by Bassoff, Jon
“Please,” he said. “Just listen to me. Let me explain. If I don’t get it off my chest, it’s bound to drive me crazy. You don’t want me to go crazy, do you?”
More blood from my skin smearing across her throat. More globs of paint darkening her skin.
“Because there is a root to my evil. Don’t you believe me? It was a tragic childhood, Mr. No Name, filled with anxiety and humiliation. I don’t mean to excuse my behavior, but perhaps I can explain it. My parents were so…disturbed. And the old man—he was the worst. The things he did. They’re hard to talk about. Hard to recall. But you’ve got the same problem! You refuse to recall! You refuse to recall any of it! How long can you live like this? Your past will catch up to you eventually, of that you can be sure.”
I gritted my teeth and clenched my fists, but there was nothing I could do about him. There had never been anything I could do about him. He’d forced his way into my consciousness and wouldn’t stop until…until what? So he talked and I painted, and Claire became more and more horrific.
“Listen to me. The old man is dead now (razor blade, throat), but not before he showed me all the vileness this world had to offer. And now…the things I want to forget I can’t stop remembering. My father, my father. Here’s what you should know. As a young man he was fascinated by entomology and, after several months of study, he even gained access to some sort of structural exterminator license. This was before I was born, of course, so my information is from secondhand sources (although I assure you, quite reliable). After a few years as an apprentice, he eventually started his own pest control company called Spray It Again, Sam. Served the greater Manhattan area. The business failed, of course, and he was understandably devastated. He went into a terrible depression, wandered through the streets and subway tunnels mumbling to the Great Nobody in the sky. And shortly thereafter, the Great Nobody started speaking to him, giving him direct instructions. I’m unsure how this communication was achieved, but apparently he was instructed to perform a simple task: exterminate unrighteousness. How could he refuse? So after selling away his business at an auction, he spent a month and a half receiving his holy credentials through a correspondence course at a Bronx seminary called Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me. By the ripe old age of twenty-three he was a full-fledged card-carrying preacher, and two years later he opened his own church on 143rd Street that he named The Church of Believers. Oh, he was a holy man, my father was, though he didn’t pass on this spirituality to the likes of me.
“Of course, he had his vices. The flesh and the booze. It was this that he did pass on to the son! He was Noah and I was Ham, entering his bedroom and finding him naked and drunk, a crown of thorns wrapped around his throat. Is it true that he would sneak gulps of Christ’s blood before services? Yes, true. Alcohol was his kryptonite. That’s how I came into being. What was it that particular night? Rum and vermouth. Gallon upon gallon. He knocked on my mother’s door, booze dribbling from his pores. She was a lovely lady. Tall and slender with blonde hair and Shirley Temple curls. At the time, she was the program coordinator for the church, organizing all the church activities, picnics, and plays. A subservient, God-fearing woman. The old man used that to manipulate her. One thing led to another. She got pregnant. These things happen. Preacher Daddy was furious. ‘Have an abortion, for Christ’s sake, have an abortion!’ He threw pots and pans and boiling water her way. She must have had me out of spite…
“Move ahead nine or so months and find good ol’ Preacher Tom Leider, cigarettes and whiskey on his breath, sitting in the corner of the hospital room, reading a tattered King James Bible and praying, while his waif of a wife lay there in a gurney, fists clenched, eye vessels popping, screaming oh Jesus fucking Christ it hurts so fucking bad, get this goddamn thing out of me, you hear, get it out! And it wasn’t until the midwife told him he could cut the cord that my father rose from his knees, took a quick look at the blood-soaked boy and snipped that rubbery lifeline with steady hands. And the first thing he said wasn’t wow what a beautiful little boy or sweet Jesus it’s a fucking miracle, no the first thing he said was this isn’t my son, look at the color of his hair, and he gave my mother a slap across the face, leaving a nice red welt and more than a few tears. The nurse didn’t think this was appropriate at all, so she got on the phone and called the police department, and my father said to hell with this and marched out of the hospital under his own power.
