February - Giants 5 страница

Chapter Three

One more interview. Just one more interview and then Gerard said he was done. The show only had a few more days to run, and the newspaper wanted a retrospective voice on the show. They wanted to talk not only about how the show was affecting Gerard's life now, but also to get a biopic of him as well. Vivian had agreed to it, stating that it would be good to establish a narrative focus, so people could sympathize and then buy, buy, buy. Establishing mystery was no longer an option. Soon his paintings would be gone from the display, and his lack of visual presence would be enough to form that half-truth the audience could then play with. The narrative of his life, though, was a different matter and used for a distinctly different purpose. We were dealing with emotions now; it was doing the nude in another form. People wanted to see the nude, and they wanted to know everything; not because they had a perverse interest in Gerard, but because they needed to know more about themselves. Vivian told us what was said in the interviews didn't have to be true necessarily, it just needed to be evocative of truth. She was getting to her most philosophical, and meanwhile, Gerard was becoming his most base and honest. He knew he did not need to speak truth, but I knew he also felt compelled to anyway. He dreaded this interview and would have never said yes to this by himself. But he trusted in Vivian's judgement on these matters, although he teased her mercifully about this whole art business up until the interview actually happened. He both loved the woman and feared her simultaneously and she knew it, too. She would have never made him do this if she didn't think it was necessary.

He just insisted that I come along. "To keep me company, and to make sure I don't get into trouble," he joked around with me. "To make sure I don't tell too many lies to make myself sound interesting."

One of the things that he had teased Vivian with, especially after her remark on the superficiality of truth, was threatening to make every word that passed his lips sensationalist drivel and melodrama. Like how he and Vivian had a secret love child and had been married illegally in Morocco and now that the art career was over, they were both planning on opening a bed and breakfast in Vermont. He would also practice answering interview questions with "once upon a time" and give bastardized version of the Grimm's fairy tales where he was somehow both Hansel and Gretel and the witch all at once.

"They're going to lock you up," Vivian chastised him, and he proclaimed that that would probably be good for his career.

"As soon as they think I've lost my marbles, I'll start selling like crazy, pardon my wonderfully apt pun. Prohibition always produces something far greater. If there is the threat that I am somehow negated, I will flourish. If these works suddenly become the final works, the need to covet becomes much larger. We suddenly have an end to the story, no? And isn't that what people want when they interview me now? They want to know how the story ends. I could give them that."

Vivian didn't say anything back to him, probably because she knew he was right. If Gerard spun crazy stories and was put away for it, it fed the tortured image of the artist as this misanthropic, misunderstood figure that was perpetually alone and misunderstood. If he really did disappear, it was an end to his artistic story. I saw the undercurrent of sadness that sometimes plagued him come back for a moment, and I wondered if there was more to what he was saying. I wondered what other stories he wanted to create in the wake of art.

"Perhaps I could cut off an ear?" Gerard suggested, bouncing right back into a more playful demeanor. Vivian sighed and ended up throwing a towel she had been cleaning with at him.

"Would you suggest another body part, then? You know, to be more original? Does Van Gogh have his ear copyrighted?" Gerard kept teasing, unaware that he had gone past the threshold for the day. Vivian stuck her tongue out at him and then declared, "Cut off your tongue, you foolish old man and just be quiet."

Gerard laughed a lot, but he did take her advice. Tongue intact, however. There was no more joking before we left for the interview. As I got in the car and we did our seatbelts up, Gerard adjusted the mirror so he could fix his hair, and leaned in close to me.

"You know I was teasing before, right?"

I adjusted the mirror back to the road after he was done, and gave him a funny look. Of course I knew he was joking, but he was reminding me again of the sadness that I had seen, if only for a second.

"I was joking about the critics and reports, the audience that feeds of misery, and not those who actually possess it, right?" Gerard asked again, and this time I considered it. I knew he was critiquing the giant money making machine that spun fictions and got people to believe them as facts, but I went through some of the insults he had thrown around from before. One of the suggestions had been to take up a drinking problem and then he would be famous, because the correlation between alcoholism and artistry clearly meant that one influenced the other. He had been facetious, I knew, but I guessed because of my minor history with alcohol, and my own father's past, that he wanted me to be sure that he was definitely not exploiting that. He was exploiting the people who thought that problems equaled fame.

"I know," I assured him.

