Scumbler

by William Wharton

  Two hours later, I come out depressed as hell. There’s Goya taking all his talent, his fantasy, to design tapestries for the king’s slop room. He’s frantically painting Cheshire-cat grins on the faces of Bourbons, trying to hide the mad ball-twisting minds behind painted masks and not quite making it. And then the violent deaf madness he painted for himself in his own dining room; more agony than any man should have to live with. There he was, a genius of his time, lackey to a packet of morons.

  Velásquez, same thing. How he must’ve despised those vacuous Hapsburg blue eyes and equine lantern jaws. I’ll bet he could paint them blindfolded: acres of stupid-looking little girls, bare open spaces between their eyes; each little ribbon and frill painted carefully in place.

  And how many horses’ asses did Velásquez paint? Not just the kings, or queens; real horses’ asses Velásquez, master of the horse’s ass. Something true he could paint. There’s great love when he attaches the strong muscle of a tail; luxurious flow of tail hairs barely hiding private parts. He stroked those tremendous bulging muscles into life, carefully modulating surfaces of burnt sienna and yellow ochre. Pure mastery.

  Such beautiful painting, such a tremendous person. He’s the one who did the painting of the princess with the dwarf. The dwarf has his foot on a giant dog in the foreground. I can hear the king telling Velásquez what to do.

  “Diego, I want this big painting for that space over between those windows. I want little Theresa here in front, with her maids dressing her. Use the new dress we just got from Paris, put in all the details. Beside her I want old Jocko, the dwarf, with this here gun I got from the Pope and with one foot up on the dog like he just shot it. The Queen of England gave me that dog; sort of symbolic, you know. Got that?

  “Then, off in the back, I want an open door, and, standing with light coming in behind us, I want me and the wife, as if we just came in unexpectedly on this nice domestic scene. You know what I mean, Diego? You could even paint yourself in the corner, not blocking anything but real natural-like; maybe you could be painting this picture in the painting. Get it? You do this right, Diego, and I’ll order three, one for the Queen of England and one for the Pope. Show them how much we like the things they gave us. Be good for diplomatic relations. Stick with me, Diego, you’ll be an international star.”

  So there it is in the Prado, with a big whorey mirror on the other wall to show all the people what it really looked like because Velásquez was painting in a mirror. He had to be; he’s in the picture himself, right? One good thing about being a painter is you usually die before you see what some moronic museum director is going to do with your work.

  Then, there’s Hieronymus Bosch painting wet dreams for the monks. Only a very sane man could have painted those things. He sure knew the sick mind inside and out. A real sick mind only knows the inside; can’t write or paint or anything about it, just lives it. Bosch flowed this specially canned erotica for the religious. Holy heaven, but he knew his clientele.

  “Put down your whip, Brother Adrian, take off your hair shirt, Brother Damien, drop your cock, Brother Xavier; come see what Jerry’s painted for us this time a real tribute to the marvels of God’s will.”

  Shock, wiggling and giggling.

  “Oh, you nasty thing, Jerry. Look, teeheeheehee, that one’s got flowers growing out of his seater. Teeheeheeheehee!”

  One crappy way to make a living. Imagine, this impressive mind with his magnificent skills doing a medieval version of Playboy. Freud, Jung—all those guys were only playing games compared to Bosch. It could make a person vomit, the kinds of things an artist has to do, just getting by. And nothing seems to change. All the L.A. and New York artists are doing the same thing, only instead of brown-nosing kings and queens, it’s a bunch of rich widows and bored daughters to rich millionaire crooks. These gals open galleries as happy hunting grounds and the artists are their pimps.

  Now, I know I’m putting all this down a bit hard up there, but it’s the way I’m thinking when I come out of the Prado. I have stupid missionary feelings about painting and it breaks my heart seeing this kind of sacrilege.

  I mope across the street and sit in a chair along a wide boulevard. I drink a Spanish version of absinthe, hoping it will make the heart grow fonder. The train for Málaga is at ten o’clock. I figure the night train is best: flash my pass in the dark. I’ll even try turning the light down in the compartment, not enough so the conductor will notice, just enough to blend out my blotchy pass.

