Hunting and Gathering (47 page)

“Did he fall or did he jump?”

“He was an elegant man; he fell. He was an insurance broker and he was walking on the roof of a tower, something to do with some ventilation conduits, he opened up his file and he wasn't watching where he put his feet.”

“God, that's unbelievable . . . What do you think?”

“I don't. There was the funeral after that and my mother kept turning around to see if the other woman hadn't shown up in the back of the church. Then she sold the Jaguar and I stopped talking.”

“For how long?”

“Months.”

“And then? Can I push the sheet down? I'm suffocating like this.”

“Me too. I became a lonely, ungrateful teenager. I put the number of the hospital into the phone memory but I didn't need it. She calmed down. Not suicidal anymore, just depressive. That was progress. It was quieter. One death was enough for her, I suppose. After that I had only one thing on my mind: to get the hell out of there. I left the first time to live with a girlfriend when I was seventeen. One evening, boom, my mother and the cops are outside the door. Although the bitch knew perfectly well where I was. It was lame, as the kids say nowadays. We were having supper with my friend's parents and talking about the war in Algeria, I remember . . . And then knock knock, the cops. I felt really uncomfortable for our hosts but I didn't want any fuss so I left with them. I was going to turn eighteen on February 11, 1995, and on the tenth at one minute past midnight I left, closing the door behind me quietly. I got my baccalaureate and went to study at the Beaux-Arts. Fourth out of seventy admitted. I'd made a really beautiful dossier based on the operas from my childhood. I worked like a dog and got a commendation from the jury. At that point I had no contact at all with my mother and I was struggling, life was so damn expensive in Paris. I lived here and there, nothing permanent. Cut a lot of classes. Cut theory and went to the studio workshops, until I began to mess around. To begin with, I was sort of bored. I guess I really wasn't playing by the rules: I didn't take myself seriously so as a result I wasn't taken seriously. I wasn't an Artist with a capital A, I was a good workman. The kind to whom they'd recommend the Place du Tertre, rather, to daub some Monet and little dancers . . . And then, uh . . . I didn't get it. I liked to draw, so instead of listening to the professors' jabber, I'd do their portraits. The whole notion of ‘visual art' and happenings and installations—it all bored me stiff. I realized that I had got the wrong century. I wish I'd lived in the sixteenth or seventeenth century so I could have apprenticed to a great master. Preparing his backgrounds, cleaning his brushes, grinding his colors. Maybe I wasn't immature, I don't know. The second thing was, I fell in with the wrong sort of guy. It was a classic scenario: silly young woman with her box of pastels and her neatly folded rags falls in love with unknown genius. The accursed prince of clouds, the widower, dark and brooding and inconsolable. A real storybook character: tormented, incredibly brilliant, suffering, passionate and with a long mane of hair . . . Argentinian father and Hungarian mother, what an explosive combination. He was incredibly cultured, living in a squat and just waiting for a dewy-eyed little ninny to fix his meals while he created in the midst of terrible suffering, and I fit the part. I went to the Marché Saint-Pierre, bought yards of cloth to staple to the walls to make our little ‘love nest' look ‘stylish and charming, ' and I looked for work to keep the stew pot bubbling . . . Stew pot, well, camping stove is more like it. I dropped out of school and sat cross-legged on the floor to think about what sort of job I could do. And the worst of it is that I was proud! I watched him painting and I felt important. I was the sister, the muse, the great woman behind the great man, the one who dragged the wine crates up the stairs, fed the disciples and emptied the ashtrays . . .”

She laughed.