"Good. I never want to glamorize tragedy, even if people like this want to do it. I don't want to equate fame with addition or depression, either, because those are serious things. But I also can't deny the fact that most artists are sick in some way. Artistry, however, is not the cause," Gerard was on a bit of a tirade. I supposed he needed to get it out of himself before the interview happened. In a few moments, he would be compelled to recreate a myth of himself, and he wanted me to know that this was one of his creative projects. It was still very real, but only in the sense that he had made it. There did not need to be truth. He kept going as I drove us: "There is a high mortality rate in the arts. You ever notice that? It makes me uncomfortable and some days I wonder why on earth I'm here. No one ever retires."

"You can't retire from something you love," I told him.

"Very true. You still do it in some way or the other. But it's overwhelming when I begin to learn about an artist here and there, and I realized how many of those I've undertaken to study have killed themselves. It's become a stereotype, but it is based on truth. It has merely been viewed from the wrong way."

"How are we supposed to see it, then?"

"Being an artist doesn't create insanity. Usually doing art is a way out from that insanity. The insanity was a feature that preceded the art, it was not a product of that. The art itself is better than the pills they shove into our faces now. It is the one thing that helps them feel human, feel whole. At least it always has been for me," he stated, and rubbed his hand on my knee as I drove. "But the suicides. It's so easy to just look at suicides and blame the person for killing themselves, to infer that they couldn't handle the world. How come we don't look at the world itself that they lived in? The world which creates this image of the artist as depressed, that depicts the artist's life as a waste, and that doesn't support the artist economically? Some artists just give up because they can't actually make a living and being cold, hungry, and tired is hard on you and does make you want to die. If art was actually supported, then I doubt we'd have the tragic artist figure."

I considered this, feeling a pang of recognition. We had lost our house and not had food for a while here. In Paris, we had no electricity a lot of the time and the water was always cold all the time too. We had no food some nights. We were not supported, it was as simple as that. I played out all those romanticized figures of the starving artist – the hunger artist – in front of me. But my time at Food Not Bombs and working at the drug store had made me think differently. The only way to get through something like that mentally was to make yourself think it was art, which was what we had done then. But when I was able to step back, had some distance, and now that we were in a house with warm food in our bellies... nothing about any of that was okay. Actual starvation and having no home, living in poverty, and having no money was not funny. It was not beautiful. It sucked and I never wanted to go back. Sometimes when the groceries at Vivian's place got a little low, I would feel a slight panic. I didn't even realize I had been panicking until Cassandra said my arm was shaking. It was hard, still dealing with those memories. Hunger had left its mark on both of us. Gerard's body even seemed like it refused to gain weight, no matter how much he ate. His hunger had become a physical manifestation beyond healing. There was nothing glamorous about this.

"The same thing happens with homosexuality," Gerard continued. "Any kind of sexual deviance, really. Think of the high mortality rate there, too. Instead of blaming those people for liking what they like, how about we fix the society that tells them they are no good. That way, maybe they won't become a self-fulfilling prophecy. They need more options. If all you show people is suicide and destruction, of course that is what they will become."

I nodded, getting that entirely. "No one wants to hear about how many times we've been called a faggot. They'll probably just want to know about lurid love affairs and leave."

"Exactly. They will ask me about you, they will ask me about my sexuality. This is not me being paranoid, either. I know they will because others have, and since I painted Gauguin and Van Gogh together, I have 'brought it on myself'" He rolled his eyes. "They want to hear about broken love affairs and heated passion. Romeo and Juliet and all of that drama. They never want to hear about something that lasts, because then it's not tragic enough."

He held my knee tighter, and after I turned, I touched his hand and we linked for a while.

"People never want to hear about actual happiness, and yet, people are always trying to obtain it. It's a hamster on the wheel. This is our new modern Sisyphus: people see what they want again and again as they pass by, but they keep going because don't believe it."

"So what are you going to tell them?" I asked. We had pulled into the lot of the art centre now, and Gerard still seemed to be working through his own thoughts. We were early, but I knew we didn't have a lot of time, and I was losing his train of thought. The interviewer said they were going to meet us inside; I saw a few cars in the parking lot, one with a green parking pass, and I figured they were there. Gerard considered my question for a while.

"I suppose I'll have to tell them what they want to hear, but, in spite of Vivian's many cautions, I will also tell them the truth. I am full of contradictions, I know, Frank, and I thank you for bearing with me and humouring me as a very old man right now. A very old man, yes, but not a dead or crazy one. I don't plan on writing that ending, yet. Instead I will make this an exercise in improvisation and creative storytelling. But keep me honest, Frank. Don't let me create myself in tragedy just to sell paintings. Keep me myself."

