William Wharton - Scumbler

I get to work; probably isn’t crazy, we’re just not communicating.

Five minutes later she’s back. She looks at the painting for a while. I smile at her, hoping for a convert.

‘I’ll let you paint my store for twenty francs.’

‘I’m sorry, lady; I’m not going to pay. Artist has rights.’

She watches me for a while. She’s not acting mad or pushing now, just watching.

‘There should be chickens in the window.’

‘Don’t need any chickens.’

‘For ten francs, I’ll put chickens in the window.’

‘Don’t need any chickens.’

I prove this by painting a few quick chicken strokes into the window. She still stands there watching me. I try to keep working. There’s a long pause; then she pushes between me and the painting.

‘Why are you painting my store? Why don’t you go paint Notre Dame or some church for the tourists?’

She’s beginning to bug me. I stare down at her. I can see her scalp through thin gray hair. She’d make a fine painting. When I’m mad or drunk, I speak my best French.

‘Look, lady! I’m a world-famous collector of ugliness. I have a terrible passion for ugly things. I paint pictures of ugly things I can’t buy and move to my castle in Texas. I have a whole museum filled with paintings of the most ugly places in the world. They’re from China, Timbuktu and Cucamonga.’

She’s paying attention now.

‘This chicken-shit place of yours is my greatest discovery. I’ve never, in twenty years’ searching, found anything more ugly than your store. I’m going to paint it and put this painting at the top of my collection!’

Her mouth is open. I can see bumpy, hardened ridge where her bottom teeth used to be. She’s staring at me through the whole speech. One eye is slowly dropping to half-mast, like a dead woman’s wink; her eyes are runny cataractal blue. I smile at her. She looks across the street at her store. It’s probably the first time in thirty years she’s actually looked at it. Practically nobody ever looks at anything.

Her place is truly beautiful, beautiful for a painter. It all runs together; the dirt makes everything fit. The old lady stares at me.

‘Maybe it’s dirty, sir; but it’s not ugly.’

She backs off, turns and walks up the street. You never know when and where you’ll meet a kindred soul.

WE TOUCH IN A CAULDRON, TWISTING

MISSES OF CONCURRENT THOUGHT IN A

MORASS, A BOILING SOUP. WE’RE ALL

BETROTHED IN THE SAME BROTH-BREATH.

Two men in black hats and beards are standing behind me. I’ve been listening with one corner of my mind and they’ve been discussing the painting like connoisseurs. They’re into a long discourse on my use of warm and cool colors to penetrate the plane and establish an illusion of space. They’ve got all the baloney together, very impressive. They both have rosy cheeks, bright eyes and a very healthy look. They look like grown-up altar boys. I reach down to get some more medium. One of these guys speaks in perfect English.

‘Pay no attention to her. She is a dir -ty woman.’

I look back at him. He has long curly sideburns and a fine fat-cat look.

‘She’s a dir -ty woman and her shop is not kosher. We tell our people never to buy here.’

‘Not kosher?’

I take a cloth and wipe the word ‘CASHER’ off the window in the painting. They laugh. I get to working again.

The other guy leans closer; maybe I’ll give him a quick dab.

‘Why do you paint pictures, sir? Do you paint them for money?’

‘It’s the way I try to feed my family.’

‘Yes, but do you get joy from it?’

What the hell, nobody ever asked me that. I do. I certainly do; boy, do I ever get joy out of it.

‘Yes, much joy!’

‘But, what is the joy in painting buildings?’

This creep’s right there.

‘Nothing much. Only the joy of making them mine, of having things pass through me; the joy of playing God, screwing some details and chewing up, spitting out others. I enjoy the joy in the great delusion of being alive.’

I’m into it. I go on and on, painting away, slashing and picking at the color, wet-in-wet. The world is forming under my hands. I’m taking things from out there, bringing them in and pushing them out again, like breathing, panting.

‘Painting’s the joy of kissing, sleeping, sunlight, breathing; and it’s all in this work. I get inside, the outside-inness of an exploding wish. It’s more than joy, more than ecstasy; it’s a soft gliding and turning in midair with complete control.’

Holy bloomers, I go on and on. I’m making a total ass of myself, bleeding emotion all over the street. I keep thinking they’ll get embarrassed and go away, or laugh, or maybe call the police. I’m not trying to put them on, just turned on myself. What a great question: ‘Is painting joy?’

Finally I run down, lean further into the painting. Maybe they’ve already gone; I don’t look back. Then one of them puts his hand on my shoulder.

‘You might well be a religious man, Monsieur le peintre.’

The two of them walk away up the street. What a wild thing to say; probably means I’m some kind of maniac. That’s for sure. I guess being a maniac and liking it has to be the greatest insult going for all the sane people in the world.

A WHITE CRY TO THE BRIGHT, SILVER-LINED

CAPE OF MEANING. A BLACK EDGING TO MAKE

IT VISIBLE. BUT IT’S BUTTONED TIGHT,

SMOTHERED BY BONE BUTTONS AGAINST COLD.

I work on. I want to get the impasto finished. It’s a perfect surface for dragging now. I drag to peel paint off the wood horizontally, then wipe it down with dirt, black, vertically. It’s the battle of man versus gravity, energy versus entropy. All art is basically anti-entropic, that is to say, foolhardy; it takes hardy fools.

The inside light’s getting brighter and brighter; pale bright like a morgue light. The chickens look like corpses. They are corpses. It’d scare hell out of some thinking, live chicken; Dachau of the chicken world.

ONE MAN’S FEAST, BANQUET.

ANOTHER’S GROSS INIQUITY.

NOTHING IS FOR NOTHING.

Later, a thin girl slinks up behind me. She squeezes into a doorway. This door is closed; only a very thin person could fit in that doorway. I keep working away. I can’t tell if she’s thirteen or thirty; blond stringy hair. She smiles; I smile back.

‘ J’aime beaucoup votre tableau, Monsieur.’

‘ Merci.’

That’s enough. I’ve the world’s strongest American accent in French. I can’t even say a simple ‘ merci ’ without giving myself away. She switches into English.

‘I also am an artist. I study at the school of decoration.’

‘That’s nice.’

I’m not too interested in womankind or any kind right at that moment. It’s no insult or anything; I’m not interested in anything else much when I’m deep in painting.

‘Would you like to drink some coffee with me?’

Oh, sure, here we go: coffee, cigarettes, eye wrestling. I stop, take a good look at her. She seems like a fine, sensitive young woman, maybe twenty-five. I would like to know her, talk about painting. What I can’t figure is why she wants to take time talking to a worn-out old bozo like me.

‘OK. Come back in half an hour; I’ll be finished then.’

She slides away, I figure I’m rid of her. I dig myself back into the work. What do young girls like that want? I know there’s no natural father love in humans, it’s something we have to learn, but it can’t be all that bad. God, if it’s only sex, pick on one of these young bucks stomping around, unbound dongs dangling loose against their knees.

There’s something about a picture painter turns a certain kind of woman roundheeled. But why should I knock it? Maybe I need a shot of vitamin E, need to eat more parsley, oysters, hot peppers. Then again, this young woman might really need or want to talk with another artist. I’m definitely getting too cynical in my old age. I’ll have to watch that. I think I’m mostly afraid, been hurt too often, love-punch drunk, can’t take it anymore.