Idiots First (11 page)

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Authors: Bernard Malamud

BOOK: Idiots First
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“Neither is the original any more. You don't think Rembrandt painted in those sfumato browns? As for painting the Venus, you'll have to do the job here. If you copied it in the castello gallery one of those cretin guards might remember your face and the next thing you know you'd have trouble. So would we, probably, and we naturally wouldn't want that.”
“I still ought to see it,” Fidelman said obstinately.
The padrone then reluctantly consented to a one-day excursion to Isola Bella, assigning Scarpio to closely accompany the copyist.
 
On the vaporetto to the island, Scarpio, wearing dark glasses and a light straw hat, turned to Fidelman.
“In all confidence, what do you think of Angelo?”
“He's all right, I guess.”
“Do you think he's handsome?”
“I haven't given it a thought. Possibly he was, once.”
“You have many fine insights,” said Scarpio. He pointed in the distance where the long blue lake disappeared amid towering Alps. “Locarno, sixty kilometers.”
“You don't say.” At the thought of Switzerland so close by, freedom swelled in Fidelman's heart but he did nothing about it. Scarpio clung to him like a long-lost brother and sixty kilometers was a long swim with a knife in your back.
“That's the castello over there,” the major domo said. “It looks like a joint.”
The castello was pink on a high terraced hill amid tall trees in formal gardens. It was full of tourists and bad
paintings. But in the last gallery, “infinite riches in a little room,” hung the “Venus of Urbino” alone.
What a miracle, thought Fidelman.
The golden brown-haired Venus, a woman of the real world, lay on her couch in serene beauty, her hand lightly touching her intimate mystery, the other holding red flowers, her nude body her truest accomplishment.
“I would have painted somebody in bed with her,” Scarpio said.
“Shut up,” said Fidelman.
Scarpio, hurt, left the gallery.
Fidelman, alone with Venus, worshipped the painting. What magnificent tones, what extraordinary flesh that can turn the body into spirit.
While Scarpio was out talking to the guard, the copyist hastily sketched the Venus, and with a Leica Angelo had borrowed from a friend for the purpose, took several new color shots.
Afterwards he approached the picture and kissed the lady's hands, thighs, and breasts, but as he was murmuring, “I love you,” a guard struck him hard on the head with both fists.
That night as they returned on the rapido to Milano, Scarpio fell asleep, snoring. He awoke in a hurry, tugging at his dagger, but Fidelman hadn't moved.
The copyist threw himself into his work with passion. He had swallowed lightning and hoped it would strike
whatever he touched. Yet he had nagging doubts he could do the job right and feared he would never escape alive from the Hotel du Ville. He tried at once to paint the Titian directly on canvas but hurriedly scraped it clean when he saw what a garish mess he had made. The Venus was insanely disproportionate and the maids in the background foreshortened into dwarfs. He then took Angelo's advice and made several drawings on paper to master the composition before committing it again to canvas.
Angelo and Scarpio came up every night and shook their heads over the drawings.
“Not even close,” said the padrone.
“Far from it,” said Scarpio.
“I'm trying,” Fidelman said, anguished.
“Try harder,” Angelo said grimly.
Fidelman had a sudden insight. “What happened to the last guy who tried?”
“He's still floating,” Scarpio said.
“I'll need some practice,” the copyist coughed. “My vision seems tight and the arm tires easily. I'd better go back to some exercises to loosen up.”
“What kind of exercises?” Scarpio inquired.
“Nothing physical, just some warm-up nudes to get me going.”
“Don't overdo it,” Angelo said. “You've got about a month, not much more. There's a certain advantage in making the exchange of pictures during the tourist season.”
“Only a month?”
The padrone nodded.
“Maybe you'd better trace it,” Scarpio said.
“No.”
“I'll tell you what,” said Angelo. “I could get you an old reclining nude you could paint over. You might get the form of this one by altering the form of another.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It's not honest. I mean to myself.”
Everyone tittered.
“Well, it's your headache,” Angelo said.
Fidelman, unwilling to ask what happened if he failed, after they had left, feverishly drew faster.
 
