“Debierue does not like any label. Debierue is Debierue. Marcel Duchamp I admired very much, and he too did not like labels. Do you remember what Duchamp did when a young writer asked him for permission to write his biography?”
“No, sir.”
“When Duchamp was asked for the quite personal information about himself he said nothing. He did not have to think. He emptied all of the drawers from his desk onto the floor and walked out of the room.”
“An existential act.” The story was one I hadn’t heard.
“Another label, M. Figueras?” He clucked his tongue. “So now on the floor are odds and ends, little things saved in the desk for many years for no good reason. Snapshots, little notes one receives or makes for himself. Old letters from friends, enemies, ladies. And, what is it?—the doodles, little pencil squigglings. And pretty canceled stamps, saved because they are exotic perhaps. Stubs from the theater.” He shrugged.
“It sounds like my desk in New York.”
“But this was the Duchamp biography. The clever young man picked up everything from the floor and went away. He pasted all of the objects in a big book, entitled it The Biography of Marcel Duchamp and sold it for a large sum of dollars to a rich Texas Jew.”
“It’s funny I never heard about it. I thought I knew practically everything about Duchamp there was to know . . .”
“And so did the young man who ‘wrote’ the biography about Duchamp out of odds and ends from a desk.”
“Nevertheless,” I said, “I’d like to take a look at that book. Every scrap of information about Duchamp is important because it helps us to understand his art.”
The artist shrugged. “There is no such book. The story is apochryphal—I made it up myself and spread it to a few friends many years ago to see what would happen. And because it is something Duchamp might do, many believed it as you were prepared to do. The chance debris of an artist’s life does not explain the man, nor does it explain the artist’s work. The true artist’s vision comes from here.” He tapped his forehead.
Debierue’s face was expressionless now, and I was unable to tell whether he was serious, teasing me, or getting hostile. He turned to Berenice and smiled. He took her right hand in both of his and spoke in English.
“If a man had a wife and children, perhaps a short biography to leave his family, a record for them to remember him . . . but old Debierue has no wife, children, no relatives now living, to want such a book. The true artist, my dear, is too responsible to marry and have a family.”
“Too responsible to fall in love?” Berenice asked softly.
“No. Love he must have.”
I cleared my throat. “The entire world is the artist’s family, M. Debierue. There are thousands of art lovers all over the world who would like to read your biography. Those who write to you, I know, and those who—”
He patted my arm. “Let us be the friends. It is not friendly to talk about nothing with such seriousness on your face. It is getting late, and you will both stay to dinner with me, please.”
“Thank you very much. We would like very much to stay.” He had changed the subject abruptly, but the longer I stayed the better my chances became to gain information about the old man. Or did they?
“Good!” He rubbed his dry hands together and they made a rasping sound. “First I will turn on my electric oven to four-two-five degrees. I do not have the printed menu, but you may decide. There is the television turkey dinner. Very good. There is the television Salisbury steak. Also very good. Or maybe, M. Figueras, you would most like the television patio dinner? Enchilada, tamale, Spanish rice, and refried beans.”
“No,” I said. “I guess I’ll have the turkey.”
“I’d rather have the Salisbury steak,” Berenice said. “And let me help you—”
“No. Debierue will also have the turkey!” He smiled happily, and turned toward the stove. Relenting, he changed direction, went to the sideboard and got out a box of Piknik yellow plastic forks and spoons. There was a four-mat set of sticky rubber yellow place mats in the drawer. He handed the mats and the box of plastic utensils to Berenice and asked her to set the card table on the porch.
So far, I thought bitterly, as I glumly watched this bustling domestic activity, except for a few gossipy comments on a low curiosity level, I had picked up damned little information of any real interest from the old artist. If anything, he had learned more about me than I had about him. He had refused to let me see his work, and just as he had started to open up he had slammed the lid on what might have been an entire trunkful of fascinating material. He was a bewildering old man, all right, and I couldn’t decide whether he was somewhat senile (no, not that), putting me down, with some mysterious purpose in mind, or what . . .
