Jeff in Venice, death in Varanasi Page 5

  ‘Now fuck me,’ she said. He reached for his trouser pocket, for the condoms. ‘You don't have to use a condom. I have a cap. I didn't have it with me last night.’ He moved on top of her. His prick slipped into her cunt, her tongue into his mouth.

  He began moving inside her. It was like nothing he had ever experienced before. She had opened herself to him at a non-physical level that increased the intensity of the physical sensation of their bodies moving together. He was conscious of being inside her, but it was like anout of body experience. The word that insistently came to mind, afterwards, as they lay in each other's arms, was unusable in a way that ‘cunt,’ ‘cock’ or ‘fuck’ once were: communion. She was licking her fingers, moistening them with the saliva from her mouth and his, arching her back, pushing her hips towards him.

  ‘I'm coming,’ she said. Her wet finger pressed into him and, a moment later, he too was coming, joining her, coming inside her.

  They lay still.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘That was most agreeable.’

  ‘Wasn't it?’ she murmured. When his prick slid from her, they moved onto their sides, in each other's arms. He felt himself drifting to sleep.

  He woke up just ten minutes later, his arm numb under her neck. She was waking too. His arm, as he disentangled himself from her, pinned and needled back to life.

  ‘You're the thinnest person I've ever slept with,’ she said. ‘It's like making love to an ironing board.’

  ‘There must be some culture in the world, possibly an ex-Soviet republic, a very poor place suffering from a dearth of consumer goods, where that is the greatest compliment a woman can ever pay to a man. Wherever it is, I am going to find that place, ideally with a view to taking up permanent residence.’

  ‘That is where I'mfrom ,’ she said. They kissed. He continued lying on the bed while she got up to take a shower. He watched her walk into the bathroom: small hips, thin, long back. He heard the toilet flush and the noise of the shower. She emerged from the bathroom with a white towel wrapped round her and he took her place in the steamy shower. When he came out she had put on the same white dress that she had worn that afternoon. He helped her with the zip and the hook at the top.

  They left the hotel and walked to an almost empty trattoria that, in a few hours, would be crammed, hectic. Neither of them wanted wine, just fizzy water. Jeff asked for risotto; Laura ordered a veal cutlet.

  ‘A strange and potentially controversial choice,’ he said, ‘though I can see why, after stuffing your face at the Guggenheim last night, you can't face any more risotto.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Laura, ‘there's something I have to tell you about that night.’

  His stomach flipped. ‘What?’

  ‘I lied about the risotto. There wasn't any’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I overheard you and your friend talking about it.’

  ‘Why, I oughta … ’

  ‘It's funny, no one says that any more: “Why, I oughta.” We should start a campaign to bring it back.’

  ‘You're right. We oughta.’

  ‘We otter.’

  While Jeff tucked into his pea and mushroom risotto – even more satisfying in the wake of Laura's confession – she told him about an exhibition she hoped, one day, to curate. Having seen the look of stunned disappointment on the faces of so many gallery-goers, she aimed to take the bull by the horns with a show called ‘Is ThatIt ?’ featuring works by some of the most consistently disappointing artists of the day. Soon they were trading titles for a series of related exhibitions:

  ‘This, That and “The Other.”’

  ‘Something of Nothing.’

  ‘Next to Nothing.’

  ‘Slim Pickings.’

  ‘Climaxing with a symposium of curators and critics,’ Laura said. ‘Something along the lines of “Now Talk Your Way Out of That.”’

  It was fun, talking like this, but Jeff had the nagging sense that they were talking themselves out of what he most wanted to talk about: how they were going to spend the rest of their lives together. They ordered another bottle of mineral water. He watched her eat a strawberry gelato for dessert. They each had an espresso.

  After dinner – and how nice it was eating early, like pensioners – they walked through Venice in the hot evening, holding hands. He'd read somewhere – it was another of those things that practically every writer-visitor remarked upon – that Venice was a narcissistic city, always looking at itself in the mirror. What he saw reflected everywhere was his – their – well-being. The city was radiant with reflected happiness.

  They had both been invited to the Australia party, on Giudecca. They stopped at Jeff's hotel briefly, so he could change, and then walked to the vaporetto at Zattere. Twilight was falling. In the church behind them the bells started up, tumbling over each other, becoming a torrent of sound. The wide stretch of water separating them from Giudecca glowed darkly with the surplus light absorbed in the course of the day. Then it dulled, grew dark, as dark as the sky – navy blue and then Atlantic-black. The vaporetto chugged into view, the first stars appeared.