“Now I could spend some time detailing what the preacher did next, could spend time detailing how he went to a local tavern and drank six, yes six, double bourbons, and how he found a pay phone and called a certain girl named Tara Billings, and how they went to a cheap little pay-by-the-hour joint called The Holland Motel in Jersey City, and how Dad grabbed this girl by the ponytail and rammed her nice and hard till she was begging him to go easy on her. I could tell you all this, but I suppose I’d be losing focus.
“In any case, after my birth, the old man didn’t come home for another week, although he did go to work each day, preaching to the dwindling few. He was still furious about the fact—at least he felt it was a fact—that his wife had been unfaithful. You see, Mom’s hair was blonde and Dad’s hair was the color of Campbell’s tomato soup, but poor little me, I did have hair the color of tar. When he finally did return, he wasn’t in a mood for Mom’s explanations—my grandfather was Italian, she said, he had pitch-black hair! He kissed her on the forehead, told her that all was forgiven. All he really wanted now was a steak and a cold beer. And that was something that my mother could provide him with.
“And maybe it wasn’t completely fair that my father was so concerned about his wife’s fidelity. After all, for as long as they’d been married, he’d been screwing half the congregation. This was public knowledge. It was pathetic. Mom’s face would be covered with tears, and the mascara would be running everywhere, staining the carpet. But there were too many other girls for Daddy. Pretty ones, too.
“As I neared my third birthday—by all accounts a sullen and quiet little boy, although quite talented artistically—my old man became further convinced that Mother was parting her legs to the highest bidder. There was this fellow named Billy Watson, a piece of ghetto trash with missing teeth and salami breath. He started coming around the neighborhood from time to time trying to see Mom. She played the whole thing off, telling the old man that Billy was harmless, that she would never betray her one true love. And the preacher might have believed her…
“But then on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, a couple of boys from the congregation were wandering uptown, looking for a score, and they heard some sounds coming from the alleyway. Pudge, the older brother, convinced Luther to take a peek, and that boy got a nice eyeful of Mom taking Billy in her mouth. Billy gave him the thumbs-up sign, but Mom, poor Mom, never knew she was being watched, and so she was in for a hell of a surprise when she got back to the apartment later that afternoon!
“See, in my old man’s church, word traveled fast, and it wasn’t an hour later that Dad got a phone call from an eighty-two-year-old choirboy telling him that Mom had been up to no good and was on a sure path to the fiery coals of hell. Dad took it mighty well, all things considered. After drinking a dozen or so Mickey’s big-mouths, he went to the closet and located a rusty old jackknife. He spent the next hour and a half in the kitchen smoking cigarettes and listening to the Platters on that little cassette player of his. When Mom arrived, he was staring at the city darkness, his back toward her, the knife resting on the table. ‘Hi Clyde,’ was what she said.
“‘Where you been?’ he said, his voice all gravely.
“‘At the church. Praying.’
“‘No. You haven’t.’
“A long pause. ‘Okay, I haven’t. I’ve been having fun. With some of the girls from work. I just didn’t want you to get upset that I didn’t come home right away.’
“He turned toward her, his face shining like a devil. ‘Don’t lie to me woman.’
“She paused for a moment,
considering. Then she spoke. ‘I’m not lying.’
“That’s when my father rose to his feet. Despite the fact that he was a preacher, he was an intimidating sort, all six-foot-four, two hundred twenty pounds of him. ‘I’m gonna do you like you deserve to be done,’ he said.
“‘I didn’t do nothing wrong,’ she said. ‘Honest I didn’t.’
“My old man took a couple steps forward. Then he slapped her hard across the face. Mom didn’t react, didn’t cry or anything. He tried again, this time with his fist, and she collapsed to the floor like a dress falling off a hanger.
“I watched most of this take place through the keyhole in my bedroom. The next time I saw my mother, she was sitting on the couch, drinking a soda, and her face didn’t look like a face at all. It looked more like an overripe melon, all torn apart and oozing…”
And now I could hear the faint sound of Leider sobbing, and I kept on painting, Claire’s face becoming more and more grotesque. Like an overripe melon, all torn apart and oozing.
