Scumbler

5

The People’s Painter

Today I begin my painting of Sweik’s place. Sweik did leave his key under the doormat. It’s cold but sunny when I step into the room. There’s strong slanted sun pushing in through his window, but this place smells musty even with that window wide open.

I stop there in the doorway and set up my easel. I want it just this way; maybe later, I’ll get Sweik to sit under the sunshine, casting unpredictable shadows.

There’s not so much cat-look in the room. Books, pipe, wine bottle out; pants hanging over a chair; clock crooked on the mantel; little things. Sweik might be a bear or a bear cat; Himalayan bear; hibernating type. I’ll have to find out if he eats honey and berries. Bears tend to gorge on honey, berries, fruit and meat, almost as omnivorous as men.

This room desperately needs paintings to cover those water stains on the walls; I’ll bring over some sunny Spanish wall paintings. I did them two years ago, when we went down to southern Spain for Easter holidays; never managed to sell even one. Nobody believed them; that can be a problem with paintings or anything else. People don’t seem to want to believe the beautiful hard things.

I do a fine layout; stand-up view; looking across the table and over his bed; almost one-point perspective. The wall, fireplace, books, a mirror fill up my right side. The window’s dead center. Outside, across the street, there’s an old wall in the shade. The room’s so full of trapped sunlight you can almost wade in it.

It’d be terrific having Sweik in front reading; alone like a bear; definitely bear. How could I’ve thought cat? His hands, feet are too big. Big soft-moving mountain bear or bear cat; he even lifts his head up every once in a while, sniffs, looks around, the way all bears do – definitely bear.

RESTING DARKLY IN A MOLDERING CAVE

A SLAVE TO ALL SEASONS, YET BLESSED.

First, ultramarine blue, ochre, burnt sienna for the underpainting. No real drawing yet; I’ll get my drawing in the painting. I’m inside the forms and light now; splicing places where walls meet. I’ll use that sagging beam in the ceiling against the rug and light on floor tiles. Leitmotif: yellows, yellow-browns against dark green.

EATING AIR, RACING LIGHT, FLIGHT

THROUGH SPACE AND EYES THAT BITE.

I’m a kind of dog myself. I’d like to be a wolf. Kate’s a full-blooded wolf. Dogs need to be liked; bark a lot; whine. Dogs care. Wolves never give anything away; are very loyal, very uptight about the nest, kids, full of pride; possessive. My first wife was a wolf, too. She brought on the pack and they destroyed me. Sometimes I even think she enjoyed it; I keep trying to wipe that thought out of my mind but it won’t go away.

THE HOWLING OF AIR IN A CHIMNEY,

THE CALL OF A WOLVERINE FOR HER CUB:

I’M EMPTY WITHOUT FIRE.

I want as much room as I can get in the painting, so I blow out the perspective to a wide-angle-eye distortion. The problem with four major converging forces like walls is they can confuse the point of focus.

Now I’m drawing over my underpainting. The light’s moving across the room, falling left to right. I’m moving with it, tilted at an angle in my mind, leaning on photons.

I’ve just put on the first licks of impasto when Sweik comes. He agrees to sit in front of the window; has some studying to do. He sits in his chair, rocks back with a foot on the rail of his bed. It’s quiet. We’re both working hard. I can hear my brushes on the canvas.

I’m feeling and letting it happen. I’m out there and the room is flowing through me. I don’t even know how it’s happening. I’m watching the painting from far away, like watching God create the world. I drift on the brushes that way an hour or two, controlled falling, skiing on light.

But that light’s dropping off now. Sweik rocks down and stretches. We decide to eat here in his room. There’s a half bottle of wine; the wine’s in the foreground of my painting on the table. That wine can never be drunk completely; it’s there in the painting forever, or at least what passes as short time forever.

We chip in ten francs each. Sweik goes out to buy. I pack up my box feeling empty. I flop on his bed and listen. The painting’s on the mantel; another day pinned down. I turn it over, can’t look at it; more real than real; can’t get out of it. It’s so easy to get lost, to lose your bearings, not know what’s real anymore.

Sweik comes back. He has warm baguette, Camembert, some tomatoes. These’re the first good-looking tomatoes of the year, Moroccan. I cut the bread down its length, spread Camembert and hunks of tomato. We slice into the sandwich some sausage that’s hanging over the sink in my painting. Here we are in the waning sunshine eating immortal sausage washed down by immortal wine. Downright immortal.

