The Beautiful Dream of Life

by Domingo Zapata

  47

  SHOW, SHARE, AND TELL

  There were still a couple of hours until the show. After I put Desideria and the painting in the taxi, I took a cab to La Défense to see Miró’s enormous sculpture Deux Personnages Fantastiques, and I sat in the garden for a while to get a taste of home. Texts were flurrying in to my phone, the usual suspects with their usual concerns. But I had my own plan to follow. I cabbed back to the Place des Vosges, one of my favorite squares in the city. Victor Hugo’s house was there, but I sat on the benches and let the antiquity seep into my senses. Last, I marched up to Montmartre to get a good view of the city, of the planet, from the steps and terraces of the Sacré-Coeur.

  I decided to skip the show altogether, but then I received a text from Julia, who had flown in from California. I was touched that she had come, and I could not let her down. There was poetry and value in her appearance as well. I bought a spiral and began writing, first a poem called “Sailing,” inspired by, once again, Heriberto. I looked up to him more than ever now.

  I gave long and celebratory thought to my days as a young boy, clutching protectively his little red box of prized coins, hoping to become an artist. And the rawness of a small creative flame that had been ignited, yet remained undisciplined, undeveloped, idealist, and pure. I’d possessed a talent, perhaps, and Heriberto had fed me the nutrients to allow it to grow. He was an example to admire, and it had taken me such a long time, such a circuitous path through minefields of vanity, self-absorption, and ego, to realize it. What he stood for was—and had always been—a long way from Art Basel. But with all my misguided instant gratification, I had forgotten how lucky I was that he had been there to guide me in the early days.

  Finally trimmed of all that excess, I had the conscious feeling of soaring high in the clouds with all the other birds in flight as I floated weightlessly from Montmartre to the Pompidou Center.

  I ARRIVED AROUND SEVEN-THIRTY, forty-five minutes late for the show. Jean Paul, Alan, Rafaela, and Julia were already there, and I was besieged by the obsequious fawning of the Western art world and its minions.

  “Bravo!”

  “We love your Universe!”

  “Génial!”

  Rafaela helped fend off the crashing blandishments, but there was no ducking Jean Paul.

  “Rodrigo? What are you doing? You removed one work and reserved another eighteen. If I counted correctly.”

  “You counted incorrectly. I’ve reserved all of them.”

  “Comment? For whom?”

  “I have a list.”

  “Rodrigo, this is not our deal.”

  “We don’t have a deal.”

  “All the effort I have put into this show and we have no deal?”

  “This is not a Jean Paul show.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “It’s a Rodrigo Concepción sharing.”

  “I’m not involved in sharings. We have—”

  “With respect to me, that’s exactly what you have dedicated your time to. And you will be compensated for it.”

  “Je suis désolé, but that is not my business, time compensation.”

  “You’re not in your business, you’re in mine. Alternatively stated, your business is your business, not mine.”

  “We have a verbal commitment.”

  “Jean Paul, I may be a foolish artist, but I’m not a fool.”

  Just then Alan spoke up. “Rodrigo. You—”

  “Alan—por favor—do not speak of issues bound by our attorney-client privilege. You are my attorney until you are not. I will permit you one answer for all to hear. Do I have a signed deal with Jean Paul or not?”

  “No. Your contract ended two months ago.” Alan turned to Jean Paul and shrugged. “You’re entitled to a commission for the gallery rental, of course.”

  Jean Paul’s face folded, his chest sank, and he recoiled to reassess. Soon enough he placed his paw on my shoulder to take me aside as the flock of fawners continued to look on. At that moment Julia approached us. Then Rafaela. I greeted them as warmly as possible.

  “Excuse us one second—” Jean Paul barked at them.

  “No, please remain,” I countered. “They have as much right to this discussion as you do.”

  “Look, I know you’ve been through a lot,” he said. “And this is a lot to take in. A lot of eyes. Rumors. A lot of press. The stakes are big . . .”

  “This is nothing. I could do it in my sleep. And I have. Only it’s a nightmare. Which I will not give credence to.”

  “What are you saying?”

