by Anna Tambour
Price Realized £125 ($259)
Estimate £600 - £800 ($1,243 - $1,657)
Sale information: Sale 5131
Russian Icons and Pictures Including works by Non-Conformist Artists
29 November 2007, London, South Kensington
Provenance
Gift of the artist to his niece, Ewa Totwen
Acquired from the family of the above by the present owner
Department information 19th Century European Art
Under the bees
FALDAROLO WALKED till he could walk no more, which was a very small way indeed. The only shoes he had were gold-embroidered slippers, and he couldn’t wear them for two reasons: their resplendency and their uselessness. His formerly well calloused feet were almost as useless, soft as coddled eggs.
He stopped in a shady orchard. Great boughs laden with tight green leaves drooped so low that a child could have picked their fruit. A blanket of white blossoms covered the ground. In every place on every bough that the blossoms had once congregated as a flower, a hairy green stone brazenly jutted out. These stones would, in months, grow and soften and finally glow, becoming the fragrantly teasing golden quinces whose preciousness could still only be unlocked after a day’s stewing in a cauldron of syrup; but now the orchard was not worth guarding from anyone, man or bird or cook with a cauldron in waiting. It was a lonely and quiet place.
Or it would have been if the racket of Çimçims didn’t disturb the peace.
Faldarolo settled on the blanket of blossoms, his back against a trunk.
His stomach cried out. It had become spoilt.
He unwrapped the bladder-pipe and pretended she was well, that these nightmare times had not befallen the two of them.
The day was still. No wind played in the trees. Not a blade of grass sighed nor a cricket chirped. Somewhere bees droned, birds chattered, screams and laughter reverberated against rocks, and mirrors aplenty shattered—yet in that orchard, from the time that the sun watched from overhead to the time when it reluctantly or not, had to illuminate another scene, all looked destined to be forever verdant peace.
Faldarolo’s ears had adjusted to the background din of çimçims, and he took no more notice of them than he had learned to—as a musician—of respected yet out-of-tune singers.
His eyes dimmed with tears as he gazed at his Beloved.
Tenderly, he took her in his hands and lifted her.
“Not that again,” yelled Nick. “No more of this finger on the orifices stuff. And don’t wet your lips in front of me. I’m sick of your bloody lips. Get a move on, you artyfarty arsehole.” If you’d ever been a cook, you’d know what work is. You’d know about sore feet, varicose veins . . .
On and on Nick whinged, and his heckles might as well have been silence. Faldarolo heard not a word, let alone a single uplifting bit of advice.
However, Nick was not alone. The bladder-pipe was in harmony, and some!
Faldarolo put his lips to her mouth, and she bit him.
Not only that but when he, in unthoughtful reaction, jerked her away, she hung on tighter than the twist in two rough twisted cords holding a heavy laundered cloth.
By the time he pried his lip from the crack in the bladder- pipe that had remorselessly sucked it in, he had grown a large, succulent, and infinitely tender blood blister.
High above, a swarm of bees travelled past in a sky so clear and still, you could have heard the sound of each of their golden droppings hitting leaf and stone; bird and wasp and ladybug; and crashing on the tile on an earthworm’s roof . . . if not for the çimçims.
A reason to dance
IF BURHANETTIN’S DESPAIR were set to music, only the plaintive cries wrung from a stringed instrument played with a catgut bow would do, accompanied by a dolorous Tom stuck behind a window that has views of an alleyway. As there was no instrument to accompany Burhanettin and soothe his savaged breast, and no frustrated beast whose protests could make Burhanettin feel the joy of shared agony, he kicked Ekmel and kept kicking him all the way from the Çimçim cemetery, out of the town gates, up the valley and down the unfamiliar rocky road that needed no additional aid to trip Ekmel, as Burhanettin had not removed the humiliating hobble. They proceeded agonisingly slowly till an orchard came within sight. A place of peace and beauty and shade, where Burhanettin yanked on Ekmel’s lead just before they reached it, a boon to anyone who might be looking from above.
