The Death of Francis Bacon Read online

  Max Porter

  The Death of Francis Bacon

  Contents

  Title Page

  Preparatory Sketch: Non-existent, pencil on paper, 6 x 4 in.

  One: Oil on canvas, 60 x 46½ in.

  Two: Oil on canvas, 65½ x 56 in.

  Three: Oil on canvas, 65 x 56 in.

  Four: Oil on canvas, 14 x 12 in.

  Five: Oil on canvas, 78 x 58 in.

  Six: Oil on canvas, 37 x 29 in.

  Seven: Oil on canvas, 77 x 52 in.

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  Preparatory Sketch

  Non-existent, pencil on paper, 6 x 4 in.

  Did I draw this?

  Frame or bed, hole could be window, flesh could be flat, nobody looking,

  one body prostrate,

  another attending.

  Note to self but never did anything with it. Promise me you’ll hide this.

  The body on the bed pinned down by sickness.

  The body of the carer, choices.

  The body of the painting, reckoning.

  Madrid.

  Unfinished.

  Man Dying.

  One

  Oil on canvas, 60 x 46½ in.

  Take a seat why don’t you.

  Hopeless angle, chin stuck on like a dumpling, cheek like a chop, but I like the cut white sail of the cap and the forearm border with the starched guillotine sleeve.

  This is all worth a look.

  Take a seat why don’t you.

  I heard you before, piggy.

  Run along fuet, poor sibling to the Catalan whip on the bowl of peas with the garlic oil.

  Darling mama, sister oh Dios, Mercedes, my hair must be utterly laughable.

  No oil.

  She pats my little linen hill belly.

  Hungry, starch and starve, all your thoughts of food and fizz.

  The martyr Edward or the painter Francis?

  She turns and that suddenly is a handsome prospect, twisted neck, thick line of brown shadow, that’s what I’d seen this morning, nag-at-me ridge-bone, rather unholy, little bull at the door beneath a broken nose. I’d love to see her snarl. There’s an odd lidded familiarity and the sense of too many teeth, teeth going all the way back down the throat, that’s why she has to sit like that, as if sitting for me, lest those rows of teeth burp out.

  I’d love to see you snarl.

  Sí.

  Minotauromaquia.

  Sí sí.

  My hair must be utterly laughable, I can feel it fluffing, puffy, all the air I no longer have is up in my hair. No oil.

  Fuzz. Fuss. Fizz you say. Lust.

  Stop now. Listen. So vain.

  I ask her for Francis, and I say Please. She takes from her face a handsome hardback and breaks it open like it was made of crackling, lacquered, and we are in the details and she licks her finger, she licks the cut ridge of the pink tip and sucks licks pits puts her finger in the middle fingering rings an awkward van Dyck tapering chub bell with the ring pinning the trimmed figure to the belted indentation, bothers me, paying attention, too pale.

  Sister Are you in pain?

  Francis Just working. Unbother that dangling finger with a rag.

  (What you know is that a seventeenth-century finger will say to a twentieth-century eye: Look at this, this little wooden box, if I put myself against the lid and push, see how tightly it makes its patient progress into that groove, heavens yes, it’s perfectly tantalising, and you hardly need me to tell you with a found image what it’s like.)

  Slices her finger and holds open the cut to show me but I’m asleep and refusing to dance her little clichéd blood-dance so she reads:

  Bacon is a very remarkable but not finally important painter.

  BORING. I know this. I know what you’re doing. She’s up on the ceiling, in some kind of trapeze swing seat or harness, matte batwings, couldn’t reach her if I tried.

  These paintings are haunting because Bacon is a brilliant stage manager rather than an original artist; and because their emotion is concentratedly and desperately private.

  Oh naff off you skag. Rien de tel que privé.

  And the little policeman runs up to the camera and is about to scream, but the image is paused and down she comes from the ceiling above the bed and holds my eyelid open and says not finally important, and as the little policeman runs again to the camera and seems about to scream, it’s paused again and she drops back down, again, like a great broken apparatus of tarpaulin and picnic stools and lifts my eyelid – it clicks as it leaves the eyeball – and says desperately private, and there he is, again, the pre-scream, the about-to-scream policeman with his little hat and I know exactly what this is, I know it step by step, it is arriving at a party, again, and feeling horribly new, unknown, lonely and awkward, affecting disinterest and realising the only way is to spin on in, whip up some energy, and for that we need drinks and for that we need more drinks and she lifts my eyelid again and says I will see you later, dear boy.

  Sí.

  Intenta descansar.

  Two

  Oil on canvas, 65½ x 56 in.

  Take a seat why don’t you, but I’m still asleep so she doesn’t hear. Nice familiar weight at the foot of the bed, the sort of fever guest weight, aunt or mother, nurse, or the after-fuck check-up, to tuck me in, still a little whiff of hurt in the room, of procedures. Rather wonderful actually, to be reminded of childhood sickness and post-coital exhaustion in the same second. Rather comforting. Close.

