The Death of Picasso

by Guy Davenport

  —The Lord makes allowances for the young, Edith said. It’s a blessing he has on clothes.

  32

  Feeling friendly toward the bobble of red dahlias outside the windows, where the afternoon stood as a tall box of solid and perpendicular light, Nikolai began with a dip to undress. It was a remote out-in-the-country farmyard light, between kitchen and barn, with chickens, a well, old bricks with a felt of moss in corners and under trees. Butterflies, bees, midges.

  —Your courtyard is a farm on Fyn, you know? Pushing down his jeans, he mouthed to the empty air I am Batman.

  A new book lay on the coffee table, essays on Wittgenstein edited by Jaakko Hintikka.

  —Who in private life is a reindeer. It’s Wittgenstein you’ve done a bust of, right? Tall neck and gaze. In a leather jacket with zipper.

  Briefs down, he tickled the neb of his penis, a baby’s innocence in his smile. The drawing block, colored pencils.

  —Today we’re drawing. Pull your briefs up, leave your socks on, shirt off. Your hair’s a nice muss today. Light’s splendid, as you’ve said. And for reasons I probably oughtn’t to pry into, you’re sweetly happy, pleased with yourself.

  —Happy with just being here, Gunnar. Can I say that? There are lots of good places, the Troll Wood, my room at home, Mikkel’s room, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek and which what, but this is my best place.

  33

  —We sculptors have no interest in time, and therefore have no language. What we and the critics say about sculpture is usually pig swill.

  —Potato peels, mash, and buttermilk, Nikolai said. I’ve seen it. Tasted it. Oh a dare from my cousin on the farm. Pigs are delicate eaters, you know.

  —Beautiful beasts they are, too.

  —Part dog, part hippo.

  KORCZAK TO JOSEF ARNON

  Don’t you think I look like an old tree filled with children playing like birds in my branches? I’m trying to exclude everything temporal from my thoughts, to relive all that I’ve ever experienced through the silence within silence.

  35

  Samantha throwing off a shawl and kicking off her shoes.

  —Whatever will we do when the Ariel’s finished and there’s no Nikolai to do his fetching striptease and be beautiful and talk nasty?

  —I can still drop in, can’t I?

  —There’s the Korczak group, Gunnar said over the whirr of his grindstone. I have other ideas, too. And then, if I wanted to, I could be jealous.

  Samantha kissing Nikolai on the mouth.

  —I saw that, said Gunnar.

  —I’m in love, Nikolai said.

  36

  Having peed shoulder to shoulder at a urinal off The Greening toward the Fortress, Mikkel and Nikolai grinned at each other in purest idiocy.

  —Some days, Mikkel said, I’m only half horny, you know? As if I were grown up or there’s a hormone short out, but most days I wake up to a prosperous stiff cock that’s going to butt my fly all day, and hums to itself, and plumps my balls up tight. Are you like that?

  —Worse, I hope.

  —Today’s a hormone overload. Why do ducks come in threes? Two drakes and a hen. Is one her spare? Or is one drake the other’s friend?

  They walked, bumping shoulders, up the path behind the regimental chapel to the ramparts.

  —Kierkegaard used to walk here, Nikolai said, round and around. Gunnar told me that the other afternoon. He said he only knew me as a kid who turned up on time, posed in the altogether, jabbered polite and awful nonsense, and went away. A walk is how you get to know people, he said, and we came up here. Said he liked the light and the trees and the quiet.

  —And Nikolai.

  —This is where Niels Bohr’s father explained to him how a tree works, photosynthesis and water through the roots and all, and little Niels said, But, Papa, if it weren’t like that it wouldn’t be a tree. Gunnar likes me? Mna. I look like what he thinks Ariel looked like.

  37

  —The Korczak group will be bronze. With rock you have to know exactly what you’re shaping, where Nikolai Ariel is inside, which I do, and which I need to get to all at a go.

  Gunnar wore sneakers and an American baseball cap only, his naked body powdered over with marble dust.

  Industrial yellow-and-blue work gloves, mallet, chisel.

  —So your posing is for the finding you in the stone, that’s behind us, and for the finishing and smoothing, which begins tomorrow. By tonight it will be here. I got up this morning with it in my eye, in my hands, all the thousand decisions made.

