Scumbler

by William Wharton

  These are very nice flics. They tell me to cut down the noise; I turn the volume lower on the stereo. They say some of the bikes have to be moved: blocking traffic. I announce that. I invite the cops to come in, join us, but the chief is sitting out in the wagon waiting.

  After they go, I go outside and look at my painting. It’s inviolate: not a drop of yogurt or anything. It’s beautiful standing out there, some more frozen time. People keep asking what I’m going to do with it now. I can practically cry looking at this beauty; like watching a daughter getting married. In the morning, I’ll dismount it from the stretchers and roil it up. I really should wait another month to avoid crushing the texture and having it stick, but what the hell; there’s not enough room in the studio to leave it up and still work. It blocks all the light. I’ve already had complaints from a couple of Italian guys whose garage door is blocked in the alley.

  FORGIVEN TEMPTATIONS FALL EVENLY

  WITHOUT CONTEMPLATION UNDER WATER-

  WARMED ROCKS; ENEMIES WAIT SILENTLY.

  These two Italians have a little factory where they fake Chinese lacquer ware. I visited the place once. They’ve worked out a fast dryer and heating system to get a many-layered effect. They make imitations of the Ming period, can make a dozen or more original Ming vases in a week. They’re very good craftsmen; the best antique dealers buy from them. They’ve probably made more Ming vases than the Chinese. Our whole area here is filled with people faking everything from Louis XIII furniture to old brass. The center of the world’s best fakes.

  Well, the party starts dying off at about four. It goes on slowly, people sleeping, loving it up in different corners, smoking, dancing, until the morning light begins to make the candles look lonesome. I snuff them out, then dash over to a bakery and buy croissants. Some woman I don’t know has volunteered to make coffee upstairs with the butane cooker. I don’t know what’s happened to Traude. Maybe she got mad and left or maybe somebody stole her.

  We pass out coffee, croissants. I encourage people to go home. With some people, you open the door and they move in for life. Finally, I push the last bunch out the door and lock it. The coffee-making woman is moving around with a broom sweeping up. She’s very efficient. I figure she’s a waitress by the way she gathers up glasses, carrying a dozen at a time, slipping them into a bucket full of water.

  I’m scooping up coal shovels of dirty yogurt and throwing it through the sewer grate. Our rats down there must think their luck has changed.

  We get it all fairly well cleaned by seven. I begin to feel let down. I can’t decide whether to go upstairs and flop out or go home. I know Kate’s going to be too nice about it all. I can’t face that.

  I decide to climb upstairs and sleep it off in Traude’s nest. The coffee-making girl follows me. She’s not a girl at all; she’s a woman, maybe thirty-five; first-class woman at that. We lie down together close and go to sleep. Nothing said, just sleep. What a nice way to end a party.

  Later, I find out her name is Vascha, or Vrashca, Russian-sounding name. She’s doing her doctorate at the Sorbonne in sociology, works as a waitress to stay alive.

  Here we have another tremendous wife going begging. She’d have fine, close-to-the-ground kids with quick hands. I wish sometimes I had nine lives like a cat. I’d have a wife to go with each life; nine kids with each wife. Be-nine, benign, not malignant, benign; I think I hope! Or—better yet—I’d trade in those whole nine lives for just one life as a woman, an honest-to-God mother.

  If I could be a woman, I’d have as many kids as possible, each by a different man, by as many different kinds of men as possible, from pygmies to Watusi, from Scandinavian blond giants to Semitic desert people. I’m convinced we’re on the brink of destroying our species, maybe all species, if not the whole damned planet. During that war I sat out in prison, we killed over fifty million people with ordinary weapons; just think what we can do with atomic weapons!

  I like humans, despite what that psychiatrist in the prison might say; I’d like to think of our species staying around for a while. To me, the only answer seems to be making a new kind of people, people who don’t want to destroy themselves, or, if we can’t manage that, at least having enough different kinds and blends of people around so there’s a better chance for a few surviving and carrying on, staying alive, getting things going again after everything goes KAFLOOEY!

  TWINKLE, TWINKLE LITTLE MUSH-

  YOU DIDN’T LEAVE US MUCH ROOM!

