A Way of Life, Like Any Other

by Darcy O'Brien

  I was soon to see why Mother thought his art was in need of encouragement. He worked like a devil at it, using every spare hour from his animals at Disney, but in thirty years he had sold only a few pieces, and his studio was therefore difficult to move around in. There were many works in the vein of the Pan and Syrinx statue, mythological figures performing sexual acts of every description. Here, one had to admit, was an imagination of extraordinary fertility and a vision bold enough to couple classical learning with an earthy, contemporary realism. I asked him whether the classical-genital series, begun around 1935 and not yet completed, had a common theme, the grasping of which might help me to bring together in my mind disparate elements of an array bewildering in its complexity.

  “De Griks,” he replied, “dey know it de gods dey are human. You human, me human. You got it penis, I got it penis. What to do wit penis? It is de same problem, de gods and de man. Of course de woman, you know I don’t haf tell you. Praxiteles, is all de same. And always de perfection. I try always de perfection. So!”

  Anatol was hardly the first Western artist to take as his theme the presence of the human in the divine and the divine in the human, but his genius produced twists and nuances to what in cruder hands could have been dull, cliché-ridden, journeyman’s work. His “Zeus Assaulting Athene,” for instance, suggested far more than the obvious quest for union between the principles of creation and knowledge. The work achieved its effect of surprise and antic abandon through a single daring leap in construction: the goddess was five times the size of the father of the gods, who, captured in the act of scrambling up the female buttocks, reflected in every straining sinew the desperation of a man who may have taken on a task too big for him. “Will he attain it?” was the question sculpturally posed. And in the eyes, beetle-browed and bulging with determination, lay the answer, “Yes.” “I am optimist, in life, in work,” Anatol was fond of saying. The goddess’s face conveyed an air of compliance, resignation, with perhaps a hint of gratitude, a sense of chosenness about the mouth. Yet more innovation: the goddess was clearly a Negress. Some day it would be for the artist’s biographer to reveal this subtle link between Anatol’s art and his experience as a palm oil trader in the Congo. I told him I understood that such indirect expression of personal life and point of view characterized much twentieth-century art. So he, in effect, was Zeus? “Dat is de it,” he answered. All life was a struggle. To the victor went the spoils. He had learned a lot from the Belgians.

  It was my mother’s opinion that Anatol’s greatest chance for recognition lay in a chess set he had designed and carved in wood. Each piece represented a portion of human anatomy, the pawns fingers and toes, the bishops ears, and so forth. When you played with this set, the game was an epic of the human body. Since the opposing pieces were distinguishable by sex rather than by color, chess became more a game of love than of geometric position. Mother was certain a big game manufacturer could be interested in the set and that technology would discover a way to mass-produce it. The potential market was limited only by the number of chess players in the world, and by adding an all-male or all-female set to the line, you could take in the homosexuals. “Faggots love chess, just like anyone else,” she said. You could display it, even if you never played with it. It was the sort of thing that sparked conversation.

  I had heard that artists were difficult to live with, and Anatol helped me to appreciate what truth lay in the adage. He made me weed his garden, which had only weeds in it; and when I was blistered and fouled with sweat and dirt, he would summon me to arm wrestle with him. I would always lose, he had the arms of Haephestos, and like the god his bandy legs gave excellent leverage; but he would say to me that if one day I could beat him, on that day I should become a man: “Venn you veaklink beat it me, you man denn!” Afterwards he would challenge me in vodka and beer drinking and in chess playing, which he fell to very vigorously, picking up the pieces swiftly and laying them down with a crack, defeating me always, as I was of a meditative disposition and could not keep pace. Again, I would be a man on the day I beat him. I saw childhood stretching out before me.

  He would cook meat in the fireplace, carve it while giving out sharp cries and grunts of pleasure, and dare me to eat as much of it as he. To show his steadiness of nerve, he would pick up my chair with me in it and hold it out at arm’s length for ten minutes, meanwhile executing a folk dance to music emanating at tremendous volume from the phonograph. Mother would sit with glazed cheeks and eyes, smiling vaguely, humming to herself, or muttering over and over, “A real man, a real man.”

