeff. He did the same, passed it back. He became pleasantly stoned. They were pleasantly stoned together. The light was brighter, sharper. The canal threw shadow patterns on the yellow wall opposite. In fact, he was very stoned, but pleasantly so. This was what being stoned used to be like.

‘So, about Hawkwind,’ he said.

‘Now, remember, nothing about getting stoned in your article. No little nudges or winks.’

‘I promise.’ His throat was burning. He took a big gulp of water whose sparklingness made his throat sting, briefly, even
more. ‘Moving on, reluctantly, from seventies prog rock, maybe you could tell me a little about Steve Morison.’

‘Charming man. Quite good artist. Total cunt.’ This is dynamite, Jeff thought to himself, unsure, moments later, whether he had in mind the interview or the grass. ‘But, needless to say, I wouldn't want you to quote my saying that either.’

‘Oh, OK. You mean the whole of the answer or just the last part?’

‘No, just the first two parts.’ They both laughed. This was turning out to be
fun.

‘What do you think of his work now? Back in the sixties, he was so revered. I wondered how you felt it had stood up to the passage of time.’

‘I think it was extremely variable. His best is on a par with some Hodgkin.’ Jeff looked at her closely, hoping to penetrate her sunglasses, to see her eyes, to see how this remark had been intended. Hodgkin, in recent years, had become a complete joke. Jeff waited for her to expand on Hodgkin, but she went back to Morison. ‘And the earlier, figurative stuff is good. He had a knack of capturing the way people stood, their relationship to their surroundings. And if there
were
no surroundings, then just the way they stood in relation to themselves. Out of that there was a kind of psychological intensity that was very difficult to articulate but that was definitely there. Everyone could see it or sense it even though there was nothing – absolutely nothing – interior about the scene. It would be as objective as a photograph.’

‘Yes,’ said Jeff. Though impressed by the analysis, he was having trouble remembering how it had begun. That was the beauty of recording interviews, though. It was like an external memory. Except, he realized now, he had forgotten to turn the Dictaphone back on.

‘Fuck!’ He reached forward, pressed
Record.

‘Naturally you don't expect me to say all that again, do you?’ she said.

‘No, no.’

A motor boat went by, the canal swooshed and churned in its wake, making the shadow-swirls on the wall coil into life again.

‘Was it …? Bringing up Niki on your own. You lived partly in France and partly in London. How was that?’

‘Fine. We had a lovely apartment in Paris. A reasonable flat in London. We weren't short of money. Niki was an easygoing child.’

‘What about you? What were you doing? Apart from bringing her up, I mean.’

‘I didn't have any impulse to do anything much. I wrote a few articles. I had vague ideas about writing a book, but never got round to it.’

‘There was talk of a memoir.’

‘Oh, yes, I did a few little things, but I didn't have the application and there was nothing I wanted to get to the bottom of. So there was nothing to sustain me and nothing to propel me. And although I had a few famous friends, I actually felt too loyal to them, or too affectionate, to say anything interesting about them. You know, that kind of book always works best when there's some kind of betrayal involved. I had no interest in betraying or score-settling. And the idea of writing didn't interest me enough. So I just swanned around. Tell me, do you get bored?’

‘Me? Yes, all the time.’

‘That must be an advantage. You see, I've never had any capacity for boredom. I'm like one of those people you see in India or Africa, sitting by the roadside, staring into space. I can just do nothing all day long and I'm quite happy. And I've never had any ambition. Not even in its most basic,
negative form of envying other people's success. I think that's why I've had so many friends, I was really delighted for them to get on when so many of the other people around were measuring themselves against how everyone else was doing. I'm sorry, am I speaking too much?’

‘No, not at all. This is great, actually’ Jeff glanced towards the Dictaphone to make sure it was recording, to make sure that, by turning it on, he had not accidentally turned it off. Such things, he remembered, had a way of happening when you were stoned.

‘All of which applies particularly, presumably, to Niki?’ He was sharp as a pin! As Paxman!

‘Yes. It was obvious she was going to do something. If it hadn't been music, it would have been art or writing. Something like that. She had just enough discontent. Unlike me. I've always sat very comfortably in my own skin.’

It was true. She was just sitting there, comfortably, talking about herself but not in an egotistic way, imparting information about this person who happened to be herself. And it was easy to see why she had so many friends. She was easy to be around. She made you feel at ease – a thought that immediately made Jeff feel ill at ease, anxious about how to broach the subject of the picture Max had requested and which, in its way, was more important than everything that had gone before. The shadow of Julia's building was stretching across the wall opposite like a plimsoll line suggesting, as it moved slowly upwards, that cargo was being loaded onto this neighbouring house, causing it to sink slightly into the water. He turned off the Dictaphone.

‘Great. Thank you. That will work really well.’

‘That was painless.’

‘Good. The only other thing – and again it's something I think Max Grayson, my editor at
Kulchur
, mentioned. The
picture of you by Steven. They were hoping you might agree to let them reprint that with the article.’

‘You want to take the picture with you?’

‘Not necessarily. Whatever's easiest for you. If you prefer, they could arrange a courier or it could be scanned and sent electronically. But, well, it would be great if I could at least see it.’

‘And would you mind if I asked what was in it for me?’

‘No. In fact, one of the things I've been asked or authorized to do is to agree a fee with you.’

‘So?’

‘A thousand pounds?’

‘It's strange, this is one of those situations when I could be difficult.’

‘You'd certainly be within your rights.’

