The Italian Teacher(94)
He presses the tip of his sable brush into a shiny blue knob of paint, swipes the laden bristles across the center point of the canvas. Gingerly he proceeds outward, his nose close enough for its tip to become flecked with color. Many hours later he retreats, bashful to have painted himself. His gaze drifts down the shaft of the paintbrush, halting at his tight fingers. “Artists shouldn’t question,” Natalie once said. “We should just do, like ants.”
“Why am I talking?” he asks the studio. “Only me here.”
But he finds solidarity here, linking himself with all those quiet types who looked upon blank surfaces with expectation, those who mark objects to erase themselves, who dissolve in the bliss of work. Pinch raises his brush, leans forward on the balls of his feet, floorboards creaking. From the corner of his eye: all these painterly tools, a kaleidoscope of colors, his companions. Is that tragedy? That the peaks of my life are entirely inside? Other people—those I so craved— mattered far less than it seemed. Or is this what I pretend?
As the tide of sadness flows closer, he returns to work, misplacing himself there, though it’s his own image taking shape before him. After a measureless stretch of time, he wipes his brushes on rags, drops them into the turps jar, and sits beside the spattered boom box on the floor, clicking a CD into action. His father required bopping jazz to work, but Pinch cannot hear music while painting. Only after.
He lies on the studio floor, fingers laced behind his head, knuckles pressing with pleasant soreness into the wooden boards, his entirety absorbing Schumann’s Kinderszenen op. 15, no. 1. “Von fremden L?ndern und Menschen.” He inhales the paint fumes, his breath quickening, eyes stinging. He sits up, glances around: a blurred, joyous sight.
2010
78
It is entirely sensible when Pinch and Jing—he nearing sixty, she nearing fifty—initiate a sexual relationship. She’s matter-of-fact about the human body, and her bluntness amuses him. They continue to sleep in separate rooms, however. Intercourse is just something that happens when it suits both parties, like her bruising massages. Equally, they have reached genial accord about running the household: She vacuums and gardens, never squeamish about snipping slugs in two with the secateurs; he does their laundry and irons, even if he’s falling behind lately, so weary all the time. These past years have exhausted him. For once, he should try a proper vacation, catch up on sleep, not just race off to France. He ponders this an instant. Never!
“Did you bring down the napkins?” Jing asks.
“Yes, yes.” But he hasn’t, so opens the cupboard, reaching for them. She laughs to have caught him out. “I’d done it in the future!” he protests. “The future past. Hey—I invented a new verb tense.”
They often share meals; it’s harder to shop for one. “If you’re cooking tonight, make something horrible, so I don’t overeat again,” he says. “Look at this abomination.” He lifts his shirt to expose his paunch.
“You’re thin.”
“Hey, don’t minimize my gut,” he replies. “I put a lot of work into this.” Yet she is right—he’s trimmer with age. “Lack of exercise clearly agrees with me.”
When they’re splitting dinner one night, he burns his tongue on the chicken soup. The injury takes ages to heal, with the annoying side effect of causing him to salivate constantly, which makes him thirsty, which makes him glug water, which makes him pee. He is reminded of his water-drinking contests with Barrows, so sends her an email, which proves awkward when his situation takes on a different shade.
A visit to the doctor places Pinch on the wrong side of that window between the healthy and the ill. “I quit years ago. My father was the heavy smoker—perhaps I inherited this from him,” Pinch jokes, without amusement.
“It isn’t something you inherit,” the oncologist replies. “As I tell all my patients, three out of four people will suffer from cancer over the course of their lives. Given enough time, it’s the natural state of cells.”
“I don’t find that particularly comforting.”
The oncologist speaks of Kaplan-Meier curves, how each case is different, that we’re talking about a range here.
“Thank you for explaining that,” Pinch says, so terrified that he clings to manners.
“Twelve to thirty-six, if you’re asking for a number.”
“Months,” Pinch adds, smiling to appear cavalier. “That’s quite a range!”
“My colleague can run through what’s next.”
When Pinch walks from the hospital, he is unable to register sounds, perceiving other pedestrians as silent beings, who step around him. He needs to tell someone, a particular person: Marsden. The time difference makes it too early to call, and writing this in an email would be wrong. So Pinch carries on with his day, which passes in a slow blur: tutoring at Utz, evening classes, exchanges with colleagues, his tongue—the enemy now—darting about in action, then inert on the train home. I was lenient with my students. Why did the diagnosis produce that effect?
Jing knows the test results were today. Hearing them, she poses myriad smart questions, none of which occurred to Pinch at his appointment. He ought to feel gratitude for her interest but is detached, imagining other patients confronting a case like his completely alone. There was probably someone like that in the waiting room today. Never does Jing doubt his diagnosis or urge a second opinion, as others will. Nor does she panic. This is the situation.