Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer Read Free Book Online

you know that singer Niki Morison?’
    ‘Steven Morison's daughter, the artist?’
    ‘And of Julia Berman, the mum, who is here at the moment.I have to interview her and get her to hand over this picture of her by Morison. A drawing. The editor of the magazine I'm writing for is obsessed by this picture even though he hasn't seen it.’
    ‘What's so special about it?’
    ‘No idea.’ Jeff could think of nothing else to say. The absurdity of his job, of the stuff he wrote, extended its reach to taint any words he might use now. Again, she came to his rescue.
    ‘But you write mainly about art?’
    ‘Not really. I'm not a very visual person.’ That was it – his best shot. He'd come up with this line before coming to Venice, had decided it was going to be his big joke of the Biennale, to be repeated at every opportunity. What he hadn't counted on was being able to try it out, for the first time, in such perfect circumstances, to such devastating effect.
    ‘Me neither,’ she said. Oh, no. She was perfectly serious, she
meant
it, hadn't realized he was joking. She was an earnest Californian. His disappointment must have been obvious – maybe he had even been silently mouthing the words to himself – because she punched him on the arm.
    ‘Joking,’ she said. Shit! He'd been out-deadpanned. She'd taken his best shot, thrown it right back at him.
    ‘Sorry. Like I said, I only just got here. I'm a bit off the pace still.’
    ‘OK. Let's backtrack. You write about art?’
    ‘Sometimes. Celebrities. Interviews. Profiles. Features. The usual—’
    ‘Bollocks?’
    ‘Got it in one. Have you spent time in England?’
    ‘London. Stratford.
The Tempest.
Oxford. The Cotswolds. Portobello Road. Hoxton. I did it in a day and a half.’
    ‘Well, I guess you saw pretty well everything. It's a small country’
    ‘Difficult to get around, though.’
    ‘Foolish even to try. Especially on a Sunday. Did you come across the words “engineering works” and “bus replacement service”?’
    ‘I flew into Stansted from Pisa on a Sunday. They said we should take the Stansted Express train. They sold tickets on the plane – even though there was no train. The train was actually a bus. It cost a fortune—’
    ‘And took forever. Welcome to England.’
    In terms of what had been said, nothing much had passed between them, but these few words had carried an enormous weight of expectation. It was just a fluke, just luck, but the air between them was charged. She was beautiful, anyone could see that, but perhaps he was the only person here who could have felt that beauty as
a force.
He desired her – not sexually, not yet; that was too specific, would have diminished the scale of his longing – and he would not have done so were the feeling not reciprocated at some level. He could take no credit for this. It just happened. They could have met anywhere, anywhere in Venice in the course of this weekend, or anywhere else in the world in the years to come, and the result would have been the same. They could have said anything and nothing would have changed. Everything would have turned out the same.
    Frank and Yvonne came back over, accompanied by a guy called Louis something. They were all amped up from meeting Bruce Nauman but the party was winding down. There was talk about what to do next. Everyone was enthusiastic about going somewhere else. Except Laura. Jeff was surprised to hear her say that she was tired, was going back to her hotel. He wondered if this was a strategic move to get away from the group and back to her hotel – with him – but, evidently, she had nothing of the sort in mind. She wanted to go backto her hotel. As they prepared to leave he was able to say, unheard by anyone else, ‘I'd love to see you again.’
    ‘Me too.’
    ‘Shall I phone you? At your hotel?’ She shook her head. Because of the pause in the middle of his question, he was not sure whether this shake of the head meant
No, not at the hotel,