Pictures of Fidelman Read online

  After zuppa inglese and a peeled apple she patted her lips with a napkin, and still in good humor, suggested they take the bus to the Piazza del Popolo and visit some painter friends of hers.

  “I’ll introduce you to Alberto Moravia.”

  “With pleasure,” Fidelman said.

  But when they stepped into the street and were walking to the bus stop near the river a cold wind blew up and Annamaria turned pale.

  “Something wrong?” Fidelman inquired.

  “The East Wind.” She spoke testily.

  “What wind?”

  “The Evil Eye,” she said with irritation. “Malocchio.”

  He had heard something of the sort. They returned quickly to the studio, their heads lowered against the noisy wind, the pittrice from time to time furtively crossing herself. A black-habited old nun passed them at the trattoria corner, from whom Annamaria turned in torment, muttering “Jettatura! Porca miseria!” When they were upstairs in the studio she insisted Fidelman touch his testicles three times to undo or dispel who knew what witchcraft, and he modestly obliged. Her request had inflamed him, although he cautioned himself to remember, it was in purpose and essence theological.

  Later she received a visitor, a man who came to see her on Monday and Friday afternoons after his work in a government bureau. Her visitors, always men, whispered with her a minute, then left restlessly; most of them, excepting also Giancarlo Balducci, a cross-eyed illustrator—Fidelman never saw again. But the one who came oftenest stayed longest, a solemn gray-haired gent, Augusto Ottogalli, with watery blue eyes and missing side teeth, old enough to be her father for sure. He wore a slanted black fedora and a shabby gray overcoat too large for him, greeted Fidelman vacantly and made him inordinately jealous. When Augusto arrived in the afternoon the pittrice usually dropped anything she was doing and they retired to her room, at once noisily locked and bolted. The art student wandered alone in the studio for dreadful hours. When Augusto ultimately emerged, looking disheveled, and if successful, defeated, Fidelman turned his back on him and the old man hastily let himself out of the door. After his visits, and only his, Annamaria did not appear in the studio for the rest of the day. Once when Fidelman knocked on her door to invite her out to supper, she said to use the pot because she had a headache and was sound asleep. On another occasion when Augusto was locked long in her room with her, after a tormenting two hours Fidelman tiptoed over and put his jealous ear to the door. All he could hear was the buzz and sigh of their whispering. Peeking through the keyhole he saw them both in their overcoats, sitting on her bed, Augusto clasping her hands, whispering passionately, his nose empurpled with emotion, Annamaria’s white face averted. When the art student checked an hour later, they were still at it, the old man imploring, the pittrice weeping. The next time, Augusto came with a priest, a portly, heavy-breathing man with a doubtful face. But as soon as they appeared in the studio Annamaria, enraged to fury, despite the impassioned entreatments of Augusto, began to throw at them anything of hers or Fidelman’s she could lay hands on.

  “Bloodsuckers!” she shouted, “scorpions! parasites!” until they had hastily retreated. Yet when Augusto, worn and harried, returned alone, without complaint she retired to her room with him.

  Fidelman’s work, despite the effort and despair he gave it, was going poorly. Every time he looked at unpainted canvas he saw harlequins, whores, tragic kings, fragmented musicians, the sick and the dread. Still, tradition was tradition and what if he wanted to make more? Since he had always loved art history he considered embarking on a “Mother and Child,” but was afraid her image would come out too much Bessie—after all, a dozen years between them. Or maybe a moving “Pietà,” the dead son’s body held like a broken wave in mama’s frail arms? A curse on art history—he fought the fully prefigured picture though some of his former best paintings had jumped in every detail to the mind. Yet if so where’s true engagement? Sometimes I’d like to forget every picture I’ve seen, Fidelman thought. Almost in panic he sketched in charcoal a coattailed “Figure of a Jew Fleeing” and quickly hid it away. After that, ideas, prefigured or not, were scarce. “Astonish me,” he muttered, wondering whether to return to surrealism. He also considered a series of “Relations to Places and Space,” hard-edge constructions in squares and circles, the pleasures of tri-dimensional geometry of linear abstraction, only he had little heart for it. The furthest abstraction, Fidelman thought, is the blank canvas. A moment later he said to himself, if painting shows who you are why should not painting? I mean I oughtn’t to worry about that.

