This is Life (37 page)

Léandre Martin saw just as well as she did that the art world, just like any other tentacle of show business, was a playground for the wild and the weak; a gruesome tableau of grifters
and chancers and rich folk at play; a grim pit of desperation, vanity and despair, where nothing was thought of trampling on the lives of those who couldn’t keep up. If it hadn’t been
for people like his manager, if it had been run solely by artists and born-wealthy dilettantes, the art world would never have been anything more than a hotbed of intrigue, failing livers, lost
fortunes, unfulfilled potentials and herpes.

The intrigue never abated, livers continued to fail, fortunes were lost all the time, potentials continued to go unfulfilled and herpes remained a constant menace, but she was able to bring
order to his working life, to shield him from the chaos. She had convinced him that the last thing an artist needs is a manager who believes that self-expression is an end in itself. She had
steered him on a course that kept him productive, and his profile high, and which, particularly now this run was set for success, had made him a good living.

He was happy with her, and something he had thanked her for many times was her ability to cover up his true identity. He didn’t like the idea of people snooping around his private life.
She supposed that like a lot of artists he was under the impression that he had a big secret. She had never asked about it, but unless he had killed somebody it probably wasn’t as big a deal
as he thought it was, and even if he had killed somebody, she doubted it would have made that much difference.

And then there was the girl. He hadn’t told her about the girl. Maybe she was behind it all. What if she was the clingy type, and had persuaded him to give it all up so they could spend
more time together? It could be that she didn’t want to share him; she wouldn’t be the first girl who didn’t like the idea of other women seeing her man without his clothes on. Le
Machine’s manager had not been there when she had made her appearances in the auditorium, and she knew nothing more about her than what she had read in the newspaper, but she didn’t
like the idea of her one bit.

After every showing of
Life
so far, Le Machine and his manager had withdrawn to a luxury hotel suite for three days as he adjusted back to normal life. They had an
understanding that any sex that took place between them, and there was always a lot of it, was mechanical, that there was no emotional aspect to it at all, and that outside these days they would
never mention it, or let it become an issue in their working relationship. But that didn’t mean that it wasn’t incredible, and that she wouldn’t miss it if it stopped
happening.

Once his reacclimatisation was over, she would go through his fan mail with him and help him pick out the best of his offers from other women. Together they chose the ones who looked beautiful
and hygienic, and she would call and arrange for them to meet him. She felt no jealousy towards them; she just accepted the situation. After all, they meant nothing to him. It wasn’t as if he
loved them.

But if the girl was there when he came off stage, things would be different and that would be a great pity. She hoped she wouldn’t be around, that something would happen to come between
them. She wanted to be the one Le Machine turned to when he walked off the stage.

For now, though, the production was going very well. She checked the box office statistics. They had sold almost two thousand tickets overnight.

E
verybody involved in
Life
knew that it wasn’t possible to please everyone who came through their doors. Some people arrived with what
they had thought was an unassailable cynicism, only to find that by the time they had left they were steadfast admirers of the work, but others would not be swayed, and would leave the venue
spitting fire.

Le Machine’s fiercest critic so far sat in a café round the corner from the exhibition, drinking the most obscure coffee on the menu. Most people would not have dared to order it,
believing its name to be unpronounceable, but he had pronounced it not only correctly, but also with extreme nonchalance. His girlfriend had ordered a cappuccino.

Before he had crossed the threshold of Le Charmant Cinéma Érotique, Sébastien had already made his mind up about
Life
, and had been furious when his girlfriend had
told him she had bought them tickets. He had only gone along in order to prove himself right.

‘That was pathetic,’ he said. ‘I’m streets ahead of that clown. If he can shift that many tickets, I’ll have no problem when the time comes. My work’s in a
league of its own.’

Sébastien’s girlfriend said nothing. She sat there looking at her spoon, turning it over and over in her fingers. She thought of her boyfriend’s latest piece. He had drawn
three circles in black felt-tip pen on a sheet of A3 paper, then he had coloured them in, also with felt-tip pen: one red, one blue and one green. At some points he had gone over the edges. That
was all he was going to submit for his project.

