Scumbler

I go in about a hundred feet, one careful step at a time; creepy, spooky and it gets darker. Then I look behind me. I can’t see the hole where I came in. She did it!

Panic strikes! I scamper back till I see the hole again; the tunnel curved and blocked my view. I climb out and up the ladder. I’ll go ask Sweik to help. I’ll get a rope, more flashlights; more nerve. It’s better I don’t mention anything about this to Kate; she’d be sure it was bad for my blood pressure, only another way for me to be wasting time when I should concentrate on painting. But. Holy God, think of it, tunnels under Paris, I feel like Jean Gabin-cum-Jean Valjean in Les Misérables.

GROUNDED AS WITH ELECTRICITY,

OR AS A PILOT. I’M STUCK TO THIS

EARTH, BURROWING BLINDLY THROUGH IT,

OUR ULTIMATE HOME NEST.

That afternoon, I tell Sweik about the tunnel. He’s moving around some; still being careful, dragging his feet like a prostate case, but moving. He says he’ll help but can’t go down any ladder. That’s OK. I buy some string, some rope, three flashlights, extra batteries, a compass and a detailed map of central Paris. I’m planning a big operation; figure tomorrow I’m into the Paris secret underground world.

WHEELER’S WORMHOLES, PASSPORTS

TO AN ETERNAL INFINITY. I PEEK

IN AND FEEL LIGHT RUSHING PAST

MY EARS – HEARING NOTHING!

I do finishing touches on both paintings of the room. Sweik and I get to drinking wine, so I’m slightly drunk when I leave. I shouldn’t drive that damned bike when I’ve been drinking. The trouble is, it’s hard as hell carrying my box and a wet canvas in the Métro or on a bus. I keep smearing people. It’s not good for paintings and very tough on people. An old lady hit me on the head with a book once. I’d given her a hand-painted back-of-coat. That coat will be worth a fortune someday but definitely not appreciated now. I really felt sorry, tried to give her twenty francs for dry cleaning. That’s when she hit me over the head.

I weave home on my bike. Kate is not happy. I’ve missed dinner and I’m drunk; how wrong can you get? I show her the paintings and it’s OK again. My wife knows what’s important.

She saved my life once when it counted, knows I’m hers. She kisses me, really looks at the paintings; kisses me again and warms up dinner. I eat and we go to bed. It’s hard trying to be an artist, a husband and a father all at the same time. Each one requires a full lifetime and I’ve only got one, probably a short one at that. I don’t know how much I can ask of Kate and still live with myself. She doesn’t want to ask any more of me than she has to, but sometimes I know it’s hard.

Sweik says the difference between a Dane and a Swede is you go down the hole with a Dane and leave the Swede to hold your rope up top. Nobody should ever leave me holding any rope, any time.

THE THIN LINE OF LIFE; A ROPE

OF WOVEN HOPES, RAVELED, WORN,

WE HANG BY IT TILL DEATH.

Next day, I take Sweik over to meet Lotte and help with the tunnel. Sweik goes into his very reserved, well-mannered role. Sweik is handsome in a nineteenth-century-sailor kind of way. He and Lotte will be in bed soon’s his back’s better. I can tell he’s surprised with the way she looks. Lotte looks as if she’s going to correct your grammar, straighten your tie or light a candle for your soul. I know he thinks I’m sleeping with her. Let him think, good for the imagination. I can’t say I’d really mind, but it’s too complicated; I need to conserve what little energy I have left. Besides, I don’t think Lotte’s exactly hot for this old man’s flabby body.

My idea is to map the tunnel, find out where it goes. We’ll use a string to make measurements and a compass to measure directions. I’ll mark it on the map as we go. I tape two flashlights onto my motorcycle helmet to keep my hands free. Sweik gives me a pellet gun to shoot rats. Where the hell did he get a pellet gun? I’m feeling like Tom Sawyer but I’m not shooting any rats if I can help it. After all, it’s their tunnel.

I climb down the ladder and start counting out on my string. I go in about two hundred feet and come to a cross-road. I see my first rat: big bastard, big as a cat; he stares at me, ruby-eyed, then scampers off.

I go back, mark measurements and compass reading on the map with Sweik. One arm of the crossroad goes toward the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés across the boulevard; the other arm toward Saint-Sulpice. I’ll try the one to Saint-Germain.

