The Feast of Love - Charles Baxter [34]
Both God and love are best described and addressed by means of poetry. Poetry, however, is also stone dead at the present time, like its first cousin, God. Love will very quickly follow, no? Hmm? Don’t you agree? I asked. After God dies, must love, a smaller god, not follow?
Uh, I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it, said Bradley, our new neighbor. Do you want some dessert, Professor? I got some ice cream here in the refrigerator. It’s chocolate.
A very nice change of subject, Esther said, breathless with relief. Harry, she continued, I think you should save Kierkegaard for some other time. For perhaps another party. A party with more Ph.Ds.
She gave me a loving but boldly impatient look, perfected from a lifetime of practice. Esther does not like it when I philosophize about love. She feels implicated.
Okay, I said, I’m sorry. I get going and I can’t help myself. I’m like a man trying to rid himself of an obsession. Actually, I am that man. I’m not like him at all.
Esther turned toward Bradley Smith. Harry is on the outs in his department, she said. He does all the unfashionable philosophers, he’s a baggage handler of Bigthink. What do you do, again, Mr. Smith? You explained but I forgot.
Well, he said, I’ve just bought into a coffee shop in the mall, I have a partnership, and now I’m managing it.
This interested me because I’ve always wanted to open a restaurant.
Also, he continued, I’m an artist. I paint pictures. There was an appreciable pause in the conversation while Esther and I took this in. Would you like to see my paintings? he asked. They’re all in the basement. Except for that one — he pointed — up there on the living room wall.
Esther appeared discountenanced but recovered herself quickly.
The artwork he had indicated had a great deal of open space in it. The painting itself covered much of the wall. However, three quarters of the canvas appeared to be vacant. It was like undeveloped commercial property. It hadn’t even been compromised with white paint. It was just unfulfilled canvas. Perhaps the open space was a commentary on what was there. In the upper right-hand corner of the picture, though, was the appearance of a window, or what might have been a window if you were disposed to think of it representationally. Through this window you could discern, distantly, a patch of green — which I took to be a field — and in the center of this green one could construe a figure. A figure of sorts. Unmistakably a woman.
Who’s that? I asked.
The painting’s called Synergy #1, Bradley said.
Okay, but who’s that?
Just a person.
What sort of person? Who were you thinking of?
Oh, it’s just an abstract person.
Esther laughed. Bradley, she said, I never heard of an abstract person before. Except for the persons that my husband thinks of professionally. Example-persons, for example.
Well, this one is. Abstract, I mean.
It looks like a woman to me, Esther said. Viewed from a distance. As long as it’s a woman, it’s not abstract.
Well, maybe she’s on the way to becoming abstract.
Oh, you mean, as if she’s all women? A symbol for women? There she is, not a woman but all women, wrapped up in one woman, there in the distance?
Maybe.
Well, Esther said, I don’t like that. No such thing as Woman. Just women, and a woman, such as me, for example, clomping around in my mud boots. But that’s not to say that I don’t like your painting. I do like it.
Thank you. I haven’t sold it yet.
I like the window, Esther continued, and all those scrappy unpainted areas.
It’s not quite unpainted, he informed us. It’s underpainted. I splashed some coffee on the canvas to stain it. Blend-of-the-day coffee from the place where I work. It’s a statement. You just can’t see the stains from here.
Ah, I said, nodding. A statement about capitalism?
Esther glared at me.
You want to see my pictures in the basement? Bradley asked.
Sure, I said, why not?
Only thing is, he said, there’re some yellow jackets nesting in the walls — or wasps — and you’ll have to watch yourself when you get down there. Careful not to get stung.
We’ll