Finally she could stand it no longer. “What are you going to do?”
“What can I do that I haven’t?”
“I don’t know. Do you want me to go back to my work?”
“I never said so.”
“If I don’t you’ll be like this forever. It’s what you’re like when you’re not painting.”
He remained mute.
“Why don’t you speak?”
“What can I say?”
“You can say no.”
“No,” he said.
“It sounds like yes.”
He went out for a long walk and for a while hung around the palazzo where Dostoevsky had written the last pages of The Idiot It did no good. When he returned he said nothing to Esmeralda. In fact he did not feel too bad though he knew he ought to. In fact he had been thinking of asking her to go to work, whatever she might do. It’s circumstances, he thought.
Esmeralda had got out her black hat, the two dresses, and her gold shoes. On the velvet hat she sewed the silver roses. She raised the hems of the dresses above her knees and unstitched the necklines to expose the rounded tops of her hard breasts. The purple sequins she threw into the garbage.
“Anyway, I’ll need protection,” she said.
“How do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. I don’t want those bastards hurting me or not paying in full. It’s blood money.”
“I’ll protect you,” F said.
He wore dark glasses, a black velour hat pulled low over one eye, and a brown overcoat with a ratty fur collar buttoned tight under the chin and extending to his ankles; he walked in white sneakers. He thought of growing a beard but gave that up. His bristly reddish mustache was thicker than it had ever been. And he carried a snappy cane with a slender sword inside.
They went together to the Piazza della Repubblica, almost merrily. “For art,” she said, then after a moment, bitterly, “art, my ass.”
She cursed him from the depth of her heart and then forgave him. “It’s my nature,” she said. “I can’t bear a grudge.”
He promised to marry her once he had finished the painting.
F paints all morning after Esmeralda has posed; she bathes, does her nails and toes, and makes herself up with mascara. After a leisurely lunch they leave the house and go across the bridge to the Piazza della Repubblica. She sits on a bench with her legs crossed high, smoking; and F is at a bench nearby, sketching in a pad in which he sometimes finds himself drawing dirty pictures: men and women, women and women, men and men. But he doesn’t consort with the other pimps who sit together playing cards; nor does Esmeralda talk with the other whores, they call her hoity-toity. When a man approaches to ask whether she happens to be free she nods or, looking at him through her short veil, says yes as though she could just as well have said no. She gets up, the other whores watching her with their eyes and mouths, and wanders with her client into one of the crooked side streets, to a tiny room they have rented close by so there’s no waste of man-hours getting back to the piazza. The room has a bed, water bowl, chamber pot.
When Esmeralda rises from the bench, F slips his drawing pad into his coat pocket and leisurely follows them. Sometimes it is a beautiful late-fall afternoon and he takes deep breaths as he walks. On occasion he stops to pick up a pack of Nazionale and, if he’s a little hungry, gulps an espresso and a bit of pastry. He then goes up the smelly stairs and waits outside the door, sketching little pictures in the dim electric glow, as Esmeralda performs; or files his fingernails. It takes fifteen or twenty minutes for the customer to come out. Some would like to stay longer but can’t if they won’t pay for it. As a rule there are no arguments. The man dresses and sometimes leaves a tip if it has been most enjoyable. Esmeralda is still dressing, bored with getting in and out of her clothes. Only once thus far has she had to call F in to deal with a runt who said it hadn’t been any good so no sense paying.