  I turned away to avoid the confrontation, but I just couldn’t. I spun back around. “Do you know what art is?”

  “I believe I do.”

  “What it means? What it represents? Do you?”

  “Yes, I do. And I’ve been doing a great job representing your art for many years. How many millions of dollars have I made you in the last ten years? A hundred million? One-twenty?”

  “Since when is art purely about our bank balances or luxury galleries on Twenty-fifth and Tenth, or Bond Street? And champagne bids in multimillion-dollar auction-house salons—buying, buying, buying—for people who don’t have a clue about valuations?”

  “Rodrigo, s’il te plaît—”

  “Ridiculous numbers that only make sense to greedy dealers—as they select some buffoon, often without an artistic bone in his body, then coronate him as the chosen one, inventing a false market, manufacturing the market, cornering the market, pushing the market, manipulating the market. You’re a stockbroker. With inside information. With the taste of a hot dog salesman. Add a little ketchup, some sauerkraut, some spicy brown, and shove it down some fat cat’s throat. You think anyone who can boil a sausage has ‘potential’ and ‘promise,’ the golden buzzwords of greed. In a golden greedy world. Potential for you. Promise for you and your bank balance. You know derivative. You know imitative. Infertility. You’re the Anti-Innovator. You make alliances. Corporate employees. Vehicles. Not artists. And cultivate a garden of weeds.”

  “Talk about biting the hand that feeds you—”

  “You don’t feed me. I feed myself. And I feed you! And your kids! And their college tuitions!”

  “And how did that happen?”

  “Because I allowed you to handle some things. As opposed to anyone in this room who could have made the same phone calls.”

  “Let’s cool it, guys,” Rafaela interjected. And I saw Julia pull her back.

  “Heriberto was right all along—”

  “Who’s Heriberto?”

  “Exactly! Someone who shunned your limelight. And stayed true to his faith, his art, and his principles. He may be lesser known, but he’s a giant in neon to those who crossed his path. He could always look in the mirror and know he lived an honorable and dignified life.”

  “He’s lost it, Rafaela. What are we going to do? We have a verbal agreement—”

  “Listen to what he’s saying!” cried Julia.

  “Jean Paul, whatever happened to visionary creation? Bold expression? Artistic statements? Innovation? Originality? Imagination? Who decided it should be all about profit and showing off like some sort of human freak show? ‘Ladies and gentlemen, here is the bearded lady dancing on a horse, or the Siamese Twin Hobbits shot from a human cannon!’ You’re a talentless, uninspired, fast-food, flash-in-the-pan marketer—entertainer—in the unimaginative circus, the Cirque de Merde, that is the art world in the twenty-first century! Vive le Cirque de Merde!”

  And then I stood up on a chair and raised my voice. “Welcome to the sharing—I am your host—but I’m afraid I can offer you only shame. And please share with me the same embarrassment and self-reproach. For our perversity. For our crude and tasteless intervention into something so transcendent and pure. A sacred profession that has forty thousand years of history, and we’ve treated it like an electro-rave party of dollars and euros while we all dance to our desperation, insecurity, lack of knowledge, understanding, love, and respect
!

  “Whatever happened to true art? And what happened to the true artist? Not some unimaginative slob body-snatched and trained like a dancing bear to line everyone else’s pockets because he’s shown ‘promise’ drawing stick figures and vomiting sidewalk pizzas against the wall!

  “What happened to noble patrons? Worthy, dignified, and educated collectors? And curators with integrity? People who actually care about the work and its legacy and influence on future generations? Worthy of our children and history books? Where the fuck did all that pure sense of purpose, artistic merit, creative credibility, and duende go? Where’s the outrage? Let us pray—

  “Today, as you know, I am rich, I have fame. But in the quietest of moments, when I’m alone with myself and listen to the silent beating of my heart, I cannot conceive of having the audacity to call myself an artist in any meaningful historical context. Michelangelo, Botticelli, Leonardo, Vincent, Goya, Renoir, Monet, Bacon, Picasso—they were artists. I am only a marmite. A goldfish. A rhesus monkey. With a paintbrush. A cog in a corrupt system. A game manager. A technician. Which all means an artist, yes, but con artist—no better than the defrauding dealers, collectors, and curators. We are all con artists.

