The Shallows Page 7

  On Thursdays he didn’t have to go in to work, and he had to vacate his temporary studio urgently. He asked Marthinus to help him move. No problem, said Marthinus, he’d bring a bakkie and helpers. Amazing how many contacts the man had. The move was hard labour, because Nick’s work had to be handled with care, but Marthinus was the soul of vigour and good cheer, and he took charge of everything – just as well, since Nick had little enthusiasm for the whole undertaking, he felt anxious and distracted.

  The new studio was in Woodstock, on Main Road, on the first floor, in an old but well-maintained building. At street level there were a few small shops: a little supermarket (Best Price Superette), a video store (Vezi’s Home Videos), a take-away joint (Bismillah’s Fast Foods), a small second-hand store, and on the corner, above the Battery Centre, the House of Glories Ministries. Over the road, glimpses of the mountain between the buildings. The area was noisy, with hooting taxis, and heavy traffic at peak times, but Nick did not find that a problem. He preferred it to the area where he was living now (he should have known when he bought there), and definitely to Stellenbosch, where he and Isabel had lived for a few years in middle-class isolation. He’d hated it, that area, where the renovations and the aesthetic choices of their neighbour, poor unsuspecting Mr Burger, had driven Isabel to distraction. The last few months, before the final termination of their relationship, had been insufferable – Isabel at times at the end of her tether and just about berserk, some days almost incapable of going to work. He’d felt like a prisoner in his studio (the converted former servant’s quarters), in the house, in the affluent neighbourhood, and in the relationship.

  In the late afternoon after the move they sat in the new studio having a beer. Marthinus was impressed with the space; he was enthusiastic about Nick’s work – what he’d been able to see of it thus far. The person who’d rented the studio before Nick – a painter who was making it big time internationally and who’d moved to a more upmarket area – had left behind a few pieces of furniture. A bed, a sofa, a bookshelf, some plastic chairs. The room, with bathroom and storeroom, was big, actually much more acceptable than Nick had realised when he’d rented it so precipitately. He was grateful for this new, neutral space. He preferred it to his house – which he was in no hurry to return to today.

  Later they bought rotis from Bismillah’s Fast Foods and they drank some of the whisky that Nick always had to hand in his studio. The large room was cool – it was going to be cold in winter, the single heater wouldn’t be of much use. But this evening, with Marthinus here with him, it was cosy. They sat on the plastic chairs, their food and drinks on a crate because Nick’s big table was full of not-yet-unpacked-and-unwrapped objects. Marthinus with his large, august head, his tanned face. His hair a bit like the mane of a lion. Large features, his expression full of confidence, his eyes sympathetic. A good-natured man, radiating magnanimity. Big heart. Generous with his time and attention. Apparently so unguarded, and open to the world at large. And tactful. Nick wondered about all the roads Marthinus must have travelled, because he could surely not have spent all of his time tending pigs.

  But a talker! A talker par excellence. Now he had warmed to the subject of pigs. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you get your Large Whites. A hardy and robust breed, that thrives in any climate, but I prefer the black pig’ (he laughed), ‘or even the speckled. The original Large Blacks came from America, but my pigs – the descendants of the farm pigs – have been bastardised to such an extent that you can hardly tell what the original line was. I like dealing with pigs. They’re clever. They’re sly. They have character. You even find your pig with integrity. President Burgers is such a pig. A natural leader. Inspires confidence in humans and fellow animals.’

  Nick told Marthinus that long before he was born his father had kept Large Whites on a relative’s farm. Marthinus quizzed him extensively on this, but Nick was uncertain about many of the facts.

  When they’d exhausted the subject of pigs, the conversation moved on to Zen, prompted by the small Japanese teabowls that Nick had unpacked and from which they were now drinking their whisky. (He’d brought the bowls and a small teapot from New York.)

