Pictures of Fidelman Page 11

  “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 eight percent of Esmeralda’s earnings.

  “Per cortesia,” says the pimp haughtily. “At the very least twenty-five 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.”

  “Drop dead,” said Esmeralda.

  “The man’s sincere,” F said, irritated. “There’s no need to be so cruel.”

  “Come to bed, Arturo.” She entered the gabinetto as Ludovico went on with his confession.

  “To tell the truth, I am myself a failed artist, but at least I contribute to the creativity of others by offering fruitful suggestions, though you’re free to do as you please. Anyway, your painting is a marvel. Of course it’s Picassoid, but you’ve outdone him in some of his strategies.”

  F expressed thanks and gratitude.

  “At first glance I thought that since the bodies of the two figures are so much more thickly painted than their faces, especially the girl’s, this destroyed the unity of surface, but when I think of some of the impastos I’ve seen, and the more I study your painting, the more I feel that’s not important.”

  “I don’t think it’ll bother anybody so long as it looks like a spontaneous act.”

  “True, and therefore my only criticism is that maybe the painting suffers from an excess of darkness. It needs more light. I’d say a soupçon of lemon and a little red, not more than a trace. But I leave it to you.”

  Esmeralda came out of the gabinetto in a red nightgown with a black lace bodice.

  “Don’t touch it,” she warned. “You’ll never make it better.”

  “How would you know?” F said.

  “I have my eyes.”

  “Maybe she’s right,” Ludovico said, with a yawn. “Who knows with art? Well, I’m on my way. If you want to sell your painting for a handsome price, my advice is take it to a reliable dealer. There are one or two in the city whose names and addresses I’ll bring you in the morning.”

  “Don’t brother,” Esmeralda said. “We don’t need your assistance.”

  “I want to keep it around for a few days to look at,” F confessed.

  “As you please.” Ludovico tipped his hat good night and left limping. F and Esmeralda went to bed together. Later she returned to her cot in the kitchen, took off her red nightgown and put on an old one of white muslin.

  F for a while wondered what to paint next. Maybe sort of a portrait of Ludovico, his face reflected in a mirror, with two sets of aqueous sneaky eyes. He slept soundly but in the middle of the night awoke depressed. He went over his painting inch by inch and it seemed to him a disappointment. Where was Momma after all these years? He got up to look, and doing so, changed his mind; not bad at all, though Ludovico was right, the picture was dark and could stand a touch of light. He laid out his paints and brushes and began to work, almost at once achieving the effect he sought. And then he thought he would work a bit on the girl’s face, no more than a stroke or two around the eyes and mouth, to make her expression truer to life. More the prostitute, himself a little older. When the sun blazed through both windows, he realized he had been working for hours. F put down his brush, washed up and returned for a look at the painting. Sickened to his gut, he saw what he felt: He had ruined it. It slowly drowned
in his eyes.

  Ludovico came in with a well-dressed paunchy friend, an art dealer. They looked at the picture and laughed.

  Five long years down the drain. F squeezed a tube of black on the canvas and with a thick brush smeared it over both faces in all directions.

  When Esmeralda pulled open the curtain and saw the mess, moaning, she came at him with the bread knife. “Murderer!”

  F twisted it out of her grasp, and in anguish lifted the blade into his gut.

  “This serves me right.”

  “A moral act,” Ludovico agreed.

  5

  Fidelman pissing in muddy water discovers water over his head. Modigliani wanders by searching by searchlight for his lost statues in Livorno canal. They told me to dump them in the canal, so I fucked them, I dumped them. Ne ha viste? Macchè. How come that light works underwater? Hashish. If we wake we drown, says Fidelman. Chants de Maldoror. His eyeless face drained of blood but not yellow light, Modi goes up canal as Fidelman drifts down.

  Woodcut. Knight, Death and the Devil. Dürer.

  Au fond il s’est suicidé. Anon.

  Broken rusting balls of Venus. Ah, to sculpt a perfect hole, the volume and gravity constant. Invent space. Surround matter with hole rather than vice versa. That would have won me enduring fame and fortune and spared me all this wandering.

