The Art Student's War (20 page)

For that matter, she’d seen but one van Gogh, one Chardin, one Velázquez. Of course she had looked at catalogues, and she’d peered hard at magazine articles. But out there, beyond her hometown, and beyond the War that postponed indefinitely all such dream-visions, lay a chain of galleries as distant as the galaxies in Uncle Dennis’s science-fiction stories. Galleries in Philadelphia, Washington, London, mythical Paris …

Where did she come down on modern art? She knew for certain only that some of it unsettled her stomach—almost as if she’d eaten something strange. That’s what happened after she contemplated a magazine reproduction of a Picasso painting of a man and a woman on a beach—only, it wasn’t so much a man and a woman as two animate stone beings. They were two living sculptures sprung out of some drunken geometry textbook, with little triangles for heads and big sweeping parabolas, or maybe ellipses, for haunches. It made her feel so
peculiar…

The only thing to which she could compare Picasso’s painting was wholly inappropriate—the “pulp art” in Uncle Dennis’s goofy and
appealing and unnerving science-fiction magazines:
Astounding Tales
and such. Of course Uncle Dennis had no use for Picasso, Matisse, and all the rest, whose bizarre visions were hardly
his
bizarre visions. If asked, Uncle Dennis would doubtless dismiss them as “oddballs” or “goofballs”—a curious dismissal from somebody truly convinced that someday men would pack themselves into rocket ships and steer by the stars; in his universe, it was only a matter of time before “the man in the moon” became a literal man. She’d sometimes tried reading his magazines, but none of the stories ever caught her imagination. The illustrations, though—those were a different matter. They, too, made her queasy. They had populated her childhood with slinking, sliding, darting, levitating aliens: a host of unearthly creatures that nonetheless resembled earthly insects and dinosaurs, snails and great jungle cats. There were also creatures that quivered like Jell-O and creatures that glowed from within like radios and creatures that were, sometimes, queer cousins to Picasso’s triangle-headed men and women.

But if Bea didn’t know what she felt, finally, about modern art, she knew she loved the Impressionists (Cézanne most of all, but van Gogh, too, even if those greens of his were the strangest, most disquieting greens in all the world). Her taste for Impressionism was something to underplay around Ronny, who saw it as “the beginning of the end of real painting.” (“Gauguin,” he declared with finality, “was no draftsman.” And: “The Impressionists managed some pretty effects, I’ll grant you. But we mustn’t let them off the hook for what came after.”) The only late-nineteenth-century painters he regularly admired were the Pre-Raphaelites (“At least their hearts were in the right place”), with their wide palettes and flattened vistas, gorgeous fabrics and exquisite drowned-looking women. He was far happier in a courtly, long-ago France, the sumptuous allées of Fragonard, Poussin’s evenhanded landscapes. (Bea found the former artist a little too frivolous, the latter a bit static.) But Ronny was happiest of all with the Old Dutch Masters: Rembrandt and Vermeer, of course, but also Claesz and Dou and Ter Borch and, sometimes, Ruisdael. He didn’t fully share Bea’s conviction that nothing in the world was so ravishing as the Italian Renaissance, when some summit in mankind’s eternal pursuit of Beauty had been attained, never equaled since. (“Signorina Paradiso,” Ronny teased her, “you’re such a blood loyalist!”) Although she’d seen them only in reproductions, she knew to a glittering certainty that Giovanni Bellini’s
Saint Francis in the Desert
and Titian’s
Venus with a Mirror
were more beautiful
than a whole gallery of Fragonards, even with a roomful of Louis Quatorze furniture thrown in for good measure. And if it wasn’t perhaps so beautiful as
Saint Francis in the Desert
, nonetheless the Bellini at the DIA, a Madonna and Child, might just be the most beautiful object Bea had ever beheld. And now there was a gratifying human anecdote attached to its beauty: the occasion when, at her urging, she and Ronny had stood before it for long, long minutes, until he turned and announced, concessively, nobly, “Yes, Paradiso, it’s much finer than I ever realized …”

It was her passion for Renaissance art that led to one of the oddest afternoons of her life. The episode really began on a Thursday night—the evening after the day when she and Ronny took their memorable walk in Palmer Park. At dinner with Ronny’s parents at what she’d begun to think of as the DAC—always formerly known, from afar, as the Detroit Athletic Club—Ronny happened to mention Bea’s “passion” for Italian art.

Mrs. Olsson interrupted: “Bianca, you must give me a tour. A tour of the Italian galleries at the art institute.” She followed this with a grandly humble yet imposing confession:
“I have always longed to understand the Italian art.”

