by Tom Rachman
10
Cecil stayed only a week, but he lingers in Bear Bavinsky lore as the comical stoic: “You walked here in the hail with no umbrella? Why, Cecil would’ve loved that!” At any mention of their departed guest, Natalie finds reason to leave the room. Nightly, she works on an apology letter to Cecil and reads various versions to Pinch. Yet she cannot send one; she’s too angry still. Meanwhile, Bear—who was kept away for much of Cecil’s trip—extends that absence, at his studio constantly now. Nobody questions this until another guest appears.
Birdie is a fifteen-year-old with short dirty-blond hair, an elephant-footed gait, pudgy pubescent curves. She’s also Pinch’s half sister, although he never heard her named before. The arrival is a merry occasion for Bear, who lifts his youngest daughter off the ground, swings her around, her saddle shoe hitting the mahogany bureau with a thunk. “Birdie, little buddy!” Alas, her timing is not the greatest, with Bear right in the middle of a sitting. “You’ll be your big sister’s tour guide for a few days,” Bear tells Pinch, who is on summer break. “How about it, kiddo?”
Pinch always longed to meet his relations in America, of whom he’s heard only vague mention. This fogginess allowed him to invent them, concocting a clan of best friends, the kind of pals Pinch reads about but never finds at school. Still, it’s peculiar to have an unknown girl in the apartment who happens to be a blood relation. “I want the grand tour of Rome,” she says, but Pinch has no clue what this involves. So Birdie buys a guidebook and takes her little brother along to interpret.
They stroll around the Forum, forging through weeds, high-stepping over a fallen marble column. “So crazy: a treasure like this, left out in the open, nobody guarding,” she marvels, approximating the view that local males hold of her, they sizing up her shorts, cocking their chins beckoningly. Birdie is pinched on the bus, fondled in churches—there’s a palpitating sexuality in the city that summer. With aplomb, she bats away each hand yet claims to enjoy the attention, which confuses Pinch. Romance is the embarrassing part of every movie, the part that drags on with no purpose. Still, he likes that older boys approach him for information about his sister. He wants Birdie to like them, so that he may be their personal translator.
“Tell him my husband’s about to turn up,” she instructs Pinch, when a fresh contender addresses her in the Pantheon.
“Aren’t you too young to be married, Birdie?”
“Fine, then. Tell him my fiancé is on his way.”
The Italian lothario, a spotty adolescent, gazes down long black eyelashes at Pinch. “Allora? Che t’ha detto?”
“Che è già fidanzata.”
“Ma che m’importa a me? Sarà in America, ’sto fidanzatino. E mica è bello come me, vero?”
Pinch reports to Birdie: “He’s saying, ‘He’s not as beautiful as me, right?’”
“Who isn’t as beautiful as you?”
“Not as beautiful as he is.”
“You lost me, Charlie.”
“Your fiancé isn’t good-looking enough.”
She rears on her suitor in mock outrage. “Don’t dare talk mean about my fiancé who doesn’t exist.”
The adolescent responds in English: “You no ’ave boyfriend?”
“Hey, you’re not allowed to understand. I will not abide a cheater, cute ragazzo.” Off she stomps, little brother hurrying after.
Birdie is equally likely to sass grown-ups. As if measuring her target, she narrows her eyes, lips twitching sardonically. Snarkiness has already landed her in heaps of trouble—it’s why her mother dispatched Birdie here in the first place, unwilling to tolerate a full summer with this hellion. But her boldness is a hit with Pinch. He has developed into a boy who must prep everything he says. By the time he’s ready to speak, conversations have moved on, causing him to blurt. By contrast, Birdie can’t hesitate—just out with it. When Bear returns from his studio late each night, she is often snarky, such as when Dad summons Pinch for a bit of roughhousing, and Birdie calls him back, saying, “You don’t have to go, Charlie, just because the dog barks.” Regarding Pinch’s mother, Birdie is dismissive of the new wife, who busies herself with domestic chores, ironing sheets, making meals. That’s nice and all, Birdie tells her half brother, but when is Dad taking me out? He promised. You heard him.
