“How she sleeps!” thought Zinzaga. “What the hell? Could she have taken poison? The disappointing reception of my last novel may have affected her deeply . . .”
Zinzaga, wide-eyed, shook the couch. Pages rustling, a book slowly slid off Amaranta’s chest and flopped onto the floor. The novelist picked up the book, opened it, and blanched. This was not some book. This was by no means just any book. This was his own latest book, published under the patronage of Count Don Barabanta-Alimonda. The novel carried the title Execution by Catherine Wheel in Saint-Muscovy of Forty-Four Polygamists with Twenty Wives Each, a novel, as you can see, taken directly from Russian life, and what could be more interesting than that! And yet, lo and behold . . .
“She fell asleep reading my novel!” Zinzaga hissed. “What a lack of respect for Count Barabanta-Alimonda! What a lack of respect for Alphonso Zinzaga, who bestowed upon her the glorious name of Zinzaga!”
“Woman!” Zinzaga barked at the top of his Portuguese lungs while banging the couch with his fist. Amaranta sighed deeply, opened her dark eyes, and smiled.
“Is that you, Alphonso?” she asked, and stretched her arms to him.
“Yes, it is I. You sleep? You sleep?” Alphonso sat down on a wobbly ramshackle chair. “And what were you doing before you fell asleep?”
“I went to ask my mother for money.”
“And then?”
“I was reading your novel.”
“And you fell asleep? Admit it! You fell asleep?”
“And I fell asleep. But why are you so angry, Alphonso?”
“I’m not angry, I’m offended by your flippant treatment of something that will surely bring me glory one day, even if it hasn’t yet! You fell asleep over my novel! That’s how this sudden sleepiness of yours appears to me!”
“There now, Alphonso! I was reading your novel with great pleasure. I was engrossed. I—I—I—I was especially struck by the scene in which the young writer Alphonso Zenzega shoots himself with a pistol—”
“That’s not in this novel. That’s from A Myriad of Lights!”
“Really? So what was the scene that transfixed me? Oh, yes! I wept when the Russian Marquis Ivan Ivanovichichichich flings himself out of his lady love’s window into the river . . . into the river . . . the Volga River.”
“Ahhh!”
“And drowns, blessing the Viscountess Ksenia Petrovna. I was transfixed!”
“If you were so transfixed, how come you fell asleep?”
“I was terribly drowsy, you know! Last night, I didn’t sleep a wink. It was so sweet of you to read your wonderful new novel to me all night long and it gave me so much pleasure I just couldn’t stop listening and I didn’t get any sleep.”
“Ahhh! That’s understandable. Get me some dinner!”
“You haven’t eaten yet?”
“No.”
“But when you left this morning you said you’d be dining with the editor of the Lisbon Provincial Gazette.”
“Yes—because I assumed the damned Gazette would be publishing my poem!”
“Don’t tell me that they’re not going to?”
“They’re not going to.”
“What a disaster! Since I became your wife, I’ve hated editors with all my heart! Are you hungry?”
“I am hungry.”
“My poor Alphonso! Do you have any money?”
“What kind of a question is that? Isn’t there something to eat?”
“No, dearest! Mother gave me food but she didn’t give me money.”
“Hah . . . ” Zinzaga muttered. The chair groaned. Zinzaga stood and began to pace. Having paced and deliberated, he felt the strongest urge to convince himself at all costs that hunger was really nothing other than lack of willpower, that man was created to battle nature, that man does not live by bread alone, that to be an artist was to go hungry, etcetera, and he would probably have succeeded, if he hadn’t recalled that right next door, in suite number 148 of the Venomous Swan, resided an Italian genre artist by the name of Butronza. This talented man, with some good connections, possessed the entirely practical and important skill—which Zinzaga had failed to master—of dining every day.
“To him I will go!” Zinzaga determined and went to call on his neighbor.
On entering suite 148, Zinzaga witnessed a scene that delighted him as a novelist and made his heart sink as a hungry man. All hopes of dining in the company of Francesco Butronza were dashed when, among frames, stretchers, armless mannequins, easels, and chairs covered with faded costumes of all types and eras, our novelist finally spotted his friend.
Butronza, wearing a hat à la Van Dyck* and dressed in the habit of Peter the Hermit,† was standing on a stool, waving his maulstick, and bellowing furiously. His appearance was beyond terrifying. One foot was on a stool, the other on a table. His face blazed, his eyes gleamed, his goatee trembled, his hair stood on end, as if ready to fling his hat in the air.
Carolina, hot-blooded Francesco Butronza’s German wife, was huddled in the corner beside a statue of an armless, noseless Apollo with a huge angular gash in his torso. Pale and trembling she gazed at the table lamp in terror.
“Barbarians!” thundered Butronza. “You do not love art, you stifle it, the devil take you! How could I have married you, you frigid-blooded German! To think, fool that I am, that I bound myself, a man as free as the wind, an eagle, an antelope—in short, an artist—to this lump of ice full of prejudices and trifles . . . Diablo! You are ice! You are a gristly roast . . . You—you are a fool! Weep, you miserable overcooked German sausage! Your husband is an artist, not a lousy shopkeeper! Weep, beer bottle! Is that you, Zinzaga? Don’t leave! Wait! I’m glad that you dropped by . . . Behold this woman!” Butronza waved his left foot toward Carolina, who began to cry.
“There now!” began Zinzaga. “Why are you quarreling, Don Butronza? What did Donna Butronza ever do to you? Why are you making her weep? Think of your great motherland, Don Butronza, your motherland, a country where the worship of beauty is so closely intertwined with the worship of woman! Think of that!”
“I am outraged!” roared Francesco. “Put yourself in my place! As you well know, I have begun a magnificent painting at the personal request of Count Barabanta-Alimonda. He has asked me to depict a story from the Old Testament, Susanna and the Elders. Ever since this morning, I’ve been begging this fat German to undress and model for me. I’ve been crawling on my knees before her, I’m beside myself, and she still won’t do it! Put yourself in my shoes! How can I paint without a model?”
“I can’t!” wailed Carolina. “It’s indecent!”
“You see? You see? You call that an excuse, damn it?”
“I just can’t. Honestly, I can’t! He orders me to undress. He tells me to stand by the window—”
“Exactly! I will depict Susanna by moonlight! Moonbeams falling upon her breast, the Pharisees’ torches shining upon her back . . . The interplay of color! I can’t do it any other way!”