Useless to protest—though Bea did of course protest—that she was no fit guide for Mrs. Olsson, who surely could find somebody more knowledgeable. And useless to protest—though Bea did protest—that such a visit ought to be delayed until she could “do a little research.” The guided tour was set for Saturday, only two days away.

Naturally, early the next morning, Friday morning, Bea was at the library, where she located a book called
Art in Northern Italy
and a catalogue of the Academy Gallery in Florence and
The Makers of Venice
by a woman named Mrs. Oliphant. There was supposed to be a book by Bernard Berenson, but somebody had checked it out. Bea plunged desperately into the pile, for it grew immediately apparent that, although she frequently referred to the Italian eye and the Italian sensibility, she in fact knew precious little about the Renaissance, which apparently was subdivided into “early” and “high.” Giotto, Duccio, the various Bellinis, Leonardo, Perugino, Michelangelo, Piero della Francesca—she would flunk any simple art history quiz about their who, where, when.

But on the dreaded Saturday, little of Bea’s crammed research proved useful. Mrs. Olsson tired quickly of the paintings.
(“Another
Madonna? I suppose it’s quite beautiful, but wouldn’t you think they’d
find other things to paint?” “It was a very religious time, I guess.” “I guess, but isn’t the whole point of being a Renaissance man the ability to
accomplish many things?
It’s pretty arrogant of them to call themselves Renaissance men.” “I’m not sure they actually—”) And Mrs. Olsson tired more quickly still of Bea’s commentaries. (“Oh you mustn’t give me any more dates, my dear. It’s only half the time I can remember Mr. Olsson’s birthday.”) Having been profusely and graciously thanked (the graciousness truly was imposing; a mere thank-you from Mrs. Olsson descended upon you like some precious gift), Bea found herself seated in the backseat of Mrs. Olsson’s car, beside Mrs. Olsson, who was not driving. In the front seat, impressively uniformed, sat a chauffeur. A chauffeur!

“Now we’ll go to lunch,” Mrs. Olsson said.

They were driven to a place called Pierre’s, off Jefferson, not far from the Windsor Tunnel. They were welcomed by Monsieur Pierre himself, who greeted Mrs. Olsson with all but uncontainable warmth. He had a pencil-line-thin moustache, which looked eccentric but which perhaps was to be expected of a restaurateur named Pierre. (Although both men had named establishments for themselves, Pierre and Chuck of Chuck’s Chop House probably wouldn’t have much to say to each other.) “This is Bianca Paradiso,” Mrs. Olsson announced.

Bianca was used to clipping her name—a name that commonly inspired silly jokes or cumbersome gallantries. “Bea Pardiso” was how she often introduced herself, condensing the whole business into four syllables. But Mrs. Olsson strung it out in all its Italianate amplitude: Bi-an-ca Pa-ra-di-so. She might have been introducing a contessa.

Monsieur Pierre lifted Bea’s wrist as delicately as though it were a nosegay, and if he did not actually kiss her hand, he brought it near enough to his moustached face to deposit his breath on her flesh. “Enchanted,” he sighed, a translation for
enchanté
, which Bea long ago had learned in French class was a standard form of greeting, though until now she’d never quite believed anything so preposterous.

All the tables had beautiful salmon-colored tablecloths.

“Have you been here before?” was the first thing Mrs. Olsson asked Bea once Pierre had seated them.

Now this was a funny question. Only on rare and very special occasions did Bea’s family go to a fancy restaurant, and never to a place that looked and felt like Pierre’s, where the curtains, too, were a beautiful salmon color. But there was something about this afternoon far stranger
and more rarefied still: never in her life had Bea visited a truly fancy restaurant with another woman. (Aunt Grace usually took her to Sanders.)

“I think it’s my first time,” Bea said.

Pierre and Mrs. Olsson conducted an earnest and somewhat befuddling conversation, in which nothing seemed resolved, and yet within moments a waiter placed a glass before Bea, a different sort of glass before Mrs. Olsson. “I ordered you a glass of wine,” Mrs. Olsson said. “You needn’t drink it. I don’t know whether you drink wine.”

“Oh yes. Well, sometimes.” Bea had already had occasion to clarify this issue for Mrs. Olsson. Indeed, she had drunk a number of glasses of wine in her presence. But Mrs. Olsson didn’t always recall what she’d been told.

“I mean at lunch.”