Ekmel fell upon the careless stones.
Burhanettin sat on one.
The donkey stopped behind Burhanettin, who sighed almightily. “I should murder you for tricking me,” said Burhanettin. He took out a knife and, with the speed of the master helvassi that he was, used to having to pull a pot off a fire just before it boiled over, he cut Ekmel’s hobble before the honey merchant had opened his mouth to scream.
“Go,” said Burhanettin. He walked away shaking his head, his grief so great that as the donkey followed, she wished he would see the sympathy in her eyes.
Ekmel followed them with his eyes, till he was ready to explode.
Instead, he ran after them.
Sadness, love and rage are always funny when they’re so far away, they’re played out in miniature.
“Take your donkey,” bellowed Burhanettin.
He turned away and the donkey followed.
Ekmel grabbed her lead, and the donkey laughed, in her own way. But it wasn’t her laugh that made her so impossible for Ekmel to catch and hold. It was her grief. She was a whirlwind of hooves and teeth with Ekmel in the centre, and then she was off, following Burhanettin.
Ekmel’s palm was sticky and hot from rope-burn, but this was no time for self-pity.
“Effendi,” he pleaded as he ran. “Wait for me!”
Darkness would fall soon. And though the wiry, unkempt Ekmel looked a brigand from his sandpapery cheeks to his calloused brown bare feet, he was as frightened of being alone on a dark road as the most lovely young maiden should be. And the richest gentleman.
“Wolves!” he blubbered. “Please, Burhanettin, don’t leave me to be eaten.”
Burhanettin walked faster.
The donkey followed faster.
“I beg of you,” said Ekmel weakly. This was his old honey- merchant “Can’t you see I am making a loss, but for you, dear friend, I’ll give up eating” voice.
Oddly enough, it worked. Burhanettin stopped. Not only that, but he walked back to Ekmel and took his arm, leading him to a thick-trunked cedar, where he gently lowered the man and asked Ekmel if he were comfortable.
“Yes,” said Ekmel suspiciously.
Burhanettin picked up a rock and crushed it in one hand. Its sand poured from his fingers. He whirled away, took out two sticks of nougat. One he tossed on the ground in front of the donkey. One, in Ekmel’s lap.
Gingerly, Ekmel picked his up. He was so hungry that his mouth filled with drool.
“Why?” asked Burhanettin sadly. “Why did you trick me?”
Ekmel tied the nougat in a fold of his robe.
When a man has been pushed to the edge of a cliff, it is better to dance than to pray.
“Who tricked whom?” he smiled, opening his hands. “I didn’t roll you in a carpet.”
“You never had anyone in mind.”
“You gave me no choice,” said Ekmel reasonably. “In my place, what would you—”
“I trusted you.”
“Hah!” laughed Ekmel, putting as much irony as he could into the ‘H’. “You always insulted me.”
“That’s beside the point.”
Ekmel restrained himself from sighing, but he wondered when this would pass. He desperately needed to eat, and if that donkey wasn’t going to eat its, he was. His fingers inched out.
“Leave it.”
The donkey looked at Burhanettin in surprise. He had finally glanced in her direction.
“Eat it,” he ordered.
She took it in her lips, all joy forgotten. As quickly as she could, she crush
ed it between her teeth and swallowed.
“The Kirand-luhun,” said Burhanettin. “I suppose as big a lie as that primula honey from the forests of Xo Man.”
“That honey was sold to you below cost,” insisted Ekmel. “You were my only client for it, so strange it tasted.” (a confession he never would have uttered but for the fact that he despaired of ever being a honey-merchant again).”I swear it came from Xo Man or this nose isn’t a nose on my face.”
“So,” said Burhanettin, who had no dispute about that. “The Kirand-luhun,” he said, hating himself for his naivety. “It’s just as real.”
