the start of a long campaign of relentless demand. Manuela (P.’s mother’s name) sleeps constantly and only wakes to blow little bubbles at the purse of her lips and take a little milk.
8th June 1951, Tangier
I run into C. in the Bar La Mar Chica, which has become a late-night haunt of aristocrats and other beauties. They press money on to Carmella, who beguiles the air with the horrors of her armpits, and pay no attention to her partner, Luis, who is a much better dancer. I have not seen C. since the incident with the boy in my studio. Things have not gone well for him. He is drunk and ugly. He looks drained and sucked out. The anarchy of depravity has bitten back and taken great chunks from him. He unleashes a tirade against me in English for the benefit of the onlookers. ‘Behold — Francisco Falcon, artist, architect, contrabandista and legionnaire. The master of the female form. Did you know, he once sold a picture to Barbara Hutton for one thousand dollars? No, not a picture, a drawing. A little scratching of charcoal on paper and a thousand notes fluttered down on his head.’ I sit back. It is harmless, but C. has his audience now and rises to it. He knows they’re the sort who don’t want Luis but Carmella, and he rewards them. ‘But let me tell you about Francisco Falcon and his deep understanding of the female form. He is an impostor. Francisco Falcon knows nothing of the female form, but he is an expert on boys — oh yes, let me tell you of the bums and cocks he has savoured. These are his real speciality and I should know, because he used me as his pimp …’ At this point Luis ventures over and tells him to shut up. I am white with rage but cool to the touch. C. does not shut up but launches into a final bitter tirade which ends on the occasion of my wedding night. Luis grabs him and hauls him from the bar. They do not return. I leave, followed by the audience who assume that, having seen the dirt, they will now smell the blood. Luis has taken C. away and, despite feeling capable of tearing up palm trees, I walk calmly home.
12th June 1951, Tangier
C. has been found dead in his rooms in the Medina, his head bludgeoned to an unrecognizable pulp. The boy whose nose he had broken in my studio was found with the body and blood on his clothes. He’s charged with the murder. This is the ultimate end of the sensualist — the kiss no longer satisfies, the touch is too delicate and so in time only a slap will do and then a punch and finally, down comes the cudgel.
18th June 1951, Tangier
I have decided to spend the summer months here in the studio. The house is in an uproar and stinks of caca and milk. The air is full of idiot talk. I’d rather lie here drowsy beneath my net, the world vague beyond, with only the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer to punctuate my day. His calls seem to come from the belly and resonate in his chest before issuing forth from his mouth — more plaintive than any of Luis’s flamenco. The sound always comes from silence and its eerie spirituality needs no translation. Five calls a day and I’m moved every time.
2nd July 1951, Tangier
At one of the rare lunches I attend these days P. asks me what I am doing. I go into a long diatribe about painting the muezzin’s call as an abstract skyscape and she interrupts. She has heard malicious gossip of depraved goings on. It seems that the proceedings in the law courts have penetrated her baby world. She probes and I am like a live oyster whose cold clammy world winces under the intrusions of her teasing blade. I ask her to visit my studio and see the work I am doing. I convince her of my ascetic life. She is satisfied that I am serious. I am such a monster … or at least so Paco thinks. He giggles and clasps my huge head as I feed on his tiny, tight belly. He knows no fear, this little fellow.
5th July 1951, Tangier
I wake up in a stupor with some Mohammed or other lying by my side and P. knocking on the door down below. I send him up to the roof and let her in. I make tea. She asks to see my work. I am evasive because I have nothing to show. She touches me in a way that lets me know that she has not come here with this in mind. I am spent after a whole afternoon at play and I am dirty, too. She becomes irritable as I procrastinate and spills scorching mint tea on my bare foot, so that I hop about and the boy on the roof lets out a blurt of laughter, which I hope she doesn’t hear. She leaves soon after.
26th August 1951, Tangier
I glance back over the years, flicking through these journals, and am aghast at the revelations. I now hope they will never be read. If I attain any sort of fame from my work and these diaries come to light, what will it do to the classification of my genius? They have become confessions, not diaries. These aren’t the noble notes one would expect of an exhausted master but rather the tawdry jottings of a depraved rascal. I think I must be smoking too much and not spending enough time in lively company, although where I should find that I don’t know. That American Paul Bowles I mentioned earlier has had some success with a book which I haven’t troubled myself to read. I try to find him, but he’s always away. I go to Dean’s Bar, but it is full of drunks and reprobates with not one idea between them. The rest are tourists who have other things to think about. I have failed to keep up with my contacts from B.H.’s world. C.B. is not here. I give up on society.
I hear from C.B. that he has sold two of my pieces to wealthy women in Texas. The cheque is substantial, he tells me, but I had been hoping for a space in MOMA. He tries to pacify me by saying that Picasso once told him that ‘Museums are just a lot of lies,’ which is easy to say when you hang in the best of them in every country of the Western world.
17th October 1951, Tangier
R. tells me that G. is pregnant again. He is both happy and terrified after the last occasion. I am amazed how this monument to ruthlessness can be reduced to the softness of dough. He quivers at the memory of her suffering. When I tell P. about the pregnancy she looks at me with longing and I realize why she came to my studio in July.
8th February 1952, Tangier
R. has sold all our boats to various competitors and they have paid the top market price. He has also emptied the warehouses and rents them out to the same people who bought the boats. I am astonished, but he assures me that the smuggling business has peaked, that negotiations are underway between the US and Spain. The Americans want to build bases to counter the perceived Soviet threat. Franco will let them in because he wants to stay in power. There will be a trade link.
20th April 1952, Tangier
G. went into labour and it was much worse than before. The complications were such that the doctors even asked R. who they should save, wife or child. He chose G. because he could not live without her. Having decided this G. rallied and the baby was delivered, apparently unscathed. This brush with near tragedy brings P. and I closer and we go back to the old days and rediscover some of our passion. She comes to the studio in the afternoons and I work and lie down with her. The paintings are better than before, but they still haven’t recaptured that lost moment.
18th November 1952, Tangier
At a reception in the Hotel El Minzah I meet Mercedes, the Spanish wife of an American banker. Her husband had bought my work at C.B.’s gallery in NY and so she knows me like an old friend. After her years in America, she comes across as very modern, not the typical Spanish woman from across the straits. I ask her to my studio and she arrives the next day in a chauffeur-driven Cadillac, which she sends away. I make tea. She braces herself against the verandah rail and looks out to sea. She has a boyish figure, narrow hips, small breasts and slim muscular legs. I show her some abstract Tangier landscapes I have been doing, which she notices have cubist elements from Braque floating in blazing bands of colour, as she’s seen in Rothko’s work in NY. I am taken with her intelligence. We are drawn to each other and it isn’t long before I find out what that taut little body, or rather, mind, is capable of. There is a wickedness in the workings of it. As she reaches her moment she goes into frenzy where
