Remember Why You Fear Me (68 page)

I always understood, of course, that things began to go wrong with the Saras negotiations from that moment I met his wife. And I supposed at the time that was down to jealousy, a simple defensive reaction of an old man. But now I think that was wrong. That the assumption on my part was arrogant, that my interest in his wife and her interest in me could have made the slightest difference to him. Saras knew what he was doing, and I think introducing me to Mrs. Saras was the point at which his games began. Who can say what is going on in the head of a genius?

Because Miguel Saras was undeniably a genius. Even if you didn’t appreciate his art, then his talent for reinventing himself had something extraordinary about it. He’d started out in the fifties with paintings, and in his juvenilia you can see the influence of Picasso; indeed, it was that influence that at first so blinded western commentators to his own skills—if you’re going to want someone with a third eye, if you’re going to look at some South American Guernica, why not simply look at the original? But at home he found his audience, and they followed him. They followed him into sculpture, big sexless stone men standing by neutered and impassive as they’re raped by female devils with mad faces and fanged mouths and their genitals all on fire. He experimented with cubism, and with neo-cubism, and then developed a form that pushed neo-cubism into strange new areas that caused controversy; Saras was declared a fraud, declared an anarchist, declared at least an idiot—and in the late seventies Saras had just laughed at his critics, then gathered together all his neo-neo-cubist works in a big exhibition at Sao Paulo, gave a blunt public statement saying they were shit, and set fire to the lot of them—this, he said, was the real point of them, this had always been the plan. Arguably, this was his first venture into performance art, and from there he moved into video art, and from there into graffiti art. In one single week of celebration, his own private carnival, he spray painted every single building within a one mile radius of his Rio de Janeiro mansion, the eligibility of the buildings determined methodically with a map and a protractor, and he painted on to the walls and doors and windows all the images he felt inspired by—numbers, letters, impossible constructs of optical illusions bleeding down the bricks, zodiac symbols, Sanskrit symbols, traffic sign symbols, chiaroscuros of himself grinning cheekily whilst being flagellated by shadows, flowers, fingers, footballs, his own face superimposed on any number of animals or human body parts: fish, crabs, eyes, tongues, monkeys, goats, penises, severed heads, dogs.

And he’d
survived
; he’d survived President Vargas shooting himself, he’d survived the military juntas, the tanks on the streets, he’d survived the demonstrations and the cautious return to democracy. He’d seemed not to notice the ever-fluxing fortunes of Brazil, his art was unaffected by it, and yet its very waywardness seemed to
symbolize
Brazil, to give it a voice in spite of itself. And for all the dictators’ fears of the untamed, for all the people cried out not for art but for stability and freedom and some little self-respect, they all embraced Saras—Saras was the soul of their nation, Brazil’s power, its unpredictability, its madness and its angry beauty. And Saras, his face known to all, his famous sneer printed on stamps, on T-shirts, on magazine covers, tattooed on to a hundred thousand Brazilian torsos and counting, Saras didn’t seem to give a jot. He stood apart from it all. He lived his art, he ignored the rest. And the money poured in.

That was in Brazil, of course. They do things differently there. If anyone thought to graffiti on my front door, I’d have the police on to him. I respected Saras’ work, but didn’t much care for it. It was all too spicy for me, and I like my art the way I like my food—solid, identifiable, and unlikely to return on me later in the evening. Gladwell confided in me that he didn’t much like Saras’ work either, but personal opinions didn’t enter into it, of course. Though there had never been much emotional interest in Saras outside his home country, there was an
intellectual
interest around the world, and it was to the intellectuals that the new exhibition in London would appeal. It would be a major retrospective of his career, putting examples of all his different styles and media under one roof; it had never been done before, if Saras’ art changed direction he seemed to reject his previous works so completely it was as if they were the products of a rival artist. There would be many attempts in the art houses of the world to acknowledge his eightieth birthday the following year; let ours be the major one, the one endorsed by Saras himself—and, as Gladwell put it—for once, let’s fuck over the Guggenheim, they got their fingers into everything.

