At one o’clock the next afternoon he was booked to appear in court. Shortly before that time Jo Flanagan appeared. She was wearing a sweatshirt with a peaked cowl on which there were a few beads of moisture, and UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS stenciled on the front.
He took hold of the bars and said, “I guess it’s snowing outside?”
She studied him with no hint of sympathy, her arms crossed.
“I hope they keep you here a week,” she said. “They can keep you forever.”
“Didn’t you bring me anything?” he asked. Obviously she had not.
“I could escape if I wanted to,” he suggested, rattling the cell door experimentally. He had never been in jail before and was interested in his own sensations.
“Very well,” she said, “you’re a bon vivant. What now?”
This irritated him; it seemed to him that he was always being criticized. He sat down on the bench and crossed his legs.
“Is there something the matter with your back?” she asked, coming closer to the bars.
“I don’t know, but it hurts. It feels like an old cornstalk.”
“Did the policemen beat you? Is it true they hit prisoners with rubber hoses?”
“I don’t know if they do or not,” Melvin said, and carefully straightened up. “Have you got—wait a minute! Wait! Where are you going? Aren’t you going to stay and talk to me?”
“About what, may I ask?”
“Well, I don’t know,” he said. He hobbled toward the door with one hand supporting his back and looked at her intently. “Why did you come here?”
“You don’t have the haziest notion, do you?”
He could not think of anything to say. He thought she had come to visit because she liked him, but he did not want to say this.
After the trial he wrote a check to pay his fine, was released, and struggled through the snow to his porch, unshaven and groggy and of the opinion he had not been treated fairly.
He took a long nap, awoke greatly refreshed, and made his way inside the landlord’s house by pulling himself from one piece of furniture to the next. He telephoned Jo Flanagan to ask if she would care to have supper with him. She said she would not. He thought he must have misunderstood, so he asked again, and again she said no. He was baffled by this; and not knowing what else to do, he asked again. This time she said no—but not quite so emphatically, so he asked again.
This time she said no, but then she said yes.
That evening, moved by he knew not what, and in periodic discomfort from a stabbing pain in his spine, he began telling Jo Flanagan about his experiences in the Navy—how he had attempted to do what was expected of him and how it ended so disastrously. She did not interrupt. She toyed with her beads and looked at him. He was struck by the expressionless female quality of her hands, the tapering, childish fingers. He noticed how delicately her skin absorbed the light, and he recalled a moment when they had been standing close together and the sweet odor of her body caused him to feel strangely weak. He stopped speaking. He could not remember what he had been saying. The war—the concern he felt for all that happened during those years—what did it matter?
23
Melvin saw Jo Flanagan frequently during the next few weeks, and, when they were apart, was surprised to find that so many things caused him to think of her—someone’s gesture, the sight of a policeman, a sudden burst of laughter.
One morning while he was loitering on the porch steps wondering if she might like to go to a basketball game that night, he heard the trash collectors trundling barrels from the garage next door; he looked through the hedge and observed in the midst of the rubbish an old, weathered baby buggy. For a moment he stared at the buggy, reminded of something, although he did not know what. Then, with a shrug, he mashed his Navy fatigue hat comfortably on the back of his head, settled himself on the steps, and resumed basking in the pallid midwinter sun. But all at once he sat up with a bemused smile, jumped to his feet, and quickly walked along the driveway to the street and looked for the trash collectors. They were nowhere in sight. He stood there a while, pinching his lip and frowning. The February arts-and-crafts festival was not far off and he had not yet decided what to exhibit. Ribbons were to be awarded in various categories. It would be nice to win a ribbon. Thoughtfully he went to a telephone. After being referred from one bureau to another he got the information he needed: the address of the city dump. And there he went to wait for the baby buggy.
A few shabby men and one old woman with eyes like chinks and her head bound up in a kerchief were picking through the litter. Melvin hesitated, thinking they might have some sort of priority, but as none of them paid the least attention to him he soon came to feel more at ease. With his hands in the pockets of his coveralls he wandered around, whistled through his teeth, and occasionally stamped his feet.
From time to time a truck appeared, dumped its load, and drove off, and he inspected what had been brought.
Eventually a truck arrived with the buggy. He had been afraid an argument might develop over who was to have it, but none of the other scavengers was interested, so, having banged it on the ground a few times for no other reason than that he felt like doing so, he took it home.
The next day after class he borrowed a hammer and a hacksaw from his landlord and sawed off the wheels. He then sawed the bumper in half and twisted the ends upward into a semicircle. After that, he took the hammer and industriously pounded the interior of the buggy outward to fatten it a bit. Having got this far he stopped, somewhat short of breath, and realized the job was finished.
He had planned to construct four legs and a tail from a broomstick and some clothesline, and to paint the object Spanish black, but it had come to him as he stood there panting for breath that the essence of the creature had already been revealed. To add to it would be to pollute the inspiration. It was complete, it was marvelously simple, and it was, above all else, the sort of exhibit to perplex a jury—for he had found himself brooding quite often; on the chaos wrought by the Cubists and their innumerable relatives. Ever since 1913 when Duchamp’s nude stumbled down the staircase the critics had been notably reluctant to criticize anything that puzzled them, for fear of being thought imperceptive. It might well be, Melvin reflected, that the jurors for this particular festival were, deep in their souls, insecure. And if ever there was an animal to confound them, this surely was it. All it needed was a pedestal.