  XVIII

  FIREMEN’S BALL

  On Monday, I roll the big painting and store it under the steps where Duncan keeps his stuff. Duncan paints part-time. He does big abstract things on fiberboard. He has no place to store them in the little apartment where he and Pierrette are living, so he keeps them at my place. We stack them under the ladder going up to Traude’s.

  I-stand-my-rolled-up master-monster painting in the corner there.

  The storage of paintings is always a big problem for working artists; usually, nobody wants what we do but they seem too important for us to let go, forget.

  SO HERE I AM, I’M A PAINTER.

  AND THERE YOU ARE: A PERSON,

  A BOTTLE, OR A WHITE CLOTH

  WITH A BLUE SHADOW.

  YOU’RE A MOUNTAIN, BLUE AND GREEN

  OR A TABLE IN TWO-POINT PERSPECTIVE.

  SO HERE AM I. WHERE ARE YOU?

  I’m overflowing the attic at home, so I decide to make some storage for other paintings here at the studio. I buy piano wire and string it on staples, up and down, tight from floor to ceiling in that place under the steps. I space the wires about two inches apart. I string more than a hundred wires up and down; it’s like a giant harp. When I strum it, there’s background music for Star Wars. I suspend a platform in the middle and have storage for two hundred paintings. That should take some strain off the attic. My paintings will stand up against the wires but not touch each other; perfect. I’ll haul stuff over from the grenier-attic a little at a time, using my wooden handcart.

  I bought the handcart from a carpenter down the alley; got it for a hundred and fifty francs. It’s one of those antique jobs with big wheels and a sliding tailgate. I move all kinds of things in it; it’s also great for saving a parking place till Kate comes home from school. Parking is hellish in Paris.

  I used to give our kids rides in the cart, too. Once I pulled Sara and Mike all the way over to the Jardin des Plantes zoo. Downhill going was OK, but tough coming back. The cart makes a, loud, crunching noise on the streets because the wheels have metal rims. The kids loved it, good exercise for my old legs and heart, too; better even than running around the dining-room table.

  I’ve always known exactly where to look from our place in case of fire at the studio. That whole damned alley is a firetrap. Those buildings are wooden and there’s woodwork going on with machinery, paint, solvents. Also, there’s Le Forte with his blacksmith shop. But worst of all are those cockeyed Italians with the Chinese Ming-ware factory. One cigarette in that spray room and everything goes swoosh. I have a special fear for fire.

  One morning, about a week after the party, I’m running around our apartment bare-ass, sweeping, dusting, straightening up, when I look out the window and there it is, just in the wrong place. Black smoke’s rolling up. I jump into clothes and scoot downstairs. I rev up the Honda and I’m there in three minutes. It’s the Chinese Ming place; thunderous flames are shooting out. A few people are standing around with stupid looks on their faces. I pick the most intelligent-looking one and tell him to run to the restaurant and phone the fire department. He’s an Arab, doesn’t speak much French; we don’t get anywhere. A little black girl is listening; she understands. I give her a franc, point to the restaurant and she runs like hell.

  I dash up our alley. The Italian guys are beating at their fire with burlap bags. I pull out my water hose and try to squirt the fire, but the hose isn’t long enough and I don’t have enough power. The fire’s starting to roar now. Huge, thick clouds are blotting
out the sun. Brings on bad memories of my house burning in that California brushfire; eighty-two of us went down and I got the lining burned out of my bronchial tubes: spat black for six months. To this day, I can’t stand eating in a restaurant with people smoking. If the ticker doesn’t give out first, I’ll probably die of throat cancer. That’s how Sisley went; terrible death for such a fine painter. I start spraying water onto the roof of my studio and on my walls facing the fire. It’s already getting too hot to stay there. I keep listening for fire engines. I spray myself and try getting closer but it’s hopeless. I leave the water running and dash in for paintings. I drag down all the portraits for the motorcycle painting. I go back. I get out two of Duncan’s big ones. There’s still time for another trip. I’m heading back to get my motorcycle monster masterpiece when two flics grab me by the arm.

