Jeff in Venice, death in Varanasi Read online

  ‘It was of her. Nude, lying down, looking at Morison, who was drawing her.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘And?’

  ‘It just didn't seem appropriate to take it.’

  ‘Was it a good picture?’

  ‘Yes, I think it was. There was an intensity about it. It was really quite powerful.’

  ‘You're not going to say something boring about “the male gaze” are you?’

  ‘I was actually,’ he said, looking at her. ‘Did you only say that to make me look at you?’ Which was all he wanted to do for the moment, a moment that, as far as he was concerned, could last forever. To look at her in this red and gold dress. To look at her and wonder about her underwear, to wonder about her naked … Clicking back to the present, he said, ‘What about you, though? What did you do after that? After you were on Accademia bridge.’

  ‘This is more like an interrogation than a conversation.’

  ‘I can see it is in a way. A similar urgency in the wish for answers. There's so much I want to know. Like what you did after Accademia.’

  ‘I went to buy glasses. I needed sunglasses.’

  She rummaged in her bag – a Freitag bag, mainly red.

  ‘I love your bag,’ he said.

  ‘Me too. You know what I most love about it?’

  ‘Let me look.’ He looked at it while she rummaged, even peeked inside slightly. ‘The fact that it's got a zip,’ he said. ‘Without the zip, its beauty would be diminished by its lack of practicality.’

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘Did you think I'd just say “red” or something?’

  ‘Oh, no. I had no doubt you'd say zip. That's why I asked. To make you feel astute. The other great thing about this bag is it's got a separate compartment.’ She showed him. ‘With another zip.’

  ‘Worlds within worlds. Also cuts down on rummaging.’

  ‘Cuts down on,’ she said, rummaging in her bag. ‘but can never eliminate completely’ With that she produced her new sunglasses. She put them on. They were the bug-eyed ones that make every woman look like Kate Moss or the girlfriend of an England footballer. There was no doubt about it: this was one of the great eras for women's sunglasses. They were fantastic sunglasses. He could see her eyes through them, could see himself reflected in them and, behind him, the buildings of Venice.

  ‘Try them.’

  He took them from her, looked through them. In the fading light the sky glowed as it does when there is a bank of clouds with the sun shining directly on them so that they become a glowing black screen. It was like a storm was coming – a storm of gold-green light.

  ‘Fantastic,’ he said, handing them back. ‘Speaking of fantastic, what about this dress? The one you were wearing last night was great. But this one – it's the most beautiful dress in the world. You could wear it to the Oscars.’

  ‘Too short. But thank you.’

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘Ah, the interrogation resumes. In Vientiane.’

  ‘I'll be honest, I don't know which country that's in.’

  ‘Laos,’ she said, pronouncing it so that it rhymed with ‘how.’

  ‘You know what my favourite thing about it is?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The sleeves.’

  ‘There aren't any.’

  ‘Bingo!’ They clinked glasses.

  ‘What about the piece you're writing?’ she asked. ‘Have you found anything to say?’

  ‘It's impossible to say anything about Venice that's not been said before,’ he said, cleverly.

  ‘Including that remark,’ she said, even more cleverly. That line gave him pause; her next floored him completely. ‘So,’ she asked, ‘did you get any risotto?’

  ‘No! Not a grain.’

  ‘You're kidding.’

  ‘No,you're kidding. There isn't any.’

  ‘You're right. There isn'tnow. But I had a ton.’

  ‘Where were they serving it? I can't believe this has happened. I find you and I realize that I've lost the risotto. By confirming its existence, you've confirmed my missing out on it.’

  ‘I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings.’

  ‘How was it?’

  ‘Very nice. Pea. Pea risotto.’

  ‘Fuck! I love that shit! I don't suppose there's any left?’

  ‘They were clearing it away just before I came out here.’ He stood there dumbfounded. ‘I'm sorry for your loss,’ she said.

  ‘I'm glad for my find,’ he said.

  There was something so obviously heartfelt about this that the conversation stalled until Laura said, ‘So, how was Julia Berman? Was she like some kind of older-woman fantasy come true?’

  ‘She was really nice but, to be honest, I've reached the age where even fantasies about older women involve women younger than me.’

  ‘Very good. Actually, while we're on the subject, how oldare you? Roughly.’

  ‘Um, forty. Ish.’

  She held up her fingers, counted on them. Looked startled, looked at him. Recounted desperately, looked at him in horror.

  ‘No, no. It can't be.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘You look good. Ish. For your age.’

  ‘I've got to tell you something.’

  ‘What?’

  He bent down and whispered. ‘For the first time ever. Two days ago …’ He paused. ‘I dyed my hair.’

  Laughing made her spit a mouthful of bellini back into her glass.

  ‘I had my suspicions,’ she said.

  ‘You did?’