  They got off at Palanca and walked west a couple of hundred yards. The party was packed by the time they arrived. Or at least the terrace was packed. As had happened on the previous two nights, the heat had driven everyone outside. Every few seconds there was the pop of a new bottle of prosecco being opened; bellinis were being prepared in vast quantities. It was, in other words, exactly like every other Biennale party except Jeff had turned up at this one with Laura, was arriving with the woman he'd met at the first party on the first night and slept with after the party of the second night. He took a couple of drinks from a tray, passed one to Laura, who was immediately greeted by a friend. In turn Jeff was greeted, not by a friend but by Graham Hart, art critic for theObserver. Either he'd been here for a while or he'd not waited till he got here to get his snout in the bellini trough. It wasn't just difficult to understand what he was saying; it was difficult to tell where one word ended and the next began. What emerged from his mouth was an undulating torrent of what was obviously language, but which had no capacity to convey information. That was not the only thing to emerge from his mouth. He sprayed slightly as he spoke and a blob of spit landed on Jeff's lower lip. He could feel it there, wet and alien, but out of good manners refrained from wiping it away. To have done so would have been to acknowledge what they both preferred to ignore: that Graham had spat on him. Graham was sweating profusely, more than all the other guests who were also sweating profusely. He mopped his forehead with an old-fashioned handkerchief.

  Gradually Jeff grew acclimatized to what Graham was talking about, namely the prodigious amount he'd had to drink in the course of the day, but his ability to understand served only to confirm the lack of any desire to listen. Fortunately Graham was so far gone he didn't mind – probably didn't even notice – when Jeff sidled away. One of the reasons he was keen to get away was because he worried that Graham was a prophetic mirror. Washe like this when drunk? Was Graham a premonition of how he'd be a couple of hours and a dozen bellinis down the line? What must the world seem like to the ex-drinker, the teetotaller, the permanently sober, recovering alcoholic, surrounded on all sides by pissheads and drunks? It was a horrible prospect, enough to drive Jeff back to the bar. On the way he bumped into vehement Monika Weber, who presented a cultural affairs programme on German TV. She asked if he was going, tomorrow, to the exhibition curated by Jean-Paul. Jeff had completely forgotten about this show, but said he would be going, yes.

  ‘I am going for one reason,’ she said. ‘I want to go just to tell him how much I hate him.’ It was an excellent plan, one Jeff immediately fell in with. He was more than happy to tell Jean-Paul how much he hated him, even if he didn't actually hate him, could scarcely remember who he was. There was no opportunity to clarify things. Having spotted other people they knew, both he and Monika continued in their respective directions. In some ways the Biennale was likeA Dance to the Music of Time
condensed into four days: the same people cropping up, expectedly and unexpectedly, generally looking somewhat the worse for wear.

  Jeff grabbed a drink and retreated from the bar, jostled and jostling as he did so. It had gone from being crowded on the terrace to being very crowded, impossible to move, difficult to drink without spilling bellini over your neighbour. And the area outside the party, as more and more people clamoured to get in, was almost as crowded as it was inside. Jeff was congratulating himself on this, on being one of thoseat the party rather than one of those trying to get into it, when someone tapped him on the shoulder: Laura, not looking any the worse for wear.

  ‘Guess what I've just been given?’ she said.

  ‘A bellini?’

  She shook her head and whispered in his ear.

  ‘A gram of cocaine.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘I bumped into a friend. He'd forgotten my birthday and wanted to make it up to me.’

  ‘Nice friend.’

  ‘Shall we have some?’

  ‘Most definitely.’

  ‘Come on then.’

  They pushed through the crowd to the bathrooms. Surprisingly, there was no queue and no one to spot them stepping inside. He locked the door and rolled up a ten-euro note while Laura arranged two neat lines with a Visa card. She snorted up one and he quickly followed suit.

  ‘Very nice,’ he said, folding away the note. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Actually, I need to pee.’

  Unsure whether she was asking him to leave or simply making an announcement, Jeff said, ‘Let me watch.’

  She pulled up her dress and pulled her knickers down to her knees. Unconcerned by his being there, she began pissing immediately. Jeff held his hand between her legs, feeling her piss run hotly over his hand while she did so. He was on the brink of asking her, later on, when they were back at the hotel, to piss on his face but, even in the midst of the rush of coke, worried that this might lie outside the realm of her sexual enthusiasms – on reflection, he wasn't even sure it lay within the realm of his. He ran his hand under the tap. They came out of the toilet together, sniffing, glowing, unnoticed.

  He'd been in a good mood before; now, with the chemical taste of coke trickling down his throat, he was in areally good mood. Unfortunately this surge of good feeling coincided with seeing Charles Hass, whose arm was in a sling. Jeff was about to introduce him to Laura but she was already talking animatedly to Yvonne, the friend she'd been with on the night they met. So Jeff was stuck with him.

