Chapter Four
FOUR
Twenty-five years ago, in an entirely different childhood, there was a big sea. The sun shone, the summer was endless, and out into the never-ending clear blue water stretched a fishing pier, and at the end of it sat the best sort of humans. They were fourteen years old, almost fifteen, and not to brag, but Louisa was right: it really was the most excellent fart. One of them let it loose and the friends almost fell into the sea with laughter. That was the moment that became the painting.
If you’ve had people who can make you laugh like that, you never forget it. If not, words are pointless. Either you have smelled a remarkable fart, or you become one of those adults who stands at an auction a quarter of a century later thinking it’s a painting of the sea simply because the painting is called The One of the Sea . Adults really are out of their minds.
Those teenagers? Before they were in the painting they only existed for each other. They had one summer on that pier twenty-five years ago which felt like it was going to last forever, because that’s how all summers must feel when you’re about to turn fifteen, that’s the age when friendship is like joining the mafia: you can’t leave it, you know too much. When you’re fourteen you know every corner of each other, all the weakest and most fragile places, and of course you can’t be allowed to become an adult with all that knowledge, because an adult would never be able to keep secrets like that.
One of the teenagers farted and everyone laughed like crazy. If you only get a few summer days like that you’re truly lucky, if you only find one friend like that you’re insanely fortunate. The pier was so hot that the fourteen-year-olds had to sit on their backpacks to stop their buttocks from getting scorched, and if there were any gusts of wind, they were less cooling than a hair dryer in a crematorium. They were sweating so much that if they went for a swim, the sea ended up saltier, they were so hot that if they burned themselves on a cigarette, the cigarette would scream. And they laughed, dear God, how they laughed, because it was that sort of summer. Their last one together.
Of course it was never supposed to be a painting. The plan was never that anyone would see that signature at the bottom, “C. Jat,” with the skulls next to it. There really wasn’t anyone who thought that fart would become a world-famous fart, and that many, many years later it would be sold at an auction for so much money that even rich old ladies would have raised their eyebrows if they had enough movement left in their faces. The kids on the pier weren’t supposed to be anything at all, they were supposed to be born poor and die poor, because that’s how the world is constructed. They got into fights at school and got beaten at home, they knew exactly how a key sounds in a lock when a father comes home dangerously drunk, they knew perfectly well that they were stupid and worthless because they had been told that the whole way through their childhoods.
And that summer twenty-five years ago? They saw death in those weeks, they were chased and assaulted, they experienced more violence than the people at that art auction twenty-five years later would experience in their whole lives. You aren’t supposed to have any sort of future at all if you grow up that way, you certainly aren’t supposed to end up a world-famous artist, but one day that’s exactly what will happen to one of those teenagers. Because in an ugly place, he was born with so much beauty inside him that it was like an act of rebellion. In a world full of sledgehammers, his art was a declaration of war.
One day one of the other teenagers, a boy named Joar, leaned over the artist’s sketch pad and whispered, as if the whole thing were magic: “Who the hell can draw so you can see what it’s supposed to be? You fucking alien!”
That was the closest Joar got to saying what he really wanted to say: I love you. I hope you know that. So the artist replied:
“Thanks.”
That was the closest the artist got to saying what he really wanted to say to Joar: I love you too. I can’t live without you.
It was Joar who found the competition that started it all. His mom used to take home the newspapers she found in the staff room of the nursing home where she worked, because at the end of the month it sometimes happened that Joar’s old man had to choose between buying alcohol and buying toilet paper, so it was good to have the newspapers. The first day of summer vacation, Joar happened to read an ad in the newspaper before he wiped himself with it, and that changed everything. The following morning he stood on the pier and explained the rules of the competition, which unfortunately wasn’t easy, seeing as he was surrounded by idiots.
“It’s a fucking competition for young artists, and anyone can send in a fucking painting, and they hang the best fucking painting up in a fucking museum!” he explained for perhaps the seventh time, possibly the eighth. “ Now do you get it?”
Naturally his friends understood perfectly well, sometimes they just enjoyed pretending to be idiots because it was so funny when Joar got angry.
“But… what do you have to paint, then?” one of them asked for that very reason.
“You can paint whatever the hell you want! You can paint a goddamn boat!” Joar groaned impatiently.
“But… we don’t have a boat?” was the response.
“Not paint ON a boat, you moron! Paint a picture OF a boat on a… painting canvas! Or whatever the hell it’s called!” Joar snapped.
Then the friend pretended to understand, only to exclaim:
“But I’m not much good at painting boats, Joar.”
“YOU won’t be doing the painting…,” Joar sighed, and then he finally realized that his friends were grinning, so he muttered: “Idiots, you’re all idiots.”
The first person to stop laughing was obviously the artist, his joy never lasted very long, his skin was too thin to keep reality out. He scratched himself all over, he always did that when he was nervous, and then he whispered:
“Can’t we just forget about it, Joar? I can’t paint the way you’re supposed to for competitions like that, they’re for fancy people with money, I can’t—”
Joar interrupted impatiently:
“What do you mean, you can’t? Stop that! You’re a million times better than all those fucking rich kids, you just need to show them! Paint anything, paint the goddamn sea!”
Joar said it with the best intentions, it was just that no one had taught him how to make his words sound like that. He didn’t want to prove to the world how good the artist was, he wanted to prove it to the artist himself. Joar was good at mending engines, because in them he could always see what was broken, but humans are full of crap you can’t see. We break in the invisible parts. So Joar didn’t know how to say that he loved the artist, and instead he roared:
“Just paint! Just win that fucking competition!”
“It doesn’t work like that,” the artist whispered, because he couldn’t explain why he couldn’t breathe, he didn’t have words for why he was so sad that summer.
He scratched himself all over and his eyes darted about, the third boy saw it and did his best to distract the others.
“Paint the sea? Difficult,” the boy said, and this time it was hard to tell if he was playing dumb or if he really was.
“How is it DIFFICULT? It’s just ONE color!” Joar pointed out.
“But it’s so… big. How would we get enough paper?” came the response.
There was a long silence before one of them started to giggle, then all of them broke down laughing. Even the artist, eventually, and when he did, not even Joar could be angry. That was how all the best things started.
They spent the rest of the day throwing stones at each other, telling stupid jokes, and swimming. Out of all the things the artist would paint for the rest of his life, Joar was the hardest, because it was never possible to paint him the way he felt about his friend. When the sun started to go down that summer day, Joar said irritably:
“You need to get away from this fucking town.”
“Don’t say that,” the artist pleaded, but then Joar got angry:
“But you do! The rest of us are screwed, we’re going to have shit lives, but not you, do you hear what I’m saying? Because you’re a goddamn world-famous artist, the world just doesn’t know it yet! Don’t forget that when all the other bastards out there know who you are—we knew you were world-famous first!”
Not to brag, but he was right.
Then they lay on the pier and drank cheap sodas and watched the sunset for free. The summer was still endless and the world-famous artist who wasn’t world-famous yet slowly moved his finger across the sky in the last of the daylight, drawing skulls in the air.
Then he asked one of the other fourteen-year-olds: “Do you think we’ll all still be best friends when we’re grown-up?”
Joar replied calmly: “When we’re grown-up, I don’t think we’ll all be alive.”
Not to brag, but he was right about that too.