Clear (10 page)

‘Anyhow,
Kafka
was a Jew,’ Jalisa casually continues.

‘Pardon?’

‘Kafka,’ she repeats (not a little patronisingly), ‘
Franz
Kafka. The writer. His short story, “A Hunger Artist”, was the inspiration behind this entire thing.’

It
was?

‘You didn’t know that?’ she purrs, then tops up her wine, smugly.

‘Isn’t Kafka German?’ I ask (struggling to disguise my furious bemusement–I mean I saw Orson Welles’ cartoon version of
The Trial
when they played it on Channel 4, late-nite. Shouldn’t that be
enough
for this harpy?).

She rolls her eyes, ‘German
Jew
, dumbo.’

‘He lived mainly in
Prague
, I believe,’ Solomon boredly interrupts.

We both ignore him.

‘And I don’t know if you happened to catch his earlier TV shows,’ Jalisa continues, warming to her theme, ‘but the whole
Jewish
angle is definitely significant in Blaine’s general psychology. He used to have this–frankly kinda
strange
–“radical-rabbi” look (was
well
into it: black clothes, black hat)…And when I saw him on the news the other week and they asked him how he was preparing for his ordeal, he said something like, “My biggest inspiration has been reading the work of Primo Levi. Those people went through
real
trials.”’

She pauses. ‘
Those
people,’ she explains, as if to a dim 4-year-old child, ‘The victims of the
Holocaust
…’

She pauses again. ‘The
Jews?
’

(Yeah.
Thanks
. Think we
just about
sorted that one out.)

Bud (as she rattles on) has given his seal of approval to at least 70 per cent of the dishes at the table (all credit to the animal and everything, but I’ve actually seen him devour other dogs’
shit
in the park, so forgive me if I don’t consider fastidiousness his
watchword
). He tips his head (somewhat ironically) at the bowl of green mango. Solomon pushes it aside.

‘You seem very well informed…’ I fight back manfully (yes, I’m eaten up with rage-I mean overanalysing Blaine is
my
hobby, isn’t it? How
dare
this haughty faux-African queen muscle in on it?). ‘A big
magic
fan, are we?’

‘
Her
?’ Solomon sniggers. ‘This is
Jalisa
, man.
She
only became interested in Blaine when he pulled his Art Trousers on.’

Art Trousers?

Art
Trousers?

(So who exactly designs
those
unwieldy sounding garments?)

‘Here’s another irony,’ Jalisa continues, pinning Solomon to his chair with a Death-Star smile. ‘Harmony Korine is filming the video, yeah?’

I nod, smugly (now this I
do
know…). ‘Talented director of the legendary
Julien Donkey-Boy
…’ I swank.

‘Did you
see
it?’ she asks.

Uh
…(damn, damn,
damn
her).

I slowly shake my head.

‘Well it’s basically a film about family dysfunction,’ she explains. ‘The lead is this young kid–Julien–who’s a little simple, I guess. But the star of the show is no less a man than Werner
Herzog
…’

She pauses, as if waiting for the significance of this fact to utterly pole-axe me (I remain politely unpole-axed). ‘The legendary German
film
director,’ she clucks. ‘
You
know…
Nosferatu, Cobra Verde, Fitzcarraldo
?’

She quickly and efficiently tucks a stray frond of hair into her headscarf. ‘I mean if you actually stop and
think
about it, there’s quite a fascinating intellectual art-
link
here…’

(My face–for your information–is a picture of total bewilderment at this point.)

She turns to Solomon, almost excitedly, ‘Remember
Fitzcarraldo
?’

Solomon nods, boredly.

(Solomon remembers it? He
does
?)

She turns back to me again. ‘Basically it’s this wonderful story about a rich madman–played by the superlative German actor, Klaus Kinski–who has this crazy idea to build an opera house in the middle of the Amazonian rainforest. The film is about his futile attempt to fulfil his dream. The project turns into an absolute disaster when the river they’re using to transport all their materials dries up (or
something
- I don’t entirely remember the details) and they end up dragging this huge,
huge
boat, full of wood and building equipment, over a massive hill. People are crushed and killed. It’s a total catastrophe…’

She pauses for a moment, thoughtfully. ‘And when you’re actually
watching
the film…’ she eventually continues.

‘Does it have subtitles?’ I ask (she immediately delivers me the kind of look which could easily maim a small child).

‘When you’re actually
watching
the film,’ she repeats, ‘it’s almost difficult to believe that the disaster isn’t really
happening
, you know? It’s kind of like the film itself is
part
of the catastrophe…’

She smiles (at her own genius, no doubt). ‘And the fact is that it
was
. Herzog got a guy called Les Blank to make
Burden of Dreams
–which is a documentary–about the making of
Fitzcarraldo
, to illustrate this point. I mean Herzog’s a kind of madman, too, just like his main character–he’s
equally
obsessed. The entire project was wildly over budget, the locations were virtually unreachable, it was incredibly dangerous, and the whole production spiralled into terrible chaos…’

Out of the corner of my eye I see Solomon ‘taste-testing’ one of Aphra’s prodigious gooseberries. He swallows and his face actually inverts (like Schwarzenegger’s does at the end of
Total Recall
).

‘Hang on.’ Solomon finally gains control of his juiced-out tongue again. ‘So
where’s
the actual irony here?’

‘I’m still working it out,’ Jalisa snaps, ‘if you’ll just give me a
moment
. And anyway,’ she continues, ‘I didn’t
say
it was ironic, I said that there were signs of some kind of interesting art
legacy
…’

(For your information–and so you don’t need to backtrack to figure out this girl’s inherent
duplicity
–she
did
mention irony before…

What?

