This is Life (9 page)

In every other city, when the show had finally opened people had always come in large numbers, art-minded curiosity seekers on the whole, which was fine with him, and the overwhelming majority
of them seemed to end up appreciating what he was doing, just as he had hoped they would. They would often return, bringing their friends, art-minded or otherwise, and over the course of a run he
would attract a diverse audience. With a few predictable exceptions the press would surprise itself by responding with warmth, guaranteeing further ticket sales. Then the hubbub would die down, and
the run would continue in relative peace right up until the end, when the media tuned back in, becoming fascinated by how full all the phials had become, and potential visitors realised that there
would be no extension and clamoured for the remaining tickets.

So far, there was nothing to indicate that this run would pan out any differently from the others. He supposed his twelve weeks on stage would pass as they always did.

Somehow, though it had never been his intention,
Life
had become a money-spinner, a small industry. When this had begun to happen, he had let it go to his head; for a while he had lost
his equilibrium, and his reason for doing what he was doing had slipped out of focus. In those days he had given interviews in which he had appeared arrogant, and said things he ought not to have
said. He was ashamed to think of it now, but he had even begun to feel that the money and press that his work was attracting was in some way a validation of its artistic worth.

Since regaining his perspective, which had happened during a particularly relentless bout of diarrhoea two weeks into the San Francisco staging, his interviews had been more measured, and
Life
continued to have a very positive, even ecstatic, reception. It had come to be regarded as one of the great recent phenomena of the art world. Perhaps Paris would be the place where
this all changed. Maybe his home city would reject him, just as he had rejected it. He was ready for this, and he was also ready for this run to be his final presentation of the work. In some ways
he hoped it would be. He was starting to feel he had done enough: to pull down the curtain and move on with his life would be a relief.

Only when it was all over, when the finished exhibits from the final staging had been shipped off to whichever collector had bought them, and when his body hair had begun to grow back, never to
be waxed again, would he be able to talk openly and honestly about
Life
. If the people who came were to find out why he was doing what he was doing they would bring so many preconceptions
that it would come between them and the work. They wouldn’t have the opportunity to read the piece in their own way; they would instead see something else, their minds clouded with words, and
he felt strongly that words were the enemy of art.

If the critics were ever to find out why he did what he did, they would do everything they could to tear him down. He knew exactly what they would say, too: they would say it was
sentimental
schlock,
and they would be half right. It wasn’t schlock, he was sure of that, but it
was
sentimental. Only he knew this though, and he was well aware that if the truth ever got
out it would all be over, because there is nothing that angers the custodians of the art world more than simple feelings expressed in a straightforward manner. And it was simple feelings, expressed
in a straightforward manner, that were at the heart of
Life
.

The waxing went on and on. He would leave the hair on his head until the last moment. That way he would be able to move around unrecognised. He still had a lot to do. He had put off too many
things until the last minute. In addition to all the organisational issues that needed to be dealt with, there were two people he had to see before it all began. He had already made several
discreet visits to one of them since his return to the city, but he still needed to see them one last time. The other was somebody with whom he had unfinished business.

He had been putting off this particular meeting ever since he had arrived back in the city, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to relax on stage unless he had had an opportunity to get what
he needed to say off his chest. It was something that had been bothering him for years, and which he had been delaying ever since he had returned to the city: he needed to track down a man called
Professor Papavoine.

The woman continued ripping off strips. He would wait until two hours before the doors were due to open before having his eyebrows waxed off, along with a final full check for any missed body
hairs from this session. Last of all, the hair on his head and face would be shaved to the skin. He wanted to be as smooth as an egg for his public. Only his eyelashes would remain, and even these
he would collect and display as they moulted over the course of the twelve weeks.

He thought back to his visit to the venue. It had put his mind at rest. He had been impressed with the space, and was sure he was going to be comfortable there. His last show had been in the
round, in a two-thousand seat boxing arena, and he had never quite been able to relax into the surroundings. This production was going to be smaller in terms of capacity, but he and the crew had
worked hard to see that it had a good chance of success. His manager had told him that early sales were fairly strong but they still had a long way to go before they would be able to relax. Soon he
would be finding out whether or not he had conquered his home city.

Eugène Carrière’s enlarged baby looked on as Le Machine presented his scrotum for waxing. This was his least favourite part of the procedure. He closed his eyes, and braced
himself.

I
t was almost dark by the time Aurélie and Sylvie started walking down the hill. Sylvie was taking a turn at pushing a drowsy Herbert, and
having left Lucien and the Akiyamas eating at the restaurant, they could at last talk freely. Each was impatient to find out what the other had been up to since they had last met. Sylvie told
Aurélie about the antics of some of her tormented former lovers and, particularly, their mothers. Sylvie had continuing problems with her ex-boyfriends’ mothers who, it seemed, were as
keen to have her as their daughter-in-law as their sons were to have her as their wife.

In her middle teenage years, when she had dated only troublemakers, this hadn’t been a problem. Her older lovers had never introduced her to their families, preferring to keep her in a
dark room and tell her to keep her mouth shut and not go anywhere until they came back, which would often be days, sometimes even weeks, later. When she reached her late teens, she had realised
once and for all how quickly things became tedious with bad boys, and stopped bothering with them. She experimented with dating boys of around her age who were more or less normal, and it was then
that the mothers had started to come into the picture.

Each of this second wave of boyfriends had been keen to show off his incredible new girlfriend to his family, who without exception would be instantly won over by her looks and her sunny
disposition, and when they began to learn snippets from her unhappy history, the boys’ mothers clung to her.
She’ll be looking for a surrogate family
, they said to their
husbands.
Orphans are like that
. They were determined to make theirs the surrogate family they were sure she so desperately craved.