Lotte’s already leaning all over Sweik. Women are marvelous, have a nose for something valuable. She’ll have him in her sack soon enough, back or no back. She’ll get Sweik all fat with Salzburg cooking. Damn, I’m going to miss the weisswurst. Maybe I’ll raise the rent next month. No, I can’t do that. Maybe I can bargain something for a once-a-month meal. I have a hard time letting go. I’ve got so many strings hanging from me I’m like a three-year-old Christmas tree somebody forgot to take down.

HOLDING ON, HOLDING BACK, HOLDING UP;

ROBBERY, BREAKING IN, BRAKING.

THE PAST BECOMES HEAVY; THE FUTURE

FURTHER AWAY AND I CAN’T LET GO.

I inch along the tunnel toward Saint-Germain. It starts dropping sharply. Maybe I’ll get the bends; should’ve brought along my canary, like a coal miner, in case of gas. I can hear traffic rumbling overhead; a Metro goes by, rattling the stones.

Panic’s surging; I stop a minute to get my bearings. I take slow, deep breaths; whip out the old mantra for a couple of quick Kee Rings; try to think of something else except where I am. What’re they doing up there?

Sticky cobwebs keep brushing against my face; there can’t actually be spiders in all this dark; these must be left over from the Middle Ages. Maybe secret mystic masses were held down here: Ignatius Loyola and his fighting Jesuits.

I flash my light around; don’t see anything except more tunnel. There’s water running over the stones, and dirt’s caught in the spiderwebs. It’s warmer down here than outside. ‘OK, get on with it Scum, stop diddling.’ I reach the end of my string, a hundred meters. I check my compass, mark the spot and go back.

I sneak up the ladder. They’re sitting on her bed. Never trust a Swede at the hole! I climb out and we work over the map again. ‘I’m up to Boulevard Saint-Germain, now; be crossing under the church next.

I go back down and in. I find my mark, drive in a stake and tie the string to my stake. Maybe I should be dropping bread crumbs as I go along; feed the rats. I move on. The tunnel begins rising and turns to the left. There, at the turn, is a big wooden door with iron hinges and a bolt. I give the door a strong pull; it budges and dirt falls. I try two more tugs and the bolt snaps off. The door swings open on its own; the middle hinge is broken, but there are three hinges, so it holds.

I flash my light on four steps down. Now I’m into Ali Baba’s cave. I go down slowly into a big room with cut-stone paving. I flash my light around. There are tall boxes standing against the walls. I start pacing to get the size; this room must have two hundred squares, at least.

Holy mackerel! Those are coffins standing against the walls! Right then, one of my flashlights blinks out and I let myself sink slowly to the ground; time for a little more deep breathing; I need to take a leak, too – mostly just nervous, probably.

The rats’-nester-scumbler mind is spinning. What a great place I could make out of this, a real rat’s nest, burrows and all. Nobody could ever find me, not even the FBI. I turn my head slowly, the flashlight cutting through the dark. There’re maybe twenty coffins around the walls. There’s also something in one corner made of wooden poles and rotted cloth.

It might be tough renting with all the coffins; like one of those French apartments you buy already occupied – only occupied this time by a few dozen corpses.

There’s another door in the wall to my right. I get up, go over, try it. This one’s locked tight; probably leads up to the church, straight into the tabernacle. Hey, maybe I could rent this nest to a religious freak. He’d be the first one to early mass mornings; beat the sexton, the priest, maybe even God himself. I take my leak against the wall while I’m over there.

INSIDE, UNDER, BEHIND; I BURROW

OUT OF LIGHT, OUT OF MIND. I DRILL

INTO A CAST CORE OF CARBIDE HARDNESS.

NEVER MIND.

I go around checking coffins. They’re nailed tight; square-headed nails; wood rotten but holding. Nobody’s going to get out from any of those boxes. I’m beginning to have a hard time breathing again; too much excitement for an old man; ticker’s pounding wildly, skipping beats like a Caribbean marimba player.

About halfway back along the string, I see something moving in the tunnel. I hit the floor without even knowing it.

It’s Sweik; he borrowed a flashlight from Lotte. He got to worrying what the hell happened; thought maybe the rats had wrestled me to the ground. I take him back and show him the room. He comes in behind me and keeps saying, ‘Jesus, man!’ ‘Shit, man!’ ‘Holy fuck.’ We both try that other door but it’s locked tight. I put my flash onto the ceiling. It’s a high-arched vault, no bats, no vampires. We check measurements and head back out to the map.

It feels wonderful being outside in light, clean air. We calculate that room to be directly under the altar of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, one of the oldest churches in Paris.

