The Cat Who Could Read Backwards

by Lilian Jackson Braun

  "Too bad. I hear he was a good man."

  The guard wagged his head sympathetically. "Politics! And that muckraker down at the newspaper. That's what did it. I'm glad I'm civil service…. If you want to see Mr. Farhar, try his office — down this corridor and turn left."

  The office wing of the museum was shrouded in its Sunday quiet. Noel Farhar, Director — according to the lettering on the door — was there alone.

  Qwilleran walked through the unattended anteroom and into a paneled office adorned with art objects. "Excuse me," he said. "Mr. Farhar?"

  The man rummaging in a desk drawer jumped back in a spasm of guilty acknowledgment. A more fragile young man Qwilleran had never seen. Although Noel Farhar seemed young for the job, his unhealthy thinness gave him a ghostly look of old age.

  "Sorry to intrude. I'm Jim Qwilleran from the Daily Fluxion."

  Noel Farhar's clenched jaw was all too obvious, and he was unable to control the tremor that afflicted one eyelid. "What do you want?" he demanded.

  Amiably Qwilleran said, "Just wanted to introduce myself. I'm new on the art beat and trying to get acquainted." He extended a hand and received a reluctant, trembling hand from Farhar.

  "If they added you to the staff to mend matters," the director said coldly, "it's too late. The damage is done."

  "I'm afraid I don't understand. I've just arrived in this city."

  "Sit down, Mr. Qwilleran." Farhar folded his arms and remained standing. "I presume you know the museum has just lost a million-dollar grant."

  "I heard about it."

  "That would have given us the incentive and the prestige to raise another five million from private donors and industry. It would have given us the country's outstanding pre-Hispanic Mexican collection and a new wing to house it, but your newspaper subverted the entire program. Your critic, by his continual harassment and ridicule, presented this museum in such an unfavorable light that the Foundation withdrew its consideration." Farhar spoke forcefully despite his visible trembling. "Needless to say, this failure — plus Mountclemens' personal attacks on my administration — has forced me to offer my resignation."

  Qwilleran mumbled, "That's a serious charge."

  "It is incredible that a single individual who knows nothing about art can pollute the city's art climate. But there's nothing you can do about it. I'm wasting my time talking to you. I have written to your publisher, demanding that this Mountclemens be stopped before he destroys our cultural heritage." Farhar turned back to the files. "Now I have some work to do — some papers to organize —»

  "Sorry to interrupt," said Qwilleran. "Very sorry about this whole business. Not knowing the facts, I can't comment —»

  "I've told you the facts." Farhar's tone put an end to the interview.

  Qwilleran wandered about several floors of the museum, but his mind was not on the Renoirs and the Canalettos. The Toltec and Aztec cultures failed to capture his interest. Only the historic weapons stirred his enthusiasm — the left-handed daggers, German hunting knives, spiked maces, Spanish stylets and rapiers, Italian poniards. And repeatedly his thoughts went to the art critic that everyone hated.

  Early the next morning Qwilleran was on the job at the Fluxion. In the reference library on the third floor he asked for the file of Mountclemens' reviews.

  "Here it is," said the library clerk with a half-wink, "and when you finish with it, you'll find the first aid room on the fifth floor — in case you need a bromo."

  Qwilleran scanned twelve months of art reviews. He found the blistering appraisal of Cal Halapay's curly, haired kids ("drugstore art") and the cruel words about Uncle Waldo's primitives ("age is no substitute for talent"). There was a column, without mention of names, on private collectors who are less dedicated to art preservation than to tax avoidance.

  Mountclemens had strong words to say about Butchy Bolton's life-size metal sculptures of the human figure, which

  reminded him of armor worn in a rural high-school performance of Macbeth. He deplored the mass production of third, rate artists at Penniman School, whose assembly lines would do credit to a Detroit automobile factory.

  He complimented the small suburban galleries for their role as afternoon social centers replacing the bridge club and the sewing circle, although he questioned their value as purveyors of art. And he inveighed against the museum: its policies, its permanent collection, its director, and the color of the uniforms worn by the guards.

