Theft: A Love Story

by Peter Carey

  Then I added, Mad Max.

  He laughed. I was pleased to have made a joke.

  On the way to what you would call an ANCIENT LIFT we passed a long gallery with a stained-glass ceiling which was dead as a DODO with no sunlight to drive it. MEDIOCRE CRAP hung on the walls and I was pleased Butcher was not here for he would have got COMPLETELY APE SHIT, taken a whip and driven the so-called artists into the park for manual labour. Of course I did not know anything about Gramercy Park, not the secret tree poisoning, not the locksmith on First Avenue who will cut the illegal key to its gate, not the trouble with the committee either and when Jeavons told me Bowtie Johnson had declared this mansion among the most beautiful in New York, I did not know this name any better than Suspender.

  Just the same, on my first night in New York City I understood I was with the CRÈME DE LA CRÈME. I slept in a bed two feet wide, as snug as a bug in a rug.

  41

  My first week in Manhattan was spent jet-lagged, twiddling my thumbs and dozing while Marlene attempted to persuade Olivier Leibovitz that he should exercise his droit moral and sign the certificate of authentication.

  Marlene told me everything, blow by blow, and I was so free of jealousy, so bloody adult, you have no idea, and it was only when AT&T asked for my social security number that I really went ballistic. An hour later, at Prince Street Lumber there was a set-to when they did not understand that an “outlet” is what is really called a “power point.” After that I was nearly run down on Houston Street. I was a lonely, unemployed disaster, a two-hundred-pound barramundi flapping on the deck.

  That Slow Bones had deserted me in favour of the bloody Bicker Club was more upsetting than you might imagine. But what could I do? There is always Hugh, an interference on the screen, a hum in the speakers, a nagging ache when there is nothing wrong. So what was I complaining about? I had more money in my pocket than my father had accumulated in the full total fury of his life. So I could visit the Corots at the Met, or finally admit, if only to myself, that I had never seen a Rothko except in reproduction. I had the time. Indeed, the Mercer Street apartment was full of time, a cold metallic blue colour which soaked into every corner, sucking the life from the greys and browns, and once I had stood naked in front of the dusty full-length mirror, confronting the puckering pectorals, I knew it was better to be outside, away from the Lagavulin and my own decay and guilt.

  In an empty lot on Broadway, I bought a severely secondhand London Fog from a hostile Korean in mittens. The coat was adequate, or would be for a week or two. Never mind, I hurried into a shop where they understood my accent and I bought a tourist guide and a five-dollar lottery ticket and then I walked beneath all those blunt sans-serif shop signs advertising quality linen and factory remnants, past the Strand Morgue, all the way along lower Broadway on up to Union Square where I figured out the subway could get me to the Museum of Modern Art. Then, on what we might call a faux-impulse, I cut sideways, across the grey and black gum-speckled sidewalk, down to Gramercy Square. I might just look at this ridiculous Bicker Club. It was in my guidebook after all. Philip Johnson said it was great. Not knowing his work, I went along.

  There was also, as there had been on lower Broadway, a certain level of street hollering, so I was not surprised, on entering this lovely garden square, to hear the human voice once more in uproar. Waaaaaa! I shoved my hands into the nasty twenty-dollar coat and peered between the black spiked rails, and there, at the far end of the locked park, I saw a white man running. An ambulance now entered Twentieth Street and was attempting to push its way across to Madison with the force of nothing but light and sound. In the midst of this confusion it took me a moment to see that the white man was the author of that dreadful Waaaaaaa. He was barreling around the park with his naked legs exposed by cowboy chaps.

  Then I saw that the chaps were split trousers and that the man was none other than my brother Hugh.

