"This is a very rare privilege," said Ingrid. "Leon does not often allow people to see his studio or works in progress. I am very excited. He will be a very great artist one day."
"Stroke-artist," muttered Kevin. "Blag-artist."
"I am sorry?"
"Never mind."
"You, too, are excited?"
"I can scarcely contain myself."
"Leon did not want you to come today."
"Then I'm very happy to be here."
"I had to persuade him to let you. He was most surprised to hear you had been so enthusiastic about his exhibition. He said you had said some things which indicated you were not sympathetic to art. Perhaps you were making jokes again?"
"I suppose I must have been."
"I think it would be best if you did not make any jokes while we are in the studio. Leon does not like them. Also if he asks you for your opinion on works in progress do not give it unless you can be overwhelmingly positive. He has explained to me that, although when a piece is finished he will defend it to the death, there are times during the process of creation when he is subject to torment and self-doubt and the slightest word of criticism can make him depressed. Leon is very sensitive."
"Nob-ends generally are."
"I am sorry?"
"Nothing."
"You should not mumble, Kevin."
It was the following Wednesday and Kevin had been pussy-whipped into accompanying Ingrid on a visit to Leon's studio. Following her return their relationship had resumed exactly as before. Kevin had not made any assertions of his burning desire for her and Ingrid for her part had showed no signs of having developed an inclination to ravish him in her absence. The most hopeful sign was that she had said she had told her parents all about him and had spent the whole weekend yearning to resume their conversations. She had also said, "The others are beginning to talk about us. They say we are behaving like boyfriend and girlfriend." She had snorted with amusement at this and seemed to study Kevin carefully as he smiled feebly back.
Really it was a return to the same old mental enslavement and nothing more. Kevin could feel himself beginning to chafe at the bonds, however. Maybe today would be the day when they finally snapped. He did not think he could trust himself to endure an afternoon of having to fake admiration for Leon's pretentious shit and having to listen to Ingrid plainly not faking it. Ingrid obviously considered Leon to be some sort of genius and almost certainly felt it to be both her duty and her privilege to sleep with him soon. Was he really going to hang around to watch that happy event coming? Truly, he was wasting his time here. Ingrid harboured no feelings for him beyond a temporary delight with the conversation machine she had fashioned him into. He should cut his losses and fade, and before he went tell both Ingrid and Leon exactly what he thought of Leon, modern art, and the prospects of the people taking the world back from the politicians and the multinationals any time soon.
But whenever he thought anything like this another part of his mind would sneer: Bollocks. It would take the entire Gladiators team armed with crowbars to prise him away from Ingrid. If she had spent the previous weekend missing their conversations, he had spent it at best feeling only half-alive. He would submit to any indignity rather than not be with her. He would probably end up preparing Ingrid's bed for her and Leon to screw in, fluffing up the pillows and straightening the duvet and ushering them in with a humble smile, and then remaining in the room so she could talk to him while they were at it. If by some miracle she didn't get off with Leon or any of the other tossers, he would certainly be content for things to continue as they had been ad infinitum. This was not masochism but happy enslavement to a remarkable intelligence and a superlative set of secondary sexual characteristics, although of course if she ever manifested a desire to walk across his back in spike heels or make him drink her used bathwater he would probably go along with that too.
