Rodin's Debutante (27 page)

During the course of June Nieman's illness I spent nights in my studio, determined to finish the three pieces that would give me the hoped-for baker's dozen. When I had them, I would have a show. One gallery on the South Side and two downtown had expressed interest on no more faith than rumor generated by Laura's father, who was widely acquainted with Chicago's art world, then a small but lively place given to sudden and often inexplicable enthusiasms—the French expressionist Bernard Buffet, for example, who for a time was as ubiquitous in fashionable living rooms as the Social Register. Buffet was a North Side phenomenon. Hyde Park leaned more in the direction of the anguished German expressionists, Beckmann, Dix, and Kirchner, altogether more strenuous, more disturbing, than the Frenchman. However, the North Side was where the money was, and the North Side was always eager to support local talent. Harold Nieman said I could forget about the North Shore. Except for a very few very well-heeled and very cultivated merchant princes and their wives, the North Shore was a wasteland. Stay away from it, Harold said. Republicans lived there.

Graduation came and went. My father agreed to continue my allowance while I finished the three pieces, which I was working on simultaneously. I had never done that before and I have never done it since, but in those months I was filled with a fanatic's energy, sleeping no more than three or four hours a night, eating infrequently, slowly losing confidence that this work would amount to anything. Laura spent one or two nights a week at the studio and the other nights in our apartment or at her parents' house or, when her mother was in a bad way, in the waiting room of the hospital. By that time I had acquired a telephone and Laura called every night with a medical report on her mother and whatever other news she had gathered. She knew enough to let the telephone ring and ring before she hung up, knowing that I was so absorbed in my work that I often did not hear the ringing. I was always happy when she called, her voice so soft and seductive. We would often spend thirty minutes or more on the telephone. She was clever the way she went about the calls, the first few minutes a slow recitation of the mundane details of her day, aimless chitchat while she waited for me to arrive in her world from my own and turn my back on Number Eleven and, as she said, join the party—meaning, listen to her voice as opposed to the voices in my head. I thought of it as akin to the crafty opening of a novel, setting a false scent, lulling the reader, encouraging the reader to enter an unknown house; don't worry, everything's going to be fine.

I was happy too when she dropped in at the studio, though twice she quietly slipped through the door and went straight to the couch and to sleep before I even knew she was in the room. When you are twenty-one years old your powers of concentration are formidable, and later the power of concentration can be translated to absent-mindedness. I would step back from Number Twelve and light a cigarette while staring a hole through the marble, determined to discover the nature of the interior, look left, and there she'd be, eyes closed, breathing softly. I thought there was something miraculous about it, as if she were delivered to the couch by some supernatural agency. How did she get inside without my noticing? I always worked better when she was in the room despite the temptation to join her on the couch; the temptation easy to yield to. At any event, I always yielded. I had an idea that if we were ever rich enough to afford a house we would buy one with a full basement, a large basement with room enough for my table and marbles and of course a couch big enough for two. Laura would have a spacious room upstairs for her own work, and that room too would have a couch beneath a big bay window, and beyond the window a street with serious high-crowned trees. Both the basement and Laura's study would have telephones, each phone with its own number so that we could call when the spirit moved.

One night she said, When will you be finished?

Soon, I said.

How soon?

Maybe next week, I said, gesturing around the room. Numbers One through Ten were arrayed on pallets along the wall, numbers Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen on my long worktable. There was almost no free space except for the couch. The floor was thick with marble dust and I knew I would have to set aside some time for housecleaning, though not just yet.

That soon?

Maybe, I said.

You're holding something back, she said.

I've lost confidence, I said. That's what this is, a confidence game. You have to have an iron belief that what you're doing is good. Your best. The best you can do, and if you lose that belief it's chaos.

I don't believe that, she said.

It's true, I said. It's the worst feeling imaginable.

