receiver with a bang.
With the connivance of Gertrude and others, Strether disposed of a steady stream of his richly priced gems. There were no bargains in that simple adobe studio. A whole year could be lived upon the proceeds of one sale, including his sojourn in the Greek islands. This year, with the Farthing sale already under his belt in April, Strether just might be in for a double-header.
Mine was the role of the Judas Goat. I had proven valuable on an earlier midday affair when I quite by chance expounded on the Minoan influences of terra cotta and pale blue in Strether’s colors. It clinched a sale that had been dangerously at sea. I saw Gertrude’s eyes narrow as she reassessed my worth upwards. Thereafter I was usually included when another Strether was ready, to lure the new victim forward.
At first blush, I felt guilt at taking part in this charade, but in time, I found a rationale for my actions. The rich of this world are fully able to take care of themselves financially, and perhaps emotionally. It’s the artists of the world who need help.
I later expanded my Minoan touches to include a short lecture on the classical proportions of Strether’s panels, the impeccable quality of his surfaces and the subtle O’Keeffean overtones in his shading. I quite relished these professorial touches. The more shameless the trickery, the more I embraced it.
Today was the debut of another painting. Strether rose early to set things straight with a phone call to tell me about his new piece. He spoke almost in a whisper, every word a special confidence. “I saw a glorious sign in the sky early one morning, three stars in a row and the whole painting appeared in my mind,” he said. Considering that all of his paintings were exactly the same motif, a blue square in the middle of a mottled brownish rectangle, it was no great feat to have it appear fully clothed in the mind. I asked him to describe it.
“A blue doorway in an earthen wall. Colors and composition had already been worked out, as if from on high. The blue of opportunity, a new life and the earthen colors of the status quo. I saw the exact texture on the linen.”
I knew this celestial assistance would become a major theme at dinner parties. “As our friend, Mozart. Whole symphonies downloaded like so much email?”
“You’re making fun of me now. But it really happened.”
I felt my nose for growth as I said, “I’m sorry. I can’t wait to see it.”
Strether said, “There are new ideas in this piece. The stars in the doorway.”
The stars were definitely something new and this was his calculated way of letting me know that the stars would be the subjects of my dissertation after lunch. If I lectured convincingly on their stunning originality, I could pay for my lunch and continue to be a member of the Strether cabal.
“Stars. How exciting.”
“Think about it,” he said. “We’ll gather at twelve.” He rang off.
Strether had no sense of humor at all and I always felt bad after I flung a bit of sarcasm his way. He was strangely without the usual defenses. Furthermore, he was dishonest only on the large matters, while maintaining scrupulous uprightness on all the other, smaller issues. It confused me that a thousand small blessings could make up for one major crime. What exactly was the meaning of moral turpitude and was Strether born without it, arriving in this world with a chromosome missing? Did luring the gullible rich into parting with some of their hoard really constitute a sin?
As long as I proved a capable shill, I would be included in future lunches and I would be given moneyed contacts to exploit later on my own, after the Strether purchase was safely in the bag. I repeated in my mind what I remembered about Orion and Betelgeuse and the mid-winter meteorite showers as I parked the car below his house.
Strether’s house was simple and classic, without modern heat and only rudimentary electrical outlets and plumbing. Its high, elegant windows gave a full view of a pristine valley below. The multi-paned windows were recycled from the Sisters of Loretto School razed for downtown development and the walls were surfaced in authentic mud plaster. In the courtyard was an ancient juniper, a remnant of the primordial tree cover of the area. Lunch was set in its shade at a pine table with pottery and glassware from Mexico, Georgian silver forks and cotton napkins.
Indoors, I could see that the others were there already: the novelist, Gertrude and Strether, who was pouring white wine from a pitcher into more Mexican glassware. The novelist saw me first and smiled a welcome.
“So much talent at a small luncheon. How delicious,” he said.
“It’s good to see you again. Isn’t this a wonderful house?” I said.
Before he could answer, Gertrude sensed something amiss, information not given to her. She said, “What’s this? I hadn’t realized you knew one another.”
“When you said novelist I didn’t know you meant Willard Chivers here. We met last week at the Halcyon Gallery.” I patted Willard on the arm, while Strether disappeared into the kitchen.
Gertrude was not satisfied, however, staring pointedly at me. She was a short, heavy woman with costly processed hair a color somewhere between rosé wine and straw. When required to, as she did then, she could pull together the ranging parts of her frame into stiff uprightness, a definitive version of social outrage. “Indeed. Are there suddenly dozens of novelists in town? A literary convention, perhaps?”
Since Gertrude’s thrust required a parry, I thought over what my answer would be. Willard and I had met the week before at the opening night gallery reception for a young landscape painter. There was a crush at the bar and we bumped elbows as we reached for the same plastic cup of wine. He laughed and I noticed he had straight white teeth. Expensive teeth. He was a slim man, aging well, with bright blue, friendly eyes. He had the long narrow frame of an ascetic monk from Athos.
We talked a bit and I told him that I was a painter, too. I invited him to go see what remained of my one-person show at the Ludlow Gallery. “The reviewer in The New Mexican termed me a ‘Minor Mannerist Landscapist, worth watching,’” I said. I thought that was a humorous comment and I saw him smile, too, as he wrote down the address of the Ludlow Gallery. We parted ways when friends of his arrived to take him to dinner.
Gertrude, who seldom gave benefit of a doubt to anyone, suspected something other than this innocent encounter. Her bright eyes stayed on my face as I formed an answer for her.
Mercifully, Willard interrupted with, “No matter, it’s too nice to loiter inside. Let’s go to the terrace.” He took Gertrude’s ample arm with “My dear” and propelled her through the French doors. He had expertly cut short her questions for the moment. “Donald says you terrorized the Red Cross in Paris during the war. Tell me all.”
Nodding and smiling at Gertrude’s oft-repeated tale, Willard showed his patience and kindness. The hardship of war, particularly her own, was her favorite subject and she carried on until we were seated at table. Lunch was a cold poached salmon, a large bowl of salad greens from the patch Strether grew out back, a peasant loaf and Spanish white wine in the Mexican glasses. Apple tart and espresso followed.
On the surface, Strether’s persona was that of a simple, ethical man of the arts. He eschewed chemical pigments in his work. He was concerned with the encouragement of traditional adobe architecture and was a keen proponent of solar design, heating his house only with a wood stove. He gardened to have organic vegetables for his guests, and he entertained simply but with style. Small but annual contributions arrived in his name at the opera and chamber music festival. Was
