The Paper Dragon (53 page)

Casamorte was alive though, and real I suppose, certainly more genuine an artist than I was at the time. Oh, I loved the
role
of being an artist, I played the role a bit more amateurishly perhaps than Casamorte, but I played it nonetheless. I would sit on subway trains or buses, incessantly sketching, not because I really itched to draw — or perhaps I did, who the hell knows anymore? — but only because I wanted everyone sitting opposite me to see that I was an artist, to understand that I was an extremely talented and serious person who was sketching, sketching, sketching all the time, oh boy, was I serious! Sometimes I would walk into a luncheonette still wearing my paint-smeared workshirt, knowing that everyone at the counter would turn and stare at me and think again Oh lookie, there's an artist, especially if Ebie was with me in her dirty green smock, her cheek smeared with pigment, she was a good painter but a sloppy one. Or I would sometimes stop dead in the middle of the sidewalk, and raise both hands in front of my face, palms flat, thumbs touching, to form a fleshy picture frame around a tree or a bench or a building in the distance, once again courting appreciation from the people in the street, the onlookers, the outsiders, those poor, untalented, uncreative souls. I think I knew even then I would never become a painter. I have since seen music students practicing scales on subway trains, their fingers running over imaginary keyboards in their laps; I have watched architectural students describe with soaring hands the engineering feat of the Guggenheim; I have overheard playwrights discussing the interminable and incomplete second acts of their works in progress; and I have learned without question that those who
play
the part never
live
it. I was only playing at being an artist.
I
knew it, and
Ebie
knew it, but neither of us ever mentioned it.

And yet there were times when, visual evidence to the contrary, talented people surrounding me day and night, doing work I could see, work I could compare against my own, there were nonetheless times when I felt I really had it in me. Laboring late into the night in Ebie's apartment (stay, she would constantly plead,
must
you go?), I would feel a solitary isolation (never truly solitary because I knew she was there across the room) a total absorption with the drawing pad before me, the charcoal or pencil moving in my hand as though directed by someone, something, other than myself, the line clean and sure and unfaltering. That was real.
That
, at least, was real. That, and Ebie.

Ebie was everything; everything paled beside her.

I can recall the first time we saw El Greco's
Cardinal
at the Metropolitan, standing before the painting — silken scarlet robes stiffly parted over intricately detailed lace, beringed left hand tensely gripping the arm of the chair, eyes covertly regarding something beyond the frame — my own eyes were on Ebie alone, watching her reaction, thrilling to her response. She caught her breath in wonder, a radiant awestruck look crossed her face, and I watched her in soaring delight; El Greco, for all his magnificance, could have been for me that day a Greenwich Village hack exhibiting seascapes on a Sixth Avenue sidewalk.

I loved her so much.

So very much.

There were daffodils blooming in the courtyard of the church on the day we were married. A stone baptismal font, fallen into neglectful disrepair, stood lopsidedly in one corner of the garden against a stone wall covered with English ivy. Beyond the wall and behind it, the city's buildings rose against an April sky stretched in taut blue brilliance. We stopped in the garden after the ceremony. The wedding party was on the sidewalk in front of the church, the photographer wondering how he had managed to lose us in the blizzard of tossed confetti and rice, the rented limousines at the curb, relatives and friends shaking hands in greeting, exclaiming no doubt on the beauty of the bride and the nervousness of the groom, anxious to get on with the reception, all waiting for the newly married Mr. and Mrs. James Driscoll to join them. But we had seen the garden earlier, separately, and now we were drawn to it together, neither of us uttering a word, as we ran down the church steps through the flying rice and paper, Ebie's hand in mine, and then raced along the stone wall to the low iron entrance gate. The gate was painted green, chipped in spots to reveal the rusting iron beneath. I opened it, it squeaked into the silence. We went into the small cloistered garden, treading softly over the slate walk to where the daffodils ringed the fallen stone font.

The ceremony had already taken place, but it was there in the garden we were really wed.

With her hand in mine and her eyes wet, Ebie looked up at me and said, "Forever."

