The Painter and His Wife

"We're starving. The baby is dying. I've been fingering mashed potatoes into its mouth for three days now!" the young wife screamed.

The painter picked up a larger brush, and quickly painted the baby ultramarine, then threw it far off into the sea where it blended perfectly.

"You are a genius!" his wife beamed.

*

The painter's mistress was making a scene in the hotel room where they had just fucked.

"And the credit card you gave me only had a $5,000 limit. What do you think that does to my self-esteem, when I come up against a brick wall like that when I'm holding a dress that's worth three thousand dollars?"

The painter stuck his thumb through his palette just to be Renaissance-dramatic, and in a matter of moments painted his whore into a Madonna, with an infant Jesus at her virtuous right breast.

The mistress began weeping in gratitude.

"You are a genius," she sputtered.

The Infant Jesus held out a platinum credit card to the Madonna.

"Ooooh," the Virgin cooed in the hotel room, as a nimbus began to glow about her head like a glow-in-the-dark frisbee.

"Jeeegyus!" the Infant Jesus sputtered.

*

The painter's wife was on a tear, pursuing him like a Fury from room to room of the mansion he had foolishly painted years ago, thinking it would make a difference.

"She keeps calling. She said the Kid is in trouble again. She said they're talking about crucifying him this time. For real."

"I'll handle it," the painter said.

*

The boy was indeed being Crucified.

The painter arrived just in time to see a Roman soldier pierce him with a stave.

He noticed the blood dripping down the stave would require at least seven colors to render it convincingly.

"My Father, My Father....why hast thou abandoned Me?" the child upon the cross called out.

The painter stepped forth and began working in a slapdash manner, turning the scene from a realist tableau into a painting of the most austere geometricality.

When he was finished, there was only a black X on a white space.

He had painted out his Saviour and son, the weeping Virgin Mother who had once been his whore, the posse of Roman soldiers, the bloodhthirsty crowd, everything...

He stood alone in the purity for a few moments, admiring the way the white of the work made even snow seem noisy.

"You are a genius," said a Russian critic who was suddenly standing there, looking old as a mountain, and not nearly as well-dressed.

*

The painter had returned to his wife and sprawled on the couch, exhausted.

"What do you want for dinner?"

"I don't care. Wax beans. Something bland."

"Do you remember that baby we threw in the ocean?"

"Yeah."

"Well, he turned into a merman. He's in The Louvre. Do you wanna go visit him on Sunday? For old time's sake?"

"Don't care. If you want to."

"Figured it would be the right thing to do. Take a picture for the family album."

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry about your Son. He was a nice boy."

"Thanks. He's in a better place."

"And even she wasn't really that bad. I mean she did stand by Him.

"Uh huh."

"Hey. If I asked you to, would you paint me out of here. I mean, if I really felt like that was what I wanted?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I'm tired. You should stay here."

"Well, that's hardly what I expected to hear!"

She went off into one of her rants and the droning had its usual effect.

"You're a fucking genius, that's what you are!" was one of the last things he remembered hearing, spoken with great irony.

"I would prefer to be a wax bean," the painter mumbled.

Soon the painter was fast asleep.

*

When the painter awoke, he was in a painting that appeared to have been done by a kindergartner.

He wondered that he had not awakened sooner, as even the couch upon which he was sleeping was horribly rendered.

It looked more like a baked potato than a couch.

Looking about, he realized his wife had gotten into his paints and had placed him in Van Gogh's final wheat field.

He could see the bloody mess Vincent had made of his head with a shotgun only a few feet from where he was now sitting upright.

The painter's palette and brushes were nowhere in sight.

"Vincent, can you hear me?" the painter tentatively asked.

"Caw!" Vincent said. In clear imitation of a crow.

"You are a genius!" said the painter to the dying painter.

"You are a genius!" the shotgun had said to the brain.

"You are a genius!" said the crows now to nature.

And nature yawned.

Bored with all these geniuses.

*

The painter helped Vincent to his feet and escorted him to the hospital where he, of course, died later that night.

The painter needed a place to stay.

Logic led him to rent the skinny room he knew would be vacant, the one Vincent had painted so memorably.

And that was where he stayed.

As he settled into the narrow bed and the cold sheets Vincent had inhabited the previous night, he couldn't help whispering to himself: "You are a genius."

*

Sometimes, when he was bored, he would read Van Gogh's diaries and his thoughts on Christ.

At these times, the painter would think of his son and how proud he was of how he had graduated from being a Van Eyck to being a Malevich.

The urge to paint left him gradually and he rarely wondered what had become of his wife.

He knew the divorce was final. She would never paint him back into her life.

She was, clearly, a genius.

*

On Saturdays, he liked to go to the field where he had found Vincent and feed the crows stale bread.

One day one of the crows attacked him and as it beat its wings into his face, he noticed paint was covering his face, his body, that he was turning into a shadow.

He realized too late that what he had mistaken for a crow was really the tip of a brush being wielded by someone.

This attack was pure genius.

*

The field was filled with gentle sounds of the wind leaning this way and that.

Occasionally punctuated by the rusty throatcalls of the crows.

Not a painter in sight.

Nature felt so relieved, at last.

As though it had endured a woman's particularly bloody period, and come through.

It didn't feel anything like genius.

But it felt good. Because it had stopped feeling like anything at all.

"That is the only genius," nature thought.

*

Painting was over and nature felt clean again.

She felt creative, she felt fertile.

She did absolutely nothing all day but exist.

*

Later that afternoon, the Lumiere Brothers were busy splashing about in a creek, throwing frogs at one another.

One of them had a very peculiar thought at just that moment.

"What if we could make a photograph of these frogs seem to move?"

Genius was on the move.

It had found two little boys in one fell swoop.

*

Nature felt a pang right then.


Right in the middle of her crotch.


She dreamt about all the geniuses who had died in abortions, and she slumbered in the warm sun of the afternoon.


Flowers swooned and sprawled about her, as if to console her.


They did this all with great Love, and no particular genius.