THE TEMPORARY ARREST. THE OBJECT

OR PAPER TO ATTEST TO WHAT IS, OR

WAS, OR MIGHT HAVE BEEN.

I sit on the floor; Sweik’s on the bed. Now our sun’s bouncing against that wall across the street not fifteen feet away. The reflected light is warm. I pour wine into a glass, toothbrush glass; Sweik drinks out of the bottle. It’s blanc de blanc, cheap, dry, good with cheese.

We spend all afternoon shab-rapping. Sweik has no idea what he’s doing. Feels he has no big talents, no strong drives; refuses to live just an automatic life. He likes living around, traveling; likes women, sex, but has a hard time getting anyone up the front hall with the sagging burlap bags and rug strings. He’d like to find some important, serious woman he could live with for a while.

I tell him about Lotte’s place. I might be able to work out something there. That nest’s too big for only one person; holy heaven, fifty squares. That’s almost as much as I’ve got at home with five people. I’ll divide off a room for Sweik. It’ll be cheaper than the hotel. He can share john, kitchen, maybe bed, with Lotte. It’ll be good for her. A guy like Sweik’d be good for her soul: scrape it up a bit; loosen some of those icebergs left over from the disappearing Frenchman. Sweik’s soul’s so big she can’t put any hooks into it either; big bear soul. Lotte could sure use some careless loving.

Yes sir, Lotte needs a bumbling bear to muck around with her, smell things up. She’d be happier with Sweik; give some sense to things, put some surprises in her life. Sweik’d have something to fill his empty space, too. It’s a bad habit living only with things you already know.

AUTOMATIC LIVING, SPIRITUAL, PSYCHIC

OXYGEN TENTS, IV, CATHETER TUBES PUMPING.

WE KEEP ALIVE IN A KEEP, LUBRICATING

OUR PATH TO THE GRAVE, SAVING NOTHING.

Before leaving. I arrange to come paint some more next day. I go out, hop on my bike and ride over to the Marais. Marais’s the old Jewish quarter of Paris. There are good bakeries with bagels and pumpernickel; delicatessens with pastrami; Yiddish in the streets. You see kids with black hats and schoolbags going to the ‘shul’. Uplifting smells, beautiful small streets, all crooked.

I sit on my bike and start some sketches. I’m laying out an idea for a whole series: thirty or forty paintings at least. I’ve been working on this idea for a month and I’m almost ready to start.

The people here are great; ask all kinds of crazy questions. The first one is usually if I’m Jewish. Sometimes I say yes, sometimes no; see if it makes any difference. I can’t notice any.

CATHOLIC, PROTESTANT, HINDU,

MUSLIM, ORTHODOX JEW;

BUT who THE HELL ARE YOU?

NOT WHAT!

I always try to paint in series, want to give the whole idea of a quarter. Any single painting is only like a man with a stiff neck: nice view so long as you don’t move. I pick good spots, then turn slowly, painting in all directions, one painting ending about where the other begins.

I’m sure the future for painting is video-cassette tapes. I’ll tell what I’m thinking about while I’m painting, tour all over my painting with a video camera, show it happening. People can see things the way I see: completely subjective; my Paris, nothing real to get in the way; just glorious, personal lies. Everybody’ll have video-cassette players soon; full-wall color cathode screens. That’s the future for paintings, all right; the only trouble is, I’ll be dead.

Museums are mummy shows, nobody goes. Private collections are money tombs, cut off from the world. Hell, I’m the people’s painter! I paint the way most people’d like to paint if they could. People in the streets like my paintings, like to watch me paint. They drift along with my mind through my eyes, and the more they know about what I’m painting the better they like my work. For me it’s a good part of what makes the whole thing worthwhile.

What bugs me is I always have to break up these series, sell them in bits and pieces. I can’t seem to find anybody rich enough to buy a whole set intact.

I try keeping track of the work, someday maybe put them together again; but it’s hard, probably impossible, definitely improbable.

OUR EFFORTS, DREAMS, IDEALS, IDEAS

DISSIPATE, DISPERSE, LEAVING US

LIKE CHILDREN. COULD BE WORSE.

