My Biggest Lie (8 page)

We fucked and I fell asleep and if someone had picked me up and carried me still sleeping back to my room, it would have been OK. But when I woke, she woke too and there we were, staring at each other with naked surprise.
You.
There hadn't been much sleep, three or four
hours, but the sun was pouring in through the windows and there wouldn't be any more now, not for me. She pressed her face into the pillow so I didn't have to. I hope she was thinking what I was thinking:
get out of here
. It's not to say we didn't like each other. But I think we both agreed that we didn't have to demonstrate we liked each other
now
, unprepared, defenceless and surprised as children. ‘Are you all right?' I asked. I had had to bite my tongue not to ask Sarah this every ten minutes in our last month together. It was always less a question than a statement to the reverse.

‘Mmph,' she said, turning over onto her side, facing away from me.

‘I'll let you sleep,' I said. Then I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, the casual, natural gesture of the long-term boyfriend I still was. I froze the second after my lips brushed the softness of her skin. She was the wrong woman.
Sarah.

I'm sorry.

I fell out of bed, pulled my clothes on, most of them – there was a missing sock not worth the seconds – and I ran away.

I got lost trying to find my way out of the apartment block. It was like the Library of Babel. At one point I had to lean against the wall and force myself to breathe slowly, my hand holding my heart as it tried to escape my chest. A spiral staircase sunk abysmally below me and soared upwards to great distances. After I'd calmed myself, I found my way out into the sunlight and flagged down a taxi. When we pulled up at the hostel, the driver tried to charge me a
cinquenta
for what couldn't have
been more than a ten-peso trip. I gave him everything I had, twenty-three pesos, a stern look, and walked out the door followed by a stream of gleeful abuse,
la concha de tu madre!
He had to act outraged, even though he had in effect received more than a 100% tip. The fucking drama of the place.

England. Sarah. Home.

I let myself go to pieces for a few days then. I felt a swoon of exhilaration, of swooping hard and fast. After that, the monotony of being miserable took over. I cried with the regularity that I smoked cigarettes. My heart was blackened, blasphemous; I thought in the language of a Cormac McCarthy novel. One of the dreams I'd been clinging to was that when I returned, chaste, to the UK, Sarah would have forgiven me and we would go on as normal. But now I would have to tell her about Ana-Maria, a month after we split up. I'd lost the ability to lie to her; she knew what I looked like now when I did.

After a week I began to pick up. I stopped trying to write magic spells to make Sarah go back out with me and started again with the novel. I had known all along that I was a comic rather than tragic character. I had wept for a week because I had slept with an
Argentine fashion student
. I imagined my friends' reactions if I told them this, the incomprehension, the merciless piss-taking. Being cruel is one of the kindest things men are to each other. I normally preferred the company of women but I could never understand how they could bear so much sympathy from each other in the face of disaster. You had to keep thinking about the disaster then. The best thing, in my experience, if you had been dumped, was for a mate to make a joke about the woman in question being ecstatically fucked by a jazz musician. Because the thing is she
might
be, was what you were thinking: much better to make a cartoon rather than a documentary out of it.

I had decided one thing for certain: I was not going to risk sleeping with any more women if that's how it made me feel. I would just have to hope my libido took notice.

Though I was desperate to email Sarah, I forced myself not to. I continued to write to her by hand, in my notebook. I could not trust my feelings as they arrived. I would write her the best love letter I could, as true as Tolstoy, as romantic as Fitzgerald. The best love letter the world had ever seen, or I wouldn't send it. In the face of this awful hope, I pushed on.

Chapter 9

I
t took Amy Casares two weeks to respond to my request for more information about her life with Craig Bennett in Buenos Aires. Her email, when it arrived, ended with a warning, and a tone of suppressed annoyance – who was I, after all, to continue to claim anything other than fatal significance in the life of this man I knew so briefly?

Well, I could understand that, but she wasn't there. The man had tried to help me at a time when I had thrown away the happiest luck of my life. He made me feel briefly that I could survive the end of the world, or better still, that I might not have to. When he suggested I fight to keep hold of Sarah, with him by my side, to help me make my case, I believed I might be able to.

Perhaps it wasn't a coincidence my friends were mostly men much older than me. But was it paternal guidance or just a precedent for bad behaviour I wanted from them? James Cockburn seemed to have deserted me but would never anyway have enquired deeply into the wisdom of my behaviour, for fear that I would enquire into his own
– and I had always thought I was grateful for this unspoken pact of ours. In the company of men who lunge to unburden themselves, it is sensible to be on permanent guard. What frustrates me. What I want. What isn't working. When did it become acceptable to be so bald in our demands? It was hard to see how the emotional life could be discussed in these terms; how it would not be deformed by precise language. Love, I had thought, should be spoken of on the slant. Or not at all. But that night Craig had given me permission to talk about it, to hope and have faith. I didn't feel strong enough to have hope without his permission, without him. I needed to make him live.

