Nicola Barker - Clear - A Transparent Novel

Out of the corner of my eye I see Solomon ‘taste-testing’ one of Aphra’s prodigious gooseberries. He swallows and his face actually inverts (like Schwarzenegger’s does at the end of Total Recall ).

‘Hang on.’ Solomon finally gains control of his juiced-out tongue again. ‘So where’s the actual irony here?’

‘I’m still working it out,’ Jalisa snaps, ‘if you’ll just give me a moment . And anyway,’ she continues, ‘I didn’t say it was ironic, I said that there were signs of some kind of interesting art legacy …’

(For your information — and so you don’t need to backtrack to figure out this girl’s inherent duplicity —she did mention irony before…

What?

Bitter?

Me?)

‘So?’

Solomon tears off a piece of herby soda bread, and dips it into a mung-bean curry.

‘This is just high-spirited speculation ,’ she says, ‘but the powerful parallel between Blaine’s “stunts” and the sense of physical extremity in Herzog’s cinematic oeuvre seems more than self-evident to me …’

As she talks she tucks into a mouthful of chicken.

‘Nope.’ Solomon is obdurate. ‘I’m not linking the dots.’

‘Well so far as I’m aware,’ Jalisa continues doggedly, ‘Herzog totally had Korine down— Korine , remember? Blaine’s best mucker — as the man who was going to change the face of modern cinema (after Gummo , this was). He talked the big talk about him all over the media. He made his admiration for Korine widely known…’

She sucks up a thin slither of mixed pepper.

‘So what does Korine do ? How does he go about thanking him? He casts this eccentric German monomaniac in the part of a monstrous, frustrated father figure in his film, thereby both celebrating and diminishing him. If you ever get to see the film,’ she glances my way, witheringly, ‘you’ll almost be able to taste Herzog’s fury and frustration, both at the role, and at the direction the film seems to be taking…’

‘’A dodo?’ I ponder.

‘Let’s just say,’ she grins, ‘that it asks quite a lot of the viewer.’ She shrugs. ‘But then that’s not necessarily any bad thing, huh?’

I commence scratching at my head like a wild dog with eczema.

‘And the Jewish factor?’ Solomon asks.

‘I dunno.’ She dips her fork a second time into the bowl of grilled mixed peppers. ‘But it does seem strange that Korine symbolically belittles Herzog in the film, because — intellectually speaking — it’s kind of like, “Kill the Father”, if you know what I mean…’

(I don’t.)

‘…or in this case, “Kill the German Father”, which resonates at an even deeper level, actually…’

‘It’s a film ,’ Solomon says, ‘a fiction. The meta stuff’s all just fanciful conjecture.’

‘Don’t be so fucking pedantic ,’ she growls, ‘the performance art aspect is definitely important. Fitzcarraldo —Herzog’s masterpiece (and remember, this was pre -Dogma) — was both fact and fiction. Blaine — via Korine — has used Kafka’s story, a fiction , to underpin a real drama.’

‘Do you provide study notes with this lecture?’ I ask.

They both ignore me.

‘I think you exaggerate Korine’s influence,’ Solomon growls (through a mouthful of the ‘poisoned’ mango).

Jalisa shakes her head. ‘When Blaine and Korine first met,’ she tells him, ‘Blaine’s desire to impress the film-maker was so intense that he spontaneously climbed into a pizza oven.’

‘ What ?’

Now I’m agog.

She nods, scooping up some yams with her fingers. ‘The old fashioned kind. The sort that takes hours to cool down. And apparently he remained in that oven for literally hours .’ She grins. ‘It was a total — what would you Brits call it? — wank off? I mean if you were related to either of these two men, you’d seriously really want to keep an entire continent between them. They’re plainly a horrendously bad influence on each other.’

‘It was probably just a trick or a scam on Blaine’s part,’ Solomon debunks her (through more herby bread filled with chicken and topped with chilli salsa). ‘Either that, or part of some carefully constructed “imagined” history they’ve since invented, which cunningly serves to fire the so-called myth of their “partnership”, in order that people like you — and simpletons like Adie — can jack-off all over it.’

(Oh. Thanks .)

‘I certainly don’t have Blaine down as an intellectual,’ Jalisa says, ‘or even as a radical. He’s an entertainer, a performer. He’s very commercial. Korine, on the other hand, is totally art-house. He’s self-destructive. But he’s extremely clever. This is basically an Art/Celebrity union of the highest order. It’s a powerful partnership, but it’s a destructive one. Korine’s agenda — to his mind — is plainly better acted out on an international tabloid stage, rather than on merely an Art one. Art wasn’t enough for him. And the mystery of magic , i.e. bullshit , was obviously wearing a little thin for Blaine. This recent stuff is a real challenge. A real mystery. But Korine’s definitely the intellectual. He’s definitely the spur…’

Solomon performs a — frankly offensive — wanking gesture with a triangle of filo in his hand.

‘Korine had a long-term film project,’ she calmly continues (while devouring yet another portion of the mung-bean curry), ‘in which he walked around the streets of New York, provoking people of different racial and cultural backgrounds to get into physical fights with him. And he filmed each encounter.’

‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘Now just hang on …’

‘The guy has no sense of self-preservation,’ she shrugs. ‘He’s chaotic. He does everything to excess. But even he had to rein in a little. I mean he’s only small. He’s quite puny. There’s only so many Czechoslovakian bricklayers you can provoke into punching you in the larynx before things start to turn kinda nasty . So what does he do? He turns to Blaine. The Big Man.’

‘How convenient ,’ Solomon intervenes, ‘that the stooge was so accessible.’

‘And so rich,’ I say.

‘All the “doing stunts” stuff definitely comes from Korine,’ Jalisa fights on. ‘ Think about it. The stunt is arbitrary. It’s uncontrolled. Magic, as such, is about setting things up, about meticulous pre-planning in order to create the mere appearance of arbitrariness…’

‘It’s a fucking love affair,’ Solomon trills.

‘You could just be right there,’ Jalisa smiles, ‘and I certainly get the strong impression that when Blaine does these “stunts” of his — you know, standing on that ninety-foot pole, packing himself in ice, all the rest of it — he’s completely neglecting to research into the likely consequences of the things he’s doing. They represent a kind of leap into the darkness. A leap of faith . But also an act of total nihilism . And that’s Korine’s influence. Blaine wants to impress Korine. He wants to embrace Art . I’m certain.’

She pauses. ‘Is that dessert?’ she asks, reaching for the apple and quince pie, and taking a big spoonful of it. ‘I do think we’re dealing with a generation of young Jewish men,’ she muses, ‘who are, at some very fundamental level, acting out the pain and the guilt they feel at perhaps not loving life quite as much as they think they should do after all the sacrifices made by those who went before them…’ She gradually peters out. ‘Or perhaps they’re clinging on to the…the drama …’ (she’s re-energised by another mouthful of pie), ‘or to the sense of belonging …’ she swallows, ‘or perhaps this is a fundamental uncertainty which they’re now experiencing as a direct consequence of Israel’s current belligerence which makes them feel this overwhelming urge to rediscover their victimhood. I mean, ‘ Don’t let those damn Muslims take it away from us …’