by Ian Frazier
—Label to The Monet Family in Their Garden,
by Edouard Manet, in the Metropolitan Museum
A suburban summer afternoon at Argenteuil. A garden: willows, hyacinths, a privet hedge. Beyond the hedge, walls of the bicycle works, twin smokestacks with plumes of smoke blowing at identical angles. To the south, a field filled with haystacks, probably left over from last year, and to the west, past the lane, a hillside sloping gently to the sea.
MANET, MONET, and RENOIR are setting up easels, uncapping and sniffing tubes of paint, flicking brushes across their thumbs, etc.
MADAME MONET fusses with young JEAN, arranging his collar. He squirms.
The ROOSTER struts nervously nearby.
RENOIR: Now, allow me to understand. Monsieur Manet paints Monsieur Monet—
MONET: After painting first Madame Monet, my wife.
REN.: Ah, yes, your wife, and also your charming infant—
MANET: And the rooster.
MON.: That goes without saying.
REN.: And, Claude, you paint me—
MON.: If you have no objections.
REN.: Certainly not. You wish to paint me at my easel?
MON.: Of course.
REN.: Who, then, should I paint?
MONET and RENOIR look at each other. Then both turn to look at MANET.
MAN.: Absolutely not! I forbid it!
MON.: Please, Edouard, it only seems fair.
REN.: Oh, but the symmetry—you paint the Monets, Claude paints me, I paint you—perfect!
MAN.: Nobody paints Manet. (He hunches over his canvas and begins to sketch in some outlines.)
REN.: But, but—
MAN.: You may paint Madame and the child, as I am doing.
RENOIR looks at MONET. MONET shrugs.
REN.: Very well. Monsieur Manet paints Madame and the child, who have no objection to the procedure, and Monsieur Monet paints me, who am similarly inclined, while I, in turn, following the lead of the distinguished Monsieur Manet, paint, to the best of my ability, a second, though one hopes not inferior, portrait of the family Monet.
MAN. (without looking up): Shall we begin?
RENOIR places his easel and stool a few feet from MANET, facing MADAME MONET and JEAN. MONET moves his easel where he can see RENOIR. They begin to paint.
Humming tunelessly, RENOIR selects a brush and makes a few passes at his canvas. Still humming, he sights along his thumb at MADAME MONET. Then, slowly, he moves his thumb until he is sighting at MANET.
MAN.: What are you doing? I made it clear that you are not to depict me in any way.
REN.: Sorry, sorry.
They continue in silence. The ROOSTER pecks at a grasshopper; it jumps away from him. He chases it; it jumps away again. He catches it and throws it in the air with his beak.
REN. (to MAN.): Did you see? Remarkable!
MANET snorts derisively.
MON.: Auguste, could you turn this way just a bit? … Just a bit more, if you don’t mind. A bit more … . Good! Just like that. Look like you’re painting.
REN.: That is what I am trying to do, if you will allow me.
MON.: Just another moment. Good. Now you may relax.
MME. MON.: There is cider, if anyone should wish.
MAN.: No. Please hold your pose.
REN.: I have a tremendous thirst, myself. I have been perspiring like a swine.
MAN.: But we have been sitting here for less than a quarter of an hour.
MON.: We shall have the cider a little later, my dearest.
REN. (under his breath): Sheesh! (MANET works intently, peering around his canvas and then painting with his brush held close to his face. RENOIR makes a few dabs at his canvas, then leans back on his stool to view the result.) Ah, yes. (He makes another few dabs, leans back again.) Ah, yes! Just so! (Another few dabs.) Oh-h-h-h-h, yes! That’s it. That is IT! (Another few dabs.) Oh, now you are working. Yes! Now you are cooking! (Another few dabs. Chuckling softly.) Oh, yes! Very good! Ver-y good in-deed!
MAN.: WILL YOU PLEASE BE QUIET!
REN. (startled, smudging his canvas): Aaah! Now look what you made me do. Her eyebrow is like a giant sun.
