Song Of Time (27 page)

Christos’ teachings, if they could be said to make any sense at all, were based on the assertion that these were the last of days. The Kingdom of God was due to be established here on earth at any moment, although he cleverly avoided specifying an exact date. Meanwhile, though, we must all fear and obey Jehovah, God and Allah—whom he claimed were all the same deity—as never before. Which meant that women should meekly obey their husbands, bear children, and not work outside the house, whilst homosexuality, and any kind of promiscuity, not to mention birth control, abortion and genetically-based medical treatment, were evil, and all people who doubted the word of God, which was effectively the word of Christos, were blasphemers. Not that Christos actively supported violence, but his words were inflammatory enough to encourage others to firebomb gay bars and assault women who had the temerity to go out dressed in a way which might be construed as sexually appealing.

Then there were the ghost vans, old trucks and delivery vehicles spray-painted with extracts from the Talmud, the Bible or the Koran, in which Christos’ followers toured the city in search of lost souls. Pave-ment drunks, park-bench sleepers—anyone who happened to be momentarily unable to fend for themselves—were routinely press-ganged into his so-called Community of God. The gendarmerie did nothing, whilst the political right, who enjoyed having the dirty work of cleaning up the streets of so-called undesirables done for them, smilingly looked on. President Boullard, who knew a trend in need of riding when he saw one, even invited Christos to the Elysée Palace, and posed with him for a virtuality shoot. Compared with the self-flagellating bombers and warmongers, Christos probably seemed like a moderate, and Boullard said that he, too, was a man who feared God, and that his poli-cies of stronger censorship, of fostering full male employment by encouraging women to go back to their kitchens, his abhorrence of same-sex marriage, even his doubts about what he called the so-called theory of evolution, all chimed with what this holy man taught. As to whether the world was soon ending, well, he was merely the President of France, and would govern as best he could until that time, but meanwhile he would urge people to pray and consider their conscience when the time came to vote. Christos then shook the president’s hand, and that handshake gave Boullard another million votes.

Claude presided at a meal in a private room at Gagnaire’s the evening of the live debate with Christos on the popular current affairs show
Rapport
which Mathilde’s advisors had organised for him. He seemed happy and confident. Despite all the troubles which afflicted France, these were good times for us both. Claude was basking in the award he’d just received for his recordings of the Brahms symphonies, and it seemed as if the tune of
Les escaliers de Montmartre
came from every café loudspeaker, whilst I’d just learned that I’d been awarded an honorary degree, which would be presented to me as soon as the embattled Sorbonne re-opened its doors. I bridled now when critics compared me to mature Heifetz, or the young Menuhin, or middle period Oistrakh. I didn’t want to be like anyone, no matter how great. I simply wanted to be Roushana Maitland.

Harad Le Pape was there with us at Gagnaire’s. He or she had resumed criticism, although the subject was now life in general rather than any particular work of art. That night, Harad rustled in an entirely black outfit, all frills and puffs, and bore a small, silkily feminine, mous-tache. He or she had reviewed the recent killings amongst the far right as a Dadaesque tragedy on a par with Godot. Other recent missives had focussed on the conjunctions of adverts and clouds over Chaillot, and the smears of tomato sauce left on a plate. Harad’s great work on the 6th had been finally pronounced complete. The struggle was over, but now like a fine wine, like a good cheese, like a newborn infant, the creation had to learn to breathe. Meanwhile, we all must wait.

If Harad seemed relaxed and expansive, Karl Nordinger was barely recognisable that night as the sour man I’d first encountered. The program which would create the ever-changing final version of his
Fourth Symphony
was working fully, and had just been sold as a conceptual framework to a multinational software company. After years of nothing but good reviews and artistic acceptance, he was suddenly inordinately rich, and seemed to be enjoying it. He’d been down to Monaco with two succulent heiresses of the old nobility, and had returned to Paris with three.

