Jeff in Venice, death in Varanasi Page 12

  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 fuckwas 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 thepoint – 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 thevague 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 hewanted to meet had just come over and revealed the identity of the person whose name hewanted 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 rememberhis 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 havinga 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 sayI'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, sointeresting. ‘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 suggestio
n 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.

  ‘I suppose I should return the compliment.’

  ‘Please. Don't feel you have to.’

  ‘No. I want to. I really do.’

  ‘OK. Maybe the shirt.’ He held out his arms, a gesture that was part display and part shrug.

  ‘Itis a nice shirt.’

  ‘Thank you. Look, I know I had to drag that out of you but, well, it's my favourite shirt. I feel it's so …’

  ‘Blue?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Wrinkled?’

  ‘No. Though I admit I could have folded and packed it more carefully. No, the word I was looking for was “manly.” Sorry, I shouldn't have said it. You were right on the brink of getting it anyway’

  ‘Was I? I thought I was going to say “cheap-looking.” ’

  ‘A synonym of manly. Whereas your dress is expensive-looking.’

  ‘Which is a synonym of …?’

  ‘Exactly’ Wow, he was really in the swing of things now. There was no trace of that earlier paralysis. If anything, he was feeling too full of himself.

  ‘Fifty dollars from a thrift store,’ she said.

  ‘Really? It looks like it cost, I dunno, twice that.’ A waiter came by. ‘Would you like a bellini?’ Jeff asked, gallantly. They took one each, depositing their empty glasses on the waiting tray. These opening exchanges out of the way, they talked Biennale logistics, where they were staying, and for how long (she was leaving on Sunday). It gave Jeff the chance to look at her more closely, to note the mole high up on her cheek, her earrings (small, gold), her full lips. Frank and Laura's friend turned back towards them.

  ‘We're going over to see if Bruce Nauman will grant us an audience. Will you come too?’ Frank had addressed both of them. Under normal circumstances Jeff would have jumped at the chance to suck up to such a big-hitting artist but now – even though he forced himself to say nothing – every molecule of his being was screamingWe'll stay here, Frank, thank you.

  ‘We'll stay here,’ said Laura.

  ‘See you back here,’ said her friend.

  ‘What was your friend's name?’ asked Jeff, watching her follow Frank.

  ‘Yvonne.’

  ‘Yvonne, that's right. Of course.’ He was so relieved to have gained this time alone with Laura that he was unsure what to say, eager to lure the conversation back in the direction of her dress and his shirt, metonyms – if that was the word – of manliness and womanliness. Instead, rather dully, he asked what she did.

  ‘I work in a gallery.’ The impulse he'd had earlier, to move to L.A., reasserted itself. What did this say about his life, his situation, that he could be so ready, at the drop of a hat, to chuck everything in? Probably that the ‘everything’ was in fact nothing.

  ‘What about you? What do you do?’

  ‘Journalist. I'm freelance. If it was a proper job, I'd pack it in and do something else, but freelancingis the something else that you do after you've packed in your job so my options are kind of limited. It's that or retirement – from which it is at times pretty much indistinguishable.’

  ‘Actually, Iam quitting my job. Though the gallery doesn't know it yet.’

  ‘What happens then?’

  ‘I'm going travelling. I'm doing what kids do when they're twenty. It's just that I'll be doing it more than ten years too late.’ So, he'd been right, she was thirty-one or thirty-two maybe. Nothing was escaping him tonight. He hadn't been as sharp – asun vague – as this in years.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Oh, you know. The places everyone goes. South-East Asia. India.’

  What was wrong with him? Minutes after contemplating moving to L.A. he was ready, now, to go backpacking through Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Lacking any larger ambition or purpose meant that you clutched at whatever straws came your way. If she'd said she was thinking of moving to Romania, he'd have signed up for that too. Or Mars, even.

  He said, ‘Have you been to India before?’

  ‘Once. To Goa and Kerala. This time I want to go to Rajasthan and Varanasi, Benares.’

  ‘They're the same place, right?’

  ‘Exactly’

  ‘From the Sanskrit, isn't it?Nasi , place.Vara , many. Place of many names.’

  She laughed. She had perfect teeth, quite large: American teeth. ‘I have absolutely no idea whether that is extremely impressive or completeBen as in bull,Ares as in shit. Which means it's probably both.’

  They clinked glasses. He watched her lips touch the rim of her glass, watched her drink. No smudge of pink was left on the glass; she was not wearing lipstick. He took a gulp from his own glass. The act of drinking served as a reminder of the heat from which it was intended to bring relief.

  ‘My God,’ she said. ‘Is it ever hot!’ She pressed the glass to her head. He could see her armpit, shaved. The glass left a few beads of moisture on her forehead.

  ‘Tomorrow will be even hotter, apparently’ He had nothing particularly in mind by this meteorological observation, but it carried the vague suggestion of less clothes, shedding layers, sweat. Underwear, nakedness. Heat. ‘Actually I got that wrong. The people at my hotel don't call it heat. It's eat. And tomorrow it's going to get otter.’

  ‘The eat will be otter?’

  ‘Exactly’

  ‘Really? I feel like the whole place could just, like, evaporate overnight.’ Such a thing seemed quite possible. It was easy to imagine waking up to find the once-watery city stranded and stilted in foul-smelling mud, the lagoon turned into an expanse of nothingness, a moist brown desert in which the last few fishes flapped and gasped. On the positive side it would be an opportunity to give the canals a scrub and do much-needed repair work on the foundations. Surprising, in a way, that something along those lines had not been proposed as an art project, like a Christo wrap. Assuming it was temporary and reversible, it would probably turn out to be a tourist attraction.

  Laura was saying, ‘Nice to write, though …’

  ‘Oh, it's not proper writing. It's just …’ He shrugged, paused, wondering if, with all the words of the English language available, there was a way of completing the sentence without recourse to the one that sprang immediately to mind. But there wasn't.

  ‘Bollocks,’ he said at last. In the long interval of expectation the word doubled both as a description of his work and an exclamation of resignation to the fact that he had been unable to dredge up an alternative.

  ‘Ah, bollocks,’ she laughed. ‘The very essence of the English.’

  ‘You're right. You have freedom and the pursuit of happiness. We have … bollocks to it.’

  ‘You're writing about the Biennale?’

  ‘Yes. Plus, you know that singer Niki Morison?’

  ‘Steven Morison's daughter, the artist?’

  ‘And of Julia Berman, the mum, who is here at the moment. I have to interview her and get her to hand over this picture of her by Morison. A drawing. The editor of the magazine I'm writing for is obsessed by this picture even though he hasn't seen it.’

  ‘What's so special about it?’

  ‘No idea.’ Jeff could think of
nothing else to say. The absurdity of his job, of the stuff he wrote, extended its reach to taint any words he might use now. Again, she came to his rescue.

  ‘But you write mainly about art?’

  ‘Not really. I'm not a very visual person.’ That was it – his best shot. He'd come up with this line before coming to Venice, had decided it was going to be his big joke of the Biennale, to be repeated at every opportunity. What he hadn't counted on was being able to try it out, for the first time, in such perfect circumstances, to such devastating effect.

  ‘Me neither,’ she said. Oh, no. She was perfectly serious, shemeant it, hadn't realized he was joking. She was an earnest Californian. His disappointment must have been obvious – maybe he had even been silently mouthing the words to himself – because she punched him on the arm.

  ‘Joking,’ she said. Shit! He'd been out-deadpanned. She'd taken his best shot, thrown it right back at him.

  ‘Sorry. Like I said, I only just got here. I'm a bit off the pace still.’