  I try explaining about the painting. My French abandons me. They hold on to me tighter. Jesus! What’d happen if I punch out two cops? Who am I kidding? I couldn’t punch my way out of a Big Mac Styrofoam carton. But they see it in my eyes. They hold me by the arms. I try putting my tongue in order, let the left half of my brain take over; explain slowly.

  I ask them to spray some water on the roof of my studio and on the wall while I get some more paintings and maybe some sculpture out. No, they say, I have no permission to wet the building, neither do they. That’s the work of the pompiers.

  They want to know if I’m the propriétaire. I tell them I’m the locataire, the renter, but my paintings are in there. The buildings are going up in flames and we’re being legalistic! They’ll let the whole thing burn down so they won’t have responsibility for any damage.

  Two cars and three trucks are parked in back of the alley. There’s still time to get them out; I tell the flics this. One strolls in and tries the door of one of the cars: locked. He shakes his head and comes back. He’s going to let them burn because he won’t force a car window. They’ll most likely explode, blow gasoline over everything.

  The corner of my studio is burning now. All we need do is spray it with my hose. The flic turns off the water at the spigot; I can’t believe it!

  People are hanging out windows, almost as much fun as watching the crazy painter paint.

  SENSING THE BEGINNINGS OF NONEXISTENCE OUR

  SOULS TREMBLE, YEARN FOR THE FIRE OF ANNIHILATION.

  The fire department finally arrives. They come running up the alley with ass-backward hats and axes. Yep, fellows, it’s a fire! Yessiree, paintings, sculpture are burning up; isn’t it a lovely day for a fire?

  I hurry to move the paintings, the ones I did get out, off to the side so these firemen won’t tromp on them. The only thing more destructive than a fire is a French fireman. They start stringing hoses down the alley and get a good burst of water going on the Italian place. Nothing’s going to be saved there. They need to spray water on the houses around, on my studio, on the cars, the trucks. The tires are already burning on the trucks and one car. My studio roof is beginning to burn seriously. I point this out to a fireman but it’s like talking to an enemy soldier. His eyes are gleaming. This is why he came into the fire department. All those days sitting in a little room, or practicing on a hot, dry courtyard, are finally paying off: noise, fire, excitement. Why should he put out the fire? This whole area is condemned anyway, has been for fifty years. This fire’s a good way to flush out the squatting rat nesters.

  They push everybody out the alley now; want it to themselves. I look down the alley: milling crowds, it’s like the days when I was painting my big one. Only fires don’t last as long as paintings; no time for periscopes. Then again, paintings last only as long as one fire.

  I’m hauling my paintings back down the alley. Another fireman stops me. He thinks I’m stealing them, pillaging. The fire is blazing behind us while I’m pulling out identification and pointing to my signature on the paintings. He OKs my paintings but won’t let me take Duncan’s. I try to explain. No way. Duncan’s paintings are big, kind of hard-line abstract expressionist. They’re not the kind of thing a fireman thinks of as valuable but he won’t let me out with them. There’s nothing to do; he’s treating me like some kind of fat, bearded child nut. I tuck the paintings out of the way as best I can; then the firemen push me clean up the alley.

  People are on the street with television sets, mattresses, vacuum cleaners. One even managed to get out an electric washer. The poverty of most people’s lives is unbearable. It’s terrible to see them in the street, sitting on the things they think worth saving. I’m sure they think I’m a loon standing there surrounded by pictures of people. I ask the same little girl who called the fire department to stay with my paintings while I go get the cart. I come back and fill it up. I realize right then I’ve left my painting of the Spanish witch in that fire. It’s upstairs in Traude’s place; it’s the one painting she asked to hang. HOLY JESUS! TRAUDE! It’s only ten o’clock in the morning! She’s probably still asleep.

  I drop the cart handles, run full steam, break through the police line, past the police! They’re all chasing me up the alley. I get to the firemen squirting away with the hoses. The head fireman grabs hold of me. The whole studio is burning; there’s no way I can get in. I try to explain how there’s a woman sleeping in there. He looks at the blazing studio; shakes his head; asks if anybody saw a woman come out. Christ! I should’ve thought of it. I should’ve gone up to check if she were still there. She sleeps tight, could sleep through it; sleep through the whole thing.

