96
BERNARD MALAMUD
a sucker for strange beauty and all sorts of experiences, felt himseH
involved with and falling for her. Not my deep dish, he warned
himself, aware of
all
the dangers to himself and his renewed desire
to create art; yet he was already half in love with her.
It
can't be, he
thought in desperation; but it could. It had happened to him before.
In her presence he tightly shut both eyes and wholeheartedly wished
against what might be. Really he trembled, and though he labored
to extricate his fate from hers, he was already a plucked bird, greased,
and ready for frying. Fidelman protested within--cried out severely
against the weak self, called himself ferocious names but could do not
much, a victim of his familiar response, a too passionate fondness
for strangers. So Annamaria, who had advertised a twenty thousand
lire monthly rental, in the end doubled the sum, and Fidelman paid
through both nostrils, cash for first and last months (should he at–
tempt to fly by night) plus a deposit of ten thousand for possible
damages. An hour later he moved in with his imitation leather suit–
case. This happened in the dead of winter. Below the cold sunlit
windows stood two frozen umbrella pines and beyond, in the near
distance, sparkled the icy Tiber.
The studio was well heated, Annamaria had insisted, but the
cold leaked in through the wide windows.
It
was more a blast; the
art student shivered but was kept warm by his hidden love for the
pittrice. It took him most of a day to clear himself a space to work,
about a third of the studio was as much as he could manage. He
stacked her canvases five deep against her portion of the walls,
curious to examine them but Annamaria watched his every move
(he noticed several self-portraits) although she was at the same time
painting a monumental natura morta of a loaf of bread with two
garlic bulbs ("Pane ed Aglii"). He moved stacks of 0
ggiJ
piles of
postcards and yellowed letters, and a bundle of calendars going back
to many years ago; also a Perugina candy box full of broken pieces
of Etruscan pottery, one of small sea shells, and a third of medallions
of various saints and the Virgin, which she warned him to handle with
care. He had uncovered a sagging cot by a dripping stone
sink in
his corner of the studio and there he slept. She furnished an old
chafing dish and a broken table, and he bought a few household
things he needed. Annamaria rented the
art
student an easel for a
thousand lire a month. Her quarters were private, a room at the
