The French story - 4
The next part of this draft... Some very useful comments thus far, thanks!
Four (2)
I confess I had imagined I would immediately recognise her, a face seen in a bar or brasserie, or someone from my extended circle of friends. I had foreseen a knowing smile, then an extension of a hand, a kiss on each cheek, all following the uttering of “It’s you!” or some such. But there was none of that, at least not on my part. Even though I did not know her, it hadn’t occurred to me that she may well have recognised me, the same internal dialogue being triggered from her side. Luckily we were both spared the embarrassment of one-signed recognition; each of us taking a few of steps forward, hands extended, a handshake sought.
“I feel I should apologise,” she began, naturally in French.
“So soon?!” I laughed.
Had I met her previously I was certain I would have remembered her. Although she was not classically beautiful perhaps, and in many respects remarkably average in terms of height, build, her general physical attributes — and I daresay that was exactly what she thought of me too, if she were being kind! — her two most striking features were her long hair and the green tint in her hazel eyes. The latter I noticed because of my predilection and preference for colour perhaps, and the former because it was so obvious; not just long but lustrous. Verging on the red side of auburn, she was almost Pre-Raphaelite. I recall shaking myself internally as I waited for her clarification, annoyed at having made such a cliched comparison. She had an air about her, an aura too modern for her to be anyone other than who she was.
“You knocked on my door the other day and I ignored you. And I should have come round to introduce myself; Hergé told me about you, when you were arriving. I’m afraid you’ve had a very poor welcome from me.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. Even though I had been thrown by her reticence to meet, I made light of it, not wishing to get off on the wrong foot. “We were both busy. I was chasing backwards and forwards. It’s fine really.”
She made her way to a small seat set in an alcove in a nearby closely-clipped hedge.
“I need to explain,” she began again once we had sat down. “I mean, there’s a reason, and it’s best you hear it from me I think.”
“Sounds intriguing,” I said.
“It actually is, in a way.” She paused. “And it will help explain how things work here; what Madame’s ambition is.”
“Ambition?”
“Oh yes. And from what I can tell it’s a lofty one at that.”
“What’s she like? I haven’t met her yet — which has surprised me a little — and would like to be prepared.”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”
There was nothing in her manner during these early exchanges to suggest I should expect anything but honesty from her.
“But you’ve met her?”
“Oh yes, of course,” and she laughed. “But she has asked me not to tell you anything about her. She is keen you make your own assessment, uncoloured by anything anyone else says. She feels you will have a more honest reaction to her under those circumstances. And vice versa, I suppose.”
I was thrown. The precept seemed logical enough, but to act it out to the letter suggested something else.
“When I arrived here I remember pestering Hergé to describe her to me — but if anyone is going to toe the party line it’s Hergé.”
“He said nothing?”
She shook her head.
“Why am I not surprised?” I asked rhetorically.
“Which brings me round to why I haven’t introduced myself before. I needed” she paused to find the words “to be ready.”
“Ready?”
“You will find Madame will insist on some rules, though not many. These rules — like me not telling you anything about her — are intrinsic to what she is trying to do here; her ‘experiment’.” Seeing I was about to interject, Sylvie hurried on. “Please don’t ask, Monsieur Rose.”
“Paul, please.”
“Paul.” she smiled, seemingly a little more relaxed. “Anyway, one of the rules she has insisted on is that I am only permitted one unstructured meeting with you — I am sure she will tell you the same thing when you meet her.”
“Unstructured?” It was an unusual choice of word, evoking the avoidance of precision or control. I looked around at the manicured landscape in front of me and the house just to my left; perhaps not such a remarkable turn of phrase to use.
“That’s probably the wrong word. It’s like unscripted, unrecorded, unwitnessed. Part of what she is trying to do here — I think — is to ‘live’ art. My words not hers; and I’ve probably said too much anyway.”
“I hope not,’” I laughed, “because I’m not sure I’m following you yet.”
She looked away and up at the house, almost as if she were checking on something or reorganising her thoughts. I tried to follow her gaze to see if I could divine the precise window on which her eyes might have alighted, but they were back on me in an instant.
“I know you are a sculptor, and have been a painter too.”
“I aspire still, I’m afraid!”
“My medium is more cinematic; the video arts, things recorded live, edited, played back. That kind of thing.”
“Like Steve McQueen?”