And I whispered "Forever" to her.

Louis Brackman lived in a garden apartment in Queens, a complex of six buildings set around a grassy court in which there were concrete benches and a lily pond. In the summertime, the benches were invariably occupied by young housewives taking a late afternoon breather before the dinner hour, which was just when Sidney arrived each time. In the winter, as now, the benches were empty, the lily pond was a dark amoeba reflecting the starless sky above. It was six o'clock. The lights in the buildings surrounding the court were aglow and cooking smells wafted on the evening air. Sidney quickened his step and moved along the shoveled concrete walk to his father's ground-floor apartment. Through the kitchen window, he could see Louis wrapping something at the table, why did he always
wrap
the stuff, Sidney wondered. Why not simply say "Here, Sidney, here's some worthless crap for you" instead of going through this idiotic ritual each time? Sidney sighed and rang the bell.

His father did not ask who it was because he knew this was Thursday, and he knew that Sidney arrived every Thursday at close to six o'clock. Sidney did not expect him to call out, nor did he expect anything less than a five-minute wait on the doorstep since that was usually how long it took his father to get from the kitchen to the front hallway, give or take a few thousand years. He did not ring the bell again, nor did he exhibit any signs of impatience. He leaned against the brick wall' of the building instead and looked up at the sky, wishing there were stars, and smelling rain in the air, and beneath that the aroma of borscht, his father was cooking borscht again. When Louis finally opened the door, the two men embraced silently, and then walked slowly into the kitchen, where Sidney would spend most of the visit. Sidney supported his father as they walked, one arm around the old man's waist, deploring his smell and the smell of the beets boiling in the kitchen, permeating the entire apartment until Sidney thought he would suffocate.

Louis was eighty-two years old, and Sidney could not remember a time when the old man had not been a burden, even when his mother was still alive. Dimly, only dimly, he perceived in this shell of a man someone who had once punched a Bowery wino, who was strong, who had black hair and dark shining eyes. That person was a stranger to Sidney, as was the old man he helped down the hallway and into the kitchen.

"I'm making borscht," Louis said.

"That's good."

"You like borscht, don't you?"

"Mmm."

"Your mother, may she rest in peace, made the best borscht."

"Mmm."

"Look what's on the table, Sidney," he said.

"Sit down, Pop."

"I can stand, I'm not a cripple, thank God. Look what I found for you."

There were three pacakages on the kitchen table, each wrapped in brown paper and tied with white string. "Well, sit down, Pop," Sidney said, and looked wearily at the packages and thought, Here we go again. His father took a seat at the table, and then put his hands before him on the table top, palms down, and smiled and looked at the packages. Sidney nodded and looked at the packages too.

"Your cousin Marvin called this morning," Louis said. "Don't you want to open the packages, Sidney?"

"Sure, Pop. What'd he want?"

"Who? Oh, Marvin. Nothing, nothing, he was complaining about his wife again, who knows?" Louis waved the problem aside with his bony hand and again looked at the packages. Sidney lifted one of them, shook it, and said, "This isn't a time bomb, is it, Pop?"

"Sure, sure, a time bomb. Open it."

"It won't blow up the whole apartment, will it?' '

"Sure, blow up the apartment," Louis said, watching as Sidney fumbled with the knots on the package. Sidney loosened the string, and then pulled back the folds of wrapping paper. He recognized the bank at once, a small wooden box made of bamboo, with sliding panels that were pushed back one at a time and in sequence to reveal the keyhole. His father had given it to him as a present when he was ten years old. He had never kept more than a few dollars in coins in it at any time, but the knowledge that he was the only one who knew the secret of the sliding panels was a source of comfort and security at a time when he needed assurance most.

"Do you remember it?" his father asked.

"Yes, I do. Where'd you find it?"

"Oh, with the stuff in the closet. There's lots of stuff in the closet."

"Mmm," Sidney said. Automatically, his fingers moved to the first sliding panel, and then the second. He could not remember the sequence after that. He put the bamboo box down on the table, a faint pained smile on his face.