Things went badly for the copyist. Working all day and often into the very early morning hours, he tried everything he could think of. Since he always distorted the figure of Venus, though he carried it perfect in his mind, he went back to a study of Greek statuary with ruler and compass to compute the mathematical proportions of the ideal nude. Scarpio accompanied him to one or two museums. Fidelman also worked with the Vetruvian square in the circle, experimented with Durer's intersecting circles and triangles and studied Leonardo's schematic heads and bodies. Nothing doing. He drew paper dolls, not women, certainly not Venus. He drew girls who would not grow up. He then tried sketching every nude he could lay eyes on in the art books Scarpio brought him from the library, from the Esquiline goddess to “Les Demoiselles 'Avignon.” Fidelman copied not badly many figures from classical statuary and modern painting, but when he returned to his Venus, with something of a laugh she eluded him. What am I, bewitched, the copyist asked himself, and if so by what? It's only a copy job so what's taking so
long? He couldn't even guess until he happened to see a naked whore cross the hall and enter a friend's room. Maybe the ideal is cold and I like it hot? Nature over art? Inspiration—the live model? Fidelman. knocked on the door and tried to persuade the girl to pose for him but she wouldn't for economic reasons. Neither would any of the others—there were four girls in the room.
A red-head among them called out to Fidelman, “Shame on you, Arturo, are you too good to bring up pizzas and coffee any more?”
“I'm busy on a job for Angelo.”
The girls laughed.
“Painting a picture, that is. A business proposition.”
They laughed louder.
Their laughter further depressed his spirits. No inspiration from whores. Maybe too many naked women around made it impossible to draw a nude. Still he'd better try a live model, having tried everything else and failed.
In desperation, practically on the verge of panic because time was going so fast, he thought of Teresa, the chambermaid. She was a poor specimen of feminine beauty but the imagination could enhance anything. Fidelman asked her to pose for him, and Teresa, after a shy laugh, consented.
“I will if you promise not to tell anybody.”
Fidelman promised.
She got undressed, a meager, bony girl, breathing heavily, and he drew her with flat chest, distended belly, thin hips and hairy legs, unable to alter a single detail. Van Eyck would have loved her. When Teresa saw the drawing she wept profusely.
“I thought you would make me beautiful.”
“I had that in mind.”
“Then why didn't you?”
“It's hard to say,” said Fidelman.
“I'm not in the least bit sexy,” she wept.
Considering her body with half-open eyes, Fidelman told her to go borrow a long slip.
“Get one from one of the girls and I'll draw you sexy.”
She returned in a frilly white slip and looked so attractive that instead of painting her, Fidelman, with a lump in his throat, got her to lie down with him on a dusty mattress in the room. Clasping her slip-encased form, the copyist shut both eyes and concentrated on his elusive Venus. He felt about to recapture a rapturous experience and was looking forward to it but at the last minute it turned into a limerick he didn't know he knew:
“Whilst Titian was mixing rose madder,
His model was crouched on a ladder;
Her position to Titian suggested coition,
So he stopped mixing madder and had 'er.”
Angelo entering the storeroom just then, let out a furious bellow. He fired Teresa on her naked knees pleading with him not to, and Fidelman had to go back to latrine duty the rest of the day.
“You might just as well keep me doing this permanently,” Fidelman, disheartened, told the padrone in his office afterward. “I'll never finish that cursed picture.”
“Why not? What's eating you? I've treated you like a son.”
“I'm blocked, that's what.”
“Get to work, you'll feel better.”
“I just can't paint.”
“For what reason?”
“I don't know.”
“Because you've had it too good here.” Angelo angrily struck Fidelman across the face. When the copyist wept, he booted him hard in the rear.
That night Fidelman went on a hunger strike but the padrone, hearing of it, threatened force feeding.
After midnight Fidelman stole some clothes from a sleeping whore, dressed quickly, tied on a kerchief, made up his eyes and lips, and walked out the door past Scarpio sitting on a bar stool, enjoying the night breeze. Having gone a block, fearing he would be chased, Fidelman broke into a high-heeled run but it was too late. Scarpio had recognized him in aftermath and called the portiere. Fidelman kicked off his slippers and ran furiously but the skirt impeded him. The major domo and portiere caught up with him and dragged him, kicking and struggling, back to the hotel. A carabiniere, hearing the commotion, appeared on the scene, but seeing how Fidelman was dressed, would do nothing for him. In the cellar Angelo hit him with a short rubber hose until he collapsed.
 