  I watch people walking past. There are tiny women all dressed up, flicking their asses around, and tiny men larking along behind them. Beautiful to watch. They’re all so small. The farther south you go, the bigger you get, like Gulliver.

  I catch the train and there are two other people in the compartment. The whole train’s crowded. One guy has a big black hard cardboard sample case. It fills up the knee space completely. The conductor comes in, switches on the bright lights, looks at my pass then gives it back without a word. I can put up with a lot of discomfort.

  I go to sleep and don’t wake till we’re coming down out of the mountains onto the coastal plain. It’s like early summer here: everything green, trees in flower. I climb over the snoring bastard with the suitcase; he sleeps, his nose tucked under a fedora hat.

  Out in the corridor, I wait in line to take my morning crap. There are four ahead of me, two women. Each takes too long for just a piss; the Spanish must be regular. The john smells like Spain already; cold air blows up the hole. I look down at the railroad ties whizzing by but can’t make it. I’ve been having troubles that way—not like me at all. By nature, I’m more the diarrhea type.

  I go out and stand in the corridor to watch the scenery. Small white adobe houses are in clusters along the track and up sides of hills. People stop work to watch us go by.

  I get off in Málaga and take a bus to Torremolinos. When Kate and I first came here, this was a town with two bars and a bodega; now it’s Babylon, an incredible mixture of Moorish and Nordic. The whole place a kind of Stockholm or Essen transplanted into the sun. Long-legged blondes in bright colors and tight jeans march to the hard thumping beat of flamenco and tiny Spanish men. Pure heaven for everybody; the Mediterranean shimmering just down winding steps from the village.

  I walk through town and out the road toward Benalmádena. Sture and Annastina Dahlstrom live about two miles up this dirt road into the mountains. I know I can find their place by gigantic palm trees Sture stole from the botanical gardens in Málaga.

  He and his eldest son, Per, drove up in work suits and started digging. It took all day; people stood around and watched but nobody stopped them. They hoisted the trees on top of their old Volvo station wagon and drove off up into the hills with palm fronds dragging the ground behind them; planted the trees in their front yard. Sture says the average Swede has a soft spot in his heart for palm trees; part of the great tropical dream for the frozen ones.

  WE DECORATE OUR INNER SCENERY

  WITH DREAMS: MOSSES, FERNS AND

  OTHER TENDER SUNLESS GREENERY.

  I get to their place; knock on the door. Nobody comes. I peer into a window. Annastina is peering out at me. Both Sture and Anna are paranoid, convinced the world is trying to get them—probably true.

  Annastina throws open the door talking Swedish, little bubbles and all. She puts her strong arms around me; that I understand. I lift her off the ground; surprisingly light for a strong, tall woman. She hasn’t changed at all, even more beautiful. Sture comes around from back. We grab one another by the shoulders and hop in circles, shouting, hollering and shaking hands. We poop ourselves out, both breathing hard; like some kind of sums wrestling match—too much for a pair of old guys.

  They switch into English. Both speak English fluently with a lilting singing accent. Sture even writes in English sometimes. I call it Swinglish; he makes up words that ought to be there, carves them out of Swedish words curved to sound like English—lovely words.

  Inside, they
give me some of their presweetened coffee; it’s always brewing on the back burner. I tell them how everybody is, except me. They tell me about their kids. We pause; they’re waiting. What the hell am I doing all the way down in Spain? I don’t want to tell them yet. They aren’t pressing, know it will come.

  I could actually stay a week and go back without saying a word. These people know what privacy means. My experience is the only people who respect privacy are those who want it for themselves. Most people can’t even understand the idea, want to live in beehives under spotlights on TV. Annastina’s getting a bed ready for me; no question about my staying.

  A PLACE WHERE YOU ARE IN

  OTHERS’ HEARTS, WHERE YOU BELONG

  NO MATTER HOW LONG YOU’VE BEEN GONE.

