The Man in the Tree (13 page)

Later Avila said, "Don't worry about it. It is very bad, but there is
nothing to be done."
After that Darío did not come any more; Avila said he had gone back to
Uruguay. Peggy turned up once, with another man, at a party in the loft;
Avila spoke to her briefly, and she left with her escort.
When the cold weather came, Avila and Gene moved their work space closer
to the oil stove in the middle of the loft. It was never quite warm
enough even there; the high ceiling drew the heat away, and cold drafts
came from every side of the room. Often in the morning the big windows
were frosted over, glittering in the sunshine like sheets of ice. There
were fewer visitors now, and they worked in a quiet contentment, hardly
speaking all day long.
On weekends, if the weather was clear, they took the bus uptown. They
went to the Museum of Modern Art to see Tchelitchew's "Hide and Seek"
and Calder's delicate mobiles, to the Guggenheim for Kandinsky. They
toured the galleries together, and Avila made skeptical noises. There
were no living sculptors he liked, and very few painters.
They looked at Greek and Roman sculpture in the Metropolitan, and Avila
said, "Here is where most of the crap comes from. They paint their
statues, bright colors, but when we dig them up the paint is gone, so
for two thousand years we think sculpture has to be white. They make
their sculptures to look
alive
, that's why they are so realistic in
form, every proportion, every muscle, and what do we do? We make them
look dead."
He had nothing but contempt for action painting and minimalist art. "A
big mistake," he said. "In eighteen forty, they try to see if they can do
without hard lines, invisible brush strokes and all that classical crap,
so then everybody says, 'Oh, let's see what else we can do without.' First
they do without perspective, then natural forms, then they do without
drawing, and now if you get some house paint and paint a canvas gray,
they call it art. Pretty soon the only thing left to do is leave the
canvas blank."
In the evenings sometimes they went to the ballet with friends, or the
theater, or to a movie. Avila was fond of the films of Chaplin and
Buster Keaton that turned up occasionally at the Museum of Modern Art,
or at the Apollo uptown; he could seldom be persuaded to go to a modern
film. He liked everything that was choreographed, economical, and certain
in movement; he detested the work of actors who were stars because they
were handsome. "What you see makes what you are," he said. "Watch crap
long enough, you are crap."
Sometimes when they had been to the Metropolitan Museum, or to a movie
uptown, or to the Cloisters, they went back to Gene's apartment because
it was closer than the loft. Avila's 'Hierophant' was on the bookcase,
and Gene saw him looking at it whenever he entered the room. One day he
said, "Don't you ever wish you could keep things instead of selling them?"
Avila shrugged. "Sure, I wish. If I was a rich man, maybe I keep everything,
like Picasso. Or if I was a bird I would fly."
"I could give you back this one," said Gene.
"No. You bought it, it is yours. Let's talk about something else."
Gene thought about it for a long time. Next week, when they entered the
apartment, there were two 'Hierophants' on the coffee table. Avila stopped
when he saw them. He looked at Gene, then at the two bronzes. "What is this?"
he said. He walked forward, picked up one of the statues and examined it
minutely, then the other.
"It's for you, a present," said Gene.
There was something haggard in Avila's expression. "But how did you do it?"
"I had it copied."
"Copied, what do you mean? A mold, then another casting in bronze? No."
He turned the two statues on the coffee table. "The patina is the same.
Here, these are the marks of my tools. And here, the same. No casting
could do this. Don't tell me, I know."
With a sense that he had made a catastrophic blunder, Gene said, "lt's
my uncle, he has a special process -- I don't know how it works."
"I want to meet your uncle. What is his name, where does he live?"
"He's my uncle Walter. He lives out on Long Island, but he doesn't see
anybody except me. He's real old and kind of eccentric."
"Now, more than ever I want to meet this uncle. Tell me his address,
I write him a letter."
"No, I can't, Manolo; I promised."
Avila looked at him a moment. "You are lying, aren't you."
Gene did not reply.
"There is no uncle. And the money you have -- There is no trust fund
either, and no parents dying in a plane crash. True? Is this how you get
money, by copying things and selling them? How many copies of this have
you made?"
