The Intimates (11 page)

“Listen – ” he says, as if preparing me for something transcendent. The circling riff tightens like a knot in the stomach, creating an almost unbearable tension. The voice rises to achieve the high notes, before finally hinging itself around the hook of the song with a glorious abandon that raises the hairs on my neck. As the cymbals swell the song crashes to a halt. I feel exhilarated and inspired.

He looks up at me and in the garish light for a second he looks ten years younger – his fringe still plastered to the side of his face, the circling lights illuminating him as he carefully manages the glare of the crowd, who respond so urgently to his caresses. His guitar is slim and lethal, its many cuts seem like war wounds from a battle against the mundane. A ravenous roar fills his ears, electrifies him. But as the cymbals fade I see in the half-light that is no longer the case. He is older now; his nicotine-tinged fingers twitch with less precision. His body is less contained, he no longer has that strange sexual energy I remember him using to stalk stages in his youth. He shakes his head, smiling to console himself.

“What do you think?” he asks, nodding me towards the answer he wants.

“It was incredible.”

“It still is.” He smiles, lopsidedly. His face is flushed with pride; a powerful feeling which I suspect now visits him rarely. I want to ask why he has come here, alone, to listen to his own seven-year-old album. But there's a clammy scent of desperation around him, and I feel inclined to treat him gently, to nourish him somehow. It's a feeling which sits uncomfortably with me, and I resent him for forcing me to play that role.

I am used to Franz circling me, building my confidence with hands that move in waves of encouragement. I am used to his eyes lighting up as he goads me to reveal some secret promise that I know I have. I am used to him insisting that I am the person I want to be, and not the wretched person I often feel I am. Usually his potent mixture of aftershave and perspiration signifies that inspiration is on its way. It upsets me that he now wants me to somehow build him up. It would be like seeing your father cry – though your reaction is to help, it feels well beyond your capacity, terrifying even.

“Towards the end of that song, there were shivers going down my spine,” I continue. He looks up at me, his face wide with unmasked pleasure. He's heard this response many times, but hearing it now clearly relieves him. My approval seems to offer him a surge he will ask of strangers for the rest of his life. He moves over to a lounger, taking a gulp of wine as he settles down.

I feel compelled to snap him out of this reverie. “Do you remember when you taught me how you channel all your negativity into the way you move onstage? Do you remember that?”

He looks at me as if waking from a dream. I press on, eager to make him emerge from this chrysalis as the invigorated man he once was. “It was just after your first gig,” I say, walking up and down in front of him as he cradles a wine glass. Something starts to move in his eyes.

“I asked you how you knew exactly what to do with your hands on stage, how to dance to the song, what to say to the audience. You took me backstage and you told me that at any concert a unique motion is lingering in the room, and it is the performer's job – whether a musician, singer or comedian to instantly use it. To use the moments when the crowd offers you wild acclaim to find that motion and tap into it. You told me that to be a performer, in any walk of life, I had to train myself to find that channel instantly and dwell in it for the duration that I am on show.”

I am circling him now, wrapping my determination to hoist him from the past around him. He begins to nod, at first weakly, but soon with sharpness – like a battered boxer being coaxed by his coach to face the final rounds.

“And I asked you what you do if you don't sense that motion in the room. If you are met with nothing but apathy or negativity. And you taught me that then, especially then, there was energy to be sourced that's more powerful than any other. You taught me that negativity was an emotion easier to use than any other. That in that circumstance a performer should make themselves a medium for the anger in the room. That the performer is the only one in the room privileged enough to act as a mirror for everything the audience is feeling. You said they can offer the audience a spectacle, a cathartic spectacle for them to vicariously live through for the duration they are on stage. They can turn that negativity and apathy into something beautiful. Do you remember?”

He looks up, smiling as if faintly embarrassed by his previous passion. “I do remember. Did I really say all of that?”

