False colors

by Powell, Richard, 1908-1999

  stock of good prints. Now and then I sell some original art. Now and then somebody calls me in to play art detective."

  "Sheldon said you have a gallery?"

  "I fixed up a room back of the shop so I can give one-man shows."

  "Just what I'm looking for," she said happily.

  I flinched a little, thinking of her pictures.

  "Oh no," she said, catching my thought. "I don't mean me. It's for somebody else. He does wonderful work. And some of the best of it is right here in the Clothesline Art Exhibit."

  "1 haven't looked at everything here," I said doubtfully, "but what I saw didn't look very good."

  "Well, then, of course you didn't see his paintings. Come on. I'll show you."

  "You're going to leave your paintings here? Don't you think they might be stolen?"

  "That would be a wonderful compliment," she said, "but I don't think anybody will pay it to me. What I want you to see is over here."

  She led me toward the part of Rittenhouse Square where they have the bronze goat that all the kids love to pat. I hadn't looked at the paintings in this section, so I felt a little more hopeful about what she wanted to show me. Frankly, I wanted to find some merit in her friend's stuff. If it would give me an excuse to hang around her longer, I might be tempted to see merit in doodles on a telephone pad.

  "Oh dear," she said suddenly, grabbing my arm. "Don't tell me that man is going to buy one of Nick's paintings!"

  She must have spoken loudly enough for the man to hear, because he turned. My eyes popped a little. Maybe I was being taken to see doodles on a telephone pad. But if so, and if the man ahead of us was going to buy one, doodles on a telephone pad were a coming thing in the art world. The man was Lud-wig Lassiter, of the Lassiter Galleries. A lot of people have never heard of the Lassiter Galleries, but that's because they don't have a few million bucks and don't collect art. Lassiter is one of the country's top art dealers. And right at the moment

  he certainly looked ready to buy something. In fact, I thought I had seen him opening his wallet. But it didn't seem to be in sight now.

  "Hello, Mr. Lassiter," I said. "Buying something?"

  He was a big solid guy built along the lines of a steel filing case. I never looked at him without thinking of a certain portrait by Franz Hals. It's called "Laughing Cavalier," although the Dutchman in the picture isn't laughing, and you can't figure him breaking into a grin over anything less than a burning at the stake. For some reason Lassiter's face got red.

  "Buying something?" he said. "Here? Ridiculous."

  He brushed past us and marched stolidly away, heading for the big old mansion facing the square which houses the Lassiter Galleries.

  "Well, I never!" a woman's voice said angrily. "He takes up a person's time and then walks off like that."

  I glanced at the woman who had spoken. She wasn't talking to me. She was addressing the world at large, and she looked as though she often found reason to give it a piece of her mind. At a guess, the world had been doing annoying things in her presence for fifty years or so. She was sitting on a folding chair beside a row of paintings.

  I said to Nancy, "Where's this fellow Nick you mentioned?"

  "He isn't here. But these are his paintings. The woman runs a rooming house on South Twenty-second Street where Nick lives. Take a look at the paintings, Pete."

  There were nine of them, all oils. I worked down the line slowly. Several landscapes, showing hints of post-Impressionist style. Four city scenes done as almost pure abstractions. A couple of portraits in flat planes of color that reminded me of Cezanne. Both portraits were of the same young man, and might be self-portraits. The guy had a dark lean face and his eyes looked hot and angry.

  Xancy asked, "What do you think of them?"

  "Well, he has a lot of ability. But right now he's still playing around with the techniques of other painters. There are traces of three or four schools of painting in these. The guy hasn't

  worked out his own style yet. Maybe he'll be good. Maybe not."

  "But if he becomes famous, collectors would be interested in his early work, wouldn't they? Because it would show how he developed?"

  "Yeah, sure. If he becomes famous. But that's a thousand to one shot. It's—" I stopped. Lassiter had been snooping around these paintings, and he wasn't noted for taking wild gambles. He might give you nine hundred bucks for a portrait of Grover Cleveland, but only because it was engraved on a thousand-dollar bill. I muttered, "I wonder why Lassiter was looking these things over?"

