Authors: Roberta Latow
Her performance was backed by an orchestra of Arab instrumentalists, who sat in clusters at four corners of the tent. While Shammamam was still taking bows and trying to settle her admirers, four
sufragis
rushed down an aisle carrying a simple, narrow, wooden daybed and placed it off to one side near the center of the tent. Two others placed cushions upon it, then disappeared. Finally the men quieted down and she began to sing.
Cheyney had never heard such a sensuous voice. The guttural sounds the woman drew from the back of her throat, the way she caught a note on a breath and manipulated it, her timing. Arabic holds such exotic sounds when spoken well, like its calligraphy, all sensuous twirls and flurries on the tongue, the roof of the mouth, deep in the throat. She tore out the heart of every man in that room with her singing, the movement of her hands, a turn of her head, a tilt of her chin, the way she used her eyes, moved her hips, made as if to caress her audience with her head-scarf. She lured them further and further into a trance-like state with every note of the voluptuous sounds.
Each song, many times as long as a Western song, seduced her audience and never let them go. By her fourth musical extravaganza even she seemed to have worked herself into some sort of trance. Several more songs and the erotic pitch broke all bounds. Shammamam tore open her bodice and presented her magnificently large breasts to her audience as if she was offering them to every man in the room. They flowed over her hands, and their nipples with their large nimbus rouged pink, with tattoed blue arabesques around them, were more an erotic gift than a vulgar gesture. Cheyney heard men softly weeping, others panting with excitement, others who looked lost in the words of her songs.
She finished her song, the center light followed her as she collapsed onto the daybed. The crowd went wild with applause. The
sufragis
rushed down the aisles to carry her on her bed from the tent. Men were throwing bank notes on her and onto the carpet at the center of the tent. Jeweled bracelets and necklaces, pearls and diamonds were draped on her breasts by men trying to kiss and caress them, her lips, a cheek, a hand, a finger, a foot. She tortured them further; drew her knees up, raised her voluminous black skirts to above her thighs and opened her legs wide, giving them a brief glimpse of her most intimate self while she writhed in her own sexual lust on her bed of jeweled tributes, all the time, till she was gone, rushed away by her bearers. But not before Cheyney saw an Arab in princely robes roughly snatch from a mistress’s neck a necklace of cascading diamonds, fling them between Shammamam’s legs into the shadows of her skirt, and make an attempt to stuff them into her yearning cunt, while he bit hard into her fleshy thigh. Pandemonium, when shoved off her, he was seen to have Shammamam’s blood on his lips, in his mouth.
On the way back to Cairo, to a large and grand house behind closed iron gates that were opened by the night watchman standing guard, they said not one word to each other. They couldn’t, so enveloped were they in her dark aftermath of lust, words would not suffice. On entering the car, he placed an arm around her shoulders and pulled her firmly into his arms to hold her tight against him, and grasped her hand. Once he raised it to his mouth to kiss her fingers, sucked them moist, and bit hard into one of them until he saw the tears brimming in her eyes. But they did not speak.
The house
sufragis
ran before them up the grand marble staircase, lighting the way. In the bedroom, he thanked them and sent them to bed, saying he did not want to be disturbed. Then he turned to Cheyney. They drew together in a powerful urgent lust that dissolved all emotions save one and knew no restraints. Cheyney heard the tear of silk, felt his hands upon her flesh. They excited, but she burned with desire for more, and to that end, she tore at his clothes, and bit into his lips, and covered his face and then his body with wild passionate kisses.
Cheyney and Grant driven by the thrilling exhibition of unashamed erotic abandon Shammamam had seduced them with, and with a boundless desire to share with each other nothing less, ravaged each other and constantly sought more and more from the flesh. It was passion to the point of violence. Erotic madness that went beyond the realms of reason. Each magnificently erotic act inducing another and another and another. And erotic gave way to lust and lust to decadence. But to two willing partners steeped in sexual oblivion, what Cheyney and Grant once might have classed as depraved, decadent sexual acts lost their labels. They became, instead, shared sublime erotic freedom governed by trust and love. It was inevitable because their sexual comings together were as natural for them as if they had been waiting all their lives to meet and give themselves up completely to each other and their fantasies and dreams of all that is sex.
