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What Humbert did not tell the reporter was that when Heribert Julià had burst onto the scene a few months later, establishing himself as the new star, breaking with and going beyond all those trends without belonging to any of the in-groups, he had decided to dig a bit deeper. The fact that Julià was also from Barcelona — though he had remained aloof from the so-called Catalan colony and had been an American citizen for many years — could only work to his advantage. Helena Sorrenti seemed to hold the key to the situation. Not only did she run the gallery that had launched Julià and established his dominance, she also seemed to be his wife. At the restaurant where he worked, Humbert asked to work only the lunch shift for a month. He followed her. He studied her habits. Sometimes she had dinner at The Odeon. Sometimes at Les Pléiades or Ballato. Once in a great while at Da Silvano. Every Tuesday, though, she had dinner alone in a plain old Blarney Stone, always the same one. That bit of simplicity touched Humbert to the core!
On the fourth Tuesday, he made up his mind. That morning he withdrew all his savings — a pittance — from the bank. At noon he swept his studio, dusted, put fresh sheets on the bed, and lined all his paintings up against the walls. That afternoon he showered, shaved, put on a clean shirt, a jacket, and tennis shoes. That evening, as he walked toward the Blarney Stone, he couldn’t stop thinking that maybe that night he wouldn’t be going home alone. Outside the restaurant, he stopped for a moment to work up his courage: he opened the door, crossed the room with determination, and sat down at the table where Helena Sorrenti was sitting, all by herself. He introduced himself, still not entirely sure she wouldn’t call the waiters over to send him packing, a possibility she did indeed entertain for a few seconds.
He looks at his feet and finds them to his liking. He wiggles his toes a little. Satisfied with the effect, he picks up a little notebook (which he always carried with him to jot down ideas he will later copy over into the big notebooks) and writes: “My feet. Self-portrait.”
Helena was doing laps.
“I don’t know why we’ve bothered to come here when we haven’t been to the beach once.”
To the beach. . But what if, suddenly, all the muses descended upon him and he is so far away from the studio that by the time he gets back they’ve all fled? The mere thought of such a possibility sets his nerves on edge. What if his greatest insights slipped away because he didn’t write them down fast enough? Or, even worse, if he is too slow to realize that the fleeting image in his brain is a stroke of genius? How many ideas must fail to materialize, hidden behind layers of veils, not quite able to penetrate his consciousness? What if everything he was able to portray was nothing more than the shadow of the residue of the great ideas that had died in his unconscious? Perhaps he should consult a psychoanalyst who would help him reach the inner world that was lost to him. What about the seconds in which he wasn’t thinking? Aren’t they, in effect, wasted seconds? Perhaps it is precisely during those seconds that the perfect notion, the greatest he could ever produce, may emerge? And all that thinking, about ideas and images. . Why think? Each second lost in thought is irretrievable. If, instead of lying there, he were face-to-face with a canvas, he wouldn’t have to rationalize at alclass="underline" the only thing he would have to do would be to allow the image in his brain to secrete its fluid down his arm which, by means of the hand, would transfer it to the canvas, without rationalization, alive, passionately. .
He leaps to his feet. He goes to the bungalow he’s using as a study, next door to the one they are staying in. He drops his sunglasses on the table and finishes a painting he had started the day before, full of people pursuing one another or running around in every direction. He starts a new one: one man strikes another in the stomach and despite the blood that flows from his navel, the victim is laughing.
He finishes the painting, signs it, washes his hands, calls Xano. What a waste of time to have to dial so many numbers. Xano isn’t in the hotel. He isn’t at the gallery either. Humbert leaves a message. He goes to the pool and has a swim. Helena, who is sunbathing, joins him. Under the whitish-blue water, they play tag. One of those Mexican swimmers, who risk their lives diving into the water from the dizzyingly high cliffs of Acapulco, reaches the pool through a secret tunnel and drags Helena along the ground as she laughs, offering herself to him and resisting him at the same time, arousing him. He wonders: should he get out of the pool and write the idea down, or let the idea run its course. He decides to take a chance. He goes over to Helena and whispers:
“I was imagining you were with one of those Mexican swimmers who dive into the water from the dizzyingly high cliffs of Acapulco. .”
When they are done, Helena goes off to shower and dress. Humbert stretches out on the grass surrounding the pool. He dreams a dream that’s very similar to another he had had recently: it was so simple to fly, you only had to know how to make a certain motion while holding your arms bent, as if they were wings, and move them with the necessary precision.
The sound of the horn of the car that has come to pick them up awakens him. He gets up quickly, showers, and puts on his contact lenses. Every time he does this he remembers those green glasses that had made such an impression in the press at the time of his discovery. Had sticking them on one of the paintings he had done this fall, which would be seen in the Chicago show later this month, been too impulsive?