“I didn’t want to turn into my daddy. Believe me, I didn’t. But the sins of the father become the sins of the son.”
Down below, on the street corner, the detective leaned against the street lamp, smoking a cigarette, waiting for me to make a wrong move.
The blood from my forearm had dried, so now I got to slicing my arm, my thigh. The new portrait was almost complete. Almost…
Leider spoke again, and I couldn’t tell if his voice was coming from the phone or my skull. “The blade. Use the blade this time.”
CHAPTER 27
I slept and painted, slept and painted. Which was more terrifying—the nightmares rattling inside my skull, or the portrait of Claire (all smeared with blood and angry paint)? This much I was sure of: an entity greater than me was guiding my every brushstroke, was scalpeling the soft skin from her face.
As I slept, the phone never stopped ringing. As I slept, I could hear my neighbors whispering: It’s a shame how it has to end, but his fate is predestined. Present fears are less than horrible imaginings. But still…perhaps I should strangle him with my stethoscope. As I slept, I could hear Suzanne Flowers weeping, Turner screaming, Claire dying.
It’s true that I don’t remember actually finishing the painting, but at some point I woke from an instantly forgotten nightmare and gazed at the canvas and Leider told me it was complete. “Yes, yes,” I whispered. “It’s a masterpiece. Someday they will dedicate an entire floor of a museum to this work!” The beauty was all gone and now there was only ugliness and repulsion, hatred and rage, blood and murder. There was only truth. And as I gazed into that hideous face (how much she resembled some of the distorted women from Turner’s photographs!) I couldn’t help myself from laughing and I couldn’t help myself from scratching at my skin. Indeed, the scratching became a compulsion. For hours on end I scratched and scratched, scratching so hard that much of the skin on my hands scabbed off in a bloody mess beneath my fingernails.
I’d caught an illness of some significance. When I tried eating, my stomach lurched, causing me to vomit or dry heave. I couldn’t stop sweating and my hair fell out in clumps. I shivered beneath blankets and pulled a rotted tooth from my gums.
The only thing I could do was squeeze my eyes shut and sleep, and that’s what I did, my body lurching back and forth on the mattress, my fears filling the room in a suffocating fog. And in the latest nightmare I was a child watching my parents through the keyhole, and it was just like Leider described it with the old man confronting my mother about what she’d been doing with other men and then letting loose in a terrible rage, tearing her face apart while she moaned and cried and pleaded and prayed. “The sins of the father become the sins of the son,” Leider had said. But this wasn’t my past, it was Leider’s, and I was not he.
My eyes opened, and light filtered through the window, dust spinning sluggishly. I sat up in bed. My head was pounding and my hair was drenched in miserable sweat. I blinked a few times, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Or was I still dreaming?
The albino was sitting on a chair, his legs crossed, staring at the bizarre painting of Claire. And standing behind him, her hand resting on his shoulder, was the mole-faced super.
“Your masterpiece, huh?” he said, and then he glanced back at his mother. “You’re right, Mom. He is a bad artist.”
I didn’t say anything; instead I reached for the knife that I’d hid beneath my mattress. Before I could use it, the albino reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pretty little pistol. “Please, sir. Return the weapon.” I slumped back on the mattress and groaned.
“You owe me money,” the super said. “And me and my boy aim to make you pay.”
I shook my head. “No. You’ve got it all wrong. You’re confusing me with the artist. With Max Leider. I paid you. When I first arrived. And just the other day.”
The gun hanging limply from his hand, the albino stared at me for a long time, then back at the painting. Then he shook his head, muttered something under his breath, and rose to his feet. “You had me fooled for long enough. Yes, mister, you did. But then Mom explained the way things really were.”
“Your mother is confused.”
“My money,” she said, and she scared me more than the boy.
“I don’t have any money. Not more than a few dollars.”