  The fire chief begins asking questions. Is it my studio? Was someone living in there? I can see the net closing in. Nobody’s supposed to live there. He pulls out his notebook. My lease is strictly illegal, between Sasha and me; we’re all in trouble. I start backing off.

  I was confused. They misunderstood me. It’s only a painting I was talking about; painting of a beautiful woman is getting burned in the fire. The firemen look at each other, then at me, as if I’m crazy. The chief puts away his notebook. He asks about my insurance; I only have liability. It costs an arm and a leg but I need to have it by French law. I hate spending money that way; I’m my own insurance.

  MY PASSPORT TO EVERYWHERE REVOKED

  I WAIT UNDER RENTED SKIES WITHOUT A KEY.

  MY HEART A TRANSPLANT FROM ONE STRANGER

  TO ANOTHER. I SHIFT FROM FOOT TO FOOT WAITING

  FOR AN END TO WAITING.

  There’s no way to save Traude but I’ve got to find out about her. It’s a blazing inferno in there; firemen are all smiling. I go back through the police line; one tries to give me a bad time. I’m not in the mood, pull myself away. I start running. Another cop grabs me by the arm. I look up, about ready to let fly. It’s Clement, the young Saint-Sulpice cop. Standing beside him is Traude!

  I grab hold and dance her around in my arms. Thank God she isn’t burnt in there. Thank God I don’t have to die with such a terrible thing on my soul. You’re so goddamned lucky, Scum; another sure strike curved at the last minute and called a ball.

  The young flic is not too enthusiastic about me dancing in the street with his woman. It turns out she’s spent the night at Clement’s. She was coming back to get her clothes and things; going to move in with him. She’s been looking for me, to tell me. They’re very lovey, all over each other; nice to see. Traude doesn’t seem to mind much losing her stuff. I tell her about the witch being burned. That’s when she breaks down, actually cries, tries explaining to Clement in Dutch French. Traude is a very good woman; going to raise a large family of big-assed Girl Scouts and cops.

  A MAN FOR A WOMAN, EACH TO

  EACH OTHER; MOTHERING FATHER

  FATHERING MOTHER.

  I pull the cart home. I pull it the way a horse pulls, between the rails. I haul my paintings into the grenier. It’s so crowded up there now you can hardly find place to squeeze through. Thank God I hadn’t started moving any of my paintings to the new storage place: one time inertia paid off. I stand in the dark of my attic surrounded by paintings and think o
f that hot fire turning my gigantic harp into glowing red lines of hot wire. I’d like to have seen that. I look around at my paintings, my life, and think how it could all go up anytime. You convince yourself you’re doing something more or less permanent and then a fire can eat everything up in a few minutes. What the hell can happen to them in four years, four hundred years; thousands of fires?

  I go down to our apartment and phone Pierrette at work. I tell her most of Duncan’s things burned. I tell her about the ones still in the alley so Duncan can go get them. Pierrette’s shocked; she’s been with Duncan while he created some of these.

  Later I find out Duncan doesn’t even go get the ones I saved. He says the fire convinced him painting’s a dumb bag. He decides to have kids with Pierrette and get himself involved with real life.

  I call Claude’s wife. I have to talk with her in French, hard to get across what I want to say. She’s very cool, say’s she’ll call Claude in Italy. I guess she agrees with all the rich friends, Claude’s only playing with his giant stone building blocks. I tell her I think the stone pieces are OK but all the wooden ones probably burned. I’m wrong. Most of the stone ones are pulverized by the heat. Quite a fire.

  So there goes about one third of my total income from rats’ nests. Shot down—I mean burned down. I’m lucky I still have five of the original thirteen thousand left. I’m going to need it.

  NESTLESS, I FEEL RESTLESS, LEACHING

  OUT OF MYSELF, SEEING NEW BURROWS,

  SCAMPERING, SCUTTLING, SCURRYING, SCRAMBLING.

  A SQUIRREL WITH A NUT TO BURY.

  XIX

  A PIERCING THOUGHT

  Talking about that vanishing thirteen thousand bucks, let’s go back a few steps again.