“You look better today,” the artist said.
Well, what a polite way to start a conversation, thought Diana. But she still couldn’t help wondering how bad she must have looked the day before.
“Won’t you look at the paintings?”
“As far as I can see, not much has changed in the painting you’re working on.”
“Doesn’t the increase in the wave’s rage count as a change?”
“Of course, it counts,” Diana said. “Yesterday, the painting was totally different! It’s as if I’m looking at another painting now! Wow, it’s completely amazing! With only a few more brushstrokes, you’ve managed to create a storm that reveals what’s inside the wave. Wow, I couldn’t be more impressed!”
“The same as yours?”
“Excuse me?”
“The storm in you reveals what’s inside pretty well, too.”
Struck by his comment, Diana’s shoulders slumped.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“That’s okay. What do you really see in the picture?”
“Well . . . I see you haven’t yet added the flying seagull which appears in your other paintings.”
“You’re quite observant, I must say.”
“Some people think so,” Diana said.
In spite of his scruffy appearance and crude style of greeting, the artist seemed to be a person of some education.
“Are you a student?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“So you’ve finished your studies?”
“I was studying economics till I quit.”
Diana looked at him as if to say, “But why?”
“Before it was too late, I realized I’d never improve my painting by listening to my economics professors.”
“Couldn’t you work on your painting as well as continue with your studies?”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t have the time. The problem was that each new painting I finished made me feel that the previous one was better.”
“Better in what sense?”
“Well, like every other artist, what I paint onto the canvas is what’s inside me. But with every passing day, I could see that my colors were fading. You could perhaps say that I had to leave school for the sake of my original colors.”
Diana’s eyes showed her approval. “That’s quite brave, I must say.” She held out her hand to him. “I’m Diana.”
The artist shook her hand but said nothing.
He had done it again! He’d behaved as if he was indifferent to her. He had neither told her his name nor had the courtesy to say he was glad to meet her. It was pointless to continue an already overextended conversation with someone who couldn’t even be bothered to give his name. So, saying that she had an appointment to keep, Diana muttered good-bye and left.
On her way home, however, her mind was preoccupied with what he had said about the colors fading. Just as the artist had once missed his original colors, Diana thought how much she missed her mother’s colors.
12
WHEN DIANA HAD disappeared from view, the beggar waved to the artist. The day before, the artist had gone to him and asked questions about the beautiful girl whose fortune the beggar had told.
The beggar had grinned, saying, “Hold it, son. What happens between me and my customers isn’t here to stay; it flies away. You go ask the little lady herself what you figure on knowing. She comes here soon. Tomorrow, she comes . . . But just look at you, asking an old fool like me for help. You are young, ar-tis-tic and you are nearly as good-looking as me. What do you need me to charm the little lady for?”
The artist, a little embarrassed, had tried to defend himself. “I saw both of you looking at me, so naturally I wondered why.”
“Don’t make me laugh, son. Those eyes, big as saucers, see her come down the road there; those big eyes fixing themselves on her, weren’t mine, eh? No need for fortune-telling. You wished to meet that little lady the minute you saw her. Do I tell a lie? If that’s a lie, let your gull shit on my poor old head!”
Not knowing what to say, the artist had made some excuse and left. He’d realized it wouldn’t be easy to prize information out of the old beggar.
Just a few minutes ago, however, when the beggar waved to him with a welcoming smile, the thought passed through his mind that perhaps the beggar had now decided to say something about Diana. The artist would try his luck again by visiting the beggar tonight.
13
IN THE CENTER of the straw mat, the artist carefully placed the bottle of fruit juice he’d taken from the cooler in his jeep. The beggar had warned him the previous evening not to come empty-handed again. He had also told him to wait until the park was less crowded in order not to chase away potential customers.
“Will you receive a guest now that it’s—”
“My place is always open to anybody who doesn’t want to know too much.”
“Okay, okay, I won’t ask so many questions tonight. But I’d like to know how you knew she’d be taking a walk again today. Did you use your fortune-telling? I don’t have $9 by the way, let me say that from the start.”
“I don’t believe in no fortune-telling,” the beggar said. “People want to hear their future, so I tell them. What am I supposed to do? Tell them, ‘Don’t ask me, if you live, you find out?’”
“So you mean you actually can’t tell fortunes?”
“Begging your pardon, young man, I’m a man of honor. I respect my job. Fortune, that’s just the name of the game. Ashes, jars, water, they’re just the excuse. You must have some kind of a show for folks, something like they see in the movies. Suppose everything you say comes true, they won’t believe it, not without the hokeypokey. Like I said, fortune-telling is just the name. What I do is read faces. I read faces, all right—everything’s written there.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s suppose I watch the little lady when you were talking to her. You know what I see? I see on her face she likes your pictures. Ho-cus po-cus, I know sometime soon she comes back. There, that’s fortune-telling for you.”