  After the incident with the priest Annamaria was despondent for a week, stayed in her room sometimes bitterly crying, Fidelman often standing helplessly by her door. However, her unhappy mood was prelude to a burst of creativity by the pittrice. Works by the dozens leaped from her brush and stylus. She went on with her lyric abstractions based on the theme of a hidden cross and spent hours with a long black candle, burning holes in heavy white paper (“Buchi Spontanei”). Having mixed coffee grounds, sparkling bits of crushed mirror and ground sea shells, she blew the dust on mucilaged paper (“Velo nella Nebbia”). She composed collages of rags and toilet paper. After a dozen linear studies (“Linee Discendenti”), she experimented with gold leaf sprayed with umber, the whole while wet drawn in long undulations with a fine comb. She framed this in a black frame and hung it on end like a diamond (“Luce di Candela”). Annamaria worked intently, her brow furrowed, violet mouth tightly pursed, eyes lit, nostrils palpitating in creative excitement; and when she had temporarily run out of new ideas she did a mythological bull in red clay (“La Donna Toro”), afterwards returning to natura morta with bunches of bananas; then self-portraits.

  The pittrice occasionally took time out to see what Fidelman was up to, although not much, and then editing his efforts. She changed lines and altered figures, or swabbed paint over whole compositions that didn’t appeal to her. There was not much that did, but Fidelman was grateful for any attention she gave his work, and even kept at it to incite her criticism. He could feel his heartbeat in his teeth whenever she stood close to him modifying his work, he deeply breathing her intimate smell of sweating flowers. She wore perfume only when Augusto came and it disappointed Fidelman that the old man should evoke the use of bottled fragrance; yet he was cheered that her natural odor which he, so to say, got for free, was so much more exciting than the stuff she doused herself with for her decrepit Romeo. He had noticed she had a bit of soft belly but he loved the pliant roundness and often daydreamed of it. Thinking it might please her, for he pleased her rarely (he reveried how it would be once she understood the true depth of his love for her), the art student experimented with some of the things Annamaria had done—spontaneous holes, for instance, several studies of “Lines Ascending,” and two lyrical abstract expressionistic pieces based on, interwoven with, and ultimately concealing a Star of David, although for these attempts he soon discovered he had earned, instead of her good will, an increased measure of scorn.

  However, Annamaria continued to eat lunch with him at Guido’s, and more often than not, supper, although she said practically nothing during meals and afterwards let her eye roam over the faces of the men at the other tables. But there were times after they had eaten when she would agree to go for a short walk with Fidelman, if there was no serious wind; and once in a while they entered a movie in the Trastevere, for she hated to cross any of the bridges of the Tiber, and then only in a bus, sitting stiffly, staring ahead. As they were once riding Fidelman seized the opportunity to hold her tense fist in his, but as soon as they were safely across the river she tore it out of his grasp. He was by now giving her presents—tubes of paints, the best brushes, a few yards of Belgian linen, which she accepted without comment; she also borrowed small sums from him, nothing startling—a hundred lire today, five hundred tomorrow. And she announced one morning that he would thereafter, since he used so much of both, have to pay additional for water and electricity—he already paid e
xtra for the heatless heat. Fidelman, though always worried about money, assented. He would give his last lira to lie on her soft belly, but she offered niente, not so much as a caress; until one day he was permitted to look on as she sketched herself nude in his presence. Since it was bitter cold the pittrice did this in two stages. First she removed her sweater and brassiere, and viewing herself in a long faded mirror, quickly sketched the upper half of her body before it turned blue. He was dizzily enamored of her form and flesh. Hastily fastening the brassiere and pulling on her sweater, Annamaria stepped out of her sandals and peeled off her culottes, and white panties torn at the crotch, then drew the rest of herself down to her toes. The art student begged permission to sketch along with her but the pittrice denied it, so he had, as best one can, to commit to memory her lovely treasures—the hard, piercing breasts, narrow shapely buttocks, vine-hidden labia, the font and sweet beginning of time. After she had drawn herself and dressed, and when Augusto appeared and they had retired behind her bolted door, Fidelman sat motionless on his high stool before the glittering blue-skied windows, slowly turning to ice to faint strains of Bach.