  Take a seat why don’t you.

  I heard you before, piggy.

  Process. Grouse. A throwaway remark to a journalist. Twee my bloody tombstone.

  Quail, redcurrant jus. Oysters. The pheasant stew I tried to do after we had it at the claustrophobic place. When I bit down on shot.

  It’s extraordinarily nice not to have to order or get up, it all just arrives when I think of it and somewhat offsets the embarrassment of Capelo, lying a mile from here when I suppose I always thought one might be murdered, have one’s throat slit, or be garrotted in an alley off Frith Street.

  Not comic, vultures. Bit down on shot and regretted saying anything about accidents, I can still feel it, right through me, like a shock. Metal drill in my fillings right down through my urethra. Buzzing in my underbladder.

  Edward the Martyr or Francis the painter?

  Oh hello ducky. You look like a pastry, a slightly overdone bun. I would have you twisting to look over your shoulder, cap on, uniformed, slight formless gash where your crowded mouth is, that lovely brow like a minotaur’s shoulder in the middle. Good face. Do you know the poem Picasso wrote about Guernica? I was terribly, terribly struck by it, cries of children, cries of women, cries of birds, do you know it? He says, I think, something like, cries of the stew in the pot, can you imagine? Scorched earth and little button mushrooms, thyme, shallots, Manzanilla, I suppose, something dry, all sticky in the Le Creuset, I say bloody bring it out here, don’t bother plating it up we’ll eat from the casserole won’t we darling, just bread, and more wine, I think that will do splendidly, look at that. May all who see thee bless the great creator who made so fair a thing, quite right! Quite right! Santé.

  Edward was riding – OH DO FUCK OFF.

  Edward was riding – YOU NASTY SINISTER MEAN-SPIRITED HAG.

  Edward was riding – OH FINE.

  Edward was riding up the hill.

  Sister Listening?

  Francis (Broncoespasmo) Wheeze. Please believe me, I’m not always like this. Lower me, raise me, give me more air, take away that ghastly blue pleather chair. (Sleeping)

  Edward was chafing, long ride from Salisbury, slept on a bale, barely
a hair on his bollocks, none on his chin and his arms ached, saddle sore on his left arse cheek, blister on his thumb, shoulders and neck stiff from the ride, cross and anxious hot young king, sweat in his eye stinging, unease in his belly, alarm bells ringing, just a boy, would he like a drink of course he’d like a drink, he’s ridden from Salisbury, hawk, scabbard, leather flap, taste of chalk and whey, starving hungry but shite like gruel loose and feverish cramping a bit, nervous to eat, keen to sleep, here she is, the woman he fears in his future and fucks in his dreams, the sow on the hill, but she has a glass of beer and she hands it up and he feels a surge of hold me, bathe me, dry my hair, wipe my arse, drain me, empty my balls into your downturned mouth and let me sleep in your bed.

  Sister ¿Estás bien?

  Francis Sí, sí, thank you darling, just slightly tight in my chest. Carry on.

  And various pleasantries are exchanged, you look well Aelfryth, you look well Edward, long ride, good day, strong wind, sea air, here, some beer, a long gladdening gulp of gold, the colour of the stone, strange look, first cold, extremely cold and makes him think of river swims and soiling his sheets, shock, shame, the wet sock game, being stabbed is the same, extraordinary pain, the colour blue, lapis right through him, and then again and again and she’s walking back into the castle and he’s dripping venison memory, white fat and clicking, smoke, dripping onto the stones, trying to turn and see where the hurt is, caught in the stirrup and upside down, crack on the skull metal thump in the side in a brawl with the pages, again, crack again, black, bits of his brain scattered on the track thumping down the hill down the hill down the hill and into the river Corfe, last thought is of the beer, wasted, where is the cup, we are concerned with those who notice the cup, yes the dead king, yes politics, meat and temporality, but also the well-made cup, perched body ripe and crucial on the road.

  Yes. Now you’ve got me thinking. Unseated picador, all horse and no animal. Not good enough. This is how I think when I’m at it.

  Thrown rider.

  Horribly kitsch and pointless picture. Futile nod to decoration. But I do like the grey area. Feels like scab.

  Several hundred quid in a pewter pint mug, light-catching cameo from a William Nicholson, behind the orange male nude I left half done. London is several days away in either direction.

  A gold bit, chomp on, something to hold, teeth on metal, imagine that, I used to like the idea of a back strap.

  Yes, peeling a scab. Lifting off the whole clotty lot of it and seeing the root. Verruca stippled.

  These are a few of my favourite things.

  Yes, sister, that’s just marvellous, you are quite marvellous. I thought it was Peter, reading to me, but I see of course it’s you. I wonder if I might have no pain. If you’d be so kind.

  No pain?

  Sí, no pain.

  Sí. Intenta descansar.

  Three

  Oil on canvas, 65 x 56 in.