I’m coming near the end of my Canettes series. I’ve been into the houses, up and down the streets. I’ve painted portraits, straight-on façades, peeped in windows, painting, sniffing around generally. I’ve got just about all of it. Now I’ll need to cut it up; like slicing salami or cheese.

My new series will be the Marais. Best way to forget paintings is to start new ones. I’d sure like to try living down there. I even found an apartment for rent; this Jew’s going to Israel for his kids’ sake. But I can’t move into every painting. Kate says she’ll never move again, anywhere; can’t blame her. We’ve really played a lot of gypsy in our lives, and without violin music either. She deserves a regular sit-down nest now for sure. Thank God we overlap some, both like being aliens, living outside; but my restlessness can be too much for her sometimes.

A HOME OF HER OWN.

WALLS, HALLS, A TOILET

AND A BED WITHOUT LUMPS.

IT CAN’T BE ALL BAD.

So I’m sitting on the bike, sketching away, creating space with a pencil, when a woman comes up to me. She’s about forty-five or fifty: nice face, hair cut short, bit dikey somehow, in a nice way. She speaks to me in English: reasonable English, French accent. She knows I’m American because I have California license plates; avoid French taxes, French tickets that way.

Says she’s a painter and looks into my eyes. She has the most amazingly dirty eyes I’ve ever seen. They make me want to reach up and wipe my own. She tilts her head and gets close; little alky smell there, too; bacteria shit, human vomit. She turns her soft, dirty eyes onto my drawing. Then she puts her hand on my hand while I’m trying to draw. She smiles at me; I can’t keep on drawing like that!

She asks me to join her for a drink. Sure, maybe she’ll go away if I buy her a drink. She takes me to a place around the corner, we sit in back. I’m tired; I don’t really even know how I got here.

We’ve just sat down when she reaches over and puts her hand in my crotch. Nothing serious, I think; only keeping her hand warm. She orders a marc for each of us. That’s the end of drawing for the day. She starts telling me her life story; some people think artists are priests. Maybe I should have a portable confessional, wear a stole. Maybe I can steal one.

THE SOFTEST BOULDER IS A

SHOULDER, BUT BE CAREFUL

IT DOESN’T BECOME A LANDSLIDE.

Turns out she’s the daughter of a famous artist. Her father and mother died when she was a baby. I think I can see him in her eyes; maybe only alcohol, maybe drugs; dried-skin look, more than age. She paints, sells father’s drawings, sells authentications.

She’s just back from Switzerland. Tears start filling her dirty eyes; I look for mud to run down her cheeks; story’s getting expensive. While she’s in Switzerland, her daughter runs away, gets pregnant. So what’s so awful about that? Wish I could get pregnant. Probably we all want what we can’t have; part of being human.

Now her head is down on the table next to her hand holding the drink. It’s all very Lautrec. She’s crying like a mad Russian; men around the bar turn their heads away.

I want to get out. This is developing into something too scary for me. She’s asking me to come visit her place, see her work and her father’s drawings. She’s getting lovey; insists on paying for the drinks; pulls a thick folded wad of hundred-franc bills from her purse. I should’ve packed up and driven away in the first place.

We leave the café; I have no desire to go with her but I don’t want to hurt her feelings either. I lie, tell her I’ll finish the drawing, come over later. She points, gives me directions; one street away. She wobbles off. I hustle back to my box, pack it up, jump on the bike and roll, drifting downhill a ways before kicking over the motor, sneaking away.

I can’t face a sad sex scene with a drunk. I can be an awful coward; I’m not strong enough to help when things are really bad; my nerves aren’t up to it. I only hope she bombs out and forgets she ever saw me.

I’m not ready to waste my time either: scarce stuff, coming to the bottom of the barrel. It’s terrible to feel you’re running down like an eight-day clock and you’ve lost the key. I don’t even keep correct time anymore, always slightly behind.

6

Notes From the Underground

Wednesday I finish the painting of Sweik’s room, the one looking in from the door. I also bring over some sunny paintings to take the curse off his walls.

Thursday I start a new painting, this time looking from his window toward the door. There’s a large French wardrobe with a mirror next to Sweik’s bed. In French hotels, you almost always find a mirror beside the bed. I paint Sweik’s motorcycle bags and helmet hanging against the back wall by the door. On the other side, I paint the sink and bidet, working up all the French plumbing details.

