Judith (11 page)

There was one of Oliver's paintings, a mural, in an alcove. It was of a female figure lying on a rock with sea-anemones and crabs crawling over her. It seemed unfinished.

Oliver said ‘She is Lilith. Do you know the story of Lilith?'

I said ‘No.'

He said ‘Lilith was Adam's first wife. God had made her equal to Adam. So when she and Adam made love, she wanted
to be equally on top. Adam objected to this, so Lilith flew away and lived on a rock. From there she sent out demons to plague mankind.'

The figure of Lilith was like a womb turned inside out. Her skin was white, as if from acid in the stomach of a whale.

Oliver said ‘Be nice to these people! Poor old Jonahs: all eaten up by the devils sent by Lilith!'

Oliver, when he was not being venomous, was being flattering to me at this time. I thought – He does not know which way to hang: from the good breast or the bad breast of his mother.

Or – You mean Lilith would not have had to go away to her rock if she had learned about the powers there are in being underneath?

The people we met in the house in North London were large smooth men like drops of oil on the point of touching substance and spreading. They seemed to be from the Middle East: they gave the impression of being to do with yachts, and armaments. In the house in North London there was not much at first that went on: the atmosphere was like that of the party that Oliver had taken me to when I first met him. But these men did not seem to be residents of any holy of holies: they were like vessels that came in to be scraped and caulked before setting out again.

There had been a story in one of the
Die Flamme
magazines about Oliver's Middle East connections. They had suggested he was some sort of pimp: not only for the sake of what might be his art, but because he liked this sort of power.

The first time I went to the house in North London there was some party or reception. I was to act as a sort of hostess: I was to move among these people carrying caviare and biscuits on a plate. But what they seemed to get from me was the feel of something that they (or indeed I) could not quite grasp: a lick of some fantasy unseen and unspoken: what was it these people had not got that they could still want to feel?

They watched me from behind dark glasses. I thought –
Oliver will get commissions to paint harems in the Middle East? They want their heads cut off like Holofernes?

I said to Oliver ‘What have you told them?'

Oliver said ‘What do you mean, what have I told them?'

I thought – You have turned me inside out: they feel there is some glow about me; some radiation.

What I worked out was that Oliver must have told them – I am sorry about this: there are, indeed, here parts of the story of which I am ashamed – was that I was something to do with royalty. I mean not, of course, that I was royal: but that I had been, was being, fucked by someone royal: what else would such men want to rub off on; to have rub off on to them? I mean, what else could they not get for money? And what else, for me, might be nearer rock bottom?

I had thought – But of course, I am in the tent of Holofernes; should I not be good at getting something apart from this?

There were the walls with beautiful tiles and statues of nudes like surfaces from which blood could be wiped off.

I said to Oliver ‘What exactly have you told them?'

He said ‘They are dealers in uranium and plutonium, which are the modern philosopher's stones.'

I said ‘What is your connection with them?'

He said ‘The Israelis bugger the South Africans who bugger the Arabs who bugger the Israelis.'

I said ‘But what do they pay you for?'

He said ‘The snake that eats its own tail.'

I said ‘And what is that?'

He said ‘Queen Sheherazade.'

I said ‘Hullo.'

‘Hullo.'

‘Is that the Professor?'

‘Yes.'

‘You gave me your number.'

‘I did.'

‘Can I see you?'

‘You can.'

‘When?'

‘Lunchtime.'

‘Where?'

‘The National Gallery.'

‘Whereabouts?'

‘Do you know a painting by Piero di Cosimo of a girl lying on her side with a wound in her throat?'

‘Yes.'

‘You do?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then that's all right.'

‘I see.'

‘I'll see you there.'

‘Thanks.'

Hullo, hullo, all you who find yourselves on spiral staircases; who look out of windows: you think you can fly?

You make your mind a blank: you think your number will come up on the roulette wheel –

On my way through the rooms of the National Gallery there was a huge St Sebastian on the wall like a board stuck through with darts: a row of Virgin Marys on their thrones like lavatories.