F enters with the sword drawn out of his cane and points it at the man’s hairy throat. “Pay,” he says, “and beat it.” The runt, gone two shades white, hurriedly leaves assisted by a boot in the pants. Esmeralda watches without expression. She hands F the money—usually two thousand lire, sometimes three; and if she can get it from a wealthytype client, or an older man especially fond of eighteen-year-old girls, seven or eight thousand. That sum is rare. F counts the money—often in small bills—and slips it into his wallet, wrapping a fat rubber band around it. In the evening they go home together, Esmeralda doing her shopping on the way. They try not to work at night unless it’s been a bad day. In that case they go out after supper, when the piazza is lit in neon signs and the bars and cafés are doing business; the competition is stiff—some very beautiful women in extraordinary clothes. F goes into the bars and seeks out men who seem to be alone. He asks them if they want a pretty girl and, if one shows interest, leads him to Esmeralda. When it’s rainy or freezing cold, they stay in and play cards or listen to the radio. F has opened an account in the Banco di Santo Spirito so they can draw from it in the winter if Esmeralda is sick and can’t work. They go to bed after midnight. The next morning F gets up early and paints. Esmeralda sleeps late.
One morning F paints with his dark glasses on, until she wakes up and screams at him.
Later, when she is out buying material for a dress, Ludovico strides into the studio, incensed. His usually pallid face is flushed. He shakes his malacca at F.
“Why wasn’t I informed that she had gone back to work? I demand a commission. She took all her instruction from me!”
F is about to run him out of the room by the worn seat of his overcoat but then has this interesting thought: Ludovico could take her over while he stays home to paint all day, for which he would pay him 8 percent of Esmeralda’s earnings.
“Per cortesia,” says the pimp haughtily. “At the very least 25 percent. I have many obligations and am a sick man besides.”
“Eight is all we can afford, not a penny more.”
Esmeralda returns with a package or two and, when she comprehends what the argument is, swears she will quit rather than work with Ludovico.
“You can do your own whoring,” she says to F. “I’ll go back to Fiesole.”
He tries to calm her. “It’s just that he’s so sick is the reason I thought I’d cut him in.”
“Sick?”
“He’s got one lung.”
“He has three lungs and four balls.”
F heaves the pimp down the stairs.
In the afternoon he sits on a bench not far from Esmeralda’s in the Piazza della Repubblica, sketching himself on his drawing pad.
Esmeralda burned Bessie’s old snapshot when F was in the toilet. “I’m getting old,” she said, “where’s my future?” F considered strangling her but couldn’t bring himself to; besides, he hadn’t been using the photo since having Esmeralda as model. Still, for a time he felt lost without it, the physical presence of the decaying snap his only visible link to Ma, Bessie, the past. Anyway, now that it was gone it was gone, a memory become intangible again. He painted with more fervor yet detachment; fervor to complete the work, detachment toward image, object, subject. Esmeralda left him to his devices, went off for most of the afternoon, and handed him the lire, fewer than before, when she returned. He painted with new confidence, amusement, wonder. The subject had changed from “Mother and Son” to “Brother and Sister” (Esmeralda as Bessie), to let’s face it, “Prostitute and Procurer.” Though she no longer posed, he was becoming clearer in his inner eye as to what he wanted. Once he retained her face for a week before scraping it off. I’m getting there. And though he considered sandpapering his own face off and substituting Ludovico as pimp, the magnificent thing was that in the end he kept himself in. This is my most honest piece of work. Esmeralda was the now-nineteen-year-old prostitute; and he, with a stroke here and there aging himself a bit, a fifteen-year-old procurer. This was the surprise that made the painting. And what it means, I suppose, is I am what I became from a y
oung age. Then he thought, it has no meaning, a painting’s a painting.
The picture completed itself. F was afraid to finish it: What would he do next and how long would that take? But the picture was, one day, done. It assumed a completion: This woman and man together, prostitute and procurer. She was a girl with fear in both black eyes, a vulnerable if stately neck, and a steely small mouth; he was a boy with tight insides, on the verge of crying. The presence of each protected the other. A Holy Sacrament. The form leaped to the eye. He had tormented, ecstatic, yet confused feelings, but at last felt triumphant—it was done! Though deeply drained, moved, he was satisfied, completed—ah, art!
He called Esmeralda to look at the painting. Her lips trembled, she lost color, turned away, finally she spoke. “For me it’s me. You’ve caught me as I am, there’s no doubt of it. The picture is a marvel.” She wept as she gazed at it. “Now I can quit what I’m doing. Let’s get married, Arturo.”
