Prochownik's Dream (23 page)

‘I'm still the same person,' he said. He looked at her and smiled.

‘So what is it now?' she asked. ‘I can see you're going to tell me something.'

‘I've decided to show as Prochownik.' He pronounced it softly, Pro-shov-nik.

‘So you're telling me you're changing your name?'

‘Not for everything. Just for my work.' He wanted to hear himself telling her in full. ‘From now on, I'm the painter Prochownik,' he said, and he felt the rightness of it going right down into the root of his being.

‘Just for the painting?' she said doubtfully.

‘Just for the painting.'

‘It was her idea, wasn't it?'

‘It was my own idea.'

She stared at him. ‘So if I said I'm talking to a stranger through a glass door it wouldn't be so far from the truth?' She waited and, when he did not react, she made an exasperated sound and got up and went over to where her bag was sitting on the lounge. She took out her cigarettes and lit up.

He stopped eating.

She came back and sat down again, taking the smoke into her lungs then letting it out slowly, lifting her chin towards the ceiling and closing her eyes.

‘You've taken up smoking again?'

‘You noticed!' She waved the smoke away from his food. ‘Do you think you can live with someone for years and share everything with them and have their child and still be a stranger to them?'

‘You haven't smoked since you were pregnant with Nada. What about the new baby? Are you going to be smoking while you're pregnant?'

‘We're having a new baby? Listen! I'm trying to talk to you. Are you and me strangers? That's what I'm asking you.'

‘You're exaggerating things.'

‘I'm lying in our bed on my own while you're down there painting and this feeling comes over me that I should face the truth. The truth is, things are falling apart for us, Toni. That's the truth.'

He pushed the plate away and drank the last of the coffee. ‘Things are changing for us. That's true. But they're not falling apart. Change is always difficult.'

‘Listen to him! Change is always difficult! What is this, the wisdom of the male? There's more coffee. You want some?'

‘No thanks.'

‘Am I making this up?'

He reached across the table for her hand but she pulled it away.

‘No! Don't grab me. Look at me! You have to talk to me.'

He looked at her.

‘Are you having an affair with her?'

‘With who?'

‘With
her
! With her! With Marina-fucking-Golding! Who the fuck else do you think I fucking mean? With
her
! Jesus Christ!'

‘Take it easy.'

‘
Are
you?'

‘Don't shout, you'll wake Nada! No. Definitely no. Of course not. It's crazy to even think it.'

‘You used to want sex every night.'

‘And you often didn't want it.'

‘That's different.'

‘It's not different.'

‘It's different!'

He would not argue with her. When pushed, Teresa did not back down. She did not know how to back down. He had learnt early in their relationship that backing down was not a possibility for Teresa. She had that in common with his brother. Once they were stirred up, those two just went for it. It was something in their natures. He was not going to fight her. In a fight with Teresa he knew he would lose because she was prepared to go the extreme and he was not prepared to go to the extreme.

The last enchantment of his work had gone.

Across the road the party was reaching full throttle, the bass thumping of the sub woofers penetrating the walls of the house, penetrating the walls of his chest, causing his heart to doubt its own rhythm. He was exhausted. He pushed his chair back and stood. ‘Let's go to bed.'

She got up. ‘You're not sleeping down there tonight? I never know if you're sleeping down there or coming over.'

He put his arm around her and held her.

She stubbed out her cigarette in his empty coffee cup.

‘You want me to stop doing this?' he asked.

‘You don't mean that!'

If she asked him to give up the project, would he give it up? Giving up the project would be giving up his art. That was the truth. How to live without it? What else could he do? Get a real job? Doing what? Become his father and work on the Dunlop moulding line? Only Dunlop had long since gone from Port Melbourne, the vast manufacturing plant replaced by expensive city apartments. His dad would not know the place today. His dad would be even more a stranger there today than he had been then. The lines of weary blackened migrant workers had disappeared from Port Melbourne's streets long ago. It was another age now. Another place. History had swallowed the lives and the dreams of those men and left no trace of them.

