William Wharton - Scumbler

Two flics are standing spread-legged on the corner. I explain. I know I’m getting myself in trouble. One flic surprises me by jumping on back of my bike while the other phones in. We head back to Charenton. When we get there, my flic leans over the poor blood-drained bastard. People are looking out windows now. The flic asks my name and looks at my passport. I figure I’m set for a night in the pokey.

He takes off his cloak and covers the dead one, head and all. It’s a damned nice thing to do; it’s not exactly warm. He says I can take off. He’s written my name, address and passport number in his little notebook. I figure I’ll hear from the cops, but don’t; you never know in France.

I roll the few blocks home. The door’s locked but I have a key. I try to slip into bed quietly. No good. I wake up Kate and snuggle against her. It feels great, spoon tucking, warm body, warm bed feeling. There’s nothing better than sleeping wrapped up with a wife. It’s awful to be dead out there on a street like that, nobody even opening a window to peek out.

Kate rolls over, loks at me just as I’m drifting into sleep.

‘Dear, you really can’t stay up late like this and get your work done. It’s almost three o’clock and it doesn’t make sense. You’re not a kid anymore, you know.’

I don’t feel much like answering but Kate deserves to know.

‘Yeah, you’re right, I know; but sometimes a painter works without a brush in his hand, Kate.’

It’s quiet, I should leave it there. I’ve sworn I’ll never argue with anyone, especially with Kate. Everybody loses every argument. But I’m so upset by that dead man in the street I can’t keep my mouth shut. Mostly I want to tell her, to spread out my fear.

‘On the way home, I found a corpse stretched out in the Rue Charenton. I called the police, and that flic even got on my bike with me and rode back. I thought for a while there I might spend the night in the hoosegow. You know, Kate, I’d’ve called you if something like that happened.’

I leave it. This kind of thing unhooks me, maybe even more than dead people. I’m probably afraid of becoming one more of the living dead, living all my life’s time for some kind of postmortem postpartum expectation or justification; defensive living. Most people wear out their shoulders from looking over them.

TORRENTS TRIGGER ENDLESS FAULTS

WITHIN THIS AMPLITUDE OF WELL-FINGERED

FAILURE. IN PAINTED ILLUSION TRUST DECLINES.

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.