  Interspersed among the tirades, however, were the critic's enthusiastic endorsements of certain artists — especially Zoe Lambreth — but the jargon went over Qwilleran's head. "The complexity of eloquent dynamics in organic texture… internal subjective impulses expressed in compassionate linguistics."

  There was also a column that had nothing to do with painting or sculpture but discussed cats (Felis domestica) as works of art.

  Qwilleran returned the file to the library and looked up an address in the telephone book. He wanted to find out why Mountclemens thought Zoe Lambreth's work was so good — and why Cal Halapay thought it was so bad.

  He found the Lambreth Gallery on the edge of the financial district, in an old loft building dwarfed by nearby office towers. It seemed to have class. The sign over the door was lettered in gold, and in the window there were only two

  paintings but thirty yards of gray velvet.

  One of the canvases in the window was navy blue, sprinkled with black triangles. The other was a mysterious gravy of thick paint in tired browns and purples. Still, an image seemed to emerge from it, and Qwilleran felt a pair of eyes peering from its depths. As he stared, the expression in the eyes changed from innocence to awareness to savagery.

  He opened the door and ventured inside. The gallery was long and narrow, furnished like a living room, rather richly, in uncompromising modem design. On an easel Qwilleran spotted another arrangement of triangles — gray scattered on white — which he preferred to the one in the window. The artist's signature was "Scrano." On a pedestal stood an elbow of drain tile spiked with bicycle spokes. It was titled "Thing #17."

  A bell had jangled somewhere when he entered the shop, and now Qwilleran heard footsteps tapping on the treads of the spiral staircase at the rear of the gallery. The iron structure, painted white, resembled a huge sculpture.

  Qwilleran saw feet, then narrow- trousered legs, and then the crisp, formal, supercilious proprietor of the gallery. It was hard for him to imagine Earl Lambreth as the husband of the warm, womanly Zoe. The man appeared somewhat older than his wife, and he was painfully dapper.

  Qwilleran said, "I'm the new art reporter from the Daily Fluxion. Mrs. Lambreth asked me to visit your gallery."

  The man did something that started to be a smile but ended as an unpleasant mannerism: he raked his bottom lip with his teeth. "Mrs. Lambreth mentioned you," he said, "and I suppose Mountclemens has told you that this is the leading gallery in the city. In fact, it is the only gallery worthy of the name."

  "I haven't met Mountclemens as yet, but I understand he speaks highly of your wife's work. I'd like to see some of it."

  The dealer, standing stiffly with hands behind his back, nodded toward a brown rectangle on the wall. "That is one of Mrs. Lambreth's recent paintings. It has the rich painterly quality recognized as her signature."

  Qwilleran studied the picture in cautious silence. Its surface had the texture of a heavily iced chocolate cake, and he unconsciously passed his tongue over his lips. Yet he was aware, once more, of a pair of eyes somewhere in the swirls of paint. Gradually there evolved the face of a woman.

  "She uses a lot of paint," Qwilleran observed. "Must: take a long time to dry."

  The dealer cleaned his lower lip again and said, "Mrs. Lambreth employs pigment to capture the viewer and enmesh him sensually before making her statement. Her declamation is always elusive, nebulous — forcing her audience to participate vitally in the interpretation." Qwilleran nodded vaguely.

  "She is a great humanist," Lambret
h continued. "Unfortunately we have very few of her canvases here at present. She is holding everything back for her one- man show in March. However, you saw one of her most lucid and disciplined works in the window."

  Qwilleran remembered the paint-clouded eyes he had seen before entering the gallery — the eyes full of mystery and malice. He said, "Does she always paint women like that?"

  Lambreth jerked one shoulder. "Mrs. Lambreth never paints to formula. She has great versatility and imagination. And the painting in the window is not intended to invoke human associations. It is a study of a cat."

  "Oh," said Qwilleran.

  "Are you interested in Scrano? He is one of the foremost contemporary artists. You saw one of his paintings in the window. Here is another on the easel."

  Qwilleran squinted at the gray triangles on a white background. The painted surface was fine-grained and slick, with a gleam that was almost metallic; the triangles were crisp.

