The Italian Teacher(56)
He returns to the cottage, puts on clothes, makes coffee—and returns to the studio. He places an easel beside the damaged painting. Arms quavering from caffeine now, he hoists the damaged painting, rests it on the horizontal tray, lowers the holder, screws the wingnuts tight. He flicks on a floor lamp, leaves it a few steps behind him. The shadow of his own head obscures much of his mother’s hands. He keeps moving to reveal the extent of the damage, yet cannot get out of the way, condemned to his deformed shadow dancing before him.
There isn’t proof it was me. But why would a vandal break in, damage one picture, and of my mother? Then again, why would I do it? “This is an actual crime,” he says fearfully. From the rental car, he fetches his pipe, lights it, smoking hard. Could a restorer save this? Once they know, I’m at their mercy. When he was a museum guard, Pinch often ate lunch in the restoration department, permitted to observe—but from a distance. He hasn’t a clue where to start.
A jar of Dad’s paintbrushes stands on a table. Pinch leaves his pipe smoldering by the door, and he approaches a ruined patch of the painting. He has not painted since age sixteen. He takes a brush, dabs in the air—dry bristles poking nothing, testing the handle weight in his palm. This is a violation. And Dad would notice. But what if I do this, and hide it, and he doesn’t scrutinize this particular painting for a while? I never come back, I ditch the keys, and nobody ever knows that I was here.
But no—Pinch cannot touch even a dry brush to the damaged painting. He drags a second easel beside the first, cuts and hammers together a blank canvas of the same dimensions. This way, he can practice harmlessly, perhaps even deconstruct the strokes of Bear’s composition and test pigment mixtures on a blank ground, grasping how everything fit into the damaged area. Only then, perhaps, possibly, maybe, he could risk a touch-up.
By day three, Pinch is still engrossed in his practice canvas. He has sketched the entire painting of Natalie’s hands. He has tested pigment mixtures. But something strange has happened. As Pinch toils away, time misbehaves, seeming not to move, then rushing forward, chunks strangely deleted. To know the time of day, he must step outside and look at the sky. Is this Thursday yet? Saturday already?
He visits the weekend market, driving too fast around hairpin turns, his gaze still back at the art studio, stirred only when speaking to the Catalan baker, addressing the man in an improvised blend of French and Spanish. At dinner in the cottage, Pinch recollects this exchange, easily his most vital in weeks. He folds himself a sandwich of that man’s bread and another’s paté de campagne, alive to taste and sight (two flies circling above the kitchen table), reflecting on the potency of experience known only to oneself, which nobody else can ever witness, and heightened for it.
“All those cheeses,” he mutters while chewing, walking in memory past market stalls, among merchants and shoppers, including a woman around forty who led two children by their hands. “Est-ce que vous avez essayé leur cassoulet? Est-ce que vous le recommenderiez? Et un vin qui irait bien avec?” he asks her now (at the time, he said nothing). “Je m’appelle Charles. Enchanté de faire votre connaissance. Et les petits, comment s’appellent-ils?”
On his last day at the property, Pinch dares to patch the damaged painting. He cannot know if his restoration is glaringly flawed—he left this so late and these are oils, so the paint won’t dry for weeks; his new brushstrokes glisten. But he must leave, so drives at breakneck speed to Perpignan, buys replacement art supplies, then puts everything as it was, swinging open the studio door to test the sight upon entry. The place is suitably dingy, seemingly untouched, except for the fresh paint smell. He must count on Bear not visiting anytime soon.
Pinch lugs his practice painting outside and rests it by the oil barrel where he’ll burn it. He touches the swaying flame of his Zippo to the back of his canvas. The thinnest smoke line rises—then he spits on his finger, pats out the smoldering dot. There isn’t time to ensure that it burns completely to ash. Guiltily, he thinks of Birdie, for whom he made this trip, and for whom he has obtained nothing. A thought comes to him.
On the drive back, he is stopped at British customs. The officer points at the large painting lying flat in the back of his car. “What’s that about, son?”
Pinch brushes aside an errant strand of comb-over, his hair specked with paint. “It’s just a picture I did.”
“What of?”
“Someone’s hands, my mother’s.”
“Worth something?”
“No, no. Just a hobby.”
“But someday,” the officer says, winking, “we’ll be famous, you and me, hey?” He waves Pinch through.
At the first stretch of open road, he steps on the pedal and hammers the steering wheel in excitement, inadvertently beeping the horn at a station wagon ahead. He drives up beside it, waving in apology; a sullen family glares back. Pinch returns to admiring the road, blinking at a low sun, taking jittery peeks in his rearview, seeing a fragment of his own face, aglow—and a painting in the background.
47
“Wait for Ms. Petros.”
Four minutes pass.
How quintessentially New Yorkish of Eva to call, then place him on hold. But Pinch must accept it. He’s been trying to reach her for days.
“So thrilled to hear your voice!” she says finally, as if they’d ever spoken before. Eva—estimating that the aging Bear nears his expiration date—has been sidling up to his kids, seeking to sell any Bavinsky art they possess. Annoyingly, his multitude of brats owns squat. As for Pinch, he always ignored her calls before. Until, suddenly, he can’t stop ringing. Which is why she made him wait. “Please, dear,” she tells him, “talk to me.”