“It’s a shame,” he said and then he walked across the room and stood over me. With no warning he jammed his forearm into my throat and pushed me back toward the bed. Then he placed the gun inches from my left eye. “I’ll shoot your fucking eye out. Don’t fucking believe me? I’ll shoot it out!”
His mother had followed him across the room and stood over the both of us.
“My money,” she said again.
He tightened the pressure on my throat. I could barely breathe. “Wait,” I croaked. “The painting.”
The albino released just enough pressure to let me speak.
“I know a guy who might buy it. He’s a big supporter of mine. I think he’d buy it. In fact, I think it might be just what he’s looking for.”
The albino pressed the gun into my cheek, denting the skin. His eye was twitching and his shoulders were heaving. I was scared as hell that he was going to make good on his promise and blind me. But then a sickly smile spread across his face revealing his yellow Tic Tac teeth. “Okay,” he said. “Sure. What the hell are we waiting for?”
* * *
The super stayed behind, but the albino accompanied me out of the building. I wasn’t lying—I had no money—but he insisted on taking a taxi. He’d treat for this ride just to show he “wasn’t a bad guy.” So there we stood on First Avenue, me slumped down, one hand gripping the painting, the other buried in my Baracuta pocket, he standing tall and proud, waving his hand frantically at each passing taxi. After a few minutes a vacant cab pulled up and the trunk popped open.
I placed the painting (covered in a trash bag) gently inside and then the two of us slid into the backseat. The driver wore a turban and the radio played Hindustani music. I gave him the address and he powered onto the avenue, swerving in and out of traffic, skimming past parked and moving cars by the slimmest of margins, all the while his fingers tapped out the beat of the music. I gripped the door handle tightly until my knuckles whitened.
As we drove, the albino just stared at me, his lips curled in a hideous grin. I ignored him, stared straight ahead. It wasn’t for a few minutes before he spoke.
“A fellow like you is hard to figure out,” he said.
I didn’t answer, instead cocking my head toward the passenger window and watching the blur of cars and storefronts and pedestrians.
“I mean, I’m not entirely sure if you’re putting on an act or if you’re really fucking crazy. And if you are putting on an act, you oughta get an Academy Award. Al Pacino ain’t got a thing on you.”
Now we were in Chinatown and I could smell the spices and flesh and urine. The albino kept talking and I wished I could s
trangle him, pound his head against the glass.
“That day when you knocked on our door, when I gave you the key, you sure pulled it off. Acting like you’d never been in the building before. Taking back your own apartment. Yeah, you were convincing, all right. So what is it? You an actor? Or a lunatic?”
The taxi cab jerked to a stop. We were parked across the street from Pretty Pictures, in front of the restaurant where I’d eaten once before. The proprietor stood in front of the window gripping the feet of a skinned rabbit. He was smiling and beckoning to me. I stepped out of the taxi and grabbed the painting from the trunk while the albino paid the driver. The little Chinaman rushed out of his restaurant, still holding the dead and bloody rabbit.
“You back!” he said. “I make you something scrumptious.”
I shook my head. “No. No food.”
And now his face suddenly became somber, his already slanted eyes narrowing more, his eyebrows tensing downward. “You going back to art store, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I need to sell my painting.”
He looked down at the black garbage bag. “What it a painting of?”
I smiled thinly. “My true love.”
A quick shake of the head. “You go home. You stay away from there. Devil’s work.” And now he leaned even closer and hissed in my ear: “The devil!”
The albino appeared next to me and grabbed my arm. “C’mon,” he said. “Looks like we’re not the only ones in an artistic mood.”
I turned around and saw that there was a mass of people pushing their way into the gallery.
I walked across the street, dodging the cars and taxis and delivery trucks, with the albino shuffling along just behind me. We joined the crowd of people—there looked to be thirty or forty people at least—and they were murmuring excitedly.
“He’s certainly hyped the painting enough,” said a little man wearing a checkered jacket, a skull tie, and a red carnation. “Kept it behind the curtain for weeks. I just hope it meets the hype.”
