Goya'S Dog (15 page)

He said nothing, and then, very quietly, he said: “It could well have been discontinued since then.”

“What?”

“I said it may have been discontinued. Since then. Since I won it. The prize.”

By the time he stopped talking he was almost whispering. He didn't have a handkerchief so he padded his forehead with his soft palm. He wanted to destroy her, he wanted to pound her into the floor like a nail, prove her wrong. But the greater part of him wished to curl up into a ball and be carried out in his mother's arms.

“A retrospective before you were even forty. That
is
impressive.”

He shrugged without lifting his gaze from the table; she was not really impressed, he gathered.

“A friend of mine typed it for me,” said Dacres. “A Pole. A boy. At least, he used to be my friend. I don't know if we are still friends or not …”

Now she was looking at the other papers he'd given her.

“Is this letter of recommendation from the
king
?” she asked.

Miss Lung's face stayed cast in that expression, pure incredulity. Then she suddenly relaxed. She leaned back, leaving his papers on the desk unloved. She looked at him and he thought she wasn't angry as much as puzzled. They sat that way for some time. The snow twisted, and waited. She continued to study him, so calmly, leaning back, chin resting on her knuckles, elbow at her wrist.

“I'm just so tired,” Dacres said at last.

“Pardon?”

He rubbed his face hard, with both hands.

“Very tired. Fit to be tied.”

“I don't think you're entirely well, are you?” Her voice had softened.

“Please can I have some money?”

From Miss Lung, a half-laugh, half-sigh.

“Oh dear,” she said.

“Miss Lung, I'm so tired of this, going around from office to office, door to door like a tradesman. I have nothing to sell. Please. I beg you.”

She leaned forward again, professional again.

“Naturally I'll do everything in my power to help you,” she began, “but what is it exactly you—”

Dacres moaned. He heard tromping feet and giggles out in the hall.

“Please …”

“You know I can give you nothing.”

He moaned again.

“If you want to, come back another time. If you think that's appropriate.”

He sat there.

Nothing.

“Maybe you ought to go.”

In the hall, all the sprites were gone, the stairs were silent. Outside, he suddenly thought he should have complimented her. He should have told her she had a fiery Celtic look. He should have been roguish. He should have seduced her. Davis would have.

Yes, he'd have had his way with her, over the desk. She would have unbuttoned his uniform with her teeth—special war artist issue, sprinkled with medals for bravery and superlative personal hygiene—and he was in luck because, if nothing else, Miss Lung certainly had war fever. Davis was unbuckling Miss Lung's green girdle. Now they were going to parachute him into Rome to set the Axis ablaze using only egg tempera. The works from his Toronto period—a series on the “New Disasters of War” (produced with his
left
hand)—would revolutionize figurative art for the balance of the century. Oh yes, Miss Lung had given Davis a very great deal.

He should have seduced her, Dacres thought. But all he could imagine was her staring back at him just the way she had all along.
It was five o'clock and the sky was lilac. He was walking east, away from the sun, but everyone else was walking in the opposite direction. Dacres wondered why there was no fascism here. He was passing grey office buildings, the sky was cut up by the telegraph wires. It was cold, he licked sweet mucus off his lip.

People here, Dacres thought, are simply not interested in the things that make life worth living. No, better: they hate the things that make life worth living. Yes, he was buried in a sanctimonious bush metropolis, a little Scotland dedicated to its provincialism, unsure of its place in the world (as it should be) and hence resistant to gifted outsiders. Wouldn't know genius if it fell out of a window onto them. What kind of a name was Lung?

