by Bassoff, Jon
Me: Murder.
Detective: Murder?
Me: That’s right.
Detective: Mind if I record our conversation?
Me: That’s fine.
Detective: Care for something to drink? A cigarette?
Me: No, thank you. I don’t smoke anymore.
Detective: I’m going to start the recorder now. Whenever you’re ready.
Me: Sure. It’s about a guy named Anthony Flowers. They found him dead outside of my apartment the other day. Throat slit. Body left in an abandoned basement.
Detective: Yeah, I know the case. Got my men working on it right now.
Me: Well, this Anthony fellow was involved with a woman. Her name was Claire Browning. She lives in the apartment across the street from me.
Detective: I’m listening.
Me: And before I moved in to the apartment it was this fellow named Max Leider. An artist. Heard of him?
Detective: Afraid not. Not much of an art connoisseur, you know. Stick to movies and baseball.
Me: A pretty talented fellow apparently. He was well-known in some art circles. Anyway, from his own apartment—where I live now—he noticed this Claire woman standing in the window opposite. I’ve seen her. Something of a knockout. He became fascinated with her. Some might say obsessed. Began watching her. Began painting her.
Detective: And he became a bit possessive, did he?
Me: Something like that. And when he saw her with Anthony…well, I guess he sort of lost it. Said he didn’t want Anthony spoiling her purity. Or something of that nature. So he began watching him, too. Began writing him threatening letters—although he never sent them. Then he followed him from work one night. And…well, you know.
Detective: Sure. Slit his throat. Dumped the body. Nasty stuff.
Me: Yeah. Nasty.
Detective: The big question though. How do you know all of this? About this Leider fellow?
Me: Because he told me. Called me up on the phone. Confessed to all of it.
Detective: I see. I’ll get my men on it right away. Hell of a brave thing you’ve done, giving us this information.
Me: Just want justice is all.
That’s the conversation I should have had. But I couldn’t bring myself to turn him in. Even if he was a Peeping Tom. Even if he was a murderer. So I didn’t tell the cops. I didn’t tell anybody. You can judge me if you want.
As for Suzanne Flowers, she’d totally gone off the rail. Up and down the hallway walls and outside on lampposts and in store windows she began plastering cheap-looking fliers. On each flier was a picture of Anthony, the same one she’d shown me, and beneath it the caption: My son Anthony Flowers is missing. Please help me find him. Call this number with information. Reward possible.
I saw her in person a few times. Her hair was a disheveled mess, her frame had become gaunt, and her eyes bulged from her skull—she’d stopped eating. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “He didn’t have to die. We’ll find the killer. He can’t be too far. I’ve got some ideas.” The poor woman broke down, tears soaking her cheeks, but I didn’t know how to comfort her properly so I left her to cry alone, that’s what I did.
Meanwhile, I ran into the super’s son, the albino, and said, “Your mama’s been bothering me. Telling me I owe her money. Don’t you remember me? Don’t you remember how I paid you money up front?” He nodded and said, “Sure, I remember. A miscommunication is all. I’ll talk to Mama. She gets confused sometimes. I’ll talk to her though. I’ll get her to stop bothering you, sure I will. Shame about Anthony. All kinds of meanness in this world. Somebody killed him just to kill.”
I waited for Leider to phone again, but he didn’t. Perhaps he’d gone into hiding. So I wore his jacket and clothes. I lived in his apartment and studied his paintings. And I guarded his muse from morning till morn (although Claire hadn’t pulled back the curtains a single time since I spoke with her through the doorway. Was she using the curtain as a barrier from me? From Leider? Wasn’t her black veil barrier enough?).
