How to Paint a Dead Man (19 page)

He almost burst with joy. Literally. You could see him inflating, through his shoulders, through his cheeks, as if he was attached to a pneumatic pump.
Brilliant, Suze, just bloody brilliant. I must have found it for a reason. I mean, these things don’t just happen…

On the train back to London you opened your bag and took the thing out. It certainly looked the part. He might have got it from a flea market, or a junk shop, or a dead relative; you would probably never know. Or maybe your old man’s great-uncle twice removed was the cousin of the reclusive Italian. It was simply a bottle, a bottle by name and description, with no pedigree but for the word of your dad.

The electric doors of the train beeped and closed. People made their way along the aisles looking for reservations, bumping luggage against the armrests, hauling it into seat wells and the overhead racks. You put a hand out to steady the bottle as it rocked on the table. Yeah, you thought, gold star from the Caldicutt school of flimflam, fable and fabrication.

You did swallow his stories once. When you were a kid you bought the whole lot, every last word. Flying in Leonardo’s helicopter. Marching with Martin Luther King. Singing with the Beatles. The heroes, the nutcases, the flophouses. And later, the parties, the busts and arrests, those big-haired, Afghaned comrades of a bygone era.

The big man. He was so full of vim, so experienced, so full of life’s banquet. To you it seemed he had tasted the wares of the world. You knew you could never live like him, even if you tried. He was too potent, too hungry. No wonder your mother had to be sage. It was probably a reactionary measure, designed to give you and Dan balance. Where your dad was as effervescent as his berry hock, which often exploded on the pantry shelves, she was a spirit level. You remember her charting the water table and the ley-lines. Quartering withered apples to feed the fell ponies over the garth wall. She had devices that hung in the garden to measure rainfall, air pressure, and wind speed, tubes that sang and gurgled, emptied and filled. Inside was her kitchen of pies and soups and breads, her known recipes, her faith in the ingredients.

You were once theirs, as Danny was theirs. The fertilisation of bilateral ova. Sometimes it seems unbelievable. That remarkable double spark. The celestial, genetic chance of you and he, playing thumb-wars in the womb, doing an amniotic slow dance, and making yourselves from the pattern they gave you.

You could probably tell them everything, about how you feel, or don’t feel. You could say that your home life is deteriorating rapidly, that you are being unfaithful. You could say you can’t work any more, that you can’t even develop the last roll of film in your Leica because Danny is on it and you can’t bear to see him, on the bench outside Euston with pigeons at his feet. You can’t bear to be reminded that only a few months ago he was walking naked round your flat, showing Nathan some juvenile trick with his cock, making chocolate pizza to thank you for your hospitality, making you laugh. You could say to your mum and dad that you are in such serious trouble, in such decline, you are so unbearably alone and undefined, that you can’t operate normally. You could say that without Danny you are imbalanced, you have no real identity, you are not really Susan.

Maybe they would tell you what to do, or who you are. Maybe they would remind you that you have always been the strong one, always wilfully yourself, despite the pronouncements of Dr bloody Dixon. They would say that you have control over your relationships, and that you are a professional artist. They would remind you of the time you sneaked into your dad’s studio as a kid and applied some white acrylic to a painting he was doing. One rebellious brush stroke in the upper left corner. You waited a few days, braced for discovery and a row of epic proportions. But he didn’t notice. All he did was rove about the house in the kilt he was currently favouring and sing in the bath and drink homebrew. Later you went back into the studio and the mountain had advanced in composition. The flat crescent summit appeared sturdy enough to support another world if one had been set down upon it. It looked like an authentic Caldicutt. Annoyed, you confessed. You didn’t say you were sorry. You just said you’d done it.
Oh, bloody hell, sweetheart,
he said,
it was exactly the thing it needed.

Of course they would sympathise. They love you. But they can’t fix you, can’t make you yourself again. No more than sex can shock your atoms, make them come alive. No more than Dr Dixon’s therapy could make of you a first person. You are comprised of a million tiny locks. There’s no master key to be found, encased in the plush velvet heart, no matter how desperately you ask someone to reach in and grope around. No matter how hard you try to find it.

