Involuntary Bliss Page 7
He’d met Madeleine in mid-March, shortly after he’d been informed by the proprietor of the bar where he’d been working as a busboy that his services were no longer required. He’d spent the afternoon walking the Main, his hair tied back in a ponytail, his beard trimmed to some semblance of respectability, Warren’s mandola slung over his shoulder while in his hand he carried a grocery bag filled with résumés, leaving a copy in every restaurant, bar and café he passed. None of the head waiters or assistant managers he encountered were receptive and by evening he’d grown discouraged, when, not far from the diner in which we were seated, he’d happened upon two young women and a young man in front of an Indian restaurant. They were smoking cigarettes and speaking rapidly to one another in a French that James found difficult to understand, though he made out the phrase “ .” This, along with the intensity of the three of them and also the attractiveness of the young women, recommended them as individuals with whom he should become acquainted. He approached them on the pretence of asking for a cigarette, directing his attention to the young woman who was thin and pale and whose dark hair was tucked into the upturned collar of her coat. He spoke in French and though he was pleased with his delivery, he could tell by the way she took the pack of cigarettes from her pocket and handed one to him that his French had not convinced her. He then asked for a light, which was provided by the young man. The three of them returned in earnest to their smoking and their conversation as James listened, attempting to be at once attentive and unobtrusive. When he heard something he thought he understood, he would nod in agreement, and when one of them said something and the others laughed, he would smile broadly, as if he were in on the joke. Eventually they made their way up the street and James followed.
“Where do you think you’re going?” the woman who’d given him the cigarette asked him in English.
“To the reading,” he replied, for this is what he’d thought he’d heard them say. The young man mimicked his reply and the young women laughed. James thought he’d entirely misunderstood until the other woman asked him if he liked French poetry. James said that he very much liked the poetry of Rimbaud, which was true, and of Baudelaire, which was somewhat true, and then the same young woman quoted a short passage that James didn’t recognize, though he surmised it must be from Baudelaire.
“Do you write poetry?” asked the young man, and James said yes, and as no one told him not to come along, he continued to walk with them until they came to the entrance of an art gallery where it seemed the reading was to take place. Then James, acting on impulse, asked if they would like to smoke a joint with him before they went inside. James’s offer caused the three of them to pause and look him over closely, as if truly seeing him for the first time. James was glad that he had Warren’s mandola strung over his shoulder, its presence lending, he thought, credence to the good intentions of his offer. The young man suddenly assented, as if the anticipation of the offer had been the very reason they had tolerated his presence. The four of them stepped into a nearby alleyway, where the joint James produced circulated amongst them. He did his best to limit his glances to the young man, who was slight and stubble-chinned and who wore a woollen scarf tightly coiled round his neck. Eventually James initiated introductions, which prompted the young man now known to him as Jean-Marc to ask whether he was new to the city and whether he was a musician, to which James replied doubly in the affirmative before asking “ ” to which Jean-Marc replied that he and the woman now known to him as Mathild were taking courses at the French university. Jean-Marc was also employed as a short-order cook, while Mathild was, like James, a poet, and would be reading from her work that night. Instead of offering her own reply to his question, the young woman now known to him as Madeleine said that it was time for them to go inside, and in spite of her evasiveness, indeed because of the coyness it implied, James felt he’d been successfully initiated into their group.
On the walls of the crowded gallery hung portraits of creatures with the bodies of men and women and with oblong avian heads that Jean-Marc pointed out resembled those of the ill-fated dodo birds. The portraits were painted in a classical style; the dodo men standing, the dodo women either sitting in armchairs or lounging upon divans, some nude, others draped in luxurious fabrics occasionally trimmed with fur. The artist had used lavish tones and the dodo men and dodo women, without exception, seemed very happy, as if they’d posed for the portraitist at a high point in their lives. The crowd that filled the gallery was divided between people in their twenties and people in their fifties or older, all of whom seemed more interested in the reading than in the paintings in the walls. Three poets read in total, including, in addition to Mathild, two significantly older men. The three took turns standing in front of a microphone at the rear of the gallery and all three of them read with great feeling. Though they all held manuscripts before them, they only glanced at them, the rest of the time looking out into the crowd, or else standing with their eyes closed. The two male poets, to the best of James’s understanding, wrote in disparate, perhaps rival poetic traditions, while Mathild, who was the second reader and whose subject matter consisted largely of the complexity of her relationship with the city in which she lived, seemed to be more closely aligned with the tradition of the first reader, although she also seemed to have something of a style all her own, a directness particularly appreciated by the younger members of the crowd. After the poets had finished, wine and cheese and fruit were served, and it was then, as Jean-Marc and Mathild embraced, that James’s suspicion that they were on intimate terms was confirmed. A few members of the audience drifted away, but most of them stayed.