"Will you take it with you?" his father asked.

"Sure." He would take it with him and then throw it in the garbage when he got home, the same as he did with almost everything his father gave him.

"Open the others," Louis said, pleased.

The second package was long and flat. Sidney knew it was a book even before he loosened the string. He nodded as he pulled back the brown wrapping paper.

"From "Harvard," his father said.

"Yes, I see."

It was a notebook he had kept for an Ethics class at Harvard when he was still an undergraduate. He had no interest whatever in it, but his father was watching him, so he leafed through some of the pages and pretended amazement at what he had written.

"I thought you could use it," Louis said.

"Yes," Sidney said, and nodded.

"Can you use it?"

"I'll find some use for it," Sidney said.

"I found it in the closet," his father said, and seemed to want to say more, but let the sentence trail instead.

"All this stuff," Sidney said, and let his sentence trail as well. He broke the string on the third package. The brown wrapping paper rattled open to reveal a wooden inkstand he had made in a shop class in elementary school. There were two holes for ink bottles, drilled into a solid block of wood that was affixed to a larger, flatter piece of wood. A scalloped bar in front of the inkwells was designed to hold pens. The inkstand was stained walnut. Sidney turned it upside down to its raw, unstained bottom where he had gouged out his name with a knife, S. BRACKMAN, and then filled in the letters with black ink. The date beneath his name was 2/7/25. February 7, 1925. He tried to remember the boy who had made this inkstand, but the image was vague. He turned the stand over in his hands again. Something else to throw in the garbage he thought.

"You brought that.home to your mother," Louis said.

"Yes, I remember."

"It was in the closet."

"I'll take it home with me."

"Sure, I have no use for it," Louis said. "I thought you might like it."

"Sure, I'll take it home."

"Well, how is the trial going?" Louis asked.

"Fine."

"I told all my friends you're in a new trial."

"That's good."

"Is it a murder case?"

"No. Plagiarism."

"What's that?"

"When somebody steals from something that's copyrighted."

"Books?"

"Yes. Or plays. Pop, do you have anything to drink in the house?"

"In the living room, there's something," Louis said. "Don't drink too much."

"No, I won't," Sidney said, and went out of the kitchen and into the darkness of the living room. He snapped on the light and searched in the low cabinet for his father's whiskey supply. There was a partially filled bottle of scotch, and a bottle of banana cordial someone had brought to Louis from Puerto Rico. Eventually, Louis would wrap the cordial in brown paper and present it to Sidney, who would throw it in the garbage the moment he got home. He poured two fingers of scotch into one of the glasses, and then turned off the light and went back into the kitchen.

"You ought to get some bourbon," he said, and went to the refrigerator.

"Isn't there bourbon?"

"No, you've only got a little scotch."

"Well," Louis said, and tilted his head.

Sidney put two ice cubes into his glass, sat at the table with his father, and sipped at the whiskey.

"So what's new?" Louis said.

"I'm getting married," Sidney said. "I think I'm getting married."

"Oh?"

"It's about time, huh?" Sidney said, and smiled at his father, and then took another sip of his scotch. "Forty-eight years old, that's a long time to be single."

"Sure, it's about time," his father said. "Who is the girl?"

"Her name is Charlotte Brown."

"Is she Jewish?"

"No."

His father was silent for a moment. Sidney sipped his drink.

"What is she, then?" his father asked.

"Irish, I think. Or English."

"You don't know?"

"I think she's Irish."

"Charlotte Brown?" his father said. "This doesn't sound Irish to me."

"I think it is."

"She's a nice girl?"

"Yes."

"An older woman?"

"Well, she's twenty-seven."

"That's very young, Sidney."

"I know."

"She's pretty?"

"Yes."

"Well," Louis said, and again tilted his head skeptically.

"I'll bring her around someday."

"Yes," his father said, and nodded.

The men were silent. On the stove, the beets were boiling. Sidney finished his drink and went back into the living room for a refill. His father said, "Don't drink too much, Sidney."