I thought – What is the difference between these images and those hatched out of the dark in the house in North London?

The painting by Piero di Cosimo is of a girl lying on her side with wounds in her throat and wrists: at her head there is a faun kneeling; at her feet a large brown dog. Behind her is a beach of pink-gold sand on the edge of what looks like an estuary: there are blue and silver hills beyond this in the distance. On the sand are three dogs playing: above the estuary is a line of birds dropping down like notes of music.

I thought – These people are not posing? They are getting on with what they are to be doing?

Then – This might be myself? You are the brown dog? You are the faun?

On the same wall at the other side of the room there was a painting by the same artist of a battle between Lapiths and Centaurs. Squat grey figures bash at each other with clubs and stones and something that looks like a chandelier: they seem to be fighting in the middle of a picnic. Everyone seems to be having a good time: they glow with the ghastly bottom-of-the-ocean light of a flash photograph, or the figures in Oliver's paintings.

I thought – Well, people do think they're having a good time with this sort of posing, showing-off, don't they?

I went back to the picture of the girl with the wound in her throat. I had loved this picture from the first time I had seen it. I thought I would wave and say – Coo-ee!

The Professor said ‘Hullo.'

I said ‘Hullo.'

We stood side by side looking at the picture. I thought – You mean, you have nothing to say to me?

– Then who is it that I talk to?

I looked up at a corner of the ceiling.

After a time the Professor said ‘Now come along here.' He took me by the arm and led me through the gallery.

He went past the St Sebastians like dart-boards and the Virgin Marys on their thrones. I thought – You mean, they pose for those who need them to be posing?

We came to rest in another room in front of a picture which was a small Filippo Lippi of the Annunciation. I had not noticed this before. The Virgin Mary, on the right, is in a courtyard on a chair over which something like a towel has been placed; she is not on her throne; she is leaning forward with a hand beneath her breast: she is facing the angel, to the left, who is kneeling in a small garden. Beyond and between them is a doorway to a staircase down which there has flown a small bird; its passage is marked by a spiral of light. At the top of the picture, almost outside the frame, is a hand with two fingers pointing down. The bird has stopped in the air and is gazing intently at Mary's middle. Mary and the angel are watching the bird.

I thought – You mean, they too are not posing? They are getting on with whatever it is they are to be doing –

– That bird: that finger coming down –

– They are from just outside the painting?

The Professor said ‘Now this.'

I thought – I want to sit down.

He said ‘Only one more.'

He led me through other galleries. I felt I might be going to faint. Once the Professor seemed to lose his way. He stopped and looked around, humming. I thought – He is waiting for that bird, that finger to come down?

He said ‘Here.'

He stopped in front of a small picture by Giorgione of the Adoration of the Magi. There was the usual group of Mary and the child and St Joseph on the left –

I thought I might say – I'm not well.

I said ‘I'm sorry.'

He said ‘That's all right.'

There are Mary and the child and St Joseph on the left; the three wise men and various worshippers and onlookers on the right. Mary and Joseph and two of the wise men are gazing not at the child but at a place on the ground just in front of him: this space is quite empty except for some faint marks which might once have been a nest containing something like four stones. The child has a finger up to his mouth and is looking out of the picture to the left: also looking in this direction is a donkey.

I thought – You mean, they are intent on something that is both within, and without, the framework of the picture?

The Professor led me to one of the upholstered seats in the middle of the room. We sat down. He said ‘Phew!' He seemed to be exhausted.

I thought – All the lights have come on in the auditorium of the theatre?

I said ‘They're watching what they themselves are doing: they're not reacting; they're not posing: they are listening.'

He said ‘Yes.' Then – ‘What are you on, any of the hard stuff?'

I said ‘In that battle between the Lapiths and Centaurs, they're all posing as if for a photograph.'

He said ‘You're finding it difficult to get off?'

I said ‘I can get off.'