  Cathedral of Erotic Misery. Schwitters.

  Everybody says you’re dead, otherwise why do you never write? Madonna Adoring the Child, Mater Dolorosa. Madonna della Peste. Long White Knights. Lives of the Saints. S. Sebastian, arrow collector, swimming in bloody sewer. Pictured transfixed with arrows. S. Denis, decapitated. Pictured holding his head. S. Agatha, breasts shorn clean, running enflamed. Painted carrying both bloody breasts in white salver. S. Stephen, crowned with rocks. Shown stoned. S. Lucy tearing out eyes for suitor smitten by same. Portrayed bearing two-eyed omelet on dish. S. Catherine, broken apart on spiked wheel. Pictured married to wheel. S. Laurence, roasted on slow grill. I am roasted on one side. Now turn me over and eat. Shown cooked but uneaten. S. Bartholomew, flayed alive. Standing with skin draped over skinned arm. S. Fima, eaten by rats. Pictured with happy young rat. S. Simon Zelotes, sawed in half. Shown with bleeding crosscut saw. S. Genet in prison, pictured with boys. S. Fidel Uomo, stuffing his ass with flowers.

  Still Life with Herrings. S. Soutine.

  He divideth the gefilte fish and matzos.

  Drawing. Flights of birds over dark woods, sparrows, finches, thrushes, white doves, martins, swallows, eagles. Birds with human faces crapping human on whom they crap.

  Wood sculpture. Man holding sacrificial goat. Cubist goat with triangular titties. Goat eating hanged goat.

  The Enigma of Isidor Ducasse. Man Ray.

  In this time Fidelman, after making studies of the work of Donatello, in particular of the Annunciation carved in stone for the church of S. Croce, the S. George in armor, with all the beauty of youth and the courage of the knight, and the bald man known as Il Zuccone, from figures in the façade of Giotto’s Campanile, about whom it was said the sculptor, addressing his creation, would cry out, Speak, Speak: In this time the American began to work in original images dug into the soil. To those who expressed astonishment regarding this extraordinary venture, Fidelman is said to have replied, Being a poor man I can neither purchase nor borrow hard or soft stone; therefore, since this is so, I create my figures as hollows in the earth. In sum, my material is the soil, my tools a pickax and shovel, my sculpture the act of digging rather than carving or assembling. However, the pleasure in creation is not less than that felt by Michelangelo.

  After attempting first several huge ziggurats that because of the rains tumbled down like Towers of Babel, he began to work labyrinths and mazes dug in the earth and constructed in the form of jewels. Later he refined and simplified this method, building a succession of spontaneously placed holes, each a perfect square, which when seen together constituted a sculpture. These Fidelman exhibited throughout Italy in whatsoever place he came.

  Having arrived in a city carrying his tools on his shoulder and a few possessions in a knotted bundle on his arm, the sculptor searched in the environs until he had come upon a small plot of land he could dig on without the formality of paying rent Because this good fortune was not always possible, he was more than once rudely separated from his sculptures as they were in the act of being constructed, and by the tip of someone’s boot, ejected from the property whereon he worked, the hollows then being filled in by the angry landowners. For this reason the sculptor often chose public places and dug in parks, or squares, if this were possible, which to do so he sometimes pretended, when questioned by officials of the police, that he was an underground repairman sent there by the Municipality. If he was disbelieved by these and dragged off to jail, he lay several days recuperating from the efforts of his labors, not unpleasantly. There are worse places than jails, Fidelman is said to have said, and once I am set free I shall begin my sculptures in another place. To sum up, he dug where he could, yet not far from the marketplace where many of the inhabitants of the city passed by daily, and where, if he was not unlucky, the soil was friable and not too hard with rock to be dug. This task he performed, as was his custom, quickly and expertly. Just as Giotto is said to have been able to draw a perfect free-hand circle, so could Fidelman dig a perfect square hole without measurement. He arranged the sculptures singly or in pairs according to the necessity of the Art. These were about a braccio in volume, sometimes two, or two-and-a-half if Fidelman was not too fatigued. The smaller sculpture took from two to three hours to construct, the larger perhaps five or six; and if the final grouping was to contain three pieces, this meant a long day, indeed, and possibly two, of continual digging. There were times when because of weariness Fidelman would have compromised for a single braccio piece; but in the end Art prevailed and he dug as he must to fulfill those forms that must be fulfilled.