  "Who, Pete?"

  "That was Ludwig Lassiter who was here. The owner of the Lassiter Galleries."

  "Oh, Pete! Then he must think Nick's going to be famous! He was going to buy these and put them away and later on make a fortune on them. But he didn't want you to suspect what he was doing and—"

  "Why would I scare him off?"

  "He might want to see if Nick has other pictures worth buying. He might be afraid you would get there first."

  "You have art and gold mines mixed up. A geologist can look at a hunk of rock and prove it's filled with gold. But nobody can prove that the work of a half-trained painter will pay off."

  "Then why was Mr. Lassiter interested?"

  "It's got me." I turned to the woman camped beside the paintings, and said, "About that man who just walked away. Did he act as if he wanted to buy all these?"

  "No," she said. "He was just going to buy one."

  "Which one?"

  "This here," she said, lifting a canvas that had been leaning against her chair. "I was going to wrap it up for him when he walked off without so much as a never mind."

  I stared unbelievingly at the picture she held up. Either my eyes or Lassiter's head ought to be examined. If I saw correctly, this wasn't a picture at all. A lot of weird paintings have been done by the surrealists and abstractionists and the non-objec-

  tive boys, but this thing made them look as normal as calendar art. The canvas was filled with swirls and eddies and lightning bolts of color: chrome yellow and vermilion and ultramarine blue and oxide of chromium. The pigment looked as if it had been almost thrown onto the canvas and then slashed around with a palette knife. There wasn't a hint of any plan or thought behind it.

  And yet there was an odd thing about the painting. It got something across to me. It was as if the guy had distilled onto the canvas the pure essence of rage and hatred and disgust.

  "Awful, ain't it?" the woman said.

  Nancy said, "That can't be one of Nick's. I never saw it before. It's like nothing else he ever did."

  "You know him, do you?" the woman said. "Well, this is his, all right. Last night I heard him doing a lot of shouting and so I dumb up to his room to tell him he was making too much noise and he was standing in front of this and he says to me, 'Mrs. Jennings, this is the best thing I ever done.'"

  "As a matter of fact," Nancy said, "it does have quite an effect on me."

  "On me too," I said. "But I'd rather get seasick in a boat."

  "It can't be that bad. Mr. Lassiter was going to buy it."

  "Maybe he wanted it for the cellar, to scare away rats."

  Nancy set her jaw. She turned to the woman and said, "I want to buy these. All of them."

  "What do you want to do that for?" I said.

  "You listen to the young man," Mrs..Jennings said. "He's got your best interests at heart."

  "Do you want to sell these or don't you?" Nancy said. "And if you don't, why did you bring them here?"

  "I guess I brung them," Mrs. Jennings said gloomily, "to prove to myself I was a fool to take 'em in payment for back rent. One hundred and fifty dollars that Nick Accardi owed me up to last night. Nobody in their right senses would pay that much good money for little dabbings of paint like these."

  "I'll take them," Nancy said.

  "Wait a minute," I said. "Have you any right to sell these,

  Mrs. Jennings? I know you can hold personal property for nonpayment of rent, but are
you allowed to sell it the next day?"

  "I have a bill of sale here, all right and proper," she said. She dug out a grimy sheet of paper and handed it over. It was written in ink and said: "I owe Mrs. Jennings $150 for back rent and I am turning the following paintings over to her to pay it." Then there was a list of titles and the signature: "Nick Accardi."

  "There are only nine titles here," I said. "You have ten paintings."

  "That nasty looking one is the tenth," Mrs. Jennings said. "After he wrote out the list I remembered he said that was the best thing he ever done, so I told him I'd take that along too."

  "Then you don't have any right to sell it."

  Nancy said angrily, "I'll buy them all or I won't buy any."

  "All right," the woman said, "but it's throwing money away." She peered at me and added, "Took the words right out of your mouth, didn't I?"

  She had, so I kept quiet.

