She still had the suit she made.
There was a wardrobe off a skip in a corner. She went to the wardrobe. It had a special padded hanger.
May I see?
The Italian guy was standing at her shoulder.
She said: Yeah, OK, why not.
It was a suit in a scratchy woollen cloth. It was a dirty mustard brown. You did not get to choose what you would make up, it was a chance for the dressmaker to get rid of fabric she could not use, other places treated the apprentices better, she had heard. The suit had buttoned epaulettes and cloth straps with a button at the cuffs and a cloth half belt, and pockets with buttoned flaps, and of course a lining, and self-covered buttons. It had piping in dark brown. It had three semi-pleats above each breast, each set interrupted by a pocket. It hung on its hanger, this baleful garment that no one would ever wear because of the hatefulness of the cloth and the cut and the straps and the stitching, and all this time the garment had been locked up in a wooden coffin with no one to look at its madness.
He said: Ma che brutto!
He said: Take it over to the light.
In the white light of the studio the sullen mustard wool, the psychotic stitching, the brutal dowdiness snarled at the world.
He said: Madonna!
He said: When was it made?
She said: 1962.
He said: Can you still do this?
She said: I don’t do this any more.
He said: I want this.
She said: It’s not for sale.
He said: I want 20 of these.
She said: I am not a dressmaker.
He said: No no no! Who would wear such a monstrosity? What do you take me for? No. You are an artist. I will give you £1,000 apiece.
She said: I might be able to do one more.
He said: That’s not enough. I want to have a show. I need another 19.
He said he would have a show in his gallery in Milan.
He said: The paintings don’t interest me.
He said: You’ll get the normal terms, 50% split, the 20 grand is up front.
She said maybe she could find someone to help her and he said No. It’s got to be you or the deal is off. You know you can’t find someone to do this kind of work.
He said: Will you be able to find —
No, we go look for the stuff together.
Maybe we go to Leipzig, I think, they got a lot of ugly old stuff left from before 89, yeah I bet we can do it.
She did not know what to do because she just couldn’t.
Then Serge came in, he had been down the hall in Danny’s studio schmoozing with a buyer who maybe would take something for his company headquarters. Serge said: Adalberto!!!!!!!! Christ, I’d no idea you were in town.
So maybe you can imagine if five lizards would be in an icebox and somebody would put them up the back of your jumper so they would be crawling up your back with their cold claws, because realistically how many people in the artworld would there be with the name Adalberto —
Adalberto said: Yeah I’m really excited about this piece she did back in the 60s.
At first Serge got excited because of the sale and then he started to be pissy because Adalberto wanted to be the gallerist for the material in Italy so Serge would not get a commission, but Adalberto said No no no we’re not gonna argue this is the most exciting work I’ve seen in a long time but I gotta have a free hand to take it where it needs to go, we’ll work something out, we’re not gonna be assholes about it.
It would never have arisen in the first place if Serge had paid her the £5,000 he owed her from the London Art Fair.
People were coming into the studio and looking at the paintings and all it would have taken was just one to buy just one.
She could tell that Serge was flattered and Adalberto was talking about dinner and she could tell he would bamboozle Serge into agreeing to anything.
Serge was thinking he could make some good contacts, and if he knew the right people he could get some publicity for his next opening, maybe Nick Serota would come, if Nick Serota would come it would be the bees knees.
She was completely skint.
She said she would have to think about it because she was not working in that tradition at all, and Adalberto said Yeah, sure, think about it, I have to go to New York next week so it would be good to go to Leipzig tomorrow so you can do some before I come back.
Adalberto said: Look, let’s not pussyfoot around, I give you £2,500 apiece, that’s 50 grand.
Serge was just standing there completely gobsmacked.
It’s easy to say you can just walk away from it.
They flew first class to Leipzig out of City Airport. It was sort of the way you are always imagining it would be if you would get your lucky break, you know you are sleeping in a sleeping bag on a concrete floor and there is no heating and no loo but you think maybe one day you will be discovered, but meanwhile everybody is poor. If she would have lunch with Serge he would always go somewhere really cheap, and then they would go Dutch. And meantime Serge had given her the scoop on Adalberto, she had heard stories of course but it turned out he was this really hot potato, he was on the committee for the Venice Biennale so if Adalberto would like her work it would be phenomenal.
When they got to Leipzig they took a taxi to this posh hotel. Adalberto said he did not know if they would find what they were looking for in Leipzig, maybe they would have to go deeper, but they would maybe have some luck.
The thing that is famous in Leipzig is the passageways, these arcades. The most famous is the Mädler-Passage, but they have them all over, these passageways between streets that were built to be fashionable places to be seen, with shops selling things that fashionable people would want to buy, well you can imagine how popular that would be in a socialist republic. So they would go down an arcade and out into the street and down another arcade, looking for this thing Adalberto had in his head.
If you would go to East Germany in those days it was still the way it was under the Communists. You would go into a shop and it was like a time warp. A shop would have a little window display and it would be a pair of knickers and a packet of tights. You forget what people used to wear, so if you suddenly see it in a shop window you can’t believe it. You can’t believe that it went on looking completely normal. So they would be drawn into these shops that were not selling what they needed, because it was like a museum.
Adalberto was still wearing the red cowboy boots. He saw all this stuff and he went completely mad. He would see a garter belt in a glass case in a little shop and he would be like a man possessed, he would buy maybe the entire supply of garter belts. He would ask what is the German for this, and it would be a garter belt or an antique pair of knickers or a slip.
Then he would say: We gotta be focussed, we gotta be totally focussed on this, this is gonna be, what is that word, humongous. Estupendous.
Then they found a haberdashers.
It had these bolts of this disgusting beige jersey. Adalberto said: We gotta be focussed. We gotta be totally focussed.
He said: Ask where they keep the suiting materials.
So they went to the back and she thought she would throw up. There were these bolts of woollen cloth.
Adalberto was saying Madonna.