The Gawgon and the Boy

by Lloyd Alexander

  "And that simpering beardless boy Raphael, gawking around trying to copy me. His pictures? They give me a toothache. He should paint with sugar water."

  "Pay him no mind," The Gawgon whispered to me as Leonardo ranted. "That's how artists talk about each other."

  To draw Leonardo's attention from his colleagues. The Gawgon turned the conversation to his own work. I dared a glance at the sheet of paper on his table eager to see what brilliant new masterpiece the greatest genius in the world had been pondering.

  The page was covered with tic-tac-toe games. Leonardo had been playing against himself and losing. "I promised Isabella d'Este a painting. Still nor begun." Leonardo pulled at his beard. "The town wants a war memorial, a battle scene to cover a church wall. I tore up my sketches. I wanted to do a bronze horse, the biggest ever cast. I haven't even begun the model.

  "I don't need this aggravation." Leonardo paced back and forth. "I'll go into some other line of work. I can build fortifications, sewer systems."

  "Did you ever make a cootie-catcher?" I asked.

  "I invented it," Leonardo said. He went on with his grumbling. "Earn my bread? Worse comes to worst, I can always play the lute in taverns.

  "Painting? No more." Leonardo seized a brush and snapped it in two. "I give it up. Finito!"

  17 La Gioconda

  Leonardo cast around for something else he could break. He snatched up a palette and tried to snap it over his knee. When he did not succeed, he threw it across the studio, where it went sailing into a wall, leaving messy paint stains. "Stop that nonsense," ordered The Gawgon. "What's the matter with you? What are you telling me, giving up painting? Ridiculous!"

  "I've lost my knack." Leonardo's shoulders slumped. "I was doing a portrait. I can't finish it."

  "Of course you can," said The Gawgon. "A simple picture? You could dash it off with your left hand."

  "I am left-handed," Leonardo retorted. "I forgot," said The Gawgon. "All right, you could do it in your sleep."

  "Not this one. Besides, who sleeps? I haven't had a decent night since I started this disaster. You want to know?"

  "I'm sure you'll tell us," said The Gawgon.

  "All right, if you insist," Leonardo said. "I'm here in the studio, going about my business. I'm thinking of my bronze horse. How to cast it? Interesting technical problem, it would have to be in sections. Yes, and that pazzo Michelangelo got wind of the project. He mocked me, right in the middle of the piazza. He said I didn't have the nerve, the gall to try anything so colossal."

  "Enough horse, enough Michelangelo," said The Gawgon. "Then what?"

  "So, I'm sitting doing calculations for the molds when in walks a puffed-up idiot. I knew of him: Francesco del Gioconda, retired with a fortune, money pouring out his ears, but a miser nonetheless. He just got married, he wants a portrait of his wife-his third. The first two must have died to escape him; it would have been a pleasure for them. The new one didn't have a ducat of her own, no dowry, no property. Why did such a skinflint bother with her?

  "Anyway, I tell him I have better things to do. 'Go ask Raphael,' I say. He'll make her look like an angel and do it on the cheap."

  "But that won't answer. It has to be me, no other. He takes out a purse and jingles it under my nose. He's talking cash, gold, a lot of it."

  "And you agreed," said The Gawgon.

  "What else?" Leonardo shrugged. "An artist has to live. 'Good,' he says. 'Only the best for my little Lisa. You make a nice picture. Understand?'

  "Next day, he brings her to the studio. My eyes popped. I see why he didn't care if she had no dowry. Bellissima! Beautiful, you can't believe. She's, what, twenty something? And married to that ancient goat? Ah, well, I tell myself, this is Florence and what's a poor girl to do?

  "She sits calm and relaxed, very sure of herself, no wiggling, no complaining she's getting a stiff neck. Only the best for little Lisa? Who could do less? I was inspired, I began to work. It went well, so easily. Then-catastrophe!"

  "What happened?" asked The Gawgon as Leonardo paused to sigh.

  "She smiled," he said.

  "So?" said The Gawgon. "Everybody smiles when they have their portrait painted."

  "Not like she did," Leonardo said. "She knows secrets, past anything I could understand. Little Lisa? No, with that smile she's every woman in the world, every woman since time began. I had to catch her smile; my life depended on it.