“I was so proud when I got a job as a guard at a museum—really clever of me, no? Well, if I'm telling you about my colleagues it's because I really discovered the grandeur of public service. To be honest, I didn't care. I was fine. Because I was in my great master's studio at last. The canvases had been dry for a long time but I was definitely learning more there than any school in the world could teach me. And, as I wasn't getting much sleep in those days, I could nap all I wanted. I was keeping warm. The problem was that I wasn't allowed to do any drawing. Even in a tiny nothing little notebook, even if there was no one around and God knows there were enough days when there was hardly anyone, but it was out of the question that I do anything besides ruminate on my fate, ready to jump whenever I heard the slap-slap of the soles of some visitor gone astray or to put my stuff away quick as I could when I heard the jangle of a key ring. In the end it became the favorite pastime of a certain Séraphin Tico—Séraphin Tico, I love that name. He'd creep up on me to catch me red-handed. God, he was pleased, that ass, whenever he could force me to put my pencil away! Then I'd watch as he walked away, spreading his legs so his balls could inflate with delight . . . But every time he snuck up on me it made me jump, and that drove me nuts. The number of sketches that were ruined because of him. God! I couldn't take it anymore. So I learned how to play the game. My education in life was beginning to bear fruit: I bribed him.”

“Sorry?”

“I paid him. I asked him how much he wanted to let me work. Thirty francs a day? Done deal. The price of an hour's catnap somewhere warm? Done deal.”

“Shit.”

“Yup. The great Séraphin Tico.” She added, dreamily, “Now that we have the wheelchair, I'll go and say hello to him someday with Paulette.”

“Why?”

“Because I liked him. At least he was an honest scoundrel. Not like the other prick who would be pissed at me from the minute I walked in the door after a full day's work simply because I'd forgotten to buy him his cigarettes. So what did I do, stupid bitch? I'd go back out to get them . . .”

“Why did you stay with him?”

“Because I loved him. I admired his work too. He was free, he had no hang-ups, he was so sure of himself, demanding . . . Exactly the opposite of me. He would have preferred to die penniless and friendless than accept the slightest compromise. I was barely twenty years old and I was the one supporting him and I admired him.”

“You were so naive . . .”

“Yes. No. After the adolescence I'd just been through, he was the best thing that could have happened to me. We had all the time in the world, all we talked about was art, painting. We were ridiculous, yes, but we had our integrity. Six of us could eat on two welfare checks, we were freezing cold and we stood in line at the public baths, but we had the feeling we were living better than others were. And as grotesque as it may seem today, I think we were right. We had passion. The luxury of it . . . I was way naive and I was happy. When I was fed up with one room, I moved into another one, and when I didn't forget the cigarettes, it was party time! We drank a lot too. I acquired some bad habits. And then I met the Kesslers—I was telling you about them the other day.”

“I'm sure he was a good lay.” Franck scowled.

She cooed: “Oh yes, the best in the world. Oh . . . just thinking about it gives me shivers all over.”

“All right already. You made your point.”

“Nah,” she sighed, “it wasn't really so great. Once the first postvirginal emotion was over with, I—I, well, let's just say he was a selfish man.”

“Ah.”

“Yes. You might know something about that too.”

“Yeah, but I don't smoke!”

They smiled at each other in the dark.

“After that, things began to go downhill. He was cheating on me. While I was putting up with Séraphin Tico's stupid tricks, he was screwing the first-year students, and when eventually we made peace, he confessed that he'd been doing drugs, oh, not a whole lot, just to try, for the beauty of the act . . . And that's something I really don't feel like talking about.”

“Why?”

“Because it was just so sad. It's unbelievable how fast that shit can bring you to your knees. Beauty of the act, my ass. I held out a few more months and then I went back to my mother's to live. She hadn't seen me in nearly three years, she opens the door and says, ‘I'm warning you, there's nothing to eat.' I burst into tears and I didn't get out of bed for two months. For once she was decent, she had what it took to take care of me, so to speak. And when I was back on my feet, I went back to work. In those days all I ate was baby food. Hello? Dr. Freud? After all the Dolby Surround CinemaScope, all the sound and light and blockbuster emotions, I went back to a small-scale life in black and white. I watched TV and my head would go all funny whenever I walked along the river . . .”

“Did you think about it?”

“I did. I pictured my ghost rising up to the heavens to the aria of
Tornami a vagheggiar, Te solo vuol amar . . .
and my papa would be there to open his arms and laugh, ‘Ah, here you are at last, mademoiselle! You'll see, it's even nicer than the Riviera up here!' ”

She was crying.

