“A blue doorway in an earthen wall. Colors and composition had already been worked out, as if from on high. The blue of opportunity, a new life and the earthen colors of the status quo. I saw the exact texture on the linen.”
I knew this celestial assistance would become a major theme at dinner parties. “As our friend, Mozart. Whole symphonies downloaded like so much email?”
“You’re making fun of me now. But it really happened.”
I felt my nose for growth as I said, “I’m sorry. I can’t wait to see it.”
Strether said, “There are new ideas in this piece. The stars in the doorway.”
The stars were definitely something new and this was his calculated way of letting me know that the stars would be the subjects of my dissertation after lunch. If I lectured convincingly on their stunning originality, I could pay for my lunch and continue to be a member of the Strether cabal.
“Stars. How exciting.”
“Think about it,” he said. “We’ll gather at twelve.” He rang off.
Strether had no sense of humor at all and I always felt bad after I flung a bit of sarcasm his way. He was strangely without the usual defenses. Furthermore, he was dishonest only on the large matters, while maintaining scrupulous uprightness on all the other, smaller issues. It confused me that a thousand small blessings could make up for one major crime. What exactly was the meaning of moral turpitude and was Strether born without it, arriving in this world with a chromosome missing? Did luring the gullible rich into parting with some of their hoard really constitute a sin?
As long as I proved a capable shill, I would be included in future lunches and I would be given moneyed contacts to exploit later on my own, after the Strether purchase was safely in the bag. I repeated in my mind what I remembered about Orion and Betelgeuse and the mid-winter meteorite showers as I parked the car below his house.
Strether’s house was simple and classic, without modern heat and only rudimentary electrical outlets and plumbing. Its high, elegant windows gave a full view of a pristine valley below. The multi-paned windows were recycled from the Sisters of Loretto School razed for downtown development and the walls were surfaced in authentic mud plaster. In the courtyard was an ancient juniper, a remnant of the primordial tree cover of the area. Lunch was set in its shade at a pine table with pottery and glassware from Mexico, Georgian silver forks and cotton napkins.
Indoors, I could see that the others were there already: the novelist, Gertrude and Strether, who was pouring white wine from a pitcher into more Mexican glassware. The novelist saw me first and smiled a welcome.
“So much talent at a small luncheon. How delicious,” he said.
“It’s good to see you again. Isn’t this a wonderful house?” I said.
Before he could answer, Gertrude sensed something amiss, information not given to her. She said, “What’s this? I hadn’t realized you knew one another.”
“When you said novelist I didn’t know you meant Willard Chivers here. We met last week at the Halcyon Gallery.” I patted Willard on the arm, while Strether disappeared into the kitchen.
Gertrude was not satisfied, however, staring pointedly at me. She was a short, heavy woman with costly processed hair a color somewhere between rosé wine and straw. When required to, as she did then, she could pull together the ranging parts of her frame into stiff uprightness, a definitive version of social outrage. “Indeed. Are there suddenly dozens of novelists in town? A literary convention, perhaps?”
Since Gertrude’s thrust required a parry, I thought over what my answer would be. Willard and I had met the week before at the opening night gallery reception for a young landscape painter. There was a crush at the bar and we bumped elbows as we reached for the same plastic cup of wine. He laughed and I noticed he had straight white teeth. Expensive teeth. He was a slim man, aging well, with bright blue, friendly eyes. He had the long narrow frame of an ascetic monk from Athos.
We talked a bit and I told him that I was a painter, too. I invited him to go see what remained of my one-person show at the Ludlow Gallery. “The reviewer in The New Mexican termed me a ‘Minor Mannerist Landscapist, worth watching,’” I said. I thought that was a humorous comment and I saw him smile, too, as he wrote down the address of the Ludlow Gallery. We parted ways when friends of his arrived to take him to dinner.
Gertrude, who seldom gave benefit of a doubt to anyone, suspected something other than this innocent encounter. Her bright eyes stayed on my face as I formed an answer for her.
Mercifully, Willard interrupted with, “No matter, it’s too nice to loiter inside. Let’s go to the terrace.” He took Gertrude’s ample arm with “My dear” and propelled her through the French doors. He had expertly cut short her questions for the moment. “Donald says you terrorized the Red Cross in Paris during the war. Tell me all.”
Nodding and smiling at Gertrude’s oft-repeated tale, Willard showed his patience and kindness. The hardship of war, particularly her own, was her favorite subject and she carried on until we were seated at table. Lunch was a cold poached salmon, a large bowl of salad greens from the patch Strether grew out back, a peasant loaf and Spanish white wine in the Mexican glasses. Apple tart and espresso followed.
On the surface, Strether’s persona was that of a simple, ethical man of the arts. He eschewed chemical pigments in his work. He was concerned with the encouragement of traditional adobe architecture and was a keen proponent of solar design, heating his house only with a wood stove. He gardened to have organic vegetables for his guests, and he entertained simply but with style. Small but annual contributions arrived in his name at the opera and chamber music festival. Was it so terrible that he bilked the rich with his questionable paintings? If the well to do were foolish enough to fall into his ethical and aesthetic traps, was he so bad?
There was a pause in the conversation as we finished the coffee. Gertrude, in whose presence lapses of prandial chatter were forbidden, took the opportunity to start the real proceedings. She put her heavily ringed hand on top of Strether’s, long-fingered and thin. “And now, what treat awaits us in the studio, my dear? I have several yawning blank walls since the museum people came to wrest away my gifts, the Gaspards.”
She ably played the coquettish game that she just might buy the painting herself. It was intended to put the victim off his guard and make him feel comfortable, unsuspecting in the company of peers. I wondered if Willard was fooled by our provincial games. Didn’t he sense the glowing red dot on his forehead?
We gathered up our glasses and walked slowly along the path to the separate adobe studio. It was one large room with north-facing windows and a high ceiling. The painting was under a white cotton cover on the easel, encased in the shaft of bright sun from the skylight. Strether seated Gertrude in the one chair, a regal Spanish design with gilded finials, and motioned the two of us to the long window-seat with cushions.
He then pulled off the cover with a flourish. He said nothing as we stared at the small canvas, which was even more austere and plain than I anticipated. There was, as expected, a row of three stars high in the cerulean blue doorway. The background was an expertly applied wash of earthy light terra cotta.
Willard, always polite and well-bred, started with, “How elegant, Donald. It’s most impressive.” He was not showing any of his cards at this time.
Gertrude made a humming sound while she gave her well-practiced expression for viewing serious art. I thought of an old, blonde iguana on a limb, blinking.
It was time to get my part started. “Stars in the doorway, Donald. What can they mean?” Did I sound as if I was reading from a script?
Strether replied in his softest tones, “I never put into words what all can see. The painter should paint and let the image speak for itself, others can do the talking and writing.”
“Quite