  Nancy said, "Is a check all right?"

  "How do I know it's any good?"

  "I live just off the square on Delancey Place, between Eighteenth and Nineteenth. I'll go around the square with you and find a park guard if you like. Most of them have known me since I was a little girl."

  "I guess you don't have to do that. I'll take a check."

  Nancy got a blank check from her handbag and borrowed my pen and filled it out, and Mrs. Jennings made out a bill of sale on the note written by Nick Accardi. Then Mrs. Jennings got up heavily from her folding chair and said, "The way I feel about that nasty picture, I'd keep it turned face to the wall if I was you. It might ward off the bad luck."

  She was taking more words out of my mouth. "What bad luck?" I said sharply.

  "It's just a feeling I get sometimes about things," Mrs. Jennings said, and picked up her folding chair and waddled away.

  I looked at Nancy and saw that she was peeking at me warily, the way a child might look at her parents after announcing

  that she had just brought home a cat with four kittens. "I don't want to pry into your personal affairs," I said, "but why are you so interested in this guy? I mean as an artist."

  "Because he has talent. Because he needs help."

  "How did you meet him?"

  "He was sketching here one day and I stopped to watch and got talking to him and—"

  "Do you often pick up strange guys on the street?"

  "It wasn't on the street. It was here in the square."

  "That made it all right, did it?"

  "He looked very young and unhappy and I wasn't worried about talking to him at all. Then one day after I knew him better I went up to his room and—" She caught the look on my face, and said in a warning tone, "Were you going to comment on that?"

  "I was, but I decided not to."

  "I went up to his room and looked at his paintings and liked them. I wanted to help some way but he's horribly proud and until today I couldn't figure how to do it without hurting his feelings. I knew he would never let me buy any pictures, or lend him money."

  "Do I gather that the guy doesn't have a job?"

  "Well, yes and no. What he does for a living is fight. I mean professionally. In the ring."

  "I never heard of a fighter named Nick Accardi."

  "He hasn't been in any main bouts yet. But he will be, as soon as he gets a break."

  "Are you just taking his word for all this?"

  "Why shouldn't I take his word for it? I'm sure he's a very good fighter. He's won every bout he's been in."

  "We'll bill him in both his careers," I said, "as a knockout artist."

  "I think you're horribly mean and suspicious. It just happens that he's fighting this very evening in Madison Square Garden. In the fight that follows the main bout. And he—oh, I wasn't supposed to tell anybody about that!"

  "Why not? What's he got to cover up?"

  "I can't tell you. And you haven't any right to ask."

  "All right. Let's forget how he dumps other guys on the canvas, and talk about how he dumps paint on canvas. What are you going to do with his paintings?"

  She had been acting defiant but now she moved up closer to me and dialed one of the buttons on my jacket and said softly, "I'm going to lend them to you for a one-man show in your gallery. You'll do that for me, won't you, Pete?"

  I told her it was impossible. I explained that it would wreck whatever reputation I had. I said no. All the time, she kept looking up sadly at me and dialing the button on my jacket as if it might tune me to a channel with a better program. Her lower lip quivered and two large perfect tears formed slowly under each of her blue eyes. It was a completely phoney performance and it didn't change my mind a bit. I knew I would end up doing what she wanted.

  "Besides," I said, "nobody would come."

  "All you do is provide the gallery. I'll arrange everything else."

  "I absolutely refuse to put up that one awful picture."

  "You can turn your back and I'll put it up."

  "That isn't what I meant. I—oh, all right. Do anything you want to my place. I haven't anything to lose but my lease."

  "I think you're very nice," she said, dialing the button completely off my jacket. "Oh, look. Your button. I'm sorry."

  "That's all right. Girls are always yanking off my buttons as souvenirs. They—"

  "Speaking of souvenirs," she said, "I want to get a picture of us." She called over my shoulder to somebody, "Hello, Bill. Do you have a moment?"

  A guy carrying a Speed Graphic camera stopped and said, "Hi, Nancy. Got all day for you. What's up?"

