The Immigrants (14 page)

“What’s that?”

“Time wasting. Ships are real.”

“And where do you get the million dollars?”

“From Seldon.”

“You’re kidding. That old bastard wouldn’t give you the right time.”

“Maybe—but I never asked for anything. Not one nickel. I’m not going to ask him personally. This is a banking proposition.

Either he sees it that way or not. But I got to have you behind me, not looking at me like I lost my mind.”

“I guess there’s only one thing to hope for,” Mark said.

“What?”

“That England and Germany don’t go to war.”

Dan got up, walked to the wall, and stared at the map. “Mark,”

he said, “you remember the way the city looked after the earthquake and the fire?”

“Who forgets a thing like that?”

“Well, that’s the way the whole fuckin’ world’s going to look a year from now.”

When Calvin Braderman, bearded, with velvet jacket and a black beret, returned to San Francisco after five years in Paris, he brought with him a local corner on Fauvism and names like Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck, Marquet, and Camoin—names which he let drop with authority and intimacy, the suggestion being that if he had not actually shared studio space with these men, he had supped at the same board and quaffed at the same trough of ultramodernism. He

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also brought with him several dozen of his own paintings and two Derains and a Vlaminck, traded, as he casually informed the people of the press, for his own work.

Even a less-talented artist than Braderman—himself only an average draftsman and colorist—would have been welcomed in the city that already considered itself the Paris of the West; and Braderman was lionized. Jean met him at the opening at Scoffers’ Gallery.

Mary Seldon was wont to say, with a sort of perverse pride, that Jean was not artistic. In Mrs. Seldon’s cir cles, a commitment to the arts smacked of pornography and associated indecencies; but in all truth Jean, while possessed of little artistic talent of her own—she had done only middling well in her drawing lessons at school—was utterly fascinated by the world of artists. Her eye was still untrained, but she loved color and mo tion in a painting. Also, she was in the process of build ing walls against Dan. As her initial infatuation for her husband withered, her own sense of self-esteem less ened. She fought to create in herself a series of interests that would restore her self-confidence, and instinctively she chose areas that she felt were outside of her hus band’s ken.

A half a dozen new galleries had opened in San Francisco, and Scoffers’ was one of the most presti gious. Marcy Callan and her fiancé, Johnny Whittier, had persuaded Jean to go with them to the opening. Watching young Whittier stand dour and silent while Marcy gushed over Calvin Braderman and his paintings set Jean to thinking. Johnny Whittier refused to reach into his pocket for a Braderman painting, but Jean se lected a canvas of a group of dancing nymphs and wrote out a check for five hundred dollars on the spot. Hans Scoffers, the gallery owner, immediately turned into a worshipful, overwhelming salesman, and a half-hour later Jean had signed a second check for a thou sand dollars and had become the owner of a landscape by Vlaminck, who, Scoffers assured her, was a great and honored artist. At which point Calvin Braderman

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directed all his charm to Jean, informing her that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever met and that he would not rest until he had painted her. Nor was the gaiety of the occasion marred at all by the fact that two days before German troops had invaded Belgium, after Germany’s declaration of war against France, and in re sponse to this England had declared war against Ger many.

Braderman, five hundred dollars richer, insisted that he convey Jean and the paintings to Russian Hill, and they entered her house flushed and delighted with the exchange of compliments, money, and produce. Dan was upstairs, and hearing Jean, it occurred to him that this was the first time in a long while that he had heard her laugh. He came downstairs from the nursery, where he had been admiring the baby, Barbara, to find his wife and a strange bearded man admiring two paintings that were propped for viewing on a couple of dining room chairs.

“This is Calvin Braderman,” Jean informed him. “And this is my husband, Dan.”

Dan shook hands dubiously. He had never seen a man in a velvet jacket before.

“A pleasure to meet you,” Braderman said heartily. “You have a beautiful home, sir, and a beautiful wife—and now a Braderman and a Vlaminck. I won’t tout the Braderman, but the Vlaminck is a beauty, isn’t it?”

“What the devil is a Vlaminck?” Dan said.