Dear Liam

I met Craig in BA in the mid-90s – 95 I think. I'd been working as a producer's assistant on a few films, just eking a living with long months not working between jobs. A nice time, when I wasn't worrying about money. I'm not sure I ever worried that much. Something always came up when I needed it desperately. It was my first long period of time I'd spent there as an adult and it was so exciting to feel the Argentine part of me come alive again, although, with my accent, everyone still thought of me as the
Inglesa
.

People began to ask me, ‘Have you met the Englishman?' I was intrigued at first: who was this Gatsby? Then, when the stories invariably involved three-day drinking and drugs sessions with his lawyer Alejandro and whoever would join in, I was less interested. I knew enough bloody drunks in London, enough wannabe Bukowskis and Hunter S. Thompsons. But there were rumours about the film he had written in Spanish and was trying to get made, rumours he was talented in
spite of rather than because of the drinking. No one seemed to understand what his connection was to Argentina though he spoke perfect, dirty Spanish, knew all the
lunfardo
. And he wasn't really English either, though his family was originally from Yorkshire. His accent when speaking English could veer from Aussie to Leeds to aristocrat. He was an impersonator, and I don't think I ever discovered which of his roles was the main one, the real one I guess, and this is why I think I couldn't be with him any more. The film he was making: he had written it, but I never saw him do anything else apart from talk about it. Still, he talked about it well, and people liked to listen to him talk, you know this, and once we'd been introduced we saw each other a lot at parties.

In fact, he did have a development grant for the film, one he was recklessly enjoying with his ‘colleague' ‘lawyer' ‘business partner' – it changed daily – Alejandro, his best friend who he'd met at boarding school near Sydney when he was a teenager. When they met Alejandro had just moved to Australia with his parents from Buenos Aires, and Bennett had just been sent to school for the first time in three years after being taught by his father on his remote vineyard – they lived together just the two of them there, with his mother and his sister in Melbourne. It was a last-ditch effort to get him a standard education, to socialise him.

So there were three of us hanging out in Buenos Aires, all displaced early on, and used to making a life wherever we turned up.

They had a game they'd play when they introduced themselves to someone. Alejandro would start, ‘Let me introduce myself, I am Alejandro Miguel Marques Montenegro, and this is my dear friend and colleague Craig Bennett, the gifted film-maker.' ‘No, that is too much,'
Craig would come in, ‘I am merely the sidekick of this man here who of course you have heard tell of, Alejandro Miguel Marques Montenegro, the criminal rights lawyer, artist and Renaissance man currently assisting me, or rather directing me, in a small art movie I am about to begin to film.' There's something so sweet and charming about two men so clearly in love with each other. At first, anyway. It became a bit contentious between Alejandro and me. Sad really, particularly now I hear Alejandro and Craig never made up before Craig died. That relationship was really a lot more important to him than ours was. He wouldn't admit it, though.

You can probably find Alejandro if you're determined. Try their favourite bar, L'Espada. It's still around. But try to forget and get on with your own life. There's not much I can tell you about him that I feel will help you. I hope you find what you're looking for, but are you sure you're looking in the right place?

Love, Amy

If I was going to snoop around a bar asking for a mysterious fantasist called Alejandro Miguel Marques Montenegro, there was nothing for it: I'd better learn to speak Spanish. It would provide a diversion from repeating Sarah's name in my head.

There is a popular theory, unproven by rigorous analysis: that it takes half the length of a relationship to adjust to its demise. Sarah and I had been together for four years so I only had two years of misery left. I'd done a month already: a whole twenty-fourth of my time. Well, it wasn't that bad. But if I counted the year before we got together, a year in which I'd kissed her and been entirely obsessed with her, made promises and yearned across continents . . . I'd done somewhere between a
twenty-fourth and a thirty-sixth of my time. They might let me out of my cell slightly earlier too, for good behaviour. Good behaviour? Unlikely. And this wasn't counting all the years I had loved her without telling her. So, if Sarah wasn't a special case, and I thought she probably was, I had somewhere between a hundred and a hundred and fifty weeks before I'd be able to have sex with a woman without crying. I certainly had time to learn Spanish.

I remembered Hans telling me he had been about to start a Spanish course and kept my eye out for him in the lounge. I was dangerously close to finishing
Bleak House
when he walked in and sat in front of the TV. As usual, there was a violent football match in progress.

‘Hello, Hans,' I said, walking over and sitting next to him.

‘Hello, Liam. How are you?' he asked.

‘My girlfriend dumped me by email. So I slept with another woman last week. After that I went to my room and cried for five days.'

He looked at me askance. ‘I had thought you had not been around,' he said casually. ‘The other girl, the one you had sex with, was she very ugly or very right-wing? I have never cried for five days, only four. I thought they didn't make them
that
ugly,
that
right-wing.'

‘She was pretty,' I said. ‘Much more than me.'

‘Poor girl.'

‘Yes, poor girl.'

‘I'm sorry you're sad, Liam. But it sounds like this girl would be better off with someone better-looking, more charismatic, no?'

He said this with what, to me, was heartbreaking tenderness. I could have hugged him.

* * *

We started Spanish on Monday and I was immediately grateful for the purpose. Coming to Buenos Aires to learn Spanish made a far more positive narrative than I had managed to cobble together so far. The classes were in Lizzie's language school and I looked around for her, wondering if she was back from her trip to see her friend in Brazil. I hadn't contacted Arturo since our night out together and I was worried about what he might have told Lizzie about my adventure with Ana-Maria. There were a lot of potential misunderstandings and, more to the point, understandings that could arise.