You put the bottle away as the train began to move, and you watched the familiar old town slip away, its red masonry lost behind you, the river, the peel tower, the henge. You took out your mobile. Already other people were chatting to those they had just left or those they would soon see, oblivious to the Quiet Carriage signs. You scrolled through your list of contacts. You passed over Angela, Danny and Nathan. When you arrived at Tom’s number you paused, then pressed the green call button. There were enough rings for you to guess he was finding a quiet room in Borwood House before answering. Pronto.
Are you coming back down today? I miss you. Can we meet? I’ll come in. I’ve got something to tell you.
The train sped up and began to lean into its corners, the plastic bulkheads squeaking and wobbling, and the phone signal cut out. You drafted a text, telling him the name of a hotel and where to meet. You watched the country roll past. The hills and cellars of cloud, the flat, grey Irish Sea, then mill town skylines, chimneys, canals, and terraces, small back gardens filled with bin bags and scrap metal, prams and bicycle frames.

I have not known Theresa to be a sentimental woman, but yesterday I found her weeping beside the tomatoes. A handkerchief was pressed tightly to her mouth. She was weeping with a terrible distress, as a parent might if their child stood before them with a suitcase in their hand, having taken a vow to enter a monastery. She was weeping for me. This morning we received a letter from the hospital. I do not know if it was solely this news that upset her or if Theresa was weeping with a private grief. I know, for example, that she misses her father.

In any case, we have been waiting for the news and the cancer is confirmed. It is not a surprise. I believe we all anticipated it, but Theresa is still a young woman and she is less reconciled to the inevitabilities of later life. I have been trying to continue with my work. I want to finish the new painting before winter. I am pleased with the arrangement of objects on the table. The measurements are exact, and the canvas is ready, but the easel remains unscrewed and turned away and I have stalled. Perhaps I am not immune to morbidity, as I would like to believe I am.

The sound of her crying in the garden was so unusual that I thought at first a bird was defending its nest from a predator. But she had left the house to grieve, trying to be discreet. Any compassion at my disposal is always tempered with an awareness of how absurd life can be. Theresa might have found more consolation in her work, for I am afraid I was not much use to her, and perhaps said the wrong thing. I wonder does she imagine me to be a lonely man? Does she underestimate the life I have lived and the pleasure I have derived from it? Of course I could not ask her simply to stop. A weeping woman has no desire for opposition; she wants only to know her sadness is correct on the occasion of her expressing it. All will be well, I said to her. Let us find some perspective on our little situation. In Spain this year they ran the bulls and twenty men were trampled. In Argentina penguins are swimming under the ice sheets instead of breeding. There are wars on the other side of the world and I am seventy-eight. She only wept harder. I said to her, come, my dear Theresa, we will forget our chores and retrieve our coats from their hooks and we will visit the aviary in the city. We will take the train like proud citizens of Italy! Today I am well. Today we will go. I pressed her hands between my own and she appeared to recover quickly, and I felt for the first time her hands made rough by continual work.

We spent an hour in the glass dome of birds, admiring their rich plumage. We strolled the conservatories and felt a welcome lightness of spirit. We gave new names to our favourite characters, as if we were cataloguing specimens in an uncharted land. We discerned the bolder personalities from those too shy to linger at the rails. Children tried to capture feathers from the green tails of the peacocks.

I mentioned to Theresa that I thought she was in fact a very good colourist and that I always notice the areas of the house where her arrangements are complementary and I thanked her for her years of good service. She shed her tears again and would not be consoled, and once again she sounded like a distressed bird, and I hoped that the exotic parrots might fly down and comfort her. We visited the church and she lit a candle-there were queues along the staircases so we did not go down to see the frescoes and the sacred robe. We bought pencils embossed with gold letters for her nieces and nephews, of which there appear to be several hundred now.

When we returned to Serra Partucci it was evening and she prepared salted vegetables, which we ate together at the table as if at a restaurant. I was of half a mind to read Ugo Foscolo to her but I thought perhaps it was too much and that she would once again break down. We sat companionably until the dusk arrived. Then, instead of walking her bicycle down the hill, which is her custom, she mounted it and I heard its wheels un-stiffening as she rode.

I had not truly realised her attachment to her position here, nor her affection for the stubborn old man for whom she caters every day.