  "Bill, this is a friend of mine, Pete Meadows. Do you have a spare film holder? Could you take a couple of pictures of us?"

  "Sure. Anything you say, Nancy."

  "Bill works for one of the papers," Nancy told me. "I can never remember which. He's been wasting film on me for years."

  "Best looking legs in town," Bill said cheerily. "More than I can say for most debs. How do you want this, Nancy?"

  "Wait a minute," I said. "This isn't for the paper, is it? There is no news in what we're doing."

  "This is for my scrapbook," Nancy said. "Now if you'll kneel and point at one of the paintings, Pete . . ."

  I posed with her for a couple of shots. Nancy's friend promised to send the photos to her after they were developed, and left. Then Nancy suggested taking the paintings to my shop right away. We gathered up Accardi's paintings and the ones Nancy had been exhibiting and walked across the square to Walnut Street. The way things had worked out, I was carrying the Accardi painting that I disliked on top of my pile. For some reason the thing made me a little nervous, and I remembered how Nick Accardi's landlady said she had a feeling it might bring bad luck.

  Of course I should have known better. It's just superstition to say that a thing can bring either good or bad luck. As time went on, I learned that the unpleasant painting merely brought people. It was no fault of the painting that some of them were not the kind of people you want to meet in the dark.

  3.

  At six o'clock that night I dropped exhausted into a chair in my shop. Nancy had just left, probably to keep the date which Sheldon had mentioned earlier that afternoon. She had been in my shop for the past three hours getting it ready for the one-man show of Nick Accardi's stuff. It turned out that Nancy gets things ready the way a hurricane prunes trees.

  What I call my gallery is just an old storeroom about sixty feet long by twenty wide, behind the shop. It's clean enough but rather bare, because I've never had any money to furnish

  it. After one look Nancy said it would have to be fixed up. She left the shop and in fifteen minutes came back with four guys carrying rugs. Then she went out and returned with a small caravan bringing furniture. Another trip brought assorted lamps.

  This seemed very mysterious to me, but the explanation was simple. When you are Nancy Vernon, of the Van Rensselaer Vernons, you walk into the best stores on Chestnut Street and explain sweetly to the manager that you need to borrow a few things for a one-man show to hel
p a deserving young painter, and naturally the manager lends you half the joint and is a little hurt that you won't borrow more. So now the Accardi paintings were all hung and the gallery looked like a decorator's dream.

  My assistant, Miss Krim, sighed and said, "Isn't it lovely?"

  I had expected Miss Krim to resent the way Nancy took over the place, but she acted like a mother at her daughter's coming-out party. "It's lovely," I said, "but nobody will come to see it. Nancy wants to open the show tomorrow night. You can't stage a one-man show without notice, and draw a crowd. Not that I'm complaining. The fewer people see these paintings, the better I'll like it."

  "Miss Vernon said she would invite some of her friends."

  "That doesn't mean they'll come."

  "I would not," Miss Krim said, "sell Miss Vernon short. In addition to being a charming girl, she has some quite practical ideas. We can," she added thoughtfully, "use a few practical ideas around here."

  "Name one of her practical ideas."

  "All right. She thinks that with proper encouragement you could make something out of yourself. Some people might say that's impractical, but it could be done."

  "What's wrong with me the way I am?"

  "If I may use an art term," Miss Krim said, "there are times when you remind me of the type of painting known as a still-life. Pleasant to have hanging around, but not very full of action."

  I wished Miss Krim owned the place, so I could threaten to resign. "I am," I said, "keeping a tight hold on my temper."

  "If you let it go," Miss Krim said brightly, "I'll bet it would just roll over and play dead. Well, time for me to leave. I must say I'm delighted that you have become interested in such a lovely girl as Miss Vernon."

  "She may be lovely but she's too wilful."

  "She'll need to be wilful. After all, she will have to make up your mind as well as her own."

  That was a cryptic remark, but before I could ask for an explanation Miss Krim smiled and marched out of the shop.