Wittgenstein's Mistress

by David Markson

  Daumier was somebody else who went blind, incidentally.

  Well, as did Degas. And Monet.

  And Piero della Francesca.

  Although Piero della Francesca is again not to be confused with Piero di Cosimo, the latter having been the one who would hide under a table when there was thunder.

  In fact the other Piero had an even worse phobia than Turner about not letting a single person ever see him at work, too.

  And frequently would cook as many as fifty eggs at one time, in the same pot in which he was boiling his size, so as not to have to fret over meals.

  When Maurice Utrillo was mad, he once tried to commit suicide by repeatedly hitting his head against a wall in a jail.

  And in the same period when he was trying to reform Sien, Van Gogh was known to give away all of his clothes to the poor. Or to start to cry in front of churches.

  Although Piero di Cosimo did have one pupil, who turned out to be Andrea del Sarto. So doubtiess he was at least sometimes agreeable enough to share some of the eggs.

  Don't bother to get up, doubtless Andrea said in his turn, if it stormed during lunch period.

  What Sien shared with Van Gogh was her venereal disease.

  Turner grew up as the son of a barber. In a street called Maiden Lane, near Covent Garden.

  Utrillo's father may have been Renoir.

  Although he could just as well have been Degas.

  Suzanne Valadon, who was Utrillo's mother, evidently never knew.

  If Renoir or Degas knew, they evidently never said.

  Andrea del Sarto has such a poetic sound for a name, when one reads it.

  Although all it actually means is that his own father was a tailor.

  Andrea senza errori, he was also called. What that means is that he never made a single mistake, when he was drawing.

  Naturally I had to look that up too, whenever it was that I memorized it.

  It saddens me to also happen to know that how Andrea died was during a plague, poor and neglected.

  Although Titian died during a plague, as well. If in his case at the age of ninety-nine.

  Jackson Pollock crashed his car into a tree, no more than ten minutes away in the pickup truck from where I am sitting right at this moment, on August eleventh, 1956.

  I forget Pollock's birthday, on the other hand. Although doubtless it is not something I ever knew.

  I had also forgotten Renoir's arthritis.

  My own left shoulder has not troubled me at all lately, however.

  Gauguin was one more painter who had syphilis.

  Even if, had he lived during the Renaissance, he would have had to belong to the guild of pharmacists.

  All painters did. This was because they compounded pigments.

  On my honor, that was how things worked, then.

  So possibly the drugstore I forgot to notice in Savona was not called the Savona Drugstore to begin with, but was named after Gauguin.

  In Madrid, I once lived in a hotel named after Zurbaran.

  Unless perhaps it was named after Goya.

  And was in Pamplona.

  Although what I would more seriously wish to know is why any of this is now making me think about seagulls.

  Aha. Seagulls being scavengers, of course.

  When I say being, I mean having been, naturally.

  But which in either case was only to suggest that there surely once would have been any number of seagulls at the garbage disposal area.

  One has no idea how great a number, but surely a considerable number.

  Doubtless other creatures would have come and gone also, of course.

  Such as dogs and cats, one imagines.

  Then again, perhaps even large dogs would have been leery of that many seagulls.

  Certainly cats would have been.

  Unless of course there were a considerable number of cats, basically approximating the considerable number of seagulls, which one sincerely doubts.

  Actually all I had in mind was a house cat or two, put out for the night.

  Once, when I was painting in Corinth, New York, for a summer, I put my own cat out each night.

  I remember this because the cat was a city cat and had never been put out before.

  Every night for weeks, I worried about that cat.

  As a matter of fact I felt quite guilty as well, even though I was never quite certain what it was that I was feeling quite guilty about.

  Surely a cat which has been locked up in a loft in SoHo for all of its life will find it agreeable being outside at night, I attempted to convince myself.

  Possibly it will even find other cats to associate with, which it has likewise never done before, I additionally rationalized.

  Nonetheless my condition of feeling quite guilty continued for the longest time.

  Even after I had become reassured that the cat would always come back, so that eventually it would often be as late as noon before I even remembered to look, my condition of feeling quite guilty continued.

  Except that by then what I was feeling quite guilty about was having forgotten to let the cat back in.

  Frequently I suspected that the cat had done little more than sleep under the porch all night in any event.

  Nor have I the slightest notion what this might have to do with the garbage disposal area, since I do not remember a garbage disposal area from the summer when I painted in Corinth, New York.

  That summer's garbage was collected at the door.

  There is likewise no connection between the cat I am talking about and the cat I saw at the Colosseum, incidentally.

  The cat I saw at the Colosseum was gray, and appeared to be playing with something, such as a ball of yarn.

  My own cat was russet colored, and was basically slothful.

  There is also obviously no connection between my russet cat and the cat which scratches at the broken window here.

  Even if for the life of me I cannot remember having put that tape on.

  Possibly there was no cat at the Colosseum either.

  If one wishes to see a cat badly enough, one will doubtless see one.

  Though possibly there was a cat. Possibly it was only the floodlights, when I rigged up floodlights, which made it leery.

