One Is The Loneliest Number That You’ll Never Do

Xenia Cage, Wife of John

DT

I gather at one of your husband’s performances you smashed a Lime Ricky bottle into a can of already broken glass. Do you remember that?

XC

What a very odd way to begin an interview. I thought you might have at least given some perspective on my work and long career. After all, you summoned me to this, this rather drab yet familiar place, wherever it is. As it happened yes I did. It became a cause celebre and was spoken of for some time and

Before you continue, what on earth is a “Lime Ricky”?

Surely you can’t be serious my dear boy.

Well as I am from Australia my familiarity with American culture is derived largely from television, literature and cinema. Suffice to say I have never been to America, nor have I had any desire to do so.

That is a shame and if I may say, you could extend your knowledge of the world by spending some time there. I am happy, even though I have not the slightest idea who you are, to recommend the best people and places to contribute to your, well your clearly wanting education of the world.

Thanks but no thanks.

Well as you are from the antipodes it is, well, no surprise at all that you have no desire to see the real world.

How culturalIy superior of you “dearie”. And suffice to say I don’t feel chastened in the slightest, if that was your purport. So to riposte in like fashion, I note you have a Facebook page which seems to be always empty. You are named as a “public figure”. It has one like. And I should note it wasn’t me.

That is so much gibberish. I have absolutely no knowledge of this “Facebook” of yours. Never heard of the term.

I was led to believe that wraiths like yourself possessed a total knowledge of the world, of the past and the present and the future to come. I gather it is a consequence of crossing from from the world above dust to the “land” of the dead.

I beg your pardon. What on earth do you mean?

You don’t know. How interesting.

*

Xenia Cage was a painter a sculptor with affinities to surrealism. She collaborated with artists such as Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp, as well as designing a chess table for a set designed by Max Ernst. She materialises in this séance as fluttering curtains in an impeccably realistic facsimile of her New York apartment of the 1940s. Unlike other spectres from previous séance interviews, such as Nick Tosches or Lester Bangs, her transition to the astral plane is resolved by her complete and implicit belief in the habitus that she is alive.

Madame Cage may I tell you a few things about your good self?

I can’t see what you could possibly know of my life. And even if I countenanced such a thing, not that I ever would stoop to, you would have to explain yourself and that assertion.

Which assertion, exactly, do you mean.

The one of my “death”.

Sarcasm doesn’t become you and there’s no need for scare makes. I shall be blunt about it. You passed away in 1995. September the 26th to be precise.

I really tire of this preposterous charade. Tell me immediately who are you.

I’m a mere scribbler.

The tone and tenor of this “discussion” suggests presumption. And certainly not on my part.

Well you must, as I presume you do, understand that it is the interviewer’s privilege to compose the tenor of a discussion, shape topics and, yes, sometimes ask difficult and potentially uncomfortable questions. Furthermore

I shan’t apologise for interrupting your… well, rather blunt attempt to describe the genre of “interview”, but you would do well to do some research on how it is done, especially on the etiquette of not insulting your subject. May I suggest Mr Andy Warhol’s publication of the same name?

Oh, how delightfully tuned in you are. In fact, as Andy would say, “gee”.

I beg your pardon?

Never mind.

*

In a 2013 sugswritersblog there is a thread on thirty-one influential women artists of the twentieth century. You are listed at number twenty out of thirty. Furthermore

[Interrupts] I have no idea what or whom you are talking about. What is this “sugswritersblog” of which you speak? I simply know nothing of it.

Then I take it as given that you also know nothing of Suggsy from Madness.

I beg your pardon? You are speaking complete gibberish.

That’s my point. Anyway, do you want to know who came in at number one?

Oh do tell I’m simply dying of anticipation.

Gypsy Rose Lee.

Now if you are trying to insult or unnerve me, yet again, you are doing a very good job. Gypsy was a dear friend. A very fine burlesque dancer, cabaret artiste and chanteuse. I think it time to put a stop to this preposterous farrago. In fact I can hear my husband calling me.

Husband?

Of course, dear John.

You were divorced in 1946. It is now 2020. I think that it is a bit presumptuous to invoke him as your “husband”. But having said that, following your intimation, did you feel overshadowed by his success and notoriety?

Well I think you are being demeaning. As a strong woman of the past and present I have wilfully given my time and patience to your provocative and, dare I say it, sometimes bullish and oblique questions. Indeed I’m loathe to grace them with any response at all.

I did not mean to offend, provoke or insult you. Well not unintentionally anyway.

[Silence]

Now Madame Cage in the aforesaid incident that culminated your husband’s First Construction in Metal you are credited as “female performer”. Why were you unnamed?

Well it was a minor gesture, hardly worth mentioning. Anyone could have done it. That would have been John’s point.

But you were his wife.

[Cage fades to grey and disappears]

*