  —Golly.

  —Golly exactly.

  —You want me around? Can I stay and watch?

  —Hand me those goggles over there on the shelf. There’s going to be dust when I bite into this fucker with the power saw. Samantha’s bringing gauze masks, and sandwiches. Edith’s away at her sister’s. Said something about idols as she left. What she was thinking is that when I’m bringing a work up to the finish line I get raving horny.

  —O wow.

  —Probably make a little Dane as well as an Ariel, all in a day’s work. Get the broom and dustpan and start sacking up the rubble. Into those paper bags it goes, and the bags you put in a neat line in the alley. First, find the wire brush.

  Diligence of Nikolai, with stares at Gunnar.

  —When did you start, Gunnar? Yesterday the block was my head and shoulders and the outside of my arms and legs, and you were working down the back to my butt. Now about half the rock I was in is on the floor and there’re spaces between my arms and body and between my legs, and I can see how the legs are going to be.

  —Six this morning. Shooed Edith away around half eight, quoting Scripture. Samantha turned up around nine, made coffee, and got fucked.

  —Want me to make more coffee? I get horny, too, posing.

  —We can imagine that Shakespeare writing the play, and rehearsing it, and probably acting in it, was not a Lutheran Swede in his great heart.

  —First time I was here I went away with balls as tight as a green apple and my handbrother throbbing.

  —Goggles. I hear Samantha at the door. And you jacked off twice, panting and mooing.

  —Four times. I’m not a baby. Ho, Samantha.

  Samantha with her jacket over her head, wet.

  —It’s raining cats, dogs, and Swedes. The streets are rivers. Nikolai! You count, of course. Gunnar’s not in the world when a work fit’s on him. When he went full throttle on the Georg Brandes I had to feed him for two days and remind him to pee. Charming reversal: Nikolai practically unrecognizable in clothes, with Gunnar pretty much the way he was born. Reminds me of a horse I saw the other day in the paddock at Rungsted Kyst. He was the only gentleman among mares, and he’d slid out half a metre of pizzle, and was frolicking back and forth, ready for the party, in case anybody invited him.

  Ear-to-ear fun, Nikolai’s face.

  —One foot’s here, said Gunnar to himself. The other one’s there. Nikolai’s going to grit his big square teeth and lay out the sandwiches and make coffee while there’s an urgent party upstairs, if some of us take off our knickers.

  —Don’t have any on.

  A sudden hug for Nikolai, and a kiss on the mouth.

  —Don’t get your feelings hurt. Be brave. Understand. We’ll owe you a big favor.

  Rain light. The coffee-maker was sort of like the one at home, with cannister and paper filter, reservoir in its back. Should he bolt? He would play it cool. That’s how Mikkel would see it through, pants poked out in front and all.

  Bedspring music from upstairs, and grunts. A sweet laugh. Swarm of honey in his testicles. We’re breathing through our mouth, aren’t we, Nikolai, and feeling reckless? We’re pouring sugar all over the table, everywhere but in the sugar-bowl. We’re rattling cups and saucers.

  He put the bag of sandwiches on the coffee table. He sat, looking as if he had a folded fish in his pants. He stuck his fingers in his ears, instantly taking them out. This was a learning experience. In Gu
nnar and Samantha he had people even more understanding than his tolerant, sweet, fussily liberal parents.

  He listened to the rain. He composed his account of what was happening, for telling in the tree house.

  He was just unbuttoning his pants and easing down the zipper when he heard Gunnar padding downstairs.

  —There’s beer, he said. I see the coffee making. You’re family, I hope you know. Leastways, you are now. O Lord, I didn’t even take off my sneakers. There’ll be comments made.

  —You didn’t take off your sneakers. Samantha said coming in wrapped in Gunnar’s dressing gown. I’ll take over. You’ve done it all for me, though, sweet Nikolai. I hope you grow up to be a billy goat like Gunnar. It’s lots of fun.

  —Didn’t know I was so hungry, Gunnar said through a mouthful of sandwich. See how the back of the legs echo the whole figure? Nikolai stands as if he were ready to fight the world anyway, but here it’s Ariel realizing that if he does what Prospero’s ordering, he’s free.

  Samantha mussed her hand around in Nikolai’s hair while reaching for Gunnar’s beer to have a sip from.