MAN.: That is no concern of mine.
REN.: This will take forever to put right.
MAN.: You should have thought of that before.
REN.: I was minding my business.
The minutes pass. The leaves of the trees grow heavy with the torpor of midsummer. Several times, young JEAN must be restrained by his mother from getting up and running away. We hear his plaintive “Maman.” RENOIR sketches in a detail with a small brush, pauses, then scrapes it out with his palette knife.
MON.: I heard an amusing story about van Gogh the other day. (RENOIR sketches the detail again, shakes his head, again scratches it out.) It seems van Gogh was walking down the street in Arles (RENOIR scrapes at his canvas again with an exclamation of impatience) and you know how van Gogh looks with that hat he always wears—(RENOIR scratches his head, furrows his brow, and tries the detail again. MANET, meanwhile, steals a quick glance at RENOIR’ S canvas, then another one. Then he stares openly for a moment or two. Then he gets up from his stool and looks closer until he is leaning over RENOIR’s shoulder.) So anyway (laughing), just as van Gogh was passing the bakery a Swedish man comes up to him—
REN. (suddenly seeing MANET behind him): Chouf! Spread out!
MAN.: That’s not the way a chicken’s feet go.
REN.: Oh, really? Well, I am of the opinion that it is.
MAN.: Excuse me, but I can assure you that it is not.
REN. (rising, with fists clenched): Why, for two francs I’d—
MAN.: You’d what?
MON.: Edouard, Auguste, please! Calm yourselves!
RENOIR and MANET stand nose to nose for a few seconds. Then, slowly, they back off. RENOIR turns away from MANET with dignity, sits down, resumes painting. MANET walks over to MONET.
MON.: So, anyway, to return to my story about van Gogh—the Swedish man, noticing van Gogh’s hat, remarks (unintelligible Swedish accent)—
MAN. (whispering, gesturing behind his hand at RENOIR): He has no talent at all that boy! You, who are his friend, tell him please to give up painting.
REN. (leaps to his feet): I heard that!
RENOIR spits in his palms, scrapes his feet on the ground, and rushes at MANET.
BLACKOUT. Sounds of a scuffle. The ROOSTER squawks frantically.
The lights come up to reveal the three painters once again at their easels. MANET holds a large beefsteak over one eye. RENOIR has an ice bag on his right hand, and is painting with difficulty with his left. MONET’s coat is in tatters.
MADAME MONET and JEAN are seated in the same pose as before.
MAN.: I am sure I will have a shiner.
REN.: My hand is throbbing as if I had hit a marble column.
MAN.: You may expect to receive my doctor’s bill.
REN.: And you may count upon a call from my attorney.
MAN.: I see that you paint just as skillfully with this hand as you did with the other.
REN.: Your antipathy is like a tonic to me.
MAN.: Take my advice, you are wasting your time.
REN.: The public will revere my name long after it has given up trying to tell which is you and which is Claude.
MAN.: Your name will not outlive you by one second.
MON.: And which of you, may I ask, plans to pay my tailor’s bill, or for the damage to my hedge?
A silence, unbroken except for the faint scratching of the brushes.
TABLEAU.
MONET comes forward and addresses the audience.
MON.: This, then, was Impressionism. What delight when the works identified with that name first began appearing everywhere in the galleries and salons, like a limpid tide overflowing the crumbling levees of the past! But behind the surface of the pictures—what malice, what bile, what violence! Did the admirers who stood rapt before these works suspect that the hands that held
the brushes could also hit, pinch, slap, tweak, and give stinging nose-flappers?