The mothers were right, Sylvie did want a husband so badly because she yearned for the stability of family life. The only person she had ever spoken to about this in any depth was
Aurélie. ‘I’m not stupid,’ she had said. ‘I know what’s going on; it’s pretty basic psychology.’ But as much as she wanted the husband and children,
she knew that family life with the wrong person would be a lot worse than being alone. She only ever accepted dates from boys she could see herself staying with, boys with an awful lot going for
them, but every one had revealed himself to be in some way lacking. Usually it would be nothing obvious, she would just be struck by a feeling that something was not quite right, that he was not
the one.

‘Maybe it’s just typical orphan behaviour,’ she had told Aurélie. ‘It’s not as if I set out to break their hearts, I set out hoping that I’ll love
them.’ That was something she had come to learn was a mistake: hope was not enough. She had pursued the possibility of love, rather than waiting for love to find her, and by the time she
accepted that it had failed to materialise, as had happened with every one of them so far, the boy would be so deeply in thrall to her that she could only abandon him to his misery. Sometimes the
romance would have lasted for months, sometimes only a few days, but in all cases the depth of despair she left behind was the same.

‘Sometimes I’ll wonder afterwards whether he
had
been the right one, but I was just so frightened that things would be snatched away that I sabotaged the relationship before
it had a chance to be taken away from me.’ She had laughed at herself as she said this, and Aurélie hadn’t known what to say.

These romances always ended the instant she came to the realisation that the boy was not the one she was going to end up with. She felt this was the right thing to do, that stringing him along
for a second beyond this moment of revelation would be dishonest and only make things worse for everybody. She would say, simply,
It’s over, I’m sorry,
and leave the room. One
time the epiphany had struck her halfway through sex, and another time at the Christmas dinner table in front of the boy’s entire extended family. Both had wept, one into the pillow, the
other onto his roast goose.

On every occasion, the mother found Sylvie’s departure difficult to accept. Often they would be the ones who would call her in the middle of the night to tearfully beg her for a
reconciliation, and as Sylvie pushed Herbert down rue Ravignan, her impersonation of the latest poor heartbroken woman made Aurélie clutch her sides with guilty laughter:
I hope you never
find out how it feels to lose a daughter.

She told Aurélie she was going to avoid these situations as much as possible from now on, that she was sure she had finally got the hang of identifying inappropriate men before even
agreeing to go on a date with them. She hadn’t accepted a date for two months, despite having been asked out over fifty times.

When it was Aurélie’s turn to provide an update, she told Sylvie how much she hated Sébastien, and provided her with a creditable pastiche of his plans to
subvert the
zeitgeist
. Then she told her about the advances of her creepy old professor, and just as she was making a kind of gagging noise to illustrate the extent of her revulsion, something occurred to
Sylvie.

‘That squelching sound you’re making reminds me – I kept meaning to ask earlier, but never quite got round to it: what’s going on with the baby?’

‘I got him this morning.’

‘Whose is he?’

‘Mine for now, I suppose.’

‘How did the poor thing end up with you?’

‘I threw a stone at him by mistake, and as a punishment his mother’s making me look after him for a week.’

‘I’ve not heard of that happening before.’

‘Me neither. But maybe it happens all the time – it might just be one of those things that people never talk about. Next time you see a baby with a bruise on his face, have a look at
whoever’s pushing him along and see if you can spot a trace of panic in their eyes. Anyway, I’m just going to have to live with him. It’s been a busy day, but I’m getting
the hang of it. I managed to work out how to fold that thing,’ she tapped the buggy, ‘and we came in on the bus. We were a bit early, so we went to a bookshop and I looked to see if
they had one called
How to Keep a Baby Alive for a Week
, but they didn’t. I found this, though.’ She reached into her bag and pulled out a paperback called
Your Baby &
You
. ‘Hopefully it’ll help. Are you any good with children?’

‘I’m not sure. I’ve never really looked after one, but I kept a Tamagotchi going for three years when I was in the children’s home, so I reckon I’d manage OK.
I’m doing a world-class job of pushing the buggy, anyway.’

‘You’re a natural. Hey, I’ve got a great idea – why don’t you keep him for the week? I can see you two have a special bond. You’ve always said you want to
have children one day, so it’ll be good practice.’

‘Thanks, but no.’

Aurélie found herself quite relieved. She had only been joking, but even so as the words came out the thought of relinquishing him had made her shudder. Herbert was her responsibility,
and besides she had her project to think of. She had become fond of him, too. It was strange, but she really had. Ever since she had seen that the stone was about to hit him in the face she had
wanted only the best for him.

Sylvie carried on. ‘I once heard someone giving someone else a piece of advice about babies, and it seemed to make sense. I can’t remember what it was, though. I’ll let you
know if I remember.’

‘Thanks. I’ll need all the tips I can get my hands on.’

They reached the neon lights of Pigalle. ‘Hey, look.’ Sylvie pointed at a big banner hanging outside an old porno cinema. ‘Le Machine. Are you going to
go?’

Aurélie shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing what all the fuss is about.’ It had been impossible to escape all the talk about
Life
, and like so many people they were
both inclined to go along so they could make up their own minds about it.

They stopped for a while. There was a queue at the box office, and busy-looking people, wearing black fleeces with
Life
written across them in white lettering, were going in and out of
the place as they made final preparations for the opening on Friday night, just two days away. Some of them were wearing walkie-talkie headsets. As fond as she had become of Herbert, Aurélie
wished she had chosen to do something as simple as shitting in public for her project. It would have saved her a lot of trouble.

‘He’s got a good body,’ she said.