Listen to me, she said and embarked on a kind of soliloquy on the emotions of low moments and high, as difficult to decipher as the
Tractatus.
Think about it long enough and you'll be as crazy as Wittgenstein. She said, Think only of the work. Not your own relation to the work but the work itself as if it were being composed by someone else, a separate mind inside your own mind. Do you see? Step back. Concentrate only on the matter at hand. Keep your emotions focused on the matter. You keep thinking of it as a confidence game you'll lose and we cannot allow that to happen. Do you believe that?

Yes, I said. I like the use of the word "we."

We're together, she said. Go back to work now.

I believe I will, I said.

One last thing, she said. Harold has a friend he wants you to meet. His name's Alvarez. Alvarez and his wife own a gallery up on the North Side. They like new work and they want to see your marbles.

HAROLD NIEMAN
was as good as his word. The gallery was located off Michigan Avenue not far from the Drake Hotel, a second floor space with dead-white walls, perfect for my black marbles. The owners were enthusiastic about my pieces but warned me at the same time not to get my hopes up. New work was difficult to sell and an unknown artist was a dubious, not to say reckless, quantity and a tremendous amount depended on luck, the right crowd, the right setting, the weather, what the headlines said that morning. News from Korea, news from Wall Street, news about the election. Mim Alvarez said, We want them in a good mood. We want them upbeat and confident. We want them to walk into the casino feeling lucky, as if they could successfully draw to an inside straight. We want them thinking that their lives won't be worth turds unless they have one of your marbles in the parlor. We want them thinking about peace, progress, and prosperity—especially prosperity in the form of lower taxes. All these things are beyond our control except for the drink and there'll be lots of that. And one more thing. They'll want to like you. They'll want to see an artist with a great future ahead. They'll want in on the ground floor. They'll be sizing you up, Lee. Put on a good face. Make nice to them.

We were sitting in their gallery, Laura and I, and Mim and her husband Jason. Jason was explaining how they began in the business. I inherited some money from my aunt, Mim put in. That started it, Jason said, but I was the one who got to know Herr Mackel just at the time he wanted to sell and return to the old country and a farmhouse he owned near Seebüll, almost at the Danish border. So we bought the gallery, Herr Mackel retaining a percentage—for his retirement, he said. He died last year and the percentage died with him. And here we are. Why are you shaking your head, Lee?

Did he handle an artist called Tommy Ogden?

He did. We have half a dozen of Ogden's pieces. Decent work. Hard-edged, quite original in composition. I think he had no formal training at all. He began with hunting sketches, then turned to brothel scenes in the manner of Toulouse-Lautrec, except with Ogden the scenes were more domestic than erotic. Herr Mackel was a friend of Ogden's and swore the brothel was somewhere in Chicago but he never found out where. I had the feeling he knew much more than he was saying. Strange thing is, Ogden's prices keep going up. Have done ever since his death. It's too much to call him a cult figure but he definitely has an audience. Do you want to see the ones we have?

We walked into the print room and Jason Alvarez pointed at the side wall, six sketches grouped around the sign tommy ogden. They were all of women—women painting their toenails, reading, knitting, washing their hair, resting, looking into a mirror. On careful inspection each drawing contained a jarring object, a small revolver on a nightstand, a porcelain tiger, a compass, a man's bow tie, binoculars, a rifle's telescopic sight. The composition was dense in the German manner, most carefully drawn. It was hard to imagine Tommy Ogden's heavy fingers executing such meticulous work. But there was no denying the emotion that went into it.

I think the brothel is called Chez Siracusa and it lives to this day, I said, and that was all I said.

Mim Alvarez handled the art and her husband dealt with the money. It was his idea to put a high price on my pieces and the same price for each, except for Number One, which was listed at fifteen hundred dollars. The others were set at one thousand even, a very high price in those days. If we are going to fail, Jason said, we might as well fail big. The gallery took fifty percent. They would expect a guest list from Laura and me and another list from Harold and June but the bulk of the guests would come from their own client list, proven buyers whose checks always cleared the bank. Jason Alvarez would romance the press, meaning the five daily newspapers and the two or three radio stations that might mention the opening. Posters would be prepared and distributed widely but mainly in Hyde Park and the Near North Side. The piece Mim chose for the poster was, naturally, Number One, with a smallish photograph of me, lower left, in profile, which seemed to emphasize the scar that ran from eyeball to chin. The photograph of Number One was shot in such a way that a careful observer would notice the perpendicular cut in the marble and associate the two. Laura was skeptical of this project, believing it an unfortunate "signature," as she called it. She compared it, not very favorably, to Dalí's mustache and Picasso's bare chest. Also Al Capone.

