The Complete Stories (54 page)
Read The Complete Stories Online
Authors: Bernard Malamud
“Why don’t you look for productive work?”
“Advice is cheap.”
“So is your art.”
He went to the Cappella Brancacci and sat the rest of the day staring in the half dark at the Masaccio frescoes. Geniuses made masterworks. If you weren’t greatly gifted the way was hard, a masterwork was a miracle. Still, somehow or other art abounded in miracles.
He borrowed a fishing pole from an artist neighbor and fished, amid a line of men with bent rods, off the Ponte Trinità. F tied the rod to a nail on the railing and paced back and forth, returning every few minutes to check his line as the float bobbed in the Arno. He caught nothing, but the old fisherman next to him, who had pulled in eight fish, gave him a one-eyed crippled eel. It was a cloudy November day, then rainy, patches of damp appearing on the studio ceiling. The cornucopia leaked. The house was cold, Fabio wouldn’t turn on the heat till December. It was hard to get warm. But Esmeralda made a tasty crippled-eel soup. The next night she cooked a handful of borrowed polenta that popped in the pot as it boiled. For lunch the following day there was stale bread and half an onion apiece. But for Sunday supper she served boiled meat, green beans, and a salad of beet leaves. He suspiciously asked how come, and she admitted she had borrowed a few hundred lire from Ludovico.
“How are we supposed to pay him back?”
“We won’t, he owes me plenty.”
“Don’t borrow from him anymore.”
“I’m not afraid of him, he’s afraid of me.”
“I don’t like him coming around. I’m at my most dishonest among dishonest men.”
“Don’t trust him, Arturo,” she said, frightened. “He’d knife you if he could.”
“He won’t get the chance.”
Afterwards she asked, “Why don’t you carve a Madonna or two? Two thousand lire now and then is nothing to spit at. Besides you do beautiful work in wood.”
“Not for the price, it’s not worth my time.”
The landlord, wearing a woman’s black shawl, entered without knocking, shouting for his rent.
“I’ll get the municipality to throw you both out, the puttana and you. You’re fouling up this house with your illicit activities. Your friend told me what goes on here. I have all the necessary information.”
“You know where you can stick it,” said F. “If we weren’t here the flat would go to ruin. It was empty six years before I moved in, you’ll never rent it if I move out.”
“You’re no Florentine,” Fabio shouted. “You’re not even an Italian.”
F got himself a badly paid job as journeyman in a woodworking establishment, not Panenero’s. He worked long hours turning out delicate
tapered legs for antique tables and did no painting. In the street, going back and forth from work, he looked for coins people might have dropped. He switched off the light after Esmeralda had washed the supper dishes, watched carefully what she cooked, and ate, and doled out shopping money sparsely. Once she sold six inches of her hair to a man with a sack who had knocked on the door, so she could buy herself some warm underwear.
tapered legs for antique tables and did no painting. In the street, going back and forth from work, he looked for coins people might have dropped. He switched off the light after Esmeralda had washed the supper dishes, watched carefully what she cooked, and ate, and doled out shopping money sparsely. Once she sold six inches of her hair to a man with a sack who had knocked on the door, so she could buy herself some warm underwear.
Finally she could stand it no longer. “What are you going to do?”
“What can I do that I haven’t?”
“I don’t know. Do you want me to go back to my work?”
“I never said so.”
“If I don’t you’ll be like this forever. It’s what you’re like when you’re not painting.”
He remained mute.
“Why don’t you speak?”
“What can I say?”
“You can say no.”
“No,” he said.
“It sounds like yes.”
He went out for a long walk and for a while hung around the palazzo where Dostoevsky had written the last pages of
The Idiot
It did no good. When he returned he said nothing to Esmeralda. In fact he did not feel too bad though he knew he ought to. In fact he had been thinking of asking her to go to work, whatever she might do. It’s circumstances, he thought.
The Idiot
It did no good. When he returned he said nothing to Esmeralda. In fact he did not feel too bad though he knew he ought to. In fact he had been thinking of asking her to go to work, whatever she might do. It’s circumstances, he thought.
Esmeralda had got out her black hat, the two dresses, and her gold shoes. On the velvet hat she sewed the silver roses. She raised the hems of the dresses above her knees and unstitched the necklines to expose the rounded tops of her hard breasts. The purple sequins she threw into the garbage.
“Anyway, I’ll need protection,” she said.
“How do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. I don’t want those bastards hurting me or not paying in full. It’s blood money.”
“I’ll protect you,” F said.