  Take a seat why don’t you. Deakin? Thought I smelt a friend of mine. Acqua di Colonia, peppermint.

  Sister Is chewing gum, piggy.

  Francis I can’t breathe especially well if truth be told.

  Julius Caesar or the painter Francis Bacon?

  She can’t hear me, I’m asleep. So drunk I conked out in the cab and I said to him, How long have I been asleep? Broad daylight. Sickening light.

  How long have I been asleep? Excuse me, how long have I been asleep? The meter was running, at seven hundred quid, from Islington, for god’s sake man, did I sleep all day? And he turned around and it was Deakin, but he couldn’t speak because he had a human fist in his mouth, trotter, knuckles spilling out, teeth marks on dead skin. John was clearly suffocating, his eyes were wide in panic and I said Fucking hell old chap spit it out, spit it out, and he grunted, Uh cuhhn hrreeere Uh cuuhhnn hreee

  What’s he saying?

  Sister Shhhh.

  Francis Some of us are trying to speak.

  The fist interrupts with a wet shplonk like a dollop thud onto the canvas and leaves a stain, deft impression, dent in the wet racing green, rather good actually, shut up a second, gives some doggy movement to the great waste of her face, rather good actually, canine, to have something scampering, something squirming, so I wrung it out in a bucket, the saturated fist, and used it like a cloth, swab, rubbed it back and forth against the nice clean flesh of the breast and the whole shape of the thing was suddenly terribly clear, brilliant, all it needed was some movement, bloody clumsy working from the photo, hiding, peeking, and the fist wobbling off like a tumour, voila. Now the green makes sense. Sorry if I’m repeating myself. I wonder if I could peel that neck of yours off and start again.

  Julius Caesar?

  Please. I’m going to save my breath, if you don’t mind, dear.

  Brutus sits at this desk, clutching a severed hand, which behaves.

  He opens the fingers and rests his hot forehead in the palm, and it fits like a campaign, like a chore. He has a golden bowl to shit in, he has lamb and good wine, he has a canvas womb in which to toss and turn. No helmet or hood fits his head as well as the dead slave’s hand.

  History.

  Cough. Ahem.

  He doesn’t look up—

  How clever you are. Scholarship! The Haunting of Brutus from the marvellous children’s book of ghost stories I found in Oxfam on the Gloucester Road. Yes, ‘He doesn’t look up.’

  I’ll take over. Let me. In comes the ghost of Caesar, yes, and Marcus Brutus gets the fright of his life, flashback to stabbed Caesar, folds of white, purple rim, yew, marble, cross-hatch dark arm hair, correct me if I’m wrong dear girl, then the same traumatic memory but a different shot of it, quite brilliant angle of the body as if we are lying on a tilted mezzanine, more blood, in black, good foreshortened spill, eyes open, and in comes the dead senator, robed man with puncture wounds and I can and will use that, folds, muscle, slightly you-know-who in the chin, which is why it alarmed me, self-portrait as ghost of Caesar, as royal baby, but then I lost the bloody thing. Some git nicked it from the studio. One of these shits who will write a god-awful hack-tosh-hagiography of me after I’m gone. Oh he was so scabrous, the monstrous pitiable Bacon, up at the bar, buying us drinks.

  The figure pulled the robe aside and revealed a body running and glistening with blood.

  That’s it sweetheart. Exactly. I thought I might do a lot with that, and of course me being me I’m clutching a ripped-out portrait of little Don Carlos in one hand, and I can’t resist an unholy facial marriage, a quotation of sorts, and therefore suddenly, brilliantly, pinned for your eyes only, the Infante’s chin is kissing the punctured Roman’s chest. I folded the head over at the eyes and laid it on the injury. You understand me. How I make these pictures work.

  Listen, piggy, my turn.

  Empty room, little bell ringing, which is the bell the Infante has on the little royal waist. A shrill yapping from the puppy. The bell rings because you would never have had the courage to paint such a person. You pick up the book, you rip out the image, you borrow the chair, the arm, her weight on the floor, and then you run away for twenty years.

  Don’t be unkind.

  Look, rich piggy. I look at you and you say yes master, yes market, one more walk to the Prado, one more glass of bubbles, but my face does not move one millimetre, not even disdain, I don’t need to flinch, you are just any old executioner.

  Yes, yes, now you’re talking. I don’t even turn around. Head resting on the dead palm, I know it’s Caesar, or the king, or George, or Felipe, knock knock a nice ripe face on the chopping block for Mister Bake On, ready whenever you are, begging eternal life if you please, come all the way down, all the bloody way down, no need to look, it’s the same picture again, the little girl dying at one hundred miles an hour, head lolling on the velvet chair, don’t need you here, have everything I need, no point you staying old boy, tell Willy to leave them in the hall. Tell everyone to leave.

  Sister Slow down. Breathe.

  Francis Leave the
photos on the floor and fuck off! I want to be alone.