The Complete Roderick (25 page)

Mr Vitanuova spread his wide face in a smile and his wide hands in a benediction. ‘Me, I don’t understand nothing. It’s the wife, see? She knows Art like I know garbage. No wait, don’t get sore, hey I don’t mean this is garbage, I mean
real
garbage, it’s my business.’

But already the woman in the Abbott & Costello t-shirt had turned away to listen to Ben Franklin:

‘Well purple, yes, it’s kind of ecclesiastical, isn’t all art? I mean isn’t that why we take it seriously, because it has its own liturgy?’

Allbright moved a book-shaped bulge under his sweater. ‘You’re gonna give me canons of taste for this? The fact is the guy painted the same damn purple square twenty times, the same purple the same square – and you justify that? If it
were
art you wouldn’t need to bring in all the big guns, the Church and Freud, Marx and Pater or any other dear damned dead philos, where’s that waiter? Hauling in Wittgenstein or maybe Kirke, waiter! Hey, over here!’

‘No, look fella, I’m not trying to justify anything. But so what that they’re all alike, so were icons, most of them look like mass production jobs.’

‘Mass production I like that, keep the old prayer-wheels of industry turning, isn’t that religion?’

‘Well I’m not really –’

‘Counting the revs, counting the revs see, because numbers make it all important, don’t they? This geek here could paint one purple square and who cares, but if he paints twenty, in comes the old number magic. What does the twenty stand for? What does it mean? Because that’s religion too, numbers have to mean something: the eight-fold path, the seven deadly sins, the ten commandm –’

‘What’s wrong with that? Just a way of keeping track, I mean even truth is binary, if you –’

‘Telling the beads,’ said Allbright, lifting two drinks from a passing tray. ‘Listen pal, numbers are everything in religion, telling the beads, when I was a kid I used to think that meant you know, talking to the beads. Only later on I found out it meant
telling
like a fucking bank teller, counting up the days of indulgence, no good storing up riches in Heaven if you can’t count them – Listen, you want my advice?’

The woman in the Abbott & Costello t-shirt moved on without waiting to hear his advice; a moment later she was advising Dr Tarr to look for religious significance in these paintings.

‘Lyle Danton? Is it you?’

The young man in patched denim work-clothes turned. ‘I call myself Tate now.’ He studied the old woman in lace, the corsage of radishes at her throat. ‘Ma?’

Ma Wood squeezed his forearm. ‘I’m glad to see my best pupil still interested in art.’

‘Art?’ His unhappy laugh startled her. ‘Let’s talk about something else. You still living in Newer?’ He moved to keep his face in profile, a habit she remembered.

‘Of course. Oh, I see, like Picasso? Taking your mother’s name I mean. But if you’re not painting now, why in the world –?’

‘Oh I’m painting, all right. I mean when I can afford the materials. Well it’s a long story …’

She kept hold of his arm. ‘But don’t your parents – I mean they used to be the richest folks in town when your father was running the factory. I thought he’d be doing even better by now, didn’t
you all move to the city so he could become general manager or some such, was it managing director?’

‘
Him.
’

‘You don’t get along?’

‘We never did. And when he killed my mother … No, well okay it was an accident everybody says, traffic computer goes haywire and he smashes into the back of this truckload of tranquillizers; it could happen to anybody.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’

‘Okay an accident maybe but he hated her guts, he always hated her guts. On account of me.’

‘The birthmark?’

He still kept his face in profile to hide it. ‘Mom would have split long ago, only she was too damn kind-hearted, you know? I mean he needed all his money to start this new business, she knew he couldn’t make it if he had this alimony around his neck, so she just stayed, stayed and stayed until he –’

‘But wait, what business? Did he leave Slumbertite?’

‘Got canned, so did all the execs. They got some new system there now, some, I guess they call it
BIGSHOT
or something, some kind of decision-maker – so anyway he’s in the restaurant business now. I don’t see much of him. I dropped out of the University and just been doing odd jobs, even tried working in a tattoo parlour, how’s that grab you?’

Ma continued to grab at his arm, to stare at his sullen profile. ‘ … you were always good at people, the human figure and the, the human face …’

‘Well I got fired from the tattoo parlour just the same, wrote something about T. S. Eliot on a guy’s arm, the illiterate old bastard running the place thought it was “toilets”, how does that –?’

‘Lyle, listen. I want to commission you to do a portrait.’

