The Calligrapher - Hardcover

Edward Docx is the author of the acclaimed The Calligrapher, named a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. He lives in London.

1.
Confined Love

Like so many people living through this great time in human history, I am not
at all sure what is right and what is wrong. So if I appear a little slow to grasp
the moral dimensions of what follows, I"m afraid I will have to ask you to bear
with me. Apologies. It"s a difficult age.
Actually, I do not believe I was behaving all that badly when these
withering atrocities first began. (And if it would now be helpful for me to admit
that mine was a crime of sorts, then I feel I must also be allowed to maintain
that I did not deserve the punishment.) Rather, I seem to recall that I was
trying to be as careful and as sensitive and as discreet as possible; it was
William who was acting like a fool.
We had finally come to a halt in the middle of "The Desire for
Order." Lucy and Nathalie were somewhere up ahead—progressing
unabashed through the room designated "Modern Life." I had been hoping to
slip away without detection. But matters were not proceeding according to
plan. For the last two minutes William had been following me through the
gallery with the air of a pantomime detective: two steps behind, stopping only
a slapstick fraction after me and then raking his eyes accusingly up and
down my person.
He spoke in a vociferous whisper: "Jasper, what the hell are you
doing?"
"Ssshh." The artificial lights hummed. "I am attempting to enjoy
my birthday."
"Well, why do you keep running away from us?"
"I"m not."
"Of course you are." His voice was becoming progressively
louder. "You are deliberately refusing to enter "Modern Life"— over there." He
pointed. "And you keep drifting back into "The Desire for Order"—in here." He
pointed again, but this time at his feet and with a flourish. "Don"t think I
haven"t been watching you."
"For Christ"s sake, William, if you must know—"
"I must."
"I am trying to get off this floor altogether and back upstairs
into "Nude Action Body" without anybody noticing. So it would be very helpful
if you would stop drawing attention to us and go and catch up with the girls.
Why exactly are you following me?"
"Because you"ve got the booze and I think you should open it.
Immediately." He paused to draw a stiffening breath. "And because you
always look oddly attractive when you are up to something."
"I"m not up to anything, and I haven"t got the wine—I stowed it
inside Lucy"s bag, which is now safely inside a cloakroom locker." I feigned
interest in the mangled wire that we were facing.
"You didn"t. My God. Well, we must mount a rescue. We must
spring the noble prisoner from its vile cell straight away! People from Texas
put their cream sodas in those lockers—I"ve seen them do it—and their . . .
their fanny packs. And God only knows what"s in Lucy"s bag—women"s
products, probably. And cheap Hungarian biros. You realize—"
"Will you please keep your voice down? " I frowned. An elderly
couple wearing "I love Houston" T-shirts seemed to be choking to death on
the far side of the installation. "Anyway, Lucy uses an ink pen."
But William was undeterred. "You realize that you may have
ruined that great Burgundy"s life. One of the most elegant vintages of the last
millennium traumatized beyond recovery within minutes of your having taken
possession. It"s barbarous. I am holding you personally resp—"
"William, for fuck"s sake. If you must talk so bloody loudly, then
can you at least try to sound more like a human being from the present
century? And less like a fucking ponce." I cleared my throat. "Besides, you"re
not allowed to wander around Tate Modern swigging booze. It"s against the
rules."
"Balls. What rules? That"s a 1990 Chambertin Clos de Bèze
you"ve got locked up in there like a . . . like a common Chianti. Bought by
me—especially for you, my dear Jasper, on this, the occasion of your twenty-
ninth birthday. How could they stop us drinking it? They wouldn"t dare."
I mimicked his ridiculous manner: "As well you know, my dear
William, that bottle needs opening for at least two hours before we could even
go near it. It"s my wine now, and I forbid you to molest it before it"s had a
chance to develop. Look at you, you"re slathering like a pedophile."
"Well, I think you"re being very unfair. You drag your friends out to
look at all this—all this bric-a-brac and mutilated genitalia —and then you
deny us essential refreshment. Of course I am desperate. Of course I need a
drink. This isn"t art, this is wreckage."
I took a few steps away from him and turned to face a large
canvas covered in heavy ridges of dun brown paint. William followed and did
the same, tilting his head to one side in a parody of viewers of modern art the
world over.
"Actually," he said, a little less audibly, "I was meaning the small
bottle of specialty vodka that Nathalie bought you. I thought you might have
stashed it in your coat or something. I only need a painkiller to get me
through the next room." Mock grievance now yielded to genuine
curiosity: "Anyway, you haven"t answered my question."
"That"s because you are a complete penis, William."
"Why are you in such a hurry to leave us? What"s so special
about "Nude Action Body"?" He looked sideways at me, but I kept my
attention on the painting. "Is it that girl you were staring at?"
"No."
"Yes, it is. It"s that girl from upstairs."
"No, it isn"t."
"The one you were pretending not to follow before we came down
here." He paused. "I knew it. I knew it."
"OK. Yes. It is."
He gave a theatrical sigh. "I thought you were supposed to be
stopping all that. What was it you said?" He composed his face as if to
deliver Hamlet"s saddest soliloquy. " "I can"t go on like this, Will, I am going
mad. Oh Will, save me from the quagmire of womankind. No more of this
relentless sex. Oh handsome Will, I have to stop. I must stop. I will be true." "
I ignored him. "William, I need you to buy me some time and stop
fucking around. Lucy and Nathalie will be back in here looking for us any
second. Go and distract them. Be nice. Be selfless. Help me."
He ignored me. "OK, maybe not the "handsome Will" bit, but those
were more or less your words. And now look at you—you"re right back to
where you were a year ago. You can"t leave your flat without trying to sleep
with half of London. And never a moment"s cease to consider what the fuck
you are doing or—heaven forbid—why."
I walked toward the exit on the far side of the room and
considered a collection of icons made to evoke the Russian Orthodox style.
The figures were blurred and distorted and appeared to recede into their
frames, so that it was impossible to tell whether they were indeed hallowed
saints or grotesque contorted animals or merely half-smudged lines signifying
nothing.
"Look, Will, I need fifteen minutes. Will you keep an eye on the
others for me—please? Don"t let them leave this floor. If they look like they"re
moving, set off the fire alarm or something. I don"t want to fuck up and have to
concoct some stupid bullshit. Not tonight. It would be awful. Lucy gets so
uptight. I just want everyone to have as relaxed and pleasant a dinner as
possible this evening."
"The fire alarm?"
"Yes, it stops the escalators working."
He shook his head, but there was amusement in his eyes.
"I"m sorry, Will. But I swear to you, that girl winked at me, and
she is far too pretty for me to ignore. Admit it, she is. What am I supposed to
do? I can"t just let it go. Come on. Millions of men would pay to be winked at
by girls like her. I have a responsibility to act. Fifteen minutes max."
He smiled. "Well, go on then—get on with it. But if the authorities
arrest me for false alarms, I shall instantly confess that you made me do it. I
shall explain that you are dangerously persuasive and the worst sort of
unscrupulous libertine—"
"I"m exceptionally scrupulous."
"And I shall tell them that you are incapable of behaving in a
decent manner toward friends—or even your own girlfriend—and that you
deserve to be taught a serious lesson. See you in fifteen."
"Thank you, William."
"And don"t forget to check for sisters."