  The newsman said, "He seems to be hooked on triangles. If you hung this one

  upside down, you'd have three sailboats in a fog."

  Lambreth said, "The symbolism should be obvious. In his hard-edge paintings Scrano expresses succinctly the essential libidinous, polygamous nature of Man. The painting in the window is specifically incestuous."

  "Well, I guess that clobbers my theory," Qwilleran said. "I was hoping I'd discovered some sailboats. What does Mountclemens say about Scamo?"

  "S-c-r-a-n-o," Lambreth corrected him. "In Scrano's work Mountclemens finds an intellectual virility that transcends the lesser considerations of artistic expression and focuses on purity of concept and sublimation of medium."

  "Pretty expensive, I suppose."

  "A Scrano usually runs into five figures."

  "Whoosh!" said Qwilleran. "How about some of these other artists?"

  "They command considerably less."

  "I don't see any price tags anywhere."

  Lambreth straightened a picture or two. "A gallery of this caliber would hardly be expected to post prices like a supermarket. For our major exhibitions we print a catalog, but what you see today is merely an informal showing of our own group of artists."

  "I was surprised to find you located in the financial district," Qwilleran said.

  "Our most astute collectors are businessmen."

  Qwilleran took a turn around the gallery and reserved comment. Many of the canvases presented drips and blobs of paint in screaming, explosive colors. Some were composed solely of wavy stripes. There was a six-by-eight-foot close-up of a gaping red maw, and Qwilleran recoiled instinctively. On a pedestal stood an egg-shaped ball of metal titled "Untitled." Some elongated shapes in reddish clay resembled grasshoppers, but certain bulges convinced Qwilleran that he was looking at underfed humans. Two pieces of scrap metal were labeled "Thing #14" and "Thing #20."

  Qwilleran liked the furniture better: scoop like lounge chairs, sofas floated on delicate chromium steel bases, and low tables with white marble tops.

  He said, "Do you have any paintings by Cal Halapay?"

  Lambreth cringed. "You must be joking. We are not that kind of gallery."

  "I thought Halapay's stuff was highly successful."

  "It's easily sold to persons who have no taste," said the dealer, "but actually Halapay's stuff — as you aptly describe it — is nothing but commercial illustration rather presumptuously installed in a frame. It has no value as art. In fact, the man would be doing the public a favor if he would forget his pretensions and concentrate on the activity he does so well-making money. I have no quarrel with hobbyists who want to spend their Sunday afternoons pleasantly in front of an easel, but they should not pose as artists and degrade the public taste."

  Qwilleran turned his attention to the spiral staircase. "Do you have another gallery upstairs?"

  "Just my office and the framing shop. Would you like to see the framing shop? It might interest you more than the paintings and sculpture."

  Lambreth led the way past a stock room, where paintings were stored in vertical slots, and up the stairs. In the framing shop there was a disarrayed workbench and a lingering aroma of glue or lacquer.

  "Who makes your frames?" asked Qwilleran.

  "A very talented craftsman. We offer the best workmanship and the largest selection of moldings in the city." Still standing stiffly with his hands clasped behind his back, Lambreth nodded at a molding on the workbench. "That one sells for $35 a linear foot."

  Qwilleran's gaze wandered to a cluttered office adjoining the workroom. He stared at a painting of a dancer hung crookedly on the wall. A ballerina in a filmy blue garment was depicted in a moment of arrested motion — against a background of green foliage.

  "Now there's something I can understand," he said. "I really go for that."

  "And well you might! It's a Ghirotto, as you can see by the signature."

  Qwilleran was impressed. "I saw a Ghirotto at the museum yesterday. This must be a valuable piece of art."

  "It would be — if it were complete."

  "You mean it isn't finished?"

  Lambreth drew an impatient breath. "This is only half of the original canvas. The painting was damaged. I'm afraid I could not afford a Ghirotto in good condition."

  Qwilleran then noticed a bulletin board well plastered with newspaper clippings. He said, "I see the Daily Fluxion gives you pretty good coverage."

  "You have an excellent art column," said the dealer. "Mountclemens knows more about art than anyone else in the city- including the self-styled experts. And he has integrity-unimpeachable integrity."

