This is Life (29 page)

Le Machine strained harder and harder, and as he did so the sight of him suddenly made her feel uneasy. But even so she couldn’t look away. His pained expression seemed familiar, but she
couldn’t recall where she had seen it before. And then it struck her. She had seen it two days ago, as she had stood beside a pair of policemen and shouted at him to go away. She pictured Le
Machine with clothes on, and eyebrows, and hair on his head, and before she had a chance to stop herself, she started to call out to him: ‘
Léan—!
’ As she heard her
own voice reverberating around the room, she put her hand over her mouth.

Le Machine looked up, to see where the sound had come from.

Murmurs began to spread through the crowd:
Who was that putting him off?
and
Some people have no respect for art
, and
Oh no, he’s sucking it back in
.

Le Machine stood up. His sound designer wasn’t sure what to do as he watched him pace to the edge of the stage and scan the faces in the audience. And then Le Machine did something he had
never done before – he put his hands over his genitals, hiding them from view as though he were suddenly ashamed to be naked. He took a step back, a look of horror on his face.

He stood there, covering himself up, his eyes following Aurélie as she made her way out of the auditorium, pushing through the crowd. And somebody was there in her wake,
accompanying her through the mêlée with a hand on her shoulder. It was Papavoine . . . He tried to work out what was going on.

He felt an urgent biological need to return to his glass tray and crouch back down. Le Machine strained and strained. The audience cheered, and began a slow but supportive hand clap, and finally
out came a small brown pellet, about the size of a kidney bean. It had happened. The room erupted, and the interruption was forgotten. Another pellet dropped into the tray, this one the size of a
broad bean, and the chanting began:
Le Ma-chine! Le Ma-chine! Le Ma-chine! Le Ma-chine!
And when these dry lumps and others had finally passed, they were followed by a softer, more
substantial stool. The audience was ecstatic. Not only had they been there for his first poo of the run, but the rumours were true – not one drop of wee had come out at the same time.

When he had finished he went over to the bidet and cleaned up, then with a pair of tweezers he picked out the tiny microphone, which had done its job very well. He would swallow another one the
next time he drank water. Using his special spatula, he transferred all the waste from the glass tray into the big bottle.

And there it sat, for all to see.

M
onsieur Eric Rousset was sitting at the dinner table with his wife, his daughter and his daughter’s friend Thao, whom he had met in passing
a few times before and had always found to be very pleasant.

‘I didn’t quite catch that,’ he said to Élise, his eyes glassy.

‘I think you did. But just in case you really didn’t, I’ll say it again: Thao and I are moving in together. We’ve found a place, and we’re getting the keys next
week. It’s a one-bedroom apartment. With one bed in it. A big bed. It has to be a big bed because it’ll be for both of us.’

‘You mean . . . you and she . . .?’ He made what looked like peace signs with two fingers from each hand, then bumped them together like duelling scissors.

Élise nodded.

‘I had no idea. Nice place, is it?’

‘It’s wonderful,’ said Thao. ‘It’s exactly the kind of apartment we’ve been looking for.’

‘So you’ll be needing some help with the move. I’ll get some cardboard boxes from the cinema. They’re taking deliveries of new stock for the shop every day, so they have
plenty going spare. And I can drive you around, and help you up the stairs, and all that kind of thing, don’t worry about that.’

‘Thank you,’ said Thao. ‘That’ll be very helpful. My dad’s offered too, so Élise and I won’t have to do anything much. We’ll just mix some
cocktails, sit back and let you two get on with it.’

He laughed, and looked from his daughter to Thao, and back again. ‘Well, I never . . .’

‘Dad, I’m sorry.’

‘You shouldn’t be sorry. What’s there to be sorry about? I’m very open-minded. I’ve always said there should be a lot more girls like you two in the world. But
above all, I’m glad to see you happy.’ He pointed at Thao. ‘She’s nice.’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you a long time ago. It’s just . . .’

‘Just what? You thought it would break your old dad’s heart?’

