The Buildings

The steel beam lowered in for the worker to grip, his hands the first around the hard edges pulled close to his chest. The twelve of them at his side with their gloves along the length, all the faces turned to scowls at the unwieldy broadness dropping inch by inch until it met its place down by their feet, teetered against the empty space below.

            They fed the beam straight into the frame until it lay by the one lowered in the hour before, to the one where the worker now knelt, the flame of his torch flickering an unsteady light against a pair of shallow cheeks. They untied the chains and waved up for the crane. One step to either side and they feared the harnesses wouldn’t do much for them, not with the welding tools strapped across their chests. One wrong step and they would fall down past the forty eight floors to an ugly end.

Walking along the river with the sun going down, so nice on the warm summer evenings with the towers spread out like that, like arms going out and around the city, so comforting, so close. The phone in his hand,

‘I’ll be back before it gets too late,’

sent and up and out and she’ll read it on the sofa probably, feet up, or in the foot-spa with the water quivered, vibrating like it does.

The interview set to start in under an hour. The first time the artist had wanted to talk in a decade and it was all up in the public consciousness, the painted buildings, the knighthood, and as he lingered along the river he watched the new towers half-built and the blue boards around the edges with the pictures; computer made impressions, young couples sat on the benches not yet made. They didn’t seem to fit, their clothes too colourful and he looked up over the board, glanced at the building going up and the men still working. A shower of sparks up near the top; couldn’t be safe, but beautiful in the way it seemed like a river of fire, something he’d only seen in films.

He looked at the skeleton of the building, the levels rising one after the other and a thought came about all the ceilings stacked up. If the ceilings came first, came from the ground, and the walls were put in after to contain them, anchor them down. Without the walls the floors would continue to rise, out and away, into the sky with the redness spread out and the clouds turned to sheets. What would be left then? All the people with their hands in the air, the escalators left stranded, lift shafts stubbed out. He looked at the building with the river of fire coming from the top and he snorted a little, but only against the roof of his mouth, lips closed.

Hardly an art critic, more current affairs, hardly an art critic but they’d sent him anyway. His new editor, younger than himself, had said it would be a feature, enough pages for photographs. The artist had chosen the time, the place. There was an hour to kill so he’d walked along the river to his flat, the complex nearby to where he was then with the river below and a bridge running over, the sun going down so that it fell to the towers on the opposite shore. No message from Ann yet, with her feet set to soak and the TV on. Her feet still so small and so beautiful and that time last winter when they’d lain in bed with the snow falling, the window wide and the snow seen falling, so close under sheets and her foot in his hand, the skin above the heel, his fingers pressed softly and the moan that came from her, so slight and so thin, slipped out with silk around his neck. 

A dizziness bloomed there and he worried about the dreams that had been going on for the past nights, the past week. It was hard to say for sure. He’d had them as a child and when they came then it was always at the onset of a fever. There was no fever now but it was hard to sleep.

 “I’m just waiting near the building.”

“Is it cold?” she asked with her voice soft on the line.

“It’s not too cold, still quite warm. Warm enough.”

“I was watching TV,” she told him.

“Anything good?” he asked.

“Nothing you’d miss.”

There were noises there, behind the familiar tones which came out from the cold screen against his ear. He asked her if she had eaten and she told him she had. He thought he heard a laugh but he might’ve been wrong. There was the TV in the background and the sounds of the building site coming into his other ear, the men high above working and the noise of their tools cracking into the newly built walls. It sounded like dogs, the hammers on the stone, barking dogs but hard to be sure.

“I’ll come back as soon as I’m finished,” he reassured her.

“That’s sweet but there’s no need to rush.”

“I know, but I’ll be back soon.”

“I might be asleep when you get back.”

“It won’t be late.”

The sound of the TV buzzed a man’s voice, too faint to clearly hear. “I’m feeling a bit tired, I may be asleep.”

“It won’t be late.”

He leant his weight against a railing and felt for the packet of cigarettes in his pocket. A delicate headache with the smoke gone up. She knew he loved her, she wouldn’t forget.

The dreams were not really there when he slept, more in that hour when the light outside had sunk away, before the lights of the room were switched on, when the things in his bedroom were hard to see, when they could disappear at any moment. The TV, the window, the doorway, all of them at any second flickering out of view. Then it happened that he didn’t understand the sizes of things, as if his whole vision was smaller than the thing he was looking at. It gave him a headache as he thought of it then and he looked at the laces on his shoes, neat and tied, until his headache went away.    