Ekmel unknotted the cloth around his stick of nougat. He had to think. And besides, the sound of the other stick being crunched had been unbearable. He had to eat. He put the stick in his mouth, but his teeth were not as strong as the donkey’s and he would have to suck it, so he reluctantly took it out—
“The Kirand-luhun!” bellowed Burhanettin, causing Ekmel to drop the sticky nougat in the dust. “It’s real as that.”
“There’s no saying it’s not.”
Burhanettin’s heart thumped. He knelt before Ekmel and took Ekmel’s nose between his finger and thumb.
The tale of the appearance of the mysterious red in Ekmel’s ordinariest honey was so unbelievable, it had to be true.
Burhanettin’s hopes leapt.
“We must think,” he said. “I don’t know why you didn’t pick a better spot to stop.”
He strode out, the donkey and Ekmel following, till they reached the orchard and passed it; and a cave, and passed it; and still, Burhanettin walked. He seemed to be in a great rush, so quick and purposeful were his strides, but his legs were being pushed by his mind. He had so many questions, so many thoughts. So much to consider and weigh.
Life is a recipe from someone else’s guild. He’d always considered that a stupid saying.
He stopped when the sun set.
Suspension
“FORTY LITRES OF RED NUMBER TWO,” said Savva to the worker in the Paint shop, “and your biggest paintbrush.”
November nights fall early in L—— where streetlights are no match for the moon (who has not yet thrown the covers from her bed) so all citizens are indoors unless it’s their job to be otherwise or they’re insensible. Yet up there! suspended like a spider from an almost invisible line, Savva drops down the face of that building across the street.
His feet, washed till they hurt and bearing new, clean socks, patter lightly across the damp-as-freshly-barbered President’s huge, two-dimensional face. To the mass of eyes working every day for the benefit of their respective citizens, the man on the end of the thin line high over the pavement is a painter, for that is what he must be, since he’s painting, isn’t he? And since it’s night, he must be late fulfilling some sort of a plan. If, however, the eyes of a real painter are employed, they will tell him to hold his breath, classifying the man up there either a hero or simply insane. A real painter wouldn’t think to drop with the rigging Savva made, but what equipment does love hand out?
Savva has never painted before, but he wields the brush with unerring mastery. In this light, Red 2 looks black.
The passengers in the train that’s sat here for nigh upon 24 hours, curse or snore. Those who travel prepared, burrow deeper into their coats as they sleep. The snugly blanketed Galina cries monotonously, dreaming.
The eyes of the dawn sun have yet to plumb the depths of the train, but they have reached the town’s rooftops . . . then, as a gaze upon a beauty drops downwards, so does—What’s this?
A little man stands in front of the train station, his face lifted towards the President. And that mark! It is nothing less than The Mark on Galina.
Savva’s feet were killing him. Some distant part of him announced, responsibly, that his toes might have a touch of frostbite, but he ignored it.
His eyes were bleary, but that was not why they misted now.
As he turned to fetch Galina, he sighed with the pleasure that only a Revelation can confer:
Truth IS Beautiful.
Arresting sights
AT SAVVA’S PERFECT VANTAGE POINT on the pavement in front of the train station, first one pedestrian paused, and then another—to pull up a collar against the cold; to drop the earflaps on a cap and tie them under a chin; to blow a nose; to sell, and to buy, and eat: a gherkin . . . till—in a discretely rowdy way—all these individuals became quite a collective.
Savva had not only performed a heroic act, but had painted with great accuracy the Mark on the Leader’s face. In the glorious light of the New Day, all forty litres of Red 2 shone. Truth was impossible to ignore, at this size. But size isn’t everything. The building was Party Headquarters.
He twiddled his cold toes in their thin Railway-issue boots, rubbed his bleary eyes, and sighed with exhausted satisfaction. “You’ll see, my love,” he vowed, if I have to pull you out with a rope. Then his jaw clenched, his hands bunched, his eyes narrowed and blued to steel, and he snapped into action.
“Comrade citizen,” said a smiling man.
Savva, who had only quarter-turned towards the station’s door, choked. The back of his collar was caught in the grip of an unseen hand. His feet dragged as that hand lifted him free of the pavement. A button popped off his jacket.