He spent several days building the pedestal, but when at last it was finished it was a very fine piece of work indeed. The pedestal was made of walnut and cherry wood with an inlaid perimeter of teak. He had sandpapered each segment until his fingers were numb, and had fitted and glued the pieces together with the greatest of care. He had rubbed it and waxed it and by the time it was done he had all but fallen in love with it.
On top of this pedestal he screwed the baby buggy, and he wrote on a little card:
“Yearling Bull”
MELVIN ISAACS
One Thousand Dollars
He did not think anyone would buy the bull for that price, which was the reason he had priced it so. At fifty dollars, say, someone might buy it in order to use the pedestal as a coffee table and he had worked on it so hard that he could not bear the thought of its being sold.
There was a freezing rain on the day of the festival; nevertheless a large crowd attended, and as the exhibition was in the gymnasium the rain did not make too much difference. Paintings hung from burlap screens which stood at varying angles so that an intricate labyrinth had been created, providing niches for sculpture and the different crafts. Burlap corridors, crepe paper twisting overhead from the goals to the stanchions, a sprinkle of sawdust that permeated the gymnasium with a curiously rural odor, a refreshment booth, a string quartet playing with the valiant industry and serious purpose of musicians on a sinking steamer—thus did the festival commence.
Melvin, having delivered his exhibit to the committee a few hours before the deadline, immediately went in searc
h of it. He encountered a vast abstract by Kip Silver—why did Silver’s paintings sway and bump when anyone approached?—and hurried along, past the pottery and jewelry, and after losing his way and again being confronted by Kip Silver’s painting, he located his bull in a cul-de-sac. He could have hoped for nothing more. Each visitor, turning the corner, was massively blocked by the gleaming pedestal with the buggy on top. Even for one who anticipated the sight, it was a memorable experience. The buggy, originally pale blue with what had perhaps been pink trim, had faded to a uniform beige and was spotted with rust, the crossbar strung with beads which some child, or many children, had played with, and bitten, as they were wheeled along the boulevard. These beads were badly weathered, the paint flaked from the surface, and here and there had split like rotten acorns. The instant Melvin saw them he was appalled, for whoever heard of a bull wearing beads? Nor could he imagine how he had failed to notice them. He thought of dashing to the landlord’s house for the hacksaw, but it was too late, the jury was coming, and even if they had not gotten to the bull by the time he returned they would hear the screech of the hacksaw and send someone to investigate. He did not know whether he would be disqualified if he sawed during the judging; in any event the noise would attract attention. It was too late, that was all.
But then he was struck by the thought of the emperor’s new clothes and understood that the problem was solved: he had merely to ignore the obvious and pray no child appeared.
So he remained beside the bull, hands locked behind his back, rocking from his heels to his toes with a look of unconcern, keenly attuned, nevertheless, to the remarks of visitors, but most of all to the approach of the jurors. He was puzzled and a little disappointed that the public was neither shocked nor outraged by what he had done; those who came upon it stopped promptly enough, but that might have been simply because they could not go any farther; they looked at the object on display and then at him, suspecting he had something to do with it, and went away. Evidently times had changed since 1913.
At last the jury did come around.
“Gentlemen, there is something Phoenician here,” the first juror said. He touched a faded bead. “See the famous Tyrian purple.”
“I find myself impressed,” said the next—and he cleared his throat—“by the quite extraordinary telekinetic threshold. It is virtually palpable. One may be at variance with the degree of positive realignment, which does not appear to be at less than the irreducible minimum, and on this account I must say I find myself inadequately gratified. Nonetheless, we should be remiss to disparage the intercession of contemporary scansion. At all events, this is a peculiarly inflexible commentary on the current condition. I would say we are dealing with a primitive eclectic.”
“You speak of Phoenicia,” the third juror said, visibly annoyed. “Perhaps. But I think of the Minotaur. Certainly that is the sculptor’s intent. Look around, gentlemen. Are we not ourselves in a labyrinth? And are we not Athenian captives all? Who shall be our Theseus? No one knows, yet surely some Daedalus has been here.”
“Nonsense, nonsense!” exclaimed the second with a courteous but admonitory smile. “All being is unity, we know, and approximates the omniscience of truth, from which one concludes, in this particular instance, that a Lascaux-inspired theosophy has become an irrevocable adjunct to the collectarium.”
There was a pause.
“The color is quite beautiful,” said the first.
“The mythical content is profound,” said the next.
“Beyond doubt,” the other one said, “we are here confronted by a most stipulatory reaction to the universe, however one may cavil. Shall we proceed, gentlemen?”
The judges walked away, but in half an hour they were back, and one of them pinned a blue silk ribbon to the pedestal. Melvin could feel the blood rushing to his face. He looked at the judges, and at the ribbon, and at the baby carriage, and all at once he was filled with an intolerable sense of helplessness. He turned around with a bewildered expression.