There was, he supposed, at least a theoretical possibility that Ingrid would like it if he stopped being passive and started to assert himself. Darren, whose opinion on the subject Forbes had amusedly canvassed one night, and who considered himself, despite the recent baffling disappearance of his longtime companion and mother of his infant uncle, to be an expert on women, had told Kevin that she would never go for him while he was so meek and obliging and sycophantic. He advised him to disagree with and disoblige her as often as possible. Furthermore he could not believe that Kevin had been inside her bedroom so many times and had not laid a hand on her. He counselled him to throw her down on the bed immediately the next such opportunity arose and remove her clothes forthwith. He further advocated that Kevin should then institute a regime of treating her like dirt, ordering her to cook meals for him, slapping her around a little when she gave cause for dissatisfaction, and most importantly getting her pregnant quickly to tie her to him. "Women respond to forcefulness in a man." Kevin supposed a lot of people would agree with this statement if not Darren's methods of acting on it. It was cack, though. Kevin's knowledge of women could have been fitted inside a smaller receptacle than that required to store Leon's charm, but it seemed obvious that there were as many different things that women responded to in a man as there were women. For all he knew it might have been true of a majority of women, but instinct told him that if he said one wrong word to Ingrid whatever it was they had going would be over, and he would promptly be exiled to that cold outer region where dwelled all the other poor pointless fucks in the world who didn't get to sit in Ingrid's bedroom and go round galleries with Ingrid by their side. And anyway, Darren was full of shit, because one night when he was alone with Darren Darren had rather touchingly told him how much he had been in love with his girl and how he had treated her like a princess and tried to anticipate her every wish. "I fucking loved her, man, really loved her. I would have done anything for her. If you tell another living soul I'll kill you." (Kevin had often thought that he attracted more than his share of such intimate confidences from near-strangers; he supposed he either had a sympathetic face, or, more likely, the face of someone who didn't really care a shit about anything or anyone and so would pass no judgements.) Then Forbes had come into the room and Darren had knuckled a suspicious moisture from his eyes and concluded, "If I ever see her again I'll break her fucking legs." "They're all ballbreakers," Forbes had said. "Put your trust in Old Faithful." He had kissed the palm of his right hand.
This damnable business of sex, as Dr. Ruth or someone had once said.
"I think this is the place," said Ingrid.
They had stopped in front of a building that seemed to have been converted for residential purposes from a warehouse. Leon, apparently, lived in a loft: not, presumably, the type of loft that contained insulation and a box of old Bay City Rollers annuals and so forth - although Kevin had briefly nursed this image and would not, in fact, have been surprised to find that Leon lived in one of those, or even a fucking airing cupboard, as an artistic statement - but more likely the type of loft people lived in in 1980s films of New York where they took coke and listened to The Clash and dressed like they'd raided a Humana box and failed to relate to each other in a meaningful way.
Ingrid pushed a button and spoke into an intercom. They were buzzed in and proceeded to climb the stairs.
The loft door was answered by Asta, who smiled limply at them and was quickly and roughly bundled out of the way by Leon. Leon was wearing an apron covered in blood.
"I apologize for my attire," he said taking it off. "I have been working with chicken giblets. Come in, come in," he said to Ingrid. "I cannot tell you how inspiring it is to have you in my studio. It is as if the muses themselves had descended in the form of one woman." He looked at Kevin. "You come in too," he said.
They stepped through into a wide long room with skylights in the ceiling and a number of tables on which stood objects which Leon presumably considered to be art and several doors leading off to a bathroom and a kitchen and a bedroom.
"This is an honour for me," said Ingrid, gazing round at everything with the rapt and childlike wonder of an Eskimo in the Taj Mahal.
"No, the honour is mine," said Leon, gazing at her like a very hungry Eskimo staring at a Taj Mahal made out of gingerbread, even licking his flaccid lips.
"Shall I make some coffee?" asked Asta.
"No," said Leon. "It would be tainted by the stench of failure and death as are all your enterprises."
"Leon," said Ingrid reprovingly. "You must not talk so to Asta."
"Pah! She drives me to it! She makes me insane! Get out of my sight, you pitiful wretch!" he exploded at the hapless Asta. "Can you not see I have a real woman in the house? Do you not want to hide from her beauty like a slug crawling away from the sunlight? How do you dare to breathe the same air as her, you spiritless sack of offal!"
"Leon, stop."
"It's all right," said Asta. "I know he loves me really."
"Love you? I will strangle you one day! There is not a judge in the world who would punish me when they hear how you have dragged me down! I would be rewarded! There would be street parties to celebrate your passing!"
"Leon."
"You do not know what I have to put up with! As if it is not enough that she distracts me from my work, every night I must climb on top of that corpse-like body and expend my life-force in satisfying her torpid desires! Every time I lower myself into that pit of despair it costs me a piece of sculpture, and maybe two! She is a leech on my very soul! She is sucking me dry, I tell you! Look at her! The stillbirth that formed the centrepiece of my first exhibition contained more vitality than her! Get out of my sight, you hideous maggot on the arse of a dead pig! No, wait - go and get inside your box at once!"
Obediently, Asta went over to a phone box standing in the far corner of the room, shut herself inside and remained there.
"Really, Leon," said Ingrid mildly.
