Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer Page B

It would be as objective as a photograph.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Jeff. Though impressed by the analysis, he was having trouble remembering how it had begun. That was the beauty of recording interviews, though. It was like an external memory. Except, he realized now, he had forgotten to turn the Dictaphone back on.
    ‘Fuck!’ He reached forward, pressed
Record.
    ‘Naturally you don't expect me to say all that again, do you?’ she said.
    ‘No, no.’
    A motor boat went by, the canal swooshed and churned in its wake, making the shadow-swirls on the wall coil into life again.
    ‘Was it …? Bringing up Niki on your own. You lived partly in France and partly in London. How was that?’
    ‘Fine. We had a lovely apartment in Paris. A reasonable flat in London. We weren't short of money. Niki was an easygoing child.’
    ‘What about you? What were you doing? Apart from bringing her up, I mean.’
    ‘I didn't have any impulse to do anything much. I wrote a few articles. I had vague ideas about writing a book, but never got round to it.’
    ‘There was talk of a memoir.’
    ‘Oh, yes, I did a few little things, but I didn't have the application and there was nothing I wanted to get to the bottom of. So there was nothing to sustain me and nothing to propel me. And although I had a few famous friends, I actually felt too loyal to them, or too affectionate, to say anything interesting about them. You know, that kind of book always works best when there's some kind of betrayal involved. I had no interest in betraying or score-settling. And the idea of writing didn't interest me enough. So I just swanned around. Tell me, do you get bored?’
    ‘Me? Yes, all the time.’
    ‘That must be an advantage. You see, I've never had any capacity for boredom. I'm like one of those people you see in India or Africa, sitting by the roadside, staring into space. I can just do nothing all day long and I'm quite happy. And I've never had any ambition. Not even in its most basic,negative form of envying other people's success. I think that's why I've had so many friends, I was really delighted for them to get on when so many of the other people around were measuring themselves against how everyone else was doing. I'm sorry, am I speaking too much?’
    ‘No, not at all. This is great, actually’ Jeff glanced towards the Dictaphone to make sure it was recording, to make sure that, by turning it on, he had not accidentally turned it off. Such things, he remembered, had a way of happening when you were stoned.
    ‘All of which applies particularly, presumably, to Niki?’ He was sharp as a pin! As Paxman!
    ‘Yes. It was obvious she was going to do something. If it hadn't been music, it would have been art or writing. Something like that. She had just enough discontent. Unlike me. I've always sat very comfortably in my own skin.’
    It was true. She was just sitting there, comfortably, talking about herself but not in an egotistic way, imparting information about this person who happened to be herself. And it was easy to see why she had so many friends. She was easy to be around. She made you feel at ease – a thought that immediately made Jeff feel ill at ease, anxious about how to broach the subject of the picture Max had requested and which, in its way, was more important than everything that had gone before. The shadow of Julia's building was stretching across the wall opposite like a plimsoll line suggesting, as it moved slowly upwards, that cargo was being loaded onto this neighbouring house, causing it to sink slightly into the water. He turned off the Dictaphone.
    ‘Great. Thank you. That will work really well.’
    ‘That was painless.’
    ‘Good. The only other thing – and again it's something I think Max Grayson, my editor at
Kulchur
, mentioned. Thepicture of you by Steven. They were hoping you might agree to let them reprint that with the article.’
    ‘You want to take the picture with you?’
    ‘Not necessarily. Whatever's