The Girl from the Folies Bergere

Prologue

Just moments before, my body had left the gallery room and all I understood as reality. As I entered the surface, every fibre, along with every thought and emotion sucked down into a second, but once inside that tiny fragment of time its expansion was incomprehensible. They say in that moment before death everything flashes through your mind, but this was not dying, and I never felt more alive. Within my moment, I kept on floating through a vast never-ending chasm. Where was the bar and the girl, the lights and people making merry? I began twisting like a cork screw, helpless to the force which had conspired and enticed me to take this leap in faith. Strange gyrations gripped me in a way not performed since rough and tumble as a child. The elasticity and stretch of limbs cascaded through this void; this fraction in existence, squashed, condensed.

As I struggled with shock, the fear and unknown froze in my gut; my senses unable to respond. Helplessly I was eased forward, acutely conscious that this was still just a moment. A moment so full and wide. A space without ceiling or ground, and no forward or back. Yet I knew I was headed somewhere. Nothing made sense, nothing added up, lost in a sea of nothingness. Everything was vague, yet strangely crystal clear, and I couldn’t decipher whether I was hot or cold. However, as I swam through the air, its sweet aroma began to bath me in comfort and the dread which had filled me when I entered the canvas evaporated like mist in morning sun.

There was a memory, I think, some time, a long time ago. It was hazy but there I was, sat in the summer sun and the gold of a barley field. I watched the blades of the harvester as it thrashed stems of grain into fragments. They spun in the air, bouncing, hopping freely, before being sucked into the thresher. An impending metaphor, an horrific premonition of what was to come, or perhaps a recollection from the past? It was too unclear to tell.

I recalled the second this unearthly spin had taken hold. The slight pull of gravity and scrape of my shoes along the floor before being hurled towards her world. I had started this with an unyielding obsession for an answer, but now all that remained was the notion I may be trapped and spinning forever.

Colours danced and flashed, teasing my vision as they passed like washing in the wind. Many were from the room I had left, its floor, the paintings, and the clothes the people wore. They spun away rapidly to remain in that other dimension less than a second before. New colours began to emerge in this blended palette. At first, they streamed like champion ribbons on race day, but slowly the brightness slipped away to leave deep emerald greens, blacks and a dark oak brown. The magical second began to bring sounds, creeping quietly to my ears somewhere ahead. The crack of their tone soon formed as voices; cackles, heckles, followed by a lava spew of laughter. At the same time colours started to form into shapes, building a picture of a place. My weightless body gained weight, tightening as I could feel the squeeze sucking me out like liquid through a pipe. I began to sense this strange void was beginning to ebb away, but I realised I didn’t want it to end. I was restful and contained in this bubble with no hard edges or life’s barbed comments. No good. My destination in sight and the second complete. Don’t be pessimistic. After all, this is what I craved; to reach the other side and see her face. To be greeted with smiles and a great new adventure. Yet I had not given my return a thought and as the smell of varnish and beer hit, the prick of a new reality dawned, and I feared for my future. The surge of movement, a second passed and the wall of a hard surface met my back and bones. Even if I could go back, I knew it would never be the same.

Chapter 1

Sci-fi? Pure fantasy? Or perhaps, suspended between the two. Either way, it was a tragedy, undefined in its genre, with catastrophic consequences. How easily I can still stare along those blackened cobbled streets and deep meandering alleyways and see those macabre characters growing uglier, and evermore sinister than before. Yet she remains constant. An eternal presence held in the light of those misty green eyes. She was a mystery, and a vision labelled with a sea of unanswered questions.

By day I am paid to talk, and, as is the case for the fortunate few, it is not only my career, but also my passion. From a lectern, I create a rich palette of the past; history and art come to life through the stories I tell. The underlying tales behind the canvas unfold to my audience as I take them into and around a work of art. A guided tour of controversy, intrigue, conflict and pain. Yet, also triumph and celebration as eager young eyes fill with a thirst to see the path to the dreamers and visionaries of yesterday and before.

On such a day I stood before a crowded lecture theatre. I had been talking about our shift in taste over recent centuries from historic and classical, to social realist themes. Have we lost the Mona Lisa mystery in our postmodern craving to be beneath the skin of understanding, I asked? My next line hung in the air, and the pause was just long enough for them to doubt the rhetorical nature of the question. Arms shifted at desks ready to raise with an answer.

