Bluebeard - Kurt Vonnegut [40]
“I give up,” I said.
And he said, “Paul Slazinger and Rabo Karabekian.”
There in the foyer, he said to me, “Until you dropped your eye patch, I had no idea how vain you were. That’s a perfectly acceptable wink under there.”
“Now that you know,” I said, “I hope that both you and Polly Madison clear the hell out of here and never come back again. How you two took advantage of my hospitality!”
“I paid my share,” said Mrs. Berman. This was true. From the very first, she had insisted on paying for the cook and the food and liquor.
“You are so deep in my debt for so many things besides money,” she went on, “you could never pay me back in a million years. After I’m gone, you’re going to realize what a favor I did you with this foyer alone.”
“Favor? Did you say favor?” I jeered. “You know what these pictures are to anybody with half a grain of sense about art? They are a negation of art! They aren’t just neutral. They are black holes from which no intelligence or skill can ever escape. Worse than that, they suck up the dignity, the self-respect, of anybody unfortunate enough to have to look at them.”
“Seems like a lot for just a few little pictures to do,” she said, meanwhile trying without any luck to clip her watch around her wrist again.
“Is it still running?” I said.
“It hasn’t run for years,” she said.
“Then why do you wear it?” I said.
“To look as nice as possible,” she said, “but now the clasp is broken.” She offered the watch to me, and made an allusion to my tale of how my mother had become rich in jewels during the massacre. “Here! Take it, and buy yourself a ticket to someplace where you’ll be happier—like the Great Depression or World War Two.”
I waved the gift away.
“Why not a ticket back to what you were before I got here?” she said. “Except you don’t need a ticket. You’ll be back there quick enough, as soon as I move out.”
“I was quite content in June,” I said, “and then you appeared.”
“Yes,” she said, “and you were also fifteen pounds lighter and ten shades paler, and a thousand times more listless, and your personal hygiene was so careless that I almost didn’t come to supper. I was afraid I might get leprosy.”
“You’re too kind,” I said.
“I brought you back to life,” she said. “You’re my Lazarus. All Jesus did for Lazarus was bring him back to life. I not only brought you back to life—I got you writing your autobiography.”
“That was a big joke, too, I guess,” I said.
“Big joke like what?” she said.
“Like this foyer,” I said.
“These pictures are twice as serious as yours, if you give them half a chance,” she said.
“You had them sent up from Baltimore?” I said.
“No,” she said. “I ran into another collector at an antique show in Bridgehampton last week, and she sold them to me. I didn’t know what to do with them at first, so I hid them in the basement—behind all the Sateen Dura-Luxe.”
“I hope this babyshit brown isn’t Sateen Dura-Luxe,” I said.
“No,” she said. “Only an idiot would use Sateen Dura-Luxe. And you want me to tell you what’s great about these pictures?”
“No,” I said.
“I’ve done my best to understand and respect your pictures,” she said. “Why won’t you do the same for mine?”
“Do you know the meaning of the word “kitsch”?” I said.
“I wrote a book called Kitsch,” she said.
“I read it,” said Celeste. “It’s about a girl whose boyfriend tried to make her think she has bad taste, which she does—but it doesn’t matter much.”
“You don’t call these pictures of little girls on swings serious art?” jeered Mrs. Berman. “Try thinking what the Victorians thought when they looked at them, which was how sick or unhappy so many of these happy, innocent little girls would be in just a little while—diphtheria, pneumonia, smallpox, miscarriages, violent husbands, poverty, widowhood, prostitution—death and burial in potter’s field.”
There was the swish of tires in the gravel driveway. “Time to go,” she said. “Maybe you can’t stand truly serious art. Maybe you’d better use the back door from now on.”
And she was gone!