  ‘So, Charles,’ he said, ‘what's been happening to you? Very briefly.’ Unfortunately so much had been happening to him it was not at all compatible with brevity. His injured arm was the latest instalment in a bad run of luck that extended back to the last time they'd seen each other – what? – a year ago? First, his wife had left him. Six months later his mother died and then, within a month of burying her, he was knocked off his bike by a taxi and had broken his arm. Hence the sling. How did you cope with such an unfortunate series of occurrences? By just plodding on, presumably. It actually took less effort to keep plodding on, putting one foot in front of another, than it did to lie down and stop. You kept on going. The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, even after a freak accident, even after the plough has run over his arm, severing it at the elbow. You pick it up with your good arm and head home as fast as possible, undeterred by all the pain, inconvenience and gruelling physiotherapy that lie ahead if – and it's a huge if – you're lucky enough to get the arm sewed back on. You keep plodding on. What else can you do? The only alternative is to not plod on. But you might as well keep plodding on as sit down and not plod on. As Charles told Jeff more about this terrible run of luck, he found himself transfixed and increasingly distressed by it, distressed by the possibility that something of the kind could be coming his way, hot on the heels of the run of incredibly good luck he was in the midst of now. He was aware of a wave of self-pity, heading towards him, about to crash over his head.

  ‘Nothing bad will ever happen to me, will it, Charles?’ he said.

  ‘No, I'm sure it won't.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Well, you can never—’

  ‘Promise me. Promise me that nothing bad will ever happen to me. I need to be reassured.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Say it like you mean it,’ he said. ‘Swear on your mother's grave.’

  Charles looked at him harshly. Jeff knew he had gone too far, but the only way to get out of this situation was to go further. He gripped Charles's good arm. He implored him, looked him in the eye. By now the fear of something bad happening had gripped Jeff as he had gripped Charles's arm, so much so that it was as if he had gripped himself. He no longer knew if he was joking. Everything began as a joke – or some things did anyway – but not everything ended as one. Some things began as jokes, but ended up not being funny at all. If he wasn't careful, something terribly unfunny could befall him here. He could get punched in the face by Charles, especially now that he was no longer gripping his good arm. He tried, instead, to get a grip on himself, but it was no good: the thought of Charles punching him in the face had turned into a general level of threat, a premonition that at some point in the coming days someone would hit him for something he had done or not done, something he should have done or had neglected to do.

  ‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘I don't have the resources to deal with anything bad happening. I'm hanging on by my fingernails as it is.’

  ‘Let's change the subject,’ said Charles.

  ‘Great idea,’ said Jeff. A waiter came by, bearing a tray with a single full glass of champagne. Jeff grabbed it – with his arm in a sling Charles, even if he'd had his eyes on it, never had a chance – and took a huge swig.

  ‘So, anyway, how are you?’ said Jeff, suddenly in good humour again, so much so that he laughed aloud at this little joke. ‘You see, I've learned from your example. There I was, seriously depressed a few moments ago, but I had the tenacity to butch it out, to hang on in there. And I'm glad I did. I've pulled through and am having a fine old time again here at this party, shooting the breeze with a friend whose glass, I note, is tragically empty’ Jeff clinked it with his full one anyway. What a rollercoaster ride life was. He really was feeling great again. Unlike Charles, who looked distinctly down in the mouth.

  ‘Come on,’ said Jeff. ‘I know I went off on a bit of a downer a few minutes ago, but I feel fine now, honestly. And I know that, technically speaking, I should have offered that glass of champagne to you but, well, it was a fifty-fifty ball and at that moment I felt I needed it more than anyone else in this entire city.’

  Charles turned away. Jeez, he'd had a real sense of humour failure. Not that it mattered, because here was Valerie Sacks, in seriously high spirits, blahing drunkenly on about the man next to her – Pavel Something. They shook hands, but Jeff didn't catch the rest of his name.

  ‘He's Polish,’ she said. ‘A count.’

  ‘Between you and me, though,’ slurred Graham Hart – where had he sprung back from? – ‘I think the “o” is silent.’ Count Pavel Whatever seemed not to have picked up on this vicious slur, but Jeff was quite keen to get away from this little group. Especially when he saw Laura heading towards him. My God, she was radiantly beautiful, high on coke, and, fifteen minutes previously, he'd had his hand between her legs while she pissed. And now she'd come and put her arm around his waist. Life was too good to be true! His whole life was validated by the last couple of days in Venice. He'd never made a mistake in his life because everything, even the mistakes, had led to his being here now. That was the thing about life. You couldn't cherry-pick the good bits. You had to say yes to the whole package, all the ups and the downs, but if the ups – the highs – were like this, you'd sign up willingly to the downs because, by comparison, they were nothing, so irrelevant he couldn't even remember them.

  While Jeff had been
busy behaving insensitively to poor Charles, Laura had been getting invited to a party on a yacht. A yacht moored nearby, just a couple hundred yards away, on Giudecca. A bunch of people were going. It was being hosted by James Hofman, a German, and his parties, apparently, were always excellent. After the scale and clamour of this party, the idea of going to a smaller party,a party on a yacht , was immensely appealing. Especially since, in the course of the following half hour, the booze showed signs of drying up. Jeff didn't actually want anything else to drink, but the knowledge that the drink was running out had the effect of draining all momentum from the party. It began thinning out and then, once it became obvious that it was thinning out, thinned out still more rapidly. It was time to go.

  In characteristic Venetian fashion, the yacht was a lot further away than it was meant to be. They walked so far – past Zitelle vaporetto stop – that they thought they'd somehow missed it, but here it was, at last, docked near the Cipriani.