I was rarely used for the foreign negotiations; my language skills are, at best, halting. I pointed out to Gladwell that I couldn’t speak Spanish. Gladwell told me that they don’t speak Spanish in Brazil, they speak Portuguese. I pointed out to Gladwell that I couldn’t speak Portuguese either. Gladwell explained that this would be an advantage; Saras didn’t want to negotiate with any buyer who spoke his language, it flattered his ego to demonstrate just how perfect his English was. And this would all be about flattering his ego. “He’ll put up a bit of a fight, for show’s sake,” said Gladwell, “he’s a superstar, he doesn’t need our exhibition. But make no mistake. He’s a superstar in
Brazil
. It must rankle that he’s never made such an impression anywhere else. It’s the end of his life now, he must know this’ll be the last chance he’ll get. Flatter his ego, make him feel he’s doing us the favour, and he’ll come to us nice and cheap with his tail wagging.”

That was what Gladwell believed, and there seemed a certain sense to that at the time.

My wife checked the weather conditions in Rio de Janeiro, and had my suitcase packed with the right clothes, formal and not quite so formal, laundered and neatly ironed. And on the flight I looked in my hand luggage and, yes, there she’d enclosed both a Portuguese phrase book and a travel guide to Brazil. I whiled away an hour or two practising a few words—‘obrigado,’ ‘por favor,’ ‘este e o caminho para . . .  ?’ On the pages of the guide book she had fixed post-it notes to get my attention—yellow for things she recommended, red for those she disapproved of. A warning about the street crime around ATM machines earned a red sticker, as did a little article about easy hedonism. One of the few yellow approved passages showed a picture of Christ the Redeemer, some giant statue of Jesus with his arms out on top of a big hill. At last I put the book away. On the front cover there it was, the statue, Jesus overlooking the city from on high, his arms spread wide as if he were playing at aeroplanes.

I stayed focused for the eleven hour flight to Sao Paulo. It was only on the one hour connecting flight to Rio de Janeiro that I began to fall drowsy, much to my annoyance, and that was why when Saras’ representative greeted me after immigration with cheek kissing that I was so uncharacteristically flustered. She said she’d take me to my hotel. But first she would take me to meet Mr. Saras. Mr. Saras, she said, was very excited to see me.

I recognized Saras at once, of course, but he still wasn’t what I was expecting. You could see how that mouth could be turned into a sneer, but for now it was all smiles, and he greeted me like a long lost friend, he rose from his table and gave me a hug. He was smaller than I expected, but he stood confident as if he were tall, as if he thought he were tall and no one had told him he wasn’t, he didn’t shrink into himself or hunch his shoulders the way old men sometimes do—he may have been nearing eighty, but I’d have taken him for sixty-five, and his brown beard had only flecks of grey in, and I wondered whether he had it dyed. He asked me about the flight, he asked me if he could order me any food, anything I wanted, I must be hungry—he said that business class travel might pride itself upon the quality of its meals, but they still left him feeling gassy and bilious. (I didn’t tell him Gladwell had only flown me economy; I didn’t tell him that I wanted any food. I didn’t want either first impression I made to suggest I was either cheap or greedy.) He complimented me on my little attempts at Portuguese when I spoke to the waiter, told me I’d got the accent just right—and I looked for any sign of sarcasm but he sounded sincere enough; “Some foreigners find Brazil a little dangerous, I think,” said Saras, “but you have no need to worry, you’ll blend right in, you seem like a native already!” I didn’t feel like a native, sweaty in my business suit, still woozy from the flight, but I thanked him with the best accent I could muster. “Obrigado,” I said. “You’re welcome,” he said, and smiled with perfect white teeth.

And then he frowned, and it was a frown of concern. “Forgive me,” he said, “I can see you’re very tired. You must go back to your hotel and rest. There will be much opportunity for us later to talk. I do not anticipate any difficulty with our negotiations, I was just eager to see you. Take the day to relax, and we can have dinner tomorrow? I have a favourite restaurant in Santa Tereza, I will send the car for you. You will like it, I think.” He stood up, and I did the same, and he shook my hand. “And I’ll introduce you to my wife.”