  The art student increased his services to Annamaria; her increase was scorn, or so it seemed. This severely bruised his spirit. What have I done to deserve such treatment? That I pay my plenty of rent on time? That I buy her all sorts of presents, not to mention two full meals a day? That I live in flaming hot and freezing cold? That I passionately adore each sweet-and-sour bit of her? He figured it bored her to see so much of him. For a week Fidelman disappeared during the day, sat in cold libraries or moved around in frosty museums. He tried painting after midnight and into the early morning hours but the pittrice found out and unscrewed the bulbs before she went to bed. “Don’t waste my electricity, this isn’t American.” He screwed in a dim blue bulb and worked silently from 1 a.m. to five. At dawn he discovered he had painted a blue picture. Fidelman wandered in the streets of the city. At night he slept in the studio and could hear her sleeping in her room. She slept restlessly, dreamed badly, and often moaned. He dreamed he had three eyes and was missing an ear, or nose.

  For two weeks he spoke to no one but a dumpy four-and-a-half foot female on the third floor, and to her usually to say no. Fidelman, having often heard the music of Bach drifting up from below, had tried to picture the lady piano player, imagining a quiet blonde with a slender body, a woman of grace and beauty. It had turned out to be Clelia Montemaggio, a middle-aged old maid music teacher, who sat at the old upright piano, her apartment door open to let out the cooking smells, particularly fried fish on Friday. Once when coming up from taking down the garbage, Fidelman had paused to listen to part of a partita at her door and she had lassoed him in for an espresso and pastry. He ate and listened to Bach, her plump bottom moving spryly on the bench as she played not badly.

  “Lo spirito,” she called to him raptly over her shoulder, “l’architettura!”

  Fidelman nodded. Thereafter whenever she spied him in the hall she attempted to entice him with cream-filled pastries and J.S.B., whom she played apparently exclusively.

  “Come een,” she called in English, “I weel play for you. We weel talk. There is no use for too much solitude.” But the art student, burdened by his, spurned hers.

  Unable to work, he wandered in the streets in a desolate mood, his spirit dusty in a city of fountains and leaky water taps. Water, water everywhere, spouting, flowing, dripping, whispering secrets, love love love, but not for him. If Rome’s so sexy, where’s mine? Fidelman’s Romeless Rome. It belonged least to those who yearned most for it. With slow steps he climbed the Pincio, if possible to raise his spirits gazing down at the rooftops of the city, spires, cupolas, towers, monuments, compounded history and past time. It was in sight, possessable, all but its elusive spirit; after so long he was still straniero. He was then struck by a thought: if you could paint this sight, give it its quality in yours, the spirit belonged to you. History become aesthetic! Fidelman’s scalp thickened. A wild rush of things he might paint swept sweetly through him: saints in good and bad health, whole or maimed, in gold and red; nude gray rabbis at Auschwitz, black or white Negroes—what not when any color dripped from your brush? And if these, so also ANNAMARIA ES PULCHRA. He all but cheered. What more intimate possession of a woman! He would paint her, whether she permitted or not, posed or not—she was his to paint, he could with eyes shut. Maybe something will come, after all, of my love for her. His spirits elevated, Fidelman ran most of the way home.

