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Jaime takes a length of my hair and folds it over his lip in a faux moustache, savouring my laughter. We get off the train at Liverpool Lime Street. As we wander past a wig shop with a window display full of mannequin heads sporting different styles and colours, I say: ‘Look at all the people, beheaded in the name of commerce.’
Jaime roars with laughter and I look at him, his blue eyes crinkled up, his fillings on display, and think I might be in love with him. The sunshine dazzles over us; the sky promises happiness and a ban on clouds; in the sweetness of anticipation, the fulfilment of the past few days, I feel a potential for redemption, as though the self I am presenting to him might be made true. Once more, I ask him what my surprise is and he chides me for my impatience.
Jaime looks at me with mounting panic as we stop outside the Tate.
‘I thought it would be a good surprise,’ he says. ‘Is it clichéd and boring, because you go to galleries all the time?’
‘No.’ My voice has shrunk to the size of an insect. ‘It’s fine. Thank you.’
‘You’ve had to put up with days of me mansplaining music 160to you, so I figured it was time for you to womansplain art to me,’ he carries on ebulliently. I force a smile.
Inside, we enter a room with paintings from floor to ceiling, from wall to wall; like a church with too many stained-glass windows, such is the dazzle and colour.
I always hated going to galleries with other people. They are my private dreamworlds, places I ghost through alone, letting the masters seep into me through osmosis. When Jaime follows me and examines my profile, I feel as though he is fingering the pages of my diary.
The last time I visited an art gallery was just a few months before Fate took me. My creativity seemed self-indulgent after everything that had happened. I had walked through the Tate Modern in a state of intense bitterness, aware of colours inside me that could only be stillborn.
We stop to look at Klimt’s The Kiss. It is luminous at first glance, with all that shimmering gold leaf. But then you notice how the lovers’ pose looks uncomfortable, as though expressing an uneven relationship: the man clutching the woman, his arms a cage, his lips possessive. In the Rig Veda, unity is defined as the ultimate spiritual experience. Yet the thought of a serious relationship – of blurring at the edges, of picking up habits and turns of phrase – terrifies me. I think of that quote by Marina Abramović: ‘I’m thinking an astronaut is 161my best choice as a husband, because he’d be in space doing anti-gravitational experiments, and I could work undisturbed.’
I leave Jaime and enter another room. Once, when I was seven years old, I fell off a swing and knocked myself out. As I came to, I became aware of life as a force, a gush and a rush of energy that was almost violent in its determination to keep oxygen flowing into my lungs and blood pumping around my body. For days afterwards, I wandered around the back garden, seeing its furious energy in the flutter of a butterfly’s wings, or the arms of a tree reaching for the sky. I feel it now, gazing at a Waterhouse: in the weave and layer of oil and colour; in his attention to the tiniest detail, in those strokes which are so beautiful that they feel as though they were painted not by him, but through him. This is what I am, I think as I look at it. This is me.
I stand in front of Millais’s Ophelia, my arms wrapped around my body, my face a wet mess of salt and snot, willing myself to get a grip before Jaime comes through and finds me. My mother loved the Pre-Raphaelites. I close my eyes tight and think of her funeral back in the real world. It was just a month before I went to see Fate. The Vedas state that there is a gap between death and rebirth, where the soul takes a rest, before it packs a new suitcase of karma for its next incarnation. The soul, the kernel of personality that is reincarnated in body after 162body, is called a Jiva: I picture my mother’s as feminine, foetal, finally at peace. I believe, I hope, that she has forgiven me for the part I played in her death.
When Jaime appears a little while later, I chat away and hope that my eyes have lost their redness.
We spend another half an hour walking around the cafes, and then sit in the downstairs one, sipping Earl Greys. Jaime keeps giving me concerned glances. I stare into the distance, a smile on my face. Then I begin plaiting my hair, one strand far too thick, the others far too thin. He asks me what art college I went to.
‘Goldsmiths,’ I whisper, and clear my throat. ‘And then I did my MA at Manchester. That’s why I used to live here.’
‘Tell me about your Metamorphoses exhibition,’ he says.
I tentatively begin to tell him about my most famous piece: Pygmalion’s Girl. In Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is inspired to become celibate when he sees the Propoetides: the first prostitutes, women who enjoy sex and are therefore seen as dangerously erotic. Ovid punishes them by turning them into stone. Pygmalion, meanwhile, creates a woman from ivory. But she is a daguerreotype, a copy of a copy, based on the Venus de’ Medici marble statue which in turn was inspired by Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Cnidus. The statue I created was classical in its original design, but papered with photocopies of Page Three girls and images from FHM. She was a queen of plastic surgery, an ideal rendered in papier mâché. Jaime praises it for being ‘feminist’, but I shrug my shoulders. 163
‘Before Metamorphoses, I had three exhibitions that were just as good, but nobody was interested. If you’re a female artist and you call something “feminist”, then responses become predictable. Men will be polite, even if they don’t like it; women will be obliged to support you. It puts your work in a tidy box. It’s far more dangerous and daring for a woman to simply create a great work of art in the manner of a man and be valued for it on those terms.’
Jaime smiles softly and tells me how much he loves debating with me. I smile back. I feel connected to the world again.
‘What else shall we argue about?’ I hold his gaze and raise an eyebrow.
‘God.’ His tone is one of jest, but there’s an edge to it. ‘Since you seem to like that fairy tale.’
I shrug and he looks disappointed. I feel no need to convert, nor to reprimand; as far as I’m concerned, faith is a personal matter. I tell him that I have tried reading some of the Western philosophers he admires, but that I found them neither ‘ground-breaking’ nor ‘original’. Most of their ideas echo those explored in the East centuries earlier. I enjoyed being introduced to Baudrillard, but his point that the real cannot be separated from artifice reminds me of the concept of maya, and when you posit such ideas but strip them of their spirituality, the result is nihilistic: you end up with clever white men with dazzling names whose books look good on your shelf, and are fascinating to debate, but who don’t actually nourish you in any way.
Jaime looks taken aback. ‘I refute that.’
‘Refute, then.’
‘Marx, for example! I was eighteen when I discovered him. I’d gone from taking communion twice a week to chucking my 164copy of the Bible in the bin. There was this void there, like, what the fuck do I believe in now – and then I read The Communist Manifesto and it hit me with the power of a Beethoven symphony.’ He presses his fist against his heart.
We debate back and forth for a while, and I am touched by his passion, even if it possesses an aura of youthful naivety and idealism. Then Jaime asks if we might return to the gallery. I hesitate and he backtracks. I quickly smile and say it’s a fine idea.
This time, I am able to mute my heart and view the pictures from the bland perspective of a tourist.
Afterwards, we wander through the sun-streaked streets, enjoying the Friday vibe of the city winding down. Jaime stops. I recognise the cafe across the road and realise we’re outside the big stone building that houses the Storyteller.
‘Hey, let’s try them again!’ Jaime exclaims, pressing the buzzer. I open my mouth to say that we should wait until our official appointment next week, but he’s already cajoling them, and something about the magic of the day is infused in his voice. We’re in, both not quite able to believe it. A musty hallway; stairs patterned with faded black and white diamonds; a pool of warm colours from a stained-glass window. I feign excitement. Did Jaime plan this right from the start of today’s trip, or was this just a whim? And how do I tell him that I’m not going home? I’ve composed eloquent speeches during sleepless nights, but now the lines are jumbled, cut-up fragments.
The third floor. We stand before flat 23.
He raps sharply on the door.