She and Pinch sleep head-to-toe in his bed, whispering in the dark, she asking about Italian boys and he asking about Chicago, where she resides with her mother and stepdad plus two elder sisters who—scandalously to Birdie—don’t share her fascination with horses. The eldest is marrying next year; the middle won’t ever leave home, she’s such a stick-in-the-mud. But what her brother longs to hear are tales of Dad when he used to live in America, a time that verges on the mythical to Pinch. Birdie loves to dish, claiming privileged knowledge, although her reports are often based on merest rumors.
“Which is when she caught Daddy in bed with that dancer.”
“Why was a dancer in his bed?”
“Do I got to explain everything, Charlie?”
Not necessarily. But Pinch finds ways not to understand—to hear aspersions about Dad feels like betrayal.
“Everything’s always about his art,” Birdie complains. “He doesn’t hardly care about his actual creations.”
“What do you mean?”
“The human ones.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t be an imbecile, Charlie. I mean you, me, Dina, and Kelly. Actually, you know what? Let’s please stop talking about Daddy.”
11
“Ready?” Bear shouts.
Pinch—on the living-room floor, sketching with Birdie—stills his pencil. He turns to his sister, as if to reiterate Dad’s question, which was addressed to her. She remains fixed on her drawing, heel of her hand against chubby blemished cheek, fingers straight upward, blocking her peripheral vision. “I’m still drawing Thunderclap,” she says, referring to her horse.
“Birdie?” her father says. “I rushed over to get you, sweetie.”
This is her last day before flying home, and Bear promised they’d spend it together, wanting to make up for how busy he’d been. Alas, he was detained by work this morning; couldn’t be avoided. Pinch understands. Natalie has explained how every one of Dad’s brushstrokes is the intersection of him and that instant—the slightest interruption, and art is obliterated from the record. Nobody hates this bullying fact more than Dad himself, who’d rather be horsing around here.
Bear walks from the room, and his daughter looks at the empty doorframe, then anxiously at her brother. On her behalf, Pinch sneaks into the hallway, listening hard: the back-and-forth squeak of floorboards in the master bedroom, where Dad must be pacing, his indignation seeping down the hallway. Pinch wants to warn Birdie that their father has important work, that he interrupted it for her, that he can’t be made to wait. “Birdie,” he says tentatively.
“When I’m ready!” she snaps, pushing the air to reproach him, returning fiercely to her sketch, though she tucks her hair behind her ear, listening desperately for Bear.
Another squeak of the floorboards. And another. In this direction now. Dad is coming back.
Both kids look up. He stands there. “Well, one thing’s for sure: My rivals don’t suffer foolishness like this!” Bear says, as if lighthearted. “Honey, I can’t be wasting time.” He taps his watch face. “I took the day off.”
“You did not. You said you would.”
“What am I doing here?” he responds, frustration rising. Now I’m slave to a teenage girl?”
Pinch holds still, muscles tight.
“Last chance,” Bear says.
“For what? We were supposed to have a whole day.”
“It didn’t work out that way. But I’m still looking forward. Or trying to. Don’t you want your painting lesson?”
She pretends not to hear.
“Well. That’s that.”
“Wait, Daddy!” Birdie exclaims, clutching the pencil against her chest. “I said I was almost done.”
“If I knew you didn’t want my company, I’d have gone straight to the art store instead of wasting this trip home.”
“Why are you getting sore, Daddy?”
“I’m not getting anything. Except the hell out of here.”
“But we’re supposed to eat ice creams!” She leaps to her feet, fighting back tears, and storms down the hall.
“Oh, come on now, Birdie. You’re off for a sulk?” Bear shrugs to his son. “I will never understand. Well, Charlie, it’s just the two of us. Now, I need supplies, and you look like a first-class translator. What do you say—you and me, off to Poggi’s?” He gooses his son in the thigh, causing a squeal of joy.
Pinch darts to the front door, adding nervously, “Should we ask her too?”
“I asked twice already. She doesn’t like us fellas today.”
Birdie must’ve been listening, for she slams the door of Pinch’s bedroom.