“You did.” I am nearly jabbing him with my finger now, as if channelling my own resentment into a need to inspire him. “You said that the most glorious sensation an artist could feel was that all his peculiarities had been validated through his performance, through his art. That every artist strived for a state of complete self-realisation, which drove them to slave away at often ignored works into the dead of the night. You must remember Franz – I have committed your lessons to memory, every one of them.”

“All of his peculiarities? Really? But you gain more peculiarities with time Vincent. Did I know that then? The world breaks down your defences, and plays havoc with your beliefs. It's like a bull in the china shop of your mind, leaving you to pick over the fragments it leaves for the rest of your days. The world is so relentlessly accurate with its cruelty.”

“But you must learn to use your ability to articulate such concepts into making art again Franz. Be a conduit, as only you can do. You were the one who taught me that it was possible.”

“You need confidence to do that Vincent, confidence that you can tap into a vague feeling that's hanging over a room full of strangers. You cannot fake that confidence; it must emanate from you. How can I have that confidence now? The closest I can get to it is through these songs, which I play to remind myself of it. Now Pablo is gone, these songs are all I have left of that time.”

It occurs to me that somewhere in his body is a demon, which he longs to reawaken. His face assumes a look of bitter resignation. In his heart he knows that demon has gone to sleep, forever. That he lost contact with it when Pablo, his song-writing partner, died. He knows only too well that his hour has passed, that he will stay now in a state of decline. I sit on the edge of the couch opposite him and sip from my glass.

He looks up at me apologetically. “I know what you mean Vincent; I must try to practice what I once preached. Pablo was the first person to tap into my ability, and I just need to find a way to now access it without him. I'm sure if I
needed
it back I could get it. But I'm not so young anymore.”

It intrigues me to hear him talk of his talent as I'd thought of it. As a separate entity that must be found, as a monster that wrecks everything beautifully. Looking at the queasy compromise he has become, it seems now more like a feral animal, which passes between people with no loyalty or concern, leaving tattered lives in its wake. That preys upon the beautiful and the wicked, and commands them to do its work until they become seduced by it, unable to leave it. It defines them, drains them, and then abandons them – leaving broken shells like Franz behind in their wake. To cower in empty rooms at parties, trying to relive it in little snatches. It embodied Franz just for one record, but without Pablo there to nurture it, slipped away as easily as it came. Now it possesses new flesh.

Since then mere blood and muscle have kept Franz alive, but nothing tears at his veins anymore. Franz turns to face me, his eyes widening.

“You weren't there during those glory years Vincent. You don't understand how much they change you. You look at me and you want me to be the man that I once was. But that kind of adulation, that kind of lifestyle, it alters you. It makes you accustomed to getting a huge reaction when you enter a room, living with a state of mind so transcendental it's almost impossible to return to the real world again.

“When I disappeared from your life for those few years, for much of it I was holed up in the Chelsea Hotel. I had three model girlfriends and an acoustic guitar for company, and I thought I could do no wrong by any of them. I felt as if the world had opened up to me like an oyster, as if everything was there for the taking. If I fancied another mans girlfriend, I didn't hesitate. I had an enormous, constant sense of entitlement. Now I see the error of my ways, and yet that feeling was so addictive that to now be merely human just seems… undignified.

“When Pablo and I met in recording studios, every time we picked up our guitars we wrote something special. For those few years we were just in that wonderful zone. With him I had a
need
to impress, to try and better him. Like the feelings you get what you fall in love – you can't recreate them with mere determination. You can't judge me for being unable to bring that back. How do you expect me to have that strength?

“Pablo was my best friend as well as my song-writing partner. He was the man whose talent handed me the treasures of the world. And yet when he was in the grips of heroin addiction I was carrying on with those three models and not responding to his calls. I became so angry that I was no longer the centre of his world, that he cared more for drugs, that I shut him out. By the time his addiction became life-threatening I wouldn't even answer the phone to him. When he finally died, in wretched and desperate circumstances, I was the ninth person to hear of it. With what we had been through I should have been the first – and yet success had changed me so much that I barely felt it when the news came through. That pain is still with me now though, as much as ever. I need fame and money to numb it, to take it away. It is the only way that the world can make sense to me again.”

