Nine Stories (19 page)

After
dinner, while the Yoshotos were discussing, in Japanese, some perhaps
provocative topic, I asked to be excused from the table. M. Yoshoto
looked at me as if he weren't quite sure how I'd got into his kitchen
in the first place, but nodded, and I walked quickly down the hall to
my room. When I had turned on the overhead light and closed the door
behind me, I took my drawing pencils out of my pocket, then took off
my jacket, unbuttoned my shirt, and sat down on a floor cushion with
Sister Irma's envelope in my hands. Till past four in the morning,
with everything I needed spread out before me on the floor, I
attended to what I thought were Sister Irma's immediate, artistic
wants.

The
first thing I did was to make some ten or twelve pencil sketches.
Rather than go downstairs to the instructors' room for drawing paper,
I drew the sketches on my personal notepaper, using both sides of the
sheet. When that was done, I wrote a long, almost an endless, letter.

I've
been as saving as an exceptionally neurotic magpie all my life, and I
still have the next-to-the-last draft of the letter I wrote to Sister
Irma that June night in 1939. I could reproduce all of it here
verbatim, but it isn't necessary. I used the bulk of the letter, and
I mean bulk, to suggest where and how, in her major picture, she'd
run into a little trouble, especially with her colors. I listed a few
artist's supplies that I thought she couldn't do without, and
included approximate costs. I asked her who Douglas Bunting was. I
asked where I could see some of his work. I asked her (and I knew
what a long shot it was) if she had ever seen any reproductions of
paintings by Antonello da Messina. I asked her to please tell me how
old she was, and assured her, at great length, that the information,
if given, wouldn't go beyond myself. I said the only reason that I
was asking was that the information would help me to instruct her
more efficiently. Virtually in the same breath, I asked if she were
allowed to have visitors at her convent.

The
last few lines (or cubic feet) of my letter should, I think, be
reproduced here--syntax, punctuation, and all.

.
. . Incidentally, if you have a command of the French language, I
hope you will let me know as I am able to express myself very
precisely in that language, having spent the greater part of my youth
chiefly in Paris, France.

Since
you are quite obviously concerned about drawing running figures, in
order to convey the technique to your pupils at the Convent, I am
enclosing a few sketches I have drawn myself that may be of use. You
will see that I have drawn them rather rapidly and they are by no
means perfect or even quite commendable, but I believe they will show
you the rudiments about which you have expressed interest.
Unfortunately the director of the school does not have any system in
the method of teaching here, I am very much afraid. I am delighted
that you are already so well advanced, but I have no idea what he
expects me to do with my other students who are very retarded and
chiefly stupid, in my opinion.

Unfortunately,
I am an agnostic; however, I am quite an admirer of St. Francis of
Assisi from a distance, it goes without saying. I wonder if perhaps
you are thoroughly acquainted with what he (St. Francis of Assisi)
said when they were about to cauterise one of his eyeballs with a
red-hot, burning iron? He said as follows: "Brother Fire, God
made you beautiful and strong and useful; I pray you be courteous to
me." You paint slightly the way he spoke, in many pleasant ways,
in my opinion. Incidentally, may I ask if the young lady in the
foreground in the blue outfit is Mary Magdalene? I mean in the
picture we have been discussing, of course. If she is not, I have
been sadly deluding myself. However, this is no novelty.

I
hope you will consider me entirely at your disposal as long as you
are a student at Les Amis Des Vieux Maitres. Frankly, I think you are
greatly talented and would not even be slightly startled if you
developed into a genius before many years have gone by. I would not
falsely encourage you in this matter. That is one reason why I asked
you if the young lady in the foreground in the blue outfit was Mary
Magdalene, because if it was, you were using your incipient genius
somewhat more than your religious inclinations, I am afraid. However,
this is nothing to fear, in my opinion.