Ludovico, limping a little in his squeaky shoes, came upstairs to beg their pardons, but when he saw the finished painting on the easel stood stiff in awe.
“I’m speechless,” he said, “what more can I say?”
“Don’t bother,” said Esmeralda, “nobody wants your stinking opinion.”
They opened a bottle of Soave and Esmeralda borrowed a pan and baked a loin of veal, to celebrate. Their artist neighbors came in, Citelli, an illustrator, and his dark meager wife; it was a festive occasion. F afterwards related the story of his life and they all listened, absorbed.
When the neighbors left and the three were alone, Ludovico objectively discussed his weak nature.
“Compared to some I’ve met in the streets of Florence, I’m not a bad person, but my trouble is I forgive myself too easily. That has its disadvantages because then there are no true barriers to a harmful act, if you understand my meaning. It’s the easy way out, but what else can you do if you grew up with certain disadvantages? My father was criminally inclined and it’s from him I inherited my worst tendencies. It’s clear enough that goats don’t have puppies. I’m vain, selfish, although not arrogant, and given almost exclusively to petty evil. Nothing serious but serious enough. Of course I’ve wanted to change my ways, but at my age what can one change? Can you change yourself, maestro? Yet I readily confess who I am and ask your pardon for any inconvenience I might have caused you in the past. Either of you.”
“Drop dead,” said Esmeralda.
“The man’s sincere,” F said, irritated. “There’s no need to be so cruel.”
“Come to bed, Arturo.” She entered the gabinetto as Ludovico went on with his confession.
“To tell the truth, I am myself a failed artist, but at least I contribute to the creativity of others by offering fruitful suggestions, though you’re free to do as you please. Anyway, your painting is a marvel. Of course it’s Picassoid, but you’ve outdone him in some of his strategies.”
F expressed thanks and gratitude.
“At first glance I thought that since the bodies of the two figures are so much more thickly painted than their faces, especially the girl’s, this destroyed the unity of surface, but when I think of some of the impastos I’ve seen, and the more I study your painting, the more I feel that’s not important.”
“I don’t think it’ll bother anybody so long as it looks like a spontaneous act.”
“True, and therefore my only criticism is that maybe the painting suffers from an excess of darkness. It needs more light. I’d say a soupçon of lemon and a little red, not more than a trace. But I leave it to you.”
Esmeralda came out of the gabinetto in a red nightgown with a black lace bodice.
“Don’t touch it,” she warned. “You’ll never make it better.”
“How would you know?” F said.
“I have my eyes.”
“Maybe she’s right,” Ludovico said, with a yawn. “Who knows with art? Well, I’m on my way. If you want to sell your painting for a handsome price, my advice is take it to a reliable dealer. There are one or two in the city whose names and addresses I’ll bring you in the morning.”
“Don’t bother,” Esmeralda said. “We don’t need your assistance.”
“I want to keep it around for a few days to look at,” F confessed.
“As you please.” Ludovico tipped his hat good night and left limping. F and Esmeralda went to bed together. Later she returned to her cot in the kitchen, took off her red nightgown, and put on an old one of white muslin.
F for a while wondered what to paint next. Maybe sort of a portrait of Ludovico, his face reflected in a mirror, with two sets of aqueous sneaky eyes. He slept soundly but in the middle of the night awoke depressed. He went over his painting inch by inch and it seemed to him a disappointment. Where was Momma after all these years? He got up to look and, doing so, changed his mind; not bad at all, though Ludovico was right, the picture was dark and could stand a touch of light. He laid out his paints and brushes and began to work, almost at once achieving the effect he sought. And then he thought he would work a bit on the girl’s face, no more than a stroke or two around the eyes and mouth, to make her expression truer to life. More the prostitute, himself a little older. When the sun blazed through both windows, he realized he had been working for hours. F put down his brush, washed up, and returned for a look at the painting. Sickened to his gut, he saw what he felt: He had ruined it. It slowly drowned in his eyes.