It's melodramatic to say you can taste lies. I'd lied frequently and joyfully throughout my life without feeling the awful anxiety I did now. It was danger I could taste, mechanic, chemical – but I'm not sure it was only this new sensitivity to exposure. It was acid, the taste of the slow digestion of the person I'd pretended to be while the other person grew inside me, eating me at the same time as I was emulating his voice, his turn of phrase, laughing at his jokes. The more lies I told, the more that man grew familiar. He was no longer eating me alive. I was eating him.

I ran into Lizzie in the corridor after my first lesson. Hans looked at me with increased respect as she embraced me. She didn't seem surprised to see me and she didn't appear angry either.

‘You're back,' I said.

‘Was I away? That seems like a long time ago. I heard you had fun with Arturo.'

‘Um . . .'

‘Um? An um is rather worrying where that man is
concerned. Really, um? I hope I don't need to be filing reports back to Sarah about you.'

‘Ha ha!'

She looked at me curiously.

‘I'm learning Spanish!' I said.

‘I can see your textbook. Both of your textbooks.' She said something Spanish to me, I think it was Spanish . . .

Hans, a continental, said something Spanish in return. They both laughed and shook hands. ‘Would you like to go for a coffee soon or something?' I asked.

Lizzie had the next afternoon off work and was keen to check out the newest exhibition at the MALBA. I agreed to meet up with her after my class the next day and go with her.

After I had answered Hans' questions about how it was I knew such an attractive resident of the city, I had nothing to do for the rest of the day. I had a brainwave and headed straight to the gallery.

It was a simple thing, but it reminded me I was actually here on a kind of holiday. Going to galleries is one of the few things I do on holidays. I'm not sure there's much else you
can
do on holiday in a city: read plot-driven novels on café terraces, visit famous nightclubs, try to locate and not to get ripped off by drug dealers, get drunk on wine over decadent lunches . . . the list soon runs out for a man of my imagination.

I hadn't been to a single gallery so far in my month in Buenos Aires, simply because they reminded me too much of Sarah. We had had a good system in art galleries: I'd go round quickly, looking at everything that struck me until I got moved by one thing. That's all I wanted, to be moved by one more thing. One beautiful or startling work to hold in my head and pass on to someone else.
I'd leave her to the meticulous analyses while I found the bar, bought a beer, wrote in my notebook and waited for her. I was never any happier than in those moments waiting to find out what I'd missed and what I had found.

If Sarah was gone for ever, I'd need more beautiful things, not fewer.

So I faced up to it, and instead of feeling sad, I felt the most at home since I'd arrived. The calming décor of the international contemporary art space. Every one of them done up like Brook's
Dream
, a blank canvas, an Ikea lounge, a photographer's studio. A place without background, a space to teleport into.

Art galleries are also the only places in the world where I like to get stoned; and I had been carrying Arturo's large bud of skunk around for the last week.

I shimmered into existence in front of the international doe-eyed brunette who sells the tickets on reception in every one of these institutions. Her fringe was perfect, as real as a photo in a magazine. She smiled the same smile she'd smiled at Sarah and me when we'd gone to the Hamburger Bahnhof on our holiday to Berlin a few months ago. It was a smile that recognised I was much reduced.
I know
, it said.
I saw. You idiot. But you are still welcome in here.

‘
Muchos gracias
,' I said when she handed me my change, and on a whim I asked, ‘
¿Como se llama?
' She smiled again but she didn't answer. No one knew her name. She was
Untitled
.
Sin Titulo
.

Moving on, I climbed the escalator to the first hall. Here I walked around some fluorescent sculptures and checked the cards, wrote names down in my notebook to Wikipedia later. ‘Ah, León Ferrari!' I might say tomorrow. ‘I really wanted to see his show in the New York MOMA
last year with Mira Schendel.' I was relieved to see I wasn't the only one doing this: I saw a couple of other young men and women reading the cards too. One of them was even making a sketch.

I was back the next day with Lizzie and smiled with complicity at the woman who sold me my ticket again.

‘Oh, I love Antonio Berni!' I said as we were greeted by a multicoloured alligator, a girl's legs in over-the-knee black socks hanging out of his jaws.

Lizzie peered at the tag.

‘I always think it's a shame he didn't do more sculptures.'

‘Yes,' she said.

She turned and looked at a large painting on the wall opposite.

‘Xul Solar. I think that's another of his over there. I like this one best, though.'

‘My God, Sarah's got you well-trained.'

‘Oh, it's not Sarah. I've always liked art. Actually, what really makes me like art is getting stoned. You don't fancy nipping out for a spliff, do you?'

‘Have you got one?'

‘Courtesy of your boyfriend.'

‘I should have guessed. Well, why not?'

We walked down the stairs and round the back of the building and I lit the joint I'd prepared earlier.

‘How is Arturo anyway?' I asked at exactly the same moment Lizzie said, ‘How is Sarah anyway?'