  Yet I doubt that her happiness with the Russian was ever perfect. Often they quarreled over each other’s drinking. These were pointless contentions, since they were both of them maggoty drunk much of the time, but when it came to counting empty bottles, Mother would win the argument, because she drank and disposed of bottles in secret. They fought about Anatol’s friends, whom Mother considered low, and about Mother’s friends, before whom Anatol fell asleep. During a particularly troublesome period, Mother took me aside and confided that under the circumstances she was finding it difficult “to have orgasm.” I had no suggestions to make, but she appreciated my sympathy.

  “He’s a pig,” she said. “I think he has Tartar blood.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “He’s at me day and night. What does he expect?”

  “It must be very difficult for you.”

  “Difficult! The Whore of Babylon wouldn’t put up with it! I don’t know, dear, sometimes I think it’s all just plain screwing. I don’t think there’s any love in it. Not that he means harm, the poor thing. I don’t think he knows any better. He’s had nothing but whores his whole life.”

  They had religion in common, and it seemed to give them some calm. Russian Orthodoxy was but a nuptial diversion. They went to something called the Hollywood Church of Religious Science. I never could make sense of it, but Peggy Lee was a member. Anatol was always getting me to read the literature to him. There was a lot of stuff about people healing ulcers through prayer and how Mary Baker Eddy had been on the right track but failed to appreciate the link between nuclear physics and Revelation and so ended up taking morphine and sleeping in a giant baby buggy. It was Mother’s fourth religion. She had begun as a Methodist, turned Catholic to marry my father, then the Russian Orthodox fling, and now this. Anatol said Religious Science had changed his life. He thought I should convert, but I told him Catholicism was enough for me. Besides, I enjoyed going to mass with my father. That and baseball were our only connections then.

  One night I was lying in my bed amusing myself with a German nudist magazine Anatol said he used for figure studies, when I heard them shouting and carrying on. Then a noise I later identified as a shoe smashing a mirror, and the sound of Mother sobbing.

  “You’re a beast, an animal.”

  “Shhh! Shad-up lady! You van vake de boy?”

  “I don’t care. I don’t care who knows. What do you know about caring?”

  In a little while she emerged with a suitcase. She said she was going to stay at Maggie and Sterling’s for a few days. Would I be all right?

  Anatol said we should have a party. Mother had been gone for three days and the weekend was coming. He had got over his initial despondency. The night Mother walked out we had stayed up drinking beer and ruminating on the fickleness of women. I had to make it up, since I had had no experience of women, but all Anatol needed was the occasional expression of agreement to keep him going. He told me that the Congolese women were the best, though he had no love for blacks. The Belgians had everything under control, you could get away pretty much with what you liked. The Belgians were the best colonizers. The Belgians and the Portuguese. He had been much respected in the Congo because of his great strength and his ability to withstand heat. He had kept a pet leopard that had loved him like a child. But he had never had a child, except for any number of mulatto bastards running around the jungle, but he meant a real child. T
hat was why he was so grateful to have me now. Did I mind if he thought of me as his son? I told him I didn’t mind in the least, and that I would think of him always as my father. This declaration cost me some effort. It made me feel queasy to say it and I took a big swallow of beer afterwards. But Anatol was touched. He embraced me and, spreading his arms wide, he said that I should consider the studio and everything in it my own. That was the first time he mentioned having a party, and by the time Mother had been gone three days he talked of little else.

  “You know what I mean, party?” he would grin at me.

  “Sure, Anatol. I like parties.”

  On Saturday afternoon he put two big decanters of vodka out on the balcony to sit in the sun. They had lemon peel in them and in a couple of hours they turned yellow. Then he put them in the ice box with the beer and six bottles of Buena Vista Green Hungarian wine. He stacked the record changer with Françoise Hardy and Edith Piaf. I asked him how many people were coming but he wouldn’t tell me. I said I’d be happy to go out if he wanted to have the party to himself but he said no, the party was for me. At seven he put a leg of veal on the spit in the fireplace. He had gone down to the Grand Central Market for it that morning. He said the Grand Central was the only place in Los Angeles where he could get a leg of veal the way he liked it. He was very kind to me all day. He didn’t ask me to do anything, except telephone my mother. She asked me how Anatol was.

