2nd November 1946, Tangier
An American came to see me yesterday. A sizeable piece of humanity. He introduced himself as Charles Brown III and asked to see my work. My English has improved with all the Americans suddenly appearing in the Cafe Central. I don’t want him leafing through my drawings and tell him I have to show properly and to come back in the afternoon. This gives me time to find out from R. that he is the representative of Barbara Hutton, the new Queen of the Kasbah. I set up the work I want to show and when he returns and we enter the room I say: ‘Everything’s for sale, except that one,’ which is the drawing of P.
There’s a rumour that inside the Palace of Sidi Hosni there is a world of wealth beyond even R.’s imagination. Each of the thirty rooms has its own gold mantel clock from Van Cleef & Arpels at a cost of $10,000 a piece. Anybody who spends a third of a million dollars to tell the time can only value things by price alone. ‘She will not buy a drawing from you for $20,’ says R. ‘She doesn’t know how much that is. It’s as little as a centavo is to us.’ I tell him I have never sold a piece in my life. ‘Then you should sell your first piece for no less than $500.’ He gives me the sales technique, which I have put into practice. I follow Charles Brown around the room and talk him through the work, but all I can sense is his desperation to get back to the drawing of P. At the end he asks: ‘Just outa interest, how much is the charcoal drawing of the nude?’ I tell him it’s not for sale. It has no price. He keeps using the phrase, ‘just outa interest’ and I say, ‘I don’t know.’ He goes back to the piece. I play it by R.’s book and don’t go with him but smoke at the other end of the room and look as if I’m amusing myself, rather than what I want to do which is burst like a balloon of water so that all that is left of me is a puddle of gratitude and a bladder.
‘You know,’ he says, ‘this is all very interesting stuff. I like it. I mean that. I like it. The interlocking shapes in the Moorish tradition. The patterned chaos. The bleak landscapes. It all does something for me. But we ‘re not talking about me. I buy for clients. And this is what my clients want. They don’t want the cool intellectual stuff … not the people who come to Tangier. They come for … what shall I call it? … eastern promise.’
‘On the northwest tip of Africa?’ I say.
‘It’s kind of a saying,’ he says. ‘It means they want something exotic, sensual, mysterious … Yeah, mystery is the thing. Why isn’t this for sale?’
‘Because it’s important to me. It’s a new and recent development.’
‘I can see that. Your other drawings are perfect … meticulously observed. But this … this is different. This is so revealing … and yet, forbidden. Maybe that’s it. The nature of mystery is that it shows something of itself, it entices but it forbids the ultimate knowledge.’
Has Charles Brown been smoking, I ask myself. But he is sincere. He pushes again for a price. I don’t give in. He tells me his client has to see the work. I won’t let it out of the house. He finishes our discussion with the words:
‘Don’t worry I’ll bring the mountain to Mohammed.’
He leaves, shaking my damp hand. I tremble with excitement. I am in a sweat and tear off my clothes and lie on the floor naked. I smoke a hashish cigarette, one of the half dozen I prepare for myself every morning. I look at the drawing of P. I am as priapic as Pan and, as if by telepathy, a boy arrives from C. and releases my steam.
4th November 1946, Tangier
I lie in my room in a state of controlled nonchalance for two days. My ear is trained and finely tuned to the faintest knock on the front door. I fall asleep and when the knock comes I burst to the surface like a man freed from a sinking ship. I wrestle with the bolster and try to dress at the same time. I do a comic turn while the houseboy waits at the side of the bed with an envelope. It is he who has prodded me awake. I tear open the envelope. Inside is a gold-embossed card from Mrs Barbara Woolworth Hutton, and in her own handwriting she asks if she may visit Francisco Gonzalez in his home on 5th November 1946 at 2.45 p.m. I show the card to R., who is impressed, I can tell. ‘We have a problem here,’ he says. R. likes problems, which is why he is always creating them. The problem is my name.
‘Name me a Gonzalez who has done anything of note in the world of art,’ says R.
‘Julio Gonzalez, the sculptor,’ I say.
‘Never heard of him,’ says R.
‘He worked with iron — abstract geometric shapes — he died four years ago.’
‘You know what Francisco Gonzalez says to me? It says button seller.’
‘Why buttons?’ I ask, and he ignores me.
‘What’s your mother’s name?’
‘I can’t use my mother’s name,’ I say.
‘Why not?’
‘I just can’t use it, that’s all.’
‘What is it?’
‘Falcon,’ I say.
‘No, no, no, que no … es perfecto. Francisco Falcon. From now on that is your name.’
I try to tell him that it will not do, but I don’t want to reveal more than I have to, so I accept my fate. I am Francisco Falcon and I have to admit it has something … Apart from being alliterative there is a rhythm to it, as there is to Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Antonio Gaudi, even the simpler Joan Miro … they all have the rhythm of fame. They’ve known this for some time in Hollywood, which is why we have Greta Garbo and not Greta Gustafson and Judy Garland not Frances Gumm, never Frances Gumm.
5th November 1946, Tangier
She came as promised and I am completely delirious. I have not smoked this evening so that the diamond brightness of the moment is not lost in the hashish haze. She arrived, escorted by Charles Brown, who is monumental next to her and utterly deferential. I am struck by her extraordinary grace and elegance, the perfection of her dress, the softness of her gloves, which must have come from the underbelly of a five-week-old kid. What I