  Then, right off, before I know what I’m doing, I’m into my whole tale of woe with Sture. He listens, bright blue eyes hooded with fine red eyelashes; thin lips smothered in bushes of red beard. He’s hmming and uhhuhing in Swinglish. Annastina’s listening from the kitchen. She comes in now and then to cock her head and listen closer. Sometimes she shakes her head up and down so hard her hair bounces. I can feel the confusion melting off me as I talk. I’m having a hard time reminding myself why I came. I know I still don’t actually want to paint, but it doesn’t matter so much. Finally I wind it up.

  LETTING LOOSE, TEETH OUT, HAIR DOWN;

  MUD SLIDING GENTLY ACROSS A GRANITE FACE.

  Sture leans forward.

  “And that’s it?”

  I nod.

  “You’re just full of shit, man!”

  I stare at him; it’s not what I expected.

  “You’ve got a galloping case of artist’s constipation!”

  Annastina leans over close to me, takes me in her arms, kisses my bald head.

  “He forgot to hold out his cup, Sture, darling. He smells like someone who’s been reaching.”

  They nod together, hair and beard shaking. I feel my bowels turning over. What a hell of a time to have to take a crap.

  I know they’re right. Everything’s seemed full of shit lately. Here I am, me the old genital gentle gentile, reverting. I’m trying to listen but the pressure is building up. I’m bent over, holding off cramps. I can feel myself sweating. Sture stares at me.

  “You sick or something?”

  I break out in a smile; it spreads so wide across my face I can hardly get my mouth around it. I stand up bent over.

  “No, Sture, just full of shit; please tell me in a hurry, where’s the crapper around here!”

  We start laughing. I laugh so hard I can hardly hold it in. I’m in misery and laughing to kill myself. I’m going to have a hateal fart attack. Annastina takes me by the arm and leads me, bent over, to the bathroom; pushes me in.

  I just about get my pants down. Bam, splash, whoosh, fizz, bam, splash. I’m falling apart. Sture and Annastina are laughing outside. I’m sure people can hear me in Torremolinos, think they’re having an earthquake, terremoto. I’m afraid I’ve cracked the toilet bowl at least.

  The storm is finally over. I stand up; feel weak. It looks like a bucket of black snakes in there, purple black. I can’t believe all that was inside me. And, Lord, it stinks to hell. I push open a window. Flush. Let the tank fill up; flush again. The water’s still brown. I feel a thousand percent better already; probably all this agonizing was only something not ticking with my tired gall bladder. There’s enough bile in that bowl for two or three years.

  I hang around in their bathroom, half fainting from the smell, waiting till it gets better. I’m afraid if I open the door they’ll need to have the whole house fumigated, repainted. I’d expect the paint would peel off the walls. Speaking of walls, I haven’t even looked at Annastina’s new work. I walked right in, saw there were new paintings and started with my private bitch. I was sick all right.

  I go out. They’re both backing off with bandanas wrapped around their faces, looking like the James brothers, laughing. I tell them about the black snakes in the bowl. Sture says he’ll sue me if they block his septic tank; most likely poison his fermentation.

  “Built-up artist constipation like that, concentrated shit from paintings not painted, books not written, is the most corrosive, destructive matter known to man. Just look at Adolf Hitler.”

  PLUGGED UP, MY LUG WRENCHES RUSTED:

  STREAMS DAMNED AND DAMMED, PATHS BLOCKED:

  I WIND AGAIN MY BROKEN CLOCKS.

  We talk for two days. We talk about Annastina’s paintings, which are wonderful. Anna was blind for two years after an attack of spinal meningitis. During that time, she experienced other worlds, other beings. When she miraculously got her sight back, she started painting what she’d seen, what she could remember. She’s deep inside herself and won’t talk about it. She’ll only paint it; lets me talk. Me, the big talker, turned on; just imagine.

  Then we get on Sture’s new book. It’s about a guy who sets up an élite artificial-insemination business for wives of sterile or impotent men. He advertises his stable of human stallions; makes up all kinds of imaginative stuff about their being from the best bloodlines: generals, leaders, athletes—no artists, sculptors, writers. Actually, he’s the whole stable himself, dresses differently for each situation. He’s written some of the funniest seduction scenes I’ve ever read. Of course, nothing will do for the anesthetic but champagne. For the insemination he talks about direct versus indirect transportation; recommends direct as more practical, most sure. I read it that night in bed: hilarious. For a man, there’s probably nothing better than laughing with a hard-on.