  After constructing his sculptures the artist, unwinding a canvas sign on stilts, advertised the exhibition. The admission requested was ten lire, which was paid to him in the roped-off entrance way, the artist standing with a container in his hand. Not many were enticed to visit the exhibition, especially when it snowed or rained, although Fidelman was heard to say that the weather did not the least harm to his sculptures, indeed, sometimes improved them by changing volume and texture as well as affecting other qualities. And it was as though nature, which until now was acted upon by the artist, now acted upon the Art itself, an unexpected but satisfying happening, since thus were changed the forms of a form. Even on the most crowded days when more than several persons came to view his holes in the earth, the sculptor earned a meager sum, not more than two or three hundred lire at most. He well understood that his bread derived from the curious among the inhabitants, rather than from the true lovers of Art, but for this phenomenon took no responsibility since it was his need to create and not be concerned with the commerce of Art. Those few who came to the exhibit, they viewed the sculptures at times in amazement and disbelief, whether at the perfect constructions or at their own stupidity, if indeed they believed they were stupid, is not known. Some of the viewers, after gazing steadfastly at the sculptures, were like sheep in their expression, as if wondering whether they had been deceived; some were stony faced, as if they knew they had been. But few complained aloud, being ashamed to admit their folly, if indeed it were folly. To the one or two who rudely questioned him, saying, Why do you pass off on us as sculpture an empty hole or two? the artist, with the greatest tact and courtesy, replied, It were well if you relaxed before my sculptures, if you mean to enjoy them, and yield yourself to the pleasure they evoke in the surprise of their forms. At these words he who had complained fell silent, not certain he had truly understood the significance of the work of Art he had seen. On occasion a visitor would speak to the artist to compliment him, which he received with gratitude. Eh, maestro, your sculptures touch my heart. I thank you from the bottom of my own, the artist
is said to have replied, blowing his nose to hide the gratification that he felt.

  There is a story told that in Naples in a small park near the broad avenue called Via Carracciola, one day a young man waited until the remaining other visitor had left the exhibit so that he might speak to the sculptor. Maestro, said he most earnestly, it distresses me to do so, but I must pray you to return to me the ten lire I paid for admission to your exhibit. I have seen no more than two square holes in the ground and am much dissatisfied. The fault lies in you that you have seen only holes, Fidelman is said to have replied. I cannot, however, return the admission fee to you, for doing so might cause me to lose confidence in my work. Why do you refuse me my just request? said the poorly attired young man, whose dark eyes, although intense and comely, were mournful. I ask for my young babes. My wife gave me money so that I might buy bread for our supper, of which we have little. We are poor folk and I have no steady work. Yet when I observed the sign calling attention to your sculptures, which though I looked for them I could see none visible, I was moved by curiosity, an enduring weakness of mine and the cause of much of my misery. It came into my heart that I must see these sculptures, so I gave up the ten lire, I will confess, in fear and trepidation, hoping to be edified and benefited although fearful I would not be. I hoped that your sculptures, since they are described on the banner as new in the history of Art, might teach me what I myself must make in order that I may fulfill my desire to be great in Art; but all I can see are two large holes, the one dug deeper by about a braccio than the other. Holes are of no use to me, my life being full of them, so I beg you to return the lire that I may hasten to the baker’s shop to buy the bread I was sent for.

  After hearing him out, Fidelman is said to have answered, I do not as a rule explain my sculptures to the public, but since you are an attractive young man who has turned his thoughts to becoming an artist, I will say to you what your eyes have not seen, in order that you may be edified and benefited.