‘I have an attractive little watercolour on my hallway wall,’ I continued, realising the time. They remained engrossed; silent for a conclusion. ‘It depicts, in speckled sunshine, the back of a father and his son as they stand side by side across a sandy beach on a windy day. They fly a kite and throw pebbles in the waves. Somehow, from the rear we see more clearly the bond expressed between them as they gaze at the sky and out to sea. It is evocative. It is merely a father and his son.’ I pause for a second. ‘The piece of work is by an unknown artist which I picked up on a trip to Devon. It transcends demand for intellectual scrutiny, or analysis of the artist’s skill in rendering clouds or breaking waves. My connection to, and the feeling it evokes, is all I need. It’s quite simply my favourite little painting.’ I smiled and scanned the rows of seats, full of youthful faces poised in readiness.

‘I could be that man spending time with his child. The little boy, with his head turned, looks up to daddy’s face, whose stature is tall, commanding; an invincible force and the little boy’s hero, his superman. The painting comforts me in that sweet and innocent assumption a child will make, that our fathers will be strong and protect us forever.’

The slide behind me switched to my watercolour emblazoned on a grand scale, with each delicate brushstroke plain to see.

‘The grand and mighty canvases and frescos of Renaissance Italy may spill over with pathos; the galaxy of twentieth century conceptual pieces may well probe and grapple with our senses. But it can sometimes be within the smallest and least significant of works that we see ourselves. Find your own works of art and not those which have been prescribed through generations. Great as they are, they do not necessarily tell your story.

In the aftermath, a moment’s hush stilled the theatre. It could have lingered forever or left me wondering if they had fallen asleep. There was always that brief pause of digestion before the first shuffle of feet and the closing of books echoed around the room. The students chat could be heard in muffled tones as they slowly filed out.

I am Leo Kent and I lecture in the history of art at Goldsmiths in London. I am considered by many to be a bit of an expert in the tortured world of German Expressionism of the early twentieth century. Though, I feel more at home with a good Turner, or Constable’s blustery English countryside. Apparently, the two English masters loathed each other because of artistic and temperamental differences. One a realist, the other a romantic. It was a polemic which also existed within me, and one which stretched my emotions to breaking point during the tale ahead. This is as intangible as it is true.

Chapter 2

The sudden deluge of rain meant a run from the corner of St Martin in the Fields to The National Gallery. We sped into the rotating doors and immediately ground to a halt in the small space as it eased round with the speed of a clock dial. Inside the chaos of pedestrians and traffic had filtered down to quiet murmurs with the kind of due deference associated with a library; you need to be able to concentrate when you look as well as when you read. My son Jethro and I shook the excess wet from our coats and laughed at the prospect of racing full pelt to reach our destination.

‘Told you, you should have worn a raincoat,’ I gently admonished.

‘Yeh, yeh,’ came the reply. The tone of his answer reminding me that next year he would become a teenager.

As we walked through the gallery, we chatted about some of the sculptures on display. I talked to him about the athletic poses, or how the sculptor had managed to convey feelings with arm gestures as well as facial expressions. Jethro quizzed me on who the artists were and their stories, with an interest I felt blessed he still took. However, how many more times would he willingly visit with me like this? Now I could still, just about, court his attention with the tale behind an old master, or rumour about the artist’s private life, but he had to be in the right mood. Today, his curiosity was ripe. It had always been challenging to compete with the digital age, but more recently football and a serious interest in music had entered his entertainment arena, and I knew what would come next. In only one or two more years, girls would fill his head rather than curiosity about the strange anamorphic skull in The Ambassadors. Rightly so, I thought, as I smiled contentedly and prepared to answer his question, ‘Dad, why bronze exactly?’

‘Well, it’s an alloy, it…’

‘I know that, but why is it used for art?’

‘Ah, cocky socks,’ I said. ‘Okay…as you know…copper and tin can be melted down. It makes them fantastic for…’

‘Look,’ Jethro said. His mind had already moved on. He was pointing to the end of the vaulted corridor where a huge colourful banner hung advertising the main reason for our visit today.

‘It pours well,’ I quietly finished. My own thoughts just as ready to skip to the main course.

Emblazoned in black across it the title: Manet the true father of the modern. The boldness and simplicity of the man’s name needed little else against its grey/green background, other than the reclined image of Olympia beneath. Her nudity proud and beckoning and inviting closer inspection. She was one of Manet’s most famous and certainly intriguing paintings.

