Monterey Bay (3 page)

And when he opened the book, she was surprised at her nervousness.
He's no one
, she told herself.
He
likes Renoir.
But her pulse disagreed, her heart hammering as he thumbed the pages with the same intense, almost hyperactive concentration he had lavished on the typewritten manuscript, lingering on each image for several seconds longer than seemed necessary. Many of the earliest sketches didn't warrant the scrutiny: a fly-haloed bowl of
pancit
, the head and torso of an emaciated water buffalo, the bloodied corpse of a fighting cock. Then there were a handful of which she was actually proud: a shiny-skinned
lechón
spinning on its milk-doused spit, trash fires burning in the alleyways, their well-contained heaps dotting the city with distant flares of orange heat. Her best work, however, took the form of two recent portraits, both of which had been completed on her last day in the Philippines. There was her father standing alone within the loamy wasteland of what should have been his tobacco fields. Then, on the very next page, there was one of Luzon's millions of rural poor, a girl no older than herself, a newborn twin baby at each nipple, breasts swollen to the point of hard, shiny pain, the look on the young mother's face that of suffering and startled ecstasy.

She glanced up from the sketchbook. He was frowning at the
image, just as he had frowned at her in the seconds before her accident.

“I'm sorry if it's beneath your expectations,” she muttered.

“Quite the contrary. It vastly exceeds them.”

She didn't know what to say.

“After Sargent?” he asked.

“That was the idea. Yes.”

“Can I have it?”

“What do you mean?”

“For my collection.”

She looked at the wall. “I don't think there's room.”

“Then we'll send one packing. Your choice.”

“One of the Renoirs.”

“Which one?”

She pointed.

“I thought you'd say that.”

Smiling, he tore the page carefully from her sketchbook and stood. He unpinned the Renoir from the wall, shoved it in his pocket, and secured the nursing mother in its place, after which he didn't return to the crate. Instead, he sat alongside her on the bed, his hands behind his head, his legs just inches from hers. He was admiring the sketch as proudly as if he had drawn it himself.

“The Philippines?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Hmmm. A fellow from the bureau of fisheries was here a
few months ago, direct from Manila. The way he talked about it made me want to do something irresponsible. Close up the lab. Scare up the steamship fare. Go over there for a while to collect.”

She nodded, lips between her teeth.

“Did you ever see one of those horse fights?” he asked, eyes sparkling. “Rumor has it they're downright ghastly.”

“No.” She thought he would accuse her of lying again, but he didn't.

“Well, I'm sure you—”

“Doc!
Doc!
” Arthur's voice, coming from somewhere beneath them.

“Oh, for God's sake . . .”

“Doc!”

“Coming!”

He swung himself off the bed, rope mattress whining. At the doorway, he stopped and looked over his shoulder.

“How much do you want to bet there's nothing actually the matter?”

She began to speak.

“No, no!” he interrupted. “You'll suggest something I won't be able to afford.”

When he had gone, she watched the doorway and listened. This time, however, there were no hints—no footsteps, no running water—so she picked up the sketchbook, counted the remaining blank pages, and slapped it shut. Nine more drawings
and then it would be over, at least temporarily, the book eased into a fire, rising into smoke, settling down into ash. She had done it twice now, and each time it had been an absolution born of pure, puzzling impulse: the blistering cardboard, the papers thin and orange. Now, however, she was reconsidering. His interest had been sudden and more than a little suspicious, but affirming nonetheless, which made her wonder. Had there been something in those first few books worth keeping?

She listened again. He was not someone who interested her, especially in an aesthetic sense. For some reason, though, a more definitive assessment now seemed long overdue, so she retrieved her pencil and began to draw. She worked for thirty minutes, maybe forty, and when she was done, she held the sketchbook out at arm's length, almost entirely certain of what she'd find. The image, however, shocked her: features as precise as they were handsome, a cool, cunning glint in the eyes, the subtle execution of which seemed far beyond what she had always assumed were the limitations of her talent.

A shadow across the page. She looked up. He was standing there, watching her. She closed the sketchbook and pushed it beneath the blanket.