  ‘No. Just kidding. It looks great. Like it's not dyed. So, you've been getting stoned on the job.’

  ‘I know. I'm sorry, I feel I've let everyone down. Including myself. How about you?’

  ‘Do you mean have you let me down or do I feel I've let myself down?’

  ‘I mean do you like getting stoned? California must be very conducive to smoking dope.’

  ‘California is very conducive to everything.’

  And so, at this moment, was Venice. Speedboats and low-slung taxis were pulling up, across the canal at the Gritti, and here, at the Guggenheim, but they were now taking more people away than they were dropping off. The party had passed its peak. There was plenty of booze and plenty of people still drinking it. Under normal circumstances the party could have continued, in full swing, for hours, but this was the Biennale, there were lots of other parties to go to and as soon as a party began flagging it quickly fizzled out. If the tacit theme of every conversation had been what fun it was to be here, the implied subject, now, was where to go next. There was a general move towards the exit. They joined a group going to a party given by a Russian collector at the something palazzo – Jeff was not invited but Laura had an invite for two. At some level this was his destiny in life: to be a Plus One. It was probably worth trying to change his name by deed poll, to Plus One.

  They left the Guggenheim and rambled through the alleys and lanes of Venice. A couple of members of their party went missing almost immediately. As they were passing the Accademia stop a vaporetto pulled up so they scrambled aboard, only to get off at the next stop, San Toma. Jeff didn't care where they went. They came to the palazzo where the party was being held and were admitted, all eight of them, without let or hindrance. It was essentially the same party as the one they had left. Same scene, different setting: a hot courtyard, lots of people drinking.

  Except, scandalously, the drinks were not free. Unbelievable but true! You were expected topay for them. Jeff was already at the makeshift bar when he discovered this outrageous breach of party etiquette. Eager to make a good impression, he was about to buy a bottle of prosecco when the barman's attention was diverted by a guest who claimed to have been short-changed. In that moment of distraction, a bare arm reached past Jeff, swiped a bottle from the ice bucket and instantly disappeared. He glanced round, saw Laura's discreetly retreating back, one arm raised above her head, a finger wagging him to follow.

  By the time
Jeff had located some clean glasses the bottle was openly steaming, ready to be poured.

  ‘You're something else,’ said Jeff.

  ‘She's terrible, isn't she?’ said a man he had not quite met. ‘One day she is going to get into all sorts of trouble. In the meantime, here's to Laura.’

  Jeff joined in the toast, secretly fearing that she could gethim into trouble, could smash his heart as easily as she had pinched the prosecco. Shared between many, the hot chilled bottle only lasted a few minutes. When someone went off to buy a replacement, Laura turned to Jeff and said, ‘Don't you think it's time?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Definitely. But, um, for what?’

  ‘That we had a conversation about the art.’

  ‘What art?’

  ‘Very funny. What did you see?’

  Jeff told her about the Finnish boat in the shattered glass (she'd missed that), the fun dartboards, the blue room, the video shower …

  ‘Overall, though?’

  ‘Overall, I was walking around and saying to myself, “It's of a banality that beggars belief.”’ He hadn't been thinking this at all, but he was thinking it now, as he said it.

  ‘But that's completely wrong, isn't it? Because we aren't actually amazed by the banality. We've come to expect it. It's reassuring, a stamp of quality. We've sort of invested in it. It's like we're living through a conceptual breakthrough. It's really exciting. People keep wondering how long it can go on for, when the bubble is going to burst. The thing is, the bubblehas burst but it keeps expanding anyway, even after it's burst. It's like the discovery of a new law of physics.’

  ‘Quite unusual, hearing someone from a gallery talk like that.’

  ‘I know. That's why I'm getting out. I'm going to become a hedge fund manager instead. In Varanasi.’

  ‘I wish I was a hedge fund manager. Or at least I wish I knew what hedge fund managers do.’

  ‘They collect art.’

  ‘Do you have a collection?’

  ‘A few small things. Gifts from artists whose shows I worked on. What about you?’

  ‘Not really. Not art. I like owning things so much that I resist collecting anything except books. Books and Dylan bootlegs.’

  ‘How about me?’

  ‘How d'you mean? Are you asking me if you collect Dylan bootlegs?’

  ‘No.’ She raised her glass to her lips, took a sip. ‘I meant, would you like to own me?’

  ‘I spent my twenties in the 1980s. The days of the feminist terror. If a woman had said that to me in 1984, it would have been the most flirtatious thing imaginable. But it would probably have been an ideological trap.’

  ‘I'm a trap. A honey trap.’

  ‘Are you? I've always wanted to get caught in one of those. Back in the eighties, they didn't have them. Or at least they had the traps, but not the honey. It was more like a Vegemite trap.’