“You’re not telling me her walk was an excuse to see me, are you?”
The beggar shrugged his shoulders. “What do I know about the little lady’s thoughts? I’m not a shrink. Reasons I don’t know, I just know results. But leave that now and tell me about yourself. Okay, the little lady is pretty and all, but tell me who you are or aren’t. Where you’re coming from, where you’re going. Some kind of wanderer shows on your face.”
“Yeah, something like that. I’ve come from Paranaguá and I’m working my way back there, painting along the beach. The painting you see right there, that’s the first one of my summer project. In fact, according to my plan, I should have finished it yesterday and be thirty miles away at my second pitch by now, but . . . Anyway, you know the rest.”
“The picture doesn’t want to be finished after you saw the little lady, eh? Oh my, the chase is always the sweetest. It’s when you catch or get caught things kind of go sour, hey? It’s good, son, all good. Let the painting hang around a bit longer.”
The beggar emptied his takings for the day out of the coin mug onto the mat. Filling the mug with fruit juice, he set it in front of the artist. He himself took a swig from the bottle.
“That Paranaguá of yours, what’s it like for begging?”
“I have no idea. And I can’t say it is really ‘my’ Paranaguá. I’m from São Paulo, originally. I was at college in the U.S. for a while—Boston, to be precise—until I quit. Then I moved to Paranaguá to live with a friend of mine.”
“What do your folks say about you quitting college? I hear college guys make big bucks, eh?”
“My family never had any financial expectations from me. They�
�re doing quite okay. But they did expect more of me than that. They thought I might make a good banker or something along those lines. And because it was Harvard I quit, they did make quite a fuss about it. But there was no other way; I just had to paint.”
“Har-vard, huh? My, my! Heard about that place. You told that to the little lady, I bet.”
“No.”
The beggar stared strangely at the artist.
“Son, there are three choices . . . One: you are a fool. Two: you don’t want to charm the little lady. Three: you are a fool. Take your pick.”
The artist smiled.
“What do you want, son?” the beggar asked. “You want her to take you for a loser? A shepherd herding a flock of pictures that don’t sell? You tell her who you are. How’s she to know who you are if you don’t show?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure whether I want her to look at me differently just because I went to Harvard. I don’t want to be punished in the end with being loved for somebody other than who I am.”
“What! Who’s loving what and punishing who?”
“If she’s going to like me because I went to Harvard, it’s better she not like me at all. Because I’m not my education. Or my job, or my brains . . . And I’m not the sum of all of these, either.”
“So you know who you are, son?”
“Well, I’m just . . . I’m just who I am.”
“Son, you listen to me. Don’t you see how smart she is with her cool shades pushed way up on her head? That word, ‘Harvard,’ it’d be music to her ears. Just tell her ‘Har-vard’ and maybe you’ll get lucky.”
The artist shook his head. “No, too risky . . . There will always be someone better than me. But there isn’t anyone who’s the same as me. You know, everyone’s fingerprints are different. I like to think we have a kind of inner fingerprint, too. The fingerprint which we cover by wearing trendy gloves.”
“Oh my! Poor kid’s talking about gloves now.”
“Sorry,” the artist said, smiling.
“So, what do you expect from the little lady?”
“I don’t know. Do you think she’ll be here tomorrow?”
“Sorry, son. Fortune-telling, that’s worth $9. Can’t tell it for free to those who don’t know what they want.”
“I guess you’re right.”
After a short silence: “Well,” the artist said, “I think I should be on my way.”
“As you like, son. Bring us guarana next time you come. Jumbo-size, mind you.”
AFTER PUTTING HIS paintings into the jeep, the artist stretched out on a lounger under the stars. The light of the full moon was reflected on the water, its path growing wider as it extended away toward the horizon. He fixed his eyes on the view, wondering how he could have been so taken by a girl whose face lacked the light he was looking for.
14
AT THE END of a long, routine, aimless day, Diana was sitting staring at her mother’s photograph.
“Mom, let’s suppose I did change my mind and went looking for Mary. What difference would that make? Do you really think we can reach Mary just through a name; the name of a woman who supposedly taught her how to talk with roses all those years ago?”
Her chest heaved. “Let’s just, for a minute, suppose I traveled thousands of miles to the country where that palace is, and let’s suppose I found the woman’s guesthouse near that palace. Do we even know if the woman is still alive? If she is, will she remember the foreign girl who came to her guesthouse so many years ago? Well, if she really taught Mary to talk with roses, I’m sure she will. But we don’t really think such a thing is possible, do we, Mom?
“And even if she does remember her, what good would that do? How would she know where Mary is now?
“If I really did go there, I’d ask her politely, ‘Excuse me, madam, I don’t know if you recall but, a long time ago, a girl stayed here. Her name was Mary. Remember? She was the little girl you taught to talk with roses . . . Now please tell me, where can I find her?’