"I apologize," said Leon in a slightly calmer tone, running a stubby hand through his greasy, unwashed, uncombed hair. "You should not have had to witness such an outburst. But her very existence provokes me. Also I am mounting a new exhibition next week and I have been slightly on edge. Last night I contemplated suicide, convinced that the fire had left me."
"Leon, no!"
"Yes, it's true. I even went so far as to construct a noose." Leon indicated a rope with a noose at the end hanging from the ceiling, which Kevin had assumed to be part of the decoration or a piece of art and which, as it was barely five feet above the floor, was surely not high enough to hang even a short-arse like Leon from, unless perhaps he jumped up in the air while wearing it and then tucked his legs up to his chin before descending.
"You must not think of that!" cried Ingrid. "The fire will always burn within you. It would be a crime to deprive the world of your genius."
"Yes, that is the conclusion that I reached too, eventually. But then a different and unusual terror assailed me. Was I loved? Women are drawn to me, yes, but am I loved for myself, or merely for my talent and my sexual prowess? They respond to my mind and to my loins, but what of my soul?"
"Leon, your artistic talent is part of who you are. When people respond to your artwork, they are responding to your soul laid bare."
Kevin meanwhile wandered off a few paces and tried the noose on for size. He had to crouch down to do so but maybe if he ran across the room very fast the yank as it pulled him up would be enough to snap his neck. It wasn't even tied properly, though. He idly started to tie it up right in case Leon ever changed his mind.
"Yes, you are right of course," said Leon. "But these women come to feed on me, to take my fire for themselves. But where is the woman who will feed me? I need a woman with a spirit to match my own. Someone who, when my fire is burning low, will replenish me with her fire. Where is she, I wonder?"
He looked with smouldering significance at Ingrid.
Ingrid abruptly turned away from him and gestured about them. "Your fire burns as brightly as ever, Leon. I have only to look around me to see that. Perhaps you would do me the honour of telling me about some of the pieces you are working on. Where, for example, are the chicken giblets you have been using?"
"They are on the wall there."
Leon pointed to the opposite wall, to which adhered several pieces of bloody offal. Several more pieces were sliding glutinously down it and others lay on the floor at the bottom. Some distance from the giblets there was also what looked to be some spaghetti stuck to the wall.
"It is quite difficult to get them to stick," said Leon. "You have to hurl them with some force. But I find the effects quite pleasing. The only question is whether I will be able to successfully duplicate these results within the gallery. Ideally I would tear down that wall and transport it there but that will probably prove impractical. The spaghetti on the wall next to the giblets is what provided the original inspiration for the piece. The spaghetti was not a conscious attempt to produce art - the fact is, I hurled it at Asta's head, but she moved - but I found the results of the impact intriguing. Many of my best pieces have been the result of similar accidents. Of course, in retrospect it becomes clear that they were not accidents at all, but rather the unconscious mind opening itself up to higher influences. Nothing is accidental on a quantum level."
"Quite," said Ingrid, staring at the dripping giblets with keen appreciation.
"I will show you another example of this process at work," said Leon. He went over to a table on which stood several dirty dishes, the apparent remnants of a meal. He quite carefully and reverentially picked up a plate and held it out towards Ingrid, who gestured for Kevin to stop arsing with the noose and come and look too. He did so and saw that the plate was coated with some congealed sauce into which had been scraped a pattern of interlocking circles.
"Interestingly enough," said Leon, "this, too, resulted from a meal of spaghetti. After I had finished eating I found myself unconsciously tracing patterns in the remnants of the sauce with my knife. When I saw what I had created I was unable to bring myself to destroy it. I find it very fascinating. I may now preserve all my meal plates in this way and one day mount an exhibition devoted entirely to them. The random scrapes made by the impact of the utensils during the meal are fascinating in themselves. I have found that bowls of chocolate ice cream produce very exciting results."
Ingrid stared intelligently at the dirty plate.
"The patterns are certainly very interesting," she said.
"Perhaps you can see the restrained anger in some of the knife-strokes," said Leon. "At the time I was producing them my conscious mind was engaged in debating whether to embed the knife within Asta's sluggish brain. Asta's spaghetti, I might say, is proof both of the existence of evil and of the banality of its nature, and it was the third night running it had been served to me." He put the plate down and picked up a half-eaten corn on the cob off another one. "I wish also to utilize this sweetcorn in some way," he said. "It is a fascinating record of an individual set of teeth, with all their idiosyncracies, and their passage through space and time. Of course, it will start to decay very soon, but then I often feel that decay is my forte." He stared musingly at the sweetcorn for a while then laid it aside, looked at Ingrid and said, "You must promise me that one day soon you will bite into an apple for me. I would not let that decay. I would preserve it for all time as a testament to the flawlessness of your dentation. Your teeth are so perfect I sometimes fear the very thought of them will drive me insane."
