Scumbler

by William Wharton

  “For ten francs, I’ll put chickens in the window.”

  “Don’t need any chickens.”

  I prove this by painting a few quick chicken strokes into the window. She still stands there watching me. I try to keep working. There’s a long pause; then she pushes between me and the painting.

  “Why are you painting my store? Why don’t you go paint Notre Dame or some church for the tourists?”

  She’s beginning to bug me. I stare down at her. I can see her scalp through thin gray hair. She’d make a fine painting. When I’m mad or drunk, I speak my best French.

  “Look, lady! I’m a world-famous collector of ugliness. I have a terrible passion for ugly things. I paint pictures of ugly things I can’t buy and move to my castle in Texas. I have a whole museum filled with paintings of the most ugly places in the world. They’re from China, Timbuktu and Cucamonga.”

  She’s paying attention now.

  “This chicken-shit place of yours is my greatest discovery. I’ve never, in twenty years’ searching, found anything more ugly than your store. I’m going to paint it and put this painting at the top of my collection!”

  Her mouth is open. I can see bumpy, hardened ridge where her bottom teeth used to be. She’s staring at me through the whole speech. One eye is slowly dropping to half-mast, like a dead woman’s wink; her eyes are runny cataractal blue. I smile at her. She looks across the street at her store. It’s probably the first time in thirty years she’s actually looked at it. Practically nobody ever looks at anything.

  Her place is truly beautiful, beautiful for a painter. It all runs together; the dirt makes everything fit. The old lady stares at me.

  “Maybe it’s dirty, sir; but it’s not ugly.”

  She backs off, turns and walks up the street. You never know when and where you’ll meet a kindred soul.

  WE TOUCH IN A CAULDRON, TWISTING

  MISSES OF CONCURRENT THOUGHT IN A

  MORASS, A BOILING SOUP. WE’RE ALL

  BETROTHED IN THE SAME BROTH-BREATH.

  Two men in black hats and beards are standing behind me. I’ve been listening with one corner of my mind and they’ve been discussing the painting like connoisseurs. They’re into a long discourse on my use of warm and cool colors to penetrate the plane and establish an illusion of space. They’ve got all the baloney together, very impressive. They both have rosy cheeks, bright eyes and a very healthy look. They look like grown-up altar boys. I reach down to get some more medium. One of these guys speaks in perfect English.

  “Pay no attention to her. She is a dir-ty woman.”

  I look back at him. He has long curly sideburns and a fine fat-cat look.

  “She’s a dir-ty woman and her shop is not kosher. We tell our people never to buy here.”

  “Not kosher?”

  I take a cloth and wipe the word “CASHER” off the window in the painting. They laugh. I get to working again.

  The other guy leans closer; maybe I’ll give him a quick dab.

  “Why do you paint pictures, sir? Do you paint them for money?”

  “It’s the way I try to feed my family.”

  “Yes, but do you get joy from it?”

  What the hell, nobody ever asked me that. I do. I certainly do; boy, do I ever get joy out of it.

  “Yes, much joy!”

  “But, what is the joy in painting buildings?”

  This creep’s right there.

  “Nothing much. Only the joy of making them mine, of having things pass through me; the joy of playing God, screwing some details and chewing up, spitting out others. I enjoy the joy in the great delusion of being alive.”

  I’m into it. I go on and on, painting away, slashing and picking at the color, wet-in-wet. The world is forming under my hands. I’m taking things from out there, bringing them in and pushing them out again, like breathing, panting.

  “Painting’s the joy of kissing, sleeping, sunlight, breathing; and it’s all in this work. I get inside, the outside-inness of an exploding wish. It’s more than joy, more than ecstasy; it’s a soft gliding and turning in midair with complete control.”

  Holy bloomers, I go on and on. I’m making a total ass of myself, bleeding emotion all over the street. I keep thinking they’ll get embarrassed and go away, or laugh, or maybe call the police. I’m not trying to put them on, just turned on myself. What a great question: “Is painting joy?”

  Finally I run down, lean further into the painting. Maybe they’ve already gone; I don’t look back. Then one of them puts his hand on my shoulder.

  “You might well be a religious man, Monsieur le peintre.”