  ‘I ask myself,’ said Marthinus, ‘should one have a teacher? And if you should, who should it be? The Buddha, Jesus, Mr Mandela, Noam Chomsky, Jiddu Krishnamurti? It’s a difficult choice. Each has his merits. I like the smile with which the Buddha is always depicted. Siddhartha Gautama. Also known as Shakyamuni Buddha, the sage of the Shakyas. On the night of his conception his mother dreamed that a white elephant entered her womb. The dream signified that the child would be special. He received tuition in astrology, mathematics, languages, archery, wrestling and horsemanship. He was an educated, cultured man. He ran away, life at the palace had become tedious. He tried several options. He starved himself, mortified the flesh. Finally, sat down under the tree. Resolved not to get up until he’d reached enlightenment. Afterwards, saw everything with fresh eyes. Very attractive as a teacher. I like the way he sits – comfortable, rooted. When he sits, he sits. When he walks, he walks. Somewhat rotund, compassionate smile. Attachment as the root of all suffering. Food for thought. Jesus, on the other hand. Intelligent, charismatic, but difficult to think him off the cross, as it were. By the way, have you seen Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St Matthew? We must make a plan to watch it. Very convincing. Read Saramago, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. “Why save the lamb and slaughter the sheep?” Good question. Mr Mandela – he was probably our only chance for a great man in this country. Sense of vocation. Benign. A good dose of the Buddha nature. Powerful, in combination with the aristocratic Xhosa birth. An indigenous prince. Chomsky, if his kind of political activism is your thing. Personally I nowadays incline towards old Jiddu, Mr K.’ (Nick had never heard of him.) ‘Now there’s a man for all seasons, and a tough teacher. Uncompromising.’

  Marthinus took a sip of whisky from the delicate teabowl. ‘Look, I saw this wonderful documentary about a Chinese weightlifter.’

  Nick liked listening while Marthinus was talking. Then there was no need to think; then he thought less often of Charelle. A part of him felt that was enough, he needed nothing more (as he’d felt with Charelle at the kitchen table), the effortless camaraderie had the same warming effect on him as the whisky. Another part of him felt desolate, beyond the reach of warmth or comfort.

  Marthinus told him about the documentary. ‘Look,’ he said later. ‘Enough of this idle chatter. We’re watching Bergman’s Cries and Whispers this evening. Do you feel like joining us?’

  ‘If I have to watch Cries and Whispers this evening,’ said Nick, ‘I’ll blow my brains out afterwards.’

  ‘Oh Lord,’ said Marthinus, ‘do you have a gun?’

  ‘No,’ said Nick, ‘but if I had one.’

  ‘You gave me a fright,’ said Marthinus. ‘But perhaps Bergman is a bit heavy. We can always watch something else. Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ said Nick, ‘then rather Bergman.’ He was not in the mood for Bergman’s dark drama, but Godknows also not for slapstick of any kind. He wanted to be at home if Charelle should perhaps return. He didn’t say it, but he knew that Marthinus suspected it.

  *

  Early on Saturday morning – a week after Charelle’s disappearance – he went to his studio. When he was at home, he tended to listen out for Charelle all the time. Rather get down to work, organise his studio, everything was still right where it had been dumped. Today he would draw. He used a special large-sized sketchbook in which he also wrote down his ideas and made preliminary sketches of the figures that he carved. He filled pages with drawings of little figures with exaggerated heads and sexual organs. The heads had stubbly beards and starkly staring eyes. Some of them had something of the bulging cheeks of the comic strip character Popeye or something of Robert Crumb – but in both cases considerably more malign – thugs and killers the bunch of them. These little figures assailed each other with all kinds of objects: cu
dgels, sticks, cat-o’-nine-tails, horsewhips. Simplified, almost childish-naïvely drawn little figures stood with hands raised or on their knees in pools of blood. Women with conspicuous breasts and curves in bikinis – pinup-ish – stood armed with knives, or in combat posture like Barbarella.

  Isabel had not liked the way he portrayed women. What is this male obsession with sexy sluts, she’d asked. Take Alban Berg – a composer she really liked; his ambivalence struck a chord with her, his fascination unto death with negativity – but the operas, Wozzeck and Lulu, no, sorry, she’d have no truck with that fixation on stereotyped sexy sluts who get murdered.

  At first she’d had no problem with his work in general (even though it could hardly be accused of being uplifting). But later she’d said that she found his fascination with violence abhorrent. The fucking male obsession with violence and its constant representation, she’d said – as if the prick were the eye through which the world was surveyed.