It seems to me now that almost everyone who had ever been anyone in Parisian intellectual society was with us at the long table at Gagnaire’s that night as we drank and laughed. I’m sure that Nadia Kakkousis was there, fresh from her triumphant
Rosenkavalier
. So was Max Rochereau, typically ebullient and talking happily of a return virtuality to paint. So was Alain Riboud, then at the sparkling height of his momentary fame before the match-fixing scandals which destroyed him. And so was Dorina Three, who had surpassed even the pervious Dorinas in her pallid beauty. As I look along the table, and Claude raises a toast to humanism, the candles seem to multiply amid the forests of bottles. For surely Picasso’s down there as well, dining out as he has been for years as the one artist of integrity to remain in Paris when the Nazis came. And so are Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, soused of course, but still in the brief, prime time when the words flowed out and they were truly happy. And there’s Hemingway: where else, tonight, would Papa be? And Marcel Proust has made a rare excursion from his cork-lined room, and we’re all wondering if the funny or profound things we say will re-emerge in that endless book he claims he’s writing. There, further back, are Diaghilev and Monet and, yes, there’s Georges Sand and Frederick Chopin, both at the pinnacle of their love and fame. Near beside them sits an even more familiar figure. Knowing everything, understanding it all, Leo smiles at me and raises his glass, and I raise mine back to him.

There was
truffel feuillete
and there was
croustillant de lamb,
and all of it was washed down by
Chateau Beychevelle
, which had been young when I was young, and still tasted of the sunlit earth of the once-fine vineyards of Bordeaux which are all now dead. Everyone had suggestions as to how Claude might finally nail Christos in the coming debate for the hypo-critical slug that he was. For a start, there were the so-called miracles. And how many wives was he now said to maintain in the huge encamp-ment in the ruins of Disneyland? And how did he square all that love-thy-neighbour crap with his attitude towards gays and women? He was a sitting duck, fishes in a barrel—an easy, obvious target…

The evening was passing: it was time for tides to be turned, for history to be made. With the bill settled by our PR company, Claude and I tumbled out into the streaming streets. Despite their promises of support, the other guests soon faded in flurries of excuses of new master-pieces in need of writing, fresh lovers waiting abed, bare white canvasses, the latest unexplored club. By the time we reached
Le Monde’s
studios, we were alone.

Claude took a couple of soberups and then, uncharacteristically, a small handful of calmdowns as we sat waiting in a green room and tonight’s news tunnelled across the screens. The government in Tokyo was close to collapse and the ripped up paving stones of tonight’s demonstrations lay sprawled beneath the walls scrawled in luminous paint.
Under the stones, the beach…
Then one of Mathilde’s advisors bustled in. Minor panics back at party HQ—the spin machines had ploughed through all possible scenarios, and there were worries that this interview might be becoming
too
influential. After all, Claude wasn’t here to
vanquish
Christos, was he? This was merely a philosophical, non-political, debate. But the producer was already calling two minutes, and Mum was watching in India, as were Claude’s parents in Washington. So, it seemed, was half the world.

The studio was nothing like the intimate space you entered when you viewed
Rapport
through the screen at home. The famous fireplace, the fine paintings—the whole warm aura of culture that this programme projected—didn’t exist in reality. Assistants and re-arrangers scurried through a shiny expanse of sensors and plastics whilst, cool and distant as stars, a few spotlights glimmered far above. Christos was already hunched in one of the big leather chairs. The middle of the triptych was the presenter, a smug septuagenarian named Micel whose face had been stretched by many surgeries into the look which the French termed
Le Chinois
. Claude was on the left. Sensor-operators gesticulated. The theme music began.

Christos seemed uncomfortable from the start. But he had, I decided as I watched him, the same compulsive, hypnotic quality which all of history’s famous madmen had probably possessed. Rasputin had had it, certainly. So had Hitler and Napoleon—Christ and Mohammed, would have had it, too, if they’d existed. Yet he was so ugly and sweaty! For all his blotched skin, he looked as if he hadn’t washed, or changed, or even slept, for many days. He stuttered and rambled in that strange voice which never seemed to settle on one pitch or accent, and made a weird variety of gestures which mimicked the sensor operators and suggested his body was barely under his own control. Cast onto the dangerous streets, raving to the tourist queues beneath the Eiffel Tower, gathering a giant following amongst the bitter and dispossessed—all of these things were easy enough to believe. Claude, with his elegant good looks and his American-tinged French accent, truly looked as if he belonged in a different world.