‘Edward Manet,’ Jethro said.

‘Eduard,’ I replied.

‘Does that mean he was a better artist,’ Jethro said.

‘Why so?’

‘Because it comes with a French accent?’ Jethro was a bright kid and I understood his newfound sarcasm because it could sometimes be my own. It came with a cut, but always a rubber knife.

‘No,’ I said with a benign nudge to his shoulder.

‘Sorry Dad, but you’ve got to admit, it does make them sound better.’

‘So, Henry Matisse would be more like your local butcher than a world-renowned painter.’

‘Henri!’ Jethro said with an exaggerated French voice.

I often brought Jethro into the city to visit the galleries and museums. I may have jawed all day at work about old masters, and new, but this was different. All the time he still showed an interest I wanted to soak it up and the chance to share time together. Jethro, and his little sister, Martha had grown up surrounded by art. My mum had been a decent amateur painter all her life and had always encouraged us, and in turn her grandchildren, to join her to paint in the studio at the bottom of the garden. Grandad, he was a curator of a small gallery, and edited an arts magazine. So, from the day they were born Jethro and Martha were immerse in paint, sculpture, and print, in a world of creativity. My own token landscapes were plotted around the house, mostly in less prime locations, but my eye and instinct remained passionately rooted, and when my biography of the artist Max Beckmann was released Jethro was just a toddler, so it was only fitting it was dedicated to him.

We turned a corner at the end and went up a flight of wide stone steps. I could see another banner above a doorway at the top. When we mounted the top step the entrance to Eduard Manet’s first exhibition in the UK since 1989, came into view. Beyond the desk, and the two girls selling tickets, we could already see a portrait of Manet’s great friend, the writer Emile Zola. To the left and right were other works each familiar to me with their strong black lines and sparing brushwork. Even beyond that, and only half in view from the next room I could make out Le Dejeuner Sur L’herbe with extraordinary colours to transfix from across the floor.

‘Program, sir?’ one of the attendants said.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ I replied. ‘Not today.’

‘My Dad knows everything about art,’ Jethro said. She smiled politely.

‘Come on you,’ I said. ‘One thing I do know is that you’re a wind up. Besides, it’s not about how much you know, it’s about how well you know it.’

‘Therefore, if I’m really good at multiplication I don’t need to learn other Maths?’ Jethro said.

‘No, not quite like that, young man.’

I took our tickets and we moved on into the first room of the show. I was all set to listening to Jethro bombarding me with questions and his own personal and precocious theories, when a strange sensation engulfed me. I had the sudden feeling I was being watched. Not in that casual way we all occasionally say, but specifically, and with purpose in mind. Yet what spellbound me the most was the idea of tears and pain. It was a troubled psychic set of eyes, and despite swinging round to all the pairs staring out from canvas around me nothing came back.

‘Dad, what’s absinthe?’

‘What!’

‘Dad, don’t snap. I only asked a question.’ Jethro was looking straight at me. His face turned to concern. ‘You all right? You look a bit spooked.’

‘Yes, yes, sorry. I was just preoccupied for a moment. Absinthe? Oh yeh, it’s a drink…The Absinthe Drinker…let’s take a look.

My palms felt sweaty and I nervously tucked them back into my pockets. I didn’t know why I reacted that way. Perhaps it was merely shock at the way it had struck me. I had never felt the presence of a spirit, or gave much credence to those who had, but this did unsettle me.

He looks drunk,’ Jethro said. He preceded to concoct an elaborate tale of the old man’s recent life, handled with a twelve-year-old boy’s furtive and often unpleasant imagination. ‘And at night when he sleeps and snores on his flea infested, smelly, pong ridden, cardboard bed,’ he continued.

‘Not sure they had cardboard in the nineteenth century,’ I said, but the scene he set did lighten my mood again.

That brief episode which had pricked my emotions soon faded as we walked and talked, but, remained like a whisper to my conscience, and a force beckoning me. It followed me around like one of the bad odours Jethro so eloquently described in the Absinthe Drinker.

The gallery was not too crowded for a Saturday morning, but apart from the dark-skinned gallery attendant by the door, who stood dead still for long periods before pacing to the other side, a steady flow of people filed pass each piece of work. The well-trodden floor shone with polished perfection, afoot gesturing arms at Manet’s skill and craft. Others’ pointed, or took out reading glasses, whilst some marvelled in silent awe.

