The Modigliani Scandal Read Free Page A

and a long, thin nose. ″Dedo was the worst,″ he added with a faraway smile.
    Dee made out the signature on the drawing. ″Modigliani?″
    ″Yes.″ The man′s eyes now saw only the past, and he talked as if to himself. ″He always wore a brown corduroy jacket and a big, floppy felt hat. He used to say that art should be like hashish: it should show people the beauty in things, the beauty they could not normally see. He would drink, too, in order to see the ugliness in things. But he loved the hashish.
    ″It was sad that he had such a conscience about it. I believe he was brought up quite strictly. Also, his health was a little delicate, so he worried about the drugs. He worried, but he still used them.″ The old man smiled and nodded, as if agreeing with his memories.
    ″He lived at the Impasse Falguière. He was so poor; he grew haggard. I remember when he went to the Egyptian section in the Louvre—he came back saying it was the only section worth seeing!″ He laughed happily. ″A melancholy man, though,″ he went on, his voice sobering. ″He always had Les Chants de Maldoror in his pocket: he could recite many French verses. The Cubism arrived at the end of his life. It was alien to him. Perhaps it killed him.″
    Dee spoke softly, to guide the old man′s memory without dislocating his train of thought. ″Did Dedo ever paint while he was high?″
    The man laughed lightly. ″Oh yes,″ he said. ″While he was high he would paint very fast, shouting all the time that this would be his masterpiece, his chef-d′oeuvre, that now all Paris would see what painting was all about. He would choose the brightest colors and throw them at the canvas. His friends would tell him the work was useless, terrible, and he would tell them to piss off, they were too ignorant to know that this was the painting of the twentieth century. Then, when he came down, he would agree with them, and throw the canvas in the corner.″ He sucked at his pipe, noticed it had gone out, and reached for matches. The spell was broken.
    Dee leaned forward in her hard upright chair, the joint between her fingers forgotten. There was a low intensity in her voice.
    She said: ″What happened to those paintings?″
    He puffed his pipe into life and leaned back, drawing on it rhythmically. The regular suck, puff, suck, puff, drew him gradually back into his reverie. ″Poor Dedo,″ he said. ″He could not pay the rent. He had nowhere to go. His landlord gave him twenty-four hours to get out. He tried to sell some paintings, but the few people who could see how good they were had no more money than he.
    ″He had to move in with one of the others—I forget who. There was hardly room for Dedo, let alone his paintings. The ones he liked, he loaned to close friends.
    ″The rest—″ the old man grunted, as if the memory had given him a twinge of pain. ″I see him now, loading them into a wheelbarrow and pushing them down the street. He comes to a yard, piles them up in the center, and sets fire to them. ′What else is there to do?′ he keeps saying. I could have lent him money, I suppose, but he owed too much already. Still, when I saw him watch his paintings burning, I wished I had. There, I was never a saint, in my youth any more than in my old age.″
    ″All the hashish paintings were on that bonfire?″ Dee′s voice was almost a whisper.
    ″Yes,″ the old man said. ″Virtually all of them.″
    ″Virtually? He kept some?″
    ″No, he kept none. But he had given some to somebody—I had forgotten, but talking to you brings it back. There was a priest, in his hometown, who took an interest in Oriental drugs. I forget why—their medicinal value, their spiritual properties? Something like that. Dedo confessed his habits to the priest, and was granted absolution. Then the priest asked to see the work he did under the influence of hashish. Dedo sent him a painting—only one, I remember now.″
    The reefer burned Dee′s fingers, and she