When invited to condemn violence, Christos prevaricated in a low growl. When asked if he really thought that women were lesser creatures than men, he merely smiled and said that God had made Adam first. Just as we’d suggested at Gagnaire’s, Claude then tried to question him about his miracles. Could he really heal the sick, bring death to the dying? Which of the stories were true and which were false? But Christos just kept saying all the things we’d heard him say too many times before. That the world would soon end, that it was time to heed the scriptures, and make peace with God and help build the foundations of his city here on earth. Otherwise, he said in a dry whisper, those who denied his word would burn for all eternity in the fiery pit of hell.

Christos simply rambled in response to Claude and Micel’s attempts to use argument and logic against him. Then he began to seem bored. As he slumped in his chair and his gaze wandered the studio, it even lingered on me. Undeniably, I felt a strange sense of power. What
was
it, I wondered, as I struggled against a strong impulse to look away. Then I realised something about Christos which all the ridiculously idealised images of his face which you saw in all the adverts and on the labels of his bottles failed to depict. His left iris was brown, but his right was blue.

It was obvious to me by now that the entire debate was going to be as inconclusive as such things always are. How stupid of us to have imagined that something as simple as the truth would ever come out in a current affairs programme! As Micel steered
Rapport
towards its end, he looked towards Christos, although he no longer seemed to expect more than a final shrug. But, in a startling movement, Christos suddenly unbent himself from his chair. Leaning his body towards Claude, he muttered a phrase which I and the microphones didn’t catch. But I got an impression that it was something personal about Claude. You some-thing something…Or you’re—something like that. Claude’s face contorted, then his fists bunched, and his body followed. If Micel hadn’t stood up between them, there seemed little doubt that Claude would have struck Christos some kind of blow. Then the credits rolled.

I sensed Claude’s anger and frustration as we lay that night in bed.

“So,” I murmured, my hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat, “what did he say?”

Claude drew in a long breath. “That guy—he sells bottled water, for fuck’s sake! He says nothing matters and we should all give up and just buy his product because the world’s ending. And he makes a
fortune
doing it—and then he kidnaps people in those bloody vans! How the hell is anyone supposed to swallow all of that?”

“But they do.” I stroked his belly. “You saw what he was like. He appeals to ignorance and fear and hopelessness. And he’s slippery as a snake.”

I felt Claude nod in the darkness.

“Then tell me. What did he say?”

“I’m not sure, Roushana. I’m really not sure…”

Inevitably, that final image—Claude lunging towards a cowering Christos as the elderly Micel struggled to intervene—defined the
Rapport
debate. It was on all the newscasts. It was plastered across the morning skies. People, even the many who had no belief in the coming apocalypse, went to work with that moment from the end of
Rapport
endlessly repeating across the fronts of their shirts. Most, though, thought it merely funny and interest soon moved on. By lunchtime, they were downloading something else.

That same afternoon, as I remember, Claude and I went to look at an abandoned tobacco warehouse near our atelier he was considering buying for his Project, which currently resided in a jumble of buildings beyond the buried wastelands of the
Periphique
. People were afraid to go that far out from Paris, and the kids’ performances were thus always poorly attended. It made every kind of sense to move the concern closer to the centre of the city.

Claude worked open a metal gate in an alley a few blocks away from our flat. The roof of the tall building with its acid-corroded façade was whole, but its windows were gone, and the concrete floors inside were littered and puddled. Claude always liked big, open expanses. And he liked, as we clanked up the many rusty iron stairways, the dominating views they gave through the swirling rain towards Notre Dame. It was amazing, really, we decided as we stood looking out from the lip of a wide opening in the top floor, that the place had been ignored for so long.