100
BERNARD MALAMUD
a priest, a portly, heavy-breathing man with a doubtful face. But
as soon as they appeared in the studio Annamaria, enraged to fury,
despite the impassioned entreatments of Augusto, began to throw
at them anything of hers or Fidelman's she could lay her hands on.
"Bloodsuckers!" she shouted, "scorpions! parasites!" until
they
had hastily retreated. Yet when Augusto, worn and harried, returned
alone, without complaint she retired to her room with him.
2.
Fidelman's work, despite the effort and despair he gave it,
was
going poorly. Everytime he looked at unpainted canvas he saw
harlequins, whores, tragic kings, fragmented musicians, the sick and
the dread. Still, tradition was tradition and what if he should happen
to make more? Since he had always loved art history he considered
embarking on a "Mother and Child," but was afraid her image would
come out too rr.uch Bessie, after all fifteen years between them. Or
maybe a moving "Pieta," the dead son's body held like a broken
wave in mama's frail arms? A curse on art history-he fought the
fully prefigured picture though some of his former best paintings
had jumped in every detail to the mind. Yet if so where's engage–
ment? Sometimes I'd like to forget every picture I've seen, Fidelman
thought. Almost in panic he sketched in charcoal a coat-tailed "Figure
of a Jew Fleeing" and quickly hid it away. Mter that ideas, pre·
figured or not, were scarce. "Astonish me," he muttered to himself,
wondering whether to return to surrealism. He also considered a
series of "Relations to Place and Space," constructions in squares
and spirals, the pleasures of tri-dimensional geometry of linear ab–
straction, only he had little heart for it. The furthest abstraction,
Fidelman thought, is a blank canvas. A moment later he asked
himself, if painting shows who you are, why should not painting?
Mter the incident with the priest Annamaria was despondent
for a week, stayed in her room sometimes bitterly crying, Fidelman
often standing helplessly by her door. However this was a prelude
to a burst of creativity by the pittrice. Works by the dozens leaped
from her brush and stylus. She continued her lyric abstractions based
on the theme of a hidden cross and spent hours with a long black
candle, burning holes in heavy white paper ("Buchi Spontanei").
Having mixed coffee grinds, sparkling bits of crushed mirror and
