“No, I don’t have any idea where he is.”
“Do you need anything?”
“No. Not a thing. Good-by.”
Late that afternoon he was again in the studio alone, the other students having quit at four o’clock as they always did, when he began to speculate on whether a large abstract on which he was working might not be more emphatic if he could manage to apply the paint to the surface with some sort of actual impact. He backed away and then lunged forward, thrusting the spatula to the canvas. The effect was not radically different from what he had already achieved. But one thing did come to mind—the flexibility of the spatula. It really was extraordinarily flexible. He wiped it clean and tentatively waved it back and forth. He depressed the tip with his thumb, bent the blade, and narrowly observed it whip around when released. He thought about this for a while. Then he proceeded to thicken the paint until it had very nearly reached the consistency of chewing gum; after loading the tip of the spatula he stepped back, crouched, took aim, and let fly. Through the air the globule of pigment streaked in a resolute arc and without compunction dealt the canvas a celestial blow. And as he had leaned slightly forward and risen to his toes as he released his arrow, thus he stood poised, spatula in hand, all gilded and mute as any idol.
Moments later he was busily flinging paint when the spatula slipped in his grasp and with singular radiance akin more to a Roman candle than a comet the paint soared across the studio and out the window. After a horrified pause, anticipating a shriek of rage and anguish, he rushed to the window and leaned out.
There was nobody below.
He shaded his eyes and tried to see where the paint had landed—somewhere in the bushes, he supposed, or, estimating the trajectory, maybe farther down the hillside. At all events it was gone. He was about to draw his head in the window when he became conscious of a bird darting beneath the eaves, apparently building a nest, though he could not see where. He watched it for a while. It was a common sort of bird—a chimney swift, he thought. All his life he had seen them, batlike, hunting insects in the Midwestern summer twilight. He looked again at the sky, to the west where the sun was setting. It was not a winter sunset. He felt on his face a mild, warm breeze. There was an odor of growth, of abundant earth, of life itself, inexorably triumphant.
A few minutes later Melvin walked out of the studio and telephoned Jo Flanagan to suggest they have supper together.
There was a pause.
“What did you say your name was?”
“I know,” he replied persuasively. “I haven’t called for a while, but I’ve been busy.”
“All right, then,” she said at last. “But put on a clean shirt.”
After supper they attended a movie, which was not as good as the advertisement claimed; but there was, in addition to the feature, a short subject concerning a talented macaw. This macaw belonged to a commercial artist and one day, with an obvious desire to imitate its master, the bird took a brush in its beak and pressed the brush against a canvas. The artist encouraged the bird, framed some of its works, and submitted them to a gallery specializing in modern art, where they were enthusiastically accepted and placed on display.
After the movie they were walking across the campus when Jo Flanagan said, “Do you know that you’re beginning to stammer?” She touched his arm as she said this and they stopped walking. She was looking at him with curiosity. “I’ve noticed it before,” she went on, “but I supposed you were doing it on purpose. You do have a ghastly sense of humor at times.”
“I’m not doing it on purpose,” Melvin said. “I feel all right. I can’t help it, that’s all.”
And then, to his astonishment, his fists clenched so violently that he could not release them and he exclaimed in a choking voice, “They don’t know what it’s about! Rubbish! Trash!” he shouted, desperately trying to stop himself, and suddenly flung his arms around the trunk of a tree. He managed to catch his breath, his vision cleared, and he prepared to speak rationally. “They think they’re so clever, oh, I don’t, I mean-m-m-m—” He could not understand why he was speaking like this. “I’ve got to start over,” he continued, speaking with difficulty, but with fantastic rapidity, with no idea what he would say next. He listened in dismay to the words streaming through his lips. He heard himself tell her again and again with raving insistence that he must make a new beginning, and at first did not know what this meant; then he guessed that he was talking about the painting and sculpture he had done, and then he became conscious of a remarkable sensation: it was as though he could distinguish himself at a great distance, approaching and steadily shouting, while the words continued to pour out of his mouth. He felt strangely grateful; he had no desire to stop off this flow of words, if only it would permit him to meet and merge with the approaching, gesticulating figure.
