The Bat Tattoo (21 page)

Here in the Big Apple I am doing it ‘my way’. If one can make it anywhere, one can make it here also. Well, it goes. From time to time a change is good, is it not? In financial matters and also in others. Particularly for the jaded (is there any other kind) hedonist. One tries this and one tries that: sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Through an advertisement in a publication called
Model World
, I have found a most interesting new talent. His name is Dieter Scharf, and he has made for me a miniature realisation of a scene adapted from a story by M. R. James. Victoria introduced me to this writer and reads to me from him. Horror has its erotic aspects and our new toy has given to Victoria and me fresh stimulation. Ah, that dreadful hopping creature! Who knows the manner of its pleasures? ‘Some Day My Prince Will Come’! I am now reading H. P. Lovecraft and thinking of Cthulhu rising from the sea out of his dead city of R’lyeh. Cthulhu and Fay Wray? For this I hear perhaps ‘The Good Ship Lollipop’. Possibilities of this new direction will not soon be exhausted! I foresee many commissions and so I have started at a lower figure than with Clark.

I am in close touch with Folsom Bray at the R. Albert
Streeter Museum of Art. He tells me there are a great many entries in the competition and I swell with pride at the thought of undiscovered talent that will because of me have its day in the sun. Possibly even at the bank.

Life is good, not always in the same place, but good.

The R. Albert Streeter Museum of Art at the southern end of Hoxton Square was a misshapen white thing that seemed to have hopped out of nowhere to pounce on the square and rend it from the decent quiet of its pre-modernist past. Already the Lux Gallery near the southwest corner flaunted the glass of its pretensions next to the modest brick front where a blue plaque murmured that James Parkinson, 1755—1824, physician and geologist, had lived there. Rebel Music and Tiger Beer (with a yin—yang logo) carried the trend of change up to the northern end where St Monica’s Catholic Church drew back, shaken, from the self-exposure of the new museum visible through the bare winter trees of Hoxton Square Gardens. On the eastern side Apollo Dispatch looked busy and Thomas Fox & Co, Engineering and Transport, had not yet become a coffee shop but letters were falling from its name.

The sky looked ready to snow. The ground was black with artists and their entries all round the square and into the street leading from it. I’d hired a man called Nigel to take my entry in his van to the museum and Sarah had come along to help and to see what kind of talent I’d be
competing with. We sat in the back with my brown-paper parcels and timbers that looked as if they’d be more at home in a skip. When assembled, they now had a title:
The One for the Many
. A policeman in a neon-yellow jacket waved us on out of the square to the distant end of the queue and there Nigel dropped us and our burdens and left.

I’d brought along a home-made dolly, a small carpet-covered wooden platform on casters, and with careful stacking we were able to get the figure parcels on it. Sarah took charge of that while I took the timbers of the cross and those of the easel structure that supported it. I paid Nigel, he drove off, and there we were, queueing with people and works that might or might not be the future of what might or might not be Art. The various lengths of wood I was lumbered with were tied together and were quite heavy; the queue was moving very slowly and I dragged my burden with me as we inched along with more stops than starts.

‘It might be easier for you if you assembled the cross and put it over your shoulder,’ said Sarah.

‘Maybe this Easter,’ I replied.

Ahead of us in the queue was a tall dark-haired young woman wearing jeans, a mangy Persian lamb coat, a Russian hat of the same material, and something of a lip-piercing nature in her lower lip. Her entry seemed to be the contents of a Boots carrier bag. ‘That’s yours?’ she said, indicating the timbers I was dragging.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What do you think of my chances?’

‘What do you call it?’

‘
Boogie Nights
.’

‘Not a bad concept but it’s, you know, a little retro.’

‘What are you entering?’

‘I’ll give you a clue: it happens every twenty-eight days or so.’

‘This too will pass,’ said Sarah. ‘Used or new?’

‘Have a look,’ said she of the menses. Out of the bag she took a bundle of saturated tampons tied together with a small alarm clock, wires, and batteries, like a time bomb.

‘Wow,’ I said, ‘that’s a dynamite entry all right. What’s the title?’

