Irwin was a philosopher of paint. He had theories about red and blue and green and yellow and black. “Red is not rage. Don’t let anyone tell you red is rage. It is not rage. I get mad I don’t see red I see black. Red is blood, yes, and violence maybe, but violence can be joy, communion, wine, sunset. Blue is the ice of the Virgin Mary’s eyes. Green is the wall of a madhouse but is also grass and forest. God is green, green as a frog.”
Cyril was not inclined to argue with Irwin about anything, certainly not the colour of God. He nodded his acceptance of the notion that God was green. It certainly seemed as good a colour as any for the Creator. Wondering about the effects of decades of paint fumes on Irwin’s brain, Cyril decided to invest in a respirator for whenever he used a spray gun, and at the very least be sure the windows were wide open when he used a brush or roller. Wasn’t it lead-based paint that caused Goya to go deaf and mad?
“But you know why people really love paint?” asked Irwin with more than a hint of disgust.
Cyril was eager to hear Irwin’s theory. Painters it seemed had a lot of theories. “Why?”
“Because they can cover up the past.”
In the evenings Cyril resumed classes with Novak, who was interested to hear about his Mexican adventures and said, quite frankly, that he was surprised Cyril had come back at all. Cyril said he was wondering the same thing. He’d described Don Antonio Martin Smolenski and his daughter Remedios, though made no mention of Connie.
He also enrolled in Ukrainian History. The course had two parts, lecture and tutorial. The professor was a short, thick, middle-aged woman who outlined the course content and expectations in terms of exams and grades, as well as codes of conduct—no swearing, no sexist or racist language, no eating and no drinking. After the fifty-minute lecture they broke into tutorials of another fifty minutes, each led by a graduate student. Cyril found his room. At the front stood a young man of about twenty-five years of age holding a paper cup of coffee which, when Cyril entered, fell from the fellow’s hand and splattered on the floor. The guy from the cab. All the other students turned questioningly toward Cyril who merely stood there. The tutorial leader said nothing, just went to the intercom and punched some numbers and within minutes two security guards arrived. The tutorial leader followed Cyril and the guards into the corridor.
“How did you find me?”
“I wasn’t looking for you. I’m only here to take the class.”
“I can’t have violence in my classroom.”
“Who’s violent?”
“You threatened me with a gun.”
“There were three of you,” said Cyril, controlling his tone. “You wouldn’t get out of my cab. It was you guys who were threatening me.”
“We never laid a hand on you.”
“You were mad that I wouldn’t take you to a whorehouse.”
The tutorial leader’s gaze wavered. The security guards were following the debate with mounting interest. “I allow that my colleagues and I were somewhat intoxicated.”
“The three of you refused to get out of my cab when I politely asked that you do so. All I wanted was to be left alone. I can’t believe you brought charges,” said Cyril, as if having been betrayed by an old friend. “It was a complete misrepresentation of the facts.”
“That’s not what the judge thought.” He consulted his wristwatch and became fatigued. “Now this has all been very interesting, but I have a responsibility to this institution and to those people in that classroom. And I cannot in good conscience accept as a student a man who threatens people with a gun.”
And with that Cyril was escorted to the parking lot and off the campus.
PART THREE — 1982
In Which Cyril Strikes a New Match
ONE
WHEN THE MODEL let her black robe drop to stand naked before the drawing class, Cyril saw a being cast down from Olympus and condemned to live among mortals. She was six-foot-one, had dark red hair to her hips, breasts like ski jumps, and teeth like a horse. As she took her pose, one foot propped on a stool and hands on her hips, she studied each artist in turn. When her gaze reached Cyril it halted. He stopped drawing. She smiled a shrug of a smile as if to say, Well, here we are, you and I, creatures, beings, alive and above all absurd, but with a destiny to fulfill. Later, he would insist that he’d read all this and more into that brief smile.
When the session ended she looked over his shoulder then reached for his stick of charcoal and wrote her phone number in the corner. He invited her for a beer at the Europe. Her name was Yvonne, she was Quebecois, had lived a year in the Canaries and two years in India where she’d practised hatha yoga. She wanted to be an actress, but her size was proving problematic.
“I am too high,” she said. “Maybe I can be Amazon or robot, but there are not so many calls for Amazon and robot.” She looked glum. She picked up her beer glass and ran her tongue along the rim. Then she brightened. “But I am jazz singer, too.”
Cyril nodded encouragingly. Modelling, acting, singing. “How about dancing?” He could see her in a chorus line or a ballet.
“Of course,” she said as if it was too obvious to mention.
They stayed until closing then he drove her home. She lived in a basement suite off Commercial Drive with a ceiling so low her hair brushed the light fixtures. She made coffee with sweetened condensed milk and Nescafé, and told him how the landlord, Giancarlo, promised to leave her the house if she married him.
He asked, “When’s the wedding?”
She let loose a loud piratic laugh.
Cyril said, “If he’s old and going to die soon maybe you should.”
“Would you?”
“Who knows?”
She regarded him as though he’d revealed a facet she’d not anticipated but of which she approved. “You should find some old woman who will support you.”
“Okay.”
She was serious. “You must ’ave show. Old ladies will come. They will discover you.”
They were seated on a battered couch. Yvonne sprawled at one end, legs crossed at the knee, bare foot bouncing provocatively. She stretched out her arm and clicked the radio on and began to sing along, “You’ve got the eyeeee of a tiiii-gerrr…”
Cyril was drunk. What rogues they were, plotting away in her lair. He grew bold. Leaning toward her he caught her foot in his hands and kissed her ankle and ran his tongue up her calf.
They became lovers. One morning at Cyril’s place Yvonne asked if he thought the soul had a colour.
“Sure. Grey.”
This troubled her. “But I think it is sapphire or gold.”
He said how a house painter he once knew said God was green like a frog. But as for the soul Cyril thought it was grey and had the texture of ashes.
Yvonne was aghast. “Ashes are burnt. The devil is ashes. God is flower or waterfall. The soul is rainbow.”
“You think so?”
“But it is obvious!”
“Okay,” he said, willing to be proved wrong.
“Slavs are miserable,” she said. “In love with their own defeat.”
He wondered about that.
Yvonne was a gazelle. She liked to lounge in bed, take naps, lie on the beach, do the backstroke in the ocean with long slow sweeps of her long elegant arms. She’d model for him and then they’d make love pretending they lived in a rive gauche garret. Most nights together were spent at his place. He’d found an airy third floor suite with a northwest view in a vast old house that caught the sunset. He liked when Yvonne left clothes and magazines and jewellery. He liked arriving at Novak’s class hand-in-hand with her. The Hungarian marked this without comment though Cyril saw approval, or was it amusement, in his eyes.