  "Hmm," said Qwilleran. "You will no doubt hear Mountclemens denounced on all sides — because he is weeding out the quacks and elevating the standards of taste. Recently he did the city a great service by dislodging Farhar at the museum. A new regime will bring life back to that dying institution."

  "But didn't they lose a juicy grant at the same time?"

  Lambreth waved his hand. "Another year, another grant, and by that time the museum will merit it."

  For the first time Qwilleran noticed the dealer's hands, their grimy nails out of keeping with his fastidious dress.

  The newsman said, "Mountclemens thinks well of Mrs. Lambreth's work, I've noticed."

  "He has been very kind. Many people think he favors this gallery, but the truth is: we handle only the best artists."

  "This guy who paints triangles — is he a local artist? I might like to get an interview."

  Lambreth looked pained. "It is rather well known that Scrano is a European. He has been a recluse — in Italy — I for many years. For political reasons, I believe."

  "How did you find out about him?"

  "Mountclemens brought his work to our attention and put us in touch with the artist's American agent, for which we are grateful. We are Scrano's exclusive representative in the Midwest." He cleared his throat and said proudly, "Scrano's work has an intellectualized virility, a transcendent purity —»

  "I won't take any more of your time," said Qwilleran. "It's almost noon, and I have a luncheon appointment."

  Qwilleran left the Lambreth Gallery with several questions banging about in his head: How could you tell good an from bad art? Why did triangles get thumbs-up while sailboats got thumbs-down? If Mountclemens was as good as Lambreth said, and if the local art situation was so unhealthy, why did Mountclemens stay in this thankless environment? Was he really a missionary, as Lambreth said? Or a monster, as everyone else implied?

  Then one more question mark waved its curly tail. Was there really a man named George Bonifield Mountclemens?

  At the Press Club, where he was meeting Arch Riker for lunch, Qwilleran said to the bartender, "Does the Fluxion art critic ever come in here?"

  Bruno paused in wiping a glass. "I wish he did. I'd slip him a Mickey."

  "Why? What's your complaint?"

  "Only one thing," said Bruno. "He's against the whole human race." He leaned over the bar in a confidential manner. "I tell you he's
out to ruin every artist in town. Look what he did to that poor old man, Uncle Waldo. And Franz Buchwalter in yesterday's paper! The only artists he likes are connected with the Lambreth Gallery. You'd think he owned it."

  "Some people think he's a highly qualified authority."

  "Some people think down is up." Then Bruno smiled wisely. "Just wait till he starts gunning for you, Mr. Qwilleran. As soon as Mountclemens finds out you're snooping around on his beat — " The bartender pulled an imaginary trigger.

  "You seem to know a lot about the art situation here in town."

  "Sure. I'm an artist myself. I do collage. I'd like you to look at it sometime and give me a critical opinion."

  "I've just had this job two days," Qwilleran told him. "I don't even know what collage is."

  Bruno gave him a patronizing smile. "It's a form of art. I soak labels off whiskey bottles, cut them in little pieces, and paste them up to make presidential portraits. I'm working on Van Buren now. It would make a terrific one-man show." His expression changed to a chummy one.

  "Maybe you could help me line up a gallery. Do you think you could, like, pull a few strings?"

  Qwilleran said, "I don't know if there's much acceptance for presidential portraits made out of whiskey labels, but I'll ask around Now how about the usual — on the rocks?"

  "One of these days," said the bartender, "you'll get hives from all this tomato juice."

  When Arch Riker arrived at the bar, he found the art writer chewing his moustache. Arch said, "How did everything go this morning?"

  "Fine," said Qwilleran. "At first I was slightly confused about the difference between good art and bad art, but now I'm completely confused." He took a swallow of tomato juice. "However, I've reached a conclusion about George Bonifield Mountclemens III."

  "Let's have it."

  "He's a fake."

  "What do you mean?"

  "He doesn't exist. He's a legend, an invention, a concept, a corporation, a gleam in the publisher's eye."

  Arch said, "Who do you think writes all that copy we print under his sesquipedalian byline?"