“What do you think she’d do, Mom, after hearing me ask her that question? Most probably she’d smile at first, but when I persist in asking the same question to the staff and even the guests, she’d politely ask me to leave. And when I tell her I won’t budge an inch until I’ve learned where Mary is, reluctant to throw me out by force, she’d inform the Brazilian embassy. But I wouldn’t give up. I’d keep the people from the embassy busy for hours, asking them, ‘Where’s Mary? Where’s Mary? Where is Mary?’
“And then what? I suppose, thinking that I must have lost my mind, they’d send me home on the first available flight with a report in my hand saying I was crazy. At the airport, there’d be men in white coats waiting to take me by the arm and escort me to the nearest psychiatric hospital.
“Well, that’d be good news, Mom. Because that’s the only place I can find Mary.”
15
IT WAS AS IF all the tall chestnut-haired girls in Rio had convened in the park and as if they’d all agreed to look like Diana. As soon as they got nearer, however, the artist was once again left disappointed. For the past two evenings he’d waited for Diana in the same place, but she hadn’t shown up.
He scolded himself for not keeping to his schedule all for the sake of a girl whom he knew wasn’t right for him, but he just couldn’t get himself to leave the park.
For a long time now, ever since he’d lost confidence in the trial and error approach to love affairs, the artist hadn’t been involved in a relationship. In time, he’d come to the realization that each new relationship inevitably meant a new separation, so he’d decided to seek refuge in the turbulence-free state of being single.
Previously, he’d regarded every parting as a preparation for the next relationship and hadn’t thought that he’d lost anything. But with time he’d come to understand that the ruins of a previous relationship were carried over into the next one.
He’d also realized that most people thought they were the ones who had been wronged when a relationship ended. They all thought they’d given much of themselves while their partner hadn’t responded in the same way.
This had been the case for both him and his last girlfriend when they’d parted three years ago. For weeks he’d tried to understand this discrepancy. How could it be that both parties believed they were the ones who’d been wronged? One day, as he was watching two seagulls flying, he found the answer he’d been looking for.
THAT DAY HE’D set up his easel on the cliffs, a short distance from where he lived. As he was absorbed in his painting, a seagull distracted him by taking off from a nearby cliff and diving down toward the water. Immediately, another seagull followed, launching itself from the cliff opposite, swooping down seawards toward the same place. Just as both were a hair’s breadth from the water, in danger of colliding, a series of maneuvers took them up into the sky again. As if embracing each other with their wings, they rose in concert to a height far above the level of the cliffs from which they’d taken off.
As he watched the flight of these two seagulls, the artist thought that perhaps to be attached, first one needed to become unattached.
However, most people entered into new relationships carrying all their old ties with them. Whether what they carried from the past were feelings of mistrust, being misunderstood or a defensive wall, those old ties prevented them from living the new relationship freely. Maybe they were right in thinking they had been wronged in their previous relationships; but what they failed to see was that it wasn’t their partner who’d wronged them but their own past, which they hadn’t been able to leave behind.
These two seagulls coming from different cliffs had been able to leave their “past” place and descend to sea level, to “zero,” for each other, freeing themselves of their separate identities and so rising up into the sky as one.
WHEN IT BECAME quite dark, the artist realized that Diana wouldn’t be coming to the seafront that night, either.
16
HER DREAMS DIDN’T even let Diana enjoy a half-an-hour afternoon nap. She tried to rid her mind of fragmented scenes of a palace and a rose garden. It was impossible. If she couldn’t get them out of her head, she wished she could at least make sense of them. But that seemed impossible as well.
She got up and put on her tracksuit and sneakers. Perhaps a short walk in the park or a brief chat with the artist might help.
THE OLD BEGGAR, sitting on his mat with the air of a king rather than a beggar, immediately began to count his coins when he saw Diana coming. It was as if he were trying to show that he didn’t intend to notice her today, either. Diana didn’t care. She no longer expected any explanations from him anyway.
The artist was in his usual place, again busy with his painting.
“Well, how are your colors today?” Diana asked.
“Good. How about yours?”
“Okay, I guess, Senhor . . .”
“Jon or Mathias. You choose.”
“You have two names?”
“Kind of a split personality, if you like.”
“How do you mean?”
“Mathias wants to stay in this world and be indulged in it. Whereas Jon wants to fly away.”
“Fly where?”
“I don’t know, beyond this world, maybe.”
“Oh, I see. Mathias . . . unusual name around here.”
“Well, some people think so,” Mathias said, just as Diana had the last time they talked.
Diana smiled and turned to look at the painting. Since there was still no seagull in the picture, she could tell that it wasn’t finished. Although she stared at it for some time, she couldn’t think of anything to say about it.
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