Bradbury, Ray - SSC 11 (16 page)

 
          
 
" 'My God!' cried Willy, 'you're the
loveliest grand camellia that ever did unfurl!' Whereupon new tides of blush
moved in hidden avalanches within, showing only to color the tent of my body,
the outermost and, to Willy anyway, most precious skin.

 
          
 
"What did Willy do then? Guess."

 
          
 
"I daren't," said the doctor,
flustered himself.

           
 
"He walked around and around me."

 
          
 
“Circled you?"

 
          
 
"Around and around, like a sculptor
gazing at a huge block of snow-white granite. He said to himself. Granite or
marble from which he might shape images of beauty as yet unguessed. Around and
around he walked, sighing and shaking his head happily at his fortune, his
little hands clasped, his little eyes bright. Where to begin, he seemed to be
thinking, where, where to begin!?

 
          
 
"He spoke at last. 'Emma,' he asked, ‘Why,
why do you think I've worked for years as the Guess Your Weight man at the
carnival? Why? Because I have been searching my lifetime through for such as
you. Night after night, summer after summer, I've watched those scales jump and
twitter! And now at last I've the means, the way, the wall, the canvas, whereby
to express my genius!'

 
          
 
"He stopped walking and looked at me, his
eyes brimming over.

 
          
 
" 'Emma,' he said softly, ‘may I have
permission to do anything absolutely whatsoever at all with you?'

 
          
 
" 'Oh, Willy, Willy,' I cried.
'Anything!' "

 
          
 
Emma Fleet paused.

 
          
 
The doctor found himself out at the edge of
his chair. "Yes, yes, and then?"

 
          
 
"And then," said Emma Fleet,
"he brought out all his boxes and bottles of inks and stencils and his bright
silver tattoo needles."

 
          
 
"Tattoo needles?”

 
          
 
The doctor fell back in his chair. "He .
. . tattooed you?"

 
          
 
"He tattooed me."

 
          
 
"He was a tattoo artist?"

 
          
 
"He was, he is, an artist. It only
happens that the form his art takes happens to be the tattoo."

 
          
 
“And you," said the doctor slowly,
"were the canvas for which he had been searching much of his adult life?”

 
          
 
"I was the canvas for which he had
searched all of his life.”

 
          
 
She let it sink, and did sink, and kept on
sinking, into the doctor. Then when she saw it had struck bottom and stirred up
vast quantities of mud, she went serenely on.

 
          
 
"So our grand life began! I loved Willy
and Willy loved me and we both loved this thing that was larger than ourselves
that we were doing together. Nothing less than creating the greatest picture
the world has ever seen! 'Nothing less than perfection!' cried Willy. 'Nothing
less than perfection!' cried myself in response.

 
          
 
"Oh, it was a happy time. Ten thousand
cozy busy hours we spent together. You can't imagine how proud it made me to be
the vast shore along which the genius of Willy Fleet ebbed and flowed in a tide
of colors.

 
          
 
"One year alone we spent on my right arm
and my left, half a year on my right leg, eight months on my left, in
preparation for the grand explosion of bright detail which erupted out along my
collarbone and shoulderblades, which fountained upward from my hips to meet in
a glorious July celebration of pinwheels, Titian nudes, Giorgione landscapes
and El Greco cross-indexes of lightning on my fa9ade, prickling with vast
electric fires up and down my spine.

 
          
 
"Dear me, there never has been, there
never will be, a love like ours again, a love where two people so sincerely
dedicated themselves to one task, of giving beauty to the world in equal
portions. We flew to each other day after day, and I ate more, grew larger,
with the years, Willy approved, Willy applauded. Just that much more room, more
space for his configurations to flower in. We could not bear to be apart, for
we both felt, were certain, that once the Masterpiece was finished we could
leave circus, carnival, or vaudeville forever. It was grandiose, yes, but we
knew that once finished, I could be toured through the Art Institute in
Chicago
,
the Kress Collection in
Washington
,
the Tate Gallery in
London
, the
Louvre, the Uffizi,
the
Vatican
Museum
! For the rest of our lives
we would travel with the sun!

 
          
 
"So it went, year on year. We didn't need
the world or the people of the world, we had each other. We worked at our ordinary
jobs by day, and then, till after midnight, there was Willy at my ankle, there
was Willy at my elbow, there was Willy exploring up the incredible slope of my
back toward the snowy-talcumed crest. Willy wouldn't let me see, most of the
time. He didn't like me looking over his shoulder, he didn't like me looking
over my shoulder, for that matter. Months passed before, curious beyond
madness, I would be allowed to see his progress slow inch by inch as the
brilliant inks inundated me and I drowned in the rainbow of his inspirations.
Eight years, eight glorious wondrous years. And then at last it was done, it
was finished. And Willy threw himself down and slept for forty-eight hours
straight. And I slept near him, the mammoth bedded with the black lamb. That was
just four weeks ago. Four short weeks back, our happiness came to an end."