Eventually, the strange presence and disturbing murmurs left, and I put it down to a late night, or recently being a little over worked. I allowed my son to take the lead from painting to painting.

‘They all look a bit sad,’ he said after a while. I gave a moment to contemplate his perspective, and indeed there appeared to be some truth to his idea. Who could know what lay behind those melancholic expressions?

‘I’m not sure whether it’s sadness,’ I replied. ‘I think… more reflection. And it is true that outward displays of fun and laughter could often be frowned upon.’

‘But everything tells us they are sad,’ he answered. ‘All that dark, shadowy stuff and the thick black lines. It’s not just the look on their faces.’

‘Glad you’re really observing what you see,’ I said. ‘It was the style of the time. Those people are real people and their lives were not often easy. Manet was one of the first artists to study the ordinary…the everyday folk.’

‘It’s like you can even see the dust on their clothes,’ he observed.

‘Yes,’ I said, and proudly thought.

‘And he looks like Jack the Ripper.’

I laughed again, remembering how contented it felt to be away from the profundity and

intellectualism of Goldsmiths.

We stood before Le Dejeuner sur L’herbe and I could sense he was considering it more

acutely than the others.

‘They’re never quite like they are in books,’ he said. I had seen many of the world’s great arts and could boast trips to The Prado, Uffizi, and The Louvre, but it was true what he said. It never ceased to amaze me how flesh came to life when you saw it for the first time.

‘A truly great artist breathes life into the paint,’ I said.

‘But even the…I mean the colour bit in the eyes…’

‘The iris.’

‘Yeh, it’s such a tiny brushstroke, but it makes them look like they could step down and out into the gallery.’

‘No chance of that! But I agree. Maybe we are made to feel a little uneasy as we stare because we wonder whether they are judging us from behind their static pose?’

‘Uhm,’ he pondered.

‘Who’s that?’ Jethro asked as we moved to another piece of work.

‘Manet,’ I said.

Jethro gazed up to the face of a distinguished middle-aged man in fine black jacket and cravat. Wild nut-brown hair rose like flames and steely blue eyes mesmerised the viewer.

‘He looks a bit manic,’ Jethro said, ‘but he also seems to be very confident and sure of himself. His face reminds me of a politician, and the way he is dressed.

‘Why politician?’

‘Because of the way he sits…all important like, but his eyes have a sort of sadness. Like he’s spent too long trying to be understood and is just a bit tired of it.’

‘He was, misunderstood,’ I said. ‘It’s hard to believe, but at the time his work was heavily criticised. Manet was a true visionary, a one off. I studied those blue eyes myself. I leaned in as far as I was allowed, but a cool shiver brushed my neck. My hand instinctively shot up to cover it and as I did, I felt that strange sense of being watched once more. Less powerful than before, but because it had happened once, I was more moved by its presence. I panned around to see who might be looking, but, nothing, and nobody focused their attention on me, in a room as normal as can be. Only Jethro was watching. I wondered whether the strange feeling had emanated from the magic of Manet’s eyes.

‘Can we get a hot chocolate?’ Jethro asked.

‘Sure.’ I said, but before the word had completely left my lips, there was a scream from

somewhere in the room.

Chapter 3

There is a fraction of time when something drastic occurs where you anticipate its shrill call. Half a second of silence; a moment of freeze-frame and then it blows. The neck of the Chinese lady alongside, craned as it lurched forward; the rise of her eyebrows caught my eye as they raced outwards from her sockets at the sudden sound. A wailing cry shattered the gallery’s tranquillity and all faces fixed on the man who had crossed the line and now started to sob uncontrollably; his arms, stretched, imploring across the surface of a canvas. The painted female figure shimmered in expressionless motion as he slapped in desperation. Shouting echoed from a nearby corridor, and two security guards appeared from nowhere, speeding towards him. However, he was so distraught, so immersed, that the static audience caused not a flicker of embarrassment.

He was pouring out garbled words as they prized him from the beautiful young woman, serenely standing with her hand delicately placed on the side of a sofa chair.

‘Please, please, let me back,’ he cried. His grief pleading into her eyes, as he was wrenched away.

‘My God, Dad,’ Jethro gasped. I couldn’t reply. I wasn’t even sure I heard, as I stared at the man’s broken, twisted face. Rather than struggle he caved in; hauled like a half-filled sagging sack of sand.