She laughed again. It was a warm sound that seemed to match her hair — hair that rippled when she did so.
“I wish! But yes, a little like that. So my part of the barn — you will see it soon enough — has been set-up with a number of ‘studios’ or booths where I can record things and edit them later.”
“Such as?”
“My conversations with Madame for one. She insists on everything we say being recorded. And then I have a long-term recording on-going watching some watercress grow and then die. Time-lapse, that sort of thing. I am my own subject too; I video myself doing things, mundane things. I am keen to record and play back, and in the playing back — or in the editing — to see if we can make better sense of the world we live in, the lives we lead. I suspect that may be a little like what you hope to achieve. Maybe what I am exploring is how can might choose to recycle ourselves.” She paused. “So you see why I needed our first meeting to be as meaningful as possible, so that you can understand the parameters in which I work — in which we will interact — so that it doesn’t freak you out when you turn up for coffee one day and find me shoving a video-camera into your face!”
“That’s what you will do?”
“Certainly. And almost certainly we will take coffee in one of my little booths, and everything we do or say will be recorded; life as art, if you like. Madame’s rule, my mode of execution.”
It was a somewhat bizarre notion that I could only partially grasp. Given the outline as presented, it felt as if I was destined to be as much a lab rat as anything else, and I was thrown by the idea that I could be both the creator of something and the subject of someone else’s creation — be it Sylvie’s or Madame’s. But then it seemed that whatever Sylvie produced would, in one way or another, only be an extension of Madame’s will. If these were the constraints and terms under which Sylvie had to work, if this was the price she had to pay for provision of the facility in which to experiment as an artist, then what rules might be applied to me?
Given the likely extent of Madame’s apparent desire for control, there seemed little doubt Sylvie would have any idea as to the covenants of my own contract were concerned, and so there was no point asking her. I had a sense that what she needed most of all, at this precise moment, was for me to show her that I understood the reasons behind her actions and that they were not representative of how she would have chosen to behave if she was given a free hand.
“And all of this works for you?” I found myself asking.
“Works?”
“The rules, the constraints; the conditions imposed?”
She laughed again, despite my serious tone.
“I don’t know yet! The facilities I have been given are generous, remarkable. Where else would I get them? How else could I afford them? Allowing Madame to keep one of my videos or installations — or whatever you might want to call them — I see no hardship in that at all. It seems a fair trade really. But you will be the test.”
I was surprised to find myself already a factor in Sylvie’s plans.
“Me? How so?”
“Because we will be working alongside one another — independently, I know, but in physical proximity. I am a more gregarious person than Madame’s rules allow me to be, so I have no idea how difficult it will be for me to adapt to them with you around. If I want to have a chat, a coffee, I can’t simply come knocking on your door; I need to wait for you to come to me, and then I have to film our conversations. I think that will be a little surreal, at first at least.”
“But you don’t know what my rules are yet,” I suggested, trying to ease any sense of burden Sylvie may have been feeling. After all, we were in this little experiment together.
“I don’t follow.”
“Well, there may be something in my contract that allows you to come to me for coffee and a chat; obligations under those circumstances may be entirely mine — and will undoubtedly not involve me filming you. You may be able to be as gregarious as you like!”
She laughed, relieved.
“I hadn’t considered that.”
Even then I had a sense that it was important we saw ourselves as collaborators, that we were ‘on the same side’. It felt critical that we had something between us that was not ruled over by Madame or her acolyte.
“Then we must ensure we have our own secrets, our own rules, Sylvie. If we are going to play this little game, then we must do so as much on our own terms as we can.”
I cannot say whether, as we walked back toward the barns, I had any real inkling of what I meant by my words, nor if I understood their actual import. At the time the most significant thing was that they had succeeded in putting Sylvie more at ease, and had created the beginnings of a bond between us. We were establishing ourselves as allies and that felt important.
“So when do we meet next?” I asked as we came to a halt outside the door to her studio, a door through which I was now desperate to pass.
“After you have met Madame, only then.” She was all business-like. “When you next knock on my door I will assume you and she have spoken and that you want to come and tell me all about it — or tell me all that you can. But remember, it will be under exam conditions.”
“Everything recorded?”
“Everything recorded.”
“I’ll bring croissants,” I said, smiling.
Then, with a laugh and a peck on the cheek, she was gone.