Ingrid smiled and seemed to blush a little. "Don't be ridiculous, Leon."
Leon looked at her solemnly. "You find me ridiculous?" he asked quietly. "I could not bear it if I thought you found me ridiculous."
"You know I do not," said Ingrid shortly, stepping past him to look at a workbench on which stood various lumps of plasticine and other things. "Come, show us some more of your work. I am interested in seeing some of your more consciously constructed pieces."
Leon begged Ingrid not to look at the plasticine models as he wasn't completely happy with them. Next to them, however, were some sculptures made out of Lego bricks of which he seemed very proud. "I have been working a great deal with Lego lately," he said. "I find it a very interesting medium." Ingrid cooed appreciatively. Further along there were a series of portraits done on Etch-a-Sketches which he was also very excited by. "They are a useful means of reducing faces to their basic forms. My critics might say that a child of five could produce such work, but actually it takes many hours of practice to become proficient with these things." When they had mulled over the Etch-a-Sketch pictures for a sufficient length of time they moved on to a tableau which Leon intended as an anti-war statement which consisted of Action Man dolls which had been dismembered or melted in various ways.
"Why," asked Ingrid, "are they all nude from the waist down?"
"I am glad you noticed that," said Leon. "It is to display their lack of sexual capacity. I find it very interesting that these soldier dolls have no genitalia. I have always felt that sexual frustration is at the heart of war. It might be interesting, by way of contrast, to construct a soldier doll with functional genitalia and depict him conducting a normal and happy home life with a Barbie doll."
At the end of the bench was a tape recorder.
"This is an aural piece," said Leon, pressing play and turning up the volume.
At first they could hear nothing but background distortion from the tape. Kevin began to fear that that might be all there was and promised himself that if such were the case and they were forced to listen to it for any length of time he would grab Leon and the tape deck and swiftly convert it from an aural piece into an anal piece. Then some semi-rhythmic crunching and slurping sounds became faintly discernible, like someone noisily eating a bowl of cornflakes. Leon turned the volume up further and looked at Ingrid eagerly.
"That is rather unnerving," said Ingrid frowning. "What is it?"
"It is the sound of two rats devouring a dead rabbit," said Leon. "I am thinking of playing it as background to the exhibition."
"It's quite catchy," said Kevin. "You should stick a drumbeat on and make a rave mix."
As they moved on from the table Kevin's foot knocked against something. He looked down and saw a bucket filled with vomit.
"Please be careful with that," snapped Leon. "It is a work in progress."
They all stared down at the vomit.
"The working title is 'Revulsion'," said Leon. "Asta filled it for me. She has been on a diet again. I am disappointed with the results so far. Even her vomit is insipid and lifeless. It is intended to dramatize rejection of modern values. I have now had the idea of forcefeeding her pages from the daily newspapers and having her bring those up into the bucket. Perhaps it would work best as a performance piece." He frowned thoughtfully at Asta still standing passively in the phone booth. "And then, perhaps, if some sinister figure were to force her to eat the vomit...yes, that might work."
There were more pieces on a table against the far wall of the room. Pride of place went to a clockwork apparatus depicting a human figure endlessly running along a treadmill apparently in pursuit of an American dollar dangling before him hanging from a stick which was attached to his own head. Leon had almost as big a down on money as he did on war. There was a piece entitled The Death of Literature consisting of a papier mache figure whose skin was formed by pages from books and which had its limbs entangled and was being throttled by a length of video tape. There was a tray of pork chops which Leon explained would putrefy slowly over the duration of the exhibition.