He wore dark glasses, a black velour hat pulled low over one eye, and a brown overcoat with a ratty fur collar buttoned tight under the chin and extending to his ankles; he walked in white sneakers. He thought of growing a beard but gave that up. His bristly reddish mustache was thicker than it had ever been. And he carried a snappy cane with a slender sword inside.
They went together to the Piazza della Repubblica, almost merrily. “For art,” she said, then after a moment, bitterly, “art, my ass.”
She cursed him from the depth of her heart and then forgave him. “It’s my nature,” she said. “I can’t bear a grudge.”
He promised to marry her once he had finished the painting.
F paints all morning after Esmeralda has posed; she bathes, does her nails and toes, and makes herself up with mascara. After a leisurely lunch they leave the house and go across the bridge to the Piazza della Repubblica. She sits on a bench with her legs crossed high, smoking; and F is at a bench nearby, sketching in a pad in which he sometimes finds himself drawing dirty pictures: men and women, women and women, men and men. But he doesn’t consort with the other pimps who sit together playing cards; nor does Esmeralda talk with the other whores, they call her hoity-toity. When a man approaches to ask whether she happens to be free she nods or, looking at him through her short veil, says yes as though she could just as well have said no. She gets up, the other whores watching her with their eyes and mouths, and wanders with her client into one of the crooked side streets, to a tiny room they have rented close by so there’s no waste of man-hours getting back to the piazza. The room has a bed, water bowl, chamber pot.
When Esmeralda rises from the bench, F slips his drawing pad into his coat pocket and leisurely follows them. Sometimes it is a beautiful late-fall afternoon and he takes deep breaths as he walks. On occasion he stops to pick up a pack of Nazionale and, if he’s a little hungry, gulps an espresso and a bit of pastry. He then goes up the smelly stairs and waits outside the door, sketching little pictures in the dim electric glow, as Esmeralda performs; or files his fingernails. It takes fifteen or twenty minutes for the customer to come out. Some would like to stay longer but can’t if they won’t pay for it. As a rule there are no arguments. The man dresses and sometimes leaves a tip if it has been most enjoyable. Esmeralda is still dressing, bored with getting in and out of her clothes. Only once thus far has she had to call F in to deal with a runt who said it hadn’t been any good so no sense paying.
F enters with the sword drawn out of his cane and points it at the man’s hairy throat. “Pay,” he says, “and beat it.” The runt, gone two shades white, hurriedly leaves assisted by a boot in the pants. Esmeralda watches without expression. She hands F the money—usually two
thousand lire, sometimes three; and if she can get it from a wealthytype client, or an older man especially fond of eighteen-year-old girls, seven or eight thousand. That sum is rare. F counts the money—often in small bills—and slips it into his wallet, wrapping a fat rubber band around it. In the evening they go home together, Esmeralda doing her shopping on the way. They try not to work at night unless it’s been a bad day. In that case they go out after supper, when the piazza is lit in neon signs and the bars and cafés are doing business; the competition is stiff—some very beautiful women in extraordinary clothes. F goes into the bars and seeks out men who seem to be alone. He asks them if they want a pretty girl and, if one shows interest, leads him to Esmeralda. When it’s rainy or freezing cold, they stay in and play cards or listen to the radio. F has opened an account in the Banco di Santo Spirito so they can draw from it in the winter if Esmeralda is sick and can’t work. They go to bed after midnight. The next morning F gets up early and paints. Esmeralda sleeps late.
thousand lire, sometimes three; and if she can get it from a wealthytype client, or an older man especially fond of eighteen-year-old girls, seven or eight thousand. That sum is rare. F counts the money—often in small bills—and slips it into his wallet, wrapping a fat rubber band around it. In the evening they go home together, Esmeralda doing her shopping on the way. They try not to work at night unless it’s been a bad day. In that case they go out after supper, when the piazza is lit in neon signs and the bars and cafés are doing business; the competition is stiff—some very beautiful women in extraordinary clothes. F goes into the bars and seeks out men who seem to be alone. He asks them if they want a pretty girl and, if one shows interest, leads him to Esmeralda. When it’s rainy or freezing cold, they stay in and play cards or listen to the radio. F has opened an account in the Banco di Santo Spirito so they can draw from it in the winter if Esmeralda is sick and can’t work. They go to bed after midnight. The next morning F gets up early and paints. Esmeralda sleeps late.
One morning F paints with his dark glasses on, until she wakes up and screams at him.
Later, when she is out buying material for a dress, Ludovico strides into the studio, incensed. His usually pallid face is flushed. He shakes his malacca at F.