He seemed to hum. He tapped his foot up and down. Then he said ‘Well, let's have lunch then.' I thought – I can't have lunch.

I said ‘What are they looking at in that empty space on the ground?'

He said ‘Put your head down. There.'

I said ‘I think I'm going to faint.'

He said ‘Well, I want a large whisky.'

I thought – The faun had one hand on her shoulder –

– The finger, then the bird, coming down –

– The nest, where it laid, is now empty?

There was a bright light as if the curtain had come down and all the audience were leaving the theatre.

I thought – You mean, we can get on with whatever it is we are to be doing?

He said ‘Rum tiddle di um, tum, tum tum.'

I said ‘I've got to get some air.'

He said ‘Meet you in the square in five minutes.'

I wanted to say – But why me?

It was as if we were sitting in that picture, in the courtyard. He had his hand on my shoulder. He might say – Now now, Mary!

I would say – I didn't mean –!

I said ‘Whereabouts in the square?'

He said ‘By the right-hand fountain.'

I thought – Right as you look at it?

He said ‘Right as you look at it, not right as you look back from the square.'

I thought – Oh, but would they not, indeed, have been blinded, those people, when they looked out from their cave, into the sun!

I said ‘Perhaps what they were looking at was light.'

He said ‘Perhaps what who were looking at was light?'

I said ‘Those people in the farmyard.'

He said ‘God Almighty.' Then – ‘Take your time.' Then – ‘I'm getting my whisky.'

There is something, I suppose, I ought to put in here: as a rest from the light: as if it were a glass of whisky –

There had been recently an evening in the house in North London when Oliver had done more than he usually did: he had staged, or helped to stage, some performance.

It is difficult to write about these things because, again, a description seems more affecting than a performance. A performance seems often not much to do with you at all. Words are not good – are they? – at showing the silliness of shadows.

The performance was trying to make shadows flesh on a wall: what would a dreamer see – what would happen to a dream – if the dreamer saw it enacted?

At first I was to move as before among the guests (five or six) in my usual form as hostess. I distributed sweetmeats and smoke: I was this desirable thing, but untouchable. I was the one because I was the other: the sacred sacrifice: the virgin nymph with the horn of plenty: why do you think there are these images?

Oliver had the idea that what people wanted from queens and goddesses was (of course) sacrifice: there had to be immolation: then desires could come together and burst like slime-mould on to the floor.

So I was to move among these people dressed as – what? – Isis, Artemis, Judith, Jezebel. Was there not a time when women had been goddesses? And arms had reached up adoring, adoring them: and how happy had been their slaves! So in the sand-dunes, in a temple, might it not be a female child that is dismembered (you know this story?) and then partaken of: to be eaten, and redeemed?

I might suggest – I am sorry, my time has come; I must go to my mother; and so on.

There was an alcove in one of the Moorish rooms that was curtained off as if it were a stage. Within this alcove there was a
cage in which there was trapped – well, what do you think? – suffering humanity. Suffering humanity was represented, in this case, by Edwin, a large black man from an agency in Hertford Street. I mean Edwin himself was not really so large; but he had the rare and remarkable (do you not think?) attribute of being able to make himself large (if you see what I mean) at will; even if apart from this ability he was a rather unsuccessful middleweight boxer. Edwin used to do knitting behind the stage. Well, I said – didn't I – that these things usually go on below the level of sensible description. But where do they come from: where are they going. Anyway, there I was, with shadows around me that yearned to find a home on a wall; how can humanity both get and not get (in order to keep?) what it needs as unobtainable? You can get it vicariously, can't you? This is the role of dreams: but dreams search for a home to be made flesh; to be raised at will; like the accomplishment, as it were, of Edwin the middleweight boxer. Anyway, when the curtain went up there was this black man in his cage – wrongly imprisoned, of course: on the eve of his execution perhaps (are we not all likely to be blown up?), or even as that rich man Dives straining agonised arms up from hell.