With
sincere hope that you are enjoying completely perfect health, I am,

Very
respectfully yours, (signed)

JEAN
DE DAUMIER-SMITH Staff Instructor

Les
Amis Des Vieux Maltres

P.S.
I have nearly forgotten that students are supposed to submit
envelopes every second Monday to the school. For your first
assignment will you kindly make some outdoor sketches for me? Do them
very freely and do not strain. I am unaware, of course, how much time
they give you for your personal drawing at your Convent and hope you
will advise me. Also I beg you to buy those necessary supplies I took
the liberty of advocating, as I would like you to begin using oils as
soon as possible. If you will pardon my saying so, I believe you are
too passionate to paint just in watercolors and never in oils
indefinitely. I say that quite impersonally and do not mean to be
obnoxious; actually, it is intended as a compliment. Also please send
me all of your old former work that you have on hand, as I am eager
to see it. The days will be insufferable for me till your next
envelope arrives, it goes without saying.

If
it is not overstepping myself, I would greatly appreciate your
telling me if you find being a nun very satisfactory, in a spiritual
way, of course. Frankly, I have been studying various religions as a
hobby ever since I read volumes 36, 44, 45 of the Harvard Classics,
which you may be acquainted with. I am especially delighted with
Martin Luther, who was a Protestant, of course. Please do not be
offended by this. I advocate no doctrine; it is not my nature to do
so. As a last thought, please do not forget to advise me as to your
visiting hours, as my weekends are free as far as I know and I may
happen to be in your environs some Saturday by chance. Also please do
not forget to inform me if you have a reasonable command of the
French language, as for all intents and purposes I am comparatively
speechless in English owing to my varied and largely insensible
upbringing.

I
mailed my letter and drawings to Sister Irma around three-thirty in
the morning, going out to the street to do it. Then, literally
overjoyed, I undressed myself with thick fingers and fell into bed.

Just
before I fell asleep, the moaning sound again came through the wall
from the Yoshotos' bedroom. I pictured both Yoshotos coming to me in
the morning and asking me, begging me, to hear their secret problem
out, to the last, terrible detail. I saw exactly how it would be. I
would sit down between them at the kitchen table and listen to each
of them. I would listen, listen, listen, with my head in my
hands--till finally, unable to stand it any longer, I would reach
down into Mme. Yoshoto's throat, take up her heart in my hand and
warm it as I would a bird. Then, when all was put right, I would show
Sister Irma's work to the Yoshotos, and they would share my joy.

The
fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular
difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and
joy a liquid. Mine started to seep through its container as early as
the next morning, when M. Yoshoto dropped by at my desk with the
envelopes of two new students. I was working on Bambi Kramer's
drawings at the time, and quite spleenlessly, knowing as I did that
my letter to Sister Irma was safely in the mail. But I was no where
even nearly prepared to face the freakish fact that there were two
people in the world who had less talent for drawing than either Bambi
or R. Howard Ridgefield. Feeling virtue go out of me, I lit a
cigarette in the instructors' room for the first time since I'd
joined the staff. It seemed to help, and I turned back to Bambi's
work. But before I'd taken more than three or four drags, I felt,
without actually glancing up and over, that M. Yoshoto was looking at
me. Then, for confirmation, I heard his chair being pushed back. As
usual, I got up to meet him when he came over. He explained to me, in
a bloody irritating whisper, that he personally had no objection to
smoking, but that, alas, the school's policy was against smoking in
the instructors' room. He cut short my profuse apologies with a
magnanimous wave of his hand, and went back over to his and Mme.
Yoshoto's side of the room. I wondered, in a real panic, how I would
manage to get sanely through the next thirteen days to the Monday
when Sister Irma's next envelope was due.