  "I couldn't. She never smiled that way again. I try everything to bring it back. I recite poems to her, pile flowers in the studio, sprinkle perfume. I have musicians clone and play. No use. I think she's teasing, daring me to make her do it.

  "For how long?" Leonardo spread a hand and counted the fingers. "Three, four, five."

  "Who paints a portrait in less than a week?" The Gawgon broke in. "Not even you. Give it a few more days."

  "Not days! Years!" cried Leonardo. "Close to six years I'm working on it. I put everything else aside, turned down commissions, gave up my bronze horse."

  Leonardo stamped over to the easel and pulled away a sheet covering his painting. "Ecco! Defeat! Ruination!"

  The Gawgon stared, hardly breathing. I did the same. Leonardo had worked mostly in rich, dark tones. In the background, the landscape alone was a masterpiece; it looked as if it had come out of a dream. But it was the figure itself that so bewitched us. Lisa sat quietly, hands at rest, without rings, bracelets, or any other jewelry, in the simplest of gowns; the most miraculous picture I had ever seen.

  Only one thing was missing: her face. Not entirely. To be more accurate, Leonardo had finished everything but the lips. It was all there except the smile. "See what I mean?" Leonardo burst out. "Hopeless!" The Gawgon had stepped a little away from the easel. She stood silently, lost in her own thoughts, on her features a mysterious look I had never seen until this moment. Leonardo was glooming around and muttering to himself. I took his arm and pointed at The Gawgon.

  "Is that the kind of smile you were talking about?" I said.

  Leonardo stared at her. His jaw dropped, he nearly fell over backward. He ran to get the palette he had flung against the wall, snatched a new brush, and began working like a madman, all the while yelling at The Gawgon to hold her expression and not to move a muscle.

  It did not take him long-after all, he was a genius. When he finished, he tossed brush and palette in the air and capered around the studio.

  "That's it! At last!" he cried. "All right, you can move now."

  The Gawgon went to study the finished portrait. "Yes, Leo, you've pulled off another miracle as usual. Lisa won't notice somebody else smiled for her. Or, what's the difference? Women all know the same things and smile the same way over them. So, it's done. You can deliver it only six years late."

  "Deliver what?" Leonardo protectively spread his arms. "Deliver nothing! Niente! I'm keeping her for myself. I'm leaving town," he added. "Enough of Florence. Lisa's coming with me. I still have a few little touch-ups to do."

  "Somehow, Leo," said The Gawgon, "I'm not surprised."

  "Good luck with the big horse," I said.

  Thuh End

  My twelfth birthday came at the worst of a Philadelphia winter. We were housebound, ice coated Lorimer Street, snow drifted into the are away and back alley. My father tied his derby to his head with a muffler, armed himself with a coal shovel, and made threatening gestures at the drifts. My mother took over and did a little better, but finally gave up. I volunteered-Admiral Peary hacking his way to the North Pole-but my offer was declined. Deprived of her Tulip Garden, my sister moped in her room and did not volunteer at all.

  "God put it there," my father said. "Let Him take it away."

  "Oh, Alan," my mother said, "you shouldn't talk like that. He might hear you."

  Instead of the usual birthday party with my aunts and grandmother, there were only the four onus. My mother baked a cake, as she always did; I blew out the candles in one breath, as I always did. For gifts, I received handkerchiefs and underwear.r />
  My father, all that week, did not go in town. He left the store closed and did not worry about business. There had not been enough business to worry about since his failed hopes with the Mexican jumping beans. The beans themselves had stopped twitching altogether. He told my mother to throw them out.

  "Certainly not," she said. "They'll be all right. They're hibernating."

  My sister was kept home from school, although given the equipment, I believe she would have hitched a sled to a team of huskies and mushed her way to rejoin the Tulip Garden. As far as I was concerned, I might as well have been quarantined without the distinction of a Board of Health sticker on the front door.

  Lessons with The Gawgon had to be suspended. Even after the weather cleared, I did not go to see her. My grandmother had telephoned, saying it was better to put things off a little while. I stayed in my room and drew pictures of Leonardo tramping along the roads, with a sack tied to the end of a pole and the Mona Lisa tucked under his arm. In the distance, Michelangelo flung Italian gestures at him.