  It took him eight days, a labor of love. He tried her as nude and although able to imagine every inch of her, could not commit it to canvas. Then he suffered until it occurred to him to paint her as “Virgin with Child.” The idea astonished and elated him. Fidelman went feverishly to work and caught an immediate likeness in paint. Annamaria, saintly beautiful, held in her arms the infant resembling his little nephew Georgie. The pittrice, aware, of course, of his continuous activity, cast curious glances his way, but Fidelman, painting in the corner by the stone sink, kept the easel turned away from her. She pretended unconcern. Done for the day he covered the painting and carefully guarded it. The art student was painting Annamaria in a passion of tenderness for the infant at her breast, her face responsive to its innocence. When, on the ninth day, in trepidation Fidelman revealed his work, the pittrice’s eyes clouded and her underlip curled. He was about to grab the canvas and smash it up all over the place when her expression fell apart. The art student postponed all movement but trembling. She seemed at first appalled, a darkness descended on her, she was undone. She wailed wordlessly, then sobbed, “You have seen my soul.” They embraced tempestuously, her breasts stabbing him, Annamaria bawling on his shoulder. Fidelman kissed her wet face and salted lips, she murmuring as he fooled with the hook of her brassiere under her sweater, “Aspetta, aspetta, caro, viene Augusto.” He was mad with expectation and suspense.

  Augusto, who usually arrived punctually at four, did not appear that Friday afternoon. Uneasy as the hour approached, Annamaria seemed relieved as the streets grew dark. She had worked badly after viewing Fidelman’s painting, sighed frequently, gazed at him with sweet-sad smiles. At six she gave in to his urging and they retired to her room, his unframed “Virgin with Child” already hanging above her bed, replacing a gaunt self-portrait. He was curiously disappointed in the picture—surfacy thin—and made a mental note to borrow it back in the morning to work on it more. But the conception, at least, deserved the reward. Annamaria cooked supper. She cut his meat for him and fed him forkfuls. She peeled Fidelman’s orange and stirred sugar in his coffee. Afterwards, at his nod, she locked and bolted the studio and bedroom doors and they undressed and slipped under her blankets. How good to be for a change on this side of the locked door, Fidelman thought, relaxing marvelously. Annamaria, however, seemed tensely alert to the noises of the old building, including a parrot screeching, some shouting kids running up the stairs, a soprano singing “Ritorna, vincitor!” But she calmed down and hotly embraced Fidelman. In the middle of a passionate kiss the doorbell rang.

  Annamaria stiffened in his arms. “Diavolo! Augusto!”

  “He’ll go away,” Fidelman advised. “Both doors locked.”

  But she was at once out of bed, pulling on her culottes. “Get dressed,” she said.

  He hopped up and hastily got into his pants.

  Annamaria unlocked and unbolted the inner door and then the outer. It was the postman waiting to collect ten lire for an overweight letter from Naples.

  After she had read the long letter and wiped away a tear they undressed and got back into bed.

  “Who is he to you?” Fidelman asked.

  “Who?”

  “Augusto.”

  “An old friend. Like a father. We went through much together.”

  “Were you lovers?”

  “Look, if you want me take me. If you like to ask questions go back to school.”

  He determined to mind his business.

  “War
m me,” Annamaria said, “I’m freezing.”

  Fidelman stroked her slowly. After ten minutes she said, “‘Gioco di mano, gioco di villano.’ Use your imagination.”

  He used his imagination and she responded with excitement. “Dolce tesoro,” she whispered, flicking the tip of her tongue into his ear, then with little bites biting his ear lobe.

  The doorbell rang loudly.

  “For Christ’s sake, don’t answer,” Fidelman groaned. He tried to hold her down but she was already up, hunting her robe.

  “Put on your pants,” she hissed.

  He had thoughts of waiting for her in bed but it ended with his dressing fully. She sent him to the door. It was the crippled portinaia, the art student having neglected to take down the garbage.

  Annamaria furiously got the two bags and handed them to her.

  In bed she was so cold her teeth chattered.