Читать книгу Why I Won't Be Going To Lunch Anymore - Douglas Atwill - Страница 11

Because her studio sign is small and overgrown by a neighbor’s shrub, people looking for Marian Yamaguchi sometimes get lost and end up knocking on my door seeking direction, so I draw a small map and send them off back down the street. Marian is a friend and a dedicated painter who lives and works in Santa Fe. She is a widow of many years and her work, somewhat Japanese, vaguely modern, is well received by an international following of admirers.

Her long-time studio gallery is a block away from mine, around the corner on Delgado Street. If someone buys a canvas or drawing at the Yamaguchi Studio because of my map, she sends an assistant with a gift for me wrapped neatly in rice paper with raffia. It is a small piece of pale green porcelain, something crafted from black bamboo or one of her smaller unframed sketches. At home I have a shelf devoted to Marian’s offerings from the sales that my maps generate.

She surprised the artist community by marrying Lewis Goldfarb, a widower from Trenton, New Jersey. This is a curious, intercontinental match; she is small and deliberately graceful, moving with quiet, inborn elegance and he is tall, raw-boned and cheerily awkward. The top of her head is the on level with his elbow. Maybe because of this disparity, the union agrees enormously with them both. Lewis adopted with enthusiasm all things Japanese in honor of his new wife, selling his poultry business in the East and moving with gusto into a life as the artistic spouse.

While Marian works in the studio, he now tends the incipient moss garden at the side of their house and, following months of experiment, prepares very acceptable sushi and teriyaki. His bonsai collection grows and after a year of searching catalogs he orders from Kyoto several pair of gray cotton gardener’s pajamas and two-toed clogs. I see him in the side garden attired thus almost every summer morning with his special bonsai secateurs and straw peasant’s hat. Marian’s friends consider her a very lucky woman, and for their anniversary she presents Lewis with an elegant black kimono with white piping around the collar. He has a broad smile of pride on the ceremonial occasions he wears it.

Lewis is tireless in the promotion of the works of his wife, whom he still refers to as “Mrs. Yamaguchi.” Since her studio is several houses away from the moneyed crush of Canyon Road, Lewis spends hours at the corner, hoping to lure a collector off to Marian’s secluded establishment. His tall stature in Nipponese regalia seldom fails to enchant the passing tourist and if the victim shows even minimal assent, Lewis drags him in an excitement of chatter to her door. Marian’s calm determinism takes over from there. Many a visitor leaves with a canvas under the arm and smile on the face.

The fourth autumn of my stay in Santa Fe, Marian Yamaguchi is harvesting yellow pears from a tall ladder when she falls to her death. Our group of artists is stunned. Lewis reverently performs a Shinto ceremony for the gathered friends, then instructs us in the launching of the paper boats with candles on the reservoir up Canyon Road. He grieves for many months and I don’t see him again until the following summer.

At my studio door appears Lewis with a small package wrapped in rice paper with a raffia tie. I had earlier drawn a map to the Yamaguchi Studio for a prosperous-looking couple and this must be my reward. The package is even more expertly composed than Marian’s were, as if sent by courier from an exclusive shop in the old country. He is tired and drawn.

“I want to thank you ever so much for sending customers by, like before,” he says. “You know, things have been hard since Mrs. Yamaguchi passed on. People still love her work, though. She left so many unframed and unfinished pieces. They’re much harder to sell than the finished ones.”

“I understand, Lewis. I have some extra frames in the back. Would you like . . . ?”

“No, no”, he interrupts. “I can manage. Thank you all the same.”

He looks around my studio with an attentive eye. “They say you are doing quite well here, and you haven’t been here really all that long”.

“Yes, I’ve been lucky, Lewis. Collectors seem to like what I do.” I wonder if part of his visit is to ascertain if I might be siphoning off sales and collectors from the Yamaguchi Studio, now run totally by him. Perhaps I have secrets of display or framing or lighting that could account for my success.

After more scrutiny, he turns and walks to the door. I notice the gray pajamas are soiled and the two-toed clogs breaking apart. We bow to each other and I watch him departing down the road with his own larger rendition of the quick-stepped Japanese walk.

That winter has a dozen snow storms, one after the other without respite. The task of snow-shoveling the sidewalk in front of the studio becomes tedious. This day, after a night of blizzard, is bright and white, sunlight raking across the pristine drifts. I shovel slowly, for a change enjoying the physical activity in brisk, clear air. Motor traffic is sparse so the silence envelopes each sound and amplifies it.

Another man and Lewis are bicycling slowly in the wheel-tracks toward me up Canyon Road. Lewis is wearing the black anniversary kimono. He cycles boldly erect, like a large, dark grasshopper. I can hear them talking a house away, wheels crunching as they follow single file, voices loud in the cold.

“And did you hear about the terrible fire in that department store downtown? It was truly awful. Dozens killed.” It is Lewis’s voice.

“Downtown where, Lewis?” asks his friend.

“Tokyo, of course,” he replies.