And then and then and then. And then I decided to paint. Can you blame me? It was my fate. Of course it was. After all, I had no job. No friends. No wife. Most of my days were spent pacing around the apartment, stomach aching with anxiety. It would be good for me, I figured. At the very least, a hobby to pass the hours, and perhaps that’s all we can ask out of life: enough distractions to keep us occupied until God chokes the breath from each of our windpipes. And, besides, if Leider was on the run, he needed somebody to take his place…
* * *
But how does one learn to be a painter without any direct instruction? How does he learn without a teacher encouraging and inspiring? He searches for beauty. He imitates. And so it was that for hours upon hours I studied Leider’s paintings—the lines and the colors and the brushstrokes. The form and perspective. I touched the paint with my finger to analyze the texture. I studied the paintings from the edge of the room. I studied the paintings with my nose pressed to the canvas.
In my notebook, I wrote detailed analyses of the paintings, starting with Yellow Window #1: Spare and stark, Leider manages to apply a narrative element while maintaining the abstract qualities (note the transparency and symbolism of the yellow window itself). The appearance of the woman, only half-hidden behind the curtain, represents the voyeurism that is present in the city, and also shows the juxtaposition between intimacy and loneliness. For Leider, there is perhaps no hyperrealism, but through impressionistic strokes, he paints honestly, almost violently, with little regard for anything but conveying the mood of the precise moment.
I did this type of analysis for each and every painting, hoping to make up for my lack of experience and formal training. If it seems foolish, keep in mind that Frido Kahlo, Paul Gauguin, Henri Rousseau, Grandma Moses, and Winslow Homer were all self-taught artists. And perhaps none of them had a muse as potent as my Claire…
And so it was, after hours and hours of obsessive scrutinizing and analyzing, I decided to finally put color to paper. I went to an art supplies store and explained to the woman that I was learning to paint and she thought it was wonderful, absolutely wonderful, that a man my age should take up a new hobby. After all, too many adults are content to remain stagnant, to never grow, to inch closer and closer to the filthy swamp of death. Why do we believe only children can learn? So she loaded me down with oils and watercolors and acrylics and gouache and chalk and pencils and crayons and tempera and brushes and canvases, and wished me Godspeed, and I was ready to create because there is a lot more ugliness in this world than beauty, a lot more violence than love. No wonder Leider obsessed about losing Claire and all she represented!
* * *
But at first I couldn’t bring myself to even place the paints on the palette, couldn’t bring myself to squeeze the pastels and chalks between my fingers. I was afraid of failure, afraid of producing amateurish work that would pale in comparison to Leider’s. Then I thought of Claire, remembered her silhouette, recalled her voice, imagined her smell. I had to overcome my fear of failure, had to grit my teeth and clench my fists. And although my face was debilitated with nervous twitches, I closed my ears to my own doubts and began the artistic process.
With sheet after sheet of canvas paper I experimented with the different paints, trying each of them in turn until I was able to match the color and texture of Leider’s work. While I found pastels the easiest to control, it became quickly obvious that they weren’t what Leider used. Eventually I settled on the linseed oil paint, diluted with turpentine. One of the things that was striking about Leider’s paintings was the depth and richness of color. Oils allowed this; plus, the colors didn’t change after drying.
And it was strange, perhaps even miraculous, but after overcoming my fears, I showed an almost instant proclivity for painting, and I credit that to an unknown spirit or demon who was steadying my trembling hand and soothing my agitated mind.
I started by painting still-lives around the apartment. An apple. A can o
f beer. A chair. Not to say that the paintings were perfect—I had some difficulty achieving the right color, and my perspective was a bit off—but all in all, considering my lack of training, the work was quite impressive. After several days I was using the larger canvases and was painting in more detail and with greater feeling. My brushstrokes became confident and my coloring more accurate. I experimented with complementary colors, and my compositions became more fully realized. Soon I would start painting the yellow window, and soon Claire would see my paintings, and soon I would touch her skin, warm velvet beneath my fingers.
