The Italian Teacher(55)
“Not enough of you or me to go around, son,” Bear responds approvingly. “It’s us two in this dogfight. Anyone disposes of my work for money alone, it’s betrayal. Plain and simple. But you won’t stand for it.”
“Not while I’m alive and kicking. No, sir!”
“You know it, don’t you, Charlie? You know. They are yours. My paintings. All I got. Not for the other kids.”
“Where do you even have them, Dad?”
“At the French cottage. All my old pictures, right there in the studio. No rat will find that place. But when I croak, kiddo, I’m leaving you the keys. When I check out,” Bear concludes, “I’m in your hands. You, my boy. You are the one.”
Although Bear never realizes it, this is the moment when his son takes over.
46
Without telling anyone, Pinch heads to France. He is cantankerous throughout the drive, recalling taking this route alongside Barrows, plus Julie telling him to “freshen up” with a spell at the cottage. The pity burns into him still.
Pinch parks outside the cottage, slams the car door, marches toward the art studio, praying that these old keys—tossed in a suitcase pocket after his trip here with Barrows—will work. He tries them one after another, turning left and right, wiggling, shaking. The bottom lock opens but the second remains locked. He is at the end of hope, tries one last time—and the tumblers turn.
Dim morning light silhouettes Pinch. (It’s dawn; he drove through the night.) Before him is the potter’s kiln and an easel, as if Natalie were to one side, Bear to the other. But this is distinctly Dad’s territory. Propped around the walls are Bavinsky canvases, front sides turned from view. This is what Bear has clung to; these are to be his legacy. More than two dozen huge paintings. Pinch turns, looking back through the studio door as if there were someone behind, spying.
After a minute at the entrance, he walks up the overgrown lawn, leaving the door wide open, purposely reckless (though petrified to do so). Fear causes him to hike faster into the woods. It’s freezing, dewy, slippery. He has hardly eaten since departing London yesterday evening—just a fatty pork pie on the hovercraft. Shivering as he strides, Pinch speeds up to generate warmth, jogging now, gasping, pushing himself to go faster. Stumble on a stump and you break your leg—that’d be the end. Nobody finds you here.
In the closest town, he buys a ham baguette, and devours it on the street. Back at the cottage, he glugs a bottle of red wine, draining the contents in fifteen minutes, then tossing it out the window. The bottle lands silently on the grass. He finds a flask of Armagnac and downs that in large gulps, then storms back into the studio as if to punch someone, the location still infused with eye-stinging visions: Barrows sprawled on the floor, Pinch bursting in, disgracing himself.
He scours the place for something to give Birdie. Not a painting but something small, secondary and obscure—a piece he could sell on the sly. He finds no old sketchbooks, however, no napkin doodles, nothing extraneous. Bear is so controlling about how he’ll be seen. Pinch kicks the air, nearly losing his balance, only now realizing how drunk he is. “All this fucking way for nothing.” He wavers before the huge canvases, whose reverse sides are smudged with Dad’s handprints, tobacco burns fraying the fabric. Pinch lurches at the closest painting, wiping his hands—still greasy from the sandwich butter—right there on the back of a canvas.
This fails to quell him, so he drags the canvas over, clutching the stretchers with one hand, pushing the rear of the picture with his other, jaw clenched, dropping to his knees to shove harder still, closing his fist now, knuckles twisting into the spine of the painting, the fabric taut, tacks buckling.
A pop: paint sprinkles, flaking down the front side. And Pinch falls back. He stands in haste, blood drained from his head, dizzy, ill, panicked yet still drunk enough for defiance. He tosses the painting aside. It falls on its face, banging onto the floor as he staggers away.
After a dry-mouthed slumber in the cottage, Pinch awakens in his father’s bed, nauseated. At each step he takes to the bathroom, his brain shudders. He sits to piss, covering his eyes. He retains enough booze in his blood to wish that someone burned the whole art studio, that he could run away. He’s also sober enough to decry his lunacy of five hours before, and to dread consequences. What did I do?
He runs a bath, looks furtively out the window. What if Dad were to turn up? Pinch sits in the hot water, sweat rolling down his forehead. He pulls at his hair, a blond strand coming off in his hand, floating away in soapy water. He digs his fingernails into his hairy thighs, scratching hard enough to incise red lines. That painting is worth more than I’ll earn in my life. It is part of art history. Or was.
It occurs to Pinch that he doesn’t even know which picture he ruined—never even turned it around. Barefoot, he hastens across the frosty lawn in a towel. He dries himself before entering. Teeth chattering, he walks toward the painting, picks it up, wipes away floor dust, and turns it around: an oversized picture of a woman’s hands, a tangle of fingers, the image disastrously cracked, an entire patch missing, the underdrawing visible on stained canvas. But still, Pinch recognizes these hands: his mother’s.
Like an insect in a matchbox, he paces back and forth across the studio. He shudders from the cold, yet throws his towel into a heap by the door. He keeps checking the damage, naked and crouching there, chewing down his fingernails. Each look sickens him anew. The canvas is distended where he rammed his fist. He finds pliers, picks off the bent tacks, frigid hands pulling the canvas tight—which only causes more paint to flake. In dismay, he grabs his hair, plier tips jabbing into his scalp. Slow down!