  The two of them walk away up the street. What a wild thing to say; probably means I’m some kind of maniac. That’s for sure. I guess being a maniac and liking it has to be the greatest insult going for all the sane people in the world.

  A WHITE CRY TO THE BRIGHT, SILVER-LINED

  CAPE OF MEANING. A BLACK EDGING TO MAKE

  IT VISIBLE. BUT IT’S BUTTONED TIGHT,

  SMOTHERED BY BONE BUTTONS AGAINST COLD.

  I work on. I want to get the impasto finished. It’s a perfect surface for dragging now. I drag to peel paint off the wood horizontally, then wipe it down with dirt, black, vertically. It’s the battle of man versus gravity, energy versus entropy. All art is basically anti-entropic, that is to say, foolhardy; it takes hardy fools.

  The inside light’s getting brighter and brighter; pale bright like a morgue light. The chickens look like corpses. They are corpses. It’d scare hell out of some thinking, live chicken; Dachau of the chicken world.

  ONE MAN’S FEAST, BANQUET,

  ANOTHER’S GROSS INIQUITY.

  NOTHING IS FOR NOTHING.

  Later, a thin girl slinks up behind me. She squeezes into a doorway. This door is closed; only a very thin person could fit in that doorway. I keep working away. I can’t tell if she’s thirteen or thirty; blond stringy hair. She smiles; I smile back.

  “J’aime beaucoup votre tableau, Monsieur.”

  “Merci.”

  That’s enough. I’ve the world’s strongest American accent in French. I can’t even say a simple “merci” without giving myself away. She switches into English.

  “I also am an artist. I study at the school of decoration.”

  “That’s nice.”

  I’m not too interested in womankind or any kind right at that moment. It’s no insult or anything; I’m not interested in anything else much when I’m deep in painting.

  “Would you like to drink some coffee with me?”

  Oh, sure, here we go: coffee, cigarettes, eye wrestling. I stop, take a good look at her. She seems like a fine, sensitive young woman, maybe twenty-five. I would like to know her, talk about painting. What I can’t figure is why she wants to take time talking to a worn-out old bozo like me.

  “OK. Come back in half an hour; I’ll be finished then.”

  She slides away, I figure I’m rid of her. I dig myself back into the work. What do young girls like that want? I know there’s no natural father love in humans, it’s something we have to learn, but it can’t be all that bad. God, if it’s only sex, pick on one of these young bucks stomping around, unbound dongs dangling loose against their knees.

  There’s something about a picture painter turns a certain kind of women roundheeled. But why should I knock it? Maybe I need a shot of vitamin E, need to eat more parsley, oysters, hot peppers. Then again, this young woman might really need or want to talk with another artist. I’m definitely getting too cynical in my old age. I’ll have to watch that. I think I’m mostly afraid, been hurt too often, love-punch drunk, can’t take it anymore.

  I work another half hour and there she is. I’m still not quite finished. I squeeze off a little smile and work on. She lights a cigarette and offers me one already lit. I shake my head, tell her I don’t smoke. She takes both those cigarettes between the fingers of one hand and smokes them at once. I never saw that before. She smokes Greta Garbo-style, hollow-cheek
ed deep drag. There’s much of Garbo there: blond straight hair, thin; Garbo except for the part about wanting to be alone.

  I stop painting. I’m finished enough so it needs drying for a while. I pack up, we walk down the street to a café. I’m shooting quick looks around to avoid the scary daughter-of-the-painter, woman. I order a beer. I’m still too excited from the work to take coffee. When I’m up, high with painting, coffee turns me into shatters.

  I listen to her, feel myself unwinding. She tells how she’s living with an older married man. He has her put up in a room near here. He comes every afternoon to extract his pound of vaginal, not so virginal flesh. He gives her money so she can go to school; probably proud of her work like a father. Not much original there.

  Halfway through the beer, she tells me she won’t take me to her room, very ethical. I didn’t ask! I sip the rest of my beer; I’m flattening out. Then, straight from the blue, no prelims, she volunteers to go to a hotel with me. Now she’s looking into my eyes, feeling for the tongue of my soul. This can usually give me a lift but I’ve nowhere to go. I’m going down fast, irreversible.

  I try to stay with her, but it’s impossible. She must see me shrinking before her eyes. I feel any minute I might slip under the table and disappear into a small spot of emulsified linseed oil.