‘
Annunciation.
’

‘Have you ever heard of Cyndie Dubuque?’ Sarah asked her.

‘No, is she a conceptual artist?’

‘Clitoral,’ said Sarah. ‘Paintings.’

‘Sounds very sixties,’ said the annunciatory woman, and turned away.

The man behind Sarah was a weedy individual with a quilted anorak, woollen cap, spectacles, pale face, receding chin, burning eyes, and a dustbin. ‘What’re you entering?’ he said, pointing to the parcels on the dolly.

‘The dolly,’ said Sarah. ‘These other things are just stuff I bought on the way here.’

He leered at her in a friendly way. ‘Title?’

‘
Hello, Dolly
.’

‘Not bad, but I think the judges are going to want something a little more serious.’

‘Like your dustbin?’

‘Right. You can see that it’s had a lot of use; it’s all dented and battered.’ He lifted the lid. ‘It’s never been washed — smell it. It’s empty.’

‘No, thank you,’ said Sarah. ‘What do you call it?’

‘The title’s down at the bottom, you have to look inside to see it.’

‘I won’t.’

‘All right, you win: it’s
My Life
, spelled out in orange peels,’ said Weedy, hanging his head modestly.

‘You’ve spelled out your whole life in orange peels?’

‘No, no, that’s just the title:
My Life
.’

‘Poor you!’ said Sarah. ‘Your life at the bottom of a dustbin. Do you spend much time in it?’

Weedy straightened up sharpish. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, if your life is inside the dustbin, why are you out of it?’ said Sarah.

‘Are you taking the piss?’

‘Never,’ said Sarah.

Weedy’s eyes started out of his head a little. ‘But this isn’t to be taken literally,’ he sputtered. ‘It’s a metaphor!’

‘For what?’

‘My life!’

‘Which is what, an empty dustbin?’

‘It’s empty because it’s been purged; all that’s left is the orange peel of me!’ said Weedy with a vein throbbing in his forehead.

‘Then presumably you’ve eaten the orange?’

‘I
was
the orange. It isn’t easy talking Art with you.’

‘Show me some Art and we’ll talk it,’ said Sarah.

At that point Weedy gave up on her and started a conversation with a buxom blonde woman behind him who was entering a canvas covered with a brown-paper flap. Weedy showed her his and she showed him hers and although it was a picture of three kittens he seemed to find that he could talk Art with her.

The snow began to fall, the queue inched forward as slowly as ever, and there were no public toilets in sight. Some of those in the queue got others to hold their places while they
went into the museum; others who were entering buckets and dustbins may possibly have augmented their entries while screened by sympathetic conceptual artists. Sarah and I took it in turns to visit the museum conveniences and were impressed by them and the exhibition space; the snow sky now had a bright overcast and the variously angled skylights provided a coolly critical daylight that intensified the reality of the entries so far booked in.

There were two men in front of a reception desk and a woman behind it. The men, both heavyset with expressionless faces, looked like builders or movers; the woman might have been cast as a seaside landlady in a black-and-white film. Entrants handed their entrance cards to the woman and were logged in by her. The stamped bottom half of the card was then attached to the entry by the artist. The two men helped unwrap the wrapped entries and waved people on to park their works where they could.

There were many dustbins variously presented along with other concepts and found objects and there were also paintings done by hand and sculptures of recognisable human and animal figures that had the unconfident air of tourists who’d wandered into a rough neighbourhood. Quite possibly there were great works among the entries; I couldn’t take in much in a passing glance. I imagined
The One for the Many
among them and I was filled with doubt and confusion. I thought of the eight listening figures in the Orpheus fountain at Cranbrook and shook my head. Sarah had accepted the fact that I myself didn’t know what this crucifixion meant and that didn’t seem to bother her. She’d confessed that she was a man-improver and I wondered if she saw this work and the entering of it in the competition as an improvement.

The snow stopped, the sun appeared and shed a thin watery
light on the wet winter pavement and our queue as we moved slowly forward along the railings, many of the entrants talking into their little telephones. Behind the three-kitten woman was another woman, young, tall, haggard, scraggy, with what looked like a bag of laundry. She was on the phone rather loudly. ‘Of course I did,’ she declaimed, ‘and I brought your black ones too. No, I didn’t; the smell is half the story. Yes, Marcia, it
is
a new idea, because every pile of dirty knickers is different, that’s what conceptual is all about: there
are
no two things the same.’