He discovered that he had stopped speaking, that he and she were standing quite close together and that she was staring up at him with a look of such intensity that he was stunned; gradually he was able to recall what he had just finished saying—he had asked her to marry him. He could feel the warmth of her, she was so near, and he was paralyzed by the blazing black pupil of her eye, which seemed to register assent.
In the morning he went to the barber shop, an establishment he had avoided, and emerged half an hour later reeking of talcum and lotion, rather pleased that without so much hair he could feel the spring sunshine on his face. And, having contracted with himself for the reconstruction of his career as an artist, he armed himself with a hammer, a pair of pliers, and a screwdriver and walked without haste to the studio, where he dismantled and then demolished the already battered baby carriage. The pedestal he kept for a coffee table.
By Monday he had finished cleaning up. The spatula and the quart cans of house painter’s paint were in the landlord’s basement, in case he wished to paint the house. The astral cardboards, waxed papers, and similar experiments lay in ashes, and such spiritual content as they possessed had been returned to the stratosphere. Some of the canvases, those on which the paint was not too thickly encrusted, he thought he could use, so he scraped them as clean as possible and stacked them in a corner.
He knew that he would now be obliged to find a job. The government was still paying his tuition and enough for minimum expenses, but there was nothing left over, and if he was to be married there should be some money in the bank. He considered making abstracts till the end of the year, not only in hopes of selling a few but because an abstract—the bigger the better—would be just the thing to enter in competition for the annual Ellery Finch Fellowship. The fellowship provided for a year of study at any art academy in the United States or abroad, and Melvin could think of nothing he would enjoy more than a year in Paris, married or not, with all expenses paid. Nor did he need to remind himself of what this would mean when it came time for his first exhibition: whatever he showed, then, would merit serious attention. It would be reviewed. It would attract a crowd. But eventually he dismissed the idea, reasoning that if he succumbed to this temptation he would be apt to give in again, and again.
Without enthusiasm he asked his instructor if he might have the key to the still-life studio. The instructor, a taciturn old Hungarian in a paint-stained smock, regarded him somberly and without a word gave him the key. After unlocking the studio Melvin paused, gazing at the dust that had settled on the colored bottles and plaster casts and on the skeleton which hung by a bolt through the cranium. He knew immediately that when he started to draw from these he would not be ignored. It had been too long since anyone studied fundamentals.
Kip Silver, coming on him seated before the skeleton, was amused.
“Whatever you’re about to tell me,” Melvin said, “I already know.”
Silver took the pipe from his mouth and began tamping it full of tobacco while his eyes winked with malice. “Study your life away, Isaacs,” he said. “Do you think you’ll ever duplicate the old masters?” He held a match to the bowl and went on, between puffs
, “Suppose you could, what? It’s been done. You’re living in the past,” and he strolled away chuckling.
Melvin, as he laboriously copied the skeleton, which, revolving gently in the spring breeze from the window, seemed to mock him, knew that Silver had a right to be amused.
His reputation declined slowly at first because no one could possibly imagine what he was doing. Perhaps it was a new and radical departure. But after a while, when he did nothing spectacular, when, in fact, he did not do anything at all except what he was evidently doing, people lost interest.
At the end of the school year the Ellery Finch Fellowship was awarded to Kip Silver, who was represented in the competition by a single painting, unframed, titled “Variation 6,” of such dimensions that it could not be hung and so had been leaned against a wall. It consisted of a grayed rose background in which some gravel and leaves had been embedded, and a trail of purplish marks resembling fingerprints.
A bit sadly Melvin strolled around, looking at the various paintings and sculpture, most of which he had seen before. His own entries—a charcoal study of a Donatello head, and a fretfully painted view of the Kaw River—were not admitted into the final judging.