They remained together for three glorious days. She never left his side night or day. They could not get enough of each other. And then they had to part. He was flying with the crew to Khartoum to interview the Mahdī. He promised to meet her in Luxor in three days’ time. He never arrived. A cable: he was flying straight to New York, she was to call him there on her return to Athens, regrets and love.
A week later Cheyney was sitting on the running board of a battered old Chevy, fending off the midday sun with a large black silk umbrella. The car had broken down just beyond the Valley of the Kings, where she had gone to a village to see if she could buy some water pots for the museum. She had sent the driver back to the village on foot for help. Three hippies with rucksacks came down the dirt road on foot. They gave her a drink, offered her a joint, and promised to send back the first car they could stop to pick her up. She convinced them that she couldn’t abandon her wares or the car without the driver. One boy, who claimed to be called Pandor, tossed her an old
Newsweek
magazine to while away the hours. And that was where she read about the death of Acton Pace. And then wondered what she was doing, stubbornly pursuing pots in the desert. She felt lonely and alone. And she broke down and
cried for the loss of a great painter and a fine friend.
Of course Cheyney had no idea, as yet, how guilefully generous a friend Acton Pace had been to her. Only Reha, Judd Whyatt, and Kurt Walbrook knew that.
H
ome from her travels for the first time in nearly two months, Cheyney heard Zazou yelping and barking even before she and the concierge arrived at her Athens apartment door with all that Gucci luggage bought in Rome. Zazou had always been like that, could always tell when Cheyney was in the building. Betsy, the favored hippie dog-sitter, flung the door open and Zazou leapt into Cheyney’s arms.
Forty-five minutes later, Zazou was just beginning to settle down enough for Cheyney to get to the telephone. She hardly had time to repack. Grant Madigan wanted her in New York as fast as she could get there. Just the sound of his voice would have been enough, but there had been more. Love in his words, warmth, passion.
She crossed the ocean and faced New York, without a second thought, only to be with him for two days. That was all their busy lives allowed them to have together. But they had been two days of lust and love never to be forgotten and had ended with no tears and the promise of a future that was never defined.
Now here she was, four days after his departure, sitting with Della in a New York courtroom waiting to hear the summations of the Barry Sole trial.
Waiting for the judge and defendant to appear and be seated,
the courtroom to be called to order, and Judd Whyatt to be called to present his summation, Cheyney sized up the courtroom. The serious formality of it all: the solid, dark mahogany of the room, the bare windows, the empty chairs, the wooden railings and dais where the judge sat. Impressive, dramatic even, the lines of empty chairs where twelve people boxed into justice, six upon six, would soon be seated. Her mind wandered. She could not help but think of the last two days she had spent with Grant in his rooms at the Waldorf Astoria where he lived.
Love. That’s what those two days were about. Two people who feel for each other intense sexual love, who are in that in-love state that blinds you to all else but each other. Days that were made even more intense by the very fragility of such powerful feelings. Days and nights when they used the gambit of intimate relations. Maybe too intimate. Too revealing to live with. They had allowed themselves the ultimate luxury vis-à-vis relationships. They held back nothing, gave themselves up completely to each other. Showed themselves from the lightest, most loving side of their nature to the darkest, most secret, and depraved side of their being and came out loving each other even more for what they had been able to give and accept. They loved, flaws and all. Cheyney was certain of that. But could they sustain such a love as they felt for each other?
In those two days they lived in the presence of every minute of every hour. It was as if the past and the future did not exist for them. They asked not a question about each other’s lives or loves or dreams. They lived in the now of their passion. The scent of Grant Madigan, the taste of him, the feel of him inside her, possessing her, the joy of submitting to his every sexual demand without question or thought repeatedly were even now more exciting and rewarding than ever she imagined a woman might feel about loving a man. But he had submitted no less to her, and more than any other man ever had done. They held the power of love over each other, and that was a sobering thought for Cheyney. It pushed the memory of those two sublime days out of her mind, for the moment at least.
The scene in the courtroom conferred a certain perspective upon the overpowering intensity of feelings instilled in them by the lust they had shared. Their intimacy challenged the
ordinary fences that separate a man and a woman. It left them psychologically bare and raw. Little but the seeds of life itself to build on. And now he was gone. Gone for two years.