  I tell her I’ll be painting around the quarter and I’ll see her another day. I’m fading. She sees it, smart, sensitive woman. There’s some little hurt, disappointment; but nothing world-shaking. She’s an artist, she must understand.

  TRIAL, TRIBULATIONS AND LOST EXPECTATION,

  NO TENDERNESS CAN SOFTEN SOME BLOWS.

  THE TOUCH OF A FEATHER WITH THE STING

  OF A WHIP; SOMETIMES TOUCH AND GO.

  We need women like her for the bad times. They can crawl out from under atom bombs and start having new babies: two-headed, eight-armed babies with maybe no hair and yellow eyes—all kinds of exciting possibilities. Maybe we can even mutate ourselves out of males, put human beings back together again. It’s an ill wind that blows no good, even if it’s radioactive.

  I say goodbye and leave her sitting in the café. I strap the box on my back, check to see the painting’s on tight and mount my bike. The traffic’s a horror and I don’t roll into the house until after five. There are visitors from the States, some spring-tide travelers. I’d like to flop dead but I need to play host, might sell a painting or two, souvenirs of Paris.

  Sometimes I think there’s too much of the accidental in my life. Or maybe life is only an accident itself—sometimes just a fender bender, other times a “total.”

  CHAOS, AN ABYSS OF INDELIBLE

  NOTHING. WHY TELL OF IT? WHY LISTEN?

  BUT WITHOUT, THERE IS NO MASS, NO

  MOMENTUM, NO GRAVITY—NO LEVITY.

  VIII

  MOUTH-TO-MOUTH

  At our place, I’m the homekeeper. Every morning, Kate and the kids go off to school. Kate likes teaching kindergarten, hates housework; probably did it too long; anything gets boring sooner or later. I like everything to do with nesting; but I don’t much care for the words “homemaking” or “housekeeping.” To me, you make a house and keep a home. I love to be in a house I made, a home I can keep.

  Usually, I stay in bed mornings, out of the way, while the mob is jamming our jerry-rigged bathroom; the shower’s up on a platform three feet high to give some drainage.

  After that first scramble, I jump up, make breakfast and we eat together. Then everybody’s off by seven-thirty. Four months of the year it’s still dark in Paris at seven-thirty in the morning. I give myself an hour and a half to wrestle our home in shape again after they’re gone; best workout anybody could ever think up.

  First I make our bed, everything off, shaken out and tucked back on—under two minutes, just warming up. I strip off my pajamas; do all the homekeeping bare-ass. I like to air my old body; sweat like a pig.

  We turn the heat down nights. Kate fires it back up mornings to take off the chill. I turn it off again; gas and electricity cost a fortune in France—state-controlled, no real stimulation to be efficient, no incentive. I’ve got to keep moving.

  I run hot water into the kitchen sink; dash around gathering dishes from the table, slipping them in the water; let them soak; most times I save dinner dishes for mornings. I wash glasses first, rinse with clean hot water to make them shine.

  I start the washing-machine water running and begin picking up. Goddamned piles’re like cancer; once begun, they keep growing, every one malignant. Operate! Surgery! Pilectomy. Takes five minutes to break up a typical pile. The secret is stopping the first thing from being put down. That’s impossible in our house; we’re all great putter-downers.

  Our little one, Tim, leaves toys all over the house. I gather these, stuff them in his closet. His bed’s just a mattress on the floor; he’s afraid he’ll fall out of a real bed. The other two kids are up on the platforms. I check those beds: everything OK.

  I let our canary out. He knows me; started calling soon as I came into the room. I prop open the cage door with an old paintbrush. He’s eaten almost all the hairs off that brush. He flies out right away; does a couple of quick reconnaissance flights, then goes down to visit the goldfish.

  I’m into the other kids’ rooms now. If they’re not picked up, I don’t dust or sweep; just close the door and lock it; open it again for sleeping only. I’m a mean bastard here. Ecology begins with hanging up your clothes, making your bed and keeping your private nest livable.

  ALL IS ONE AND I AM ONE SO

  I AM ALL. I*M*U*U*R*I.

  WE LIVE IN OUR ENTIRETY OR

  WE EXIST IN A CLOVEN SPACE.