‘No . . .’ She knew she had to tell him the truth. ‘Well, yes, in a way. I didn’t want to ruin your love of lesbian porn, that’s all. I know how much it means to
you, and I thought that if I told you about myself it might make things too real for you and stop you from enjoying the fantasy.’

‘I do love my lesbian porn.’ He stared into space and smiled for a moment, before snapping out of it. ‘You know your old dad too well. But why would it ruin it for me? I know
it doesn’t have much to do with reality. Unless you two are in any of the films, now that would be a bit much. Have you ever . . .?’ he asked Thao.

‘Been in a porn film? No.’

‘Good. Then everything’s going to be fine. You can be too protective, you know.’

Madame Rousset and Élise exchanged relieved glances. He was right; they had been overprotective of him.

Élise smiled, and squeezed her father’s hand. Then her pager beeped, and she apologised and checked it. ‘I’ve been called to the cinema. Le Machine has asked to see
me.’ She kissed Thao and her parents goodbye, hurried out of the apartment and off to work.

Monsieur Rousset hoped Le Machine’s ailment wasn’t anything serious. Even though he had very suddenly had to abandon his dream of having him as a son-in-law, he was still very fond
of him, and wished him only well. So now it was just the three of them: Monsieur Rousset, Madame Rousset and Thao.

‘So,’ said Monsieur Rousset to Thao, ‘you and Élise . . . How long have you been . . .?’ Not knowing quite what to say, he made the scissoring gesture again.

‘About nine months now, Monsieur Rousset.’

‘Nine months, eh? Nine months. Well, fancy that. Oh, and you must call me Eric. Or Papa. Whichever you prefer.’

‘Thank you,’ said Thao. ‘Thank you . . . Eric, I think.’

‘Then Eric it is.’

Anybody watching disc 16 of the DVD box set of
Life: Paris
will see Le Machine’s Doctor, Élise Rousset, emerge from the wings, and a short consultation take
place. In the editing suite they will make sure that none of the words that were spoken make their way on to the soundtrack, and that the angles chosen do not give away any of this confidential
encounter to lip readers. One of the strictures of
Life
was that Le Machine was not allowed to make any private communications. Anything he did or said had to be shared with everyone in the
auditorium, hence the presence of the whiteboard, and the only exception for this was for his visits from the doctor. The sound designer bumped up Le Machine’s heartbeat in the body of the
auditorium to almost deafening levels, but because of the positioning of the speakers it was still possible for them to hold a conversation on stage.

After a short talk to Le Machine, the doctor walked over to the large faeces bottle, and had a good close look at what had come out. She returned to her patient, and passed a comment on the
condition of his stools. Then he pointed to his knee, and said something to her, and she prodded it, and massaged it, and asked some questions, and he answered them. Three minutes after arriving on
stage, she went away.

She didn’t go straight back to her parents’ place, though. First she went to Le Machine’s dressing room, which doubled as the official sick bay, so her presence there would not
have been regarded as suspicious. There was nothing irregular about her unlocking the medical cupboard and looking inside. What might have arrested the attention of an onlooker, though, was the
sight of her opening the bag that contained the few personal belongings that Le Machine had brought with him to the venue, then picking out his wallet and going through it. Apart from a thick wad
of euros, it didn’t contain much, and she soon found the card he had told her about, and slipped it into her pocket and zipped the bag shut. Only when this was done did she enter the details
of her visit in the official medical log.

As she left the backstage area she ran into his manager, and reassured her that he was fine, that while the first stool had been a little hard it was nothing out of the ordinary, and that he had
just sprained his knee a little on his debut crouch.

‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ she said, and she headed back into the night. She turned her task over and over in her mind. She was going some way beyond the boundaries of
her duty, but what the hell?

She dropped into a bar that she went to from time to time, ordered a beer and took the card from her pocket.

P
rofessor Papavoine hailed a taxi, and he and Aurélie got in. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you know Léandre too?’

‘Too?’

He nodded.

‘We’ve met. And it turns out there’s plenty I
don’t
know about him. He never told me he was Le Machine
,
for a start. So he’s your best friend, is
he?’