He leaned over the seat, waiting for me to kiss him. I did so quickly, and told him I promised. We both promised then to never create our lives in tragedy, to never view it through that lens. There were so many better options inside us both.

We hopped out of the car and went inside.

The interviewer was a short man, going bald at the crown of his head. His hair was still dark and he was well dressed, with a small card clipped to his front shirt pocket that had the local paper's logo on it. He was stern and eloquent, and was probably university educated. He used a lot of big and obscure words that I had heard flung around a lot while I was in college like authoritarian gaze, the Panopticon, Dada and the Situationists, Apparatuses of the State and a Nihilist perspective. I sort of tuned out that stuff and found myself wondering why on earth he was working for a local paper. He seemed much too qualified to take on the job. He was nice enough to both of us, but very professional. When Gerard came in and introduced me as Frank, he merely nodded. It took him a while to realize that I was in one of the paintings.

"Does it feel odd to be part of an exhibit? To have been painted without your prior knowledge?" he asked, writing down his question and waiting for my answer.

"Uh, no, not really?" his question was deliberately pointing, wanting me to say something negative. "I mean, it's Gerard. He paints me a lot. I like him painting me."

We were sitting on a bench near the beginning of the exhibit, Gerard's hand on my waist. He squeezed me encouragingly.

"He has done more work with you? Is that the theme for the next gallery opening?"

"I have not thought that far ahead," Gerard confessed and then got a gleam of mischief in his eye. "Besides, isn't this interview supposed to be about the retrospective look back? Let's not jump too far ahead to the future yet. I'm still enjoying the moment."

"Right. How did you and Frank meet, then? It has been speculated that you are a couple."

Gerard and I both laughed. In spite of the highly educated diction of this reporter, he was getting the gossip like any other good person in his field. Gerard launched into his creative fictions, knowing where he needed to go.

"Are you familiar with the work of Bruegel?" The reporter nodded briefly. " The Fall Of Icarus, do you know that one? All right, good. You know how there is this vast landscape, beautifully painted and full of detail? But the when you get closer to the work you see the figure splashing in the ocean, flailing and trying to stay alive? That is Icarus. The boy who had wings his father made him, but got too close to the sun and fell into the water."

The reported nodded, trying to decipher what Gerard was doing. I was enjoying his story telling, and the confusion on the guy's face. "Are you telling me you saved Frank? From drowning? From something else?”

Gerard laughed and waved his free hand in the air. "Of course not. We met when looking at the same painting, which happened to be The Fall of Icarus. Don't be so ridiculous."

I bit my lip to keep from laughing. The reporter must have seen how much fun we were having with him. He began to grow more stern and laconic in his questions -- but Gerard himself was also growing weary of this game. "How would you describe your relationship?"
"Wonderful."

"And you, Frank? Would you agree?"

"Yes."

"What type of relationship is it?"

"Good," Gerard responded, and to save him from asking me I added, "Yes. Very good."

"I'm pleased. But is this something the reading public would be familiar with? Is it artist and protégé? Artist and lover? Artist and model?" He was getting desperate and tried to hide the best one in the middle.

Gerard waved his hand carelessly. "Sure!"

"So... all of them? The last one? Which one are you agreeing to, Mr. Wyatt?"

Please call me Gerard," he said, then smiled and didn't answer anything else. This was becoming a game with both of us. The art of deflection with a subset of annoying reporters -- it didn't exactly have a good ring to it. I did begin to feel somewhat badly for him. He was stressed out to the max as it was; his neat appearance and high flatulent language was clearly a cover up for how misplaced he felt himself. Working at a local paper was not where this guy needed to be. I began to think of what Gerard said in the car about how the arts weren't supported so people just had to take whatever job they needed. This man knew about art. If Gerard and I weren't so intent on teasing him, I was sure he would be able to have an in-depth discussion about Bruegel's work with him. I didn't even know that painting. Maybe the reporter was working at the paper because he had to and was just trying to get by.

"I'm a photographer and an artist too," I finally gave him some information. "Vivian - the woman you spoke to on the phone - she has put on shows for me before, but I haven't had any recently. We've been busy."

I squeezed Gerard's back to let him know that it was okay and he went along with our new story. We were going to tell him things, maybe not everything, but we were going to try and make his life easier because he could have been just like us. He nodded profusely and wrote down every word I said.

"I did speak to her. She was a very nice woman. If there is another show, I would contact her again, correct? She would have information?" We both nodded, he wrote. "Okay, now you say you've been busy? With what in particular?"

"We went to Paris," I said. His eyes lit up. This was the artist Mecca.