When the first bottles of wine were emptied, more were produced, and though James could not tell the difference, Madeleine and Mathild seemed to agree that the second kind of wine that was served was superior to the first, which struck everyone as odd. With each glass of wine, James found that his ability to converse in French improved, Madeleine noticing the improvement herself and commented upon it, which pleased him greatly. By this point he’d consumed four glasses of wine and was feeling decidedly more at ease than he had at first. The supply of wine seemed inexhaustible and James learned that this was because the owner of the gallery—a gracious, grey-haired woman to whom he’d been introduced by Mathild—had just sold four paintings to a collector from Newark, New Jersey, and in an extravagant gesture of generosity, had purchased an extra crate of wine to serve to the attendees of the reading. The poets and poetry enthusiasts were very grateful to their host, although when she left their circle James learned that they were unified in their consensus that the paintings that hung on the gallery walls were horrendously bad, which surprised James, who quite liked several of them. Though his new acquaintances were happy that the owner had managed to sell them, they were especially pleased that the paintings had been purchased by an American, and would soon be shipped away for good. But then Jean-Marc made the point (a good one, James thought, temporarily adopting as he did the opinion that the paintings really were as bad as everyone thought they were), that the paintings threatened to diminish the international reputation of Quebecois art, that Newark was very close to New York City, and the person who purchased the paintings was likely to show them off, at parties perhaps not unlike the kind of party which was presently underway in the gallery, except attended by Newarkers, and no doubt, at least a few New Yorkers. Jean-Marc contended that there were three possible outcomes of such a party, all of which would be detrimental for Quebecois art. He remembered all three scenarios, said James, for he had had cause to think of them often in the months since the reading, and he outlined them as follows:
1) That the attendees of the hypothetical party might genuinely share the taste of their host, find something moving or provocative or at least interesting or fresh or eloquent about the paintings, and would thus take it upon themselves to seek out more work by the same artist, or else similar work by other Quebecois artists, for the style of the pai
ntings currently exhibited in the gallery happened to be en vogue, and it seemed every day more and more artists were painting in that style, either because they knew it had the potential to be commercially viable, or else because the style, distasteful as it may have been, was genuinely indicative of the zeitgeist of contemporary Quebecois painters.
2) That the attendees of the hypothetical party would not have much of an opinion of their own, or would for whatever reason not be able to formulate one, and not wanting to seem like philistines, would be willing to let themselves be influenced by the judgment of their gracious host. They would assume that the paintings he’d gone to the trouble of purchasing abroad and shipping to Newark and hanging on his walls must in fact be works of exceptional artistic merit, or at least interest, considering that their host could have selected paintings from any number of galleries, by any number of painters. This scenario, Jean-Marc granted, after he paused to drain his glass, would not be nearly as damaging as the first, given that those unable to formulate strong aesthetic opinions, or indeed, any opinion of their own, were less likely to go to the trouble and expense of buying art themselves, particularly art originating in another country, no matter how persuasive the host of the hypothetical party.
3) That the Newarkers at the hypothetical party would have good taste in contemporary art, or at least taste that coincided on this particular point with that of the poets and poetry enthusiasts at the present party, who’d been drinking steadily the entire time Jean-Marc had been speaking, and had begun to exhibit those unmistakable signs of inebriation James had become conscious of in himself much earlier that evening.
The Newarkers might hate the paintings as much as we do, said Jean-Marc to those assembled around him, but without the benefit of context, they might think it is characteristic of Quebecois painting as a whole. They might be turned off it altogether. As a result, they might never discover works by truly gifted young Quebecois painters such as_________. Jean-Marc had just mentioned a name James could not recall, though he remembered the resulting murmurs of assent and the nodding of heads, which indicated that the poets and poetry enthusiasts alike collectively revered the work of _________ just as much as they disdained the works purchased by the Newarker. All James could remember about the name was that it was male, or else it had a masculine ring to it, and sounded Eastern European. This is the threat, continued Jean-Marc, that the sale of the paintings to the Newarker poses to Quebecois art.
When he finished speaking, several of those who had listened chuckled and applauded just as Madeleine, speaking much more loudly than necessary, accused Jean-Marc of thinking not like a poet but like a cubist, an unforgivably doctrinaire cubist, a third-rate Picasso knock-off. Then Jean-Marc said to no one in particular, “Have you seen Madeleine’s paintings?” which was how James discovered that Madeleine was a painter and also that a peculiar tension existed between Jean-Marc and Madeleine. As everyone laughed, Madeleine said that furthermore, Jean-Marc was being ungrateful, that they should enjoy the fine wine and the companionship, which was what mattered, and not show off by going on about things they knew little about. She then abruptly slapped Jean-Marc across the face, which caused everyone to laugh harder than they’d laughed before, especially Jean-Marc.