That
was Tuesday morning. I spent the rest of the working day and all the
working portions of the next two days keeping myself feverishly busy.
I took all of Bambi Kramer's and R. Howard Ridgefield's drawings
apart, as it were, and put them together with brand-new parts. I
designed for both of them literally dozens of insulting, subnormal,
but quite constructive, drawing exercises. I wrote long letters to
them. I almost begged R. Howard Ridgefield to give up his satire for
a while. I asked Bambi, with maximum delicacy, to please hold off,
temporarily, submitting any more drawings with titles kindred to
"Forgive Them Their Trespasses." Then, Thursday
mid-afternoon, feeling good and jumpy, I started in on one of the two
new students, an American from Bangor, Maine, who said in his
questionnaire, with wordy, Honest-John integrity, that he was his own
favorite artist. He referred to himself as a realist-abstractionist.
As for my after-school hours, Tuesday evening I took a bus into
Montreal proper and sat through a Cartoon Festival Week program at a
third-rate movie house--which largely entailed being a witness to a
succession of cats being bombarded with champagne corks by mice
gangs. Wednesday evening, I gathered up the floor cushions in my
room, piled them three high, and tried to sketch from memory Sister
Irma's picture of Christ's burial.

I'm
tempted to say that Thursday evening was peculiar, or perhaps
macabre, but the fact is, I have no bill-filling adjectives for
Thursday evening. I left Les Amis after dinner and went I don't know
where--perhaps to a movie, perhaps for just a long walk; I can't
remember, and, for once, my diary for 1939 lets me down, too, for the
page I need is a total blank.

I
know, though, why the page is a blank. As I was returning from
wherever I'd spent the evening--and I do remember that it was after
dark--I stopped on the sidewalk outside the school and looked into
the lighted display window of the orthopedic appliances shop. Then
something altogether hideous happened. The thought was forced on me
that no matter how coolly or sensibly or gracefully I might one day
learn to live my life, I would always at best be a visitor in a
garden of enamel urinals and bedpans, with a sightless, wooden
dummy-deity standing by in a marked-down rupture truss. The thought,
certainly, couldn't have been endurable for more than a few seconds.
I remember fleeing upstairs to my room and getting undressed and into
bed without so much as opening my diary, much less making an entry.

I
lay awake for hours, shivering. I listened to the moaning in the next
room and I thought, forcibly, of my star pupil. I tried to visualize
the day I would visit her at her convent. I saw her coming to meet
me--near a high, wire fence--a shy, beautiful girl of eighteen who
had not yet taken her final vows and was still free to go out into
the world with the Peter Abelard-type man of her choice. I saw us
walking slowly, silently, toward a far, verdant part of the convent
grounds, where suddenly, and without sin, I would put my arm around
her waist. The image was too ecstatic to hold in place, and, finally,
I let go, and fell asleep.

I
spent all of Friday morning and most of the afternoon at hard labor
trying, with the use of overlay tissue, to make recognizable trees
out of a forest of phallic symbols the man from Bangor, Maine, had
consciously drawn on expensive linen paper. Mentally, spiritually,
and physically, I was feeling pretty torpid along toward four-thirty
in the afternoon, and I only half stood up when M. Yoshoto came over
to my desk for an instant. He handed something to me--handed it to me
as impersonally as the average waiter distributes menus. It was a
letter from the Mother Superior of Sister Irma's convent, informing
M. Yoshoto that Father Zimmermann, through circumstances outside his
control, was forced to alter his decision to allow Sister Irma to
study at Les Amis Des Vieux Maitres. The writer said she deeply
regretted any inconveniences or confusions this change of plans might
cause the school. She sincerely hoped that the first tuition payment
of fourteen dollars might be refunded to the diocese.

The
mouse, I've been sure for years, limps home from the site of the
burning ferris wheel with a brand-new, airtight plan for killing the
cat. After I'd read and reread and then, for great, long minutes,
stared at the Mother Superior's letter, I suddenly broke away from it
and wrote letters to my four remaining students, advising them to
give up the idea of becoming artists. I told them, individually, that
they had absolutely no talent worth developing and that they were
simply wasting their own valuable time as well as the school's. I
wrote all four letters in French. When I was finished, I immediately
went out and mailed them. The satisfaction was short-lived, but very,
very good while it lasted.