Seeing Jo Flanagan, he gave her a wan smile and shrugged.
She asked how he was.
“Oh,” he said, “fair. I guess I knew it would happen like this. I’m just disappointed, that’s all. It makes me feel so familiar. I mean, I’d like to win once in a while. Just occasionally.”
“Biting into you is like biting into an old coffee bean,” she said. “Will you carry my books and buy me a soda?”
“All right,” he answered, “if I have enough money.” And he did have enough, though not much more.
25
When he returned to the porch he found one of his paintings propped up against the cot as though someone had been looking at it. Anyone could have entered the porch, because he never bothered to lock the door, but he could not imagine who the visitor might have been. He noticed that a book had been moved—taken from the shelf—and was lying on the desk. He picked it up. Under it was a ten-dollar bill. He was about to go into the house to ask the landlord if his father had left any message when the connecting door opened and his father appeared; he had been drinking and was excited.
“I thought you would never come back!” he exclaimed. “Where have you been? Did you find the money? Buy new trousers—people will think you haven’t a cent in the world. I’ve been considering your painting. I’m happy to say it’s recognizable; however, to be honest, Melvin, I’m not surprised nobody is buying any more. You had a good business, selling what nobody could criticize, now you’ve thrown it away! Why? Never mind, we can talk about that later. Stop walking back and forth—you’re making me nervous!”
“I’m making you nervous? Is that what you said?”
“Yes! You are, yes. Kindly stop pacing the floor. I have something important to tell you, very important. Listen to me, Melvin, it was the other evening at dinner when the doorbell rang and there they stood, both of them—”
“You’re talking so fast I can’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Excuse me. Hephzibah and Ilya, your mother’s cousins from Europe. We thought they were dead. They will be living with us from now on, in the attic. You remember, we’ve spoken of them, I’m sure.”
“Yes, I remember,” Melvin said.
“Hephzibah is at least six feet tall. I opened the door and there they were, Melvin! With satchels and parcels, each with an umbrella, and your mother when she saw them almost fainted. . . .” He was not able to stop talking or to speak distinctly. His eyes were luminous and feverish. He gasped for breath, blinking and shaking his head. Repeatedly he would get up and walk around the porch, sit down again, and cross his legs, gesturing all the while.
Melvin knew that throughout the war his mother had been trying to find out what had become of these women, and that a few days after the invasion of Poland a relative named Leopold who was in the garment industry in New York had sailed to Europe with several thousand dollars in an effort to buy their freedom. Leopold had vanished. Nothing had ever been heard of him. Melvin could not get over a feeling that there existed in Europe at that time an abyss, or a maw, into which human beings were hurled like the horrified figures in a fantastic nineteenth-century illustration of hell.
He saw that his father was preparing to leave.
“Hephzibah and Ilya, I neglected to mention, are sleeping in your bed. They are anxious to make your acquaintance, Hephzibah especially. When will you come home? It has been a long time. How soon can we expect you?”
Melvin answered that he would plan to visit Kansas City over the week end. There was a bus at four o’clock Saturday afternoon.
“Come in the morning, at least. Or Friday, that would be better. It’s been so long. Everybody misses you.”
“No, I couldn’t make it on Friday, or Saturday morning. I must have forgotten to tell you, but I have a job now. I’m delivering ice.”
“Ice? You are delivering ice?”
“Yes. Every morning,” said Melvin.
“Frankly, I’m astonished. Since when?”
“I just got the job a little while ago. I’m what they call a helper. Each truck has a driver and usually one of these helpers. We start early and don’t finish the route until about noon. I have to meet the driver at the plant at a quarter to five in the morning. Sunday is my only day off.”
“I have never understood you. As a small boy you were mysterious.”
“I don’t know why you should feel that way. It’s just an ordinary job and I’m glad to have it. My summer session classes are in the afternoon and I ought to be able to earn enough working every morning to save a little.”
“Delivering ice. An iceman!”