In silence, father and son walk past the second-century ramparts of Castel Sant’Angelo, over a reconstructed Ancient Roman bridge lined with marble angels bearing whips and nails and lances. “What choice did she leave me?” Bear asks belatedly. “Played it the only way I could. That fair, Charlie?”
Pinch can’t find the right answer, so nods fast, hating to forsake his best friend of these past two weeks—yet hating even more to imperil a rare outing with Dad. All morning, Birdie was saying how she’d give Bear a piece of her mind. But, Pinch wonders, for what? She only wanted this; precisely what he is guiltily enjoying.
Dad slaps his hand on Pinch’s shoulder, and they walk the rest of the way like that: Bear guiding the boy, stopping him before traffic, leading him via a diversion to admire the elephant obelisk in Piazza della Minerva, explaining the wizardry of Bernini’s chisel work with such exaltation that Pinch forgets his guilt. When they find that the art store is closed until four, Bear promises his son “the best lunch place in this whole damn city,” grabbing Pinch’s waistband, lifting him off the ground for a few steps, plopping him down, which sends the kid into wild giggles.
At lunch, Bear feasts on course after course, until all that remains on their ravaged paper tablecloth are tomato-sauce specks, a finger-smudged bottle of purple vinegar, and a single slice of bread, which Bear flings into his mouth as they leave, munching as he points them toward “the best coffee in Rome.” On the way, they pass the Chiesa di San Luigi dei Francesi. “Won’t find much better art in the world than in that church,” Bear says.
“Could we go in?”
Bear leads his little son through the doors, down the nave, under gold medallions, glinting starbursts, and muscly sculpted saints who behold the frail human worshippers below with pity. Bear—of Ukrainian-Catholic stock, but a dedicated idolater—directs Pinch to three paintings in a back corner: Saint Matthew the Evangelist’s calling into the faith, his inspiration by an angel, and his martyrdom. “Look at this church, made of money and schifezza,” Bear says, loudly enough that people glance over, frowning. “But these paintings here? When Caravaggio painted a saint, he never modeled from nobles or clergymen. Those are street bums. Hobos and whores. Imagine what the cardinals said!”
Pinch adds Caravaggio to his list of “the best artists,” composed entirely of those his father admires: Sickert and Elsheimer, Dürer and Rembrandt, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec, Mantegna and Soutine. By the same token, Pinch reviles Correggio and abominates Renoir, his father’s second-worst painter, outmatched only by that clown Picasso.
At length, Pinch ponders the three paintings by Caravaggio. “The shadowy parts,” he attempts, having readied this comment for several minutes, “are like your paintings. Dad?” He turns to Bear, fearing that he erred.
“Good eye, Charlie!”
“But which of those men is Saint Matthew?”
“It’s all him. There. And there. And there.”
“He looks different.”
“He gets older in each painting.”
Pinch looks from Matthew to Matthew to Matthew, but cannot process three ages as the same man.
When they emerge into the roasting sun, “the best art store in Rome” has reopened. Colored chaos reigns within: paint sets for beginners and stacks of oil crayons; sable brushes—brights, flats, and rounds; and canvas rolls, down the walls like Doric columns. “This is where you come in handy, old man,” Bear tells Pinch and beckons for the clerk.
When father and son leave, laden with supplies procured by Pinch’s own words, the child is emboldened to ask: “One time, Dad, would you like to paint me? Starting with me right now, then me later when I’m bigger, and me when I’m old?”
“I’ll go one better. How’s about I show you to do it yourself?”
“To paint?”
Ever since they moved to the fancy Marinetti apartment, Pinch has been allowed to visit the art studio only by invitation, and he is forbidden to approach Dad’s supplies. This is a spectacular treat—and it was supposed to be for someone else. After a few minutes of walking, Pinch forces himself to ask: “Does it matter about Birdie?”
“What about her?”
“That she’s waiting?”
“You saw, kiddo. She didn’t want hide nor hair of me. Tell me if I’m wrong.”
Pinch stops, lips parting. But the boy must hasten along. Dad is striding away, and Bear Bavinsky does not slow his pace.