Perhaps you wonder what became of the pictures we made that day in the garden as the summer sun beat down. Renoir’s painting, when completed, was purchased I believe by a woman named Marjorie, who later sold it directly or indirectly to the government of the United States, in order to raise money for some things she wanted to buy, evidently. Manet’s painting, also, was bought and sold one or more times until it, too, ended up at a location overseas. And as for my painting—well, so moved was I by the events of that afternoon, I decided I must change my picture completely. I took the portrait I had been working on and glued additional canvas to it until it was twelve times as large, and stretched it on a new frame. I then included the struggle between the two painters, and a sequence-drawing of the holds they used, and an effect of the droplets of sweat flying in the air, and the terrified eyes of my family, and myself as participant and observer—all overhung by the dust of our exertions in shafts of late-afternoon light. When I had finished, I believed this was a work which would change forever the history of painting; but, unfortunately, it later became lost somewhere.
BLACKOUT. CURTAIN.
Ask Sherman Strong
Every week Sherman Strong, millionaire, replies to readers’ financial requests. You may write to him care of a newspaper, Department of the Treasury, Rockville, Md. 20850.
Dear Sherman Strong,
I’m a cheap, cheese-ball chiseller too lazy to pay my own freight. But why should I bust my hump when there’s rich saps like you, Sherman Strong, just waitin’ to hand over some of that long green to me? Ha-ha! Very good, Mr. Sherman Strong—you do the work, I get the cash. That’s an arrangement the way I like it! You bet I’ll take your money, as much as you can give for as long as you can shell it out. What for? That’s my lookout. I’ll feather my bed with it, Mr. Sherman Strong, and tell the world what a prize sucker I found in you. And when the dough runs out, instead of getting a job I’ll come right back to you with my sack in my hand. Fill it up, Sherman Strong, and keep it coming. Money-money-money-money-money! Fat cats like you were just made for fellows like me.
R.G., Lake Forest, Ill.
Dear R.G.,
You are right about one thing—I do have money. How much, exactly? Truthfully, I couldn’t tell you an exact dollar amount: tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, possibly even a million dollars (depending on the stock market, and the repayment on a few loans owed to me). Enough to keep an accountant busy for several days, let me assure you.
Yes, I could give you as much as three or four hundred dollars with a simple stroke of the pen, and never feel it at all. Even a sum as large as four hundred and fifty dollars, while great to you, would hardly be missed by me. But I’m not going to do that, Mr. R.G. You see money simply as a commodity. To me, money stands for hope, and dreams, and progress, and ordinary people all over the world helping other people who have it already to do the things they enjoy. But that is something I’m afraid you’ll never understand.
Dear Sherman Strong,
So—the brush-off, eh? Not so fast, Mister Strong. Chintzy little pointy-toothed advantage-taking ratty guys of my sort don’t give up so easy. No way, no day. As you know, if I put half the effort into honest work that I do into cadging and finagling and stiffing people, I’d be richer than you. So here I am, comin’ back atcha: you got, I want. Gimmee!
R.G., Lake Forest, III.
[No answer. File.—S.S.]
Dear Sherman Strong,
My wife fell down and broke her hip last week. But that’s not why I’m writing you. I’m writing you … oh, just to write you. I read your column every week. I love the way you’re smiling, in your picture, that is. It makes me think you’re nice. I want to tell you that I’ve read your column every time I’ve seen it. My problem is this.
Mrs. A.R.,
Egg Harbor City, N.J.
Dear Mrs. A.R.,
Now you’re talking, and I read you loud and clear. By the time you see this, a check in your initials may be already on its way to the charity of your choice, either from me or someone else. A gesture such as yours, taking a moment to do what you did—that’s what sharing is all about. God bless!
Hey! Sherman Strong!
What’s the hangup there, Sherman? I go to my mailbox, I got a lot of no-answer from you. Somebody put a crimp in your cash flow? Listen, there’s no hurry. I got all the time in the world. I’m just sitting here on my duff, mooching off very close personal friends of mine, you know the kind I mean, the kind I want you to be. Hey, I’ll try anything, just so long as I don’t accidentally do anything for anybody else. Get that money moving my way, the sooner the better. I have some cheesy, ratty discretionary purchases I want to make. Pay up, bub.
R.G., Lake Forest, Ill.
[File.—S.S.]