Teresa rested her head on his shoulder. ‘I married an artist. I know what I did. I've always secretly dreaded the day you'd become successful.'

They went across the room and he switched off the light. They went down the passage and got into bed and held each other.

‘Don't ever just suddenly quit, will you?' she said.

‘Shh! Go to sleep.'

She relaxed against him. ‘I need you here in our bed with me. When I'm here alone, the night disfigures everything.'

fourteen

Someone was banging on the window and yelling. He was coming out of a deep sleep with the feeling that it must be the people from the party across the road, who had reached the fighting stage and had come over to have it out with him, over whatever it was he had done to provoke them, something he could not fathom. He opened his eyes. It was daylight. Teresa's side of the bed was empty. The banging on the window and the yelling was renewed. He got up and went over and pulled the blind aside. On the verandah, Andy play-acted a shocked expression at him, holding his wrist out and pointing to his watch.

Toni dropped the blind and pulled on his underpants, then went out along the passage and opened the front door. ‘What's happening?'

‘I'm looking at your pictures.'

‘What time is it?'

‘Two.'

Andy followed him into the bedroom and stood watching him pull on his clothes.

‘You know what?'

‘What?'

‘You don't show.' Andy waited for his reaction.

But Toni was not listening.

‘You don't get into that circus. You stay out of it. It takes too long that way. On the show circuit you're just another performing bear. You don't need to build up that kind of CV. Bream Island's the last time you show. We sell your three pictures before the opening. When they come to the island your stuff 's all got red stickers on it. Nothing's available. The day they discover you, they find they're too late already. We don't pass up a chance like this one. The first thing they think is,
Hey, this guy must be good, everything's sold, so how do we acquire one
of his pictures?
Then I tell them.
Listen, it's not so easy with this guy.
Be patient. He's sensitive to deal with. He likes his privacy. He never shows.
Leave it with me and I'll see what I can do for you
, that's what I tell them. And I've got some good news for you, too. You're going to like this.'

Toni was hearing Andy's voice but he was not registering the details of what his friend was saying. Andy talked all the time, that was the way it was. Andy's dad had been the same. In the backstreet car yard in Port Melbourne, Andy's dad telling them his dream of running a new Ford dealership out on Burwood Highway with the big shots. Andy growing up in the yard developing an instinct for closing a sale. Now his business was selling art. Andy Levine was the dealer who, in his early twenties, had transformed the old Port Melbourne biscuit factory into one of Australia's most successful contemporary private art dealerships. Andy would have made more money selling cars. As he said, everyone needs a car. But he preferred selling art, which no one needs. Andy preferred artists to cars. He liked the way they took risks trying to make sense of their precarious lives. Artists fascinated him. He used to say it was like watching a movie, seeing someone's story unfolding, and you knew they could fall. And they
did
fall. And when they were on his books, and sometimes even when they were not on his books, Andy picked them up and dusted them off and gave them some money and sent them away to repair the damage. And he liked the people in the art business who were like himself, the dealers and promoters. He was one of them. These people were his other family too. He loved the strange intimate association of it, the rivalries and the shared hopes and the comradeship when someone took a fall or when they suddenly began to fly.

There was a wayward instinct in Andy that Toni loved. They both knew there was nothing objective going on in the art business.
Selling is not the ennobling art
, Andy was fond of telling anyone who was willing to listen to him.
Selling is the enabling
art. Without sales
, he would tell them,
everything goes cold and the
world comes to a standstill. Without sales no one has any fun.
Andy enjoyed making money, but that was not the whole story with him. He loved his artists. He was their champion. He was on their side. He was in awe of what they did.