Students, elderly ladies, and Japanese tourists with Dictaphones stood, astounded. The mood hung as though waiting to find out how best to re-act, but my arm slipped protectively round Jethro’s shoulder. Or was it my own shadow of vulnerability which searched for something stable. This was as incomprehensible as it was upsetting, and instead of shifting away, Jethro eased into my side. His head nestled against my ribcage and I understood, that the sight of a grown man crying had jarred against his innocence.

The guards had dragged him to the exit of the room; desperate to extract him and prevent further disturbance. A more senior looking gallery official arrived with two police officers, but it frothed up his panic in a struggle to break free at the sight of a black uniform and high visibility jackets. The crowd stared agog as he bellowed undecipherable ramblings. To stop him kicking they pinioned him to the varnished surface; his hysteria steaming into the unforgiving polished floor. Probably in his early thirties, he looked haggard and red eyed, sleep deprivation defeating his face, and now tears beginning to creep to the edges of his jaw.

‘Take me back,’ he managed at a whimper. I felt sure he was aiming the plea towards me as he looked between the legs of imprisoning guards. Was it really me? Was he really aiming his non sensical utterances to me, or was my mind spinning tricks from this haunting experience? Yet, that gaze fixed with such precision, like the infra-red of a gun sight.

‘I was like you,’ he said. The clearly aimed comment gripped.

His pitiful voice kept speaking, trance-like, in tongues, as he was hoisted to his feet, cuffed and bound. As they pulled him around to lead out his voice grew louder, craving attention like a crazed harbinger of the worlds end. The herald of darkening tide.

‘You think you all know but you don’t know what’s really there.’ Again, he focused at me. ‘You can see, can’t you? You at least, please.’

I shrank from the attention. A few eyes shot my way, waiting for a response, but I avoided eye contact, slipping my arm further around Jethro’s shoulder.

After he’d gone murmured theories and disapproval circulated. In the speculation, heads shook in dismay, or laughed with ridicule. Yet, I stood devoid of humour. I could not judge or berate his behaviour.

‘Jesus man,’ Jethro said. ‘What the hell just happened?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t say that.’ There was always time for a little parental guidance. ‘It doesn’t sound right, Jethro.’ I felt sure the same disapproval had echoed down from the painted nineteenth century onlookers.

Jethro looked lost and uncertain. Perhaps I had been harsh. I cupped my hand around his face and realised it was wrong to criticise a child’s reaction, or the words he chose to respond to such a weird phenomenon.

‘Have you ever seen such a thing,’ came an American accent from behind. I turned to see a towering elderly, silver haired figure wearing a dark blue suit with an open Hawaiian style shirt. Next to him, in starkly contrasting height, his much shorter partner with high-rise peroxide hair. It was Nashville comes to the National.

‘My goodness, that was truly disgusting behaviour,’ she said, laced with indignity. ‘They’ve got to be careful about who they let loose around these priceless works of art. I mean, what on earth was he thinking? In the States security would have come down much harder, and sooner.’ She looked to me to share her view. She assumed I did.

‘A troubled soul,’ I said.

‘More like a lunatic,’ she said. Thin leathery lips spat the callous reply as she clutched her gaudy yellow handbag covered with un-necessary buckles and studs, rather like the decoration adorning her hands and ears. Mr Big, surely her husband, began his contribution with equal relish.

‘I make you right there, my darlin’. I read about this, back in the states. An article about some stupid guy going crazy over a girl in a painting. Thought someone was trying to kill her.’ As he laughed his lips formed a shape which reminded me of a group of chimpanzees hooting in a tree. ‘Man, there are some real crackpots around, good grief.’ A raucous guffaw blew from his guts, pushing his shoulders back and the great swell of his belly outwards as it pressed against the cowboy buckle which seemed contra to the fine suit.

‘He struck me as an ordinary man,’ I said, ‘Not strange, or abnormal.’

‘There you go darlin’,’ he said. He looked back to me with pitying eyes. ‘You can’t make excuses for these people, sonny.’

‘I’m not,’ I snapped. ‘I just think when someone falls apart, we don’t automatically tread on them.’

‘I understand yah’ sympathy, darling,’ she said, ‘but that man could have been a terrorist, or something…’

‘Or just a teacher, young doctor, or used car salesman, whose life has