‘What?’ He turned full-face in surprise, showing the birthmark, a red shadow over half his features, a glimpse of Harlequin, before he turned it away again. Poor boy, she thought. Not just to have it, but to be hated for it.

‘Well, not a portrait exactly, more a painted head. I’m working it up now, maybe I could send you a cast of it to study …?’

The profile looked pleased. ‘Well sure. Sure Ma, sure. Only you don’t mind that I do it symmetrical?’

‘That would be just fine, Lyle. Just what I wanted.’

‘Art, well I leave it to the experts,’ said Mr Kratt. ‘I’m just the money man.’

‘Oh but you should take an
interest.
’ Mrs McBabbitt looked at him through lowered lashes as black as her sable coat. ‘Dr Tarr has just been telling me it all has deep religious significance. Are you a religious man, Mr Kratt?’

‘I manage to keep pretty busy without it, you know? Ha! But of course I respect the next guy’s religion as much as anybody – just like I respect the next guy’s wife.’ He leaned a little closer. ‘Mr McBabbitt’s a lucky man.’

She seemed to agree.

‘What was
that?
’ said the taller critic.

The building rocked from the crash. The shorter critic peered through the waves of people running towards the sound. From here it looked as though two cars had tried to drive into the gallery together and wedged themselves in the doorway. Shards of mirror lay strewn over the green carpet like peculiar angular lakes.

‘Mr K.’s Rolls there, looks like. And isn’t that other car flying the flags of Ruritania? The consul’s car I suppose, only those boys getting out of it don’t look like diplomats to me.’

‘God, I hope this isn’t someone’s idea of a happy accident or –?’

‘That would be unfortunate,’ said the taller critic. ‘Did you cover that boring exhibition of wrecked cars last May?’

‘Not me, you mean the freeway thing, when all those cars and trucks piled up? I wanted to go, really, thought it sounded enterprising at least, getting out there and casting the whole mess in fibreglass right on the spot, I mean whatsis-name, Jough Braun must have been actually cruising the city with a ton of epoxy – imagine getting an actual body in there!’

‘He was just lucky, though, what he was really out doing was dog turds. Trying to get a casting of every pile of doggy do-do in the city on one particular day, kind of Conceptualist record –
anyway he gave that up in a hurry once he saw what kind of money these German museums were bidding for
Freeway Disaster
. I still say he’s a boring little prick.’

‘But you gave him a good review?’

‘Wouldn’t you?’ said the shorter critic. ‘I mean with two German museums going bananas over him, wouldn’t you?’

‘What happened?’ the taller asked someone else. ‘Accident?’

‘Nothing. Just some college kids smacked into Mr Kratt’s car. Nobody hurt. A chauffeur killed.’

‘Drunk, were they?’

The stranger shrugged. ‘Sure, but they got diplomatic immunity, see? On account of the car. Cops won’t do a thing.’

It was true. The police came and went, the cars and the body were discreetly removed, but the three grinning members of Digamma Upsilon Nu remained to sip champagne and brag of their adventure.

‘Sure I’m religious,’ said Mr Vitanuova. ‘I’m a good Cat’lic, what else? Just because a guy gets his hands in garbage don’t mean he ain’t got a soul, ya know.’

Allbright, holding a champagne glass in each dirt-encrusted fist, leaned in an unpremeditated direction. ‘That’s goddamn profound.’

Dr Tarr said, ‘Yes, what’s interesting about these Catholic miracles like levitation, take the flying monk for instance, Giuseppe Coppertino in the sixteenth What I mean is I’ve been working out the psychic forces involved …’

Allbright leaned another way. ‘Look, you want my advice? You want my advice? You want to get close to God you just go out and buy yourself the biggest goddamn computer you can buy. You know why?’

Mr Vitanuova kept shrugging and smiling. ‘Look, I pay my dues, I figure –’

‘… our little mascot,’ said one of the fraternity boys. ‘Our little robot mascot. Roderick, go on, say hello to the nice lady, hee hee hee.’

Across the room Ben Franklin looked up. Just a minute, thought I … thought I heard …’ But a second later Mr Kratt’s heavy hand was on his shoulder.

‘Have fun, bub. Just taking Mrs McBabbitt home now, but you stay, have a – have a good time.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Oh one thing, all these people yakkin’ about religion gave me another brainstorm here, make a note of this: edible talk-backs. I figured maybe break into the Catholic market there, Mr Vitanuova just telling me how they do it in the mass and all –’

‘Yes sir, but I just wanted to see someone –’

‘In a minute, bub, you just listen. Howsabout a talking host, see?’