All my optimism is being pissed upon, thought Dacres. Then he amended: No, this is the bourgeois in me; in London I don't worry about money, so why am I worrying here? At home his creditors, his landlord, they understood him. Perhaps it was that here he needed money if he was to have any substance, because here he was nobody and no one. Now, money is both the realest thing in the world and the most symbolic, he thought. If he could get just one commission, just one commission, he would relax and get on with his real work, which had lain fallow for so long. And that was the point of being here, wasn't it? To get on with his real work, undistracted. That was why he'd gotten off the train; or one reason. Yes. It wasn't such a bad place, for that. He mustn't be so quick to judge. Failing to get commercial work or teaching work was a Good: he could remain an artist.

Square-shouldered cars queued up alongside him as he walked vaguely homewards. He'd heard talk of a burlesque theatre, the Casino, but didn't know where to find it. He thought it was on Queen Street: he was on Queen now, but he saw nothing so exciting; the godly types must have closed it down. He went by empty lots, it reminded him of the Edgware Road. He longed for a chancy woman to call out from a doorway, ask him how he was feeling, sailor, offer to cheer him up. He was walking around in circles again, he reflected, it must be sevenish already.

He decided to stop in at Leo's, but then he remembered at the end of the block that the Lion Grill was being redecorated. Leo had asked Dacres if he wanted to do some of the painting and make some extra money, and Dacres had refused. “You see?” Leo had asked the room, as if he'd scored a hit. Now his eyes were drawn to a cinema offering free dishes to its clientele: if Leo's had been open he could have eaten without spending too much. He could have brought his own dishes. Yes, he was starting to get peckish. The service station with the little Tudor house was open. But it was night now and severely dark.

After looking in on the sleeping great lizards in the bus garage, he went up his street, Comb Street. He passed a couple in a doorway: they were kissing hard, thighs pushing hips into the closed front door. Dacres stood stock still and stared. He wondered at them. The man, a soldier, cursed, and chased him away.

He'd forgotten his key. For God's sake. He banged on the brown door with a sense of doom. He banged again.

“Mrs. Bark,” he shouted.

Knock knock.

“Mrs. Bark,” he said, “surely you see …”

He whispered to himself: “If I were she and she were me, would I let me in?”

The worst thing was he could see his little room through the curtains. Placing his cheek against the unfriendly glass he could see through one eye the hard material of his suitcase under the thin bed, he could see the peeling wallpaper. Quite an interesting effect, actually, the breath of his soul gumming up his vision of the place. But it was chilly. I simply must remember to remember my key, he thought.

“Mrs. Bark!” He banged on the door. “I'm still your tenant, aren't I? I have certain rights.”

He could see none of her idiot children. Perhaps it was just that they were out at choir? He turned, and sat on the step, and felt the sour wet coming through the threadbare seat of his trousers, and grimaced at the long row of low houses that he called home now. On
the ice, ash from the fireplace. A few little cars interspersed with empty static space. Dacres decided to wait. Funnily enough he'd just walked past Britain Street. But a Canada Dry truck drove by. It began to snow again.

Somewhere, he thought, his adversaries were smiling at this. The More-Successful Friends of Edward Dacres Society, membership diverse, no doubt enjoying their annual general meeting on the wellappointed club yacht,
Schadenfreude
. Docked in the Sèvres-blue waters of Nassau, attended to in all things by the lissome girls of the Toronto Casino in their splendidly removable white two-piece swimming costumes. The sun as bright as the day of your birth and the drinks free-flowing and a general air of music and dancing and delight. And now the club secretary is applauded by the charter members as he rises in the middle of the celebratory banquet to deliver a bulletin just received by cable. “You'll never guess, fellows: our patron is in Canada, of all places, he's frozen solid and penniless. He's sitting on the steps …” Laughter all round and drinks for further orders.

After an hour of holding his head in his hands cursing his fate, standing and banging on the door, sitting and standing, he went on the march again. One of the things he disliked about the city was that there was nothing to do, nothing was open after late afternoon. On Sundays, because of the bloody Christians, the people had to walk along Bloor Street because there was
nothing else to do
.

