“Don’t you like this?” she asked, gesturing toward the cliffline of facades and loggia and columned fronts.
“Yes, but the important fact is that it exists, not the time it took to do it. It’s like saying something is better because it took a long time to do, and that is certainly not true.”
“Then what is important is the artist’s vision, and his ability to communicate that vision?”
“To the viewer, yes. To the artist it might be that he had done it, and how close he was to satisfying the ethereal vision with the reality.”
“Then the closer the reality is to the vision the better it is?”
“Well, the more successful, yes. We still have to deal with the worth of the vision.”
“Oh, god, this is endless! How many visions dance on the head of a paintbrush?”
“One at a time.”
The world was a playground, a beautiful toy. We could deplore the harsh, but necessary, methods they were using to reduce the population in India, even as we flew high overhead to Paris, for Andre’s fête, where the most beautiful women in Europe appeared in sculptured body jewelry and little else.
I took her to the digs at Ur in the hot, dusty Euphrates Valley, but stayed in an air-conditioned mobile-villa. We sailed the Indian Ocean with Karpolis even as the Bombay riots were killing hundreds of thousands. The rest of the world seemed far away, and I really didn’t care much, for I was gorging at a love-feast. My man Huo handled the routine matters, and I put almost everything else off for awhile. We went up to Station One and “danced” in the null-gravity of the so-called “Star Ballroom” in the big can of the central hub. We took the shuttle to the moon, for Madelon’s first visit. I saw Tycho Base with fresh eyes and a sense of adventure and wonder which she generated. We went on up to Copernicus Dome then around to the new Young Observatory on Backside. We looked at the stars together, seeing them so clearly, so close and unblinking. I ached to go all the way out and so did she. Bundled into bulky suits we took a walk on the surface, slightly annoyed to be discreetly watched over by a Lunar Tour guide, there to see that the greenhorns didn’t muck up.
We loved every minute of it. We lay spoon-fashion in our bed at night and talked of the stars and alien life and made lover’s plans for the future.
I was in love. I was blind, raw, sensitive, happy, insane, and madly foolish. I spent an emotional treasure and counted it well-used. I was indeed in love.
But love cannot stifle, nor can it be bought, not even with love. Love can only be a gift, freely given, freely taken. I used my money as a tool, as Cilento might use a scan pattern, to give us time and pleasure, not to “buy” Madelon.
All these trips cost a fortune, but it was one of the reasons I had money. I could have stopped working at making it long before, except I knew I would seriously drain my capital with commissions and projects and joy rides and women. I was already starting to think of going to Mars with Madelon, but it was a one month trip and that was a big chunk of time to carve from my schedule.
Instead, I introduced her to my world. There were the obvious, public events, the concerts and exhibitions and parties. She shared my enthusiasm in finding and assisting young artists in every field, from the dirt-poor Mexican peasant with a natural talent for clay sculpture to the hairy, sulky Slav with the house full of extraordinary synthecizor tapes, that few had heard.
Madelon’s observations on art, on people and events, on philosophy, on things large and small were always interesting, often deeply probing and full of insight. “Reality is unreal to those not sane,”
she said once. “And insanity unreal to the sane.”
During the premiere of Warlock, the opera by Douglas Weiss, she whispered to me, “Actors try to fuse the wishes of childhood with the needs of adultery.” I raised my eyebrows at her and she grinned, shrugging. “My mind wanders,” she said.
During a party in a bubble amid the Ondine complex, while a storm raged a hundred fathoms up, she turned to me from watching a group of people. “If you can be nothing more than you are, you must be careful to be all that you can be.”
Lifting from the Thor Heyerdahl plankton skimmer she said, “I always say goodbye. That way I am not burdened with appointments I cannot keep.”
She also commented that Texas was the largest glacier-free state in the Union, and that Peter Brueghel was an artist that could draw a crowd.
But life with Madelon was hardly a life of one-liners and sex. It was varied and complex, simple and fast, slow and comfortable—all of those things.
“How did you get so rich?” Madelon asked one night, after seeing me authorize a considerable expenditure on a project. “Is your family rich?”
“No, my father was an engineer and my mother was a musician. We weren’t poor, but we were certainly not rich. Sometimes I do wonder why I’m rich—or rather, how I got that way. I know why, I suppose. It was to indulge myself. There were things I wanted to do and they took money. I found I had the talent. If you want money badly enough, you can get it.”
“Isn’t that a cliché?” she asked. “I know lots of people who are desperate for money.”
“Desperate, yes, but not willing to do those things that must be done. Or don’t have the talent for it. I’m an exploiter, I suppose. I see a need, and I fill it as best I can. I try not to create a need, which is really just a want. My luck was good, my talent was sufficient, and I was willing to do the homework. I worked long hours, hard hours.”
“I’ve worked long, hard hours, too,” Madelon said, “and I had to do a lot of things I didn’t want to do, but I’m not rich.”
“Is that what you want, to be rich?”
“I suppose not. But I want freedom, and that usually takes money.”
“Yes, sometimes. Having money at all offers freedom, too, but there are problems with that condition as well. I know, I’ve had both.”
I continued to show Madelon that private world of the rich, my world, with the “secure” houses in various parts of the world, the private beaches and fast cars, the collections and gatherings and nonsense. I introduced her to worthy friends, like Burbee, the senator, and Dunn, the percussionist; like Hilary, Barbara, Greg, Joan, and the others. She had gowns by Queen Kong, in Shanghai, and custom powerjewels by Simpson. She had things, and experiences, and I shared her delight and interest.