Sweik’s in bed. He hurt his back carrying a Danish woman up these stairs. He says they were both half looped and he was trying to make it sound like one pair of feet going past the concierge. He tripped on the rug strings, twisted his back and dropped the woman.

Sweik’s really racked; the Dane stayed overnight but he was useless to her. She left in the early morning: one set of feet going down.

THE JOY OF SEX,

OUR FAVORITE TOY.

THE PLOY OF SEX,

A SHARP KNIFE IN

A STEEL TRAP.

When I finish the drawing, I help Sweik struggle out of bed to wash up. His back’s so bad he can’t sit in a chair; just rolls out onto his knees on the floor. Kneeling there, he really looks like a shot-down old bear. I pull the sheets and blankets from the bed. I put the sheets back on upside down and the other way around; thin, gray, dirty sheets, no sex-juice marks.

Using his Primus stove, I warm some water. He’s in deep pain. I help him off the floor back to the edge of his bed. He sits there and lathers himself. A bear cat like Sweik suffers deeply when he can’t keep clean. I almost expect him to begin licking his paws and grooming. Beautiful as this room is for painting, it could be depressing as hell if you were sick and forced to stay in all day.

I try talking Sweik into cutting out for Lotte’s place. I’ll wall off a room, hunt up a flat board, a piece of foam rubber and make a bed. That’s the best thing for a back like his. This ditch he’s sleeping in has a permanent body dent in the center: worst thing possible.

WE SLEEP CURVED TO THE EARTH

AND FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH,

WE DREAM.

Meanwhile, my painting’s coming along fine. I paint my own paintings in the painting. I paint paintings reflected in the mirror in my painting. I even paint one painting reflected in a mirror reflecting in a mirror in my painting. Now that’s what I call outright, fourth-dimensional lying; good honest lying to tell the truth, whatever that might be. My mind is spinning again about time in paintings. I’m sure foreground is present and background is past. I’m beginning to think middle ground is future; it’s where we take what we know from the past and then, in the present, make guesses about what’s going to happen. Yep, future is probably middle ground.

After Sweik’s back in bed, we get talking. We start on how hard it is for men to be friends; how it all gets pissed away with ‘camaraderie’, buddy-buddy kinds of shit: softball leagues, bowling clubs and poker parties. I tell how I’m convinced men are afraid of each other, circling with hackles up all the time.

We both know we’re feeling each other out, trying to let down walls but feeling vulnerable. It’s so hard breaking through. Men’re forced into competing, fighting each other so young it’s almost impossible to make contact. Sweik arches, groans, talks through his teeth.

‘You know, a guy’s finally cornered so he’s allowed one close friend in the world; out of four billion, he gets one!’

I look at him, stop painting. He smiles, grits his teeth.

‘You know, I’m actually scared to get married. After a guy’s married, he’s only supposed to be close with that one woman. Since all men are already out, that leaves a total of one.’

He rolls and winces. He’d be better off sleeping on the floor than in this eggcup of a bed. I change brushes, add some turp to the varnish.

‘Same thing for women, though, right? If people are stupid enough to run their lives that way, then that’s what they get.’

Sweik stares at the ceiling, arches his back again. I think maybe he didn’t hear me. He looks over, almost in a wrestler’s bridge, his teeth clamped together.

‘I don’t know; it’s different. Women have each other; they’re closer.’

I keep my mouth shut but I don’t believe it. Sisterhood and brotherhood are for real sisters and brothers only – and even then, rarely.

WHEN YOU’RE ALL WET,

HOW CLOSE CAN YOU GET?

We gab away that afternoon. It’s good talking at this part of a painting. It’s nice having Sweik there in bed. We bullshit some more about what’s wrong with men’s lives. For a young guy he’s figured out a lot of things.

I even tell about World War II and me. Sweik had a student deferment from the Vietnam mess.

Sometimes I can get to feeling guilty, knowing everything we know now. If there ever was anybody worth fighting a war with, I guess it had to be those Nazis. My trouble was I just didn’t want to be a part of any killing – still don’t. Even killing people who are killing other people doesn’t make sense to me. How can it end? I hate being part of anything really stupid. But my own life sure got screwed up; I’ll say that.

A LINE OF EATERS, EATING

EACH OTHER TO THE END.

WHAT BEAUTIFUL FLOWER

IS THIS WE NOW DEVOUR?