“A bit too late for modesty, don't you think? I've already seen everything you've got.”

Since he'd left the room, something about him had changed. His attention now seemed reluctant and divided, his tone blunt and low and almost suggestive. A large glass jug was in his hand,
its label reading “
FORMALDEHYDE
” in unambiguous script. His face was nowhere near as open and flushed as before. Instead, a gloom had settled behind his eyes, which made his hair appear even darker, his skin paler, his body even more agile and kinetic. What's more, music had begun to play without her having realized it: a string quartet from the phonograph in the other room, its melody unrushed and familiar.

She looked out the window. Midnight. Or later.

“Shame is almost as useless as pride,” he warned.

“I'm not ashamed.”

“Then why did you hide your drawing?”

“Because you interrupted me. Before I could finish.”

“Unfinished work makes you anxious?”

“Very.”

“Toil away, then.”

“Don't move.”

“Not a muscle.”

But it didn't matter if he moved or not, because she didn't even have to look at him. Everything she wanted to add to or subtract from the sketch was already outlined in her head, so she drew for a few minutes longer while he stood beside the bed, swaying and humming atonally to the music.

“I thought I told you to hold still,” she said.

“You didn't tell me to be quiet, though.”

“Be quiet.”

“Fine. I'll try. But I'm afraid it's like the
Patiria miniata
. Cut
off one arm at just the right angle to the central disk and two arms grow back in its place.”

He took a long drink from the jug of formaldehyde. She looked down at her sketch. Yet again, the sight of it was alarming, transcendent. Her father always claimed that certain industries were built for his manipulations, even if they seemed nonmanipulable on the surface, and now, for the first time, she fully understood what he meant.

“What's wrong?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

“I changed my mind about the beer.”

“Oh. It's too late, I'm afraid. The last bottle was dispensed with hours ago. But I can certainly offer you some of this.”

He brandished the formaldehyde. She took it from him and put it to her lips. The liquid hissed down her throat like a snake.

“I could have sworn you had better sense.” He laughed. “But then again, it's always the ones who look so well-adjusted . . .”

“What's in there?” she sputtered, wiping her eyes.

“Very expensive tequila. I keep it in the formaldehyde jug to fool the others.”

The song ended, its final chord just a step shy of resolution. A brief pause. And then another song began, its tempo and motifs almost indistinguishable from the first. When he reclaimed his seat beside her on the bed, it was without permission.

“Much better,” he said, indicating the sketchbook on her lap. “I look a bit less like General Sherman.”

“You should be flattered. Sherman was ruthless.”

“Come work for me.” His voice was clear and even, totally absent of its earlier, sullen depth. “I need some drawings for my catalog.”

She looked out the window at the deepening night.

“That's not the kind of work I do,” she replied.

“Of course it is!”

“No, it's not. To call myself an artist would be like you calling yourself a . . .”

“A what?”

She felt a redness rising. She put her hands over her face.

“Quick! Have another drink!”

Her second taste was less like a snake and more like a trail of determined ants. This time, she didn't cough. Instead, she remained motionless as the tequila reached her belly, as the warmth erupted and then fizzled, a sorrow claiming her that had nothing to do with tears.

“I know that look,” he said. “You're either homesick or in love.”

“Wrong on both counts.”

“Then what's this?”

When he picked up the sketchbook she was appalled, at first, to think he was referring to his own portrait. But then he flipped back to one of the earliest sketches: her and her father's former residence, all balustrades and terra-cotta, the Spaniards and their elaborate leavings.

“I had to practice on something,” she grumbled. “Didn't matter what.”

“What happened here? Not so very long ago, but so very far away?”

The phone rang. She looked at the empty beer crate and then at her sketch on the wall.

“Another drink for courage,” he insisted.

