protect the one from the other. There’s that room inside your mind where you are most freely and unconcernedly yourself, and then there are the many layers of masquerade by which you protect that skinless core; but there she was, my most unguarded self (a fantasy self!), famous at last, visible but invisible, hanging on a wall in Paris and five times sold.
And this, needless to say, by the woman—and not to forget, her husband—whom, among all mortals, I had chosen and drawn close to and loved, yes, wholeheartedly loved, and forgiven a myriad of shortcomings. But not this one. Never this one. I knew that even then, perched on the chair in the gallery sipping my cloudy glass of tepid, overchlorinated water and insisting to the youth that I did not need a taxi, or a doctor, that I would be on my feet and on my way in a matter of minutes—I knew in the middle of all this that I would never, ever, ever forgive her this. That she had—again, no: that they both had, because he must have known, at some point, he had known, and done nothing; or worse, had come to me only because he’d known—but this, surely, was not thinkable—not thinkable, that—they had ruthlessly destroyed everything, betrayed everything.
You don’t need suicides where there is murder.
I didn’t call them. I couldn’t even imagine calling them. I didn’t call Didi, either, although I might have, because I didn’t want to get into it. How could I begin to explain what it meant, to see myself laid bare on Sirena’s gallery wall, the great rippling outrage of what it meant—about each of us, about myself perhaps most of all, about the lies I’d persistently told myself these many years. And all certain things suddenly wildly uncertain. And what about art, and being an artist: Is this, then, what it took to be something, to become someone? Was this what was meant by “sacrificing everything” for your art? Or at least, everyone?
Here’s the good part: I carried all this anger, full to the brim with it, and now it’s allowable. Now it’s justified. I’ve learned from my mistakes. I’ve been liberated by my failings: I’ve been a fool, but now I’m a wise fool. I’ve been crushed by the universe; I’ve frittered the gold of my affection on worthless baubles; I’ve been treated like dirt. You don’t want to know how angry I am. Nobody wants to know about that. I am furious at both of them—at the lie of their friendship, their false promises of the world and of art and of love—but just as mad at myself, at my stupid dreams, my misplaced trust, my worthless longing.
But to be furious, murderously furious, is to be alive. No longer young, no longer pretty, no longer loved, or sweet, or lovable, unmasked, writhing on the ground for all to see in my utter ingloriousness, there’s no telling what I might do. I could film my anger and sell it, I could do some unmasking of my own, beat the fuckers at their own game, and on the way I could become the best-known fucking artist in America, out of sheer spite. You never know. I’m angry enough to set fire to a house just by looking at it. It can’t be contained, stored away with the recycling. I’m done staying quietly upstairs. My anger is not a little person’s, a sweet girl’s, a dutiful daughter’s. My anger is prodigious. My anger is a colossus. I’m angry enough to understand why Emily Dickinson shut out the world altogether, why Alice Neel betrayed her children, even though she loved them mightily. I’m angry enough to see why you walk into the water with rocks in your pockets, even though that’s not the kind of angry I am. Virginia Woolf, in her rage, stopped being afraid of death; but I’m angry enough, at last, to stop being afraid of life, and angry enough—finally, God willing, with my mother’s anger also on my shoulders, a great boil of rage like the sun’s fire in me—before I die to fucking well live.
Just watch me.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The writing of this book would not have been possible without the generous support of the Humanities Center at Harvard, where it was begun, and of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, where it was completed. I am particularly grateful for the kindnesses of Professor Homi Bhabha and of Professors Joachim Nettelbeck and Luca Giuliani. My thanks also to Stephen Greenblatt