  “I have processed the morally impoverished times and used them to my advantage to the best of my opportunistic, pastel-deceptive abilities, given the idiocy, soullessness, narcissism, self-aggrandizement, servility, perversion, and avarice of everyone around. I am a twenty-first-century artist in the twenty-first-century art world. And what does that mean, en fin—? Let me show you!”

  I then dashed over to the pata negra table, where the thin ham slices were being carved off the black hoof, and I snatched the carving knife from the server and charged down the row of paintings and stabbed each one in the center, all the while proclaiming: “That means this is shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!”

  One canvas after another I appraised in four letters and then physically attacked.

  I heard the bootlickers gasping at my show, the real show, the authentic confession, as well as the most genuine expression of truth that my compromised nervous system could formulate at the time.

  I was eight slashed canvases into my expression when the security guards wrestled the knife from my hands and me to the ground. Everyone huddled over me, and when the guards finally turned me loose enough that I could stand up, I saw the imposing face of Tex, with his canary-yellow sunglasses, glaring stupefied at me.

  “I never liked you, Tex, I just want you to know that. I despise everything you stand for!” It was rude, perhaps, to greet a transatlantic voyager this way, but it also had the intention and, I believe, the merit of being sincere. “But I’m liable, and I share the blame and the shame with you! All of you!”

  As I heard mumblings that the policiers were on their way, I released my wrists from the security guards’ anonymous clutches, and I turned to Rafaela.

  “Rafaela amor, muchas gracias for your time and patience. Follow Julia’s lead. Because when the lawyers start circling, she won’t run. And you’re not in any position to hold my ground. Bueno?”

  “Bueno.”

  I withdrew a sheet of paper from my jacket and turned back and handed it to Julia. She looked at me pitifully, her brow pinched, her expression etched with concern bordering on terror. So I whispered to her, “All is good, love. Perfect.”

  And I meant it. I could feel the sense of peace within and the smoothness of my face and firmness of my convictions. I was nonnegotiable.

  As I spiraled around to flee, I caught the tears welled in her eyes, and I turned back. “Don’t worry.”

  “I’m scared for you.”

  “Don’t be. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.” I kissed the tears from both her violet eyes.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I know. I’ve felt it all the way. Gracias, and may heaven’s choicest blessings be showered upon you for that and the elevated soul you are—”

  Then I sidestepped quickly and away toward the back. Instead of running, I made my departure seem controlled—in case the police arrived before I could escape, I didn’t want to call attention to myself. But as soon as I was out of sight, I tore down the corridor, out the back, and through the alley door. It was the same path I’d taken with the Mallorcan Butterfly earlier, before I watched her nobly flutter off for all the world to see. In that way, my stage exit was well rehearsed.

  48

  LE JARDIN D’ÉDEN

  When I was blocks away from the Pompidou Center, I slowed my gait. I decided against any type of hired car and took a relaxed promenade through the Tuileries Garden. It had gotten dark, so the colors of the flowers had faded to a muted gray, but the bouquets were still fragrant and, combined with the crisp early-evening air, made for delightful passage. I could depend on les fleurs. I knew by morning they would reclaim their resplendence, and their colors would be popping for all to see. It was one of the better nature walks I could remember.

  I arrived at the Hôtel Costes and passed by the bar. I ordered a bottle of rioja and took flight up the elevator. I was packing my bags when room service arrived with my Spanish red. When I opened the bottle, I contemplated the “corkscrew” and Lorca and duende fairies. I poured a generous amount into a wineglass and took intermittent sips while I finished packing.

  I gave thought to my spiritual reawakenings and felt nothing but gratitude to the gods of all religions for guiding me on an ascendant path. I was Eagle, flying close to the heavens like never before, and in touch with the divine.