Jean and Braderman burst out laughing. They were laughing at him, Dan realized. For some damned idiot reason, they were laughing at him because he had asked what a Vlaminck was. Jean saw the expression on his face and said quickly, “No, no, Danny, we are not laughing at you. It was just the way you said it—and the three glasses of sherry I had at the opening. Look. That one”— she pointed—“that’s the painting by Maurice Vlaminck. He’s one of a really daring school of paint ing, and they’ve broken all the

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rules and they call them selves Fauvists, and they’re all the rage in Paris now—”

“Well, not really now, my dear,” Braderman inter rupted. “Now it’s cults, Expressionism and Cubism, and the Philistines say that Fauvism is over. That’s like say ing that Impressionism is over and sunlight is a thing of the past.”

“You are so right, Mr. Braderman. I declare myself a Fauvist—I love it. And the next time anyone asks whether I am a feminist, I shall reply, no indeed, a Fauvist. And that one,” she said to Dan, “is a composi tion of dancing nymphs—one of Mr. Braderman’s. You know,” she confided to Braderman, “we inherited two Frederic Remingtons. Daddy adores him, and I never dared even intimate that I don’t like cowboys, and we do need paintings so. What do you think of them?” she asked Dan.

Dan stared at the paintings without replying.

“Well, I must be running along,” Braderman said. “A thousand thanks. Enjoy them. Delighted to have met you, Mr. Lavette.”

Jean took him to the door. When she returned, Dan was still staring at the paintings, his face set grimly.

“Oh, you’re so angry because I laughed at you.”

“God damn it, I’m not! I was so happy to hear you laugh that I raced downstairs. Do you know how long it is since I heard you laugh?”

“I know.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s a brilliant young painter. He’s been in Paris for the past five years. Studying.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“I don’t see why you’re questioning me like this. I met him at the opening. Marcy Callan introduced us.”

“And he calls you ‘my dear.’”

“Danny, it’s only a way of talking that artists have. Of course

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I’m excited. I bought two paintings that are my very own. Aren’t they beautiful?”

“What did you pay for them?”

“What difference does it make? It’s my own money. If you must know, I paid a thousand for the Vlaminck and five hundred for the other one.”

“I don’t think they’re wonderful. I think they’re ridiculous,” Dan said. “And if that’s the best that fop can do, he ought to get out and find some honest work.”

“What a rotten thing to say!”

“You asked me.”

“And he’s a fop. Because he isn’t a brawling hood lum?”

“Meaning that I am?”

“Dan, I don’t want this to degenerate into a quarrel,” she said coldly. “I don’t think we ought to discuss it further.”

“Christ Almighty,” he whispered, “I love you so much—I love you so much, I want you so much it burns in my gut. I don’t want to fight with you. You can buy a hundred paintings—what the hell do I know about paintings? I got sore because you were both laughing at me and the way he patronized me.”

“Dan, we weren’t laughing at you.”

“O.K.—sure. It’s all right.” He moved toward her, embracing her clumsily, pressing her to his body. First she stiffened; then she relaxed; when he tried to kiss her, his lips parted, she said, “Don’t, Dan. Don’t force it, please. Not now.”

“When?” he yelled, pushing her away from him, “When?”

“When I’m ready.”

Jean felt that Manya Vladavich was the most fascinat ing and interesting woman she had ever met. Miss Vla davich, whose age was

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somewhere between thirty and forty, was dark, full-breasted, and, as Marcy Cal an de scribed her, total y outrageous. In Paris, she had modeled for Matisse and Manguin—and by her own testi mony engaged in affairs with both of them—and now modeled for and lived with Calvin Braderman. She wore dotted veils, flowing crêpe de Chine, and feather boas; and Jean, lunching with her and Marcy Cal an at the Fairmont, found her a little frightening and totally enchanting.

“Darling,” Manya said to her—she pronounced it
dollink
—“one does not buy art, like you buy a dress or a dish. One relates. One becomes a part of it. You are beautiful woman. You are art alive.

You buy a canvas, it becomes a part of what is inside you. You under stand?”

Jean nodded.

“She bought the
Dancing Nymphs
, you know,” Marcy said. “It’s so lovely.”