Then there were some examples of what he described as interactive art. There was one called Death which was a black velvet bag you put over your head. There was another called The Search for Meaning which was a tray containing pieces from several different jigsaw puzzles which you could arrange in any way you chose. Religion was a telescope which the participant looked through to see at the end a piece of black card with the words 'You have been tricked' printed on it in luminous letters. When you put the telescope down it turned out there was soot on the eyepiece and you now had a black eye. There was a piece entitled Life which was an attractive giftwrapped box which you put your hand into through a flap in the side; inside was a mousetrap which snapped painfully shut on your fingers. Finally, Lucky Dip was a brantub from which the interactor could fish out envelopes containing messages such as 'You are a paraplegic', 'You are the President of the United States', 'Your best friend is called Bernard', 'Your grandmother was gored by a rhinoceros' and 'You will be fondled by a fat man in Antwerp'. After Ingrid put Religion to her eye Leon tenderly wiped the soot off with a grubby handkerchief. He made Kevin rather than her put his hand in the Life box and when it was her turn to have a go on Lucky Dip he pulled out an envelope on her behalf which turned out to contain the message 'You are the most beautiful woman in the world.'
"I see the serious ideas behind these pieces," said Ingrid, "but it strikes me that here we see, dare I say it, an almost whimsical side of your nature that you do not often reveal."
"Yes, that is so," said Leon. "When one has been engaged in laying out the corpse of Western civilization for days on end one often yearns for a little light relief. It sometimes grieves me that the critics fail to pick up on the more puckish elements of my work. I am an entertainer at heart, you know." The next piece was called Entropy and was a glass case containing the putrefying remnants of the dead rabbit the two rats had eaten and of the two rats themselves, who had subsequently eaten each other.
They had now reached the place were Asta stood meekly staring out at them from the phone box.
"Take off your clothes!" Leon screamed at her.
Obediently, Asta started to undress.
"This will form the centrepiece of the new display," said Leon when Asta was naked. "For the first two days of the exhibition Asta will be padlocked naked in this phone box in the middle of the gallery. I may cover her in pig's blood, I have not decided. Her hair will certainly be shaved off. She is naked, vulnerable, defenceless, and utterly isolated. She will be able to see the people walking past as they will see her plight, may gaze at them in mute entreaty, but will be totally unable to reach out to them as they are unable to help her. The effect is spoiled somewhat by the fact that one look from Asta will make all the passersby want to smash her pathetic face as I do, but perhaps that is revealing too. The essence of the piece, of course, is that she is waiting for a call that will not come."
"I understand," said Ingrid in solemn, breathy tones. "It is very moving."
"As she stays in there over the course of two days and nights she will become steadily hungrier and weaker and more desperate. She will be forced to defecate in the phone booth. Unfortunately the people who run the gallery have said this must be done discreetly and insist she must use a bucket."
"All the same," said Ingrid, "it will be quite an ordeal for poor Asta."
Leon made a dismissive noise with his lips.
"It will be the one moment of glory in her otherwise futile life. I am conferring immortality on her. It is one of the finest pieces I have yet produced. For the perfect statement, of course, she would remain within the booth until she starved to death before the eyes of the public. You understand?"
"Yes, I understand."
"But even though this happens in reality every day of the week, it is not permissible in a gallery, and besides Asta made some whining objection. So, we work with what we have." He gave a philosophical shrug.
"It is haunting," said Ingrid with a little shiver. "One of your most brilliant pieces, Leon."
"I'd like to buy it," said Kevin. "It'd look good in me front room." Leon always brought out the chirpy oik in him.
"It may well be the best thing I have created so far," said Leon ignoring this. "There is one other piece in the new exhibition which I think will cause an equal stir."
"And that is...?" said Ingrid.
Leon hesitated. "I do not know if I can bear to show it to you just now. It is very personal and...frank. For you to see it in the exhibition is one thing, but for me to reveal it to you now, face to face...if you were to reject it..."
"Please, Leon."
Leon sucked in his cheeks for a second. "Very well, then. It is this." He led the way over to a pedestal in the middle of the room that Kevin had been wondering about. On top of it was what appeared to be simply a crumpled-up wad of Kleenex. A faint musty smell emanated from it. "It does not have a title yet. I may simply call it 'Used Kleenex'."
Ingrid regarded it uncertainly. "A comment on our throwaway society? That seems rather minimal and obvious. In what way, may I ask, was it used?"
"I ejaculated into it," said Leon.
A slight but unmistakable look of revulsion passed across Ingrid's face and was quickly replaced by a look of intellectual stimulation. "Ah," she said. "Interesting."
Leon looked at her searchingly. "Merely interesting?"