Quicker than snow on a hotplate, the collective melted.
With only minutes left before the train was to leave, Galina, her face buried in her upturned collar, burst through the train station’s doors.
“Saaah-vaaa!” Her timbre fell the length of the street—and with that figure of hers—enough to satisfy two men at the same time—it was natural that she attracted the attention of one of the two men on a plank being hand cranked down the face of the building across the street.
“Hey cabbage roll,” he called.
She concentrated her gaze down the street. “Savva!” she cried. She was so angry at him, she could have spat. Had he run away, too cowardly to face her after not finding any Girl Cover? Why hadn’t he asked Valentin to get it? Had he gone on a drinking spree? She’d never seen him drunk, but . . . And maybe he is fleeing me, sick of my face.
“I’m coming,” yelled the wit on the plank.
She jerked her head upwards.
“I love ’em sweet and sour,” he chuckled. “She’ll say something juicy. You just wait.”
She stood still as a post. Her mouth opened and out came a long white cloud.
When the plank stopped, the chuckler spat in disgust.
Slowly, Galina turned her collar down. But not for them.
The unbearable perpetuity of remembrance
AS GALINA STARED across the street, so did Nick. He saw that huge face there in another perspective: Time.
How could I have forgotten?
Nick remembered his dad, who should have stayed in the upper echelons of Australian public service, but success there and international fame amongst economists had turned his head. Nick remembered his dad’s attempts to make it in the real world of business, as opposed to the real world of government law.
Goggling at that painted face the size of a nightmare, Nick remembered laughing at his father who’d judged worth by the price tag. Nick remembered his mum’s choice words. She, a corporate liquidator who delighted handing out a business card touting Rebirthing Services Inc., had lambasted his dad for wasting megabucks to spend a weekend away to see the “boofhead” up there and other famous has-beens “who couldn’t run a school fete” as his mum said, in some “quote conference, unquote” called Business Leaders of the World. That weekend turned into one of his mum’s grounds for divorce. She’d been particularly scathing of Mr Larger than Life up there.
“Losing profits can be bad luck,” she’d laughed in a line she probably wrote first, “and any leader can be couped against, but if you pay a guy who lost his country for the secrets of success, then red is the new black.” She was so verbal that Nick decided because of her, to go into something that couldn’t talk b
ack—stuff you put in your mouth, stuff you shit instead of it shitting on you. It would have been that weekend while his dad was away that the livid red blotch (How could I have forgotten?) on his father’s face appeared in that big, framed wedding photo in the lounge—a fact in the grounds of his dad’s counter-claim, and another subject in the back-and-forth of his “home life”, in both their houses.
This was more creepy than he thought possible. The actual strawberry mark on whats-is-name’s face, if he remembered correctly, and he was sure he did, was the shape of the Americas including Central America, and extended up from his forehead to the top of his shiny dome, but Nick’s father had hair down to his eyebrows in the wedding photo, so the mark that Nick’s mom had painted was right on the kisser, and sliding off it drunkenly and up, exactly as Galina’s.
But that was history. Here and now, at the sight before him, there was still enough humanity in this shred of Nick that he felt nausea.
“It’s coincidence!”
But no one heard, here.
A centre of gravity, unbalanced
THE PAINTERS dipped their brushes (into Pink Flesh 01) and began their work: to paint It out.
At the first stroke, Galina bellowed
“Stop, you—”
just as the train tooted the one toot that it was wont to utter before departure and just as Galina’s elbow was touched by the Woman in Red.
“Come,” said that woman, pulling Galina gently but with sisterly insistence, towards the train station.
Galina pulled away from the Other’s grip, but the woman had surprising tenacity.
Galina was two of her! With a violent jerk, she snatched her arm back as if those hands on her were flames. But this act unbalanced Galina’s centre of gravity.
She slipped in the slush, tripped and almost fell into the road, caught herself just in time, but her left heel stepped heavily on something round as a hazelnut, but with a screechy metal scrunch.