I’m covered with cobwebs and dirt, so I take a shower in Lotte’s little stall shower. She’s not making any noises at all about not wanting to share now.

DESIRE WASHES AWAY RELUCTANCE,

REFURBISHES TIRED, SWAYING BONES.

WE ATONE WITH ELECTRIC ATTENTION.

We spend the next day exploring. There are tunnels under the whole Left Bank. They go up to Montparnasse and down to the river. We don’t find any more big rooms like the first one but we do find ways to come up in different cellars all over the quarter.

We invade the cellar of a high-class restaurant and snitch a few bottles of wine. That’s a kind of wet dream, direct access to a wine cellar.

I think of getting a Velosolex, one of those little French bikes with a motor on the front wheel; use it to run around down in those tunnels, my own private Métro. But I don’t. I know I’ll use that tunnel somehow, someday, but now I only want to think about it; let my mind play with the idea of deep tunnels and nests under the city.

Sweik tells me he thinks he’ll stay on at the Isis; leave the place for Lotte. I don’t know whose idea this is but I think it’s Sweik’s. He’s no fool.

EGYPTIAN MUFFLED TUNNELS. NO SKY,

NOTHING OPEN, A CAREFUL PREPARATION

FOR AN UNENDING NOTHINGNESS.

7

Chicken

It’s Saturday and one of those spring days we often get in Paris when there’s a constipated heavy sky trying to rain and thick hemorrhoidal clouds listlessly drifting.

I go down into the Marais, ready to start the first painting of my new series. I figure Sabbath’s the best day, not so much traffic. I don’t figure on old ladies.

I’m setting up my box when the first one comes over to me.

‘A nice boy like you shouldn’t work on the Sabbath,’ says she.

‘Not work, my pleasure,’ says I, smiling. Haven’t been called a boy in about thirty years or more.

‘All the same,’ says she, then hobbles on down the street, shaking her head.

I get the box set up. I’m painting the façade of a broken-down old kosher poultry store. It’s the kind of place where they bleed chickens live, old-style; makes me think of South Street in Philly. There they used to keep all the live pigeons and chickens in wooden cages right out in the windows. No birds in the window here, but the same smell.

This place is a terrific mess: smeared cracked windows, dirty white marble tables inside. There’s chicken shit, blood and guts all over; probably the chickens are out of the window for Sabbath.

I’m doing it straight on. I dig in with the underpainting; mostly dark browns and yellows, with some blue for inside. I’m concentrating and flying; this will be a good one. This whole series is going to be wonderful: interesting people, real places, trapped space, good twisting light.

CUTTING LIGHT DOWN AND STILL STAYING TRANSPARENT:

ANOTHER FACE OF REALITY, FUTILE FANTASY. I DRIFT

ON TRANSITIONS TILL WE TOUCH EARTH

IN DARK STILLNESS.

Another old lady comes up. Skinny hag; hair all whichway. No teeth; bottom lip almost touches her nose. The toes are cut out of her shoes; big bunions bulging out. She pushes me away from the box, good strong push.

‘You got permission to paint my store?’

Face right up to me.

‘No, lady, didn’t know I needed permission. May I paint your store?’

‘No!’

I look down at her, trying to figure if she’s only crazy.

‘I’m going to paint your store anyway, lady. Don’t need permission; street’s a public place. Artist’s got some rights.’

She stomps her bunioned foot.

‘I do not give permission!’

She stares at me wetly. Her eyes have Velásquez lower lids, red, watery. She stomps again and goes away.

I get to work; probably isn’t crazy, we’re just not communicating.

Five minutes later she’s back. She looks at the painting for a while. I smile at her, hoping for a convert.

‘I’ll let you paint my store for twenty francs.’

‘I’m sorry, lady; I’m not going to pay. Artist has rights.’

She watches me for a while. She’s not acting mad or pushing now, just watching.

‘There should be chickens in the window.’

‘Don’t need any chickens.’

‘For ten francs, I’ll put chickens in the window.’

‘Don’t need any chickens.’

I prove this by painting a few quick chicken strokes into the window. She still stands there watching me. I try to keep working. There’s a long pause; then she pushes between me and the painting.

‘Why are you painting my store? Why don’t you go paint Notre Dame or some church for the tourists?’

She’s beginning to bug me. I stare down at her. I can see her scalp through thin gray hair. She’d make a fine painting. When I’m mad or drunk, I speak my best French.

