Envy E-Book

Alain Elkann

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 82

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2008

Beschreibung

As the result of a series of fortuitous encounters and circumstances, the Italian writer Giacomo Longhi falls victim to an obsessive curiosity about the famous English artist Julian Sax. He would like to meet Sax, but the great painter is surrounded by an almost impenetrable protective screen. The writer's wife, the charming and sensuous Rossa, eventually takes him to a tea room in London, where Sax spends a few hours of each day accompanied by his children, models and friends. The narrator begins to fear that his wife Rossa might succumb to the charms of this seductive man, who attracts women, paints them and then discards them. In an unpredictable sequence of events, Elkann weaves a fascinating web that blends reality and fiction, and draws the reader into the lives of characters who will prove hard to forget.

Leseprobe

ALAIN ELKANN

ENVY

Translated from the Italian by Alastair McEwen

To Leone

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

PART ONE: CHANCE ENCOUNTERS

1: LONDON

2: MADRID

3: NEW YORK

4: ROME

5: LONDON

6: ROME

7: LONDON

PART TWO: THE BIRTH OF AN OBSESSION

1: LONDON

2: TONY’S

PART THREE: WOMEN

1: NEW YORK

2: LONDON

3: PROVENCE

4: ROSSA

PART FOUR: TOWARDS ENVY

1: LONDON

2: SAX

3: THE SUNDAY TIMES

PART FIVE: THE GENESIS OF A NOVEL

1: LONDON

2: VENICE

3: NEW YORK

4: ROSSA

PART SIX: LISA AND TED

1: PARIS

2: CAPRI

3: LONDON

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Also Available from Pushkin Press

Pushkin Press

Copyright

PART ONE

CHANCE ENCOUNTERS

1

LONDON

THE FIRST TIME I SAW JULIAN SAX he was having dinner with Damian Oxfordshire in a restaurant on Brompton Road and I noticed how the two men seemed satisfied to be in each other’s company. I don’t know why that blurred image has remained impressed on my memory.

2

MADRID

AT THE ITALIAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE, a run-down building only a short distance from the Cathedral, one evening I ate with Matteo Esse and Charles Bloom, who was in Madrid to make a documentary on Velázquez. Matteo Esse is an influential man in the world of Italian culture. An intransigent, excitable controversialist, he was suggesting with great insistence that Bloom take on the artistic direction of the Venice Biennale. Bloom was noncommittal, but it was clear that he was gratified by the idea and he let Matteo Esse flatter him as he drank glass after glass of Spanish red. At a certain point, I don’t exactly remember why, the conversation moved on to Julian Sax. They talked about him enthusiastically; both of them thought he was the greatest living artist and felt that it would be only right to organise an exhibition of Sax’s work in Venice as soon as possible. It could be presented as an exceptional event within the context of the Biennale. I must say that I was curious and even amazed at how seriously Bloom took Esse’s proposal to direct the Biennale. Perhaps he had already thought of this position on other occasions. He became so absorbed by this prospect that he even reeled off a list of practical problems that might have hampered the project. Matteo Esse listened to these arguments with indifference; Bloom’s practical requirements didn’t strike him as important because he knew that solutions could be found. The main thing was that Bloom be selected to direct the Biennale. It would have been a fantastic coup because his was a most authoritative and intelligent voice in the field of contemporary art, a solitary voice and one averse to passing fashions. The two men got along well and thought highly of each other precisely because they detested the fashionable and the commonplace. Both were hot-blooded and subject to unpredictable mood swings.

3

NEW YORK

AFEW MONTHS LATER, we went with Matteo Esse to visit Bloom in his Soho apartment. It was a large loft furnished only with bookshelves and piles of books scattered about, two sofas upholstered in white canvas and a table with two chairs. Charles, dressed in white, was in high spirits and said openly that he was ready to come to Italy. But things had gone otherwise and at the Biennale they had appointed another director whose idea of contemporary art was poles apart from that of Charles Bloom and Matteo Esse. So, despite repeated telephone calls and messages, for a long time Charles Bloom took no further part in our lives and became inaccessible. Perhaps he had taken umbrage or perhaps he had forgotten about it, throwing himself into another project. Matteo Esse continued to deplore the failure to choose Bloom as a terrible shame and lack of vision.

4

ROME

IHAD A VISIT FROM PAUL, an English friend and a well known journalist who had to write a piece on Italian politics and wanted some advice on how to go about things and whom to meet. I asked him:

“How are you? How’s life?”

“Great, I have a young wife and a little boy. At my age it’s all terribly exciting.”

“When did you get married?”

“Two years ago, with Lidia Sax. Maybe you met her when she lived in Italy.”