  Naturally I would have had no way of knowing if it had nibbled at anything behind my back either, since most of the cans I had set out were half emptied by rain in no time.

  Before I ever saw one, I would have supposed that castles in Spain was just a phrase, too.

  Was it really some other person I was so anxious to discover, when I did all of that looking, or was it only my own solitude that I could not abide?

  In either event people continually looking in and out of windows is doubtless not such a ridiculous subject for a book, after all.

  Even though Emily Brontë once struck her dog so angrily that she knocked it out, simply because it had gotten onto her bed when she had told it not to get onto her bed, which is the one thing Emily Brontë did that one wishes she hadn't.

  Even if, as I have perhaps said, there are also things Emily Brontë did not do that one wishes she had.

  Although which may well be none of one's business either, it finally occurs to me.

  And meantime I would appear to have completely forgotten my russet cat's name.

  Although what I called the cat at the Colosseum, I am fairly certain, was Pintoricchio, after a minor painter from Perugia who did some frescoes in the Sistine Chapel some time before Michelangelo put in the parts that look like Daumier.

  Possibly I will think up a name for the cat outside of my broken window, too.

  Then again, I should also perhaps indicate that there is no connection between any of these cats and the cat which Simon once had, in Cuernavaca, and which we never could seem to decide on a name for at all.

  Cat, having been all we ever called that one.

  Well, and additionally none is connected to the cat which was intelligent enough to ignore the gold coins
that his students had painted onto the floor of Rembrandt's studio, either.

  Though by stating that, it so happens that I have now simul- taneously solved the question of my russet cat's name after all.

  In fact now that it has come back to me, it could not have come back more vividly.

  Practically every single day at Corinth, for instance, when I did remember to let the cat back in, I said good morning to it.

  Good morning, Rembrandt, being exactly how I said it practically every single time.

  Russet as a color that one automatically associates with Rembrandt having been the origin of this, naturally.

  Even if russet is perhaps not a color.

  In any case it is surely not a color that has anything to do with painting, although admittedly it may be a color that has something to do with bedspreads. Or with upholstery.

  Although not being a painting a cat can be russet too.

  And being russet is apt to be named Rembrandt.

  Which in fact no less an authority than Willem de Kooning found to be a perfectly suitable name, on an afternoon when the identical cat happened to climb into his lap.

  Perhaps I have not mentioned that my russet cat climbed into Willem de Kooning's lap.

  My russet cat once climbed into Willem de Kooning's lap.

  The cat did this on an afternoon when Willem de Kooning was visiting at my loft, in SoHo.

  I have forgotten the date of this visit, but I do believe it was not long after the afternoon on which Robert Rauschenberg had also visited, and I had hastily hidden my drawings.

  Then again, the reason for Willem de Kooning having approved of the cat's name may have actually had less to do with the cat being russet than with Rembrandt having been Dutch, when one stops to think about it.

  Being Dutch himself, de Kooning would have naturally felt certain ties to Rembrandt.

  One scarcely means family ties, of course, since one would have surely known about this, had any existed.

  Willem de Kooning is descended from Rembrandt, one would have heard.

  Then again, who is to argue that he might not have been descended from somebody who had at least once met Rembrandt, on the other hand, which even de Kooning himself would have doubtless not been aware of?

  Or from somebody who had been a pupil of Rembrandt, even?

  Surely it would have been easy to lose track, after so many years.

  How many people would have ever guessed that Maria Callas could be traced all the way back to Hermione, for instance?

  Actually, something like this could have been all the more likely if the pupil de Kooning was descended from had never become famous himself, which is generally what happens in any event.

  Many pupils not only fail to become famous, in fact, but eventually even go into a different line of work altogether.

  Why couldn't Willem de Kooning have been descended from a pupil of Rembrandt who had decided he did not have any future as a painter and had become a baker instead, let us say?

  Sooner or later, surely, the man's descendants would have had no idea that anybody in the family had ever been a pupil of Rembrandt at all.

  Father was a pupil of Rembrandt before we opened the pastry shop, one can imagine being said. Or even, grandfather was a pupil of Rembrandt.

  Certainly it would have stopped being passed down long before Willem de Kooning himself was alive, however.

  As a matter of fact Claude Lorrain was actually a pastry cook who decided to become a painter, and one would wager that hardly any of his descendants could have named the man who taught him to bake, either.

  Then again, what I have been saying about pupils is not necessarily always the case, as it happens.

  Merely from among those who have been mentioned in these pages, Socrates's pupil Plato and Plato's pupil Aristotle and Aristotle's pupil Alexander the Great are three who certainly did become famous.

  Even if one does sometimes stop to wonder just exactly what Aristotle might have happened to call Alexander, in those days.

  This morning we are doing geography. Will you kindly go to the map and point out where Persepolis is, Alexander the Great?

  Who will now recite the passage in the Iliad about Achilles dragging Hector's body through the dust for us? Is that your hand I see, Alex?