* * *
But my first and second and third attempts at painting the yellow window were failures. Truth be told, I was merely copying Leider’s paintings. I would start at the top corner of his canvas and focus on a ten-inch by ten-inch portion of the painting. With painstaking deliberation, I tried reproducing each brushstroke, tried repeating every shade of color. When I was done with one square, I would move on to the next and continue this way until my painting was complete. Three times I tried this process, and each time something was missing. The paintings were similar, no question. But while Leider’s artwork shone brilliant and mysterious, mine seemed dull and familiar.
But after enough failures, I made some realizations. That art is not about representing the outward appearance, but the inward significance. That I had to feel, instead of see.
And so, one by one, I removed Leider’s paintings from the walls and placed them facedown on the floor. I stood at my window and stared across the street at Claire Browning’s apartment. I was sure I could see her silhouette behind the closed curtain, and I breathed in the purity of her beauty. And then I closed my eyes and started painting.
It must have been the spirit that guided me. I painted and I painted. Two, three completed paintings a day. I can’t say that my windows were superior to Leider’s, but they were certainly different. The yellow light was dimmer. The glass was hazier. And now Claire, a woman in mourning, wore the black veil instead of the white. The paintings started going on the wall, replacing Leider’s, which were now on the floor. Mr. No Name he’d called me, and so I left my paintings unsigned. But art, true art, is not about the artist. It’s about the truth. And I knew I would discover the truth eventually, however painful it was.
CHAPTER 14
Eventually the walls were covered again, only this time they were my paintings and not Leider’s. I kept waiting for him to call again, to complain about me usurping his apartment gallery, but the phone remained still, his voice remained vanished.
But what to do with Leider’s yellow window series? Now that I’d shown myself to be at least the equal of him, I had to figure out something to do with the inventory. Certainly I could have stuffed them in the alley dumpster, but that seemed like a terrible waste. And then it came to me. I could bring them to the Chinatown gallery. The strange old man was waiting for his painting. How pleased he would be with nine of them!
A few blocks away from my apartment was a Pioneer Supermarket advertising southern peaches for $1.09, eggplant for 99¢, and Breyer’s Ice Cream for $3.99. I did a little shopping (hot dogs and beans and carrots) and then walked right out of the market with a shopping cart in tow. Nobody said a word as I pushed it down the sidewalk, one of the wheels spinning erratically. I suppose they mistook me for just another homeless man proud of a new storage unit.
Back at my apartment building I parked the shopping cart outside before racing upstairs for the paintings. I grabbed three of them and placed them under my arm and exited my apartment. As soon as I stepped into the hallway I saw the doctor standing there, the stethoscope around his neck.
“They’re interesting paintings,” he said. “But I don’t understand them.”
“They’re up for interpretation. Like all art.”
“Indeed,” he said. “And what about this. A mother holds her baby when it cries. A man buries his mother when she dies. Why? Also up for interpretation. Herein lies the tragedy: we are fated to strive for meaning when all we are is rotting flesh and putrefying bones.”
He was crazy and so I pushed past him. Down the stairs I raced and they were all watching me, peering from cracked doors, hiding in corners, hanging from the ceiling. “He did it!” they whispered. “He did it! That’s Max Leider! Don’t let him fool you into believing otherwise. See his jacket? See his white face? His black hair? I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. That’s Max Leider.”
Back and forth I went, grabbing more paintings and placing them in the shopping cart, vertically. Finally, after loading the last of the paintings, I glanced up at Claire’s darkened window, adjusted the collar on my jacket, and pushed my way toward the gallery, the wind blowing hard and cold.
The cart slowed me down, so it took me a good forty-five minutes to cross through the streets to Chinatown. I prayed to the devil/god that the paintings would remain in fine shape, that the inclement weather wouldn’t smear the oils, causing Claire to become a mess of blood and skin behind a stain of yellow…
By the time I finally arrived at Pretty Pictures, my hands were numb and my jaw was chattering. Not sure what to do with the cart, I finally settled on leaving it outside, hopefully ignored by the crowd.