She waited until the phone stopped ringing. Then she drank. To confess herself was not a possibility. Too pathetic. Too risky. Furthermore, there was no chance a man like this would understand the stakes, which was why, when she started talking, she knew the liquor had already done its work: summoning the words, doling them out with an almost magnanimous ease. She described their arrival in the Philippines, their occupation of a condemned colonial manor on Manila's outskirts. She outlined their newest and most ambitious project to date: the acquisition of nearly a thousand acres of mango orchards and their subsequent transformation into tobacco fields. She had been doing this sort of work, she assured the biologist, almost since birth. She knew exactly how to assist her father in his industrial transformations, which meant everything went precisely as it should have until the night he fell ill. At first, it didn't seem like much: just a moderate fever, an aching in the joints, chills that made his limbs tremble but not shake. By morning, however, his skin was blazing and his eyes were dull, his arms and legs thrashing, his mouth spouting foamy green bile, his slender torso coiled desperately around the expulsions.

Later that night, he slipped into a coma. The next day, she
took the helm. It wasn't something she had attempted before: this total assumption of responsibility, this mimicry of experience and knowledge. But she had been raised to believe she was not only capable of such things but destined for them, and in this moment of decision, belief seemed tantamount to proof. She paced the mango orchards with the tobacco farmers and considered their advice on fertilizing with wood ash versus powdered horse manure. She debated with the local politicians as to which nearby village should be used to obtain the children who would lay the screens of protective cheesecloth across the delicate seedlings. She traveled to the city by mule-drawn cart and answered the banker's questions with a succinct, merciless professionalism. For the next three months, she triumphed. The venture proceeded exactly as planned; success floated before her eyes like an opalescent sphere, a bubble that contained both the promise of the future and the substance of past. But then the bubble burst. Without warning or reason, the farmers began to mislead her. The children returned to their villages and wouldn't be coaxed back to the fields. The banker claimed she needed to refile forms she had already filed twice. No matter how hard she worked, she couldn't stem the tide. Each day seemed to drag her further down failure's depressive, unpaved spiral, until it was clear to her and everyone else that she couldn't manage it on her own.

On the day she finally gave up, she didn't tell her father. He had regained consciousness a week earlier, but he was still
delirious with fever, and her shame was too great. So instead of confessing herself or trying to put things right, she roamed the manor that for the past several months they had called home. Since their arrival, she hadn't had either the time or the inclination to explore it fully. Now she made a point of examining every room. In most ways, she was unmoved. It was just like all the other residences her father tended to favor: intact enough to ensure basic human comforts, yet squalid enough to invoke a sort of ethical high ground. The rooms were large and humid, all of them frilled with elaborately carved teak and ravaged by the twin stresses of abandonment and equatorial proximity. The only thing that seemed unusual was the almost biblical sense of loss, one that went above and beyond human haunting. She didn't know why this was the case until she noticed the large, pale stamps on the walls where paintings had once hung, which led her, on instinct, to the root cellar. And there, stacked in the blue darkness among the piles of yucca and taro and sweet potatoes, she found the stash: hundreds of framed forgeries of well-known masterpieces. The sight was unexpectedly compelling, so she began to dig through the canvases. She didn't know what she was looking for. All she knew was that, as she searched and studied, she could forget her recent failure, she could forget her father moaning and perspiring upstairs, she could forget there were things in life that evaded direct translation. She worked quickly. With the help of some books in the mansion's library, she decided which artists were the most skilled and
upsetting. She learned whom to emulate and whom to dismiss. When she had narrowed it down to a solid two dozen, she bought a sketchbook and charcoal pencil and a small leather satchel from a woman at the local market and allowed herself only an hour of immersion per day, two if she felt decadent, but it was among the most efficient and satisfactory learning she had ever done. She made copies of the copies, and then, when copying no longer seemed productive, she began to choose her own subject matter, her fingers clenched hard around the pencil as she made meticulous record of things she had witnessed both in the countryside and on the Manila streets. She tried out different styles, different methods of expression and organization: Fra Angelico, Holbein the Younger, Holbein the Elder, Rivera, Modigliani, Memling. The root cellar deepened itself: darker, wetter, colder, a realm of lawlessness and foreign language, much like being fathoms underwater. And it was in this way that a full six months passed, the Philippines taking on the characteristics of a place she loved, not because it felt comfortable, not because it felt safe, but because it showed the clearest and most direct route to what she had begun to believe was her destiny: a life of solitude, a life of work—hers, not her father's—rising up around her like walls.