Martha and Harry. Love Amongst the Protozoa
When he opened the book he found a tiny errata note slipped between two plates, one depicting the painter himself, the other the church he had painted, San Giorgio Maggiore. Gossamer paper, hand-tipped; beautiful that so gracious an afterthought was deemed important. They had agreed, the two of them, painting was the realm of the pervert, or at least ought to be if it was any good. What was the point if it didn’t ache towards the feeling of looking from the bed to the girl in the bath? Yet never getting there. Simian daubs, at best, crude approximations of the Divine. Art, the clumsiest perversion. Reverence paid to a Divinity that stands and drools whilst watching its progeny struggling to ape it. She smiled slowly, la Gioconda, cards fanned above her perfect wrist. No smear or splatter could speak to her immaculate nakedness. Not even words. Neanderthal grunts, ham fists beating out eternal frustration, aboriginal in the Provinces. And no Art could ever be as naked as the French girl, stripped by her neighbours to nothing but her socks, her head shaved and painted, being spat upon in that distant, dappled, cobbled square.
She assumed it was a man who had written the poem. The final “don’t leave me here alone,” felt like the inevitable corollary of “I love you.” The wake. The smear in the water that comes shortly after, “go fuck yourself.” We are doomed to be children, all of us, but it shocked her how ardently men in particular refused to grow up. The poem was the same old irritating story, enjoyable only in that (in this instance, unusually) it was well-told. She supposed she was complicit in the extrapolated male infancy it elucidated, the man-child, the mother, bred in the bone, the myth that compels us to instill life with meaning by propagating it. Hence the first time she had met him, startled and gun-shy, she had found herself blurting out her intention to have a baby. With her guitar in her hand, to his dismay, before reassuring him that she didn’t actually play it. “Best entrance ever,” he’d said.
She told him she’d visited with an old painting last night. Taken time with it, like an old friend. She came to one fragile place from another, sat on a chair in the corner, listened to the distant hum of the motorway. Was it possible a woman in vivid transition could be perceived as interesting and not just nuts? Maybe if she was Nusch Éluard, flouncing along Jardin des Plantes with her boobs out for Paul and Pablo and Man Ray. Even then they were probably whispering, “she’s fucking bonkers.” The conversations must have been good though, and it might have been worth doing the evanescent changeling thing if it swelled the melody closer to some overwhelming question. Compelled everybody to up their game, speak in something other than platitudes. Too much of life was singing cantatas to sea cucumbers. He was in love with her, obviously; the twinkling smirk, and a whole prickling hedgehog of compliments. And he was safe, old enough to savour the space around her without trying to occupy it. And yes, she agreed, it was disappointing when somebody said “let’s go to Palermo!” and you didn’t. But she wouldn’t. Like she had something better to do. To snout like a mole through this tunnelly half-life.
The need to have a baby wasn’t a need, she said, but something more extracurricular, a quest, a determination to expand her life at the point where it might otherwise have folded inward. A worthy enterprise, in a sense, even if it didn’t manifest a child. He asked if something unconditional was the carrot at the end of the stick; like when Nijinsky said of Diaghilev that he didn’t want universal love, but to be loved alone. She rolled spaghetti slowly on her fork. Huh. A baby with Ronald, which wasn’t his name, it was John, but he couldn’t call him that because it conferred a reality upon him that was unacceptable. Perhaps one day he’d win him over, she said, Ronald, earn his name. But he doubted it, not after this thievery. And anyway, wasn’t he one of those quiet, artisanal types that beautiful women settle for around 40? A square bear? She’s laughing; didn’t get enough sleep. And she’s shimmering, suspended at the mouth of the cave, like a treble voice before it breaks, catches, moments away from where it was, not yet where it will be. Brief, but magical in the eyes of an impartial observer, neither of which he was.
She kissed him on the cheek and he blinked back, surprised, stranded, like grandpa when visiting hours are suddenly over at the home. The vague flailing of a tiny velociraptor paw in the vicinity of her hand. “Wait, you really have to go?” He’d made the quisling error of taking her seriously when, perched at the end of the bed, she’d suggested she skip work so they could spend the day traipsing the Met together getting bored then unbored. The most wonderful thing he’d heard in his life, or at least since ten minutes ago, when she suggested getting back into the bath. The romantic notion that he’d found one of the ones who refuses to let transcendence pass untroubled when it can be mugged, wrestled to the ground and held for ransom. That a smile begets a kiss, sometimes at least, so it’s always worth smiling, just in case. But now she was gone, leaving the dust of seduction still glinting in the half-light. Life; just one long seduction. Always seducing something, somewhere. But mainly God or the Gods. Into giving us a bit more of the glittery stuff that makes them them, us us.
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