That morning he’d looked at the artist’s paintings, a coffee-table sized book he’d got from his editor. Pages of pictures of tall buildings, one after the other, each time he turned over they rose up, seemed like photographs but the artist had painted them all. Impressive, this city which he’d lived, metaphorically lived, for the past decade, one he’d invented completely from the ground up. There were streets, alleys, highways, all lined with the buildings so detailed and the shapes of trees arranged in rows along the pavements, perfectly spaced. There was a constant haze, the sun a faint smudge hung behind curtains of smog, but always there, on every page. The Idiot Sun, the book was called. He guessed that was why, and he moved for an hour along those streets, the heat of the morning coming over him as he stared into the windows and brushed against the doorways. He turned from one street into another, across the pages from end to end, but not one person did he meet on his way.

It was different before. The early paintings were all portraits. The artist would have friends sit for him, contemporaries. These were what had given him the first big prizes. He’d been so disarming in his studies, so sincere. They were beautiful in the way the eyes would be, like looking at the real thing. He’d liked those when he was young, Ann as well. When they were younger he’d bought her a print by the artist, one of a woman gazing straight out to the viewer with this look on her face, looking like she was staring into the sea, at least that’s what he’d made of it. She’d hung it in their bedroom, so much had she liked it, and after they’d made love and after he’d finished he’d lain and looked at this woman’s face with her eyes so dark and her skin so clear. But the artist’s style had changed. The people of his portraits had become buildings, now that was all they were, pages of buildings, rows of streets. That’s all there was.

The woman behind the desk had her eyes pinned on him the moment he walked through the door.

            “If you go to the top floor, you’ll find him there.”

So he smiled politely and moved to look towards the room behind. He could feel the woman’s gaze on the back of his head as he walked into what he guessed was the corridor to the lift, the walls lined with pale frames containing blank spaces, completely white, and he took a second to see what was there. They’d caught his eye, with five minutes still on his watch, five minutes to kill he didn’t have to rush.

As he moved closer to one of the pale frames he could vaguely see what was there in that space. It seemed nothing but white, a white rectangle in a pale white frame, but as he walked forward he could make out the details of what seemed to be a mountain; a light grey peak coated with snow that stretched far up towards the top of the painting. A curious effect, a few feet for it to go from nothing to this. Invisible at a distance, the lines of the painting were very faint and the image could only be seen when examined closely. At the bottom lay what seemed to be a wooden cabin surrounded by the outlines of trees. He looked towards the cabin, through the small window set into the wall.

It was impressive, the detail, unseen before, and moving to the next painting he again peered at the white expanse. This time the sight that came to his eyes was of an interior, seemingly a room of someone’s house, three figures he thought. The walls of the room were ornate, with curving pillars, a high ceiling. There was a window in the centre of the room although he wasn’t able to make out what could be seen through it. Of the figures one seemed to be sleeping, or at least lying down on some form of sofa, while the other two seemed to be engaged in a sexual act. His eyes widened as he took in the scene. One of the figures was lying atop the other, the thinness of its waist leading up to the curves of its chest. The figure’s head was turned away from him, but he could see the figure beneath grasp the buttocks of the one above, the fingers pressed into the skin and the slight shade that lay beneath. The other figure was lying peacefully; separate from the others, its body looking up towards the ceiling of the room. He took a few steps backward, his soles softly pattered on the marble floor, and with the steps he took the image faded into a pale blankness. The woman at the desk was looking at him still and from that distance her eyes seemed like small dark stones.

The electric light of the lift cast its dimness as he rose; a glass window in front for him to see the whole city spread out, the streetlights running out far below into orange spider legs. Ann had once come with him to the top of the Gherkin and he’d waited there for ages for her to say something. She’d stood there looking so beautiful and she never said a single word. He’d bought her flowers and she held them in her arms with the colours all against her.

            It was wrong to hate her.

The artist was sat on a brown leather sofa. His arms outstretched, his eyes half closed. Motioning for him to take a seat opposite the journalist sat with his recorder out and rested it squat on the glass table between them. It was clear to him then that the artist had been drinking. The smell came over heavily, it wasn’t like he was sat that far away, but the strength of it stung, whiskey he guessed, Islay he hoped.

“Would you like a drink?”

The bottle was poured before the journalist had uttered a peep.

They talked for about half an hour, about the book of paintings that he’d looked at that morning, about the tower-blocks the artist had painted. The artist spoke slowly; the words coming out like a piece of string tied one end to each of them, slack in the middle. The journalist told the artist about the print he’d bought all those years ago, the one he’d hung on the bedroom wall. He smiled as he remembered, about how the eyes were so real and the look on the woman’s face. How she looked out to sea, searching the waves as they rose and fell, creases unending and he’d looked at the print as he lay there in bed with Ann turned to sleep, her thigh against his, the warmth bleeding in and he looked at the woman with her face so clear, her eyes so dark, with the snow falling outside, down past the window.