Ludovico came in with a well-dressed paunchy friend, an art dealer. They looked at the picture and laughed.
Five long years down the drain. F squeezed a tube of black on the canvas and with a thick brush smeared it over both faces in all directions.
When Esmeralda pulled open the curtain and saw the mess, moaning, she came at him with the bread knife. “Murderer!”
F twisted it out of her grasp, and in anguish lifted the blade into his gut.
“This serves me right.”
“A moral act,” Ludovico agreed.
1968
Man in the Drawer
A soft shalom I thought I heard but considering the Slavic cast of the driver’s face it seemed unlikely. He had been eyeing me in his rearview mirror since I had stepped into the taxi and, to tell the truth, I had momentary apprehensions. I’m forty-seven and have recently lost weight but not, I confess, nervousness. It’s my American clothes, I thought at first. One is a recognizable stranger. Unless he had been tailing me to begin with, but how could that be if it was a passing cab I had hailed myself?
The taxi driver sat in his shirtsleeves on a cool June day, not more than 50° Fahrenheit. He was a man in his thirties who looked as if what he ate didn’t fully feed him—in afterthought a discontented type, his face on the tired side, not bad looking—now that I’d studied him a little, though the head seemed pressed a bit flat by somebody’s heavy hand even though protected by a mat of healthy hair. His face, as I said, veered toward Slavic: broad cheekbones, small firm chin, but he sported a longish nose and a distinctive larynx on a slender hairy neck; a mixed type, it appeared. At any rate, the shalom had seemed to alter his appearance, even the probing eyes. He was dissatisfied for certain this fine June day—his job, fate, appearance—whatever. And a sort of indigenous sadness hung on or around him, coming God knows from where; nor did he seem to mind if who he was, was immediately apparent; not everybody could do that or wanted to. This one showed himself as is. Not too prosperous, I would say, yet no underground man. He sat firm in his seat, all of him driving, a touch frantically. I have an experienced eye for details.
“Israeli?” he asked in a whisper.
“Amerikansky.” I know no Russian, just a few polite words.
He dug into his shirt pocket for a thin pack of cigarettes and swung his arm over the seat, the Volga swerving to avoid a truck making a turn.
“Take care!”
I was thrown sideways—no apologies. Extracting a Bulgarian cigarette I wasn’t eager to smoke—too strong—I handed him his pack. I was considerin
g offering my prosperous American cigarettes in return but didn’t want to affront him.
“Feliks Levitansky,” he said. “How do you do? I am taxi driver.” His accent was strong, verging on fruity, but redeemed by fluency of tongue.
“Ah, you speak English? I sort of thought so.”
“My profession is translator—English, French.” He shrugged sideways.
“Howard Harvitz is my name. I’m here for a short vacation, about three weeks. My wife died not so long ago, and I’m traveling partly to relieve my mind.”
My voice caught, but then I went on to say that if I could manage to dig up some material for a magazine article or two, so much the better.
In sympathy Levitansky raised both hands from the wheel.
“Watch out, for God’s sake!”
“Horovitz?” he asked.
I spelled it for him. “Frankly, it was Harris after I entered college but I changed it back recently. My father had it legally done after I graduated from high school. He was a doctor, a practical sort.”
“You don’t look to me Jewish.”
“If not why did you say shalom?”
“Sometimes you say.” After a minute he asked, “For which reason?”
“For which reason what?”
“Why you changed back your name?”
“I had a crisis in my life.”
“Existential? Economic?”
“To tell the truth I changed it back after my wife died.”
“What is the significance?”
“The significance is I am closer to myself.”
The driver popped a match with his thumbnail and lit his cigarette.
“I am marginal Jew,” he said, “although my father—Avrahm Isaakovich Levitansky—was Jewish. Because my mother was gentile woman I was given choice, but she insisted me to register for internal passport with notation of Jewish nationality in respect for my father. I did so.”
The Complete Stories Page 50