  This pleasantly ambiguous topic of conversation was brought to an end by the arrival of more prosecco, more people and a different, more heated discussion, about Turner and Venice. Having looked through a book devoted to exactly that subject earlier in the day, Jeff felt confident of contributing but it was impossible to get a word in.

  Dave Glanding was saying, ‘Turner came to Venice—’

  Maria Fielding was saying, ‘The Last of the Fighting Temeraires or whatever it's called …’

  You could say anything at this point in the evening. It didn't have to make sense and you didn't have to wait for the other person to finish what they were saying before you said it, but, by the same token, no one had to listen to what you were saying or wait for you to finish saying what you were saying.

  ‘Constable—,’ said a woman Jeff didn't recognise, but that was as far as she got because the Kaiser was saying, ‘There's only one artist in the Biennale I care about.’

  Unusually, there was a pause as everyone waited for the result of this declaration.

  ‘Bellini!’ he said, raising a glass in acknowledgement of the enthusiastic applause with which this remark was endorsed. At some level everyone agreed and some agreed at every level. Evidently, this was a free-fire zone in which a conversation that made perfect sense dissolved into another conversation that flowed on perfectly sensibly from the previous one even though there was no connection and the previous one had been perfectly nonsensical anyway. Jeff had no chance to join in, but was reassured by everything he'd heard – reassured by the way that lots of people were far more drunk than him. Relatively speaking, he was as sober as a slightly tipsy judge.

  The conversation spilled over into another unexpected topic: where to go next. It was decided to go to a different party, quite nearby, at the Palazzo Zenobio. Laura and Jeff left with the rest of the group, but the Zenobio was so crowded that no one was being allowed in until someone from inside left: the zero-sum maths ofone in, one out. There followed another enthusiasm-draining interlude of milling around. The Kaiser and a couple of others said they were calling it a night – calling it a night in the sense that they were going to Haig's Bar. Just across the canal was the so-called Manchester Pavilion, a bar. Laura, Jeff and the rest went there instead.

  A lot of the people in the bar had nothing to do with the Biennale – backpackers who happened to be in Venice, who had not been to any parties, for whom the anxiety of invitation was as alien as lumbago – but there were plenty of art people as well. Some of these art people were friends of the art people in Jeff and Laura's little group, which, having suffered a slight numerical falling-off, merged with this new group and was soon back to full strength again. Suited Jeff perfectly: the more people there, the easier it was to be left alone with Laura.

  They took their beers and sat outside, on the warm steps of the humpbacked bridge over the sleeping canal. With all the talking that had been going on, it felt as if this was the first drink of the night Jeff had actually had the chance just todrink , to sip and enjoy for its own sake. Everything prior to this had just been fuel, chucked on the conversational pyre.

  They sat quietly. He noticed again the things he'd been noticing all evening. She was wearing pink flip-flops with no heels. Beneath one ankle was a patch of red skin, rubbed raw by another pair of sandals. Her bare legs were tanned.

  Laura said, ‘How many times have you been in Venice?’

  ‘Twice. The Biennale two years ago and once before, ages ago, when I was twenty-one. I was on my way to meet a friend in Corfu. I slept outside the station. Which was fine except the cops woke everyone up really early so I spent the day trudging round, exhausted, occasionally buying a slice of pizza to keep me going. I was only going to Corfu, but I was travelling on an InterRail pass – you know those things? – because it was cheaper. So the second night, instead of sleeping outside the station, I went to Florence on a train, slept all the way, and then got a train straight back and slept some more. I was still exhausted but I sort of saw the city, in the brief intervals when I could keep my eyes open.’

  ‘Why didn't you get a room?’

  ‘They were so expensive. I was on my own. It seemed an incredible indulgence.’

  ‘How cheap!’

  ‘I know. But I've learned my lesson. Guess where I'm staying this time?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In ahotel.’

  She was on a slightly higher step, sitting with her feet discreetly together, but as she laughed he caught a glimpse of white knickers that set his heart racing. The history of sex is the history of glimpses: first ankles, then cleavage, then knees. More recently, tattoos, navel rings, tongue studs, underwear, Laura's underwear … Whenever she shifted position slightly, he hoped to sneak another look up her dress.

  Laura said, ‘Are you trying to look up my dress?’

  ‘No! Not now. Now I'm making a real effort to look you in the eye. But a few moments ago I was, yes.’

  ‘How old did you say you were?’

  ‘Early to mid-forties-ish. But some things are timeless. You're fourteen, you want to look up women's dresses. You'
re forty, you want to look up women's dresses. You're seventy, you've got one foot in the grave, but you're hoping, even as your gaze turns towards heaven, that you might get one last chance for a look up a woman's skirt. Hemlines go up and down, but nothing really changes.’

  Jeff felt, after saying this, as if he had made a speech, a statement of belief. Perhaps he had. They sat quietly again. Then Laura said, ‘Shall we go quite soon?’