“If you can find me a better job I’ll take it,” Melvin said irritably. “I doubt if you can, though. I don’t have much to offer for a recommendation. There aren’t many jobs available,” he went on. “What makes you think jobs are so easy to get? I was lucky to find this! I’m not about to give it up!”
“All right!” his father exclaimed, and stepped backward. “All right! Who’s arguing? At least it’s an income. Buy new trousers, don’t forget. Patches don’t look nice. Saturday we’ll expect you.”
Melvin telephoned Jo and told her he would be gone for the week end, and on Saturday afternoon he took the bus to Kansas City. There he boarded a streetcar, which let him off within a few blocks of his home.
The refugees were together on the sofa. It was evident they had been waiting for him. They were seated like schoolgirls, hands demurely folded in their laps. He had no more than entered the room when Hephzibah, unquestionably Hephzibah, flew at him—a gigantic, ruffled, extinct, moulting bird, phoenix, griffin, roc, purple-and-gold, with a touch of the ostrich in her limbs and the wood pheasant in her barbaric plumage, her slit beak cracked in noiseless, mythical laughter—enfolded and lifted him as though he were a suckling pig. He dug for safety with his toes, arms pinioned against his sides, smothering in the musty shawl. Her harsh, pitted cheek was pressing his, her mouth agape in dreadful mirth. She crushed him to an unyielding muscular bosom and dropped him, washing her hands together, bending forward from the waist to appraise him through eyes suddenly threatening and narrow as tilted coins. Ilya remained on the sofa, regarding him without the slightest expression, only a dim, lusterless apathy.
Ilya whispered in Yiddish; Hephzibah nodded, and shrewdly tapped her teeth.
Melvin straightened his necktie, which dangled askew as though exhausted by the furious embrace.
Hephzibah grinned and took a step forward.
Melvin without hesitation stepped back.
Hephzibah frowned, softly clucking and croaking, and flung up her arms; the tassels of her shawl stood out like hoodoo bells as she whirled to confer with Ilya. They agreed, and nodded wisely.
“Ech! Love!” Hephzibah crooned, advancing as he retreated.
“Love, Love, no-thing is—how to speak? Should having the beard, Love! Tchk-tchk!”
“You should have seen me at Easter,” he said, and feared he was about to sneeze. She clutched for him; he dodged.
“Tchk-tchk,” Hephzibah whispered with unutterable concern and affection.
Later Melvin remarked to his father, “If you think she’s going to roost in an attic you’d better think again.”
“That’s a fact. She’s out all day having tea with the neighborhood. She discusses the world situation with delivery boys, plays hop-scotch on the sidewalk with little girls. Now I think I should tell you—I don’t know how—a dreadful thing took place. Hephzibah was not here, she was across the street playing dominoes. Little Ilya was sitting quietly on the sofa when, for no reason, she began placing logs in the fireplace. It was a warm evening. We didn’t need a fire. She hobbled to the woodpile on the porch, returned with a log. Your mother and I were puzzled. We didn’t say a word. Ilya returned with another log, then another. All at once the meaning became clear. I was horrified. I spoke to Ilya. She didn’t hear. Your mother led her to the sofa where she was willing to lie down, docile, as though expecting something, and in a little while she went to sleep.” He stopped and took a deep breath. “The two of them were in Auschwitz, that much we know. We can only guess at the rest, at what was done to them there. We don’t ask. If they want to speak, they will. But, Melvin, there is one thing I wonder about, although I know the answer. It’s this: where have they been since then? Tell me, can you guess?”
Melvin looked uneasily at his father.
“I’ll tell you, Melvin. The Russians got them. Since the end of the Second World War they have been Russian slaves.” He stood up and beckoned Melvin to follow him. They walked upstairs and along the hall to a trap door in the ceiling. He thrust a hook through a ringbolt and drew the door downward; a ladder came rumbling diagonally from the attic. There was a smell of dried apples and mice and fresh wood shavings.
The Patriot Page 40