  Next day, I keep asking for reasons why I should paint. It gets to be the big joke. No matter what they say, I answer, “Not good enough.”

  NOTHING MATTERS AND

  MATTER’S NOTHING.

  The third morning when I wake up, Annastina is sitting in the coolish kitchen. Sture’s down milking the goat.

  She looks up at me when I come in, stays sitting at the table.

  “I know why you should paint.”

  She’s serious; measuring me with her glacier eyes, not glacial; glacier, big, wide, deep and so cold they’re warm from strong inside pressures.

  “It is because you’re a Saturn man; Kronos, child of Uranus. That’s why you get so full of shit, why you can have black moods, black bile. That’s why you get so worried about time; Kronos is almost the same as the Greek word chronos, for time. You’re the sower, the nester, eating his own children, your paintings, so a god can be produced. You sow madness, genius and suicide; that’s the way you are, an old-style artist, out of the ancient past, a shadow of our ancestors.”

  She’s staring right through me, seeing my innermost parts at the same time not seeing me, seeing something else.

  “But that’s not all of it either. Sure; Scum, you must paint because it’s your life, what you must do, what you are. Painting is you; you are your paintings.”

  I look at her, shock leaking out of my eyes. She’s right. That’s good enough. I was even coming to it myself. Almost everybody has nothing inside or they don’t know how to get at it. They need to scramble for outside things like money or status to keep from thinking, staring into some black hole. Anybody with something welling up from inside should grab on to it.

  Forget the society, time, immortality, the perfect painting, aesthetics, birth, creation, ethics, making a million bucks. Balls, ovaries, scrotums, fallopian tubes to all that. I’ll keep on painting for the sheer hell of it, because it’s what my life is.

  When Sture comes in, we’re drinking the coffee with dollops of Spanish cognac in it. Tastes terrible. We all get hysterical, start dancing around in the garden, between rows of new-grown corn, holding our cups high, shouting to the gods.

  XIII

  WOMAN TO WOMAN

  By Thursday, I feel Anna and Sture are ready to get on with their work. I’m also interested in seeing if the Paris contingent has actually made it down from the frozen north. Much to Anna and Sture’s consternation, I’ve
been sunning in their garden. They’re convinced sun causes cancer and melting of brain cells.

  After breakfast I tell them I’m going into town, that some friends from Paris might arrive and I could stay with them for a while. I leave my stuff there with them, figuring I’ll be back that evening, but tell them not to worry if I don’t make it till the next day. Anna gives me a look, but I know they’re both more than ready to get back to work; playtime is over.

  It’s about half an hour’s walk along the dusty twisting road. The smells of spring flowers, dust, and of sewers not quite functioning, come to me as I work my way downhill. I cross the main carretero and head for that Bar Central. Kate and I used to enjoy ourselves here in the old days when we’d come for winter sun. That was before kids’ schooling got in the way of our lives. We taught them ourselves then.

  The bar hasn’t changed much. The awnings are rolled back and it’s a beautiful day. I go down a few steps and find a sunny table sheltered from the slight breeze. It isn’t a swimming day yet, but it could be by two o’clock for anyone who doesn’t mind water under sixty degrees Fahrenheit, and I don’t. I actually prefer it.

  It’s-nine-thirty when I settle in for my wait. I’m not exactly waiting, because I’m sure there’s no chance they’ll try such a long trip. Crazy they are, but not that crazy. I order a glass of white wine, some tapas, then slouch down and try pretending I’m Spanish, watching all the pretty Nordic girls parade by.

  At half past eleven I’m ready to pay my bill and take a walk down the bajandillo along the beach, when sure enough, here they come, cruising up on those two motorcycles with the girls behind them. They’re covered with dust and look like the first WWII German motorcycle patrols rolling into Paris: the marauding huns.