 
Fidelman lay in bed three days, refusing to eat or get up.
“What'll we do now?” Angelo, worried, whispered. “How about a fortune teller? Either that or let's bury him.”
“Astrology is better,” Scarpio advised. “I'll check his planets. If that doesn't work we'll try psychology.”
“Well, make it fast,” said Angelo.
The next morning Scarpio entered Fidelman's room
with an American breakfast on a tray and two thick books under his arm. Fidelman was still in bed, smoking a butt. He wouldn't eat.
Scarpio set down his books and took a chair close to the bed.
“What's your birthday, Arturo?” he asked gently, feeling Fidelman's pulse.
Fidelman told him, also the hour of birth and the place: Bronx, New York.
Scarpio, consulting the zodiacal tables, drew up Fidelman's horoscope on a sheet of paper and studied it thoroughly with his good eye. After a few minutes he shook his head. “It's no wonder.”
“What's wrong?” Fidelman sat up weakly.
“Your Uranus and Venus are both in bad shape.”
“My Venus?”
“She rules your fate.” He studied the chart. “Taurus ascending, Venus afflicted. That's why you're blocked.”
“Afflicted by what?”
“Sh,” said Scarpio, “I'm checking your Mercury.”
“Concentrate on Venus, when will she be better?”
Scarpio consulted the tables, jotted down some numbers and signs and slowly turned pale. He searched through a few more pages of tables, then got up and stared out the dirty window.
“It's hard to tell. Do you believe in psychoanalysis?”
“Sort of.”
“Maybe we'd better try that. Don't get up.”
Fidelman's head fell back on the pillow.
Scarpio opened a thick book to its first chapter. “The thing to do is associate freely.”
“If I don't get out of this whorehouse soon I'll surely die,” said Fidelman.
“Do you have any memories of your mother?” Scarpio asked. “For instance, did you ever see her naked?”
“She died at my birth,” Fidelman answered, on the verge of tears. “I was raised by my sister Bessie.”
“Go on, I'm listening,” said Scarpio.
“I can't. My mind goes blank.”
Scarpio turned to the next chapter, flipped through several pages, then rose with a sigh.
“It might be a medical matter. Take a physic tonight.”
“I already have.”
The major domo shrugged. “Life is complicated. Anyway, keep track of your dreams. Write them down as soon as you have them.”
Fidelman puffed his butt.
That night he dreamed of Bessie about to bathe. He was peeking at her through the bathroom keyhole as she was preparing her bath. Openmouthed he watched her remove her robe and step into the tub. Her hefty well-proportioned body then was young and full in the right places; and in the dream Fidelman, then fourteen, looked at her with longing that amounted to anguish. The older Fidelman, the dreamer, considered doing a “La Baigneuse” right then and there, but when Bessie began to soap herself with Ivory soap, the boy slipped away into her room, opened her poor purse, filched fifty cents for the movies, and went on tiptoes down the stairs.
He was shutting the vestibule door with great relief when Arthur Fidelman woke with a headache. As he was scribbling down this dream he suddenly remembered what
Angelo had said: “Everybody steals. We're all human.”
A stupendous thought occurred to him: Suppose he personally were to steal the picture?
A marvelous idea all around. Fidelman heartily ate that morning's breakfast.
 
To steal the picture he had to paint one. Within another day the copyist successfully sketched Titian's painting and then began to work in oils on an old piece of Flemish linen that Angelo had hastily supplied him with after seeing the successful drawing. Fidelman underpainted the canvas and after it was dry began the figure of Venus as the conspirators looked on sucking their breaths.
“Stay relaxed,” begged Angelo, sweating. “Don't spoil it now. Remember you're painting the appearance of a picture. The original has already been painted. Give us a decent copy and we'll do the rest with chemistry.”
“I'm worried about the brush strokes.”
“Nobody will notice them. Just keep in your mind that Tiziano painted resolutely with few strokes, his brush loaded with color. In the end he would paint with his fingers. Don't worry about that. We don't ask for perfection, just a good copy.”
He rubbed his fat hands nervously.
But Fidelman painted as though he were painting the original. He worked alone late at night, when the conspirators were snoring, and he painted with what was left of his heart. He had caught the figure of the Venus but when it came to her flesh, her thighs and breasts, he never thought he would make it. As he painted he seemed to remember every nude that had ever been done, Fidelman satyr, with
Silenus beard and goatlegs dancing among them, piping and peeking at backside, frontside, or both, at the “Rokeby Venus,” “Bathsheba,” “Suzanna,” “Venus Anadyomene,” “Olympia,” at picnickers in dress or undress, bathers ditto, Vanitas or Truth, Niobe or Leda, in chase or embrace, hausfrau or whore, amorous ladies modest or brazen, single or in the crowds at the Turkish bath, in every conceivable shape or position, while he sported or disported until a trio of maenads pulled his curly beard and he galloped after them through the dusky woods. He was at the same time choked by remembered lust for all the women he had ever desired, from Bessie to Annamaria Oliovino, and for their garters, underpants, slips or half slips, brassieres and stockings. Although thus tormented, Fidelman felt himself falling in love with the one he painted, every inch of her, including the ring on her pinky, bracelet on arm, the flowers she touched with her fingers, and the bright green earring that dangled from her eatable ear. He would have prayed her alive if he weren't certain she would fall in love, not with her famished creator, but surely the first Apollo Belvedere she laid eyes on. Is there, Fidelman asked himself, a world where love endures and is always satisfying? He answered in the negative. Still she was his as he painted, so he went on painting, planning never to finish, to be happy as he was in loving her, thus forever happy

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