Mr. Bones Read Free Page B

murder now, and not simple homicide, but cannibalism. He’d found the cabinet of skulls an aesthetic satisfaction, like a rare ossuary. He’d never understood the pleasure of eating the bodies of these men, of emptying these skulls of the brain and spooning it into a bowl and gorging on the gray jelly sponge. Now he appreciated the magnificence of eating flesh, the great appetite, the ritual devouring. The destruction of the vase and the plates and paintings—pieces as unique as any man—was not vandalism. It was enrichment, a source of power. He was eating art.
    Two couples, dinner guests at the plate-drop, the Diamonds and the DeSilvas, called separately, expressing concern, pretending to sympathize. “You must be under a lot of pressure.” And they suggested to Minor Watt that if there were any other items in his collection that he wanted to get rid of, they would be glad to accept them. He’d smashed the plates, therefore—their reasoning went—he didn’t care about them, and would probably hand over a precious object for nothing or very little.
    â€œBut I do care,” Minor Watt said after he’d hung up. “That’s why I did it.”
    You do something spontaneously, perhaps accidentally, with no thought of the consequences, he thought, and sometimes you’re surprised at what you’ve provoked. His roofing career leading to real estate had proven that. Smashing china was a revelation, and a cure.
    The Diamonds said they had always been very fond of Minor Watt’s Tang celadon bowl, smuggled out of Cambodia, perhaps stolen from the National Museum in Phnom Penh. The man who’d sold it to him had remarked on its solidity, how this thick piece of pottery had survived through twelve centuries.
    â€œThat piece could take a direct hit.”
    Minor Watt had always smiled, and felt small and somewhat in awe, remembering those words. He invited the Diamonds for tea. He called attention to the jade-colored glaze, the inimitable crackle, and allowed them to salivate at the prospect of the gift—they were actually swallowing, gulping in anticipation. Then he asked them to put on protective goggles. “You’ll see it better.” Humoring him—he was insane, wasn’t he?—they put them on, and Minor Watt took a hammer to the bowl and, with his tongue clamped in his teeth, pounded the celadon to dust.
    The DeSilvas had hinted on the phone of their liking for an Edward Lear watercolor of the Nile depicting Kasr el-Saidi among some riverside palms. These people, too, pleased to be invited for tea, let their covetous gaze wander over the painting.
    â€œThe color is brighter without the glass,” Minor Watt said, and removed the painting from its frame. He served tea, and after filling their cups he dribbled the pot of hot tea over the watercolor, as the man held his sobbing wife.
    Minor Watt said, “Sorry,” as mockery, but he thought, Of course I know what I’m doing. Power over works of art that he owned, but also power over these people. He had the power to terrorize them, too, without ever touching them.
    Each thing he destroyed strengthened him; each person he terrified through his destruction made him someone to be feared. It had never been his intention; it was all a revelation. Money had no meaning anymore. He’d amassed his art collection believing it would inspire respect—and it had, to a degree; and it had inspired envy, too. The assumption in New York was that he would eventually give the collection to a museum. To these people, and perhaps to a museum, these objects represented wealth—the absurd bias toward money. Even a museum would not regard them as collectors’ items, one of a kind. These days a museum would sell them, to stay afloat, and Minor Watt would be forgotten. It disgusted him to think that, transformed into money, they were replaceable. The collector’s conceit was always that he