“Yes, she’s Julian’s daughter. Do you know her father well?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been hearing a lot about him recently and I felt like interviewing him.”

“I don’t think that’ll be too easy, he hates giving interviews.”

“Could you help me out?”

“Yes, of course, I’ll tell Lidia as soon as I get back to London.”

5

LONDON

ICALLED PAUL, but he had given me a wrong number. The people who answered were strange, ill at ease, as if they knew and didn’t want to say anything. I felt I had been deliberately misled, until a mutual friend gave me the right number. I spoke with Paul and Lidia, who suggested I write a letter to her father. She would take it to him, but she told me straight off that she could guarantee me nothing. Then she asked me kindly:

“Would you like to have lunch with Paul and me tomorrow?”

I accepted because I felt like spending time with them and because I wanted to get a better idea of who Julian Sax really was. But then Lidia called me again late that evening:

“I’m sorry, but it won’t be possible to meet up because I have to go to Brighton with my son. We’ll do it another time. I’ll let you know if my father replies, but as I told you I wouldn’t get your hopes up. He avoids interviews and in any case he never has the time.”

One evening, in the home of some English friends, I met a gentleman who was a splendidly ironic, inexhaustible conversationalist. On learning that I was Italian and worked in the art field, he asked:

“Do you know Matteo Esse, by any chance?”

“Yes, we’re friends.”

“I haven’t seen him in ages. We met in Venice years ago; he was very young, extraordinary. He took us to see splendid things that aren’t very well known and he had a fascinating way of talking about art. What happened to him?”

“He’s fine, still the same, always engaged in thousands of battles! He wanted Charles Bloom to direct the Biennale and organise an exhibition of Julian Sax’s work, but it didn’t come off.”

“Of course, Sax is a very special artist and an exhibition in Venice would have been marvellous, but with that character of his goodness knows if he would have agreed.”

“Do you know him?”

“Yes, very well.”

“I’d like to meet him, interview him. I tried through his daughter Lidia, but it doesn’t seem easy.”

“I don’t know how much influence Lidia has. I think you should look him up, take him a bottle of fine French red wine. Very expensive wine.”

“But I don’t even know his address!”

“Go to Tony’s, it’s a tea shop near Notting Hill Gate. He’s there every morning at nine.”

“What’s he like?”

“You can’t say he’s an easy man. He has an ambiguous relationship with money and with women. He is very reserved and arrogant too, in a certain sense. But he is undoubtedly an extraordinary artist. He is very capricious and moody, but remember, if you wish to speak with him, the best thing is to take him a bottle of the finest French wine. You’ll see, it’s the only way.”

“But if I don’t know him, it’ll strike him as odd when I show up with a bottle of wine in a café first thing in the morning!”

“Don’t try to be logical, follow my advice. You’ve nothing to lose, and you’ll see that I’m right.”

I called Damian Oxfordshire, whom I’ve known for years, because I knew that in the past he had shown Sax’s work in his gallery and that they were close friends. I wanted to know if he thought it might be possible to interview Sax. He gave me an evasive reply, saying that he would speak to him but that it wasn’t the best time to do so. Then he asked me to drop in at his gallery and I went with Rossa, who had arrived in London in the meantime. Damian has long, white, rather tousled hair and he was wearing a dark blue cashmere jacket with leather buttons, light grey flannels, and a bright blue shirt that highlighted the colour of his eyes. He greeted us in his affected, ironic way, then, as if shaking off his natural indifference, he enthusiastically showed us a Van Gogh from his Saint-Rémy period, sitting on an easel.

“I’ve just sold it to an American museum. It’s very fine, don’t you think?”

“Yes, it’s wonderful! And that portrait of a woman on the other easel?” I asked him curiously.

“It’s a painting by Julian Sax. Oh, I know that you want to interview him, but I’m not sure if that will be possible. He is very tired and I haven’t seen him for a bit. The next time you come to London we’ll organise a meeting.”

“Who is the woman in the portrait?”

“A model who used to live with him and gave him a lot of problems. Julian left her and fell for a fat, imposing black woman, whose portrait he is doing. I know that they have an excessively active sexual relationship, unwise for a man of his age. It’s odd, because he’s a hypochondriac. But to justify himself to me he says that theirs is first and foremost an intellectual relationship.”

“I’d like to interview him because I don’t think he is sufficiently well known in Italy.”

Damian’s attention had wandered from the conversation, he wasn’t interested in knowing whether Sax was well known or not in Italy. For him it was merely a boring detail. He said goodbye politely but impatiently, as if he had suddenly felt an urgent need to be on his own: