The Art Student's War (16 page)

Sometimes, she did wish Ronny weren’t
quite
so scornful. She’d felt vaguely undermined when he pointed out that the name of their school was “laughably pretentious.” The Institute Midwest? “Dear God”—Ronny rolled his eyes—“they even inverted the word order …” Bea had simply accepted its name as a given.

Yet to have stepped into this overheated office, to be alone with the
man, was to feel thoroughly intimidated—suddenly the Professor was his old self. He said, factually, “You may remain standing, or you may take a seat.” Anybody else would have turned this into an offer.

Apologetic, as ever, about her height, particularly since Professor Manhardt (a diminutive man anyway) was seated behind his desk, Bea hastened to take the office’s one free chair, balancing on its edge by way of compromise, as if prepared to vacate promptly if so requested. The Professor’s pale eyes—a soapy blue—contemplated her. His gray hair was so wiry, you could probably have scoured a pan with it.

He said, “You have a family I presume.”

It was such an unexpected conversational sortie, and so singular in its phrasing, Bea had no immediate answer. In a near whisper she replied, “Yes. A family, yes I do.”

“You have brothers?”

“A brother. Steven.”

“He is older, perhaps?”

“He’s younger. Thirteen.” She added: “Much younger.”

“So you have no immediate family in”—the Professor’s faint pause suggested distaste—“the military service.”

“The military? No.”

“Cousins, perhaps?”

“In the military? No.” And Bea felt apologetic anew. She quelled a reckless impulse to begin cataloguing some of the Paradisos’ war efforts, starting with her father’s erecting homes for defense workers.

On the wall behind the Professor hung a pastoral landscape—cows in the foreground, steeple in the background. Unmistakably an English countryside.

“I have a rather personal request to make,” the Professor informed her. His eyes tightened their hold. Under the pressure of his steady gaze, Bea felt herself nod unstoppably, while various misgivings bubbled inside her.

“This is all such a damned
peculiar
business, isn’t it?” the Professor went on. “They don’t know why we’re here. They don’t see our raison d’être. They do not understand us, do they?”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

But who was this
they?
And who the
us?

“The Industrial Arts people—they understand
them
. But you and I? We are Fine Arts people. Obviously, we are a race apart.”

Something extremely odd was unfolding, and this word
race
suggested—unbelievable though it might seem—that Professor Manhardt was about to commit an impropriety. Oh my. Oh
no
. On a handful of other occasions in Bea’s life, equally out of nowhere, a preposterous and unthinkable proposition had come her way, often prefaced, like this, by talk of a
we
or an
us
, some unlikely alliance she hardly recognized …

“We’re a different breed, aren’t we?” the Professor said and Bea certainly didn’t like the sound of
breed
. Yes: something like this had happened a few times before—wild, misguided words issuing from somebody you’d never in a million years expect to utter them. And each time it happened, it happened afresh; her panic was always the same raw quivery panic.

“We must rise above, don’t you suppose?”

And each time it happened, the utter, patent impossibility and
wrongness
of the proposition in no way impeded its delivery. That’s how it was, and it did force you to wonder: what
was
the matter with the male mind? Why did they go on thinking unthinkable things?

“I’m not sure I—”

“Yes, a damned peculiar business.”

“What business?”

“The War,” the professor replied, brusquely.

“Oh.” Pause. “Oh.”

“It has left us in a very delicate position, hasn’t it?”

“A—delicate?”

“It surely will not surprise you to hear that there are administrators at our institution who see no need for classes in still-life painting, or life-drawing, or landscape, at a time like this. Enrollments are
down
, so I’m told. Needless to say, the Industrial Arts faculty are under no similar disparagement.”

The dawning blush on Bea’s cheeks assumed a new warmth—a private, guilty warmth. Yes, she’d imputed wholly false motivations to the very proper, very English Professor Manhardt! Wherever this conversation was going, it wasn’t headed toward anything like an impropriety. She was always letting her imagination run away, and not always in healthy directions …

“Yes,” she said again. “That’s a question we’ve—I’ve—” Her impulse to point out that she and Ronny had often discussed this very issue suddenly looked unwise. Bea let it drop. The Professor, in his slow and oblique way, marched on:

“What are we who are ‘Fine Arts people’ contributing? What is our
contribution?
In this institution, those questions keep arising. Why are we painting still lifes? As if you and I, Miss Paradiso, should be assembling grenades. Or armored
cars.”

If Professor Manhardt hadn’t looked so somber, Bea would have allowed herself a smile. Really it was funny to envision the Professor on some factory floor, still wearing tweed jacket and waistcoat. Funny to think of him, with his manicured hands, picking up something so utilitarian, and oily, as a monkey wrench …

“But now a peculiar request arrives, and I thought you were perhaps the student best suited to undertake it.”

“I am?”

“A peculiar request.”

“A—”

“From the USO.” Professor Manhardt accorded each of the letters a substantial stress and pause. “The United—”

“United Service Organizations.” Bea didn’t mean to interrupt the Professor, even if he did talk so laboriously, but she yearned to know where this conversation might be leading. Of all the students in the class, just what sort of task would
she
be “best suited” to undertake?

“According to the USO, there is a need out there, an apparent need, for portrait artists. Not professional portrait artists,” the Professor hastened to reassure her.

“Portrait artists?”

“Actually, that is perhaps too grand a phrase …”

“Portraitists?”

“Shall we say ‘makers of portrait sketches’?”

“All right.”

“I’ve seen a few of your—your caricatures.”

“Well, those were hardly—”

“I gather that the emphasis here is not on quality so much as facility. Sheer speed.”

What was he saying? And was she being casually insulted? His words were so dizzying, there wasn’t time, really, to take offense, even if offense were intended, and it probably wasn’t—this was just the Professor’s way. He continued: “And it occurred to me, this may be where your particular talent lies. Not perhaps in still lifes,” he appended, which Bea again recorded as a possible slight, which must be weighed later—but not now, given how inquisitive and exhilarated she felt. “You recall that I saw you drawing such a portrait sketch. Before class.”

“Yes. Of Donald.”

“Of Donald Doobly. The Negro.”

“Yes.”

The portrait was still sitting, unfinished, in the portfolio in her lap. She’d been intending to get back to it, though Ronny hadn’t regarded it highly. Bea said, “They’re looking for portrait artists?”

“I should perhaps have selected another term. Shall we say portraitists? Young artists with a facility for capturing a quick likeness?”

“These would be portraits of …?” Bea’s voice trailed off.

“Portraits of
soldiers,”
Professor Manhardt replied. He did sometimes address his students as though they were half-wits. “What are we contributing?—that’s the infernal question they keep asking. Why do we need classes in still-life painting? Do you see? There is a war on, they tell me, and I say, Indeed there is and it’s being fought right here in this institution. For we in Fine Arts are the besieged. You might think of yourself as a peacemaker.”

“I’m not sure I—”

“I am asking you to volunteer.”

Hazarding another Manhardt rebuke, Bea asked, point-blank, “So are you asking me to draw portraits of soldiers for the USO?”

“You could regard it as a mission, Miss Paradiso. I gather the subjects would be, in particular,
wounded
soldiers. It may jolly them up, it may lift their spirits, it may fortify the war effort—so goes the thinking I presume. It’s what they call morale-building, I believe. And frankly a good thing, from our point of view in Fine Arts, to announce that what you learned at this institution is serving the USO. Let us disregard for the moment that you have been studying still-life drawing rather than—”

It was hardly her style to interrupt the Professor intentionally, but Bea felt an overwhelming desire for outright, air-clearing assertions. “Well,” she said. “All right,” she said. “Now if you’re asking me whether I would volunteer to draw portraits of wounded soldiers, I should be honored.” The words felt so stirring and noble, Bea embellished her declaration: “I should consider it a great honor and my patriotic duty.”

Bea’s pulse was pounding. As happened perhaps all too often, she was experiencing an enhanced, almost surreal sense of her own thumping young heart in her chest—as if this were an organ no longer pink and red but a bright burning gold, throbbing with an almost painful ardor. You would need a Picasso or a Chagall—someone liberated from conventional notions of color—to do it justice.

