Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow [15]
Thus began Evelyn Nesbit’s concern for the thirty-two-year-old geriatric artist and his daughter. The man had a long Jewish name that she couldn’t pronounce so she took to calling him Tateh, the name by which the little girl called him. Tateh was president of the Socialist Artists’ Alliance of the Lower East Side. He was a proud man. Evelyn discovered that there was no way to approach him except by coming to have her silhouette done. Over a period of two weeks the old man executed a hundred and forty silhouette portraits of Evelyn. After each one she would hand him fifteen cents. Sometimes she demanded a portrait of the little girl. Tateh executed over ninety of these, and he took more time with them. Then Evelyn asked for double portraits of herself and the little girl. At this the old man looked directly at her and a terrible Hebraic judgment seemed to flash from his eyes. Nevertheless he did as he was asked. As time went on it became apparent to Evelyn that while people sometimes stopped to watch the old man work, very few people asked to have their portraits done. He began to create more and more intricate silhouettes, full-figured, with backgrounds, of Evelyn, of the little girl, of a drayman’s horse plodding by, of five men in stiff collars sitting in an open car. With his scissors he suggested not merely outlines but textures, moods, character, despair. Most of these are today in private collections. Evelyn came nearly every afternoon and stayed for as long as she could. She dressed down to be as inconspicuous as possible. Following a Thaw practice she paid great sums of money to the chauffeur to keep him quiet. Gossip columnists began to infer from Evelyn’s disappearances that she was engaging in reckless liaisons, and her name was linked with dozens of men around town. The less she was seen the more slanderous the reports became. She didn’t care. She sneaked off to her new love interest on the Lower East Side. She wore a shawl over her head and a tattered black moth-eaten sweater over her shirtwaist; the chauffeur kept these for her under the car rug. She went to Tateh’s corner, stood for her portrait and feasted her eyes on the little girl at the end of the clothesline. She was infatuated. And all this time there was no man in her life other than her mad husband, Harry K. Thaw. Unless she wanted to consider her secret admirer, the young man with the high cheekbones and blond moustaches who followed her everywhere she went. She had seen him first at Tateh’s corner, standing across the street and turning his eyes away when she challenged him with her gaze. She knew her mother-in-law employed private detectives but she decided he was too shy to be a detective. He had learned where she lived and what her daily routine was, but he never approached her. She felt not intimidated by his attention but protected. Intuitively she felt his admiration like a keenness in her own breath. At night she dreamed of the little girl, woke up, thought of her. Plans for the future flashed in her mind like fireworks and quickly disappeared. She was anxious, overwrought, aroused, unaccountably happy. She would testify on her husband’s behalf and do it well. She was hopeful that he would be found guilty and locked up for life.
The little girl in the pinafore held her hand but would not say anything to her. Even to Tateh she spoke few words. Tateh said no one mourns like a child, not even a lover. Evelyn realized that the old man’s pride would have driven her off long ago if he had not perceived that her attentions to the little girl were helpful. One day Evelyn came for her portrait and neither father nor daughter was to be seen. Fortunately she had learned where they lived, on Hester Street, over a public bath. She went there now, walking quickly,