She could not forget the words. “I don’t know when we’ll be together again, but we will. I’m going away, off into the field, for two years, possibly three. It’s research on all the wars since 1945. I have a contract for a book and a lengthy TV series. Be happy for me, Cheyney, it’s a magnificent project. Algeria, Palestine, Cyprus, India, and Indochina. Suez — I already have a great deal of material researched on that. Vietnam — wonderful contacts there.” Then his mood had changed. He took her in his arms and said more feelingly, “There has been nothing in my life as intense as giving myself up to you. It blinds me momentarily to whatever else. But it’s not enough, not for either of us. We’ll meet. I’ll send for you, or come to you.”
She was happy for him, she could have wished for more of Grant Madigan for herself, but that hardly crossed her mind. They belonged to each other, no matter where they were, even if they were never to see each other again. She was sure of that, enough for her to get on with her life. That had entailed moving in with Della for a few days, and making a call to Judd Whyatt, in response to the urgent message she had received to call his office. It was he who arranged for Cheyney and Della to be seated in the courtroom.
Della had been concerned as to how it would be for Cheyney, facing so many people in the art world for the first time since she vanished from that scene after the disastrous collapse of the gallery. Eight years, a long time. But was it long enough for Cheyney to accept failure, call it the past, and forgive herself?
She had watched how carefully Cheyney had dressed so that she looked absolutely stunning. Her fur-and-leather jacket, over a long tweed skirt that covered the tops of her suede and leather boots. All her hair tucked under a sable cossack hat. She looked every inch the successful art dealer. But to them? Cheyney had seen at least a dozen people she had known. Most had cut her, a few greeted her coldly. Reha Pace had been more curt than rude. Not at all the way she had been with a five-million-dollar
check in her hand the last time Cheyney had seen her. But then, thought Cheyney, Acton had been alive.
Cheyney fixed her eyes on the draped red, white, and blue flag with its little golden eagle on top of the pole, the dark wood of the walls, and the blue of the attendants’ uniforms.
A commotion. She turned in her chair and looked up the aisle at the pair of swing doors covered in maroon leather, with their tarnished brass buttons and portholes of glass.
She was just turning back in her chair toward the front of this palace of American justice, when the swing doors flew open. In came Marion Tree, David Rosewarne’s assistant. Behind her a very subdued, neatly dressed, smoothly clean but shuffling Barry Sole. Then the scrubbed, kindly lawyer from New England, David Rosewarne. They all took their seats at the table.
A side door in the courtroom opened, an officer of the court stood aside. The jury filed in and took their seats. Ten minutes elapsed before the judge entered and order was called in the courtroom. The bailiff called out, “All rise. All persons having business before the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York come forward and be heard. The case of the people versus Barry Sole.”
David Rosewarne rose from his chair. “Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client is not guilty of fraud. Yes, he had an intent. It was to make himself into a successful painter. He did so. By his art, and by public acclaim.
“For ten years the public supported Barry Sole. They were free to reject his work, but they chose to support him. He has stated any number of times that, ‘One element of my art is to use everything that comes before me, no matter what it is, or who brings it to me.’ These are, in fact, Mr. Sole’s own words. Why then did the art world accept him? Why do they turn their backs on him now? Why do they all cry fraud, after using him up?
“He is in this courtroom today because he is their scapegoat. He was their escape-goat, their way out of a bleak period in the American art market when the art world needed a fresh new brush. Barry Sole and the images he painted served them well. Until now. And what I see here is that once more they are using him as their escape-goat. This time, to supply an exit
from a burnt-out movement called Pop Art. Both times, Barry Sole has been used as a catalyst in the art world. Used because he has the gift of making things happen.”
Cheyney was riveted by David’s summation. It put the knife into the art mafia. She squirmed at the role she had played in it. He was cutting too close to the bone. Part of the pain was hers. The art dealer in her rebelled. The bombed art dealer of eight years ago cringed. But David’s summation confirmed her belief that the case should have been thrown out of court months ago.
“Barry Sole never represented his art as being anything other than what it was. He did not claim it was great art, he never suggested that it was anything other than what it appeared to be. I would like to point out here that the definition of fraud is the willful untrue representation of an existing fact with the intention that the other party rely on it to his detriment. But it must be proved. That fact has not been proved in this courtroom.”
People began to whisper among themselves. Della leaned toward Cheyney, “David’s fantastic. I can’t believe the way he has turned this thing around to make Barry look the innocent victim.” Cheyney saw some well-known art faces begin to sweat. Larry and Tina Finn, conspicuously sixties-trendy, were haggling among themselves. Larry was also trying to slip a note to Judd Whyatt. The judge banged his gavel. The courtroom was silenced except for David Rosewarne. He continued.