Working away, stripping the cardboard outer covers from the aluminum TV dinners he had taken from the freezer compartment of the purple Kentone refrigerator, Debierue sang a repetitious French song in a cracked falsetto.
No matter how he downgraded himself, false modesty or not, he was the world’s outstanding Nihilistic Surrealist. That was the reason I wasn’t getting anywhere with him. I was trying to talk to him as if he were a normal person. Any artist who has isolated himself from the world for three-fourths of his life either has to be a Surrealist or crazy. But Debierue was as sane as any other artist I had ever met. Even the fact that he denied being a Surrealist emphasized the fact that he was one. What else could he be? This was the rationale of the purposeful irrationality of Surrealism. The key. But the key to what?
How could a man live all alone as he did—without a phone, a TV, a radio—for months on end without going off his rocker? Even Schweitzer, when he exiled himself to Africa, took an organ along, and surrounded himself with sick, freeloading black men. . . .
From this desperate brooding, my pedestrian mind came up with one of the best original ideas I ever had, an idea so simple and direct I almost lost it. The thought was still formless, but I didn’t let the idea get away from me. Berenice put three webbed chairs up to the table on the porch. She reentered the living room, and I clutched her wrist.
“I’m going to do something strange,” I whispered. “But don’t let on, no matter what happens. Understand?”
She nodded, and her blue eyes widened.
Debierue came out of the kitchen and tapped my wristwatch. “Sometimes I do not hear so well the timer on the oven, so you will please watch the time for us. And in thirty-five minutes when you say ‘Now,’ we will have the dinner all ready to eat!” He beamed his jack-o’lantern smile at Berenice. “So simple. The television dinner is the better invention for wives than the television itself. Is it not so, my dear?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Berenice said cheerfully.
“Look, M. Debierue,” I said, taking my Polaroid from the bar, “I know it’s a lot to ask, at least from your viewpoint, but I’ve got this Polaroid here, and you can see the results for yourself in about ten seconds. While we wait for dinner, let me take a few shots of you, and until we get one that you think is all right, you can just tear them up. Fair enough?”
“In only ten seconds? A picture?”
“That’s all. Maybe fifteen seconds inside the house here, for a little extra snap and contrast.”
He frowned slightly, and fingered his white whiskers. “My beard isn’t trimmed . . .”
“In a photo, it doesn’t matter. No one can tell from a black-and-white picture,” I promised recklessly.
He hesitated. His eyes were wary, but he was wavering. “Should I put on a necktie?”
“No, not for an informal picture,” I said, before he could change his mind. Taking him by the arm, I guided him to a point in front of the coffee table. I picked up the Miami Herald, flipped through it to find the classified ad section, opened it and thrust the paper into his hands.
“There. Just spread the paper, and pretend to read it. You can smile if you feel like it, but you don’t have to.”
A trifle self-consciousl
y, he followed my simple directions. After focusing the camera on him, and setting it for “dark,” I asked him to lower his arms slightly to make certain his face and beard would be in the picture. The flag of the Miami Herald and Classified could both be read through the viewfinder. I moved forward and touched his hand.
“Now,” I admonished, “please don’t move or look up at me. I’ll take the photo from back there.”
This was the last moment to take my premeditated chance, and one chance was all I could expect to get. I forced a loud cough to cover the slight click of my Dunhill, and ignited the paper at the bottom. A moment later, six feet back, I was squinting through the viewfinder. The timing was perfect. The bounce flash bulb worked, and it was only a split second after I snapped the shutter when the flames burst through the paper on his side and he dropped it with an astonished yelp. Berenice, who had been watching with bulging eyes and with her right hand clamped over her mouth, moved forward squealing, and began to stamp on the burning paper. I helped her, and it only took us moments to crush out the flames on the terrazzo floor.