  The thing about Gramercy Park is, you need a key. But if you’re a guest at the Bicker Club you are entitled to take a stroll, and Olivier, it seems, had instructed the Little Old Butler Figure whose name I will not say, to let Hugh enter. The Little Old Butler Figure, for whatever cruel reason best known to his own twisted tiny mind, had not only admitted my brother but then closed the gate behind him. And although the idiot savant, on finding himself caged, had attempted to explain his dilemma to the street, first to a dog walker, then to a limo driver and then to what appears to have been a group of English models on their way to a photo shoot, none of them—and this may not be the fault of their characters, but of the Australian accent which in Slow Bones’ case was rather broad—not one chose to acknowledge him with the result that he became distressed, and therefore more alarming to those later people to whom he delivered his appeals, including—so I heard—a member of the Gramercy Park Community Board, a “sprightly”—oh save me—eighty-year-old who, having found herself locked inside the park with a “homeless man,” fled to the street and slammed the gate.

  My brother, it is alleged, then tried to climb the spiked railing and in order to do this he successfully wrenched a park bench from its mooring, managing to shear four quarter-inch bolts, and then dragged it into a flower bed—all quite sensible you would think—until the bench sank from his weight at the most unlucky moment and Hugh got an iron railing shoved up the leg of his brand-new grey flannel trousers which then ripped him from cuff to baggy boxers.

  Poor old darling moron. I waited for him to arrive back at the gate. And when he saw me, how he began to bawl, clambering, slipping, then embracing me across the spikes. He wanted to go home, just home. It took a moment for him to get his breathing right, and a considerably longer time before I learned how he got in the park and who might let him out again.

  Thus I presented myself to the sniffy little snob at the Bicker Club and when he did not seem to like my twenty-dollar coat or the fresh marks of my brother’s mucus on the sleeve, I picked him up, this little Butler Thing—there was not much to him, but some was held together by a corset—and I carried him like a roll of carpet through the traffic and when he was finally alongside the gate, I asked him did he wish to release my brother or to join him.

  He chose release, so I set him very gently on the sidewalk and watched his huge disturbing hands as he fetched a busy ring of keys and opened wide. Hugh looked at me, blinked, then elbowed me violently aside.

  I grabbed at him, but he ducked, running blindly out into the street. He stumbled on the far curb, then rushed up the steps into the club.

  The Little Butler Thing, to his credit, did not scold or threaten. He stooped for a moment, picking at the button of his butler suit.

  “You’re drunk,” he said.

  And then with not so much as a glance at the Armani suit now visible beneath my coat, he walked stiffly back into the mansion.

  After that I got a taxi back to Mercer Street, and poured myself another Lagavulin to which I added—fuck the Malt Whisky Society of Edinburgh—a fistful of crushed ice. Bloody Hugh. Later, when it was morning in Tokyo, I woke, washed my face, and having negotiated the disgusting stairs, made my way down Mercer to Canal Street where I found Pearl Paints. On the fourth floor I bought a sketchbook and a box of ink sticks.

  42

  The great artist was in an uproar to discover no-one but Marlene had ever heard of him. He was NOTHING without his so-called art which was his prop, a splintery length of wood you place beneath the wash line.

  Hugh Bones was another matter. I took to the city like a DUCK TO WATER. I sat on the demonstration model folding chair outside the Third Street Bazaar. Except its leg was tied to a chain I might have been a BOUNCER behind a VELVET ROPE. I wore a soft thick Italian coat and a black woolen beanie and I folded my HUGE ARMS across my chest. Then the police came at me. They emerged from McDonald’s and walked directly towards my place, guns and batons and handcuffs strapped to their great big bottoms.

  I thought, I am a FOREIGNER occupying space on the public footpath in
CONTRAVENTION OF THE ACT. But the cops did not give a shit, as the saying is. They had more important business—who knows what it might be?—perhaps looking for a DUNNY ROLL to wipe their GREAT BIG BUMS.

  This was when I first noticed the GENERAL LAWLESSNESS pedestrians disobeyed the DON’T WALK sign on Third Street and the so-called AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS. The Melbourne cops would have pulled the SCOFFLAWS back onto the footpath and given them a loud lecture on their mental health. The police on Third Street gave not a TINKER’S FART, to coin a phrase. They carried their big batties down the street—they should have used a wheelbarrow—and I was still a free man when Olivier came out of the Bazaar with a brand-new folding chair beneath his arm it was $13 black and shiny as a Mercedes-Benz. Olivier put his hand around my shoulder then he took me off to show me why I should be very happy with my life.

