A Beast in Venice: (Literary Horror set in Venice) (18 page)

Dear Mr. Stone:

My friend Charles Raymond has shown me the work he purchased from you. It’s brilliant. Please be so kind as to bring two of your favorite works to my house this evening. A man will arrive at your studio at 7:00 to help you and to show you the way.

Respectfully,

Lorenzo Zorzi

P.S. I prefer paintings of women.

Although not feeling up to entertaining, or being entertained, Brigham had a feeling in his gut that this person could help him find Rose. He would be ready.

AS PROMISED IN THE NOTE, a man appeared at the studio and led Brigham, along with two paintings, to the house of Lorenzo Zorzi.

Lorenzo lived beneath Venice in a tremendous arched vault. Its low, bare-brick, Gothic-arched apex curved down to a stone floor the size of a football field. Huge oriental rugs dotted the floor but they appeared small in the vast space.

Devoid of sunlight, the room was lit by hundreds of candles. Wooden partitions decorated with paintings by Titian sectioned off a sleeping area, bath, and dressing room. Otherwise, the vault continued uninterrupted, broken up only by groupings of furniture that created room-like areas. At either end of the vault, and at several places along the walls, fires raged in mammoth medieval stone fireplaces.

A servant led Brigham to the far end of the room, to a tall figure with straight, shoulder-length hair, a rugged complexion, and angular features. Small rectangular dark glasses obscured his eyes and reflected the candles and fireplaces of the room.

Lorenzo greeted Brigham warmly. “Thank you for coming. I know the invitation and the method of delivery were… unusual.”

“Yes, well, artists never turn down an invitation to show their work. I’m afraid, though, I won’t be very good company tonight.”

“I’m sorry. Are you ill?”

“No. My wife has gone missing.”

Lorenzo raised his brow. “Missing?”

“Yes. Vanished without a trace, as they say.”

Lorenzo took Brigham’s elbow and led him to a sofa. “Please, sit down. I had no idea. Have you told the police?”

Brigham sat on the large leather sofa. “They won’t take a missing person report for twenty-four hours. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that. If there’s anything I can do, please let me know.”

“I will, thank you.”

“If you’d rather do this some other time—”

Brigham held up a hand. “No, we’re here now. Let’s proceed.”

“Very well. As I wrote in the note, Charles has shown me your work. It’s wonderful.”

“Thank you. Kind of you to say so. And I’m glad Charles is not upset with me. We had a bit of a misunderstanding the other day.”

“Ah, yes, he mentioned that, but he’s not angry. He seemed to understand.”

“That’s a relief.”

“As to your work, it’s truly remarkable. I know great art when I see it. I’m something of a collector, as you can see.”

Lorenzo nodded toward a number of easels near the sofa, each containing a painting. Brigham recognized them as works by Picasso and de Kooning, as well as the one Charles had bought from him. A servant carried in the paintings Brigham had brought with him and placed them among the others. A light from above beamed down through the hazy atmosphere, illuminating the pictures. The paintings had in common that they were of women or, in the case of Brigham’s, had titles relating to women.

Lorenzo went over to one of the Picassos. “Consider these images. All of women. Not generally flattering images. Not images of beauty. Some would even argue that they evidenced a hatred of women. Exaggerated and distorted features, big mouths, and monstrous teeth. Exposed and misshapen breasts.”

Brigham viewed the paintings from the sofa.

“But, no,” Lorenzo continued, running a finger over the lines of the Picasso, “they don’t mean that these artists hated women. They loved women, and you love women. Maybe not in the way women would like to be loved or think they should be loved by men, but the way men see them and love them.”

Standing in the light, Lorenzo’s black hair appeared white and his skin a ghastly pale. The purple brocade on his dark green coat glistened like gold and contrasted with his velvety red Venetian slippers. “Yet, there is an element of hate. No, hate is too strong a word. Disdain. That’s what it is. They love them for what they are. They represent the potential for continuing the species. At the same time, though, men hold them in disdain. They hate not
the woman
, for they love her and her attributes; the way she looks, the way she feels, and the way she smells. But they hate her for the power she holds over them.