‘Look, lady! I’m a world-famous collector of ugliness. I have a terrible passion for ugly things. I paint pictures of ugly things I can’t buy and move to my castle in Texas. I have a whole museum filled with paintings of the most ugly places in the world. They’re from China, Timbuktu and Cucamonga.’

She’s paying attention now.

‘This chicken-shit place of yours is my greatest discovery. I’ve never, in twenty years’ searching, found anything more ugly than your store. I’m going to paint it and put this painting at the top of my collection!’

Her mouth is open. I can see bumpy, hardened ridge where her bottom teeth used to be. She’s staring at me through the whole speech. One eye is slowly dropping to half-mast, like a dead woman’s wink; her eyes are runny cataractal blue. I smile at her. She looks across the street at her store. It’s probably the first time in thirty years she’s actually looked at it. Practically nobody ever looks at anything.

Her place is truly beautiful, beautiful for a painter. It all runs together; the dirt makes everything fit. The old lady stares at me.

‘Maybe it’s dirty, sir; but it’s not ugly.’

She backs off, turns and walks up the street. You never know when and where you’ll meet a kindred soul.

WE TOUCH IN A CAULDRON, TWISTING

MISSES OF CONCURRENT THOUGHT IN A

MORASS, A BOILING SOUP. WE’RE ALL

BETROTHED IN THE SAME BROTH-BREATH.

Two men in black hats and beards are standing behind me. I’ve been listening with one corner of my mind and they’ve been discussing the painting like connoisseurs. They’re into a long discourse on my use of warm and cool colors to penetrate the plane and establish an illusion of space. They’ve got all the baloney together, very impressive. They both have rosy cheeks, bright eyes and a very healthy look. They look like grown-up altar boys. I reach down to get some more medium. One of these guys speaks in perfect English.

‘Pay no attention to her. She is a dir-ty woman.’

I look back at him. He has long curly sideburns and a fine fat-cat look.

‘She’s a dir-ty woman and her shop is not kosher. We tell our people never to buy here.’

‘Not kosher?’

I take a cloth and wipe the word ‘CASHER’ off the window in the painting. They laugh. I get to working again.

The other guy leans closer; maybe I’ll give him a quick dab.

‘Why do you paint pictures, sir? Do you paint them for money?’

‘It’s the way I try to feed my family.’

‘Yes, but do you get joy from it?’

What the hell, nobody ever asked me that. I do. I certainly do; boy, do I ever get joy out of it.

‘Yes, much joy!’

‘But, what is the joy in painting buildings?’

This creep’s right there.

‘Nothing much. Only the joy of making them mine, of having things pass through me; the joy of playing God, screwing some details and chewing up, spitting out others. I enjoy the joy in the great delusion of being alive.’

I’m into it. I go on and on, painting away, slashing and picking at the color, wet-in-wet. The world is forming under my hands. I’m taking things from out there, bringing them in and pushing them out again, like breathing, panting.

‘Painting’s the joy of kissing, sleeping, sunlight, breathing; and it’s all in this work. I get inside, the outside-inness of an exploding wish. It’s more than joy, more than ecstasy; it’s a soft gliding and turning in midair with complete control.’

Holy bloomers, I go on and on. I’m making a total ass of myself, bleeding emotion all over the street. I keep thinking they’ll get embarrassed and go away, or laugh, or maybe call the police. I’m not trying to put them on, just turned on myself. What a great question: ‘Is painting joy?’

Finally I run down, lean further into the painting. Maybe they’ve already gone; I don’t look back. Then one of them puts his hand on my shoulder.

‘You might well be a religious man, Monsieur le peintre.’

The two of them walk away up the street. What a wild thing to say; probably means I’m some kind of maniac. That’s for sure. I guess being a maniac and liking it has to be the greatest insult going for all the sane people in the world.

A WHITE CRY TO THE BRIGHT, SILVER-LINED

CAPE OF MEANING. A BLACK EDGING TO MAKE

IT VISIBLE. BUT IT’S BUTTONED TIGHT,

SMOTHERED BY BONE BUTTONS AGAINST COLD.

I work on. I want to get the impasto finished. It’s a perfect surface for dragging now. I drag to peel paint off the wood horizontally, then wipe it down with dirt, black, vertically. It’s the battle of man versus gravity, energy versus entropy. All art is basically anti-entropic, that is to say, foolhardy; it takes hardy fools.

The inside light’s getting brighter and brighter; pale bright like a morgue light. The chickens look like corpses. They are corpses. It’d scare hell out of some thinking, live chicken; Dachau of the chicken world.

