The American Lady(32)

And so Marie thought it the most natural thing in the world that she should pay for their tickets to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, especially since she had to work hard to persuade Pandora to come along in the first place. The dancer had declared that she cared only for the works of the younger generation of artists, the wild and the free.

But as soon as they entered the hall where the Dutch Old Masters hung, she couldn’t pretend to be bored any longer. Rembrandt, Bruegel, Jan Steen, Vermeer—Pandora darted like a butterfly from one painting to the next, sipping, tasting, drinking them in. She dived into the sea of color, the golden glow of the sunbeams, the dark shadows and luminous outlines. Her eyes glazed over as if she had drunk too much red wine, and she gave little cries of joy.

Marie, by contrast, stood reverently in front of the pictures. She knew these paintings of course, but only as reproductions in her art books. She looked up, startled, as she realized that Pandora was beginning to sway back and forth before a portrait of a woman by Peter Paul Rubens. She wasn’t going to start dancing here, was she?

“Just look at that back! It’s just like she was drenched in gold. And the blonde hair! A bit thin, perhaps, given that she’s so young, but there’s so much . . . joy in the brushwork! As if he loved every hair on her head. He painted everything just exactly as he saw it, every wrinkle, every fold. It’s incredible! It makes me want to reach out and touch it . . . that soft, creamy skin. And look at the backside on her—now that’s erotic, don’t you agree?” She laughed. “She’s got quite a pair of hips as well! But then there are some men who like exactly that sort of thing.”

“I think the fuller figure was in fashion back then,” Marie said, smiling. So Rubens was a dirty old man? Whatever would Alois Sawatzky say if he could hear Pandora’s opinions? Marie stepped closer and looked at the bronze plate that hung under the painting. “It says here that he painted this after he had traveled to Spain and Italy, where he was influenced by—”

“Oh, who cares about all that?” Pandora interrupted. “All that happened three hundred some years ago. All I care about is what I feel, here and now.” She spun around on her toes. “Don’t be so shocked!” she said, noticing the look on Marie’s face. “All right, I admit it, I never expected these old paintings to inspire me so. But that doesn’t mean I have to kneel down and pray here, does it?”

Marie was still skeptical. “Since you ask, I have to say that’s exactly what I want to do: kneel down and pray.”

Pandora patted her on the arm. “Too much respect is never a good thing. Look at me: whether it’s music, poetry, painting, I can only be as good as I am when I take my inspiration from the real masters of every art,” she said happily. “If I didn’t have that, I’d still be dancing pointe, doing Swan Lake for the umpteenth time, and torturing young girls with old-fashioned ballet. Inspiration and an open mind are sisters in art—you need both to create anything really new.”

They made their way arm in arm toward the museum café. When the waiter had brought them each a glass of white wine, Marie suddenly leaned forward. Before she could stop to think about what she was doing, she told Pandora everything. She had clutched these terrible thoughts to herself for too long. She had to talk about it—about how helpless she felt, useless, as empty as a drained pond.

Pandora listened, her face expressionless, sipping now and then at her wine.

“Ever since I got here I’ve been waiting for the touch of the muse’s wings! The city, all these people, so many new impressions—damn it all, it has to have some effect on me, sometime!” Marie threw her hands in the air. “But no! I don’t even want to think of my workshop back home. It’s gotten so bad that even any talk of home makes me see red. I panic whenever I think that once the trip is over I have to go back to my bench and lamp and pick up where I left off.” Pandora still said nothing, so Marie went on talking, and even told her about her nightmare. Finally, exhausted and downcast, she leaned back in her chair. “What is it? Have I disappointed you so much you can’t think of anything to say?”

“Nonsense! You don’t need to say another word!” Pandora replied. “I know exactly how you feel. Or rather, I don’t actually know since I’ve been lucky enough never to experience a mental block like that. I would die if I couldn’t dance!” She was talking so loud by now that the other guests in the café turned their heads to look at her, and she beamed back at them. “But I know too many artists who have had to go through the same valley of tears: poets, painters, musicians, actors—you name it!” As always when she spoke, she gestured excitably with her hands. “I’ll tell you one thing, though: it won’t help if you try to hold your nose to the grindstone and concentrate on nothing but work. You have to go out, have fun, meet interesting people. And above all . . .”—she raised a finger—“above all, you have to talk to people who have sacrificed everything for their art. Good God, those blowhards who strut the boards in the Times Square theaters don’t count as artists no matter what your dear sister thinks! Same goes for the painters in the Fifth Avenue galleries. That’s commerce, and nothing more.” She waved a hand dismissively. “You’re lucky, you know that? This afternoon my best friend Sherlain is giving a reading. She’s one of the greatest poets this country has ever seen. I’ve used some of her poems in a dance piece already. Although I have to admit that her work is a little too . . . dark for my tastes. But the poems are heartfelt; there’s no doubt about that. The best thing we could do is go and listen.” She leapt to her feet. “Sitting about moping has never helped anyone. So what are you waiting for?”