“For example, this painting of yours. Pure abstraction, pure painting, no images of any kind, other than random circles and lines, yet you called it
Woman
. Why?”

Brigham didn’t want to answer this question. The answer was probably much simpler than Lorenzo expected. “Because I don’t paint men.”

Lorenzo laughed. “That’s what you think, but it’s not the real answer. Do you want to know the answer?” He faced Brigham, the fires of the room burning in his dark glasses.

Brigham gestured, indicating that Lorenzo should go ahead and tell him.

“The truth is that something in this picture said
woman
to you. The colors, the shapes, the overall composition, something. You didn’t know it when you painted it, and you may not have been aware of it when you gave it the title, but your subconscious was, and that’s the source of the name.”

Brigham shrugged. “If you say so.”

A log in the fire popped, sending a plume of sparks up the chimney.

“Don’t be so nonchalant about it. You know I’m right.”

No, that’s not how he named his work, but who was he to argue with the likes of Lorenzo Zorzi?

“You wanted to paint a woman, but you couldn’t bring yourself to do it. You left out—no, avoided—all imagery because of your love and disdain for women.”

Brigham rose from the sofa and stood next to Lorenzo. “I appreciate your interest in my work, but you are reading too much into it. Everyone tries to see things in a work of art. To ‘understand’ it. The truth is, artists care about conveying a message only to the extent that the curator or the buyer cares to read one into the work. Consider this Picasso. It isn’t some made-up person; it’s his wife. He painted many such pictures. Did he love her and hate her at the same time? Of course, as she did him. But was he trying to portray a special meaning by the way she was represented? Make a political statement? No. Picasso painted political paintings, but you don’t have to stare at them to find their message; it’s right there, smacking you in the face. He never hid the ball. His goal was to be original. That is the one and only goal of all artists. A curator may write unintelligible gibberish about what the painting means. They use art-speak to mystify, to cast a spell over, the patron. There is a reasonable chance that a buyer is simply some boor with too much money and no understanding of art, who doesn’t want to look stupid when confronted by several hundred meaningless words. They think that if the description can’t be understood, then the work must be good. Important. And the more strange the fucking thing is the better. But in the end, it’s about originality.

“Most artists struggle just to sell a work for a paltry sum. Do you think they really give a shit about making a political or philosophical statement? No. They’re simply trying to create something new, and they believe, for good reason, that the art world expects a deep meaning. There isn’t one.”

Lorenzo reclined on the sofa while Brigham paced before the paintings.

“I saw an interview with Robert Rauschenberg once. The guy who did the fucking goat with a tire around it. Did you know he won the grand prize for painting at the Venice Biennale for a different work? Anyway, when a painter saw the goat, he said, ‘If that’s modern art, I quit.’ But what was Rauschenberg trying to say? Nothing, that’s what. He was just trying to be different. To create something new. In the interview, he talked about his work,
Erased de Kooning
, where he actually had de Kooning give him a drawing on paper so he could erase it. Was that meant to be a deep political or philosophical statement? Of course not. It’s just that everyone was painting like de Kooning. He needed to do something different.”

Brigham sat in a chair opposite the sofa.

“You must intend for your paintings to be more than a bunch of colors on the wall,” Lorenzo said.

“Yes. I would love for the viewer to take something away from my work. Maybe an emotion. They feel the energy of it, or the tranquility, or perhaps only the feeling that they’ve looked at something interesting. Inspiring. But there is nothing hidden. It’s right there in front of you, and what you get out of it depends on you.”

Lorenzo stood in front of Brigham’s painting. “Then this is not a woman.”

“Hell, no. It’s nothing more than random marks on the canvas. Do you see a woman there?”

Lorenzo gently touched the painting with the palm of his hand. “I do.”

“Then that is proof that the psychology of giving it a title works. If I had called it Christ on the Mount of Olives, you’d be on your hands and knees praying to Jesus.”

