Paul Theroux: Mr. Bones: Twenty Stories

The phone rang in his bulletproof car, a woman. “This is the Tony Faris gallery. Mr. Faris would like to speak with you.”

“Put him on,” Minor Watt said.

“Right away. But I just wanted to say that I read about that trouble you had and I’m really sorry.”

“Thanks for noticing. You’re Mara?”

“You remember.”

“‘The language of things.’ I liked that.”

Then Faris was on the line, saying, “Are you all right?”

Other people called — dealers, galleries, auctioneers, painters, sculptors. In almost every case, they were people who wished to sell him work, all of them well aware of his plans for the piece: the knife, the hammer, the acid bath, the crucible, the bonfire, the oven.

Sonia called. She sounded terrified, and her anxious questions told him that she was afraid he might hurt her.

After the mugging and the gunshot, his protective measures took so much of his time that for three weeks or more he did not destroy anything. In this period of reflection he realized that he would never run out of works to destroy. He felt a twinge of inhibition. Faris’s sale of the Edward Hopper gave him his first intimation. Even if he concentrated on, say, Chola bronzes — a niche of Indian art — he’d only find at most a dozen masterpieces. Museums and die-hard collectors had the rest, which would be the more valuable for his destruction of the others.

And so he stopped and pondered what to do next. This pause proved accidentally helpful. He saw that he was regarded as a dominant force in the art world, almost as though his destruction was a form of art criticism, causing fear and gratitude. His spell of doing nothing created suspense. He liked the idea that he was spreading alarm by not lifting a finger, that he’d become a symbol of intimidation.

I have not drawn blood, he thought, not one drop. I have not hurt a single person physically. I have not put a hand on anyone. I have never raised my voice. I have not cursed, nor shown anger, nor damaged anyone else’s property.

The paradox he saw in the partial destruction of his collection was that he had helped to stimulate the art market and inflate some prices. This was a drawback, if not a defeat. In his period of inaction and watchfulness, his phone warbled all the time — dealers chattering to do business — and he was tempted. But he knew their motives. He was being used. Perhaps this was to be expected, but he saw it as a diminution of his power. He despised them, but he began to doubt himself for having set a wayward impulse loose.

Escaping his apartment, leaving his phone behind, he walked the New York streets in dark glasses and loitered in the open spaces where other anonymous people were idling — Central Park, Union Square, Battery Park. He strolled, sensing that he was being watched, possibly followed; the shutter click of someone ducking out of view whenever he turned. Maybe one of those demented art students.

Sitting on a bench one day in Central Park, near the zoo, he became aware that it was trembling beneath him — the slats, even a gentle rocking of the frame. At the far end of the bench a young woman sat with her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving. She might have been crooning a lullaby softly to herself, but she was sobbing.

At first Minor Watt turned away and prepared to go. What made him linger was the suspicion that the woman would think, in his abrupt departure, he was rejecting her — and that might make her feel even worse.

Seemingly grief-stricken, she turned her smeared face to him and said, “I’m so sorry.”

Now it was too late for him to leave. Nodding at her with a look of consolation, he saw that she was beautiful. Her misery made her fragile and pretty, her sorrow creasing her features with complexity.

“You’re Mr. Watt,” she said.

He was not surprised. He felt that the world knew him, even in his dark glasses and his oblique outings.

Looking closer, he recognized her as the woman from the gallery — Faris’s assistant, where he’d bought the Hopper he’d destroyed. The language of things.

What he’d first noticed about her — her Asiatic pallor, the porcelain smoothness of her skin — was more emphatic, probably because of her weeping. She had the ageless look of someone who’d been kept in a darkened room her whole life: the luminous delicacy of her face, her small shoulders, her slender hands. In contrast was the fullness of her breasts, which seemed to have a personality of their own — when she leaned they seemed to swing for him. Why had he not noticed her beauty before?

“I know you,” he said.

“Mara,” she said.

“How about a cup of coffee?”

At the nearby outdoor café, she told him she was being evicted for not paying her rent. And the reason she had no money was that Faris had laid her off after Minor Watt had stopped buying pictures. “No one’s buying art these days.”

In this period, Minor Watt felt responsible for much that was happening in the world of business, and in the city generally. He sensed that had influenced great shifts of money, not just in the art market but all over, because art was linked to so many areas of the economy. His destruction had made art an even more valuable commodity.

“I used to destroy my artwork,” he said. “You know I’m famous for that. I sometimes think that it was my wish to be an ascetic.”

“No,” Mara said, and got his attention — no one ever disagreed with him. She went on, “Ascetics are driven by pride, the desire to be like gods. You are different from anyone else.”

He stared at the pretty lips that had said this. He thought of installing Mara in his apartment. He had plenty of room. But he said, “How much are we talking about?”

Mara mentioned a round figure. It was nothing to him, yet with facial expressions and movements of his head he made his habitual show of puzzling over the amount.

He normally carried a quantity of ready cash, in case he might see a piece he wanted to buy, and dealers almost swooned when they saw real money. He picked out the amount she had named from his wallet, folded it, and pushed it across the table, the way he might ante up in a poker game.

Palming the money, Mara began to cry again, and then, dabbing her eyes, she wrote something on a napkin and put it into his hand. And, as though overcome by his kindness, she hurried away without another word.

He saw that a telephone number had been stabbed into the limp napkin. But he didn’t call her. Almost a week went by, and she called him, asking him whether he wished to visit her.

“Because you’re responsible for my being here,” she said. “I make good coffee.”

Had she forgotten saying that? Because when he visited her, she opened a bottle of wine and poured him a glass.

“How have you been doing?”

“You know this economy better than I do. I’ve sent out a million résumés.”

He understood what she meant: I don’t have any work.

“I know the art galleries are hurting.”

“You did them a huge favor,” she said. “But my background is finance.”

She was a banker, reduced to flunkying for Tony Faris. To make it easier for her, he said, “How much do you need?”

She mentioned a figure, she raised it by a third, she smiled sadly. She said, “I’ll pay you back with my first paycheck.”

She took the money and made it disappear in her pale hand. She was beautiful, perhaps the more so for looking submissive, with her slightly tangled hair, wearing her best dress. She had a dancer’s legs, slender and yet strong, like her fingers, and her head was small and well shaped on her long neck.

As he was reflecting on her doll-like beauty — thinking, Chinese? Cambodian? — she said, “The first time I saw you with Faris in the gallery I knew you were powerful, the way you carried yourself. I knew you by reputation. I hadn’t realized how young and handsome you were.”