Franklin turned to face him. ‘A what? Television …?’

‘You don’t listen, see? Nobody listens, I mean a
host
, a piece a bread they use for masses, Mr V. tells me the priest just holds it up and says this is my body. This is my body. Well look, wouldn’t it be more convincing if
the bread itself does the talking?
’

‘I don’t know …’

‘Hello, Ma,’ said a small voice.

‘Hee hee hee, hello Ma he says, here lady you can hold him a while if you want, I gotta find my buddies – Hey you guys!’ One Digamma Upsilon Nu sweatshirt went to join two others at the table of drinks. Near by, the two critics looked over copies of the beautifully-printed catalogue.

Mr Kratt’s hand squeezed Ben’s shoulder. ‘No, well just make a note of that, we’ll talk it over some other time, okay? Could be a whole new market there.’

Allbright was shouting: ‘The Mormons, they got a big goddamn computer out in Salt Lake City, counting up the souls – they got it made, see? Because you know who’s gonna get into Heaven? I’ll tell you who, the big insurance companies, the government, the credit card companies, the Pentagon, all going to Heaven! Everybody that gets control of the magic numbers, that’s who!’

Dr Tarr began filling his pipe. ‘Yes there could be something in that, the psionic effect of complex machines, pure complexity …’

‘I know.’ Mr Vitanuova winked. ‘Like they say, garbage in, garbage out. And I know garbage.’

Ben Franklin thrust his face between them. ‘Listen, has anybody seen the white-haired woman? She was here a minute ago holding this little robot mascot thing, anybody …?’

Next he tried the two critics, who shrugged and went on reading:

The paintings of
EDD MCFEE
, though superficially identical (each being a 1 cm square of Bohème 0085 Violet centred on a 74 cm square white ground) draw their individuality from the time and locus (solely determined by random numbers) in which they were painted. No. 1
, Juryroom Trout
, was painted at 3 a.m. GMT on May 2, 1979, at an exact location in the Sahara, for example (2°W, 29°N). Yet McFee’s work, while rigorously Conceptualist in performance, manages at the same time to defy the canons of that limited and uncongenial mode. A bold form, an unexpected colour – these interact to both direct and keep pace with his concept, welding precision of thought to plasticity of expression in a carefully orchestrated equation of space/time. It is, moreover, a transcendental equation. Form is embedded in time, space in colour, design becomes discovery. The result, a reified Conceptual-ism, displaces the traditional stylized ‘thought-experiment’ with a new, holistic approach. Performance is redeemed by object. His aim, then, is to …

‘His aim,’ said the taller critic, ‘is to produce some hard goods collectors can buy, without feeling they’ve been ripped off even when they have.’

‘You playing this one down, then?’

‘Hell no, Mr K. shoots a grand an inch for a good review …’

Edd McFee, looking dapper even in his Army fatigues, was talking to the woman in the Abbott & Costello t-shirt when Ben approached.

‘What old lady? Naw, I never seen her, ask, ask somebody else … now like I was saying, Carrie, religion is fine, like it’s a deep one-to-one interpersonal relationship with Somebody, sure that’s what everybody wants. Only as an artist I got this problem: I can create but I can’t really love, see? So what I’m looking for is a woman to have a deep interpersonal relations with, I mean relationship with …’

Ben Franklin tried to ask the fraternity boys, but they had begun to sing. There was no one else to ask but the waiters and that guy with the birthmark. But the waiters were busy packing
up, and the guy with the birthmark was sitting on the floor playing with pieces of mirror. Ben took a last glass of champagne and, standing alone, tried to arrange his face in a nonchalant expression. He pretended to look at the nearest painting, though in fact he failed even to notice that someone had defaced it (adding to the small purple square a large black moustache). ‘… garbage out,’ said Allbright. That’s profound, you know?’ Dr Tarr giggled. ‘
In vino, veri
true.’ ‘Right. The C-charged brain, the C-charged …’ Lyle Tate picked up two pieces of mirror and held them so that he could see himself perfected, the dark blaze gone, his face become a bright symmetrical mask. The smile was slightly V-shaped, but so much the better, he thought, murmuring, ‘… animal lamina … burn, rub … th’ gin forests, er, of night …’ and finally, ‘Eye sees tiger dreg, it sees eye …’ as the howling chorus crashed about him.