  “He misses you,” I said. “He wants to know when you’re coming home.”

  “Tell him when I’m good and ready. Maybe never.”

  They came about eight, one somewhere in her twenties and the other eighteen, Laverne and Dot.

  “You’re cute,” Dot said to me. “How old are you?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “My brother’s fourteen. He goes to L.A. Where do you go?

  “I just started Beverly.”

  “I hear it’s pretty snobby,” Dot said.

  “Pretty,” I said. “I don’t know whether I like it yet. Where do you go? You must be in college.”

  “I quit school. I hated it. Laverne and I have an apartment. Just off the Strip.”

  “Are you two related? You’re not sisters or anything.”

  “No.”

  “How did you meet? Did you know each other before?”

  “There’s a guy we know,” Dot said.

  “You seem older than eighteen to me,” I said.

  “You seem much older than fourteen to me,” she said. “You’re very mature. What is this stuff?”

  “Vodka with lemon in it. Anatol puts it in the sun. Want some more?”

  She held out her glass. I spilled a little on her hand. She licked it off and leaned over and kissed me. I could taste the alcohol in the warmth. I had never kissed a girl before. I could feel her lips, and our teeth touched. My fingers went up to touch her throat. It was so soft and warm. I hadn’t thought about anything and it had happened. A thought came to me: this is the most wonderful person I have ever met.

  We were sitting very close on the couch. She had one hand on the back of my neck. I could see partway down her dress. It occurred to me that I had never seen breasts before except my mother’s and in photographs. I had a pretty good view and I wondered whether she would let me see more, later, or maybe on our second date, maybe at her apartment.

  “You want to do it now?” she said.

  “See what?” I said.

  “I said do you want to do it now.” She hooked two fingers inside my belt.

  “Do what?”

  “It.”

  “We haven’t even had dinner.” I looked around for Anatol and Laverne but they had left the room without my noticing. I said I thought I had better set the table. Maybe she would like to look over the statues.

  At the table Anatol was in an expansive mood. He kept putting things down Laverne’s dress. She was attractive but she had one bad tooth in front. Dot was better. Anatol and Laverne went into the bedroom again after dinner, and Dot and I stood on the balcony and looked at the sea of lights. There was a big traffic jam on the Hollywood Freeway for the Passion Play at the Pilgrimage Theater. I said I would take her to it sometime or to the Hollywood Bowl. She undressed me next to Pan and Syrinx and asked me if I would like her to do that to me. I said sure. She did her best but it was cold-blooded. We were up most of the night. I wasn’t anything marvelous but she said I would learn and I probably had a block. I asked her not to tell Laverne, because Laverne would probably tell Anatol, and Dot said she wouldn’t, but would I like Laverne to come in too? I said I didn’t think that would be a good idea. Dot said she didn’t do this all the time. Anatol was paying them seventy-five dollars apiece. There were a lot of guys who took her out. She had been to the Crescendo last week. There was a guy there, a comedian who did a fantastic routine about screwing a chicken. She wanted to be rich so she could go to nightclubs and anywhere she wanted anytime. I told her my father had been a movie star and my mother had been in the movies and on the stage and had made a movie with John Wayne before anybody had heard of him. She hadn’t heard of my parents and she didn’t believe me, but then she did. She told me I was good looking and would get better looking and should be in the movies myself, and she took hold of me when she said this. I told her a barber had said the same thing to me once, but I had been afraid he was queer because he had kept pressing himself against my arm on the chair. She thought that was pretty funny. There were a lot of fags in her building. Her brother was probably a queer and her father had kicked him out of the house.

  In the morning Anatol cooked breakfast and we finished the wine.

  “Last night you boy, today you man,” he said to me.