Mim had asked, Will you please think of titles that are not so blind? I mean something more descriptive.

I said, No.

I think the titles should be rethought, she said.

No, I said again, and that was that.

The vernissage ran from six to eight, a full bar and a buffet table crowded with canapés. I suppose at the height of it a hundred people were in the room, young and old, North Side and South Side, and my parents as well, at first ill at ease in a room full of strangers and then more relaxed when June Nieman took them in hand. Harold took great pleasure in introducing me to his downtown friends, the ones whom I had never seen at Sunday lunch. Many of these were bankers and brokers, and I learned then that Harold was a director of one of the small downtown banks, a position he took seriously. He was one of the few Chicago economists asked to join a bank's board, his specific task to explain the present in order to forecast the future. I attempted affability but my eyes always wandered to the marbles to see who was looking at them and I tried to judge from the expressions on their faces whether they were intrigued or bored. In the beginning this was discouraging. I saw weary, puzzled faces, fingers scratching chins. The weariest face of all belonged to Dr. Petitbon, who stood with a glass of scotch in his hand looking skeptically at Number One; and then he turned and saw me and gave a wintry smile, more grimace than smile, and I was left to wonder whether it was a comment on me, my work, or the company he found himself in. But he had thought to come, and when I sent him the invitation I was doubtful that he would.

Then, sometime around seven-thirty, the first red star went up. That was followed in a few moments by another, and a third. The room was aroar with conversation and laughter, two bartenders doing their dance behind the long table, Mim and Jason Alvarez in continual discussion with one or another client. A fourth and fifth red star went up. Number One was still unclaimed, but in a few minutes it too was sold. I shouldered my way through the crowd to my parents, to see how they were getting on.

My father asked, What do the red stars mean?

Sales, I said.

They're buying them? Your sculptures?

It seems they are, I said.

My God, Lee, these things of yours are expensive.

I think so too. But I guess it doesn't matter.

Congratulations, my mother said. They're lovely, your marbles.

And then I was swept away again by Harold Nieman, who wanted me to meet the woman who had bought Number One. She wanted to know my life story and I had to explain that I didn't have much of a life story, or if I did, the plot had yet to reveal itself. I was engaged to Harold's daughter. My father was a judge. I went to the university but neglected my studies. When she said she occasionally wrote articles on art and artists and intended to write one about me now that she had possession of Number One, I said sure, any time. This must be a proud moment for you, she said, you've had a great success at your debut. Yes, I said, very, and the only event comparable was when I was eighteen and a member of an undefeated football team, their first time ever. That was a good day too. She laughed at that and said, What school?

Ogden Hall, I said.

Ogden Hall, she repeated without enthusiasm. She said, My parents knew Tommy Ogden and his frau.

I met him once, I said.

I did also, more than once.

Tell me about him, I said.

You're lucky to have gotten out of Ogden Hall alive, she said. Bad spirits in that house. Bad all around.

Ogden Hall was okay, I said loyally.

Tommy Ogden wasn't okay, she said. He was a bully.

I'm sorry, I said. I didn't get your name.

Trish van Horne, she said.

I smiled at Laura across the room. A number of our friends were there, Jill from Fifteen Hundred, the Indian graduate student Anand, my schoolmate Hopkins. Charles Fford had sent a telegram. I waved at Dr. Petitbon, who was gathering his coat from the rack at the doorway, a glass in his hand. The doctor had told me that the clinic was finished, kaput, and he was returning to Louisiana "where I belong." Now he waved back and disappeared through the door. When I turned to say another word to Trish van Horne she was gone too, vanished into the crowd that had collected around the bar.