His fellow students were going to spend the coming weeks absorbed in their work, trying their best to produce something exceptional, but he was confident that he had already left them standing.
She agreed that his circles were in a league of their own; it just wasn’t the league that he thought it was. This work, he had told her, undermined every preconception that people had about
art.
To call it revolutionary would be an understatement
, he had said.
It obliterates everything that’s come before it
. He had gone on at great length about his thinking behind
it. He was very, very pleased with it, and with himself.

‘Anybody who doesn’t get what I do is an idiot,’ he said, ‘and who wants to make art for idiots?’ He almost laughed as he thought of an answer to his own rhetorical
question: ‘Le Machine, that’s who.’

He sipped his coffee. ‘God, that’s good,’ he said. He looked at his girlfriend’s humble cappuccino. ‘I don’t know how you can drink that stuff. It’s so
obvious.’

She carried on turning her spoon over, and weaving it through her fingers.

He continued. ‘I guarantee that in a couple of years’ time I’ll be getting crowds twice that size to see my work. You won’t be anywhere near as high-profile as me so
don’t go expecting queues round the block, but you’ll still do well. Your sculpture has a rare quality to it – that small piece you’re working on right now, the one that
looks a bit like a whelk, has more to it than twelve weeks of
Life
. And as for my work . . .’

Sébastien had told her many times that although she was an accomplished sculptor she would never quite catch up with him intellectually or artistically, but he had always followed this
with a reassurance that she wasn’t to feel bad about it because his was the great mind of his generation. Whenever he spoke to her about her work, he went to extraordinary lengths to tell her
exactly what she was doing, and why she was doing it. She could never make any sense of what he said; it never tallied with what she was really doing, or why, but he was so good-looking that she
had let him carry on. He would sometimes break off from a monologue to tell her that he hoped she was taking it all in:
It’s so important for you to be able to talk intelligently about
your work
.

Sébastien was widely acknowledged as the best-looking boy in college, and he was her first proper boyfriend, and she had been so proud that he had chosen to be with her over all the other
girls, but the power of his looks had begun to wane, and she had grown exhausted by him. As he sat in the café and went on and on, the last molecules of her admiration for him evaporated.
She had given him the benefit of the doubt over so much, but for a while a hairline crack had been appearing, and now the dam had burst: he was bad at art; nobody liked his work; he was stupid; he
was horrible; he only ever talked shit; he was an embarrassment to himself; he had no real friends; and no matter what he thought, he was going to amount to nothing. All these failings eclipsed his
looks to the point where they had just stopped working. When he had unveiled his latest piece, she had been horrified by how pathetic it was. No amount of intellectualising or posturing could
disguise its complete lack of redeeming qualities. That he thought it had any kind of power or worth had made her squirm on his behalf.

As he lectured her about her own work, he never failed to remind her that she was a quarter Cambodian, and to tell her that this somehow connected her to a mythical past which fed into her work.
She was fed up with this. She had told herself that she would leave him the next time he used the phrase
Khmer energy
. It didn’t mean anything, it was just nonsense. She knew she
wouldn’t have long to wait.

He sipped his unpronounceable coffee, and carried on. ‘Our work sits well together. Yours has this rare and tremendous Khmer energy that links it to the past,’ he said, ‘and as
for mine, well, I work in a realm so far beyond the imagination that it can only be the future. It’s as if together we complete a circle.’ He thought for a while, then corrected
himself. ‘Well, it’s not so much that we complete a circle, it’s more that we coexist amid the same parallax. So anyway, what did
you
think of that Machine
idiot?’