Now, I don"t want to start blaming Cécile for the first wave of demoralizing
setbacks that followed hard on the heels of this, the otherwise inauspicious
evening of my twenty-ninth birthday, but as far as immediate causes of
disaster go, then she has to shoulder full responsibility: J"accuse Cécile, la
fille française. Had she not winked at me, I probably wouldn"t have risked it.
But what could be the purpose of such fetching Mediterranean looks as hers,
if not to fetch?
All the same, the fire alarm surprised everybody.
Chaos followed fast, rushing through "Nude Action Body" like a
messenger from the front with news of approaching armies. From hidden
antechambers and doors marked "Private" dozens of orange-clad ushers
emerged and began urgently to usher; the lifts stopped; small blue lights
flashed from odd places high on the walls; and (as if all this were not
encouragement enough) an unnervingly measured female voice interrupted
the revels every thirty seconds to spell out the situation in an exciting variety
of languages. "This is a routine emergency. Please leave the building by the
nearest fire exit and follow the advice of the officials. Thank you."
I had only just returned to the fifth floor and had taken no more
than three steps into the gallery proper. But now I doubled back and stood to
one side by the wide emergency exit doors at the top of the escalators,
waiting for Cécile. Along with everyone else, she was sure to leave this way.
There was no longer any need to seek her. And I was rather enjoying all the
panic.
Parents issued taut-voiced instructions to their charges.
Scandinavians strode calmly toward the emergency stairs. Italian men put
their arms around Italian women. A litter of art college day-outers roused
themselves reluctantly from their beanbags. Two children came careering out
of "Staging Discord," opposite. And an American woman began to
scream "Oh my God, oh my God."
Given that Irony and Futility still seemed to be filling in for God
and Beauty on the art circuit, the thought occurred to me that had I been
filming the whole thing, I could perhaps have submitted the results for
exhibition myself; perhaps a showing in "History Memory Society": "People
from All Over the World Leaving in Uncertainty" ( Jasper Jackson, calligrapher
and video artist).
Of course, I didn"t actually know that Cécile"s name was Cécile as
I fell into place three or four people behind her. ( Jostle, jockey, joke and
jostle all the way down six flights of unapologetically functional fire stairs.) I
didn"t know anything about her at all, except that she had short, choppy,
boyish black hair, a cute denim skirt cut above the knee, thin brown bare
legs and unseasonable flip-flops, which flapped on every step as she went.
And that she had (quite definitely) winked at me as we circled Rodin"s Kiss.
Outside, safely asquare the paving slabs of the South Bank, I
looked hastily around. The light was thickening. St. Paul"s across the
Thames—a fat bishop boxed in and stranded flat on his back —and two
bloated seagulls, making heavy weather of the homeward journey upstream.
Crowds continued to eddy from the building, but there was as yet no sign of
William or Nathalie or Lucy"s adorable light-brown bob. Still, I had to act
quickly.
Cécile was standing with her back to me, looking across the river.
"Hi," I said.
She turned and then smiled, an elbow jutting out over the
railings. "Oh, hello."
"That was quite exciting." I returned her smile.
"You think there is a fire?"
I looked doubtful. "Probably terrorists or art protesters or rogue
vegetarians."
"I wonder what they save from the flames." She bent an idle knee
in my direction and swiveled her toe on the sole of her flip- flops. "The
paintings or the objets?"
"Good question."
"Maybe in an emergency they have an order for what to keep —
and they begin at the top and then descend until everything is burning too
much."
"Or maybe," I said, "they just let the bastard go until it"s finished
so that they can open up afterward as a new sort of gallery— Burnt Modern.
A new kind of art."
"Perhaps that"s what the protesters want—a new kind of art." She
was a born flirt.
I met her eye and moved us on. "They evacuated the building very
quickly."
"Yes. But there are some people still coming out, I think." She
gestured. "I like how in an emergency everybody starts to talk. As if because
there is a disaster, now we can all be friends, happy together." She looked
past me for a second. "Will they let us back in, do you think?"
"I"m not sure. But I"m supposed to be going to a restaurant at
eight, so I don"t think I will be able to wait. This might take a couple of hours."
I paused. "I should find my friends and see if they are OK."
"Me too. I have already lost them once today—when we were on
the London Eye."
"How long are you in London for?"
"I live here." She frowned slightly—amused disparagement.
I pretended to be embarrassed.
She relented. "I am teaching here."
"French?"
"Yes." A pout masquerading as a smile.
"You have an e-mail address?"
"Yes."
"If I write to you, do you think that you"ll reply?"
"Maybe. It depends what you say."

