Читать книгу Clear: A Transparent Novel - Nicola Barker - Страница 16

The Insiders must legally submit to being filmed (like I said before), both by the maverick Korine and by the TV people at Sky (who have a million dollar deal and access to Blaine 24 hours a day).

And you know what? The Insiders fucking love that shit. That’s partly why they’re here. They’re dizzy, fuckin’ extroverts. They just wanna come on down, pay homage, dance around, show off and be a part of the fiesta.

Yup.

They’ve brought along their knapsacks and their fold-up chairs, their phones and their cameras. They’ve brought along their binoculars, their banners and their bunches of flowers (the gerbera is currently the Number One flower of Insider choice. I can only guess that this is (a) because of their cheerfully lurid – almost fluorescent – colours, (b) because of the big flower-head, which means that when you poke them through the wire – to suspend them, for David – they stay in place more easily, and (c) because these people are so obvious, so benign, so craven, and the gerbera has exactly that classic child-drawing-a-picture-of-a-flower-style-quality – a visual naïveté – which these credulous folk – in my lofty opinion – would instinctively go for.

Aw.

Blaine – of course – shows a slight preference for the Insiders. These are the fans. These are ‘his’ people.

But he doesn’t ignore the others. Already he has this dazed quality, this exhausted veneer, this kind of ‘wandering focus’. He sees a new face in the crowd, and he smiles, and he weakly lifts his hand. If it’s someone he knows, or a person of colour, or a beautiful woman, he might wave, then do a ‘thumbs up’, then the peace sign. It’s got to the point now where he doesn’t even think about it. It’s totally automatic.

So who’s conforming? That’s what I can’t help wondering. And who are the deviants? The Insiders or the Outsiders? Both? Or neither? Is it all just in the context? i.e. in the world, in general, the Insiders might be considered to be the erratic ones (the hippies, the Art-freaks, the slavish followers – take a straw poll right now, on any major UK high street and the vast majority will still say they think Blaine’s a total madman, a troublemaker, an opportunist, a maniac), but when you’re here (when you’re breathing it), it’s the Outsiders who come off seeming just that little bit buttoned-up (repressed, tight-arsed, scared). They’ve come to stand and to watch, but not to support. Not to commit. Not to take part. They’re the ghosts at the feast (Uh…Or at the starving, so to speak).

Above and beyond everything, the Outsiders seem to feel this overwhelming terror at the prospect of being ‘caught in a lie’. Or of being duped. Or diddled. Or bamboozled. (Blaine cut off his own ear in the pre-publicity for this stunt, didn’t he – in front of dozens of reporters? And it was all just a trick, a joke. He rode on the top of the London Eye, pretending he was risking his life – just like he is now, apparently – but he was actually wearing a harness, all the while. In terms of inductive knowledge – i.e. basing your views on what’s gone before – Blaine’s looking like a pretty poor bet to all those cynical Outsiders down here.)

Seems like the need for real ‘truth’ (whatever that is, in the bleak-seeming aftermath of the Iraqi war) has – at some weird level – become almost a kind of modern mania. Perhaps without even realising, this loopy illusionist has tapped into something. Something big. A fury. A disillusionment. A post-disillusionment (almost). He personifies this sour mood, this sense of all-pervasive bafflement. And he’s American. And what’s even more perplexing is that he’s starting – with the dark skin, the beard growth and everything – to look a tad, well, like an Arab.

He’s the ally and the enemy (which, either way, symbolically, is pretty bad news for the guy).

So is this thing real?

Is it an illusion?

He can’t lie, people are thinking, he’s transparent. And he’s moving. He’s there. He’s not a puppet, an imposter or a hologram. But how can we be sure? How can we possibly believe in a person whose very career (their wealth, their celebrity) is entirely based on casual deception? Even if we wanted to? Even if we needed to? How?

How?