  He started fooling around with Laverne, and Dot and I went for a walk. We discussed whether the TV reception was better where she lived. When we got back, Anatol said Mother had telephoned and he sent Dot and Laverne away.

  5

  ENCORE HOLLYWOOD

  TO SAVE their marriage, Mother and Anatol decided on a trip to Europe. At first they were going to save their marriage by having a child before Mother was no longer capable of it, but that project broke down when Anatol let out that he would have to find other women while Mother was pregnant. He had to put it somewhere, didn’t he, and Mother ought to know that it wouldn’t mean anything, since she was the only women he loved and the only woman he had ever loved. Then they were going to adopt a child. Anatol drew up plans for building on a room, but they couldn’t agree whether to adopt an American child or a foreign one, and the plans were scrapped. They got a dog, but Anatol ran over it with his car. Mother said the dog might have made a difference, but she was too brokenhearted to get another one, at least not right away. They talked to the minister of the Church of Religious Science, who was a saint, but he wasn’t much help, except that he commissioned Anatol to do a bust of himself for the foyer of the church. They went to a marriage counselor. He put them into a group of similarly troubled people, but Anatol wouldn’t open his mouth in the group, and after a couple of sessions Mother said she had no intention of paying good money to discuss her problems with a bunch of plumbers and Negroes. Anatol started taking tranquilizers, but he didn’t stop drinking so he was falling asleep all the time and he cut out the tranquilizers. He did his work. Mother sat around, looking tragic and bloated. I tried talking to her. She said I was lucky to have my whole life before me. As far as she was concerned, life was too damned long. Unfortunately she had a history of longevity in her family. So did my father. He would live to be a hundred. Everyone would live on and on, hating everybody else. Look at her godamned bitch of a mother. Except Anatol would probably drop dead one of these days. His blood pressure was up. He would die and then she would have nothing, except this lousy studio he was too cheap to expand. Didn’t she want me to have my own room? Of course she did, but what could she do? She had only enough money left from the divorce to live on herself if Anatol should die. She admitted she had made some bad investments. There was that dese
rt property that never came to anything, that was $150,000 down the toilet. Anatol would die and she would be left with nothing. That was the way it was. Some people gave and everybody else took.

  She hit on the trip to Europe during a crisis. At wit’s end, she had told Anatol that he had better take her out to dinner. And not one of his cheap dives, either.

  “Anything you vish, Madam,” said Anatol.

  “I haven’t had a decent dress on for months. Look at me. I was always perfectly chic, and now look at me. You have a great talent, all right. You have a great talent for reducing women to garbage.”

  She spent a long time making herself up and getting dressed, and when she came out, I told her she looked beautiful. She thanked me and cried a little, and she told me she was determined to do something to form a more perfect union. She didn’t know what it would be yet. At least she was capable of making an effort. She was still able to look like a human being. She was going to make Anatol take her to Scandia and she was really going to let him have it. He couldn’t yell at her there.

  She got back late, and alone. Anatol had been arrested for drunken driving. She poured herself a drink and sat down to tell me about it. She wasn’t upset. She felt rather good, in fact. She felt better than she had in months, maybe years. They had got to the restaurant, and she had let things alone while they had a few drinks and ordered. Then, during the first course, a lovely shellfish platter they do so exquisitely at Scandia, she had begun letting him have it. She had gone on eating, perfectly at ease, not causing a scene or anything like that, but she had really pulled out all the stops, letting him know what a selfish little bastard he was, how he treated her like dirt, everything. She said she was too damned old to pretend any longer. Well, she had certainly had the desired effect. By the time the main course arrived, veal Oskar for her and tournedos Rossini for him, he was shaking like a leaf and could hardly eat. She had let him order another bottle of wine, that had been her only mistake, but maybe it hadn’t been such a mistake after all. She had rendered him absolutely speechless and she had kept it up right through to the pastry cart. Maybe it had been the accent of the waiter or just the general atmosphere, they had managed to get a table in the part that looks just like the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, she had insisted on that, it may have been a premonition, but whatever it was, as they were having their coffee and liqueurs, she had said to him,