  But be that as it may, it furthermore strikes me that Andrea del Sarto is another famous pupil who was only recently mentioned.

  Well, and a pupil of Bertrand Russell's not too long ago, either.

  As a matter of fact, many more pupils than one had suspected may well become equally as famous as their teachers.

  Or even more so.

  Ghiberti had a pupil named Donatello, for instance.

  And Cimabue once made a pupil out of a boy he found doing drawings of sheep, in a pasture, and the boy turned out to be Giotto.

  As a matter of fact Giovanni Bellini had one pupil named Titian, and still another named Giorgione.

  Although to tell the truth certain teachers were never really too happy about this sort of thing.

  After Titian had become equally as famous as Giovanni Bellini he took in a pupil of his own, but then kicked him out when it looked as if the pupil might become as famous as he was.

  Which Tintoretto did anyhow.

  I happen to believe the story about Giotto and the sheep, by the way.

  I would also suddenly seem to remember that Rogier van der Weyden had a pupil named Hans Memling, even though I would have sworn categorically that I knew no such thing about Rogier van der Weyden.

  In any event almost every one of these is a pupil I am sure Willem de Kooning would have found it agreeable to have been descended from.

  Well, doubtless he would have found it agreeable to have been descended from Vincent Van Gogh as well, even if he was born less than fifteen years after Van Gogh shot himself.

  I am not quite certain how the second part of that sentence is connected to the beginning part, actually.

  Perhaps all I was thinking about was that Van Gogh was Dutch too.

  One of the things people generally admired about Van Gogh, even though they were not always aware of it, was the way he could make even a chair seem to have anxiety in it. Or a pair of boots.

  Cezanne once said that he painted like a madman, on the other hand.

  Still, perhaps I shall name the cat that scratches at my broken window Van Gogh.

  Or Vincent.

  One does not name a piece of tape, however.

  There is the piece of tape, scratching at my window. There is Vincent, scratching at my window.

  Well, it is not impossible. I suspect it is not very likely, but it is not impossible.

  Good morning, Vincent.

  Van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime, incidentally.

  Although that did put him one ahead of Jan Vermeer, at least.

  Conversely I have no idea how many Jan Steen sold.

  I do know that at the end of his life Botticelli was lame, and had to live off charity.

  Frans Hals had to live off charity, as well.

  Well, and again Daumier.

  Too, Paolo Uccello was another who died poor and neglected.

  As did the Piero who did not hide under tables.

  So many lists keep on growing, and are saddening.

  Even though the work itself lasts, of course.

  Or does thinking about the work itself while knowing these things somehow sadden one even more?

  Even Rembrandt went bankrupt, finally.

  This was in Amsterdam, which I make note of because it was only a few short blocks away from where Spinoza was excommunicated, and in the very same month.

  I am assuming it will be understood that I hardly know that because of knowing anything about Spinoza.

  Assuredly, this was a footnote I did once read.

  Although what I do only this instant realize is why Rembrandt was always so easily fooled by those coins, of course.

  Certainly if I myself
were going bankrupt I would keep on bending to pick up every coin I happened to notice, too.

  Considering the circumstances, one would scarcely stop to remember that one's pupils had contrived such illusions before.

  Merciful heavens, there is a gold coin, one would surely think. Right on the floor of my studio.

  Let us hope it does not belong to some troublemaker who will dash up to claim it either, one would think just as readily.

  Doubtless Rembrandt's pupils found this endlessly amusing.

  Well, unquestionably they did, or they would have scarcely kept on playing the same trick.

  Doubtless not one of them ever stopped to give a solitary thought to Rembrandt's problems either, such as the very bankruptcy in question.

  I find this sad too, in its way, even though there was never any way to prevent schoolboys from being schoolboys.

  Very probably Van Dyck played tricks on Rubens, too. Or Giulio Romano on Raphael.

  Although in the case of Rembrandt it might at least explain why his pupils generally failed to become famous, or even went into different lines of work, what with the lot of them being so insensitive.

  In fact it was no doubt equally insensitive on my own part to suggest that Willem de Kooning could have been descended from anybody in such a bunch.

  I had simply failed to carry my thinking far enough when I made such a suggestion.

  Oops.

  Carel Fabritius was a pupil of Rembrandt.

  Granting that Carel Fabritius was hardly as famous as Rembrandt himself. Still, he was surely famous enough so that Willem de Kooning doubtless could not have minded having been descended from him after all.

  As a matter of fact I believe that I myself have even mentioned Carel Fabritius at least once, in some regard or other.

  I suppose all one can now do is hope for Willem de Kooning's sake that Carel Fabritius was not one of the pupils who played that mean trick.

  Weil, presumably he would not have been able to become Rembrandt's best pupil to begin with, if he had wasted his time in such a way.

  Then again, quite possibly in being the best he was the only pupil who had such time to waste.

  Quite possibly whenever Rembrandt gave a quiz, for instance, it was always Carel Fabritius who finished first, and then devoted himself to mischief while everybody else was still laboring to catch up.