I found William sitting on a bench with a diesel-coated pigeon and the man
who had earlier been selling the Big Issue outside the main entrance.
"Jasper—Ryan. Ryan—Jasper. We haven"t thought of a name for
this little chap yet." He indicated the creature now pecking at a chocolate
wrapper.
"Where"s Lucy?" I asked, acknowledging Ryan.
"She"s fetching her bag with Nat. Did you meet anyone nice" —
William winked exaggeratedly—"in the toilets?"
"Yes, thanks."
William did an American accent: "I hope you were real gentle with
him."
Ryan snorted and got up. "See you Thursday, Will, mate," he
said, "and let"s hope this new bloke knows how to deal with those fucking
tambourine bastards."
"See you later." William raised an arm as Ryan left.
I sat down and was about to speak, but William motioned me to
be quiet.
"Here they come," he said, "they"ve seen us."
Lucy and Nathalie were making their way toward the bench.
William addressed the pigeon: "You"ll have to piss off now, old chap, but we"ll
catch up again soon, I hope. Let me know how the diet works out."

Before we go much further, I should explain that William is one of my firmest
friends from the freezing Fenland days of my tertiary education. (Philosophy,
I"m afraid, man"s most defiant folly.) I can still remember the pale afternoon, a
week or so after we had all arrived for our first year, when we were walking
back from a betting shop together and he came out to me. It was going to be
very awkward, he confided, and he was at a bit of a dead end with the whole
idea, because—apart from his sister, who didn"t count—he hadn"t really met
any women before now, but—how could he put this?—he was rather worried
that he might not be homosexual and—as I seemed to be rather, well, in the
know on the subject, as it were—had I any suggestions as to next st...