  It was another week before I went to Larchmont Street. My mother walked with me. The sun had come out bright enough to blind us. It was almost warm.

  "Don't stay long," my mother told me. She, Aunt Florry, and my grandmother talked in the kitchen. I went upstairs.

  The Gawgon was in bed, sitting up with her back propped against some pillows, the flannel bathrobe wrapped around her. The curtains had been pulled back to let in a big shaft of sunlight with motes dancing in it.

  "Happy birthday, Boy." The Gawgon looked in good spirits, so I knew Dr. McKelvie had not been there today. "Better late than never. What's that you have?"

  I had brought my drawings of Leonardo and the Mona Lisa. I handed chem to her. "You can keep them if you want." The Gawgon laughed and said, "Heaven help us, what will you think of next? I have something for you, too. On the desk."

  I picked up the package and tore off the wrapping paper. She had given me a treasure: the second of the three-volume set of history books.

  "When you've chewed through that," she said, "you'll be ready for the third. I'll save it for an Easter present." Hardly able to take my eyes off the book, I waited for her to start our lesson. She seemed content to scan the drawings.

  "You've got a little better at it," she said, "but you still need to look harder at things. What I'm thinking," she went on, "suppose we go to the park. Not now. When it's warm enough so we won't freeze. Try sketching from life-the trees, pigeons, people sitting on benches. It might do you good."

  I offered my own sudden inspiration. I could draw The Gawgon's portrait. That, I said, would be sketching from life. As a further inducement, I cold her I could put the Pyramids in the background; she could be sitting on one of them, the way she did when she was a girl.

  "I dread to think how I'd come out now." The Gawgon chuckled. "That would be quite a sight. We'll see, we'll see. All right, then. You can start tomorrow."

  She leaned back her head. I understood she wanted me to go. I thanked her again for the book. When I left, she was smiling at the pictures in her hands.

  The Gawgon died in her sleep that night.

  18 The Legatee

  "I think," my father said to my mother, "you'd better take him home."

  My mother nodded. She put an arm around my shoulders and led me into a dim corridor so deeply carpeted our footsteps made no sound. She sat beside me on a hard-cushioned sofa that smelled of disinfectant. I knew I had behaved badly.

  We were, that afternoon, in J. Robert Rockamore & Sons funeral parlor, a tall building in center city between a travel agency and a ladies' dress salon. All the rich and fashionable dead went to Rockamore's. Not that we counted among them, but Uncle Eustace managed to get us squeezed in. He knew people there, professional courtesy was involved. Not only was he supplying the tombstone at cost, he had also worked out some kind of cut-rate transaction. He was proud of his accomplishment. "It wasn't easy," Uncle Eustace said. "They have a waiting list."

  I had never been to a funeral, let alone to Rockamore's. We entered the lobby through a pair of massive bronze doors sculpted with acanthus leaves and twisted vines. That, thought, was what the gates of Hell must look like. Inside, Egyptian-style lamps stood on pedestals. The elevator, also with bronze doors, hissed gently as the operator took us to the top floor. No one spoke to him, but he evidently knew where we were supposed to go.

  The parlor, one of Rockamore's smallest, seemed a little cramped. Since we did not have enough men in the family, Uncle Eustace had to pay extra for pallbearers. They took up as much space as we did. They stood mute against the wall, six broad-shouldered young men glad for part-time work, black suited, white-gloved hands clasped over their groins-a posture I would see in later life taken by wedding ushers and politicians on solemn occasions.

  Though Uncle Eustace had not contracted for an organist, strains leaked out from someone else's parlor down the hall, and we had the benefit of secondhand music free of charge. Our vicar, Mr. Granville, was there to conduct the ceremony. Uncle Eustace had first thought to scout around for a Presbyterian.

  "That's what she was." he said. Aunt Rosie put her foot down. "No. Eustace, that just won't do. We can't have some stranger coming in and mumbling who knows what kind of prayers. No she'll have to go as an Episcopalian."

  My mother and aunts were the same sad dresses they wore for Mrs. Jossbegger. My sister and I had no official mourning costumes, so we made do with Sunday best. There was one basket of flowers from all of us.