“Oh. Oh yes. Well, Sundays. It’s—” She paused briefly. “We always have an Italian Sunday dinner.”

“How elegant!”

“I suppose.”

“I-ta-ly,” Mrs. Olsson intoned, and drank deeply from her glass, which held some clear liquid—vodka? It also held ice cubes, which clinked. The pensive look departed her face and her beautiful dark-brown eyes snapped sharply onto Bea’s face. “Should you tell me all about you? Or me tell you all about me? We can talk about whatever we wish.”

It was another of those veering conversational gambits from Mrs. Olsson, which, though ostensibly meant to open conversation, inhibited it; they had a way—such remarks—of intimidating Bea to near-paralysis. “Tell me about you,” Bea murmured. And added, “Please.”

“You ever hear of Scarp, North Dakota?”

“No. Well, yes. I mean I hadn’t. Until recently. When Ronny mentioned it. And you—you’ve mentioned it also.” Bea took a deep swallow of her wine. It was quite a dark red, and of a thicker flavor than anything ever tasted at home.

“D’you know what its population was?”

“No, I don’t,” Bea answered truthfully.

“Five hundred and four living souls. You could argue with that, I suppose. Whether they were actually living.”

“It was small.”

“And
stupid
. You’ve heard of ‘dirt poor.’ That’s not so bad. But folks
in Scarp were dirt dumb. And dumb enough to be
content
to be dirt dumb, which is
really
dumb. I’m no more than six years old, already I know I must leave Scarp, North Dakota. You see, I knew what I wanted. Let me tell you a story. When I first met Charley—Mr. Olsson—I said to myself, I’m going to get that man to
beg
me to marry him, and you know what? I did. He beseeched me. Implored, down on his knees. And when his parents threatened to cut him off without a red cent if we went ahead? I said to myself, I’ll get them to come round. And you know what? I did, they came round, after Ronny was born … I had three things working for me. Now can you guess what they were?”

“I—” Bea hesitated, sipped her wine. “Please,” she said urgently, a word that covered a lot of ground. It meant, Please tell me. It meant, Please don’t put me on the spot like this.

“One: I was very pretty. Am I not supposed to say that? Let me tell you something, Bianca, something that may just save you
heaps
of trouble. In this cold world of ours, being pretty counts a great deal, and a girl isn’t pretty, she’s lost half the battle before it begins, but you know what counts far more? It’s knowing you’re pretty. Not in any vain, silly-headed way. Take the men in this place. Talking their little deals?” Bea had dimly observed that, although it was a Saturday, Pierre’s seemed full of businessmen. Except for a pair of elderly ladies, tucked into a corner, there were no other women here. “Not one of these men hasn’t noticed our presence at the best table in this place. Not one isn’t yearning to know who we are. Because you’re a very pretty one, too, Bianca. You understand, don’t you—that you are?”

But there was no meeting such a question. Even if aware of being pretty, how could she possibly admit as much to the most beautiful woman she’d ever actually spoken to? Truly it was remarkable, beauty like this: Mrs. Olsson’s ivory skin, the intricate masses of auburn hair, the imposing cheekbones, the flawless nose with its faint but daring uptilt. And those big brown-black eyes in which, at this very moment, whole candlesticks were dancing … In addition, Mrs. Olsson possessed a certain nameless intangible something that Bea associated with a few Hollywood actresses: Paulette Goddard, say, or Gene Tierney, or the tragic war victim Carole Lombard—the sort of larger-than-life beauty that could fill a forty-foot screen. This was the sort of woman for whom, in the movies, men slipped into the boxing ring to challenge the champion, or, falsely accused, shuffled innocently but amenably down to the electric chair. Bea sipped her wine, whose taste she was getting used to. “I don’t—” she said. “I hope I’m not—”

Mrs. Olsson cut her off. “Two: I don’t give a damn what people think of me. Does my language offend you? Surprise you, Bianca? I’d better warn you: I can do much worse. Because I don’t give a
damn
. Just that simple. Charley—Mr. Olsson—my talk drives him crazy. He cares what
ev
erybody thinks and he’s got the bleeding ulcer to prove it.

“Three: when I know what I want, I go after it. Not ruthlessly. Never underhandedly. I’m not at all what some people say I am. But I am direct. I’m an honest person.” Mrs. Olsson had offered her displays of vanity before—you might even say that her entire carriage and demeanor were an ongoing exhibition of vanity. But this was something else: a plea for understanding. For she really did want Bea to comprehend this, anyway: Gretchen Olsson was an honest woman.