  This is your town, old boy.

  Olivier’s hives were calmer since the HYDROCORTI-SONE only the big welt on his neck hidden by the turned-up collar of his IMPORTED COAT. He was very handsome, a Wimbledon ace returning to the back line, loose in the knees, his head hung down in response to the applause.

  Olivier now taught me to never call the Avenue of the Americas anything but Sixth Avenue. Everyone would know I was a New Yorker straightaway. Once this was set in concrete we walked for a while and then turned right into Bedford Street where I learned I could sit outside the Laundromat without a permit. Soon we met a man called Jerry who had a hoarse voice and a handkerchief around his head. Jerry said I could come and bring my chair there any time I liked. He said he always wanted to go to Australia. I said it was a very nice country but do not try sitting in the street without a permit.

  After this I sat on Sullivan Street between Prince and Spring. Then I sat on Chambers Street.

  Old boy, you are a genius at this sort of thing.

  Finally I sat on Mercer Street below the artist’s loft Butcher had stolen from the NEW SOUTH WALES GOVERNMENT. I rang the bell but no-one was home. Either that or my brother was playing possum.

  Olivier now revealed he had to go off now to do business with Marlene elsewhere in the city.

  I asked would he destroy her.

  This did not make him laugh this time. He stared at me very hard and said he would now teach me how to get from Mercer Street to the Bicker Club by myself.

  I apologised for what I said.

  Hugh, he said, you’re a great man. You’re wonderful.

  But I feared I could not reach the Bicker Club unaided. I had sparks in my long muscles and a click in my head like a catching latch in need of oil.

  Olivier gave me a striped capsule which I swallowed without water. Come old fellow, he said, you’re a New Yorker now. He took out a notebook and drew me a map. Like this:

  See old chum, he said. Nothing could be simpler.

  The pill was not working.

  If you get lost, said Olivier, you get in a cab and say take me to Gramercy Park.

  I said I would not know what to pay.

  Give them ten dollars, he said. Say keep the change.

  Then he gave me a roll of notes with a rubber band around them.

  When he hailed a cab I folded my chair, but he slammed the door, save us, the taxi drove away. I chased after the taillights, but it would not stop. I ran back down to the apartment but my brother would not hear the bell, poor puppy, so I ran to the other end of Mercer Street, all the way to Canal Street where I dented my chair by accident against the metal pole. Taillights receding in the night.

  I forgot the name of GRAMERCY.

  At Houston Street, I got it back.

  Gramercy, Gramercy, Gramercy

  Poor puppy no-one heard him bark. I was sweaty, smelling worse than carpet. On Houston Street three taxis tried to run me down. The fourth one stopped.

  Gramercy Park, I said.

  Which part, he asked. I think he was a Chinaman.

  Any part.

  As he was a Chinaman, I held the map in my hand to make sure he would know the way but he set off in another direction and in the end he slid shut his window so I could not speak to him.

  I was doubtless smelling very WOOFY by the time I looked out the window and saw, by chance, Olivier standing beneath the portico of the Bicker Club.

  Stop, I said. I gave twenty dollars. Keep the change.

  Olivier now wanted me to walk back to Mercer Street. I asked him what game he thought he was playing. He was my friend and I did not wish to damage him but he fell down.

  Olivier then picked up my Dekko Fastback and gave it to Jeavons. Jeavons brushed down the Italian coat. Olivier drew on his gloves.

  He said Jeavons should make me a chicken sandwich and bring me a beer in my room.

  I asked him how he felt.

  Never better, he said. Never better old chum.

  As a result of jet-lag, I began crying on the stairs.

  43

  I have never been able to look at paintings with another human being—everyone else too superficial, too solemn, too impatient, too slow. But now Marlene Leibovitz and I moved around MoMA like partners in a waltz. She was the angel. I was the pig, drunk, endlessly enquiring, staring at Cézanne’s L’Estaque, finally understanding—at my age—that Braque had no sense of humour, getting myself in a tussle with a fucking fourteen-year-old who was willfully obstructing my view of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.

  “Shoosh,” said Marlene. “Leave him. He’s a baby.”