12
Birdie sits outside the art studio, chin on her knees, having rightly guessed that her father would end up here. She claims to want nothing to do with Bear and Pinch, yet follows them in, plonking herself on a spattered stool, unhappily fiddling with a plumb line.
“You joining or not?” Bear asks, stuffing tobacco into his pipe. “Pouting like that, you don’t hurt anybody but yourself.”
Pinch wants to intercede, to warn her that Dad won’t say sorry—just come over, please.
Instead, Bear is talking again, mouth to the boy’s ear, “We can’t make her, if she wants to be that way.” He places a charcoal pencil in Pinch’s hand, takes out a sketch pad, swishes to a virgin page. In full voice, he begins the lesson: “Charlie, I need you to extend your arm. Now, look at your hand from a distance. Okay, bring it close again. Same hand, but not the same object. Question is, kiddo, how to capture it, its essence. People talk about accuracy, but what’s that mean? There’s a gap always between what the object is and what the picture isn’t. And that gap, Charlie, that’s where the art is. Too hard?”
Pinch, uncomprehending, shakes his head.
“Good boy. Now, see that kettle? Close one eye and use your pencil to measure out its parts. Like so. The handle in relation to the underside now. Copy it in simple lines, concentrating on the dimensions. Once you’ve got the proportions, step back, then in. Remember: Look far, draw close.”
Birdie burps.
“I’m showing your brother something.”
“I’m the one who’s visiting.”
“You could’ve taken part, Bird. But you can’t disrupt. Those are the rules.”
Pinch glances up at their father, willing him to include her.
“Charlie, an artist doesn’t see as normal people do,” Bear resumes. “When normal people look, they see events: a bus stop, a pretty girl waiting, the rain. When an artist looks, he sees geometry. Everything is a shape. And within each shape, more shapes. We teach ourselves to overrule what the eyes tell us. Like Cézanne said, ‘Treat nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere, and the cone.’ All right now, shut your eyes and describe the studio.”
“Right now?”
“Not yesterday.”
When the boy finishes, they check his recollected inventory, chuckling at all the oversights. “That bathtub, right there! Son of mine—I ought to d
isinherit you!” He kisses Pinch’s cheek, as if only the two of them were here.
Pinch says, “Can you try, Dad?”
Eyes closed, Bear describes for more than four minutes, adding dozens of items that Pinch hadn’t seen, excluding only one major object: Birdie herself. “The shears, kiddo. Where are my shears?” He cuts into a roll of preprimed canvas, slicing freehand but perfectly straight, a piece as large as Pinch’s mattress. With a carpenter’s speed, Bear hammers together stretchers and crossbars, tacks the canvas to the frame, mallets the corners into true, pulls the canvas taut with pliers, gently taps in wedges, and lifts it onto the easel, erecting a wall between them and her. He and Pinch pass minutes drizzling linseed oil onto pigments, swirling the muller in a figure eight to achieve the desired paste, adding drips of turpentine to thin it ever so slightly, Bear explaining that he seeks a roughness on the side of strokes, an uncooperativeness, a slowness.
Bear demonstrates how to square up sketches and map out a canvas, how to choose a ground, how to do grisaille underpainting, how to vary skin tones. Pinch loses track of anything beyond—except when Birdie makes snide remarks.
The studio door squeaks and Natalie enters, halting as if interrupting holy rites. She lifts away Pinch’s jacket, whispers something to Birdie, who shakes her head defiantly. Natalie returns an hour later with food. All four sit on the mildewed couch, Birdie grumbling about the meal.
“Goddammit, Elizabeth,” Bear snaps. “Natty prepared this, special for you.”
Eyes wet, Birdie clutches her fork tighter.
Bear returns to the canvas, nodding for his son to join, turning the boy away from the others. “Not everyone is an artist,” he says under his breath. “But for those of us that are, it’s war. You get me, Charlie? Total war, or you’re dead from the start. There is a reward, though. Out of this—” He holds up a paintbrush. “And that—” He jabs the bristles toward the canvas. “We get to live forever.”