She put down the spoon, and brushed her long, black hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ears. ‘Well, for a start, I wouldn’t say he’s an idiot. I wasn’t sure
about him before we went; there was a good chance it could have been a load of pointless rubbish, but I don’t think what he does can ever really make sense until you experience it. I thought
the sonic aspect in particular was incredible; his sound designer is a genius, there’s no question of that. It all comes together so perfectly. It’s the kind of piece that can’t
be captured in words, and that’s partly what makes it so great. It just
is
. If you believe the press you would think it’s just some guy shitting on stage, but there’s so
much more to it than that. It really moved me. It made me think about my own life, about my body, and I found myself asking, and answering, some pretty serious questions. I thought it was
excellent.’

Sébastien was incredulous. ‘Didn’t you listen to a word I said?’

She nodded. ‘I did. I listened very closely.’

‘Then what are you talking about?’

She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘Did you see the papers yesterday? It looks as though he’s dating a girl from our course. She’s called Aurélie
something-or-other. You’d recognise her. She’s blonde. I’ve never spoken to her, but I really like her work. Do you know her?’

Sébastien turned white, and started to tremble. He tried to cover this up by shaking a salt cellar, as if separating clumps.

His girlfriend thought of the questions she had asked herself in
Life
, and the conclusions she had come to. And she thought about her body, and how she had decided that she was going to
keep it to herself for a long time to come. ‘Le Machine is a better artist than you’ll ever be,’ she said. ‘And if anyone’s an idiot around here, Sébastien,
it’s you. You are a jealous, talentless, boring idiot.’ It felt so good to say it.

His eyes were as wide as they could be. ‘You don’t mean that.’

‘Yes, I do. Why do you think we coexist amid the same parallax, anyway? What does that even mean? You talk such shit, and I’m fed up with you.’

He stared at her, unable to speak.

‘Sébastien,’ said his girlfriend, ‘I think it’s time we had a long conversation.’

For the first time in a long while, she smiled. She couldn’t help it. She was so happy at the thought that she wouldn’t have to put up with him any more. They wouldn’t need to
have the long conversation. He had got the message. She reached into her bag to get her wallet out, so she could settle the bill and leave.

As her hand began to withdraw from the bag, he held up his arms in surrender. ‘Don’t shoot,’ he said. ‘Please. Don’t shoot.’

She took out her wallet, and when he saw it he lowered his hands.

‘I was only joking,’ he said.

‘But you’ve always told me that you never joke, that joking was incompatible with the gravity of your intellect.’

‘I was just trying to lighten the mood,’ he said.

She knew he was lying. Sébastien had never tried to lighten a mood in his life.

‘I think you must be unwell,’ he said. ‘Get some rest, and we’ll talk again later.’

She left enough money to cover the bill, then stood up and checked her watch. It was ten past ten, time to go to the sculpture room at college and get back to her project. And this time it would
just be her and her work, with no interruptions, no pointless buzzing in her ear. She was so glad to think that even when she had been crazy about him, even when she had thought he was talking
sense when he had told her that she must never smile because to do so would be to devalue her art, she had never let him influence her work. In the days when she had thought there was a grand
intelligence behind his soliloquies she had let his words wash over her, and gone in her own direction.

‘You’ll be nothing without me,’ he said, as she walked away. ‘I gave you all your best ideas. I created you.’

She stepped out into the day. It was cold, but it felt like springtime.

I
t was eighteen minutes past ten, and in four minutes’ time Herbert’s mother would be an hour late. The baby was still asleep after his
busy night, and Aurélie had a sickening feeling in her gut. She wanted to cry.

She felt like a child who needed a grown-up to tell her what to do, and she had decided that she was going to wait until Professor Papavoine and Liliane had finished work, and she would wait for
them on their front step, and when they got in they would take her upstairs and sit her on their sofa and help her make the decision. She already knew what they were going to say. They would tell
her that the only thing she could do now, for Herbert’s sake, was go to the police and show them the baby, and tell them that they had to find his family. She already knew that was the
sensible and the right thing to do, even the only thing, but she needed to hear it from somebody else first, because walking into a police station would bring her whole life crashing down, and she
didn’t feel strong enough to take that step alone.