  My competitor was a tall pimply boy with a safety pin in his tiny girly ear. I will not say I hated him exactly, but it broke my heart, to think how it might be to stand inside his stinky shoes, to know this masterpiece at fourteen years of age, or argue with it, and do it all as easily as I had once walked along the dull footpath from the shop, up Gell Street, to the sale yards on Lerderderg Street.

  “I know,” she said, although I had not spoken, and for this alone I would have worshipped her, but my God—the shape of her face, the bones, the slightly narrowed eyes, the taut lovely funny upper lip.

  “How did you shrink the Leibovitz?”

  She kissed me in reply.

  Did I like New York? I loved her. If she had been with me every day, I doubt I would have picked up the ink sticks, but the business of the Leibovitz dragged on. So when my genius little thief went out like a pooka playing tricks, I put on my twenty-dollar coat and took my ink sticks and sketchpad, first down the block onto Canal Street, then on to Chinatown, East Broadway, then the deep charcoal shadows beneath the Manhattan Bridge, and from there to an awful place beneath the FDR at Twenty-first Street, the undercarriage of a crashed machine, abandoned, scabs of rust and concrete falling as I worked.

  There were many other places I might have gone to draw, but I did not really question why I drifted further and further from the streets and places I celebrated with Marlene. Now it’s clear enough to me—the city scared the shit out of my small-town soul, and it was this that pushed me on and on, a ridiculous effort to somehow conquer, to “get on top of it,” a quixotic quest that finally took me out to Tremont on the D train where I became, it seems, the only human figure on all that cruel Cross Bronx Expressway. And it was here that the Forty-eighth Precinct coppers found me, just before the George Washington Bridge itself, just at the moment where the huge Macks and Kenilworths shift down a gear before descending into the storming bolted belly of the beast itself.

  “Get in the fucking car you fucking fuck,” is what the nice policeman said.

  As Milton Hesse later told me, I was lucky they did not take me to Bellevue rather than the subway station. I never showed Milt the drawings, but there seems little doubt that they would not have saved me from Bellevue for they were black and dense as soot on a hurricane lamp, a rubbed and broken carapace of dark around the struggling light. These works are very bloody good, but they would have been so much less if I had bought the “right” materials. As it was, the notebook pages were too small, the paper too fragile for my constant erasures and, on more than one occ
asion, I wore clear through the stressed-out surface. As is true so often, it was the limitation of the materials that made the art, and they are so filled with a wild ugly sort of struggle which was only made bigger when, finally on Mercer Street, I patched A over B, and joined A to C, and so on. Anticipating this last stage I had rode the train down to the Village, my hands as black as a coal miner’s, eyes cold and mad in my overactive face.

  Marlene could see exactly what I had done. You see that is one reason I could always trust her. When she stood in front of art with me, she told the truth. It was Marlene who not only went to New York Central Supplies for more material but arranged—a birthday gift—to borrow two of my paintings back from Mr. Mauri.

  Neither of us could have foretold the consequences, but the result was that she, with my complete agreement, could bring people to see my work.

  This turned out to be a dreadful idea, because the minute I, the Speaker and If You Have Ever Seen a Man Die were tacked to the wall they could be variously patronised and misunderstood by all sorts of idiots who thought the future of art was being charted by, say, Tom Wesselmann, for fuck’s sake.

  Their assumption was, I had come to New York City to make my name, that I had arrived at the center of the universe and so I must want to suck up to a gallery, get a show, meet Frank Stella or Lichtenstein. Nothing could have made me feel worse. It is in any case, a ridiculous proposition, to arrive at thirty-seven years of age. It simply can’t be done.

  Of course I went to a party now and then, an opening at Castelli, Mary Boone, Paula Cooper. I finally even met the raging Milton Hesse, the first time to be bored by his letter from Leibovitz, the second so he could see my work. What a fool I was. Even now I am embarrassed, to remember how, in front of I, the Speaker, he began to tell the story of a fight he had with Guston in 1958. I waited very patiently for him to connect this to his judgment of my work. But in the end it was no more than an association of words and he had no interest in anything to do with me.