"More than interesting. It is very...challenging."
"Challenging, yes. At times I have questioned the wisdom of placing such a challenging piece before the public at this stage of my career. My enemies will say it is merely an attempt to, to, epater le bourgeouis - ah, how do you say that in English?"
"Annoy the squares?" suggested Kevin.
"Yes. And indeed, yes, I wish always to provoke, to question our concepts of propriety, to fling truth in the faces of those who would deny us our animal nature. But this piece is much more than that. A comment, yes, on disposability, on futility and sterility. An indictment of a quick-fix society with no concept of deferred gratification, where the substitution of a wad of tissue for a cherished soulmate is merely routine. A lament, even, for all the children that might have been, now embedded, uncreated, within a paper womb. And yet...and yet. The piece seems to me its own redemption. For who knows what dreams, what passions, what deliriums of ecstasy went into the soiling of this Kleenex? Who could deny the lonely soul who released himself within his moment of liberation, his platonic consummation with the object of his desires, his solitary transcendence and conquest through imagination of the tyrannies of circumstance and possibility? On the surface, merely a dirty Kleenex. In essence, it is a relic of a dream of fulfilment someone once had. What could be more beautiful?"
"It is certainly poignant," said Ingrid regarding the Kleenex thoughtfully. "A very bold and powerful image."
"But beautiful?" said Leon anxiously. "You do not find it beautiful?"
"Yes, I see its beauty now. I think it is one of your gifts, Leon, to perceive beauty where others do not. Perhaps to help others to appreciate this work you should choose a title that better reflects your view of it."
"Yes, yes, you are right of course!" cried Leon excitedly. "I will call it 'A Golden Moment'. I knew that you at least would understand." He looked solemn as the two of them regarded the Kleenex. "Do not ask me to say," he murmured, leaning close to her ear, "who I was thinking of at the moment of creation."
Ingrid seemed to blanche a little. "I must go and use your toilet," she said faintly.
"But of course." Leon indicated a doorway and Ingrid disappeared beyond.
Leon and Kevin stood regarding each other with frank hostility. Asta continued to stand naked in her phone box.
"Which piece do you like best?" Leon asked Kevin after a lengthy silence.
"The Kleenex, I think."
"The Kleenex? Yes, I think that is probably the right choice."
"Oh, definitely," said Kevin. "There I think you really confront your own essence. Because, I mean, when you get down to it, you really are a wanker, aren't you? You know this word, wanker?" He helpfully made some gestures to illustrate his meaning. "You're full of shit, aren't you? I mean, do you know you're full of shit? I don't care if you do know. That just makes you more of a wanker."
Leon seemed amused. "You have not, I think, the intellectual tools to appreciate my art."
"I have the intellectual tools to know a wanker when I see one."
"Neanderthal philistine," said Leon.
"Wanker," said Kevin.
"Bourgeouis pig!" snarled Leon.
"Wanker."
"Reactionary swine!"
"Wanker."
"Art-hating vermin!"
"Wanker."
"Triple pig!"
"Double wanker."
They were face to face by now. Leon seethed furiously, fists clenched and eyes boggling and nostrils flared. "How dare you," he hissed. He seemed to be nerving himself for a physical attack.
Just then Ingrid came back into the room and looked at the two of them quizzically.
"I heard...raised voices?" she said.
"An artistic discussion," said Kevin. "We were just arguing about which Impressionist was the tallest."
Leon merely glowered.
"Ah. Well, I think we have taken up enough of your time, Leon. Thankyou for showing us your work, I cannot say how exciting it has been. The exhibition will be a resounding triumph, I am sure."
"You do not know how it cheers me to hear you say so," said Leon fervently, clasping her hands. "Again, the privilege has been mine. And perhaps - dare I beg that one day you will consent to sit for me? Who knows what I could achieve with you as a model rather than that lifeless lump of protoplasm over there."
"Yeah," said Kevin, "he could immortalize you in Lego."
"I do not know if I am worthy of such an honour," Ingrid said to Leon. "But I will certainly consider it. Now I think we must leave you to your work. Thankyou and goodbye, Leon. Goodbye, Asta," she called over to the phone box. Asta raised a limp hand in a gesture of farewell.