  I wrapped myself in a robe from the garment closet and slipped into the bathroom to turn on the brass tap in the bathtub. As a searcher and seeker, I had been not only saved; I had also found what I was looking for. I’d met my millennium soulmate, and I knew she was always there. There was nothing holding me from her any longer. I had love for all those who had shown me love and even for those who hadn’t. I hoped for a similar transcendence for them, that they would be able to find the same completeness in their chosen terrestrial or spiritual lives. But there was nothing keeping me there, nothing left for me there, only the quotidian, more of the same. So why delay a superb and rejoicing reunion in the infinite?

  I checked the water temperature, and at the appropriate blend of hot with cold, I slipped out of the robe and settled into the tub. I sipped on my wine from time to time and closed my eyes and let the warmth envelop me like a soothing blanket by a fire.

  The cut was quick and sharp and painless. This was my plaza. This was my ring. I watched the fluid of noble bulls stream from my wound, and in it I saw all the colors, swirling, twirling, spreading, it was one color every color, the entire chromatic index reflected in it, in this most beautiful pool, the most amazing palette I’d ever witnessed. It was authentic and pure and good; it was everything and anything my commonplace and limited sensibilities could ever ask for.

  And it was then I recited from memory the bit of the poem my friend Sebastian had read to us at dinner, the one his grandfather the matador had always carried folded in his pocket into the arena, and I saw my countryman Lorca’s words come to life in white across the blazing pool: “ ‘I want to sleep for half a second, a second, a minute, a century, but I want everyone to know that I’m still alive . . .’ ”

  Respectfully, I wanted to add to that: I am more than alive.

  As lights began to dim and sounds began to quiet, I felt all the mundane tensions pass from me and disappear.

  I was transfixed by the swirling pool, my last canvas, as it were, but it was better than that, better than two dimensions, it had depth and promise, and it had all the dimensions, maybe four. I’d heard of a fourth dimension, perhaps my unified universe, but neither mattered. They were semantics at this point, and there was no time for petty earthly thoughts. I was on to bigger and better things.

  Because I was coming. Coming back. To the world that had so gloriously presented itself to me. In my dreams, where everything was possible,
as my mother had informed me in her own way so long ago. But my sleep had constituted my waking hours. And my world with Carlotta was as valid as any world ever proposed. It had come to me organically, from the firing of biological synapses, the functioning basis of all animal forms. It was alive because I was alive. Because in that vital and vivid world, I’d met my matching spirit, my cherished amore, who challenged me to be a better being and guided me on the path to enlightenment. I had evolved into my own living proof, and I was merely leaving behind a shell containing a thousand gracias.

  As my body faded and its functions waned, I still absorbed the warmth. I was bathed in it and embraced by it, and I could feel the love all around me, and all the faces and all the places, and then they diminished, too, and dissolved before my eyes into a whiteness, a wide canvas spread out before me, a canvas without borders, a canvas to infinity.

  But it was not long before the whiteness became filled with the colors and shapes and exquisite forms that I knew well, a Garden of Eden with lush blooms, flowers, jungle vines, sacred mountains and groves, waterfalls, creeks and streams, foliage forever, and all the animals of the kingdom trekking to splendiferous water holes—a paradise.

  I could hear the crooner music, and smell the alberese soil, and taste the Sangiovese grape, and hear the rising voices of a Ballerini pranzo at noon in the distance, and touch her flesh, and we walked hand in hand to the far end of the vineyard, past corridors of denuded, harvested vines. And I was filled with such joy and unity and humility and harmony. She had taken her Panther leap and soared, and I had soared and leaped to meet her. And we came together in embrace and melted into each other.

  I’d found my soulmate for all eternity.

  It was more than any world could ever provide. More love than any universe could ever contain.

  And I felt the love all the way home.

  EPILOGUE

  There are sounds. Slight traces of activity. I hear the faintest spike of laughter. A dog barks. I can hear the creaks of the floor softened by the carpet. Someone comes into the suite. Their steps are light and polite, seemingly so far off and yet so close. The smells are familiar, like those of old wood and plaster. I’m coming out of a slumber and see the high tin ceiling, and sunlight glimmering at the edges of the window shades. Death is so warm and inviting. You can actually still see things, too.