James Salter - All That Is

It was done by a disturbed person, she said.

“He’s not as disturbed as you think,” Wiberg said. “Quite the opposite. I think of him as being essentially free, if you can call someone who is a slave to his desires free.”

“What are the desires?”

“Drink. Sadistic lovers. It’s not only the desires. The colors are so gorgeous. The black, the flesh color, the purple. You can almost hear some frightening music or silence.”

“I especially don’t like the teeth.”

They had been to a show of Bacon portraits.

“Or the way he turns faces into awful custards,” she said.

Catarina was still very handsome although she had not performed in some years. Her figure was good, she still possessed a waist, and her throat was smooth. She looked much younger than she was. She still called him her cochon and he was interesting to her except when talking at length about himself. His taste for Bacon was inexplicable. He also owned a Corot, many prints, and a painting by Braque.

Wiberg had never met Bacon, he had only read about him, the disorderly life, the years in Morocco with young men quite cheap. In Bacon there was a sheen of awful sanctimony. There was love and disgust of the flesh and staggering dissolution. There was all that had happened in the world during one’s life. Bacon also had the gift of language. He had gotten it in Irish kitchens and drawing rooms and in the stables where, as a boy, he’d been had by the grooms. His eloquence came from his father’s coldness and disapproval and the great freedom of finding his own life in Berlin with its vices and Paris, of course. He belonged to the netherworld with its bitchy language, gossip, and betrayals. He had never concealed himself or tried to conform to any idea of artist, which allowed him to become a greater one. His lovers had drunk or drugged themselves to death, and amid the rubbish of it all, the taste for fine clothes and disdain of what others were tied to, his idleness and obsessions had spattered the walls and set him free. He never painted over on a canvas. It was always once and for all.

There was a superb biography waiting to be written, Wiberg felt, but only after Bacon died. Bacon had been born in 1909, eleven years before Wiberg. It would be a matter of luck.

As it happened, Enid Armour knew Bacon. She mentioned it one night at a dinner and Wiberg was immediately interested. She had met him at least twice in the club in Soho he always went to. Henrietta Moraes had introduced her. What was he like? Wiberg asked.

“He was friendly. We got along quite well. I was in hopes he might like to do a portrait of me and make me famous. I know you have that painting of his.”

“I should have bought more,” Wiberg confessed.

She was not looking well these days, he thought. She looked a little worn. He saw her only on occasion now, always socially, but still it was a surprise that she’d met Francis Bacon even though she was in that sort of crowd. She was still by herself as far as he knew. She had several times in the past suggested that he might find some position for her—she could do publicity perhaps, but he knew it would be the wrong thing to employ her. Catarina would know of it, and he didn’t want to defend having hired her. Her glamour, anyway, seemed a little fatigued. There were women who were always interesting even after the waning of their attractiveness, however, and he had always liked Enid’s frankness. She was not self-pitying.

“I’m afraid I’ve passed the peak. You can only rely, I mean really rely, on your looks for so long,” she said dejectedly.

“We all have the same problem,” he said.

Was he joking?

“You’ll always be handsome,” she said.

“Less and less, I’m afraid.”

“As long as you have your money,” she said.

She’d been in a scene in some restaurant, he’d heard.

“Yes,” she admitted wearily.

“Who were you with?”

“No one.”

“No one?”

“I was just having dinner by myself.”

She had become less careful with herself, she knew. She had drunk far too much that evening and spent a lot of money. She didn’t care to remember it. She had gone on to some place where there was a woman sitting with her dog on the banquette. She’d reached over to stroke it.

“What a lovely dog. What’s its name?”

She didn’t remember what the woman had said.

“I had a magnificent dog,” she said. “He was a racing dog. A champion, the most beautiful dog. Have you ever seen them run? They literally fly. The most beautiful thing, really, and so gentle, that’s what’s amazing. So really gentle and brave.” She knew she was becoming maudlin. “You can’t help but love them. It was at a time when I had no cares.”

Bowman was a friend of the Baums’ though he and Robert Baum were never strong personal friends. Aside from occasional parties they rarely saw one another in the evening, but they were having dinner one night at a restaurant that was one of Baum’s favorites, Il Cantinori, in the large room that was like someone’s own dining room but filled with white tablecloths and flowers and on a quiet street. The service was good—Baum was well known there, of course—and the food excellent. He and Diana had just been to Italy. It was always difficult, she said, to come home. She adored Italy. Apart from everything else, it was one of the few places where one’s hopes for the future could be restored. Beautiful, unspoiled fields and hills. Great houses that families had lived in for five hundred years. It was deeply consoling. Also the general sweetness of the people. She had wanted to go to the post office and asked for directions from a man standing outside a shop. He was explaining it to her when a passerby stopped to say that was not the best way and described another. The men began arguing back and forth until finally the passerby said, Signora, per piacere, viene , and began leading her down a series of small streets and across a square to an imposing building, like a national bank, where she could buy some stamps.

“Where else in the world would they do that?” she said.

Over the years, Diana had become an influential figure and a woman of principled opinion, often feared. She was a serious person. Fashionable and chic were for her words of criticism, even contempt. What she wanted was your politics and your opinions, if any, about books. She went to movies because she enjoyed them, but she did not take them seriously. The theater was a different matter. She was not beautiful—she never had been and it was no longer of importance—but she had an enviable face, even to the slight darkness beneath her eyes, and a well-defined position.

She was fiercely loyal and expected loyalty in return. A journalist she knew who was a friend had written a long piece on Robert Baum, interviewed in his office and over several lunches. Baum could be jaunty. His house, on its own and together with one or two others, represented at least half of American literature. There was really no one above him. He had changed little over the years although he was wearing more expensive clothes and sometimes a felt hat. He could be charming and casually say, oh, fuck them or him as readily as any agent. He took care of his writers but was not, in private, always reverent about them. The article had quoted him referring to “major writers” and “major frauds.” Also “major, major writers.” Diana had found it embarrassing. At a reception she bumped into the journalist, who asked, “You’re not angry with me?”

“No, just indifferent,” Diana said.

She was never evasive. She had a slight New York accent, but she was not New York as only people from elsewhere can be, she was the genuine article. When she liked or championed a writer it was a crown for them although not one without weight. But she respected and defended them. To a young woman who had been telling stories of a brief affair with Saul Bellow to editors all over town, she had said coldly,