  —Is anybody ever free?

  —Only if they want to be. Nikolai’s free. How else could he have posed for Ariel?

  —Yes, but children don’t know they’re free, and think of grown-ups as free.

  —Am I free? Nikolai asked, munching.

  —If you aren’t, lille djævel, nobody is.

  —Two glups of coffee, Gunnar said. Goggles, mallet, chisel.

  Nikolai cleaned up, and went back to sweeping dust and marble chips into paper bags. Samantha was curled up in the dressing gown on the couch, having a nap.

  Gunnar chiselled, whistled, chiselled. Nikolai watched as intently as if he were doing it himself. The stallion ran around his paddock at Rungsted Kyst, half a metre of pizzle dangling and wagging.

  —There is no reality to time at all, you know? None.

  Samantha woke with a vague smile.

  —I had a wet dream, she said.

  —Girls don’t have wet dreams.

  —A lot you know. Complete with orgasm, sweet as jam.

  —In that case, Gunnar said, I’ll follow you upstairs.

  —There’s something maybe I ought to tell you, Nikolai said.

  —What?

  Sigh, bitten lip, silence.

  —Nothing, he said.

  THURSDAY

  Samantha was on Fyn, visiting her aunt. Gunnar had spent the evening with Hjalmar Johanssen the art critic, who had come to see the finished Ariel. The morning had gone to photographers, the afternoon to Samantha and to seeing her off. And here was Nikolai’s knock on the door.

  —I’ve come to spend the night, so you’d better not let me in if you don’t want me to. Don’t look at me like that.

  —Come in, Nikolai. It’s late, you know.

  —What’s that supposed to mean?

  —That your parents will be worried you’re not home, for one thing.

  —Call the Bjergs, if you want to. They’ll tell you that Nikolai is in his jammies and fast asleep. Or reading, or watching TV, or whatever he’s doing.

  —How have you rigged that?

  —I haven’t. Nikolai has.

  —Let me sniff your breath. You’re not drunk. Breath’s as sweet as a cow’s. But obviously I’ve lost my mind.

  —I’m Mikkel. We’re best friends, me and Nikolai, tight as ticks. You have only seen Nikolai the one time I brought him around and told you he was Mikkel.

  Gunnar sat down and crossed his eyes.

  —Go on, he said.

  —When Nikolai’s mummy asked him if he’d pose for you, the plan fell into place. Nikolai has a girl who has the run of her house every afternoon, and she and Nikolai had already started fucking their brains out when this posing business dropped out of the sky. So I agreed to be him. As I have been. So every afternoon I’ve been here, he’s been coming like a water pistol in the hands of a four-year-old.

  —So, hello, Mikkel.

  —Hi.

  —Now that you’ve jolted me out of a year’s growth, tell me again why you’re here. Gently.

  —Nikolai wants to pose for the Korczak. As my buddy, arms around each other, on the death march. That will even it all out, right? He got jealous when I told him about how close you and I have become, and about Samantha. The Korczak got through to him. He thought the Ariel old hat. He’s the brainy one of us, you know. I’ve had to pass his parents off as mine.

  I was sure I’d slip up there. Did I?

  —No. Not even with Samantha talking to your, that is, to Nikolai Bjerg’s mother fairly often. And I talked with her several times on the phone. Good God! What a talent for the criminal you two little buggers have. You have a career in espionage.

  —So here I am.

  —And where do your parents think you are?

  —I don’t have any. I stay with an uncle, who’s sort of not all there. The clothes I’ve worn here were all Nikolai’s. I have some of my own now, from my pay from you for posing.

  Gunnar speechless for an uncomfortably long time. He went to the front door and locked it.

  —Could I have something to eat? Mikkel asked. I can fix it myself.

  —Let’s fix something together. Ham and eggs, toast and jelly. Tall cold glasses of milk. But come upstairs first. Let’s make you feel at home.

  —Gunnar.

  —Right here, Mikkel. I’ll have to practise. Mikkel, Mikkel.

  —Are we friends?

  —Friends.

  Big crushing hug.

