True Story

Once upon a time I met a young painter, a male, in the capital. I was in my early to mid-twenties and it was at a party given, I seem to remember, by a girl who was studying anthropology at the time, though I do not remember where. (It's strange what we remember: I don't know her name, or can't remember it, but know for example she was wearing a bright emerald green sweater.) Anyway, I got on well with this painter and made a note of his telephone number. He said he was crossing the ocean some time soon and that we should definitely keep in touch. This we in fact did. We not only kept in touch, we met up soon afterwards in the capital again and stretched some canvas onto a large frame, primed it, and set about doing a collaborative work of art - tri-laborative, really, as a girl added some background to it too. Anyway, my new painter friend drew several figures and faces in distinctive black, white and grey, though mostly grey, and I wrote many words across and within it, perhaps a total of five or six hundred - seemingly random words but in fact more considered than that. The completed stretched canvas lay against a long white-painted brick wall in the room I rented in what was a converted timber warehouse, and home for me after coming back from a war, for at least six months. The piece would stare at me when I went to sleep at night and still be staring at me when I got up again in the morning. A good six more months passed - all very tidy - and I had crossed the ocean myself again. Well, for only the second time in my life. The painting had travelled too but not with me - the painter had arranged its safe passage to his wonderfully credible turp-smelling studio in the city of scraped skies alone. A few months later, it was to me rather like meeting up with two old friends again - the painter and the painting. Another year later and there was an auction in an old club in a decrepit looking building. The derelict street was misleading - art was selling sometimes literally by the bucket and the scene was rich with cash. Our piece sold, though I did not know the person who bought it. It sold for quite a lot. Yet another year later, I was invited to someone's loft for a dinner party and there on the bare brick wall again was the piece. I kept quiet - there were about twenty people at the dinner - but I did hear someone shortly after the first course ask about it. The owner, our host, whom I did not really know, said the name of the painter - the man I had met at that party in the capital. Someone else expressed surprise and said they did not know he used words in his art. Oh yes, said the owner, knowingly, he's really a writer.