* * * * *
Roger’s leaning on his elbow, elbow on the table, fingers lightly tapping on the bandage over his right eyebrow. He’s been doing this for two days now, can’t resist it: a kind of primal pleasure comes from running through the gamut of sensations underneath the bandage, ranging up from numbness through that tingly tickling on to pain — then how the pain itself stabs, burns and dovetails back to numbness once again. It’s like eating sushi: having the palate teased, seared and anaesthetized with every mouthful. There’s some bruising just below the socket too, which over the last two days has changed from shitty brown to a kind of aquamarine blue that he quite likes, and after playing the register above the eye he strokes the bone there too, pulling the skin one way and then another, imagining he’s distributing the colour, squelching it around, like an artist mixing pigments …
He’s into physical sensation right now. That having his eye cracked should have immediately preceded sex with Barbara seems happily coincidentaclass="underline" both events have opened up reserves of sensitivity he never knew he had. Even walking to the bar just now it felt as if his feet were lightly caressing the ice as they slipped over it; then his heels digging into it, firm and assertive, the cold moving up his arms to grab hold of his chest, his shoulders, brilliant winter light around him screaming silently with bright-blue pleasure. Life’s good — has been good ever since he stepped into Jean-Luc’s atelier two days ago. Tyrone, the spaced-out black guy with the gun, turned out to be some kind of performance artist who’s been booked to do Pod Stalinem on New Year’s Eve, and he’s asked Roger if he’ll knock out images for that show just like he was doing at the party. He met another Yank at Jean-Luc’s too: Michael, an adman from New York who’s heading up a whole agency here in Prague. Michael gave him his card and told him to call by if he wanted to have a look at the equipment his outfit’s using. The next afternoon, after he and Barbara had done it so many times they’d broken his bed’s frame, he pulled his clothes on and went round there — and was led around an editing-suite eldorado: Beta machines, Cubase, an Avid … Michael told him that he had a photo shoot planned for New Year’s Eve and wanted a club setting for it, so why didn’t they just transfer the whole studio over to Pod Stalinem, and while they took their photos Roger could use the hardware to mix and project his films? That’s three amazingly good things, bam-bam-bam, all from the same night …
Michael’s lent Roger a camcorder with which he’s been filming left, right and centre, getting buildings, architecture, images of city. Honza’s been driving him around in his giant blue truck, driving him all over Prague. Tyrone’s event’s called Lift-off: A Launch Party for the Czech Republic — the stroke of midnight on December 31st being the moment of the new state’s birth. Roger’s going to use Michael’s Avid to mix his rushes of trams, people and bridges together and then layer over that the street map of Prague he bought at the airport when he first got here and larger-scale maps of all of Bohemia and Moravia he’s pulled from an old school atlas Barbara brought him; then he’ll lay the whole thing against one of his Apollo images, the rocket taking off, and get it all projected on and splattered across the stage. It’s going to be so good he just can’t wait. Each time he puts the camera down he gets fidgety, starts playing with the cut again: the tickling, then the stab, the burn …
The bar’s door opens and that American girl Heidi walks in and immediately catches sight of him. He tenses up: hasn’t seen her since the party, when he kind of came on to her, then dumped her for the more attractive B., which was kind of a crap thing to do. It’s just unfortunate, because she was really sweet. She’s coming over to Roger and Honza’s table. The door opens again; Nick Boardaman walks in holding two large shopping bags, looking around the bar, presumably for Heidi. He sees her, then sees them too and waves, all beamy. Heidi seems pretty beamy too as she sits down.
“Hi! Can we join you?”
“Sure. A pleasure. You know Honza? Honza, Heidi.”
“I guess I saw you at that party,” she says, shaking Honza’s hand. “That night’s pretty hazy.” She’s wearing purple shades, as though she were still hung-over. She turns to Roger and asks him: “How’s your eye?”
“Seven stitches. They’ll come out in a week. The eyebrow’ll take longer to grow back … How are you, anyway?”
“I’m great. I’ve been hanging at Nick’s, with Ivan.” Was that with as in with with, or just with? “It’s so cool to watch an artist working. When he’s working …” She smiles to herself and wriggles. It was with with — or at least she wants him to think it was. Nick joins them, sets the shopping bags down on the table and says:
“Hey, Roger! How’s the eye?”
“Fine. Seven stitches. You been stocking up on groceries?”
“Oh no. Heidi and I are on a mission. We’re gofers for the noble cause of art.”
He’s stoned, Roger can tell. Heidi says:
“Ivan’s sent us out with a great list of ingredients that he needs to mix pigments and texture and varnish and, like, hold the colours on this old painting he’s been hired to copy.”
“Copy? How do you mean?”
“Copy. There’s this old painting of some saint, and he’s been hired to make a copy of it.”
“So what type of ingredients have you been …”
“Ahem.” Nick raises his finger, pulls a piece of paper from his back pocket, unfolds it, holds it out in front of him like one of those old town criers and reads: “Whiting powder, rabbit-skin glue, methylated spirits, cotton wool, ketone-resin crystals, white spirit, beeswax, jelly …”
“Jelly?”
“Sorry: jell-o,” he says, mimicking an American accent.
“What’s that for?”
“Apparently,” Heidi says, “it has to go on underneath this stuff called Gesso.”
“You want more?” Nick asks, turning his list over. “There’s wire wool, sandpaper, carbon paper, purified water, garlic …”
“Garlic?”
“Mordant for the gold leaf,” Heidi explains again. “Weird, huh? It’s a kind of icon painting. There’s all this gold around the saint’s head. Like a massive halo.”
“And he’s using real gold leaf?”
“Not just any gold leaf,” Nick says. “It must be twenty-three and a quarter carat. He’s got that already. He’s got so much of it that he’s blowing it around the atelier for kicks. You should see the place. There’s so much stuff laid around the floor that you’d think he was making, I don’t know, a monster or a bomb or something. Or some high-tech glue …” Heidi swipes at him with open palm. Nick laughs and ducks, then goes on: “Agape, I mean agate …”
“For burnishing the gold,” Heidi’s still annotating. “We’re learning so much …”
“… suede, natural sponge, eggs — although I’m worried that these ones are too white.” Nick delves into his shopping bag and pulls a smaller paper bag out; then, cupping this in his hand, he lifts an egg from it and hands the egg to Roger. It is very white, but all eggs are like that here: the hens must be anaemic. Roger throws it up into the air six or so inches above his open palm, catches it, throws it up again …