  —Sit on the bed. I’ve watched you undressing so many times, and now I’m going to do it, starting with these knotted laces which surely Nikolai tied, not you. Socks that smell of dough. Stand up. Now we unbutton one shirt with a whiff of vinegar underarm. Scout belt. Slides right through, right? Zipper. And by the God of the Lutherans, you’re liking this. Pants and nice briefs down and off. Now you’re in Nikolai’s work clothes, but you’ve changed from Nikolai to Mikkel, with Shakespeare grinning down from heaven, don’t you imagine? So I’m seeing Mikkel stitchless for the first time. But as it’s chilly, let’s, if I can find it, here we go, put this on you.

  —Sweat shirt. Royal Academy of Art. Golly.

  —Sort of covers your butt halfway to the back of the knees and swallows your hands. Here, let’s add the American baseball cap and have our eats.

  —Gunnar.

  —Mikkel.

  39

  The high fields of Olympos. Yellow sedge in a meadow. Sharp blue peaks beyond, seamed with snow. The eagle sank out of the cold sky and set him in the field of yellow sedge.

  But there was no eagle when he turned, heart still thumping so hard that he had to breathe through his mouth, only a man.

  —So, said the man, in a splendid Greek that was neither of the farm or the city, we are here.

  —Where be the eagle, Mister Person? It clutched onto me and grabbed me up away from my sheep, and carried me through the air. Closed my eyes, peed and prayed. Where be we?

  —On Olympos, that great place. We walk over that knoll yonder and into the palace that rules the world, save for some infringements by fate and necessity, love and time, which are tyrants over us all. Everything that’s evil comes from the north. But in the south of time I am king.

  —Never been so mixed up in all my life. How do I git home from here, Mister Person? ’Cause that’s all I aim to do: git home, and fast.

  —You will not age here, and when you go home your sheep will not have noticed you’ve been gone. I can splice time onto time, with a bolt or two of eternity.

  —Shit!

  —You need not even imagine that you are here, now. Because on Olympos there is neither here nor now. You are so many words written by a polished writer named Loukianos, of Samosata in Kommagene, who will live two millennia from now. Look you, here before the gate, these are friendly trees. The one will not grow without the other.

  The curving street inside the gate (it opened
of itself) was paved with stones laid down when Ilion was a forest. They walked along narrow paths among trees which the boy Ganymed could not name until they arrived at a building with cyclopean rock fitted together in irregular hexagons.

  —It sure is foreign here, Mister.

  —A sweet soul, Loukianos. There was a time when he was an Aethiopian named Aisopos, who understood the speech of animals.

  —I can talk sheep. Baa, baa.

  Later, when Zeus had shown Ganymed to some very strange people, a nice lady who only looked at him briefly from her loom, a fat lady who sniffed, a handsome gentleman writing music and couldn’t be bothered to look, an amiable red-faced blacksmith who squeezed his arm, and lots of others. At a long family table with buzzing talk, Zeus lifted him onto his lap and said that after so exciting a day they were going to bed, together.

  —Don’t recommend it, said Ganymed. I sleep with Papa at home, and he says that I twist and turn all night, and talk in my sleep, and that my knees and elbows are as sharp as stakes.

  —I will not mind.

  —Besides, I want to sleep with that fellow down there, name of Eros, your grandson. He’s neat.

  Whereupon the fat lady laughed so hard that she had to be helped from the table.

  40

  Sunlight through sheets. Twenty toes. The phone.

  —Accept a call from the Fyn? Oh yes. Hello, hello! Yes, I’m probably awake. Nikolai’s here in bed with me. Well, he spent the night. Listen carefully. He’s not Nikolai and never has been. He stood in for Nikolai, who was having some kind of torrid affair with a bint, while his adoring trusting parents thought he was being an Ariel for Denmark’s most promising young sculptor. He’s Mikkel, the friend Nikolai talked about so much, I mean of course the Mikkel Mikkel talked about so much. Don’t scream into the phone: it bites my ear. No, I’m not drunk and I haven’t lost my mind. You should see him. Mikkel, that is. We’ve only seen him charmingly nude. Now he’s decidedly naked, and his hair looks like a cassowary. Oh yes, you know what boys are like. Disgraceful, yes, and frowned on by psychologists and the police, but lots of fun. The clergy are of two minds about it, I believe. Actually, he went to sleep while we were talking about how friendly it was sharing a bed. I’m putting him on the thread.