‘What if I just asked for more money? Money that, by the way, I don't even particularly want but, well, that
is
what you're meant to do, isn't it?’

‘Absolutely, yes. How about fifteen hundred? To be honest, that's the limit. Top dollar, as they say.’

‘Let me go and get the picture.’

She went inside again. He stood up and walked a few paces. He was still very stoned and it was still incredibly hot. The combination made him sit down again, under the diffused glow of the umbrella.

Julia came out with a folder, which she untied, revealing a yellowish, thick piece of paper. She flipped the folder over, opened it again and there was the drawing. She was naked, her legs apart. Between her legs was a scribble and blur of lines. She had lovely breasts – and it was obviously her. The face had the same prominent cheekbones, the same strangely blank expression. Even her hair was pretty much the same. It was easy to imagine that, if she undressed now, he would see roughly the same body as the one in the picture.

‘My,’ he said. He looked at her face in the drawing, but was unable to look at the face of the person who had handed it to him. There was the startling fact of the drawing showing her naked, but there was also an unsettling psychological quality to the picture – the quality she had commented on earlier. She was letting this man, her lover, look at her and draw her. To gaze at their lover, naked: it was what men had always wanted to do. If the man was an artist – or just a teenager with a camcorder – then what he painted or filmed was not simply what he saw but the unchanging strength of that desire, that hunger to see … But in her face there was an absolute indifference. Any love in his gaze was unreciprocated. Instead there was just a blank. Look all you want, her expression said. You can see everything and you will see nothing except what I have in common with every other woman on earth. One only needed to look at the picture for a few moments to know that the relationship was not going to endure. And presumably Morison knew this, either while he was doing it or, failing that, as soon as he had finished. Maybe that didn't matter, to either of them. Maybe the moment contained and recorded in this piece of paper was enough. But if that was true, then why was there such a sense of loneliness about the drawing: not hers – she was calm and perfectly still – but that of the person looking at her, the artist himself?

‘A hypnotic relation between the subject and the spectator is established in all Giorgione's pictures. This derives partly from the motionless, arrested scene, and partly from the unwavering look in the eyes of the portrait subject… The stillness produces the unrest.’

‘It's …’ He cleared his throat. ‘It's a remarkable picture.’

‘Yes.’ He handed it back to her. She returned the picture carefully to the folder, which she tied neatly together. ‘So I think you understand that I wouldn't want to give it to your
magazine – any magazine – either for a thousand, fifteen hundred pounds or … Or however much.’

‘I agree,’ said Jeff. ‘It's a very private picture.’

She looked at him. ‘You're not a very dedicated journalist,’ she said. ‘But you are an understanding one. That must be a disadvantage in your line of work.’

He shrugged.

‘Will your editor be as understanding?’

‘I don't think it's a sackable offence. Especially since I'm only freelance and so, strictly speaking, don't have a job from which I
can
be sacked.’

‘That's reassuring,’ she laughed.

Their meeting was over. They descended the cool stairs. She opened the door. Jeff thanked her, was about to shake her hand when she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. There was nothing sexual about it, but neither was it the standard continental air-kiss that was as conventionalized as a handshake. There was an intimacy about it that could not be accounted for, either by their getting stoned together, or because of the interview or because of the picture that he had just seen. He said goodbye, stepped out into the fierce heat, and heard the door shut jarringly behind him.

He walked back to the vaporetto stop at Campo d'Oro thinking, for the tenth time that day, that it was even hotter – otter – than it had been earlier. The vaporetto came quickly and was unusually empty. If nothing else, he was getting fantastic value out of his three-day pass. He stepped aboard, found a seat at the back and reached into his assortment of bags for the Dictaphone, wanting to listen back to what he had, to check the quality of recording. Instead of the Dictaphone, he pulled out his digital camera. Fuck! He had forgotten to take her picture. He had failed to come away
with the drawing and he had forgotten to take her picture. Of the three things he was supposed to have done, he had failed or forgotten to do two. And the one thing he'd not forgotten to do – the interview – had been sabotaged by forgetting to turn the fucking Dictaphone back on for the best part of it. He looked in his bags again: at least he still
had
the Dictaphone. He was in a panic, torn between getting off at the next stop, going back, ringing the door bell again and asking if she wouldn't mind, if it wasn't too much trouble, if he could … As with the email he hadn't sent the day before coming to Venice – ‘I just can't do this shit any more’ – he knew, even as he contemplated doing so, that he would not get off the boat, would not go back, would return to London empty-handed and would get told by
Kulchur
that they did not want him to do this shit any more because he could not be trusted – he could hear Max's voice rising –
to do the simplest fucking thing that he was asked – not asked, commissioned
, paid –
to do!
He knew also that as soon as he was told that they did not want him to do this shit any more he would realize how desperately he wanted to keep doing this shit that he did not want to do any more. He wished he was not stoned, wished he could think clearly. That was something else he remembered about getting stoned, one of the reasons he'd gradually stopped doing it: there always came a time, when you were stoned, when you wished you weren't stoned, when you needed to not be stoned, needed to think clearly. Venice was sliding past, glinting and greeny-gold, watery. Many of the grand palazzos were adorned with large banners publicizing Biennale-related art events and exhibitions. Glancing round, he saw that the vaporetto had filled up as it had stopped at whichever stops it had stopped at since he had got on at his stop, was actually very crowded. Well, what could he do now, about the photo that he had not
taken? Nothing. The best thing was not to think about it, not to worry.