Then, somehow. I don’t know how we get started, but we begin working on the idea of a fantasy motorcycle club here in Paris. We’re going to mock up a super-macho Warlock or Hell’s Angels Paris pack; only with practically no real bikes, a totally phony affair.

Sweik gets to laughing so hard tears slide down his cheeks from the back pain. We’ll write to the biggest motorcycle club in America and request a charter for our Paris-American Motorcycle Club. We’ll invent stories of way-out trips and races; send off reports of these hokey events; create a completely ersatz motor scene.

Sweik laughs and hurts; probably the best thing for his back, relax the muscles. I get some paper from his table and Sweik, propped up there in bed, writes out our letter. We get off a very good maniac missive, with baroque and arabesque flourishes.

THE LAST CURE (BEFORE CURARE)

A SURE, PURE UNCARING,

UNBARTERED BURST OF LAUGHTER.

Later, just as I’m finishing for the day, Lubar, Duncan and Tompkins stop by to see how Sweik’s doing. They can’t believe the letter. Lubar thinks it’s for real. Duncan goes out to buy wine. Lubar runs down and brings up some stolen IBM stationery from his saddlebag. We rewrite the letter with more embellishment yet. This letter’s turning into a narrative poem. We describe the kinds of motorcycles we’re supposed to have, developing the most outlandish rare bikes and combinations of machines anybody ever heard of. We’re having a real old-fashioned tribal male-

camaraderie scene. Kate would probably vomit if she could see us. No, she’d shift into her cool, above-it-all mode and make us feel like damned fools. Kate doesn’t have much tolerance for tomfoolery. But I think at the bottom of all art is some taint of foolery – Tom, Dick or Harriette. But she could be right; maybe all this nonsense uses up, wastes whatever creativity is. I don’t really know.

It takes two days to finish the painting. Sweik’s feeling better but he’s still in bed. I find a board, smuggle it up those stringy stairs, beneath sagging burlap, past the concierge, and put it under his mattress. The bed’s still not much good but it’s better. I also sneak out the sheets and run them through a laundromat around the corner. Poor Sweik’s deveoping bedsores; says he thinks he’ll never be up and walking around again.

IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS AN

END AND THAT’S THE BEGINNING.

Meanwhile, over at Lotte’s, I’m building a partition to cut out a room for Sweik when he gets well enough to move. Lotte’s griping because I’m dividing her place; she doesn’t want to share. I tell her she can leave if she wants. She doesn’t want to leave, just wants all that space for herself; Lebensraum!

Lotte’s a true cat, little cat: minx, maybe, or a small leopard. She likes everything neat, carefully wiped. She actually listens to hear if I’ve washed my hands after I take a leak. Maybe old blunderpuss isn’t much anymore but it’s the cleanest thing I’ve got. He rarely even touches air, all swathed in elastic supports. It’s my hands get dirty handling money and crappy things like that. I should wash my hands before I pee. If I’m not careful, maybe I might even get paint on the master brush; give some unlikely, lucky woman a cobalt-blue clit. Ah, fantasy; takes some edge off the bitter dawn. I don’t even use cobalt blue: too expensive, not permanent enough.

So I’m drilling a hole to mount a baseplate for the partition, when I go through the floor! I pull up a flat stone like a paving block; it opens onto a big hole! I pull more blocks out. There’s a tremendous empty space. Lotte’s having catfits; raving about rats, then about graves. It smells like graves all right; black, wet, old; dead smell. I ask Lotte for a candle. I stare into the hole but a draft blows up and snuffs out my candle. I almost scream right there and then; expect Dracula to come swooping up out of the darkness.

I dash off for a flashlight and come back. Lotte’s spread a rug over the hole and she’s crying on the bed. I’m all excited; staring into that dank hole has me turned on. I’m confused about where I want to do my cave exploring. I think of somebody coming in and stepping on that rug. I start laughing. Lotte cries harder; I’m probably not doing Sweik any favor.

This hole is deep. I rig a ladder with the wood for my partition and lower it into the darkness. It’s about eight feet to some kind of surface. I climb down slowly. Lotte’s running around in circles. Maybe she’ll pull my ladder, slide her rug back over the hole; save herself paying rent.

I get to the bottom and look around with my flashlight. There’s a long tunnel. It goes off under Moro’s and is arched with cut-stone vaulting, high enough to walk up straight but just clearing my head.