Why had he stopped painting portraits?

He was offered another drink and he smiled and tilted his glass so that what little was left pooled into the side. The artist poured the bottle and the journalist watched his hands, older than his own, the fingers wrinkled into rows of lines that forked and met. So deep those groves that he felt like he was wilting into the nightmares he’d had, in the dark of his bedroom with the sizes unsure and he blinked his eyes and he stared down at his shoelaces, not missed by the artist who asked if he was okay, if he was fine. Maybe a fever was coming, his head wasn’t warm but it was hard to be sure. He told him he was a national treasure, that’s what people had said. He asked him how it felt.

“It’s a compliment, I guess.”

“Well it must be nice.”

“If people want to say these things about me then it’s their business,” the artist said calmly, his voice like thin bamboo and a cough rising in his throat until it echoed out across the space of the flat. “If they want to say nice things then I can hardly complain.” The artist smiled and drank at his glass.

“It’s good whiskey,” the journalist said.

“Finest there is.”

He himself breathed and drank, the glass hard against his bottom lip.

“Why did you stop painting portraits?”

The artist shrugged and told him that they were hard to make. He would make them if he still could.

“I couldn’t get people right.”

The artist coughed again. He craned his neck to one side, then to the other.

“Do you ever go to the coast?” he asked.

“Sometimes.”

“There was a time when I had this girlfriend. We hadn’t known each other long but she knew about my paintings, she was a friend of a friend,” the artist rubbed the area around his left eye with the knuckles from his left hand, “we went to this place on the coast. I used to go there when I was a boy. The place had changed so much.”

The artist leant further back against the sofa, his face sagging below the cone of light from the halogen bulb above them.

 “They’d put up all these new towers, all of them there. I used to have this little place to stay with a great view of the sea, but with all the building work you couldn’t catch a glimpse of it. And that was fine and all; I didn’t have much I could do about it. But I watched the people there do their building work and I felt calmer looking at those walls and ceilings than I did looking at my girlfriend. When you look at a building you’re more honest with yourself. It’s exterior from top to bottom.”

The artist rose and passed over to a pile of canvases stacked up against the wall, he took a second to sift through them before removing a small frame. The artist showed him the picture of his old girlfriend. She looked a lot like the woman in the print him and Ann used to have on their old bedroom wall. Certainly from a distance it would be easy to mistake it for the one in his memory. The painting was framed in the same way, the light was similar too, but this woman’s eyes were not so dark, were not so deep. The shape of her face was rigid in the way the harsh angles rose broadly from her chin to her cheeks, closer perhaps to scaffolding in the way it fixed resolutely to the boarders of the canvas.

“That was the last portrait I painted.”

 Staring at the picture of the woman the journalist pictured her blue eyes becoming a reflection of the sky, two glass windows pulled open to reveal a corridor lit by lights which hung from the ceiling in ornate casings.

“Do you know where she is now?”

The artist shrugged. “We didn’t know each other for long.”

Looking through the woman’s open eyes the journalist felt as if he was moving step by step along rows of doors with pale wooden frames. He tried his hand but each door was locked, each one barred. The journalist looked at the woman’s face, thought about it hung up on his bedroom wall instead of the print he’d had with Ann when they’d first lived together. He sat on the side of the bed with her sleeping by his side, her feet so soft, seen by him, caught by the gaze of the woman forever framed above, her feet so soft and the skin so close to him that he couldn’t begin to know how to grip it.

The artist asked if he wanted to get some air, he said he was looking a little green, and so finishing what was in his glass the journalist stood and followed him up and away. They walked to a set of elevator doors in one of the walls of the flat. The metal doors opened and they stepped inside. Soon they were on the roof where the air was still warm, warm enough and it seemed so open and so fresh for him there with the whole city down below them like that. Out here he could see how old the artist truly was, his hair blown by the faint wind so that it seemed light across his scalp. The wind blew soft but it came steady over the two men, the white strands of the artist’s hair seeming like smoke that clung unsteady to his scalp. By now the artist was starting to stumble, his legs weak and unsure and the journalist placed his hand under his arm for support, the bone hard and clear through the material of the jacket. The artist turned back, the waft of booze that came from his lips made the journalist wince and he almost dropped the old man as they turned to the edge of the roof.