Bitter?

Me?)

‘So?’

Solomon tears off a piece of herby soda bread, and dips it into a mung-bean curry.

‘This is just high-spirited
speculation
,’ she says, ‘but the powerful parallel between Blaine’s “stunts” and the sense of physical extremity in Herzog’s cinematic oeuvre seems more than self-evident to
me
…’

As she talks she tucks into a mouthful of chicken.

‘Nope.’ Solomon is obdurate. ‘I’m not linking the dots.’

‘Well so far as I’m aware,’ Jalisa continues doggedly, ‘Herzog totally had Korine down–
Korine
, remember? Blaine’s best mucker–as the man who was going to change the face of modern cinema (after
Gummo
, this was). He talked the big talk about him all over the media. He made his admiration for Korine widely known…’

She sucks up a thin slither of mixed pepper.

‘So what does Korine
do
? How does he go about
thanking
him? He casts this eccentric German monomaniac in the part of a monstrous, frustrated father figure in
his
film, thereby both celebrating
and
diminishing him. If you ever get to
see
the film,’ she glances my way, witheringly, ‘you’ll almost be able to
taste
Herzog’s fury and frustration, both at the role, and at the direction the film seems to be taking…’

‘’A dodo?’ I ponder.

‘Let’s just say,’ she grins, ‘that it asks quite a
lot
of the viewer.’ She shrugs. ‘But then that’s not necessarily any bad thing, huh?’

I commence scratching at my head like a wild dog with eczema.

‘And the
Jewish
factor?’ Solomon asks.

‘I dunno.’ She dips her fork a second time into the bowl of grilled mixed peppers. ‘But it does seem
strange
that Korine symbolically belittles Herzog in the film, because–intellectually speaking–it’s kind of like, “Kill the Father”, if you know what I mean…’

(I don’t.)

‘…or in
this
case, “Kill the
German
Father”, which resonates at an even deeper level, actually…’

‘It’s a
film
,’ Solomon says, ‘a fiction. The
meta
stuff’s all just fanciful conjecture.’

‘Don’t be so fucking
pedantic
,’ she growls, ‘the performance art aspect is definitely important.
Fitzcarraldo
–Herzog’s masterpiece (and remember, this was
pre
-Dogma)–was both fact
and
fiction. Blaine–via Korine–has used Kafka’s story, a
fiction
, to underpin a
real
drama.’

‘Do you provide study notes with this lecture?’ I ask.

They both ignore me.

‘I think you exaggerate Korine’s influence,’ Solomon growls (through a mouthful of the ‘poisoned’ mango).

Jalisa shakes her head. ‘When Blaine and Korine first met,’ she tells him, ‘Blaine’s desire to impress the film-maker was so intense that he spontaneously climbed into a pizza oven.’

‘
What
?’

Now
I’m agog.

She nods, scooping up some yams with her fingers. ‘The old fashioned kind. The sort that takes hours to cool down. And apparently he remained in that oven for literally
hours
.’ She grins. ‘It was a total–what would you Brits call it?–
wank
off? I mean if you were
related
to either of these two men, you’d seriously really want to keep an entire continent between them. They’re plainly a horrendously bad influence on each other.’

‘It was probably just a trick or a scam on Blaine’s part,’ Solomon debunks her (through more herby bread filled with chicken and topped with chilli salsa). ‘Either that, or part of some carefully constructed “imagined” history they’ve since invented, which cunningly serves to fire the so-called myth of their “partnership”, in order that people like you–and simpletons like Adie–can jack-off all over it.’

(Oh.
Thanks
.)

‘I certainly don’t have Blaine down as an intellectual,’ Jalisa says, ‘or even as a radical. He’s an entertainer, a performer. He’s very commercial. Korine, on the other hand, is
totally
art-house. He’s self-destructive. But he’s extremely clever. This is basically an Art/Celebrity union of the highest order. It’s a powerful partnership, but it’s a destructive one. Korine’s agenda–to his mind–is plainly better acted out on an international
tabloid
stage, rather than on merely an Art one. Art wasn’t enough for him. And the mystery of
magic
, i.e.
bullshit
, was obviously wearing a little thin for Blaine. This recent stuff is a
real
challenge. A
real
mystery. But Korine’s definitely the intellectual. He’s definitely the spur…’

Solomon performs a–frankly offensive–wanking gesture with a triangle of filo in his hand.

‘Korine had a long-term film project,’ she calmly continues (while devouring yet
another
portion of the mung-bean curry), ‘in which he walked around the streets of New York, provoking people of different racial and cultural backgrounds to get into physical fights with him. And he filmed each encounter.’

‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘Now just
hang on
…’

‘The guy has no sense of self-preservation,’ she shrugs. ‘He’s chaotic. He does everything to excess. But even
he
had to rein in a little. I mean he’s only small. He’s quite puny. There’s only so many Czechoslovakian bricklayers you can provoke into punching you in the larynx before things start to turn kinda
nasty
. So what does he do? He turns to Blaine. The Big Man.’

‘How
convenient
,’ Solomon intervenes, ‘that the stooge was so accessible.’

‘And so rich,’ I say.

‘All the “doing stunts” stuff definitely comes from Korine,’ Jalisa fights on. ‘
Think
about it. The stunt is arbitrary. It’s uncontrolled. Magic, as such, is about setting things up, about meticulous pre-planning in order to create the mere
appearance
of arbitrariness…’