He looks up at me. I see that his eyes are bloodshot and his skin pallid. The movement of his body now lacks the charisma which once seemed to course so naturally through him. It is as if it has been resolutely switched off, by the decided push of a button.

“Is this why you chase after Barbara, Franz? Because you think she offers you a way back into that world?”

“Barbara has it in her to be successful again Vincent. She has that special spark, I see it in her. Barbara understands how the world works, how it closes a door to us and how tenacious we must be to open it again. I know she still has it within her Vincent, and when I spend time with her it comforts me to know that I am not alone. She may not articulate what she and I have in common, but she knows we are two of a kind. I feel so sure that she still has enough vibrancy, enough colour, that the two of us together can find a way back into our pasts.”

I want to grab him and shake him. For confusing his unique ability with her self-centredness. For trying to find himself solely through what he once had. For buying into Barbara's dangerous and ill-defined delusions.

“Franz, you must take in what I am saying. You had – have – a gift that is rare and in many ways unprecedented. But the only way you will rediscover it is through clarity and discipline, the two traits you taught me to value above all others. Barbara does not have talent. She will offer you nothing but confusion. You must not allow yourself to be drawn in by her shabby and faded glamour. She is so much
older
than you.”

“Don't make the mistake of treating me as you want me to be Vincent. Your father does that with you, and look at the harm it has done. Vincent, if your father comes tonight, stand your ground. Be firm about who you are, and do not allow his loathing to impact upon you.”

For the first time I recognise the voice that comforted me for a long time. But then he looks down.

“I look at you, Vincent, and I see disappointment. You want me to pull you from your rut, but you can't expect me to do that anymore. All of my strength is used up by merely keeping
me
alive.”

He looks broken, and I wonder if should put my arm around him. But that seems such a reversal of our previous relationship that I decide I shouldn't. Or can't.

“Francoise has advised me to finish my manuscript and submit it to her agent. She thinks it could really take me somewhere. Do you think she might be right?”

He cocks his head to one side; his expression suggests that he is still in thrall of that faded music. “I think the rewards of success are more complicated than someone like her can imagine.” His eyes look utterly hollow, like an animal's footprints in snow.

“Lets be brutal for a moment Vincent,” he continues. “Francoise has created one work of promise, during her late middle-age. Barbara had a couple of wonderful films and then suffered a crisis of confidence. But my work lives on around the world, in people's hearts and minds. None of The Intimates understand success like I do Vincent. You want realistic advice, talk to me about what I have been through.”

“I don't need advice, Franz. I have had enough of that from my father. I want to be
inspired
.”

“Then buy yourself a self-help book.”

As he busies himself with that CD, still too self-consumed to acknowledge me entirely, I suddenly find him distasteful, repulsive even. He clings to anyone who praises his past achievements, but he has no regard for their concerns. He has the self-absorption of one who's lived his life with a sense of entitlement, who has no gratefulness for the pleasures the world has let him indulge, who doesn't realise the void most people negotiate on a daily basis. His solipsism sickens me, and I feel glad fate has forced him to adjust.

It is his fault if he can't, life does not bend towards our every wish. People tell him he still has the gift, but it's like a wife who reassures a man that she's his only one, when it's obvious her attentions are now elsewhere. He passes through this routine of self-assurance as if forever hoping to rediscover something in its fading circles. He moves in increasingly complex patterns, looking for something to trigger that rush. He can't finish any new pieces because he knows they will pale in comparison to his previous work. It is almost as though he's condemned himself to never feel again.

“We were good, weren't we?” he says, smiling weakly and turning way from me. “We had something really good.”

Remorse occupies his face, and then he suddenly looks up brightly. Barbara is hitching up her skirt as she steps towards the fountain outside. As if something blissful has occurred to him, as if all his woes are suddenly gone, he calls out her name. It surprises me how quickly a woman's movement can dispel a man's sadness.