He telephoned his parents to inform them of his success and they were very much pleased. They congratulated him and told him how anxious they were to see this bull. Melvin knew they were under the impression he had created a bull about which there could be no mistake, an animal such as they would find on a farm; consequently he was not eager for them to see what he had made. As he talked to them he repeatedly changed the subject; with equal determination and with an enthusiasm dismally counterweighted by his monosyllabic replies they persisted in asking about the bull.
“Well,” Melvin said to his mother, “you know it’s sort of in the new modern kind of trend. I don’t know whether you’ve kept up on modern art or not.” He was walking back and forth as far as the telephone cord allowed. “It’s kind of non-objective, they call it, you know,” he added hopefully, and taking a pencil from behind his ear he scratched the top of his head. “It’s not what you—ah, might expect.” He listened to her answer and understood that she thought he was being modest; she did not grasp what he was trying to explain. He shifted from one foot to another, picked his teeth, and gazed around moodily. He was wearing his khaki pants as low on his hips as they would go without falling off, and now, with four fingers of one hand thrust into the pocket, he gestured with his thumb while he continued to disparage the prize-winning sculpture. The conversation ended with his parents still asking when they would see it, wanting to know if he couldn’t bring it on the bus the next trip he made to Kansas City, and himself replying evasively.
During the next few days he was congratulated by a great many people, some of whom he did not even know. Jo Flanagan was the only one who had nothing to say; this began to irritate Melvin. He made certain she had more than enough opportunity—alluding to the ribbon and to a review of the festival which appeared in the campus newspaper. But she only listened, or answered noncommittally if he questioned her.
“How did you like the festival?” he asked.
“I like festivals,” she answered.
“Were there some particular works of art you thought had a lot of power and meaning?” he asked.
“I saw some things I liked.”
He gazed at her resentfully. In his wallet was a clipping from the newspaper; he wanted to show it to her, since his name was mentioned three times and there was also a lengthy appreciation of the bull.
“What in particular did you like?” he insisted.
She named a few paintings, and described a piece of pottery.
“Did you get around to looking at what I did?” he asked, although she had stopped in the alcove several times while he was there.
She looked at him calmly, frankly, but did not answer.
“It was an old baby carriage nobody would have looked at twice,” Melvin said. “I revealed the essential, underlying truth. The essence of it.” He thought she would agree to this.
She did not say a word.
“There were some extremely complimentary remarks, if you must know,” he went on; and when, even then, she obstinately refused to congratulate him, he clenched his fist, choking with rage, and demanded hoarsely, “What more do you want? Look what I did!” He managed to subdue his voice, but his lips quivered and he could not stop trembling. He felt as though he had been seized unaware, bound hand and foot, and he did not know how to get free. The sensation was almost unbearable. Perspiration stood out on his face. He leaned toward her desperately and murmured, “Those animal paintings in the Lascaux caves, in case you’re familiar with them, have exerted a considerable influence on my interpretation.” He had gone to the library after leaving the festival in order to look up Lascaux, Theseus, Daedalus, and such other critical allusions as he had been able to remember, but even as he said this she turned on him a gaze so deliberate and penetrating that he quickly dropped his eyes.
“The judges saw that I’d gotten to the spirit of it, it was a transfiguration, and the spatial concept had to be altered to coincide with the metamorphosis,” he said without looking
at her. “I was devoted to the tension and stress of my subject and I reorganized it with rewarding sculptural resource.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, it is!” he exclaimed bitterly. “It said so in the paper. And half the people on campus have come up to me and said something flattering. Everybody except you. I thought you’d be pleased. If you want to know the truth, I’m an important person now. People are talking about me and I’m going to start painting abstract from now on. There’s a feature in a magazine I read the other day where it concludes the only possible way for a contemporary artist to get at his full potential, I forgot just how it was phrased, is to be abstract and disclose the innumerable shapes that peer out of the commonest things. That way you appreciate—the public, I mean, will be taught to appreciate how we artists fix moving experiences in images that verify their universality. And that’s what I’m going to do. I know how to do it. If you’d heard the jurors you’d know what I’m talking about.”
“Glory to you.”
“Yes, well, you just watch!” he told her vehemently. “This is only the beginning, and I don’t mean maybe. Everybody’s going to learn who I am. I’ve been nobody long enough. All my life I’ve just been booted around. If it isn’t my father it was a Navy officer or a schoolteacher or somebody, and I’m sick and tired of it!”
“I know you are,” she said mildly.
“Well, then!”
“Then what?”
“Well, there you are!”
“We know where I am,” she remarked, “and don’t be so huffy! Have I stung you? You’re utterly impossible when you behave like this.”
He avoided her for nearly a week, making a point of it by nodding curtly whenever they happened to meet on the campus; yet he found himself listening expectantly when the telephone rang in the landlord’s house, hoping she might be calling. And he lingered in the studio after classes were dismissed, because she had often stopped by to see how his paintings were coming along.
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