I blew on my hands and pushed open the door. The strange old man with the black bowler’s hat stood in the middle of the store, directly behind the bloodied organ couch, as if he’d been waiting for me all day.
When he saw me, he smiled thinly. “Mr. Leider, I presume.”
My stomach tightened, but I nodded my head slowly. “Yes. I’m Max Leider.”
He took a step forward and I could hear him wheezing. “It’s good to finally meet you in person. I was saddened when you dodged out of the gallery the other day without introducing yourself.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “How did you find me? At the hotel, I mean.”
He released a humorous chuckle. “It’s a small town. People talk. Whores talk. You received the payment, then?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Good. It was a bit reckless, I know. Commissioning someone of your ilk. But I believe in you, Mr. Leider.”
“That’s fine.”
“And since you’re here, I assume you have something to show me?”
I glanced over his shoulder at all the nightmarish sculptures and paintings. Leider’s painting, entitled Betrayal was still hidden behind the purple cloth. “I’ve been working hard,” I said. “The paintings are outside. In the shopping cart.”
“Paintings? As in plural? Well, this is very exciting indeed!”
He followed me outside, pushing his hat up on his forehead. A hunchbacked woman with balding hair and whiskers on her chin was next to the cart, flipping through the paintings. She muttered, “This goddamn town ain’t got no religion, that’s the problem. Too much Satan here, and that’s a fact.”
“Excuse me,” I said. “Those are my paintings.”
She looked at me with eyes covered with a gray film. “Two dollars,” she said. “I’ll give you two dollars for the lot of them.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Go away, you drunken biddy!” the old man said. “Two dollars? Please. Don’t you know who this man is? This is Max Leider! The famous Max Leider.”
“Two dollars more than they’re worth,” she said, glaring at me through those hellish eyes. And then she leaned in and whispered in my ear. “You know what I think? I think you’re a phony.”
The old man bent down and grabbed a newspaper off the ground and then started slapping the crazy old woman on her head and back. She shielded her face with her hands but he kept after her, saying, “Get on out of here, you drunken biddy! Don’t need trash like you around my store. Go, or I’ll call your daughter.” She muttered some more words about Satan before staggering away from the cart and returning to the Chinatown streets.
The old man stared into my eyes and squeezed my shoulder. “I’m trying to run a reputable business,” he said. “But people
like her make it very difficult. People like her would be better off dying every second of the day.”
He helped me lift the cart and move it from the street into the gallery. Once inside, he removed a pair of spectacles from his shirt pocket and placed them on the tip of his Roman nose. Then he removed Leider’s first painting from the shopping cart and placed it on the floor. He bent to his knees and studied the painting for a long time, nodding and frowning and muttering. After five minutes or more, he removed the next painting and analyzed it with the same care. Painting after painting after painting. All the while I leaned against the wall, listening to the ambient noises of the street and wondering about Leider’s Betrayal.
Eventually, the old man rose from his knees and wiped the dust from his trousers. He chewed on his nails and tapped his patent leather shoe. “The paintings are not what I expected,” he said. “Simple yellow squares. Reminds me of Malevich. Are you familiar with his work? He did a black square. Sold upward of a million dollars…”
“If you look closely,” I said, “you can see a woman. She’s hiding behind the curtain.”
“Certainly,” he said. “That’s the wonderful thing about art. We can see whatever we want to see.”
“Please. Don’t patronize me. The woman is there. If you just look closely enough.”
“Of course she is.” Now his face suddenly became rigid. “But these are not what I’m looking for. I’m looking for a portrait. Like the one you already painted.”
“I understand,” I said. “They’re different than my previous work. But I think that—”
“Perhaps you should give me my money back,” he said, his voice rising with anger. “If this is what you’re going to present me. This…crap.”
He took a step toward me, and I feared that he would strike me. I shielded my face with my hands.
“I put my faith in you. I gave you money. I expect more. I expect a painting as stunning as Betrayal.”