  When he’d done enough work and his studio was more or less organised, he washed his hands in the small bathroom. He regarded himself in the mirror. Today he could discern his mother’s lineaments in his own. This alarmed him. A man of early middle age, slightly thickset (physically unfit), his hair not as abundant as previously, the expression in his eyes guarded. Was Charelle safe? Why hadn’t she told him she was going away? He checked his cellphone for messages, it had been switched off while he was working.

  There was a message from Marthinus: Tarquin has reported there’s a possible link in Blue Downs. We can go there tomorrow. He’d never been to Blue Downs. He didn’t think he wanted to go there. It sounded dreadful, what one could come across there.

  *

  In the last months Isabel had seldom looked at him straight-on (which had not done his already shaky self-regard any good), but she had still told him her dreams. He’d resented this. She wasn’t talking to him, he felt, she was just using him as a sounding board. When she was walking in the front garden and saw a fresh turd left by the neighbour’s dog, she had the strange compulsion that the neighbour was forcing her to eat it, she said one morning. (Nick was shocked.) Her therapist, she said, would probably say that she felt that the neighbour was forcing her to eat shit. (Nick could just imagine what the poor upright, innocent, well-meaning but limited Mr Burger, who just couldn’t see that his choice of bricks might offend against Isabel’s aesthetic sense, would make of this.) Her dreams did not bode well, he’d thought. And how right he’d been.

  What had been supposed to be a shared voyage of reconciliation (a trip she’d long wanted to take), was for the most part a punishment and a tribulation for both of them. So often she sat across from him in museum restaurants and cafés, her face pale, her blanched eyebrows like two crossed swords. So here she was now, she said once (in a Chinese eatery – City Lights of China; pretty dismal lights, as far as he was concerned), and she was fucked good and proper. What did she mean? he asked (reluctantly). She looked down. (Her food just about untouched, whereas he was half-drunk with all the rice wine.) To think that she was compelled to feel that the neighbour was forcing her to eat his dog’s shit every day – not as an abstract metaphor, but as something that she imagined graphically – while all her life she’d had an intense loathing for the exaggerated optimism surrounding her. So she was being fucked over, she said, as a champion of negativity.

  Can’t you see, she said – I yearn for disambiguation, I yearn to be free for a day, for a single hour, of the murkiness. Every minute I’m trudging through a swamp, each movement of mine feels as if it requires superhuman effort. (I can’t move freely any more, he thought, I feel as if I’m chained to you, we move together like two manacled convicts.)

  He said nothing. He started looking forward to the end of the trip. What a horrendous waste of an expensive trip to New York. He should have read the signs in advance. He’d hoped that the journey would lift her out of morbidity, shared pleasures would bring them closer together. He’d been fucking naïve. Pallid as a nun she sat opposite him, tortured by her need, her food untouched. In the evenings she folded the blue dressing gown around her rebarbatively, like a knight’s cuirass, like the Japanese battle garb he’d looked at for a long time in the Met. It had reminded him of something, but he hadn’t known what. That Japanese battledress had touched something deep within him. He’d felt a weird affinity with it. In the last few weeks of their travels, in fact, he’d visited nothing but the Oriental rooms. It was all that he was still receptive to. He had increasingly developed an aversion, something so potent that it verged on the physical, to the whole bang shoot of Western art. Strangely enough, only the work of Jeff Koons – him, of all damn artists, whose work he’d never before taken seriously – still spoke to him to an extent. As if Ilona’s clean-shaven little butt-hole were somehow inexplicably uncontaminated, as if it, at least, wasn’t carrying any baggage. What you see is what you get: Ilona’s ass. And then the two paintings by El Greco – the portrait of the cardinal, and the View of Toledo. For the rest, only the endless rooms of Oriental art. That was all that still spoke to him.

  He’d bought a few books: among others How to Read Chinese Paintings, and had found some support in it. About one of the scrolls of the artist Ni Zan from the twelfth century (ink on paper) it was said: Distant mountains often symbolise a refuge or paradise, but in this scroll Ni Zan clearly sees such a refuge as beyond his reach. The distant mountains are cut off from the foreground by trees and a wide body of water.

