Bequest

Chapter 5

X was resting on the chaise lounge in her studio. It was her afternoon rest time. She'd been working in the studio since six a.m. and a one hour power nap often gave her enough energy to work through until eight p.m. She was now a routine painter, none of that staying up all night, drinking, drugs, stumbling into the studio after lunchtime. Those days had faded like a newspaper abandoned on a park bench. She was entering her twilight years as an artist, and she felt as though she still had so much to paint, so much to say; time was disappearing as quickly as the sun rose every day. Heaven waited for her where the sea met the sky and the only way she could escape its claws was to create meaningful works of art.

She was disorientated when she heard his knock, unsure if she'd actually been asleep or just daydreaming. She wiped the dribble from her mouth, rose from the lounge and sauntered over to the studio door expecting perhaps a delivery of something.

'Leonard,' she said, unable to mask the disappointment in her voice. This would mean her afternoon would be derailed.

'Hi X. I hope you don't mind . . .'

I do mind, I do mind, she thought to herself. 'How did you know where my new studio was?'

'Some crafty intelligence.'

'I'll make you a cup of tea.'

In their best years they'd shared 'afternoon beverages' and tea seemed like a second-rate option, but X no longer kept alcohol in her studio. She found it too distracting. Only after she'd returned home and eaten her supper did she allow herself to have a small glass of brandy. Even at openings these days, she refrained from allowing herself a glass of wine; she wanted to keep her mind as pure as possible.

She poured chrysanthemum tea from a glass teapot into little Chinese cups. She no longer wasted words on small talk; that was for novices and people not at ease with themselves. She believed in the value of silence, of space, of solitude, and anything that interrupted these things was often met with derision. Only when she sat down at the small table with him did she permit any conversation.

'What is it, Len?' It was a warm day and he was wearing a discoloured white t-shirt. The neckline had stretched, revealing the red ANZAC poppies on his chest. She'd hit her stride with those poppies at a time when she was just experimenting with botanical art. It had taken her by surprise how much she'd enjoyed etching them onto his chest. She'd considered herself as too avant garde for flower arrangements, yet there was something so beautiful in the detail, in the veins that ran through the petals, the spotted black crown in the centre. Yet, Leonard's skin was becoming baggy, like over-large tights; her beautiful poppies were road lines running over speed humps.

'I just wondered if you'd had a chance to sign that paperwork? It's been a few weeks and I can't progress things until the paperwork is signed.'

X looked over her glasses at him. 'Like I said at the opening, this has been really time-consuming for me. It's hours that I won't get back . . .'

'But you said you would sign it.'

'I said I would look at it.'

'So did you?'

X sighed tiredly. 'You've got to let it go. It's an impossible battle. The gallery doesn't want your skin.'

Leonard raised one of his decorated arms and scratched his bald head, slouched in his chair. She felt disappointed looking at this old man, covered in her designs. It was the same embarrassment you feel when returning home from a dinner party to discover spinach in your teeth; you wish you hadn't spoken so loudly or laughed with such a wide-open mouth.

She should have had a better plan for his skin, rather than this piecemeal snapshot of moments and icons in history. She'd given him too much say. If she had her time again, she would have taken more control, done a full body drawing at the beginning and made sure the composition worked as a whole. His skin reminded her of one of those large cards that gets circulated around an office at someone's farewell, where people scrawl messages in whatever space is left, the handwriting doesn't match, people use different coloured pens, some people decide to write sideways. It's a mess at the end.

'If I can't preserve my skin in Australia, I've been thinking of going to Tokyo and seeing if I can donate it to the tattoo museum over there. It will be tricky, but I'm starting to look into it. Remember the documentary? When we went over there?'

X remembered the documentary. She was even more embarrassed by that than his skin. She'd seen that they'd replayed it on the ABC just a couple of weeks ago, at eleven o'clock at night. She felt as though she'd been talked into that as well. The film crew had spent hours with her. They'd set themselves up in her studio like spies. The producer was highly strung and used to directing.

'Just pretend we aren't here,' he'd told her. 'Do your work as you always would.'

But they'd stayed for three days, trying to get the perfect footage; they'd dropped biscuit crumbs on her polished concrete floor and hid throat lozenge wrappers in one of her paintbrush holders. Those men were pigs. They'd tried to orchestrate fake visuals: 'Can we get a shot of you tattooing Leonard's skin?'

'I don't do tattoos anymore,' she'd said.

That producer, as stretched as a rubber band, had said, 'That's a shame. It would be a much stronger piece if we could get a shot of you tattooing.' They'd made her feel bad, like a monkey that wouldn't perform as its master pleased.

The documentary was about Leonard's mission to have his skin preserved. They'd interviewed unenthusiastic representatives from the National Gallery and Leonard's lawyer. Then they'd followed them to Tokyo to visit the tattoo museums over there. She'd only agreed to it because she was quite keen to see behind the scenes at these museums. She thought she might uncover something interesting for her work. But Leonard's own sense of importance annoyed her. They'd spent three days together: shots of their backs crossing the road together, conversations subtitled with the museums' anatomists, a grizzly segment in front of a display case with a full hide of a Japanese man's skin. The documentary had veered strangely onto the meaning of mortality.

'There's lots of my works that haven't ended up in collections. I've slashed works, burnt works, I've left a four-metre framed watercolour in a dumpster behind Safeway. Not everything can be preserved. I've had to come to accept that. We lose bits of ourselves all the time. We cut off toenails, hair, we urinate. These are all parts of ourselves that we lose every day. Imagine if we kept everything?'

'I'm not a toenail.'

'I know. I'm just saying. Yesterday I started some preparatory drawings, but look they're all in the bin over there. I didn't like any of them, so they get thrown out.'

'I'm not a piece of paper either.' He was starting to look agitated. He clanged his cup of tea back on the saucer. 'This is my skin. I've given my life to it.'

'We all give our life to our art,' X said, not wanting to be made to feel guilty. Into owing him anything. 'Look at me. What else do I have but my art? I have no partner, no children, nothing. We make these choices and we have to live with them. There's no point complaining about it afterwards.'

'These tattoos are magical. Darwin's moth came to life, and just the other night I woke up with the Cold War gas mask on my head. It was suffocating me.'

X narrowed her eyes; he was more delirious than she'd given him credit for. She no longer knew what it was she was dealing with. But she knew she wanted him out of her studio as quickly as possible.

'Leonard, I'm really sorry, but I have to get back to my work. This piece . . . I needed to finish it by the end of the day.' She waved at an invisible artwork.

'You can do my face. You've always wanted to do my face.'

'You know I don't do tattoos anymore. Please, I really have to get back to—'

'It would be like the old days, the pleasure of that pain, collaborating together again . . .'

People always become a burden in the end. She felt like a mother who wanted to dump her needy baby in a wicker basket out the front of an orphanage. She'd given birth to this thing, but now she never wanted to hear its cries again. She rose from her chair and opened the studio door and stood there as still and silent as a palace guard.

Eventually, he shifted his unattractive canvas out of her studio, pausing for a moment at the door and plunging his disappointed gaze into her icy heart.