"Only one, Manolo. Honest."
"Now you are crying. When a man cries, maybe he is telling the truth."
Avila put his hand on Gene's arm a moment and withdrew it. "Show me how
you make these copies."
Gene rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. "Do you want another
copy of this?"
"No. I was worried there were others, that's why I was angry. If there
is supposed to be one and there are three, four, then
I
am a liar. Make
something else. Here."
He picked up a little brass bell. "Take this, we go to where you make
them."
"I can do it here." Gene put his hand over the bell, reached and turned;
when he withdrew his hand, there were two bells side by side.
Avila looked at them incredulously, picked them up, weighed them in his
hands. He stared at Gene. "This is a trick?"
"No."
Avila put the bells down on the table. "How do you do it?"
"I don't know. I can't explain."
"And it is real -- not a trick."
"Yes."
After a moment Avila said, in Spanish, "By the Virgin and all the saints,
I have seen many things, but never this. I am sorry that I have seen it,
because I am a man who does not believe in magic or in supernatural
things." He picked up one of the bells and set it down. "Listen to what
I tell you. I know you did this for affection, to please me. I would show
my gratitude and keep the 'Hierophant.' But I can't; it is a known piece,
someone would see that there are two. You must destroy the one you made."
"Yes, Manolo."
"And promise that we will never talk about this again."
Avila had a record player and a large collection of records, most of them
classical. Listening with him in the evening, Gene learned to love Satie,
Pachelbel, Vivaldi. He bought these records for himself. Once when they
were in his apartment, Avila looked them over and said, "These are all
the same as mine. Why do you copy my taste? Buy other records, find out
what you like yourself." He tried, but it was no good; the only things
he could love were the ones he had heard with Avila.
In 1961, when they had been together for a year, Avila allowed him for
the first time to cast one of his pieces in bronze. It was nothing like
Avila's work; it was a standing figure made up of the shifting planes
and curves that obsessed him then; when it was patinaed and polished,
the light gleamed like water in the subtle intersections.
Gene wanted to offer it to a gallery, but this Avila would not permit.
"You are thinking that you can sell it, if anybody wants to buy, and
also retain it for yourself. Even if you say you will not, maybe you will
change your mind later. You know what I am speaking of. I said we would
never talk about it, but now it is necessary. This power that you have,
if you use it to make money, to live, that is nothing to me. But anyone
can see that this is a bronze made by the lost wax process, that it is
the only one, there are no others. If you make a copy, you cheat the
man who buys it. Even if he never knows, that does not matter. Make
serigraphs if you want, or etchings, if you want to sell your work;
then there is no dishonesty. An artist must not be a criminal,"
At first Avila had made a joke of the difference in their height. Once
he had said, "Why do you sit down when I talk to you?"
"I don't want to look down at you."
"But if you are not taller than I am, how can you look down at me?"
After a year or so, these jokes stopped. Gene had been a foot taller than
Avila when they first met. By 1962 the difference was nearly a foot and
a half. Avila, who was taller than most men, was so much shorter than
Gene that they looked absurd together.
Year by year, the world and everyone in it was growing smaller around
him. Ordinary chairs and tables were not big enough; plates, knives,
and forks were like a doll's tea set in his hands. He was better
proportioned now, and at a distance he could appear of normal height;
he had learned to slump when he sat down, and to keep his hands in his
lap as much as possible to avoid calling attention to their size. But
it was impossible to walk on the street or in any public place without
making people stare. They called, "Hey, Shorty!" or "How's the air up
there?" and he had to pretend that he did not mind.
He could no longer travel on buses or subways; he had to jackknife himself
into a taxi, and then he took up the whole back seat; Avila rode with
the driver. In 1963, when he was not quite twenty, he was seven feet
seven inches tall.
That was the year when Avila got a commission for a monumental work
to be erected in a shopping plaza in Atlanta; he flew there several
times for conferences with the architect and the committee. If it were
not for these commissions, Gene realized, Avila would not be able to
survive. Even though he had an international reputation and his prices
were high, he could not make a living by doing small pieces because he
worked so slowly and with such care.