Today she is her usual self again-that is to say, she has been banging in the kitchen and terrorising the house. We had a minor quarrel when she attempted to make me eat breakfast. I have no appetite, and the excursion yesterday had tired me. I wish to begin painting, but I have been too distracted. All I want to do is look out of the window at the view I love so much. A kestrel has been hovering in the air above the slopes, intimidating the mice and the larks. The ravens mock it, tumbling from the sky as if to strike a target. They fall suddenly, as if shot with a pistol, and then they recover. They are birds of the circus, trained for swinging on trapezes, and cannot balance on the tightrope of the hunt.

I read in the newspaper that on the greatest mountain in Africa the skeleton of an elephant has been discovered. It lies at an impossible altitude, as if the creature were seeking a path to the glaciers at the summit. Only God might know the reason for its journey. How slowly it must have moved, and in incomparable privacy, perhaps anticipating its fate. That animals choose their resting place speaks of a curious foreknowledge. In the East, they believe the soul travels at the speed of a camel. Perhaps migration and meditation are close to the same thing. But stillness might also offer enlightenment. Outside, the kestrel perches in silhouette on the scorched branch of an olive tree, unmoving. It recognises the glimmer of coprolites in the rock and the wet-brown eyes of the voles. The contours of its head and wings are like those of the milliner’s mannequin, borrowed by De Chirico to discuss the metaphysical. The kestrel achieves perfection in stillness.

I do not like to see omens in small occurrences, but a plague of dead flies has visited this room. In every corner there are upturned black bodies, balanced on dry wings, so it seems each ascends from the ground by a fraction, keeping in the death-pose a portion of that skill which they possessed during life. I prefer the shutters to be left open, even when it is chilly, so the house invites all kinds of little visitors. There are often scorpions on the steps. Strangely, these provide less consternation to Theresa than the lizards. The locusts have hatched from their tunnels now and have gone. The soft little phosphorous ones no longer illuminate the garden at night. Only the moths remain, drumming against the lamps. From inside the glass shades there is whispering. The moths are speaking of our prehistory, discussing the world before fire perhaps.

As a boy I kept a jar of dirt in which the traffic moved casually between the layers. Grubs and beetles got along together very well. I liked to watch the rows of ants scaling the sides. In this small condominium there would be the neighbourly investigation of items dropped inside–a Roman coin, sulphur, dough. Each fellow within the jar would attend to the object at its own speed and then return to its interval of soil.

I look out at the mountains, so dear to me. Their place on the horizon is utmost. It would be difficult to take them down and alter the sky around them; it would seem like an unfinished composition. There is sadness at the thought of leaving them, even while I rejoice in their presence. How can I explain the longing in my breast for what is present before me? I surprise myself with this melancholy. I have told them not to operate.

Tomorrow, Antonio is arriving. No doubt he will fuss and try to organise, and he will want to see the painting, which is unfinished. I have asked him to bring the official documents necessary for the transfer of the estate. It is all quite complicated. There is talk of creating a museum and there have been several requests for donations, which I must consider. Florio is also coming with a breathing mask and a tank. It will be impossible to drive up the hill in an ambulance; I do not know how he is going to manage it. The house will inevitably be too crowded. They will all buzz about and squabble over my chair and get under Theresa’s feet, and everyone will need to be separated and calmed. Serra Partucci will no longer be a peaceful hermitage.

Often I tell visitors, who come and who sit uncomfortably in their city garments, to be heedless of the train timetables. I invite them to remain past the hour of their appointment, to take some wine and sit outside and relax. Take your hand from your wrist, I tell them, your blood pressure is not abnormal, you are not on the verge of disaster. Listen to this greater pulse, to the lowing of cattle and the beating of wings against the wind. The earth grunts as it dislodges and buds break open. Can you hear? The pulse will be there too in the place where you live, I say to them. Nowhere is exempt from the service of Nature. Perhaps the drains and cables between buildings are like stethoscopes, and you may hear the heartbeat of the city if you listen.

My visitors indulge me. They are charmed by my antiquity and my devotion to this place. Later they walk back to the station along the road, and perhaps halfway they kneel with an ear to the ground. And perhaps they hear their own blood, and then the traffic in the town, and then a deeper rhythm. They get up, and brush the dust from their knees, and they continue walking. If everything seems lost, I tell them, trust the heart.