‘There,’ said Sarah. ‘Now we know what conceptual art is all about.’

‘What worries me,’ I said, ‘is, can you catch it from a toilet seat?’

‘Easily. Also from oral Zeitgeist. Best thing is not to swallow and never sit all the way down.’

‘Maybe it’s already too late; maybe I’m already conceptual.’

‘There’s a simple test: if you see vomit on the pavement and don’t give it a title you’re still OK.’

‘Right. I’ll keep my eyes open this Saturday night.’

‘And now that we’ve used the c-word,’ said Sarah, ‘I’m going to come right out and ask you if this might be a concept that we’re entering?’

‘The one thing I’m sure of is that concepts are not what I’m about.’

‘Can you say what you
are
about? I’m just asking — I don’t know that I could answer that question myself.’

I pondered that question for a long time. I was thinking about the bonking toys I’d made for Adelbert Delarue; I’d never told Sarah about those. I saw them now in action in all their possible permutations. Those four miniature
crash-dummy orgiasts had got me into wood and made me begin to feel like an artist. Feeling that way, I did what artists do: I put an idea into visible form; I couldn’t say what the idea was but maybe it would come to me in the fullness of time.

What about religion? To me Christ was not divine, only a charismatic man who died in a horrible way. And as far as I could see, Christianity had done more harm than good in the world. And yet, the idea of a man crowned with thorns dying on a cross — was that something to be taken liberties with? The crucified Christ at St John’s in the North End Road was shiny fibreglass but it had no pretensions. Could I say the same for mine? I put my hand in my pocket and felt the small wooden hand Sarah had given me. This whole project had gone from me and I was tired. The salt of it had lost its savour and I wanted to go home.

‘UFO Number One, come in, please,’ said Sarah.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Where were we?’

‘Just before you disappeared I asked you what you were about.’

‘I can answer that one now, Sarah. I’m about to get all this lumber out of here and go home.’

‘How come?’

‘Because this thing has gone from me and now it’s time for the next thing.’

‘What will that be?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘Maybe the next thing is to finish this thing.’

‘Oh God, you’re going to improve me.’

‘I warned you.’

‘Go ahead, improve.’

‘Maybe entering this competition was a bad idea but
walking away from it now would be a failure and I need you not to fail.’

‘Why do you see it as a failure?’

‘Because whatever this is, you have to get all the way into it before you can get out of it.’

I remembered boyhood fights, not those that I won but the others. When Joe Milanic dared me to knock the chip off his shoulder I did and he made short work of me but at least I hadn’t walked away. What about now? From what shoulder had I knocked the chip when I took adze and mallet to the limewood? Well, I’d probably find out if I stayed with it and I’d probably lose Sarah’s respect if I didn’t. Maybe lose her altogether.

‘OK,’ I said, ‘you’ve convinced me.’

She looked at me as if my head were transparent and every one of my thoughts was visible to her, especially the last one. ‘I think you convinced yourself,’ she said, and kissed me.

Now that I had shown Sarah who was in charge I felt a lot better and I also felt like a canoeist being swept towards the edge of Niagara Falls. In no time at all I was over the edge, plunged blindly through the thundering waters, and rose to the surface in front of the builders and movers and the seaside landlady as
Annunciation
was checked in by Ms Menses whose name was actually Philippa Crutchley-Sweet. ‘
Annunciation
, number seven six o,’ said the landlady.

It was very warm in the museum, and the bulkier of the two men had by now rolled up his sleeves to reveal a Sacred Heart tattoo on his left arm and a harp on his right. ‘Are you a builder or a concept?’ he said as I approached with my timbers.

‘You tell me,’ I said, indicating the parcels on Sarah’s dolly.

‘On a building site a two by four is a two by four but here you never know,’ he said. ‘Let’s be having these wrappings off.’

I took a deep breath, undid the twine, and removed the paper from the first parcel. ‘Jesus!’ he exclaimed as the head and torso came into view.