On his return from one of these trips, Avila looked more tired than Gene
had ever seen him. At lunch he complained of a pain in the chest, but
it passed away quickly. Two days later, when they were eating breakfast
together, Avila suddenly put down his coffee cup and bent over, grunting
with pain. His face had taken on a grayish hue, and beads of sweat stood
out on his forehead. Gene took him in his arms. "Manolo, what is it?"
"Can't breathe," Avila croaked.
Gene felt for his pulse; it was fluttery and weak. He helped Avila out
of the chair, carried him into the bedroom and put two pillows under
his head. Avila was curled up in agony; his breath wheezed in his throat.
Gene ran to the telephone and called an ambulance. When he got back,
Avila's color was worse and he did not seem to hear when Gene spoke
to him.
Gene realized with cold clarity that there might not be time for the
ambulance. He put his hand on Avila's chest and felt for the heartbeat. It
was rapid and irregular. He closed his eyes and felt deeper. He could
feel where something was the matter with the heart: the blood was going
in the wrong place. He tried desperately to understand. There was
a valve, opening and shutting, but it was working out of rhythm, and
the blood was not moving through one side. He reached in and felt the
nerves. For a moment Avila's heartbeat steadied; then it stopped. He was
not breathing. Gene threw himself across the body, willing with all his
soul, Make him well! Make him well! But Avila's heart did not beat and
he did not breathe. By the time the ambulance came, it was much too late.
Afterward what he felt was not grief but emptiness. There seemed to be
no reason to do anything in particular. It was not worth the trouble to
go anywhere; there was no one he wanted to see.
In his wallet, preserved all these years, he found the card the carnival
man had given him: Ducklin & Ripley Attractions, Ron E. Ducklin, Owner,
and a box number in Orlando, Florida. On New Year's Day, 1964, he sent
a telegram: CAN YOU USE GIANT?
Chapter Twelve
What does it profit us to preserve these bones,
Pretending that the dead will rise some day
Clotted with earth, like monsters in a movie,
Knowing that underneath the stone
The slow centuries leach them one by one away?
Why should it disturb us that a loved one's eye
Tomorrow may become a coney's foot and join the dance?
Let the molecules go, dispersing into earth and silence:
Let them turn again to wrist and elbow, hip and thigh,
Trying the old game again, taking another chance.
--Gene Anderson
He found Ducklin in a house trailer fitted out as an office, parked among
other trailers and semis on a muddy lot outside Orlando. The carnival
owner was a little older and fatter; he still wore his baseball cap,
pushed back over his balding head. He shook hands and then sat down
behind his desk, staring up at Gene. "How tall are you?" he asked.
"Seven feet eight, about."
Ducklin squinted at him and rubbed his cheek with his hand. "Well, we can
hype that up a little. Maybe put lifts on you. Now, our season starts
March twenty-eight. What I'd like you to do, if you could get down here
say about the twenty-sixth, then Mike Wilcox, he's the sideshow agent,
he could start showing you the ropes. One thing I can tell you now, you'll
need a gold ring that fits easy enough so you can take it on and off
and show it to the marks. Just a plain ring, like a wedding ring. Get
it made by a jeweler. Then you sell 'em brass copies. Mike might have a
box of them brass rings around somewhere to get you started. You buy
them by the gross, cost you about eight cents apiece, and you sell 'em
for seventy-five cents. Then there's photographs -- eight-by-ten
glossies -- you can get them made before you come down. You ought to
have about two thousand to start. You sell them, too, autographed,
for a buck a shot. Now about transportation, you probably noticed,
we travel by truck. How did you come down here?"
"I flew to Orlando and took a cab."
"Uh-huh. Well, you'll need a trailer or something to live in. Tim Emerson,
that was our last giant, he had a converted moving van -- he died in
fifty-eight. His widow probably still has it; I'll get Mike to find
out and let you know. Now, let's see." He opened a drawer of the desk
and pawed through it with grunts of exasperation. "Can't find a damn --
Oh, here. Now this is our standard contract for performers." He took out
a ballpoint pen, scribbled briefly, and handed the pages over. "You can
fill in your name and address up there, and then just sign at the bottom."