“Why wasn’t I informed that she had gone back to work? I demand a commission. She took all her instruction from me!”
F is about to run him out of the room by the worn seat of his overcoat but then has this interesting thought: Ludovico could take her over while he stays home to paint all day, for which he would pay him 8 percent of Esmeralda’s earnings.
“Per cortesia,” says the pimp haughtily. “At the very least 25 percent. I have many obligations and am a sick man besides.”
“Eight is all we can afford, not a penny more.”
Esmeralda returns with a package or two and, when she comprehends what the argument is, swears she will quit rather than work with Ludovico.
“You can do your own whoring,” she says to F. “I’ll go back to Fiesole.”
He tries to calm her. “It’s just that he’s so sick is the reason I thought I’d cut him in.”
“Sick?”
“He’s got one lung.”
“He has three lungs and four balls.”
F heaves the pimp down the stairs.
In the afternoon he sits on a bench not far from Esmeralda’s in the Piazza della Repubblica, sketching himself on his drawing pad.
Esmeralda burned Bessie’s old snapshot when F was in the toilet. “I’m getting old,” she said, “where’s my future?” F considered strangling her but couldn’t bring himself to; besides, he hadn’t been using the photo since having Esmeralda as model. Still, for a time he felt lost without it, the physical presence of the decaying snap his only visible link to Ma, Bessie, the past. Anyway, now that it was gone it was gone, a memory become intangible again. He painted with more fervor yet detachment; fervor to complete the work, detachment toward image, object, subject. Esmeralda left him to his devices, went off for most of the afternoon, and handed him the lire, fewer than before, when she returned. He painted with new confidence, amusement, wonder. The subject had changed from “Mother and Son” to “Brother and Sister” (Esmeralda as Bessie), to let’s face it, “Prostitute and Procurer.” Though she no longer posed, he was becoming clearer in his inner eye as to what he wanted. Once he retained her face for a week before scraping it off. I’m getting there. And though he considered sandpapering his own face off and substituting Ludovico as pimp, the magnificent thing was that in the end he kept himself in. This is my most honest piece of work. Esmeralda was the now-nineteen-year-old prostitute; and he, with a stroke here and there aging himself a bit, a fifteen-year-old procurer. This was the surprise that made the painting. And what it means, I suppose, is I am what I became from a young age. Then he thought, it has no meaning, a painting’s a painting.
The picture completed itself. F was afraid to finish it: What would he do next and how long would that take? But the picture was, one day, done. It assumed a completion: This woman and man together, prostitute and procurer. She was a girl with fear in both black eyes, a vulnerable if stately neck, and a steely small mouth; he was a boy with tight insides, on the verge of crying. The presence of each protected the other. A Holy Sacrament. The form leaped to the eye. He had tormented, ecstatic, yet confused feelings, but at last felt triumphant—it was done! Though deeply drained, moved, he was satisfied, completed—ah, art!
He called Esmeralda to look at the painting. Her lips trembled, she lost color, turned away, finally she spoke. “For me it’s me. You’ve caught me as I am, there’s no doubt of it. The picture is a marvel.” She wept as she gazed at it. “Now I can quit what I’m doing. Let’s get married, Arturo.”
Ludovico, limping a little in his squeaky shoes, came upstairs to beg their pardons, but when he saw the finished painting on the easel stood stiff in awe.
“I’m speechless,” he said, “what more can I say?”
“Don’t bother,” said Esmeralda, “nobody wants your stinking opinion.”
They opened a bottle of Soave and Esmeralda borrowed a pan and baked a loin of veal, to celebrate. Their artist neighbors came in, Citelli, an illustrator, and his dark meager wife; it was a festive occasion. F afterwards related the story of his life and they all listened, absorbed.
When the neighbors left and the three were alone, Ludovico objectively discussed his weak nature.
“Compared to some I’ve met in the streets of Florence, I’m not a bad person, but my trouble is I forgive myself too easily. That has its disadvantages because then there are no true barriers to a harmful act, if you understand my meaning. It’s the easy way out, but what else can you do if you grew up with certain disadvantages? My father was criminally inclined and it’s from him I inherited my worst tendencies. It’s clear enough that goats don’t have puppies. I’m vain, selfish, although not arrogant, and given almost exclusively to petty evil. Nothing serious but serious enough. Of course I’ve wanted to change my ways, but at my age what can one change? Can you change yourself, maestro? Yet I readily confess who I am and ask your pardon for any inconvenience I might have caused you in the past. Either of you.”
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