"That was most stimulating," said Ingrid outside on the street. "Some of the pieces were very exciting. At times I think Leon can be a little self-indulgent and decadent. That Kleenex, for example," - she gave a small shudder - "I am not so sure about that. I often wish Leon would emphasize the more overtly political side of his work. But he will certainly be a very great artist one day. You agree, yes?"
"I agree no," said Kevin. "He's full of shit. The most he can hope for is to be the darling of rich wankers and arty pseuds for a few years until someone even more ridiculous and gimmicky comes along. He might even become rich. But an artist, no."
Ingrid stopped and stared at him in shock.
"Kevin!" she cried. "How can you say such a thing? This is not you talking!" She frowned at him thoughtfully. "I think your judgement is impaired by the fact that Leon has been paying sexual attention to me. I have noticed also that you behave the same way with Jan, saying things you do not mean. I think you are jealous of my relationships with Leon and Jan. This is a symptom of atavistic male aggression and I do not like it."
"The pair of them are tossers."
Ingrid shook her head.
"I am disappointed in you, Kevin," she said. "I did not think you were like that." She paused and looked around. "I do not wish to discuss this now. You are coming back to the flat?"
"I don't know," said Kevin. "I should go and see my friends. I've been neglecting them lately."
Ingrid blinked in surprise then shrugged indifferently. "As you wish," she said, walking off down the street.
Kevin stood watching her walk away and then groaned to himself.
"Hang on," he called, hurrying to catch up.
Back at the flat Ingrid immediately entered into conversation with Jan while Kevin slumped down on the other side of the room and proceeded to snarlingly bite the head off anyone who attempted to talk to him. From time to time they cast cold glances at one another and promptly looked away when eye contact was made.
Kevin could envisage clearly where this was going to lead: Jan rather than he would be summoned into the bedroom. Not wishing to witness this spectacle, around ten o'clock he mumbled goodbyes to the people sitting near him and headed towards the door.
Ingrid intercepted him before he made it.
"You are going so soon?" she said. "But we have not had our conversation. You will come into the bedroom."
She walked into her bedroom without waiting to see if he followed her, which he of course did.
At the beginning of the conversation Kevin was sullen and took exception to everything she said. Soon they were arguing ferociously, Ingrid glaring at him hotly as he flatly contradicted her. But he was unable to keep this up for long and presently conceded all points to her. "You admit I am right?" she smiled after he caved in, radiant with triumphant delight. "Good! I knew you would come to agree with me." Thereafter he agreed with everything she said and atoned for his rebellion by going out of his way to say things which would please her and making special efforts to be perceptive and clever and stimulating. He succeeded in delighting her and even made her laugh twice. All in all it turned out to be one of their best and most cathartic conversations.
"I am sorry for the things I said before," she said as she lit her post-talk cigarette. "You are of course entitled to your opinion of Leon's work."
"No, no," protested Kevin. "You were right. I was being jealous of Leon. It was stupid and childish of me. I apologize deeply."
Ingrid looked at him silently for a while. "I think I have been mistaken in believing that sexual impulses can be completely ignored," she said. "But you have no reason to be jealous of Leon or Jan. I like you the best of all my friends."
"Really?"
"Yes. I have been thinking, Kevin...when you have found work you and I will get a flat together. You would like that, yes?"
"Yes!"
"Then it is settled. I do not like this place any more. There are too many people all the time. You and I will live in a flat by ourselves. Sometimes we will let the others in but often we will be alone and talk and think together. One day soon I will write a book on the future of Europe and you will help me. One day I will do many things, but behind every great woman there must be a man who will care for her and take care of things for her so that she is not tied down by mundane things like housework. You would like to be that man for me?"
"Yes!"
"Good. One day I would like to have children and raise them according to humanitarian principles so that they are not corrupted by the influence of a decadent society."
"Yes, we could live on a farm somewhere and-"
"No, that would be selfish and escapist. We must fight to change society from within. We will live in a flat. I think you would be a good father to my children and raise them well for me."
"And I'd sire them first?"
"Yes, you would sire them."
Kevin took hold of her and kissed her.
She leaned back frowning. "What are you doing?"
"I love you, Ingrid."
"Your feelings for me are not merely physical, I hope?"
"No, no, I worship you totally-"
"I do not like the term worship. It has overtones that are degrading to women. But the sentiment is good. You may kiss me again, I think, but you will not use your tongue."
Chapter 16
Back to Contents page
Back to my Homepage