“It’s meant to jolly up the boys and I daresay it will. You’re a very
attractive girl, Miss Paradiso. We here in Fine Arts, anyway, we needn’t disparage the concept, the reality of pure beauty. Do you follow me?”

“I suppose so.”

Even now, a few flickerings of wariness revived. Perhaps she should cherish the compliment, yet it unsettled her.

But why should it? Again, again she was being too suspicious—as the look of proud defiant finality on the Professor’s face attested. He had established his point. The Professor of Fine Arts had spoken on behalf of the reality of pure beauty, as was not merely his prerogative but his duty.

Professor Manhardt paused and scrutinized her closely, as though seeing her clearly for the first time. Given how high-minded he was being, Bea wished she wasn’t feeling her cheeks—again—reddening under his gaze.

Slowly, ever so slowly (the Professor spoke so elliptically!) the various details emerged. For the next three months,
as an experiment
, one morning a week, Bea would donate her talents to the nation’s soldiers—especially those in Ferry Hospital. Did she know the place, on the West Side? Yes, she did. Indeed, she did. Indeed—well, actually, she had been born there.

Now it was the Professor’s turn to look confused. “You were born there?”

“Yes. Born right there. Right here. In this city. A real Detroit girl. Not that I remember the hospital.”

The discovery that she would be drawing soldiers in the very hospital of her birth lent the Professor’s proposal, already so promising, a special rightness and richness. It was nothing less than perfect! So long awaited, it had arrived at last: the perfect way to serve her country! How had she failed to glimpse her fate? What else could her destiny be? Obviously, she must at last become the Girl Who Drew Portraits of Soldiers …

She would be working in charcoal, the Professor went on. Perhaps one or two portraits per morning? No more than that—this was art, she wouldn’t be a sideshow entertainment. (Bea nodded heartily.) The portraits would be given to the soldiers themselves. Each portrait would aspire to be
favorable
—to be
uplifting
. This goal might not always be easy. Some of the soldiers were rather badly wounded, you see. Others might have fallen into dejection—or other psychological problems. It could be something of a sticky wicket. (But what was a sticky wicket?)

Professor Manhardt could advance her the actual cost of supplies. Now did she think she was equal to the task? Did the experiment, as described, interest her?

Invited at last to speak freely, Bea hardly knew what she was saying, her words came tumbling forth … This was everything her heart had been craving: not merely to serve her country, but to serve it through her art! What task on earth could be more beautiful and fulfilling than drawing wounded soldiers’ portraits? Already she could visualize herself heading by streetcar toward Ferry Hospital, a portfolio under her arm, dressed simply, wearing a plain white blouse and a gray wool skirt perhaps, her hair pulled back in a no-nonsense bun. Or her powder-blue angora turtleneck sweater and a navy skirt and gray-and-white saddle shoes. Or her pink pinstripe blouse and her Hungarian beret? In any event, she would venture up the broad hospital steps into rooms where the poor boys lay, the young who were crippled or maimed. She would acknowledge a debt; in a small way, she would express her country’s gratitude.

What offer could be more enthralling? As she headed home, striding down Inquiry, Bea warmed to an imagined opulence under her arm. It was as if her portfolio already held soldiers’ portraits, rather than today’s mediocre sketches of a lemon, a teacup, and an impossible-to-draw (even Ronny had struggled over it) rabbit’s foot. And when she stepped into the front hall she felt—for the first time in weeks—a preoccupation more urgent than Mamma’s always precarious state of mind.

Bea managed to hold off telling her story until supper, but the minute the food was on the table she said, Guess what?—and launched into it. A knowing glance passed between Mamma and Papa, a look that said,
She’s on a tear
(one more of Papa’s proud colloquialisms). Bea didn’t care. She had every reason to be excited.

She failed to explain herself well, however, and Papa began muttering reservations. Drawing portraits in a hospital? Over on the West Side? All by herself? He shook his head skeptically. They would need to speak with Uncle Dennis, Bia …

Oddly, it was Mamma who came squarely to the rescue. This was the USO, Vico, and their daughter had been asked to serve. These were soldiers, Vico, wounded in service to our country. And it wasn’t a strange place—it was the very hospital where the girl was born.