  Now I’m dusting, moving fast. I jump up and down, keep the heart muscles pumping. I never know whether to dust first or sweep first. I hate vacuum cleaners; crummy humming sound and a big loaded dirt bag to drag around. I’m the mad sweeper, sweep in every corner. I’m moving furniture; reaching under things I can’t move; wear out three brooms a year.

  I throw dirty clothes, soap in the washer, turn it on. I move into the kitchen; got to be thorough about this part. There’s no saving little things; no ends of tomatoes, no bits of grease from the bacon, no rinds from cheese. Out with it all; just piles up in our refrigerator till it smells like a garbage can.

  My canary’s eating the calendulas I bought Sunday at the Marché Aligre. They make a pretty combination. I jog in place and watch, listening to my heart beat, feeling the pulse in my neck; feels OK to me.

  This is the kind of scene I can’t bring myself to paint. I wish somebody would; not sentimental mush, but the same colors, one a flower, the other a bird; one still, the other moving. It could be good; only I can’t do it; maybe Chardin; too bad he’s dead. God I miss him, even though we passed each other by a couple of hundred years; so many private painting secrets I’d like to ask about.

  I finish the dishes; scrub bottoms of copper pots and hang them. It’s easy if you do it every day, kind of thing the mind doesn’t want to believe, have to discover yourself. Same with windows. Every Tuesday I wipe windows inside and out with a dry cloth. That way I keep crud from starting; no big window-washing scene.

  I’m rolling sweat now. I slip on a jockstrap for my janglers, and then my sweat suit so I won’t catch chill. It’s still not nine o’clock. I pull wet wash from the washer and hang it around the heater; turn heater back on. Our crummy dryer’s kaput; no money for a new one. I wouldn’t know how to get that busted dryer out of the bathroom anyway; built the bathroom around it.

  I start my Yoga; been doing it for ten years, since we got pregnant last time. I was over fifty then and Kate pushing forty; knew I had to last out in the streets till seventy-five somehow. Won’t make it, but worth trying—who wants to be old anyhow? I also run every other day around this apartment. I run for an hour; that’s about ten kilometers the speed I can go. I have fifteen different ten-kilometer routes I take in my mind, through different parts of Paris. I have my Marais run, my Latin Quarter
run, my Bois de Boulogne run, my Bois de Vincennes run, my down-the-Champs and-through-the-Tuileries run; I’m jogging round the living-room table, into the bedrooms, through the kitchen, but in my mind I’m on one of my runs, watching the leaves fall, listening to the river flow; I really think I see more of Paris with my eyes half shut than I would really running through the city, dodging people, dog shit and stinking automobiles.

  I run to keep alive, strong enough to be a stand-up painter. Painting’s a hard business, especially the way I do it; I’ve got to be strong enough to stand up in the middle of everything and concentrate. Running helps keep the damned blood pressure down, too. Blood pressure’s going to burst every single blood vessel in the back of my eyes if I’m not careful. And what’s an artist without eyes?

  After running and Yoga, I put new seed, water, a piece of apple in the canary cage. That’s the signal and he flies back in; no problem at all. Most of us go back in our cage no matter how much fun it is flying around.

  CROUCHING IN TWILIGHT,

  POUNCE AT THE DAWN.

  Well, this morning, just after I’ve run, yogaed and gotten the bird in his cage, and I’m about to shower, I hear a tremendous scream out on the landing; really a whopper. Then a deep sob and a yell for help. The only other people on our landing are Monsieur and Madame Costanzo. They have a little cabinetmaking atelier; very quiet people, been in the same place over forty years; work together, man-and-wife woodworking team.

  I dash out our door in my sweaty sweat suit. The door to Monsieur Costanzo’s place is open; he’s bent over something just inside the door, hollering and crying. The Costanzos aren’t French; Italian. I don’t think any Frenchman could ever make the kind of scene Monsieur Costanzo is making. He’s yelling and waving his hands like an operatic tenor or soprano.

  Monsieur Costanzo has big hands, soft as clouds. Usually he and I do the French handshake once a week. My hand’s smothered in his, like a fitted fisted pillow. The concierge says Monsieur Costanzo beats his wife but I don’t believe it; concierges only say those things—intrinsic part of the job. He couldn’t hurt anybody with those hands; they’re too soft.