Illness excerpt

Carl crumpled the paper, squeezing it like clay. He had received dozens of rejections over the months of his illness, but this was the first to allude to his divorce. He could not let Madonna discover the world stood united against him and everyone blamed her. Mashing the words in his fists only created a damp ball of ugliness so he flung the wad into the fire. As he watched the paper crackle and curl, he imagined the flames melting his former friend’s self-righteous smirk.

He knew someone would eventually inquire about Emily. When Hector Charlesworth announced Carl’s return to the city, his article offered no explanation for her absence. This calculated move on Hector’s part served to buy Carl time to integrate back into Toronto society, secure a dealer, and sell a few paintings before the scandal broke. It worked. For months no one mentioned either Emily or Madonna. They likely assumed him a widower who remarried due to illness.

Wyly Grier offered his condolences first. Grier knew his marriage to Emily had been a sea of quicksand; Carl need not pretend grief.

“She’s not dead, Grier. Just out of my life.”

Grier appeared to take the news in stride. Soon after, he even badgered Carl into attending an Ontario Society of Artists’ dinner. Carl exchanged comfortable shirt and trousers for a worn—yet lovingly pressed—suit and tie. It hung from him after his convalescence. As he frowned at the gaunt man in the mirror, Madonna pressed a kiss between his shoulder blades. His coloring improved at once.

“I don’t want to spend an evening with a bunch of men and their egos. It’s torture. Can’t we just have an argument about art over supper and call it a night?”

She stuffed a scented handkerchief in his breast pocket and nudged him out the door.

These dinners had once been intimate affairs. Groups of men and the occasional woman clustered around small round tables. They smoked and argued the merits of the Academie Julian over the École des beaux-arts. Even the most prominent among them struggled financially; the food was simple, the rooms modest. He and Lucius O’Brien used to exchange snide notes if the debates dragged; neither had studied abroad. The Ahrens Academy of Art is vastly superior to those hoity-toity institutions in Europe, Carl would write. Our students learn by doing, instead of being forced to paint alike.

What if the student desires the true European experience? Lucius would reply.

For a small extra fee the instructor will place a clothespin on his nose and shout insults in a French accent.

Tonight the arguments remained the same, only exponentially louder and fought in actual French. Lucius was gone, several years in his grave; Carl doubted his clothespin comment would be appreciated by anyone now. Grier stood beside him, the top of his balding head even with Carl’s shoulder. They made such an unusual pair that other artists once drew caricatures of them to pass around at society functions. Carl remembered one that gave him the face of Adonis on a beanpole frame. Poor Grier, with his round head and rather distinctive mustache, appeared more malnourished walrus than man. Carl objected on both counts.

Many of the men who once laughed over that sketch now mingled in the room. A tall, urbane figure nearby had not. Carl groaned aloud, and longed for the good old days when bankers weren’t elected president of the board of trustees for the new Art Museum of Toronto. When careers were not made or destroyed based on the opinion of a man who never lifted a paintbrush.

Carl may not have left Canada if it weren’t for Edmund Walker.

He nudged Grier. “Why’s he here?”

“Edmund’s an honorary guest. He just donated several pieces from his personal collection to the new gallery.”

Carl gulped his wine. “He inflicts his personal taste on the city and declares it representative of Canadian art. How generous.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Which artists are represented?”

“Frederic Bell-Smith.”

“Born and trained in England.”

“John Forster.”

“Studied in France for years.”

“George Reid.”

“Studied in France and Spain.”

Grier sighed. “Me.”

“You’re the worst of the lot, Grier.” Carl clapped his friend on the back. “Born in Australia, raised in England.”

“Only until I was fourteen.”

“Trained in England, France and Italy.” He took a drag on his cigarette. “You paint as though you never left.”

“As do you.”

Carl coughed so loudly that all conversations stopped. “I’ve never been to Europe.”

“Yet you paint like Millet.”

“Who the hell is Millet?”

The older painters snickered, all in on the joke. Early in Carl’s career a critic compared one of his exhibition pieces to the French painter. When Carl read of it in The Mail and Empire, he stormed into George Reid’s studio, waved the newspaper in his mentor’s face, and shouted those exact words—who the hell is Millet?

His ignorance plagued him for years, of course, but he accepted the jabs with grace. He learned of Millet, Rousseau and Corot, all painters he had been compared to at some point, while he studied with Chase in New York. Other artists may have considered such remarks high praise, but Carl felt compelled to disprove them. Tell him he painted like Millet and he banished all peasant farmers from his work for at least a year. If the melancholy of a particular piece reminded someone of Rousseau, Carl’s next piece would be a sunburst of yellows, oranges and reds.

“If we don’t draw our influence from Europe, what do we draw upon? Surely not America.” Grier’s expression soured as he said the word.

“The forests of Waterloo County don’t resemble the Barbizon forests of France. Why should they be made to look alike? Do Canadians have such an inferiority complex that we can’t bear for someone to look at a canvas and say, ‘that’s Georgian Bay’ or ‘that’s a Saskatchewan prairie?’”

Walker crossed the room and puffed himself up to full height, which made Carl look up to meet his frosty stare. Had he shrunk in the last decade?

“Fine words, Ahrens,” Walker said. “I assume you refer to your own work.”

“Why not?”

“A European collector will forgive that Grier’s Canadian if his portraits are rendered in a classical style. Even you sold a few pieces when you painted like Rousseau or even Inness. Nationalist pride alone won’t help you sell those sentimental tree studies.”

“Did you hear that?” Carl met the eyes of Reid, Forster and Grier in turn. “This from the man you lot put in charge of promoting Canadian art.”

“I don’t have to like you to be a patriot, Ahrens.” Walker stroked his beard.

Carl considered informing Walker that the replica of Niagara Falls on his chin made his head appear as large as his ego. “I don’t give a damn what a banker thinks of me.”

Walker smiled. “And I don’t give a damn what a bigamist thinks of me.”

The room fell silent. Carl eyes flew to Grier, who dabbed a handkerchief to his moist forehead. “If you’re determined to gossip about me, Grier, at least get your facts straight. I’m divorced, you pathetic little man.”

The whispers felt like a thousand ants crawling on Carl’s skin at once, far too many to slap away. He seethed through dinner and wished Madonna sat beside him. She would sense the direction of his thoughts and make polite excuses to leave before he could unleash the venom that boiled within him. Carl’s fury intensified as Grier and Walker whispered to each other over the roasted chicken. The after dinner speeches would begin soon, but any delight Carl would have had over offending the stuffier members with a humorous yet mildly risqué story vanished. When his turn came, he stood, grinned, and took his revenge.

“I dreamed last night that I stood at the Gates of Heaven. I knocked and St. Peter came to the gate and said to me, ‘Who are you and what do you want?’ ‘I’m Carl Ahrens and I want to come in,’ I answered. ‘What do you do?’ said Peter. ‘I’m a painter.’ St. Peter shook his head. ‘You should know better. Of course you can’t come in.’”

Grier and Walker glanced at each other and snickered.

“’Why not?’ Carl continued. “’I’ve not been a bad sort of fellow. I don’t see why I should be kept out of Heaven.’ Peter sighed. ‘You’re exasperating. Surely you know painters aren’t allowed in Heaven.’ Just then I caught sight of someone I recognized through the pearly gate. “But there’s a painter here.” I pointed to the man. St Peter laughed. ‘Everyone knows Grier’s no painter.’”