Росс Макдональд - The Zebra-Striped Hearse

“How well did you know him, Miss Castle?”

She hesitated. “You asked me, before, if I was in love with him.”

“I apologize for my bluntness.”

“I don’t care. Is it so obvious? Or has Chauncey Reynolds been telling tales out of school?”

“He said that you were seeing a lot of Burke, before Harriet Blackwell entered the picture.”

“Yes. I’ve been trying ever since to work him out of my system. With not very striking success.” She glanced at the loom in the corner. “At least I’ve gotten through a lot of work.”

“Do you want to tell me the story from the beginning?”

“If you insist. I don’t see how it can help you.”

“How did you meet him?”

“In a perfectly natural way. He came into the shop the day after he got here. His room at the posada didn’t suit him, because of the light. He was looking for a place to paint. He said he hadn’t been able to paint for some time, and he was burning to get at it. I happened to have a studio I’m not using, and I agreed to rent it to him for a month or so.”

“Is that how long he wanted it for? A month?”

“A month or two, it wasn’t definite.”

“And he came here two months ago?”

“Almost to the day. When I think of the changes there have been in just two months–!” Her eyes reflected them. “Anyway, the day he moved in, I had to make a speed trip to Guad. One of my girls has a rheumatic heart and she needed emergency treatment. Burke came along for the ride, and I was impressed by his kindness to the girl – she’s one of my best students. After we took her to the hospital we went to the Copa de Leche for lunch and really got to know each other.

“He talked to me about his plans as an artist. He’s still caught up in abstraction but he’s trying to use that method to penetrate more deeply into life. It’s his opinion that the American people are living through a tragedy unconsciously, suffering without knowing that we are suffering or what the source of the suffering may be. He thinks it’s in our sexual life.” She flushed suddenly. “Burke is very verbal for a painter.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” I said. “Who paid for the lunch?”

Her flush deepened. “You know quite a bit about him, don’t you? I paid. He was broke. I also took him to an artists’ supply house and let him charge four hundred pesos’ worth of paints on my account. It was my suggestion, not his, and I don’t regret it.”

“Did he pay you back?”

“Of course.”

“Before or after he attached himself to Harriet Blackwell?”

“Before. It was at least a week before she got here.”

“What did he use for money?”

“He sold a picture to Bill Wilkinson, or rather to his wife – she’s the one with the money. I tried to persuade him not to sell it or, if he insisted, to sell it to me. But he was determined to sell it to her, and she was determined to have it. She paid him thirty-five hundred pesos, which was more than I could afford. Later on he regretted the sale and tried to buy the picture back from the Wilkinsons. I heard that they had quite a ruction about it.”

“When was this?”

“A couple of weeks ago. I only heard about it at second hand. Burke and I were no longer speaking, and I have nothing to do with the Wilkinsons. Bill Wilkinson is a drunk married to a woman older than himself and living on her.” She paused over the words, perhaps because they had accidentally touched on her relations with Damis. “They’re dangerous people.”

“I understand that Wilkinson was Burke’s boon companion.”

“For a while. Bill Wilkinson is quite perceptive, in the sense that he understands people’s weaknesses, and Burke was taken in by him for a while.”

“Or vice versa?”

“That was not the case. What would a man like Burke have to gain from a man like Bill Wilkinson?”

“He sold his wife a picture for thirty-five hundred pesos.”

“It’s a very good picture,” she said defensively, “and cheap at the price. Burke isn’t ever high on his own work, but even he admitted that it was the kind of tragic painting he was aiming at. It wasn’t like his other things, apart from a few sketches. As a matter of fact, it’s representational.”

“Representational?”

“It’s a portrait,” she said, “of a lovely young girl. He called it ‘Portrait of an Unknown Woman.’ I asked him if he’d ever known such a woman. He said perhaps he had, or perhaps he dreamed her.”

“What do you think?”

“I think he must have known her, and painted her from memory. I never saw a man work so ferociously hard. He painted twelve and fourteen hours a day. I had to make him stop to eat. I’d walk into the studio with his comida , and he’d be working with the tears and sweat running down his face. He’d paint himself blind, then he’d go off on the town and get roaring drunk. I’d put him to bed in the wee hours, and he’d be up in the morning painting again.”

“He must have given you quite a month.”

“I loved it,” she said intensely. “I loved him. I still do.”

It was an avowal of passion. If there was some hysteria in it, she had it under control. Everything was under control, except that she worked all the time.

We sat there smiling dimly at each other. She was an attractive woman, with the kind of honesty that chisels the face in pure lines. I recalled what Chauncey Reynolds had said in drunken wisdom about Harriet, that she hadn’t made the breakthrough into womanhood. Anne Castle had.

I kept my eyes on her face too long. She rose and moved across the room with hummingbird vitality, and opened a portable bar which stood against the wall: “May I give you something to drink, Mr. Archer?”

“No, thanks, there’s a long night coming up. After you and I have finished, I’m going to try and see the Wilkinsons. I want a look at that portrait they bought, for one thing.”

She closed the door of the bar, sharply. “Haven’t we finished?”

“I’m afraid not, Miss Castle.”

She came back to the divan. “What more do you want from me?”

“I still don’t understand Damis and his background. Did he ever talk about his previous life?”

“Some. He came from somewhere in the Middle West. He studied at various art schools.”

“Did he name them?”

“If he did, I don’t remember. Possibly Chicago was one of them. He knew the Institute collection. But most painters do.”

“Where did he live before he came to Mexico?”

“All over the States, I gathered. Most of us have.”

“Most of the people here, you mean?”

She nodded. “This is our fifty-first state. We come here when we’ve run through the other fifty.”

“Burke came here from California, we know that. Did he ever mention San Mateo County, or the Bay area in general?”

“He’d spent some time in San Francisco. He was deeply familiar with the El Grecos in the museum there.”

“Painting is all he ever talked about, apparently.”

“He talked about everything under the sun,” she said, “except his past life. He was reticent about that. He did tell me he’d been unhappy for years, that I’d made him happy for the first time since he was a boy.”

“Then why did he turn his back on you so abruptly?”

“That’s a very painful question, Mr. Archer.”

“I know it, and I’m sorry. I’m trying to understand how the Blackwell girl got into the picture.”

“I can’t explain it,” she said with a little sigh. “Suddenly there she was, spang in the middle of it.”

“Had he ever mentioned her before she arrived?”

“No. They met here, you see.”

“And he had no previous knowledge of her?”