Andy had been waiting a long time for his old friend to come good.
You can never tell
, he would say.
Sometimes they come
good and sometimes they die away and never do it. It's touch and go. No one
can give you the reasons for those who produce and those who don't produce.
Andy had known Toni even before they went to school together. Andy's gift was an instinct for reality. He did not claim infallibility but, as some horse trainers have an instinct for speed and stamina in a horse, he had developed this sense about art. He did not need someone to tell him what was what about contemporary art. Andy could not have dealt in old masters.
For the old stuff, the decisions have all been made, the risks have
all been taken
. There was no need for Andy's gift of divination with old masters. As far as he was concerned, the old stuff belonged in the auction houses. That's what the auction houses were for. Dead artists did not interest him. He loved to see and touch and be with the living artists, to be surprised by them, the weird and wonderful things they came up with. That was where it was at for Andy Levine. With the living. A hand on the shoulder when they needed it. A kiss. A little hug. Buy them a drink. A meal. Coax them back up out of the trough until he got a smile.

Andy followed Toni out into the living area, talking his enthusiasm.

‘I think we might get Harvey to take
The Schwartz Family
for the National. We'll see. We'll see. Now hear this. After you left Richmond the other day, Geoffrey goes over with Marina and he turns your picture around and he talks admiration for your work for the next half-hour.'

Toni looked at him. ‘That's hard to believe. He dismissed it and me with it.'

‘Not so. That's just Geoffrey. He gives people the impression he's aloof. He's not, he's shy. Oriel and Robert came in and stood listening to him. Geoffrey makes a serious business of collecting the work of his contemporaries. He always has. He's very choosy.
Get me one of Toni's pictures
, he says to me when he's done.
While I can still afford him
, he says. So how's that? You don't get a better start than Geoffrey Haine putting one of your pictures into his collection. He won't keep it a secret. It's going to make them sit up and take notice in Sydney. Believe me. You're on your way with this. Geoffrey's been on his own with this figurative stuff for twenty years. He's the one who persisted through the bad times with it. He did the hard yards when it was a sin to use paint and canvas. He went hungry. He was suspect with the critics for years. Some of his best early shows were never reviewed. Like your beautiful installations. It's true. The public curators didn't want to know him. But he stuck at it. Now he sees you coming in and it looks to him like he's having a voice with the new generation. Which thrills him. You're the young bull and he likes what he sees. He can see you're dangerous. Geoffrey is your first serious admirer. This is how all the best love affairs begin.' Andy laughed. ‘You and Teresa should consider moving to Sydney. Geoffrey would open your show. You'd be on a boom in that town. They know how to celebrate their artists. Did I tell you I'm opening a new gallery in Paddington in the spring?'

Toni was standing at the big windows looking out into the courtyard. The living area and kitchen were flooded with sunlight. Teresa had switched on the wall fountain in the courtyard before leaving for the office, and the water was spraying and sparkling in the sun. The blackbird was taking a bath. Then he noticed the obvious. She had had his pile of installation stuff removed. There was nothing left of it. The heap of old clothes and timber racks was no longer there. He felt a touch of nostalgia. There was going to be no reinstalling his old life now. No going back along that road. It was finished.

He turned from the window and went into the kitchen, where he picked up the coffee pot and held it up for Andy, who was still talking. There was a note from Teresa on the bench.
Dearest, I let you sleep. I hope the work goes well today. Give me
a ring if you get a chance. Love you!

Andy was sitting on the couch fiddling with the television remote. ‘I take a couple of your smaller oil studies and maybe a couple of the bigger drawings and I give an exclusive look to one or two of my Sydney collectors. Geoffrey's getting too dear for them these days. I make it special for them to be looking at previously unseen Toni Powletts.'

Toni called, ‘I'm signing my work Prochownik from now on.'

‘Hey, that's good! You've got it there, old mate. That's beautiful, Toni. You're doing it for your old dad. Brilliant. I love it. Prochownik. That's it.' Andy watched the television for a couple of seconds then switched channels, as if he were searching for his own wavelength. ‘Prochownik,' he said admiringly. ‘I wish I'd thought of that. Wait till we get you into a couple of the big collections, then the word's going to travel around.
Look, I got myself a Prochownik!
They don't keep it a secret, either.
You got a Prochownik? What the hell's a Prochownik?
How come
I
haven't got a Prochownik? What am I missing here? Maybe
I'm slipping.
Next thing you know the only question they're asking each other is,
How big's your Prochownik?
They don't know art from horseshit. They know money and they know size. They don't need to know art. They know everything else.'