ONE MAN’S FEAST, BANQUET.

ANOTHER’S GROSS INIQUITY.

NOTHING IS FOR NOTHING.

Later, a thin girl slinks up behind me. She squeezes into a doorway. This door is closed; only a very thin person could fit in that doorway. I keep working away. I can’t tell if she’s thirteen or thirty; blond stringy hair. She smiles; I smile back.

‘J’aime beaucoup votre tableau, Monsieur.’

‘Merci.’

That’s enough. I’ve the world’s strongest American accent in French. I can’t even say a simple ‘merci’ without giving myself away. She switches into English.

‘I also am an artist. I study at the school of decoration.’

‘That’s nice.’

I’m not too interested in womankind or any kind right at that moment. It’s no insult or anything; I’m not interested in anything else much when I’m deep in painting.

‘Would you like to drink some coffee with me?’

Oh, sure, here we go: coffee, cigarettes, eye wrestling. I stop, take a good look at her. She seems like a fine, sensitive young woman, maybe twenty-five. I would like to know her, talk about painting. What I can’t figure is why she wants to take time talking to a worn-out old bozo like me.

‘OK. Come back in half an hour; I’ll be finished then.’

She slides away, I figure I’m rid of her. I dig myself back into the work. What do young girls like that want? I know there’s no natural father love in humans, it’s something we have to learn, but it can’t be all that bad. God, if it’s only sex, pick on one of these young bucks stomping around, unbound dongs dangling loose against their knees.

There’s something about a picture painter turns a certain kind of woman roundheeled. But why should I knock it? Maybe I need a shot of vitamin E, need to eat more parsley, oysters, hot peppers. Then again, this young woman might really need or want to talk with another artist. I’m definitely getting too cynical in my old age. I’ll have to watch that. I think I’m mostly afraid, been hurt too often, love-punch drunk, can’t take it anymore.

I work another half hour and there she is. I’m still not quite finished. I squeeze off a little smile and work on. She lights a cigarette and offers me one already lit. I shake my head, tell her I don’t smoke. She takes both those cigarettes between the fingers of one hand and smokes them at once. I never saw that before. She smokes Greta Garbo-style, hollow-cheeked deep drag. There’s much of Garbo there: blond straight hair, thin; Garbo except for the part about wanting to be alone.

I stop painting. I’m finished enough so it needs drying for a while. I pack up, we walk down the street to a café. I’m shooting quick looks around to avoid the scary daughter-of-the-painter, woman. I order a beer. I’m still too excited from the work to take coffee. When I’m up, high with painting, coffee turns me into shatters.

I listen to her, feel myself unwinding. She tells how she’s living with an older married man. He has her put up in a room near here. He comes every afternoon to extract his pound of vaginal, not so virginal flesh. He gives her money so she can go to school; probably proud of her work like a father. Not much original there.

Halfway through the beer, she tells me she won’t take me to her room, very ethical. I didn’t ask! I sip the rest of my beer; I’m flattening out. Then, straight from the blue, no prelims, she volunteers to go to a hotel with me. Now she’s looking into my eyes, feeling for the tongue of my soul. This can usually give me a lift but I’ve nowhere to go. I’m going down fast, irreversible.

I try to stay with her, but it’s impossible. She must see me shrinking before her eyes. I feel any minute I might slip under the table and disappear into a small spot of emulsified linseed oil.

I tell her I’ll be painting around the quarter and I’ll see her another day. I’m fading. She sees it, smart, sensitive woman. There’s some little hurt, disappointment; but nothing world-shaking. She’s an artist, she must understand.

TRIAL, TRIBULATIONS AND LOST EXPECTATION,

NO TENDERNESS CAN SOFTEN SOME BLOWS.

THE TOUCH OF A FEATHER WITH THE STING

OF A WHIP; SOMETIMES TOUCH AND GO.

We need women like her for the bad times. They can crawl out from under atom bombs and start having new babies: two-headed, eight-armed babies with maybe no hair and yellow eyes – all kinds of exciting possibilities. Maybe we can even mutate ourselves out of males, put human beings back together again. It’s an ill wind that blows no good, even if it’s radioactive.

I say goodbye and leave her sitting in the café. I strap the box on my back, check to see the painting’s on tight and mount my bike. The traffic’s a horror and I don’t roll into the house until after five. There are visitors from the States, some spring-tide travelers. I’d like to flop dead but I need to play host, might sell a painting or two, souvenirs of Paris.