There was something about that slap, the way it could be heard above the din of conversation, or else the red mark it left upon Jean-Marc’s cheek, that caused James to feel attracted to Madeleine to an alarming degree. Then, inspired by Jean-Marc’s speech and the response it had elicited, he had a daring idea. He put down his empty glass and asked Madeleine to hold for him Warren’s mandola and his grocery bag of résumés as he removed his leather jacket, letting it fall, dramatically, to the floor. He took a single résumé from the bag, Madeleine already seeming amused, which encouraged him, and he went up to the microphone stand, still positioned at the rear of the room. He tapped on the microphone a few times with his pointer finger (although the microphone had been turned off), said “ ,” and explained, in French, that the reading was not yet over, that the intermission had gone on a little longer than intended, but that the final reader of the evening was about to get underway. James considered asking someone to turn the microphone back on, but he looked around the room and saw that those he knew to be poets appeared amused, as did some of the more astute poetry enthusiasts, and although some of the other poetry enthusiasts appeared confused, or even vaguely annoyed, everyone, without exception, was listening to him, and he decided that having the microphone turned on was not necessary after all, that making such a request might in fact be taking things too far, trying the patience of his audience, especially the patience of the gallery owner, who, as a non-poet and one of the less astute poetry enthusiasts, did not appear overly receptive to his opening remarks.
James decided that he would, however, continue to use the microphone as a prop, treating it as if it were turned on, achieving a comic effect. In a gesture of goodwill toward the gallery owner, he brought the crowd’s attention to the paintings on the walls around him, paintings of dodo men and dodo women, all of them happy or seemingly so, and he told the crowd what they already knew. Just that very afternoon, said James, four of the paintings had sold to a collector from New Jersey. He then suggested that if anyone wished to purchase any of the remaining works they should do so immediately, for now that they were known internationally they would be in high demand. James said that he was prepared to prolong the beginning of the final reading a few more minutes in order to give those in attendance a chance to purchase paintings, but that it was getting quite late and he would have to start reading soon. This produced laughter from a portion of the audience, especially Madeleine and her friends, but then no one expressed any real interest in purchasing the paintings whatsoever. He decided he should drop the subject of the paintings and simply begin reading, which is what he did, but not before offering a brief explanation of the poem he was about to read.
He said that the poem was written by a Francophone attempting to write in the style of an Anglophone with a cursory knowledge of French, who was seeking service industry employment in a predominantly French-speaking city, and that the poem took the form of a résumé. Much to James’s delight, his preamble produced further chuckles and even a slight air of anticipation. He went on to say that it was not necessary for him to explain, of course, that any errors in grammar or diction were entirely deliberate, in keeping with the conceit of the poem, after which he read the entirety of his résumé aloud, pronouncing the French text with a heavy Anglophone accent, pausing periodically for comic effect (although the parts he thought his audience might find funny were not the parts they laughed at), and the final line, his attempt to translate “References Supplied Upon Request,” was met with uproarious applause.
Several members of the audience made requests for said references, others requested that James read another poem, and though he briefly considered reciting the opening canto of “The Maundering Harlequins,” he decided against it. Instead he said that the résumé poem was the only reading he’d prepared for the evening, but that if anyone would like to offer the poet a job, he would let the poet know, which seemed to James, as he said it, a very graceful way to end his performance. He bowed and left the stage, reclaiming Warren’s mandola and his grocery bag from Madeleine, then freely dispersing his résumé to those who shook his hand or patted him upon the back, becoming only mildly discouraged when many of them were trodden underfoot, or else transformed into paper planes and cavalierly thrown about the room, or else crumpled and deposited into half-empty glasses where they became sodden and reddened with wine.
He could barely stand up when it was time to leave but somehow ended up in a cab, was aware at one point of crossing a bridge, which prompted him to fasten his seatbelt, then panic, for he could not remember having to cross a bridge, and then someone reassured him. He awoke the following afternoon when something that smelled like an unwashed cat began to lick his hand. When he
opened his eyes, he marvelled at his good fortune. Though he could not yet recall precisely what had gone on the night before, he was almost certain that he’d overdone things, had given himself over to drunkenness with little regard to his well-being. As he took in his present surroundings, he found himself in an apartment with inordinately high ceilings, its walls lined with stacks of canvases. At the far end of the room, before an easel illuminated by sunlight streaming through the windows, in seeming indifference to her own nudity, stood a pale and slender dark-haired woman whose name he could not remember. The only articles of clothing the woman wore were a pair of wool work socks—grey with a red stripe—of the kind that James himself was fond of. One of the socks was hiked up halfway to her knee, while the other was bunched down around her ankle, and he thought that the same thing often happened to him, that hike up his socks as he might, inevitably one would stay and the other would fall, it proving impossible to simultaneously wear both of the socks in the manner their length suggested. He realized that the propensity of one of the socks to stay hiked up her calf while its mate languished around her ankle was not at all a coincidence, for the socks the woman were wearing were in fact his own, and it struck him that they were peculiar articles of clothing for the woman to appropriate. The namelessness of the woman, the odour of the cat, the nausea sweeping over him—these were, thought James, the only aspects of his present circumstances that he might wish to change.
“What’s your cat’s name?” he asked in French, surprising himself with his fluency. The woman, without turning to face him, replied that the cat wasn’t hers.