Free Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer Page B

wanted to see, never caught a glimpse of Laura.
    At a pay phone, he tried Julia again. This time someone answered.
    ‘Buongiorno.
Hello. Is that Julia Berman?’
    ‘Speaking.’
    ‘Ah, good. My name is Jeffrey Atman. From
Kulchur
magazine.’ At this point she would, ideally, have said, ‘Yes, indeed. How are you?’ Failing that, some kind of encouraging noise – ‘uh-huh’ – would have been helpful. But there was nothing, just the faint sound of breathing, breathing that sounded irritable. ‘I'm sorry to call you out of the blue like this. But not entirely out of the blue, I hope. I think my editor, Max Grayson, has been in touch with you?’ More breathing. ‘About my perhaps doing a short interview with you about, well, about your life and your daughter's record? That kind of thing.’
    ‘What was the name again?’
    ‘Jeffrey Atman.’
    ‘And the magazine?’
    Tempted to say
Razzle
or
Cheeks
, he responded politely and accurately,
‘Kulchur.
With a “k” and a “ch.”’
    ‘I think I do remember something about that.’ Her accent was English, slovenly posh. Jeff waited for her to continue but it was, evidently, his turn to speak again.
    ‘So, um, if it wasn't too inconvenient, could we perhaps do the interview sometime in the next couple of days?’
    ‘When would you like to do it?’
    ‘Whenever and wherever would be convenient for you.’ A gamble, this. There were plenty of times that would be extremely inconvenient for him, but it was part of the etiquette of being an interviewer that you had to let the interviewee call the shots. It made them feel important and being important hopefully made them more amenable – though, in practice, as often as not, it just made them feel even more important, which manifested itself in their being extremely difficult.
    ‘How long would it take?’
    ‘Not long at all, if you're busy.’ He had been doing this kind of thing for long enough to realize that there was noneed to spend hours conducting an interview. You could cut it down to twenty minutes and still have enough quotes to cobble a half-decent piece together – and half-decent was still twice as good as it needed to be. In any case, he had better things to do in Venice than spend his time listening to this old has-been (a euphemism, generally, for a never-was).
    ‘Tomorrow is impossible, so perhaps today. Quite soon. At about four o'clock?’
    ‘Perfect,’ said Jeff, meaning it.
    ‘Could you come here?’
    ‘Yes, certainly. Um, where are you?’ She gave him an address – completely meaningless – and instructions on how to get there.
    Her directions were unambiguous and easy to follow. Having taken a vaporetto from Giardini to Campo d'Oro, Atman arrived at her building exactly on time. He pressed a metal bell, unable to hear if, somewhere within, this action manifested itself as a ring. There was no sound of movement, no footsteps or doors opening. He waited, was about to try again when he heard a lock turning. The door opened. It was so bright outside that he had trouble making out the figure shrouded by the darkness within. As his eyes adjusted he saw long dark hair, threaded with grey, a thin face whose ageing was indicated not by a softening of features but by the skin being stretched more tightly over the skull. She held out her thin hand, asked him to step inside, into the cool. The door clanged behind them. She was wearing a knee-length dress, blue. He followed her up the dark staircase – she was barefoot – to a third-floor apartment. It was large and airy, simply furnished, but he had no opportunity to look around as she led him straight out onto a terrace. There was a small metal table, painted white, and two chairs, shaded by a large canvasumbrella. She asked what he would like to drink. Sparkling water was fine, he said, and she went back inside. The view was of a small canal, and some other apartments, all with their own terraces.
    She returned with a bottle and glasses