Chapter 7 1/2: “The Mermaid Clothed” (from BRONX NIGHTS 🌃🍎)

You know, I’ve always wanted to publish this story. Let’s call it a bonus.

In my early 20s, I imagined I might someday be a literary voice. What became is this—but this was an early stab at it.

Away, it’s kind of juvenilia. But it’s where my romantic heart resided, at the time—probably where it still resides.

And, yes, there was a woman behind this story. Her name was—well, she was, for a time, my mermaid. Kind of feel like I’ve always needed one.

//·∞·//

It was a large studio, with the strong scent of sawdust and clay and drying paints. On the walls were pieces, works, some speaking to inexperience, others to the development of maturing artists.

In a window stood a tall oval-shaped statue made from soapstone, polished and smoothed, and it seemed to resemble the socket hole of a pelvic bone. A thin white dust covered the window sill where the statue was displayed.

Numerous incomplete statues and projects made from wood or stone or metals such as copper lay scattered on benches and tables waiting for their Makers to return. Photographs from National Geographic were strewn about, the anatomy of the world, pictures of rice patties and prancing gazelles and shipwrecks under the sea.

There were model skeletons also with various parts detached perhaps for studies of mandibles and skulls and fibulas.

Yellow and purple and burnt umber danced together in a series of hideous masks with contorted features, thick, protuberant noses, melting faces, and eyes the size of pomegranates.

Charcoal, black, and browns tinged with maroon huddled together in paintings that reminded one of concrete sidewalks and telephone poles in large cities after midnight on very cold nights where a person’s breath comes out steaming like cigarette smoke. And a homeless man warms himself at a rusted barrel where a fire has been kept, which will be an occasional streak of red or rusted crimson running through these streets of the Netherworld.

The smell of sweat could be detected if one stood very still and inhaled deeply.

Little round drops of red paint, like blood, had dried in a corner of the floor, and a painting above them entitled Joshua hung unframed. On a chair lay a hammer and chisel, beside which someone had left a necklace with a silver cross in-laid with lapis lazuli and lettered in a script which resembled Cyrillic or Greek.

A young woman lay sleeping on a couch the shade of the sea when it is at rest. She dreamed of mermaids and Neptune’s fork, and she touched herself gently on the cheek as if to wipe away tears which were not there. Her auburn hair wrapped around her face and shoulders like waves embracing island cliffs.

She wore a silk oriental blouse designed with swirling whirlwinds of violet and pinwheels of periwinkle. It left the gentle silhouette of her smoothly formed breasts, the slope of her back and the curve of where her stomach disappeared into her side.

On the wall above her were lithographs of idols in museums of Vishnu and Artemis and Aphrodite of ancient fecund figurines. At the end of the row of pictures was a black-and-white photograph of a woman who was very awkward in her nakedness. Sexless.

The young woman stirred from her rest and brought her hand down to her side. Her eyes opened and she rose and returned to her work.

She walked across the room and carried the hammer and chisel over to a large bench on which rested a piece of marble worked roughly into the shape of a man sitting on a rock.

As she brought the thick rubber head down upon the chisel, flaking away a thin flint of pale yellow rock, another figure stirred. A man, her model, had fallen asleep on another couch, one the shade of crimson, and he rose returning to his position on a very large slab of unworked granite. He removed the blanket he had used to cover himself and shivered for a moment. Sometimes he was still aware of his nakedness but he knew it was just a body.

She worked for some time only pausing long enough for perspective. Once in a while the man stood to stretch. As she worked she never said a word though he might occasionally make some effort toward conversation.

Didn’t her hands ever tire? How does that old song go again? Don’t you believe in God?

But she never replied.

There were possibilities it occurred to him of naked artists and clothed artists of naked models and clothed models of all these combinations of a world clothed in nakedness but he was naked. Naked and unashamed and perhaps a fragment image of God.

He surveyed the large studio and breathed its full air deep into his lungs. Works. There were many works and he was one of them. He felt this fully now.

The young woman paused again from her work and returned to her couch, flattening the ruffles in her blouse and skirt.

Instead of returning to his couch the man walked over to where she lay and stood over her, as from a distance, and pitied her.

She began to dream again of the sea and of porpoises and sirens and that she was a mermaid tempted by the strangeness of land where centaurs dwelt.

She saw a naked man who could not swim dive into the sea, and as he was drowning she watched him from beneath the waters watched the liquid fill his lungs until the last bubble of air slowly drifted upward.

He sank effortlessly, his head slightly tilted, and came to rest upon a bed of sand dollars and anemones.

xxx