“Ah, yes, yes,” Manya shrugged. “Pretty. When Braderman paints without passion, he is pretty. When he paints with passion, he is magnificent. You saw a painting called
Orgasm
?”

Jean glanced at Marcy.

“Obviously no,” said Manya, watching Jean intently. “You know what is orgasm?”

“I think I remember it,” Jean said.

“You think,” Manya said gently, and Jean felt she had sinned in some way she only vaguely compre hended. “So tell me the truth, beautiful woman that you are, you know what is orgasm?”

Marcy giggled.

“I don’t really know what you mean,” Jean said.

Manya looked from one to the other and sighed. “Ah, American woman—so young, so beautiful, so in nocent. Orgasm, my darlings, is what happens when a man and a woman make love.”

“You mean—when the man—” Marcy began tremu lously.

Jean felt a curious surge of excitement. She had never talked

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about these things before, never used the words. She was titillated, alive suddenly. She had never known a woman like this, so intense and so open at the same time.

“No, foolish girl,” Manya said. “Not when the man, like you say. What is with the man? An ejaculation, and then it is over, like a monkey. Orgasm is what happens with the woman, not with one little part of her but with the whole body and soul.”

Marcy was blushing. Jean could see the flush creep ing into her cheeks, and then she realized that her own cheeks were burning.

She was frightened and embar rassed, and she fought an impulse to flee, to excuse her self, to find sanctuary in the powder room. She felt that everyone in the restaurant was watching her, the wait ers, the people dining at the other tables.

“Poor, innocent children,” Manya said. “Enough. I make you uncomfortable. We talk of other things. We talk about this beautiful city of yours. It is inspiring, no? Day and night it inspires me.

I think I never go away from it.” She turned to Jean. “You are in new house Braderman says is beautiful, on top of Russian Hill. I am born in Saint Petersburg, so Russian Hill pluck cord inside me.”

“It was designed by Arthur Brown,” Jean said, her words sound-ing inane to her. “He’s very talented. Have you heard of him?” She felt stupid.

“Who has not?”

“You should see it,” Marcy said. “If you like Russian Hill, you must see it.”

“Yes, sometime. You must come.”

“Now is best time. I have whole afternoon free.”

Marcy left them to meet her mother and shop for a bridal gown.

It was a beautiful, cool afternoon, and Manya spread her arms, as if she were embracing the whole city, filling her lungs with air. “You do not breathe, you Americans. The air is so clean and sweet but you do not breathe.”

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Watching her was like watching some lissome animal. Jean, trying to think of some reason why Manya should not accompany her home, was confused and troubled, not by fear, but by her own fascination. She found her self wanting to reach out and touch the other woman, and again she felt her cheeks burning.

“With color, you are divine,” Manya said. “You pre tend to be made of—what is it, like the snow in Saint Petersburg? But in flesh and blood, you show the truth.”

At the house, Manya took over, prowling through room after room, exclaiming, praising, criticizing. She wanted to see the children. Jean explained that at this hour they were outside with the nurse. Then she must see the rooms upstairs. “A room is like a costume you wear. I see the room with the ships and the pictures of ships—so I know your husband. It is his room, no?”

They went upstairs, into the nursery, the guest rooms, and then her bedroom. She crooned over the flowered wallpaper and the lush pink bedspread.

“So feminine—you pour out passion on things, things! But inside, you do not allow it. Am I wrong?” Suddenly, she stretched out on the bed, stretching her arms above her. Then she pulled off hat and veil, smil ing at Jean. “I frighten you, snow lady, don’t I? Why are you frightened?”

“I’m not frightened,” Jean said slowly, feeling that she was in a dream, feeling drunk. But on a single glass of sherry.
What’s wrong
with me?
she wondered.

“Sit here by me.” She sat down on the bed, and Manya took her hand. “You’re trembling. Why?” Manya stroked her hand, and then dropped her own hand to Jean’s thigh and began to stroke it, very gently, very softly, her fingers like feathers, yet every touch of them sending chills through her body. Jean closed her eyes and sat motionless, while Manya’s fingers contin ued their featherlike dance, higher and now touching her Venus mound and resting there.