  Mr. Granville, at some point made a gesture and we lined up. I had no idea what we were supposed to do. I saw my grandmother bend over and kiss the figure in the casket; then, one by one, the rest of us followed. When my turn came, I could not do it. I broke away, choking and crying. I knew, shamefully I was making a scene.

  That was when my mother took me into the hall, where quieted little. After a time, Mr. Granville appeared in his white cassock, the pallbearers following with the casket, and I started up all over again.

  There was some quick conversation between my mother and father The upshot: I should not go to the graveside. My mother agreed she would have to take me home, which she did.

  I was sick to my stomach but thankful I had not thrown up at Rockamore's My mother put me to bed and gave me some tea. I tossed and turned and finally dozed off.

  The night-light was on when I opened my eyes. It must have been late; the house was quiet. I raised my head, more asleep than awake. In a corner of the room, I saw a rocking chair. The Gawgon was sitting in it.

  "You didn't kiss me good-bye," she said.

  "I couldn't," I said. "It wasn't you."

  "Quite right," she agreed. "It wasn't."

  "Are you a ghost?" I said. "A duppy?"

  "Of course not."

  "But-but," I said, "what are you? Where did you go after."

  "Nowhere. I never went away from you. Did you suppose I would?" I did not know what to answer.

  "I'm in your imagination," The Gawgon said. "You're making me up as you go along."

  "Then," I finally said, "you're all right?"

  "Yes, I'm all right," The Gawgon said. "And so are you."

  "That's good," I said. "I'm glad."

  The Gawgon was still watching me as I turned over and went peacefully to sleep.

  The following Sunday afternoon, Uncle Rob and Aunt Rosie stopped by. They brought some cardboard cartons aild shoe boxes into the dining room and put them on the table. Uncle Rob's face had the same official look as when he carved turkey, so I assumed adult business matters were involved. It surprised me when Uncle Rob motioned for me to sit with them.

  "Annie made a will. Did you know that?" he said, more to my mother and father than to me. "I'd been at her for years, but she kept putting it off. Well, a few weeks ago she got around to it."

  "Why, for heaven's sake, did she bother?" Aunt Rosie said. "She had nothing to leave anybody."

  Uncle Rob, meantime, had tucked up his s
leeves and consulted figures on a piece of paper. There were, he said, some stocks and bonds, but the companies had gone bankrupt. There was a savings account, not enough to cover expenses. He calculated everyone would have to chip in to make up the difference when Rockamore's bill came. The few pieces of furniture in her room might as well stay there; no one would buy them, and they would be useful when the room got rented out.

  "Now, you, Skinamalink." Uncle Rob finally spoke directly to me. He waved a hand at the boxes. "These are yours. That's what the will says."

  "Well, well, Bax," my father said, "you're a legatee." I asked if I could open the boxes. Uncle Rob nodded:

  "They're yours, you can do anything you want with them."

  The first thing I saw when I opened one of the lids was the third of the three-volume history; under it, Shakespeare's plays; a thick, gilt-edged anthology of poems; some Sherlock Holmes; the drawings I had given her at Christmas and the last ones of Leonardo and Michelangelo. In the shoe box were postcards of famous paintings; snapshots of her son; the photo of the Pyramids and The Gawgon with her girl's bright face.

  These were treasures beyond any I could have imagined. I thought I had better take the boxes to my room, where I could look into them privately. I began hauling them upstairs.

  "Just what I meant," Aunt Rosie was saying. "Poor dear, she had nothing."

  My father, that spring, seldom went in town to the store. I stayed mostly in my room. I had no heart to read the books or draw pictures. The tangled yarn lay untouched on the night table. I felt bad that I had not undone more knots. The Gawgon would have been disappointed in me, as I was disappointed in myself.

  No one said anything about another teacher. I did not ask. Several times a week, my mother visited my grandmother. I went along and talked to Nora, but without much enthusiasm.

  The Gawgon's room had been rented to someone named Mr. Vance. I saw him once or twice: a tight-faced man who wore wing-tip shoes. Uncle Eustace had somewhere struck up an acquaintance and recommended Mr. Vance as a reliable lodger. Men in dark overcoats and gray felt hats often came to visit him, carrying packages in and out. His door was usually closed.