Below was the city, the blocks that spread in clusters like limbs, the lights dotted unevenly and the roads far below like vessels of blood, the red lights of cars moving little by little, forward and out in small steel bubbles and he thought of the foot-spa, Ann’s feet sunken in the quivering water, her toes a mirage. He remembered the other man, the other man who had touched those feet; how she’d let his fingers, younger than his own, run their path from the tip to the heel. He thought of her blue eyes becoming a reflection of the sky, two glass windows pulled open to reveal a corridor lit by lights which hung from the ceiling in ornate casings. He imagined her eyes open, and he passed through their entrances. He moved step by step past the rows of doors with pale wooden frames, the carpet reaching along to the metal shutters as he waited there patiently for the lift to come. Encased in steel he rose with the floors passing one by one until he reached the top where, with tentative steps, he could peer from the edge and see the whole city spread out, the forms of towers stood there like ghosts and the sun above a faint mark in the haze.

He held her in his arms, she’d been honest and it was her after-all who had come to him. He’d held her and he’d kissed her forehead and she was so sorry and he knew, he knew.

 He travelled back down through the building, he’d looked at every archway, every corridor, he searched desperately, frantic to find her there but all was empty, no sound no echo.

“The city you’ve painted. It’s just walls and glass?”

 “No. I wouldn’t say that. Ah, there’s stairs and shafts, streets and pavements. There’re empty rooms but that doesn’t mean people don’t live in them.”

The artist had undone his fly and had pulled out his penis, before the journalist could say a word, before he could raise his hands and politely protest a stream of liquid shot out and away from the edge of the roof. The artist put his finger to his lips and made a gesture that said it was all okay, that it was something he did. The journalist watched it flow. The distance was impressive, maybe only the height, and the journalist felt sorry for the people below upset by the sudden rain. A river of fire, a shower of sparks.

“It’s more heartfelt. More sincere.”

On the way out he stopped once more at the corridor, the receptionist looking at him through the archway which hung over their heads. She had her hand ready at the button to open the doors, but he let her wait. He took his time and stared again at the white pictures which lined the walls. The mountain with its snow covered peak, it must have been made with the finest of pencils. Such delicate lines and he traced the path from the cabin into the forest. He took a step back and it vanished from view. He moved towards the picture of the room, peering at the ornate walls with their arches and curves coming out of the blank canvas, the bodies on the floor, the hands grasping the other from beneath; on its knees with the soles of two small feet open to the air, the toes tucked tightly under the thighs of the other. The slender neck of the figure arched back, its hand desperate against its chest. A hollowness in his stomach again and he felt unsteady, the fever definitely coming, the whiskey through his veins. He looked at the figure on the sofa, only half-seen in the white space, its head looking away from the others, up towards the arches that curved from the walls to the ceiling.    

            “Who made these?” he asked, calling out weakly to the receptionist further down the corridor.

            She leaned her head to see what he was talking about. Seeing him point at the pictures on the wall she shrugged her shoulders.

            “Do you want me to let you out now?”

He walked into a flower shop near the station, the colours of the blooms bright against the light green walls and the fluorescent lights hung above in strips. He looked at a pre-prepared bunch which lay in a small bucket of water, tulips.

            “I’m on my way home.”

            “I’m going to get ready for bed.”

            “I won’t be long.”

            “How was the interview?”

            His right hand was in his jacket pocket and he wrapped his fingers around the recorder with its buttons resting snuggly.

            “It was okay,” he said.

He thought about the white hair, the skin of the artist in the night air as they’d stood on the roof of the building. The wind had come over them and he was afraid that at any moment it could lift the man he’d supported by the arm and carry him away.

He could hear the TV on in the background still, someone laughing, an audience probably, probably. He could walk for a while longer, the night was still warm, there was no need to rush. His wife yawned and made a pleasant hum.

            “I’m just so sleepy, and it’s an early start for me tomorrow.”

            “Ah yes.”

            “I’ve just brushed my teeth. I’ll be asleep when you get back.”

            “I won’t be long.”

            “I’ll probably be asleep.”

            “I’ll try not to wake you.”

He paid for the tulips and held them tightly in the palm of his hand as he walked across the road to the entrance of the station. He would leave them for her in a vase of water. He would leave them for her so that when she woke and walked into the kitchen she would see them there and knew he had thought about her. 
He thought again about the floors of the building all rising up into the dark, the walls torn down and the ceilings left to float. What would be left then? The rooms all open.

The time they looked over the city together and had walked down by the river, they’d sat on a bench and hadn’t said a word to each other. She’s held the flowers, the colours all against her.

He felt his forehead, warmer now, and as he sat on the train he looked through the book, The Idiot Sun, with its pages of buildings rising out of the white haze. He walked through those streets, his feet tracing their way forward against the pavement, looking up at the rows of windows hung above his head. The towers rose higher than he could see. Their true size unsure to him, and he felt soon unable to grasp the wooden frames of the doorways, the glass planes of the windows which all looked out to him there stood alone in the road.

And he sat in the seat with the train rocking gently left and right.
And his eyes felt heavy looking at the pictures of buildings that the people had built.