 
          
 
"Ah, yes," said the doctor.
"You and your husband are suffering from the creative equivalent of the
'baby blues,' the depression a mother feels after her child is born. Your work
is finished. A listless and somewhat sad period invariably follows. But, now,
consider, you will reap the rewards of your long labor, surely? You will tour
the world?" .

 
          
 
"No," cried Emma Fleet, and a tear
sprang to her eye. "At any moment, Willy will run off and never return. He
has begun to wander about the city. Yesterday I caught him brushing off the
carnival scales. Today I found him working, for the first time in eight years,
back at his Guess Your Weight booth!"

 
          
 
"Dear me," said the psychiatrist.
"He's . . . ?"

 
          
 
"Weighing new women, yes! Shopping for
new canvas! He hasn't said, but I know, I know! This time he'll find a heavier
woman yet, five hundred, six hundred pounds! I guessed this would happen, a
month ago, when we finished the Masterpiece. So I ate still more, and stretched
my skin still more, so that little places appeared here and there, little open
patches that Willy had to repair, fill in with fresh detail. But now I'm done,
exhausted, I've stuffed to distraction, the last fill-in work is done. There's
not a millionth of an inch of space left between my ankles and my Adam's apple
where we can squeeze in one last demon, dervish or baroque angel. I am, to
Willy, work over and done. Now he wants to move on. He will marry, I fear, four
more times in his life, each time to a larger woman, a greater extension for a
greater mural, and the grand finale of his talent. Then, too, in the last week,
he has become critical."

 
          
 
"Of the Masterpiece with a capital
M?" asked the doctor.

 
          
 
"Like all artists, he is a superb
perfectionist. Now he finds little flaws, a face here done slightly in the
wrong tint or texture, a hand there twisted slightly askew by my hurried diet
to gain more weight and thus give him new space and renew his attentions. To
him, above all, I was a beginning. Now he must move on from his apprenticeship
to his true master-works. On, Doctor, I am about to be abandoned. What is there
for a woman who weighs four hundred pounds and is laved with illustrations? If
he leaves, what shall I do, where go, who would want me now? Will I be lost
again in the world as I was lost before my wild happiness?"

 
          
 
"A psychiatrist," said the
psychiatrist, "is not supposed to give advice. But. . ."

 
          
 
"But, but, but?" she cried, eagerly.

 
          
 
"A psychiatrist is supposed to let the
patient discover and cure himself. Yet, in this case . . ."

 
          
 
"This case, yes, go on!"

 
          
 
"It seems so simple. To keep your
husband's love . , .*'

 
          
 
"To keep his love, yes?"

 
          
 
The doctor smiled. "You must destroy the
Masterpiece."

 
          
 
"What?"

 
          
 
"Erase it, get rid of it. Those tattoos
will come off, won*t they? I read somewhere once that—"

 
          
 
"Oh, Doctor!" Emma Fleet leaped up.
"That's it! It can be done! And, best of all, Willy can do it! It will
take three months alone to wash me clean, rid me of the very Masterpiece that
irks him now. Then, virgin white again, we can start another eight years, after
that another eight and another. Oh, Doctor, I know he'll do it! Perhaps he was
only waiting for me to suggest—and I too stupid to guess! Oh, Doctor,
Doctor!"

 
          
 
And she crushed him in her arms.

 
          
 
When the doctor broke happily free, she stood
off, turning in a circle.

 
          
 
"How strange," she said. "In
half an hour you solve the next three thousand days and beyond of my life.
You're very wise. I'll pay you anything!"

 
          
 
"My usual modest fee is sufficient,"
said the doctor.

 
          
 
"I can hardly wait to tell Willy! But
first," she said, "since you've been so wise, you deserve to see the
Masterpiece before it is destroyed."

 
          
 
"That's hardly necessary, Mrs.—"

 
          
 
"You must discover for yourself the rare
mind, eye and artistic hand of Willy Fleet, before it is gone forever and we
start anew!" she cried, unbuttoning her voluminous coat.

 
          
 
"It isn't really—"

 
          
 
"There!" she said, and flung her
coat wide.

 
          
 
The doctor was somehow not surprised to see
that she was stark naked beneath her coat.

 
          
 
He gasped. His eyes grew large. His mouth fell
open. He sat down slowly, though in reality he somehow wished to stand, as he
had in the fifth grade as a boy, during the salute to the flag, following which
three dozen voices broke into an awed and tremulous song:

 
          
 
"O beautiful for spacious skies For amber
waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain . .
."

 
          
 
But, still seated, overwhelmed, he gazed at
the continental vastness of the woman.

 
          
 
Upon which nothing whatsoever was stitched,
painted, watercolored or in any way tattooed.

 
          
 
Naked, unadorned, untouched, unlined,
unillustrated.

 
          
 
He gasped again.

 
          
 
Now she had whipped her coat back about her
with a winsome acrobat's smile, as if she had just performed a towering feat.
Now she was sailing toward the door.

 
          
 
"Wait—" said the doctor.