“Hey, don't cry . . .”

“I feel like it.”

“Okay, then cry.”

“That's nice. You're not the complicated type.”

“True. I have plenty of faults but I'm not complicated. You want to stop there?”

“No.”

“You want something to drink? A little hot milk with orange flower water like Paulette used to make me?”

“No, thanks. Where was I?”

“Funny head.”

“Yes, funny head. Honestly, it wouldn't have taken much more than a nudge in the back to tip me over, but instead, fate was wearing fine black kid gloves, and tapped me on the shoulder one morning. That day I was playing with figures from a Watteau painting, I was bent over on my chair when this man went by, behind me. I'd seen him around a lot. He was always wandering in among the students and peering at their work when they weren't looking. I thought he was a pickup artist, and I wondered about his sexuality, I watched him chatting up these kids who seemed flattered, and I admired the way he went about it. He always wore these superbly long coats, and classy suits, and scarves. It was like taking a break, to watch him . . . So I was leaning over my sketchpad and all I could see were his magnificent shoes, very fine quality, with an impeccable shine. ‘May I aska you an indiscreeta question, mademoiselle? Can your morality resist all temptation?' I wondered where he was headed with a remark like that. To the hotel? Well, okay . . . could my morality resist all temptation? Here I was corrupting Séraphin Tico and I dreamt of going against the Good Lord's work. ‘No,' I replied, and because of my gallant little reply, off I went down another shit hole. Immeasurably deep, this time.”

“A what?”

“An unspeakable shit hole.”

“What did you do?”

“The same thing as before. But instead of sleeping in a squat and playing housemaid for a lunatic, I lived in one of the grandest hotels in Europe to play parlormaid for a crook.”

“You didn't—”

“Become a prostitute? No. Although . . .”

“What did you do?”

“Forgery.”

“Forged banknotes?”

“No, art forgery. And the worst of it is, I really enjoyed it. At least in the beginning. Later it became borderline slavery, the joke was on me, but in the beginning it was a blast. For once I was being useful! And I tell you, I was living in incredible luxury . . . Nothing was too fine for me. Was I cold? He gave me the best cashmere sweaters. You know that big blue sweater with a hood that I wear all the time?”

“Yeah?”

“Ten thousand francs.”

“No way.”

“Yessir. And I had a dozen more where that one came from. Was I hungry? Then it was room service and all the lobster I could eat. Was I thirsty?
Ma che
, champagne! And if I was bored? Shows, shopping, music! ‘Everythinga you wanta, you tella Vittorio.' The only thing I was not allowed to say was, ‘I quit.' Oh, then he'd get real nasty,
il bello
Vittorio. ‘If you leava, you go straighta downa.' But why would I leave? I was pampered, I was having fun, doing what I liked. I went to all the museums I had ever dreamt of, met tons of people, at night I wandered into the wrong hotel rooms . . . I'll never be sure but I think I may even have slept with Jeremy Irons . . .”

“Who's that?”

“God, you're hopeless. Anyway, it doesn't matter. I read, listened to music, earned money . . . With hindsight I tell myself it was another form of suicide. A more comfortable form of suicide . . . I cut myself off from real life and from the few people who loved me. From Pierre and Mathilde Kessler, who were really angry with me because of it; from my former school friends; from reality, morality, the straight and narrow, my own self . . .”

“Were you working all the time?”

“All the time. I didn't produce a whole lot but I had to do the same things over and over again because of technical problems. The patina, the type of support and all that. The drawing itself was peanuts, it was the ageing process that was tricky. I worked with Jan, a Dutch guy who supplied us with old paper. That was his métier: going around the world and coming back with rolls of paper. He had a mad chemist side to him and he was tireless, trying to create old from new . . . I never heard him say a single thing, a fascinating guy. And eventually I lost all notion of time. In a way, I let myself be sucked into this nonlife. You couldn't tell, just looking at me, but I was a wreck. An elegant wreck. Always in need of a drink, shirts made to measure and completely disgusted with my little self. I don't know where it all would have led to if Leonardo hadn't saved me.”