Santa Tereza was a little town up in the mountains; it was the artistic hub of the city, and as I stepped out of the car I could already see all the long haired hippy types spilling out from tavernas too small to contain them, smell their alcohol, smell their dope. And Miguel Saras was the king of them, standing right at their centre, this proud old man with his court of young fools, letting them stand in his shadow, letting them laugh at his jokes, drinking his wine and drinking in his genius. When he saw me he came straight over, he broke a path through them without a second thought, some of them got elbowed aside and smiled with delight as if it had been a blessing. “My friend!” he said, and clasped my hands. “I shall take such care of you tonight. I shall make sure you meet everybody!”

And it seemed that I did. There was much hugging, much kissing of cheeks, and Mrs. Saras was the only failure, the only hiccup in the social whirl. But I began to feel as the parade of youths went ever on, as they beamed at me so enthusiastically whilst I told them how much I was enjoying Brazil, how different it was to England, how happy they must be here, that their expressions of intent were becoming ever more extreme—they would laugh uproariously at my jokes that really weren’t jokes at all, they would hang on to every platitudinous word I uttered with eyeblazing fascination, nod in delight, then turn away and laugh. And it was the turning away that bothered me, the fact that the laugh was meant to be something private. “Our business here won’t take long!” said Saras to me, but it was like a pronouncement, and everyone shut up and listened. “My new friend from England, we have such a simple thing to discuss. And then he will be free to enjoy the best that Brazil can provide!” More laughter all round, more wide-eyed enthusiasm, those eyes so wide they looked ready to pop out of their skulls. “So,” Saras said to me, looking at me full in the face at last, “this freedom, what will you do with it?”

And it suddenly felt like a test. Saras waited for my answer. His minions, they waited for my answer.

I tried to remember the guide book, the bits highlighted with yellow post-it notes. “There are some good parks here,” I said.

“The Botanic Gardens are excellent,” agreed Saras.

“And there are museums.”

“There are always museums.”

“And I might pop up to see Christ the Redeemer,” I ventured. “That looks very good.”

“Oh, it is,” said Saras, “it is
very
good. Yes. You must see that. All the tourists must see that. You must see it, tick it off the list.” And he laughed. “It’s a remarkable achievement,” he said, “one of the seven wonders of the world, did you know? And the only wonder in Brazil.” And he laughed. “Standing up there on a seven hundred metre mountain, arms open wide, Christ looking down on us, we are all under his protection, we all feel safe.” And he laughed, and he laughed. “You must go to Christ! And maybe, maybe I will come with you!” And everyone laughed with him.

One of his disciples brought me a mug to drink from; it smelled meaty, and it was steaming. “This is our national dish,” said Saras, “this is feijoada. You must try it. Try it, and you will be a Brazilian.” I sipped at it. It was like drinking gravy, it was like the contents of a steak and kidney pie mashed up and liquefied in a blender. “You must try it,” said Saras, so I drank it down like a good boy, and managed not to baulk as the thick black gloop became progressively more chewy.

I hadn’t seen Mrs. Saras for a while, maybe not for a couple of hours—it was hard to work out how much time had passed. And she wasn’t part of that swell of bodies around me, around Saras—and Saras didn’t want her near, didn’t speak to her again once we’d had that introduction. I thought maybe she’d gone home. I hoped she had. But now there was a plucking at my sleeve, and I turned around, expecting to see some new young woman wanting to kiss me, some new young man wanting to pump me by the hand and ask me to use my accent. Mrs. Saras was there beside me, and she was recoiling again, recoiling it seemed at the very touch of my shirt, that her fingers were anywhere near my skin, that she was obliged once more to acknowledge me.

“What?” I asked her.

And she didn’t say anything, didn’t smile. She just tipped her head towards the door, and left the restaurant. She didn’t even turn back to see if I were following her. But of course I was.

Outside she took a breath of air, as if relieved she was away from that stifling heat indoors—but the heat was just as stifling out here, and to me it barely seemed fresher. She took out a cigarette, put it in her mouth, nodded her head towards me expectantly.

I didn’t have a lighter. I don’t even smoke. She didn’t care. She waited whilst I went back inside to fetch one, and when I returned she was in the same pose, her head jutted to where I had been standing, only frowning maybe with a little more impatience. She took the light. I saw that moustache. She blew out smoke through her nostrils, through those too-flared nostrils, and I don’t know how they did it, but as the smoke billowed out they flared even wider still, they found a little more give in them, they bulged and gaped. “Obrigado,” I said, although I’m quite sure I don’t know why.