Dear Sherman Strong,
I am not a welfare fraud, and I don’t cheat on my taxes, dip into the till at work, or sign time sheets for hours I haven’t put in. I don’t hide people in the trunk of my car when I go to a drive-in movie, or “sample” items in a grocery store unless I intend to pay for them. Unlike many others in our society, I don’t rent furnished apartments and then sell the contents to any of a number of used-furniture dealers found in the yellow pages. It just goes against my grain. I don’t file false insurance claims, no matter how hard they would be to check, and if money is paid to me in error, I return it. I don’t take things that don’t belong to me, I have never once been the recipient of an illegal payment or donation, and I would never ask for or accept charity from you or anyone else. Give me $2,500.
George Abshire,
Sidney, Nebraska
Dear Mr. Abshire,
I wonder if you have any idea how much money twenty-five hundred dollars actually is. Perhaps you will understand more clearly if I put it this way: what you are asking for is two thousand five hundred dollars, or, to put it in layman’s terms, nearly three thousand dollars. Even at my level of affluence, it is a sum I see only very rarely. The sheer bulk of that much cash is something of which the average person has no grasp. Imagine, if you can, a hundred-dollar bill; then imagine twenty-five of them, one on top of another. That stack would fill a standard business envelope to the thickness of one-eighth of an inch, and all solid hundreds.
However, because of your many fine qualities, I believe you are entitled to a reward. Take this column and show it to the bartender at your local watering hole; then tell him to give you a drink, on the house!
Dear, dear Sherman Strong,
Inasmuch as I am a dedicated sort of leech, and inasmuch as I love nothing better than a fat, dumb, and happy meal ticket such as yourself, I am hereby writing once again for a nice big wad of free money. Proceeding forthwith and henceforth, you will direct your agents, Messrs. Chump & Chump, Inc., to advance to my account via bonded cash courier a sizable payment, the first of many to follow on a schedule to be determined by me. Meanwhile, I’ll just lay back with my feet up on the cocktail table smoking a borrowed cigar and let John-down-the-road handle my responsibilities as a human being—gratis, of course.
Hey, don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I really need the dough. But only a schmo would miss out on a gravy train like you. So, how about a cool fifty grand, for starters? Make that sixty.
As ever,
R.G., Lake Forest, Ill.
[Don’t file. Discard.—S.S.]
Dear Mr. Strong,
Several months ago I wrote to you asking for funds to pay for a much-needed vacation from clerical duties, a trip to Disney’s Epcot Center, in Florida. As the days went by with no response, I had just about given up hope. Then last Friday I looked in my mailbox and found an official-looking envelope containing a tax-refund check from the federal government made out in my name with no strings attached! I simply cannot tell you how happy you have made me. The amount was enough to cover transportation, meals, a four-day hotel stay, and extras besides. You are a prince, Mr. Stron
g. If only there were more like you.
Rev. Michael Pattison
Clearwater, Fla. 34625
Dear Rev. Pattison,
Helping a person at no cost is one of the greatest satisfactions this little column of mine can provide. The knowledge that I could have sent you a check myself had I chosen to reminds me of how fortunate I have been. So why shouldn’t I share some of that good fortune with my fellowman, in principle? I don’t suggest notions like that merely in the hopes of receiving a reward in Heaven—but I bet a good word from you wouldn’t hurt. Have a ball, and don’t mention it!
Dear Sherman Strong,
Pursuant to my missive of the 21st inst., I once again take pen in hand to request bucks by the carload from you, Mr.
[Discard.—S.S.]
Dear Sherm,
Having decided at this juncture that it would be advantageous for me to acquire a bunch of stuff that I want but can’t pay for,
[Discard.]
My good friend, Sherman,
As down payment toward the purchase of a snazzy new sports sedan with privacy glass, I’ll be needing
[Discard.]
Dear “Got-Rocks” Strong,
In order that I may continue to coast down easy street, what say you give me
[Discard.]
Dear Sherman,