“I think it was best summed up by the Abstract Expressionist painter Simon North, in this very courtroom, when that most eloquent man made the point that painters paint what they have to say, and the public has a choice to understand or not. To buy it or not. The painter simply carries on with his work until he can go no further. He did not label Barry Sole or his art with fraud. What he labeled him with was bad paintings, bad artist. But that is something quite other.”
Sporadic giggles from the jury. Not so good for us, thought Judd Whyatt. And, damned good that Rosewarne.
David Rosewarne continued, “Barry Sole is a painter who has reached an enormous number of people in an incredibly short time span through his art. He created new methods to keep up with the demand. He used everything around him that
he could. If his methods or his art are questionable, that is one thing. But to claim, as the plaintiffs would, that he intended to conceive fraudulent acts in art and practice them on the public is quite something else.
“I will now let my case rest before you, only leaving you with the one perception that I feel is relevant here — that, if a crime has been perpetrated, it is upon my client in this case being even allowed to come into the courtroom. Thank you, the defense rests.” David Rosewarne sat down.
Half the court broke out in applause. The other half looked very solemn. Did they think they had lost their case? And if so, which one, the financial, moral, or artistic? The judge looked impressed, and Barry Sole looked confused. The judge used his gavel sharply. Once the room was called back to order, Judd Whyatt stood up and addressed the court with his summation.
“Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I will be brief and to the point. The case that I plead before you is not a very complicated one. It is simple, in fact, it leaves my request for a conviction of guilt hinging on one fact and one word: intent. Everything that Mr. Sole has spoken in this courtroom can be judged in the light of that one word, intent. Or intended, intention, or intending to. In short, intent is at the heart of this case.
“Mr. Sole is
guilty
by the fact that he intended to use anything and anyone in a number of fraudulent ways to make of himself a successful painter. He has admitted before this court — and I quote — ‘All I wanted to do was to be a successful painter, just like any number of other hungry painters before me.’ But what he has failed to admit is that he has sold works of art that he knew in his own mind, without any question, to be worthless. And sold them for high prices. That is the fraud. Willful disregard for one’s comments, statements, actions, and the consequences of them, if malicious enough, if willful enough, if damaging to enough people, is also fraud. I see no need to cite the many examples of his intentions. He has openly admitted them to the court. In the hope that by doing so he would come across to you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, as an innocent victim himself.
“Ask yourselves, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, did Barry
Sole have intent to defraud the people who bought what he offered as works of art? The facts have certainly spoken for themselves.
“If justice is to be done today in this courtroom, you have only to find Barry Sole guilty as charged. There can be no other verdict. I rest my case, and thank you for your attention.”
Whyatt sat down in his chair. Silence fell heavily over the courtroom. Barry Sole and his attorney, David Rosewarne, were notably disturbed by the summation. Sole was more the color of uncooked pastry than his usual pale self. He was getting to look more like Andy Warhol every day. Larry Finn, one of the plaintiffs, was bursting with high facial color. A kind of anger seemed to be lurking in the lower half of his face. The jowls, lips, and chin had a set to them. The jury — one could tell nothing from their faces.
The courtroom was a buzz of chatter from angry faces. Journalists were still frantically scribbling notes. Several of them took advantage of the commotion in the courtroom to leave, along with twenty or more non-scribblers. Cheyney joined them. She told Della she had had enough. She would meet her at home.
A few people reached David Rosewarne to shake his hand. David conferred with his assistant. The judge hammered his gavel several times, calling for the court to come to order. David Rosewarne looked at his client, whose still, passive face showed only one sign of change. It was in that oversensitive, bulbous, and fleshy nose — it was like a pink marzipan flower pinned on an uncooked cake. David sat back in his chair and closed his eyes for a moment. He just hoped that the surrealistic image in front of him would turn back to Barry Sole when he next opened them. It did. Whyatt sat down, and the judge addressed the jury.
When Judd Whyatt left the court, crowds of reporters and people were still lingering in the halls outside the courtroom. He found no Cheyney Fox. Della and she were supposed to meet the lawyer there after the court had adjourned. He wanted to give her the news of her good fortune and what it entailed. Now she was nowhere in sight. He was annoyed and very snappy with Della. She apologized for her friend. He asked for Cheyney to be at his office the following evening at six.