Alan Isler The Living proof (pdf)

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red, heart-shaped tin, and in it was a lock' if that is the word
- of her pubic hair, neady tied with a thin pink ribbon. I was
overwhelmed by a complex of emotions at the time, and even
now, forty years on, I find myself much moved by the memory.
'There's Stan,' I said, as indeed it was. Stan to the rescue! He
stood peering at us through the teashop window, an idiotic gap-
toothed grin on his face, over his shoulder a dark-green book
bag of a sort much favoured at that time by Ivy League under-
graduates.
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Once Stan was seated, I signalled our waitress. 'Two cream
teas,' I said, indicating my guests. When asked, they chose the
same leaf, or rather Saskia chose and Stan concurred. 'I'll just
have a Perrier,' I said. (How the habits of childhood persist!
Refusing to eat was the way I used to punish Mumsy.)
'I've been reading Trelawny on Sargent,' Stan said. 'What a
load of cobblers!'
'Cobblers, Stan?' I said, as if astonished.
'It's cockney rhyming slang. I thought you'd know it,' said
Stan triumphantly. 'Cobblers' awls, balls?'
'Oh, I know it, Stan, I know it.' My pomposity was absurd.
'But it's rather "low", don't you think? I had thought of you, a
Professor of English, as a guardian of the language. You know
what Defoe had to say about slang, don't you?'
' "A frenzy of the tongue, a vomit of the brain"?'
Sometimes, Stan could surprise one.
He reached into his book bag and took out a bright-red base-
ball cap, the kind that is now ubiquitous, but was then only
beginning to appear in Great Britain. He put in on his head.
'What d'you think of it?' It sported the logo of the London
Underground, under which were the words MIND THE GAP. 'Got
it on Oxford Street.'
'Terrific, Stan,' said Saskia warmly. 'Looks great on you.'
'The trouble is, Stan,' I said, my voice oozing patient kind-
ness, 'people might wonder, looking at your head, whether the
gap is between your ears. I rather think that's the point of the
joke.'
Stan's jaw dropped. His eyes looked from Saskia to me with
a beagle's misery.
Saskia was furious. She got to her feet. 'Take me back to our
hotel, Stan. I don't feel well.'
Christ, I'd done it again! I suppose I thought of myself as
Hyperion to a satyr. Look here upon this picture, and on this.
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She was supposed to see the differences between Stan and me,
my obvious superiority to him, physically, intellectually, the
works. She saw the differences all right, and while hairy Stan
might be the satyr, he was welcome. And as for Hyperion, if
that was my chosen role, then I was, in her view, more than a
little o'erparted.
Stan took off his cap. 'Maybe I can give it to Jake?'
'Stan!' said Saskia.
He stood and ruefully held out his hand to me. 'Look, it's
been great. But Saskia, well, you know . . . Sorry to leave like
this. Let's keep in touch.'
As they moved towards the door, I heard Saskia clearly. ' No,
Stan, forget it. No underground. We're gonna take a taxi.'
" " "
STILL, WHO IS THE 'REAL' STAN KOPS? What if the bullet wound
he sustained in the porno emporium had resulted in his death.
And what if, almost unimaginably, some misguided biographer,
enough time having passed since the obligatory obituaries, inter-
ment and memorials, was setting about the Stan Kops story. He
would, in the course of things, want to interview all those still
living who knew him, myself included. But each of us has his
own experience of the man, each his own refashioned memo-
ries. Besides, each of us has a self-image he wishes to project
and protect. How we see ourselves determines how we choose
to see others. What a hotch-potch of misinformation, what a con-
fusion of varied viewpoints, the hapless biographer would garner
from us!
In any case, the biographer himself is not a tabula rasa. He will
pick and choose from the rubbish tip he has accumulated those
cast-off wares he deems significant, selecting whatever accords
with his own slant on things. Nor will he hesitate to burnish
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the odd item here, repair and reshape the odd item there, until
he has an array that not only pleases him, but justifies his under-
taking. Still, his Stan Kops would not be mine or Saskia's or
Teitelbaum's or anyone else's. All biographers exploit their sub-
jects to some extent by reinventing them. The past cannot be
undone; nor, for that matter, can it be completely known. I'm
not talking now only of the grand events over which serious
historians pore, but also of those vivid memories of the past, the
memories of quite ordinary events, those that fill the minds of
plain and undistinguished people. Where, we should wonder, lies
the truth?
* " *
IN 1975 NEITHER STAN NOR ENTWISTLE had any knowledge of
one another - or so I then thought. The British Art Institute in
the Strand was showing an Entwisde retrospective to which, during [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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