‘He was a student of mine a few years ago. One day I made the mistake of betraying a lack of enthusiasm for an idea of his, and he stormed out of the room and out of college. I
hadn’t seen him since, not until he surprised me with a visit on Friday, on his way to the venue. That’s how we got the tickets. So what did you think of his work?’

Aurélie had reached her verdict before realising she had fallen out with the star of the show, and she had to admit that she thought it was wonderful. ‘I loved it. But once I knew
who it was up there I had to get out in a hurry. Sorry about that.’

‘That’s OK. I agree though, I think it’s incredible what he’s doing.’

‘You seemed quite choked up.’

He nodded. ‘Léandre came to me to apologise for having been such a hothead when he was younger, as if that was something he needed to apologise for. I can never understand people
who
aren’t
hotheads when they’re young. Then I apologised for not having seen the potential of his proposal, which, incidentally, was for what we just saw, and he apologised for
pitching it so crudely. Apparently his original plan was to paint a picture inspired by his hero, who happens to be Eugène Carrière, but in the moments before he came to see me about
this, he heard some other students talking a load of pretentious crap outside my office and felt intimidated by it. He thought I would throw him out of college for being unambitious, for just
wanting to paint a picture. He thought he needed a grand concept, so he came up with a new idea on the spot. Does that sound at all familiar?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘He went straight to the bodily secretions aspect, and when he started talking about earwax I went like this . . .’ He pulled a face. ‘. . . and said I wasn’t sure about
the idea. And off he went, and I hadn’t seen him since. Anyway, after a while we stopped apologising to one another, and he told me all about
Life
. He spoke about it properly this
time. He told me why he does what he does. It was almost as if he was in confession. He said he was glad of the opportunity to talk to me about it after our disastrous previous meeting. It was the
first time he’d spoken about it in such detail to anyone except . . .’ He stopped himself.

Except his main girlfriend
, thought Aurélie.

‘As you know I’m old and sentimental, and after what he told me,
Life
really tugged at my heartstrings.’

‘So what’s it all about then?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you. He swore me to secrecy.’

‘You can tell me. I can keep a secret.’

Professor Papavoine shook his head. ‘I promised. I think he’s doing the right thing keeping his motivations under wraps. There are far too many words in the art world, anyway; all
they do is create an unnecessary fog.’

‘So you think people shouldn’t talk about art?’

‘No, if people stop talking about it we’ll be in big trouble. We need to keep critics in business for a start. What if they all lost their jobs and had to work elsewhere? It would be
chaos. Would you feel safe travelling in a train driven by a redundant arts correspondent?’

Aurélie laughed. Professor Papavoine had a knack for snapping her out of a bad mood.

‘It’s the artists themselves who need to learn to keep their mouths shut and leave all the chatter to everyone else. Léandre and I are in total agreement about that. From now
on Professor Boucher and I are going to give a big talk to every new intake: we shall make it clear from day one that while we appreciate a modest degree of intelligent discourse, we have a low
tolerance threshold for what Boucher so charmingly calls
wank talk
. It’s such a shame that we’ve allowed things to get to the point where the students think that we want them, or
even expect them, to use this kind of language. Artists need to stop using words. They shouldn’t explain why they do what they do, and they definitely shouldn’t use them as part of
their work. Even giving something a title is pushing it. If we carry on going down this route we’ll end up as bad as the British. I was in Scotland for an exhibition a couple of years ago,
and the artist hadn’t even bothered making anything, he’d just stencilled a load of wank talk all over the walls. In English, of course, just to make sure I was as alienated as I could
possibly be. And as we went in we were all handed a sheet of paper explaining why he’d written all the wank talk all over the walls. It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen, and
I’ve seen a lot of crap in my lifetime. If it hadn’t been in such a nice building I’d have been tempted to burn the place down. Now
that
would have been art.’

‘It sounds horrendous,’ said Aurélie. ‘All things like that do is give ammunition to the kind of people who dismiss all contemporary art. Anyone trying anything
different or new is always bracketed alongside pointless shit like that. It’s a load of bollocks,’ she said. ‘We’ve been swearing a lot, haven’t we?’