"Both of you? For how long? And was Vivian a part of this?" His questions came out in small bursts and Gerard was left with a sigh. He would have to start from the beginning again, back with school in New York, and how he and Vivian had met. I encouraged him with small touches, and he began to go on. He gave small details and never went into any sensationalist details; Gerard and Vivian's relationship was not mentioned, nor was mine with Gerard, though we did not hide our affection for one another. He told the reporter the basic stuff that I had already known. Art school in New York was great and enriching, and then he took his practice here and there, moved around a bit, before settling into freelance work in New Jersey. Paris had been a once in a lifetime opportunity and he had stayed there alone for seven years. To the outside ear, it sounded like the perfect art fairy tale. He didn't mention his hunger, his poverty, or any of the bad things that happened, but nor did he glamorize the life that he had lived. He tried as hard as he could to state simple facts. His interview, as he gave it then, could be read through either lens. I hoped that reporter would not take Gerard's words and twist them to fulfil the artist legacy. As we were nearing the end of the story and the interview, Gerard must have had the same worries that I did about the interpretation of events.

"Is there anything else you'd like to say as an artist, Gerard?" the reporter asked. He had his notebook prepared, and leaned in intently.

Gerard sighed. "There is one thing I would like to say, but I would like to say it as a human. I may make art, but I am not this mythic artist figure. I lost a lot in Paris. Sure, I've gained credibility, if you even want to call it that, but I lost a lot as well. My grandmother died while I was there and all I seemed to care about was art. I missed huge events. I literally missed a life that was no longer here when I got back. Coming back to New Jersey has been the best decision I've made. Going was important and not something I regret, but never underestimate coming back home or staying in the first place. Some days, I think it takes a lot more courage to stay."

The reporter seemed unable to write it all down quickly. He was still going in the few moments of silence that remained. "Do you need me to repeat anything?" Gerard asked seriously. "Because I will. I want you to print this quotation. If there is anything that you print word for word, it should be this. So, do you need me to repeat anything?"

The reporter shook his head, and then Gerard got him to read what he had said back to him so he knew it was right. There were a few words missing and they both worked together to try and get it right. He was insistent on this quotation being correct, on how he didn't care about anything else the guy wrote, he could turn the story into anything, but this had to be there. It was the only way Gerard knew that he could prevent the glamorization of suicide and yet, still be true to himself as an artist. As a human, I corrected myself internally. He needed to have this truth out there, so even if the article ended up being poorly written and full of assumptions, then there would still be an authentic voice.

I waited quietly for all of this to be over and I rubbed Gerard's back. His demeanor had completely changed within a few moments and I suspected that this is what he had wanted to say all along. He had hidden behind jokes and obscure references, creating fictive pasts, and proverbial narratives with one liners the same way the reporter hid behind his own large vocabulary and expensive clothing. These elements were the creative act in all of this. These superficial outer shells were very important, but they could also be taken away, and in each of their resurrection was a small link to the real truth. This quotation had been the real for Gerard. This was what he really believed. This was his last interview before the show was over, and though Vivian told him that in order to keep his name around he should do more, I knew this would be the last for him. Especially with his insistence on this final paragraph. He really was providing an ending for himself; these were his last words.

But something bothered me about them. As much as I admired him for giving this real picture of his emotions and what Paris had been like in terms of losses and gains, he was lying, wasn't he? The emotion behind his words was true and I didn't doubt that, but his grandmother had not died in Paris. He had always told me she died while he was in art school. It was one of the early tragedies of his life that spurred him forward. He wanted to make himself something for her, because she had always tried to show him the beauty in the world. Was I remembering that right? I was sure I was. Gerard had lost a lot of time in Paris; he had missed Cassandra and Mikey's kids grow up, along with his wealth and weight, but death had not touched him there. Did he need to add that part in order to make his story more valid? I was not sure. It didn't seem to me that he would be comfortable using his grandmother's death in that way. If he really wanted to evoke that same emotion, he could have rehashed the story he told me about the verb meanings behind perdre, the novel by Proust, and the high school boy who had committed suicide. I was sure that the reporter would have loved it, because it would have given them a chance to converse in another language and discuss literature. Perhaps the perdre story was too personal, I told myself. But then again, when he had first told me about his grandmother over seven years ago, it had been a significant meeting for us. It had opened up the confessional atmosphere between us and it made me feel closer to him. This seemed even more intimate and even more worthy of protection. All I knew right then is that it was impossible for her to die twice - one of these times needed to be a lie. Gerard had joked that he had brought me along to keep him honest. Was this a time where I needed to speak up?