Lorenzo laughed. “I still think there’s a deeper psychological meaning to your calling the painting
Woman
. Not some hidden symbolism you were trying to convey to the viewer, but something about you personally.”

Brigham smiled. “When I die, have them dissect my brain.”

“That won’t be necessary. I already understand what it means.”

“Oh, you’re a psychiatrist.”

“No, but I have an understanding of the minds of men with respect to women.”

Brigham put his hands behind his head and crossed his legs. “Do enlighten me.”

“This will require some wine.” Lorenzo pulled a cord, and within moments a servant delivered a bottle of red wine along with a platter of fruit and cheese.

“Now,” Lorenzo continued, “consider this: you painted something that bears no resemblance to anything other than a bunch of colors on the canvas. There is no painstaking drawing, no lovingly made and nuanced painting. There is only a random arrangement of color and form that you call
Woman
. Does this not exhibit a disdain for women? A lack of respect, as they say nowadays?”

Brigham swallowed a mouthful of wine. “That’s absurd. I painted a similar work that I called
Still Life with Fish
. There is nothing in the painting that could be remotely associated with the image of a fish, or anything else. Does that mean I hate still life arrangements with fish? Of course not. It means only that I think patrons like to have a title rather than see it called
Untitled
or something nondescript, such as
Composition
. Pollock let his friends name his paintings. He wasn’t concerned with the title or what it represented. Pollock’s
Circumcision
, which hangs here in Venice in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, is a perfect example. He didn’t set out to paint a circumcision, and it contains no imagery of a circumcision. One of his friends gave it that title. The title of a work like Pollock’s is irrelevant, just as it is with mine. People will stare at this painting, looking for the image of a woman. And guess what. They will find it. It ain’t there, but they’ll see it.

“So, you’re wrong. I love women. I can’t take my eyes off them. It’s all I can do to keep my hands off them. They’re the most beautiful thing in the world—”

“Aha! A thing. You consider women objects.”

“No, I consider them mystical creatures provided to us by nature in order to keep the species going. And to that end, we have a burning desire to mate with the ones endowed with certain physical characteristics that facilitate the production and survival of offspring. I don’t want to turn this into an anthropological discussion. Suffice it to say that if you wanted to read anything into that painting, it would be the mysterious and ethereal nature of women. Our sexual counterparts whom nature has given us the nearly uncontrollable urge to grab and have our way with, but which moral development and society forbids. It’s right there on the canvas, as much as any other nonsense you would care to imagine.”

Lorenzo nodded. “I see what you mean. I like you. You are a philosopher as well as a painter. And not just a pretend philosopher feigning interest in social issues to give the appearance of meaning to your work. You don’t care about social issues.”

Brigham shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

“You do the art, and the viewer gives his own meaning to it.”

“That’s it,” Brigham said, spreading his arms wide.

Lorenzo stood in front of Brigham’s paintings. “I must have them.” He turned toward Brigham. “Will you sell them to me?”

Brigham shrugged. “Of course.”

“Excellent.” He handed Brigham a pen and a piece of paper. “Write your fee on this paper, and I will send my man around tomorrow with the money.”

“MR. RAYMOND,” Rose said as she neared the table.

“Please, call me Charles.” 

A servant pulled her chair out and she sat.

“You look radiant,” Charles said.

“I feel like I’m at a Halloween party. Is it me or is there no heat or electricity in this establishment?”

Charles laughed. “I knew you were smarter than Brigham, but he never told me you were funny.”

“That was a real question. You’ll know when I say something funny.”

Charles, dressed in a high-collared coat from the mid-eighteenth century, signaled to a servant, who was also dressed from that period. That servant nodded, and two other servants each brought in a bowl of soup, placing one before Rose, the other before Charles.

“I apologize for not inviting you to dinner sooner,” Charles said as he fanned out his napkin and placed it on his lap. “I couldn’t get away before now.”

Rose sat, elbows on the table, hands clasped, staring silently ahead.