I had expected an angry reaction from Debierue, but he was merely puzzled. “Why,” he asked mildly, “did you light the paper? I don’t understand.” He looked about bewilderedly as the charred bits of newsprint, caught by the slight breeze coming through the jalousied door, fluttered over his clean floor.
I grinned and held up a forefinger. “Wait. Give me ten seconds, and then you’ll see the picture.”
I was all thumbs with excitement, but I took my time, being careful as I jerked out the strip of prepared paper that started the developing process and, instead of guessing, I watched the sweep-second hand on my watch, allowing exactly twelve seconds for the developer to work.
As curious as a child, the old artist was brushing my shoulder with his as I opened the back of the camera to remove the print. When I turned the photo face up on the bar, his jarring burst of jubilant laughter startled me.
“Don’t touch it!” I said sharply, sliding the print out of the reach of his clutching fingers. “I’ve got to coat it first.” I straightened the print on the edge of the counter and then gave it eight precise sweeps with the gooey print coater. It was the best photo, absolutely the finest, that I had ever taken.
Perfectly centered, the old man wore his wise, beautiful, infectious smile. He appeared to be reading the want ads in the Herald as if he didn’t have a care in the world. His face was purely serene, and the deeply etched lines in his face were sharp, clear-cut, and as black as India ink. He had been completely unaware of the blazing newspaper when I snapped the picture, but no one who saw the photo would ever guess that. The entire lower half of the paper blazed furiously away. No professional model could have posed knowingly with a flaming newspaper without a slight twinge of anxiety showing in his face. But the old man, with his skinny legs exposed beneath the flames, with his bland innocent face and the wonderful smile glowing through his downy white beard, appeared as relaxed as a man who had spent a restful night in a Turkish bath.
Debierue watched me coat the print, but he kept reaching for it impatiently. I guarded it with my arm so it could dry.
“Let me see,” he said childishly.
“If you touch it now,” I explained patiently, “it’ll pick up your fingerprints and be ruined.”
“Very well, M. Figueras,” he said good-naturedly. “I want this photo. It’s the most formidable surréalité I’ve ever seen!”
His exuberance was as great as my own. “You’ll have it, all right.” I said happily. “In fact, when I get back to New York, I’ll send you fifty copies of the picture if you want them, and a copy to every friend on your mailing list.”
3
When Debierue granted his permission for me to keep and publish the photograph, I hurried out to the car and got one of our magazine’s standard release forms out of the glove compartment. The mimeographed form (large circulation magazines have them printed) is a simple agreement between subject and magazine to make publication legal, to protect one party from the other. There is nothing underhanded about a signed photo release. Debierue could read English, of course, but the involved legalese the form was couched in forced me to explain the damned thing at some length before he would sign it. Debierue wasn’t stupid or willful. He believed naively that his oral okay was enough.
Because of this discussion, the dinners were ready before we knew it. I forgot to look at my watch, and it was Berenice who heard and recognized the faint buzzing in the kitchen as the oven timer.
It was almost pleasant on the screened porch. A light breeze came up, and although the wind was hot, it was relatively comfortable in the darkening twilight as we sat at the candlelit card table to eat the miserable off-brand TV dinners.
The dinners had been purchased by the Negro maid who came every Wednesday to take care of the old man’s laundry and to do his difficult cleaning. She also brought his other weekly food supplies. By buying these cheap TV dinners, she was probably knocking down on the food money. I didn’t suggest this to him, but I discussed brand names, the brand-name fallacy, and wrote out a short list of worthwhile frozen food buys he could depend upon. He had a delusion that frozen foods were better, somehow, than fresh. Berenice started halfheartedly to tell him otherwise, but when she saw me shake my head she changed the subject to domestic wines. Debierue distrusted California wines, but I added the brands of some Napa Valley wines to the frozen food list, and he said he would try them. Other than tap water, all he drank, because French wines were too dear, was frozen orange juice.