Gerard and the reporter were still talking, but it was nearing the end. "Is that good, then?" the reporter questioned, showing his yellow pad of paper.

"Excellent. Thank you very much. I will be buying the paper and expecting it to be there," Gerard commented. "Are we done now?"

The reporter, who I saw from the name on the page was Dwight, got up as we did. He extended his hand and nodded that everything was concluded. "It's been a pleasure meeting you. We got off to a rough start but I understand. It's hard dealing with people like me."

Gerard smiled. "Dwight, I think we're one and the same. Keep trying to do whatever you're trying to do."

I concurred with Gerard, and then we all began to separate. Dwight seemed thrilled with Gerard's comment and I wondered if my estimation had been right: that Dwight was merely an artist in reporter's clothing. He thanked us profusely again before he decided he would take another look at the exhibition. We left the building and got into the car.

"It's strange," Gerard said to me. "The show is going to be all over soon."

I nodded, somewhat disappointed. Today was Thursday and there was one more day. Friday night was the last, even though it was not quite the end of February. There was still the weekend before we switched over months. It was easier to end the installation on the Friday and then have Vivian deal with who was getting what painting over the weekend so she didn't lose anytime from work. It was surreal, thinking that something like this that had taken so much time and energy would be so quickly concluded. Nearly fifty years in the making, and gone in two weeks.

"How do you feel?" I asked Gerard. I had the key in the ignition, idling the car.

He considered the question, then finally said: "Relieved."

I thought he would say more, and I waited for him to. But we both stared out the windshield. I wanted him to explain to me why he lied before, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it didn't matter. Maybe he was talking about a maternal grandmother one time and a paternal one the other time. Who knew? It wasn't worth it anymore because, like Gerard said, it was over now. The show was done, and, soon enough, winter would be as well.

"I'm glad I came back from Paris," he said after the long silence. He placed his hand on my knee, and I put my hand over his again. "Now that this is all over, maybe we can actually start something new."

He looked at me with a coy smile and my heart fluttered in my chest. I did feel like Icarus then, as if I had wings on my back, and we could fly. There were so many better things to do than dwell in the past. It was all contained in that one building now, and soon, even that would no longer exist.

We held hands together a long time, sitting in silence. We saw Dwight come out of the art exhibit. He waved to us in his car, and in spite of ourselves, we waved back.

"He wasn't too bad, actually," Gerard commented.

"I guess so," I agreed. After Dwight left the parking lot, I pulled out too and left it all behind. Gerard and I were quiet as we made our way home.

It was a relief to be back in the house with Vivian again. It felt as if we had been gone years instead of hours. The large white spaces and neon colours of the art exhibition were now replaced by warm, cosy oranges and yellows of Vivian's house. Her place was crowded without being messy, and living our lives in the basement for as long as we had been, I had missed the girth that the walls seemed to exude. They reached out and touched you, enveloped you without suffocation, and made you feel welcomed. The art space offered bright colours, but without the dim lights it merely represented the pure icy feeling of alienation. Here, well, we were all together. We were a family in this house.

"Hey guys. How did it go?" Vivian asked when she heard us come inside. We walked through the living room and into the kitchen after taking off our jackets and shoes, and found that she was cleaning the kitchen. The table had a few scattered papers and a torn up tissue to one side, and two mugs sitting out on the other. One cupboard was completely open and multiple bags and boxes of tea lay strewn on the counter. Cassandra had a piano lesson that day, so it was quite evident that Vivian had had a visitor. And there was only one person I knew that would tear tissues to shreds when she was nervous.

"It went quite well. The reporter was a dunce at first, but we got him to come out of his shell." Gerard informed Vivian. She rolled her eyes.

"Only you two could go for an interview and then actually interview the person," she commented and shoved the last of the tea boxes onto its shelf in the cupboard before closing the door. She noticed me looking at the kitchen with wide eyes and beat me to asking my own question. "You just missed Jasmine. She got here a little while after you two headed off and she left only moments ago."

"She stayed for a bit?" It seemed out of character with Jasmine, especially without calling first.

"Yes, people are allowed to socialize with me too, you know," Vivian teased. "Besides, this is a house. What good is a home if you can't entertain visitors in it? Sometimes people just stop by. She did bring something for you, though. That was the initial reason she stopped by, but then I pulled her into trying out my new oolong tea. When she realized you weren't here, we chatted for a bit. It had been too long. So much has happened. Your gift, dear Frank, is on the table."

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14