"No good," he said. "I worry about that." He broke up the wax, dropped it back into the pot and melted it again. This time, before he put the mold together, he brushed hot wax into the pieces that would make the horns. The wax image came out complete and perfect. Then for two days he worked with the wax, smoothing irregularities, sharpening edges with a knife, adding bits here and there.
"Couldn't you work in wax to begin with?" Gene asked.
"Sure, but the wax has to be hollow or there will be too much bronze, too heavy. Watch what I do now." He dipped his fingers into the cooling wax-pot, formed the soft wax into little bails, rolled them into cylinders. He carefully attached these to the figure to make vents and pipes. Two narrow ones went from the head to the tips of the horns. "If I don't do this," he explained, "the same thing will happen with the bronze. Better to make your mistakes in wax."
The pipes were to carry the molten bronze to various parts of the figure, and the vents were to allow air to escape. "Otherwise you get bubbles. The first time I cast in bronze, there was a. big bubble right in the belly. And a big pain in my belly, too. If you make a mistake, it's your fault, not the foundry, and you pay them just the same."
Avila made him build a clay figurine, then copy it in wood. The wood carving was a botch, because he had tried to follow the shape of the clay too faithfully. Avila smiled when he saw it. "Now you have learned something."
Another time Avila had him construct a wooden armature of soft pine, into which he had to drive curving rows of little brads until the armature bristled with them like the body of St. Sebastian. The heads of the brads, Avila explained, had to represent the surface of the clay figure he was to make; he would be allowed to cover them with a sixteenth of an inch of clay, no more; and for three days Gene turned the armature around and around while he stared at it, trying to visualize the clay volume which did not yet exist. Again and again he tapped some of the brads a fraction of an inch deeper, pulled others out and started over. When at last he added the clay, the figure was stiff, mechanical; he tore it apart himself, without waiting for Avila to do it, and threw the clay back in the bin. But from this, too, he learned something.
Chapter Ten
Corrupt and abrading, I desire your smoothness
You cool to my hot, tender to my rough
You integral, one curve, I channeled and weathered.
How can you know yourself if not through me?
Let me pay tribute under your skin
Before worm, rot and canker topple us both Into the luxury of silence
--Gene Anderson
One evening in October there were six of them sitting around the oil stove -- Avila, Gene, Darío and Peggy, Gus Vlismas and a girl he had brought; her name was Lillian. They were all bored and restless; rain was tapping the windows out of an ink-blue sky.
"Let's play los cadáveres exquisitos," said Dario, stubbing out his cigarette. "żQuieren?"
"Oh, not that again," said Peggy without looking up. She was tearing a cigarette apart with her fingernails, dropping the shreds of tobacco into an ashtray and smoothing out the paper.
Darío turned on her. "Just because I say do it, you say no."
"God," she muttered. "Do it, then."
"I don't know what it is," Lillian said. "How do you play?"
"It's a game." Darío went to a cabinet, brought sketchpads and handed them out. "Like this, you fold the paper in three parts, then in the top part you draw a head, any kind of head. You don't show anybody. Then you fold it over so nobody can see it, but you leave the neck showing, okay? Then the next person, he draws the body and folds it over, and the last one draws the legs."
Silence fell as they worked on their drawings. Gene drew the head of a snail with eyes on stalks, and put a top hat on it. He folded it, passed it to Avila. After a moment Lillian handed him her folded paper. Presently everyone was done with the heads except Darío.
"What are you doing, making a masterpiece?" Gus demanded. "Finish it already."
"Wait, be patient," Darío said. He was grinning with amusement.
Gene drew a bird's body with outspread wings; he folded it, leaving four short lines to show where the legs began, and passed it on.
Lillian handed over another folded paper; Gene drew two hairy legs with enormous feet. "Everybody finish?" Darío asked. "Come on, Peg."
"Just a minute. I'd be done now if you hadn't taken so long."
When they unfolded the pictures, it was easy to see who had done each part. Avila's drawings were bold, sketchy, and powerful, Darío's fussily detailed, Lillian's bland. The head Darío had drawn was a satiric portrait of Gene, with childish lips, eyes like a doll's. Under it Gas Vlismas had made a female torso with enormous dark-nippled breasts, and Peggy had given it chicken feet. Darío laughed until tears stood in his eyes. "Perfect!" he said. "Now whoever made the head has to give it a title."
They passed the papers around again. Under the snail head Gene had drawn was a seal's body wearing an old-fashioned collar and tie, and under that two barber-pole legs. He titled it "A Little More Off the Top."
Darío had entitled his portrait of Gene 'El pollito sin huevos,' "little chicken without balls." Gene wanted to crumple it and throw it on the floor, but instead he passed it to Avila. Their eyes met; Avila shook his head slightly.
Darío leaned back and began talking to Gene about his work. "You always make figures of men, never women," he said. "Why is that? They don't have women models in life classes Where you go?"
"No, they didn't."
"Maybe because they think it would make a scandal, if they let you see a naked woman."
"It's better to begin with the male body," Avila said. "If the man is well made, you see all the muscles very easily. In a woman they are covered up."
"That's true, Manolo, but still, how can a man be an artist who has never seen a woman?" He turned to Gene. "You should do a female nude in clay. Don't you think so, Gus?"
"Sure."
"What's wrong with right now?" Darío said, swinging around to Gene again. "Peggy here will pose for you -- right, Peggy?"
She glanced up at him with a faint smile. After a moment she put out her cigarette. "Why not," she said.
"There, you see? How about it, kid, let's see how good you are."
"I'd have to make some sketches," Gene said. "I haven't got an armature."
"Armature?" cried Darío. He swung up out of his chair, crossed to the shelf, came back with a wire armature in his hand. "Here you are, just the thing, all ready." He set the armature down on a modeling stand. It was the skeletal framework of a human figure, standing with pelvis thrust out, hands on hips. Darío turned on the overhead lights, then crossed to the bin, came back with a lump of clay the size of a baseball, slapped it down on the base of the armature. "Clay and everything," he said. "See how easy we make it for you? Come on, Peggy."
"He doesn't need me for the first part," she said, still looking down at the ashtray.
Gene looked at Avila, who would not meet his eyes. "You do what you want," he said. "I'm going to bed." He got up and went around the bedroom partition.
"Okay, kid, let's go, we're waiting," said Darío.
Gene got up unwillingly and approached the modeling stand. He picked up the ball of clay, tore off a lump, pressed it into the wires where the figure's torso would be.
The others sat quietly and watched him while he built up the torso, the arms, legs, head. Once he heard Darío and Gus muttering together, then the sound of suppressed laughter.