The Gold Coast for some twenty miles inland, from Jupiter downstate to Key Largo, is tropical—not subtropical, as so many people erroneously believe. The tropical weather is caused by the warmth of the Gulf Stream, less than six miles off the coast. There is little difference between the weather in Miami and that of Saigon. Debierue’s house, on a hammock, with a black swamp and the Everglades for a backyard, was depressingly humid. After eating the dry turkey dinner, my mouth felt as if it were dehydrated, and I couldn’t drink enough fluid to unparch my throat. I poured another glass of orange juice (my fourth) and sensed, as I did so, a certain anxiety or impatience developing in the old man. As an experienced dinner guest, I have picked up an instinct about wearing out welcomes.
The sky had darkened from bruise blue to gentian violet, and it was only a few minutes after six thirty. It was much too early for him to go to bed, but even Berenice, who was not particularly observant, became aware of the old painter’s restlessness. She winked across the table, tapped her wrist significantly, and gave me a brief, comical shrug. I nodded, and slid my chair back from the table.
“It’s been delightful, M. Debierue, the dinner by candlelight,” I lied socially, “but I have another appointment in Palm Beach tonight, and we have to drive back.”
“Of course,” he replied, standing, “but please keep your seat a few moments more. Already, you see, it is past the time for me to get ready. I must go to the movies tonight. I must go to the movies every night,” he added, by way of fuller explanation, “and I must now change my clothes.”
“The movies?” I asked stupidly.
His face brightened and he rubbed his hands together briskly. “Oh, yes, perhaps you did not see it—the Dixie Drive-in Movie Theater . . .” He pointed in the general direction of the drive-in. “Tonight there are three long features, two films with the Bowery Boys and the film about a werewolf. And before these, the regular films, there are always two and sometimes three cartoons. The first long film tonight is The Bowery Boys Meet Frankenstein, a very special treat, no? And if you will kindly drive me—”
“Certainly,” I said eagerly, “I’ll be happy to take you in the car.”
“My ignorance,” Debierue chuckled reminiscently, “it was the amusing thing. When I was first here and taking a walk one evening, I saw the automobiles driving inside the Dixie Drive-in Theater. I did not then know the American custom, and I thought that one must have the
automobile to enter the movie. Never before had I seen the drive-in movies, and I said to myself, Why not see if the permission to go from the manager can be arranged?” So I talked then to the manager, M. Albert Price. He arranged for me to go, and gave me the Senior Citizen Golden Years’ membership card.” Debierue fumbled his wallet out of his hip pocket, extracted the card, which entitled him to a 15 percent discount on movie tickets, and proudly showed it to us. It was made out to Eugene V. Debs.
“That’s very nice,” Berenice said, smiling.
“M. Price is a very nice man,” Debierue said, carefully replacing the card in his thin, calfskin wallet. “There are very good seats in front of the snack bar. The parents with the automobiles sometimes send their children to sit in these seats, and they are also for those patrons who do not have the automobile, as M. Price explained to me. Over to the right of these seats is the zinc slide and little swings, the Kiddyland for these, the children, who become tired of watching the movie screen. I like the children—I am a Frenchman—but the little children begin to make too much noise playing in the Kiddyland after the cartoons are finished. This arrangement is good for the parents inside the cars with speakers, but not for me. The noise becomes too loud for me. M. Price and I are now good friends, and he reserves for me each night a seat and special earphones. I hear only the movie with the earphones and no more the children.”
I smiled. “Can you understand American English, the way the Bowery Boys speak it?”
“No, not always,” he replied seriously. “But it is no matter. These Bowery Boys are too wonderful comedians—the Surrealist actors, no? I like M. Huntz Hall. He is very droll. Last week there were the three pictures one night with the bourgeois couple and their new house, Papa and Mama Kettle. I like them very much, and also John Wayne.” He shook his fingers as if he had burned them badly on a hot stove. “Oh ho! He is the tough guy, no?”
The Burnt Orange Heresy Page 10