Then he was in a park next to a large sandstone church in Westminster style, exhausted, teeth chattering, feeling he had nothing left to give. Medieval peasants had never brought their tithes to the side door, he knew. There had been no dung and dust here—but there was a bench under a black elm and the branches blocked the snowflakes, in part. Dacres circled around the park, past banks empty of flowers and the white grass, and then returned. The church faced south, turned away from him, giving him its shoulder, as if offended by something he'd said.

How dreamlike and quiet the snow was falling. He was used to raindrops and their snake hiss (in fact he missed the constancy of
English precipitation, though in England he'd never stopped cursing it). You could listen with the ears of a fox to this and never hear a peep. And it wasn't even so cold, though he knew that the accumulated flakes would gather on him and then melt, and then he would be sopping wet, and then it would get colder, and freeze, and the Toronto ice would insinuate itself into his bones and replace the marrow entirely and he would probably die. But not yet. Snow gathered in the branches above him, snow hung about the streetlamps, each was surrounded with a little rainbow, it was almost beautiful. It reminded him of the Nordic attitude: light in winter. He squeezed his hat down over his face and smelt furry sweat. He held his hands against his collarbone. The skin over his ribs burned.

Nowhere to go, night.

A painter is a person who paints, Dacres thought, trembling, in the snow.

Burner,

You unscrupulous ungrateful philistine I trusted you. It's your fault I'm here at all you repellent mediocrity: all this is entirely at your door. You promised me your help, you promised me milk and honey, and what do I get from you? Nothing but vile slurs in a cesspool, blind alleys, introductions to men with brains the size of walnuts, it's as if you are deliberately trying to destroy me. All this pain you've caused me! And for what? To just take pleasure in demeaning another man, a man who comes to you with open arms, homeless and hopeless and despairing? God scorns the ungracious host, it is an offence against society: you know your classics. Of course you don't.

But fear not I will not let you. I will not let you. Now there is no greater betrayal than this: the outstretched hand replaced with a poisoned poniard. You bastard bitch. Think about that when you're sleeping in your soft bed, piggy eyes all resting. I
hope to see your bones rotting in hell in the sordid place they deserve, your cheeks consumed by maggots as you starvingly long for someone, anyone to assist you—at which point I, walking by, will relieve myself in your open mouth.

Yours ever,

Edward Dacres

Not
Davis damn you

Turning from the postbox the next night he saw a placard outside a church announcing a concert. Bach. He didn't know the time, but around him men with round backs in dark overcoats were leading their wives in. Soon it was crowded; cars shook as ladies in green hats gingerly alighted. Dacres had nothing else in the world to do, so after lingering and watching for a few minutes, scratching occasionally at his itchy face and hair, he attached himself to the tail of a group of five and went up the steps and through the arches. He slipped past the table at which a fresh-faced young couple was selling tickets for general admission (“Proceeds from refreshments to fund war work”) and took a right up the white stairs to the gallery. He had his coat under his arm now. At the door, blocking the path of the people behind him, he feigned a search of his pockets and opened up his coat to check there. He told the pretty usher that his wife had his ticket inside. He pointed and even called out “Evie?” over her shoulder. Hurried and harried, she motioned him in without fuss or smile. It was fortunate: Dacres had seventy-five cents to his name. Three quarters.

There were six black risers before the altar, making a stage, and on them a cello, flat on its back like some African carcass. An unsettling sight. Next to it, a three-legged stool—unpainted, chipped, from a farmhouse—and a shining silver music stand. The gallery was half full and downstairs there were more people chatting before taking their seats. They were all friends, all friends here for some Art. Bah. The building itself was predictable enough, an Anglican palace made of white columns and no imagination, a representation of the spiritual
triumph of Queen Victoria, Dacres thought, the kind of thing that provincial architects got away with because they never saw anything better, the kind of … He stopped. He swallowed. He was tired of his voice. He had a grating headache from the previous night's adventures, he had a terrible cold, his arms and legs felt ancient.