  And then one more thing that had excited him: in MoMA there was an exhibition of the Olivier brothers’ most recent work. They’d come a long way, the twins. Near-contemporaries of his at art school, slightly younger than he. Two shy and likeable chaps, sons of the celebrated historian Marcus Olivier. Two gifted youngsters, identical, difficult to tell apart. Attractive in appearance – indeed almost angelic: blond, blue-eyed, slender as adolescents, light-footed and graceful (good tennis players as well, apparently), but from the outset something exceptional about their work. Something much more rounded and sophisticated than the work of their fellow students. And even then, something enigmatic. The father was a different kettle of fish, according to reports a difficult customer – controversial, confrontational, even unscrupulous, if there was any truth to the stories in circulation about him. Nick couldn’t remember these in detail, but he did recall the air of notoriety that hovered about the man.

  Twelve

  Charelle was gone and there was no getting away from that fact. He shuddered to think what could conceivably have happened to her. The visit with Marthinus to Tarquin and company on the mountainside had not been reassuring in the least. The albino guy with the snow-white dreadlocks reciting a whole litany of murder and rape, as if he’d rehearsed it. Marthinus was convinced that those people had their fingers on the pulse of whatever happened in the city and surrounds – from Blue Downs to Bishop Lavis. If they didn’t know where somebody was, Marthinus argued, that person was as good as untraceable.

  Nick wanted Charelle back in his kitchen; he wanted to know that she was safe. He did not want to have to go to strange people in strange settlements to find out whether they had any idea of her whereabouts. He wanted her back at his table unharmed. It was probably presumptuous, even ridiculous, to want such a thing. Perhaps she’d left exactly because she’d found his attentions improper. A white man, her landlord, cooking for her. She’d not shown any signs of awkwardness with the situation, but perhaps she’d sensed something, and had wanted to spare him the embarrassment of taking him up on it.

  *

  Normally he did not work on a Monday, but this Monday he had to go in specially at the behest of the principal of the art school, Albrecht Bester. A visiting artist was coming to give a talk, and Albrecht wanted the full staff complement to be present. Nine days since Charelle’s disappearance. Cold and dry, but windy. Nick did not feel like going in. He knew who the woman was, Liesa Appelgryn; she was quite a noted artist these days; her work had suddenly become
massively popular, he wasn’t quite sure exactly with whom, but it was now all the rage and she was exhibiting at leading galleries, according to Albrecht. Nick found her stuff hideous. Albrecht could hardly contain his enthusiasm about the prospective visit. He was camp to a fault and he enunciated impeccably. Old school, though not much older than Nick.

  Nick was late. The proceedings had started. Albrecht acknowledged his presence with a curt nod and an icy glare. The school’s rooms were state of the art. (No lack of funding here.) The talk this morning was being held in the main exhibition area, a large, circular space. The students sat on the floor, the lecturers stood against the wall at the back. In front, at the lectern, stood Liesa Appelgryn and a blushing, bubbling Albrecht Bester. A few of the woman’s paintings were hanging against the wall. For the rest they were fated to be treated to a Powerpoint presentation, without a doubt.

  Liesa Appelgryn was younger than Nick, she’d been at art school with the Olivier brothers, if his memory served. He had a vague recollection of her as mousy and put-upon, but she had manifestly put that behind her. She’d gone blonde in the meantime, with opulent curves and an imposing cleavage – she was dressed in a form-fitting dress with a neckline plummeting almost all the way to her navel. So this was the drab, untalented Liesa Appelgryn reincarnated. In the flesh her stuff was even more horrendous that he’d imagined it. Female nudes – a hybrid of sentimental Cardies mush and porno-mag drools. Nudes with enormous tits, bums, forests of pubic hair, on flower-strewn hills, on swings in gardens, on beds in boudoirs with the wind coyly tweaking the transparent curtains, in pious attitudes: the hands clasped, the eyes cast heavenward. Saccharine pastel colours. Very obviously a Statement. ‘It’s about allowing the work to embarrass you,’ he read in the small photocopied leaflet in circulation. The otherwise apathetic students were humming like tops. The light in the room was too hot. It caromed off the large sunflower-yellow and baby-pink and apple-green canvases.