The Angel Of Darkness

CHAPTER 10

It’s always seemed to me that there’s two types of people in this life, them what get a kick out of what might be called your odder types and them what don’t; and I suppose that I, unlike Mr. Moore, have always been in the first bunch. You’d have to’ve been, I think, to have really enjoyed living in Dr. Kreizler’s house, for the folks he had in and out of there-even the ones like Mr. Roosevelt, who were long on brains and went on to great fame and success-were some of the more peculiar characters you could possibly have met in those days. And of all those strange but noteworthy souls, none was stranger than the man I liked to call “Pinkie,” Mr. Albert Pinkham Ryder.

An artist by religion in addition to profession, the tall, soft-spoken, kindly man with the big beard and searching eyes gave off the general impression of a monk or priest, which was why he was known as “the Reverend” or “Bishop Ryder” to his friends. He lived in rooms at Number 308 West Fifteenth Street and spent most of his nights either working or on long walks around the city-its streets, its parks, even its suburbs-studying the moonlight and shadows that filled so many of his paintings. He was a solitary soul, a recluse, by his own estimation, who’d grown up in the spooky old whaling town of New Bedford, Massachusetts. He’d had a Quaker for a mother and a collection of brothers for company-all of which meant that one of his more extreme peculiarities was his way of dealing with women. Oh, he was polite enough, in a way what would’ve seemed chivalrous if it hadn’t been so damned odd. There was the time, for instance, that he heard a beautiful singing voice floating through his building and, when he found the woman who possessed it, immediately proposed marriage to her. Now, this woman was a fine singer, sure enough, but on the street and at the local precinct house she was known to be other things, too; and it was only when a group of his friends stepped in to lower the boom on the idea that poor old Pinkie was saved from what probably would’ve been a thorough fleecing.

He liked kids; he was kind of a big, strange boy himself, and he was always happy to see me (the same could not be said for some of the Doctor’s other friends). By 1897 he was famous and successful enough, among those who understood art, to be able to live pretty much as he pleased-which was basically like a pack rat. He never threw a thing away, not a food carton or a piece of string or a pile of ashes, and his rooms really could get a little frightening at times for most people. But his gentle, quiet kindness and the definite pull of his hazy, dreamy paintings more than made up for all that, especially for me, a boy from the Lower East Side who was used to garbage piling up inside flats. That, combined with the fact that he shared my taste in food-he kept a kettle of stew always on the boil and, when out, preferred oysters, lobster, and baked beans in a waterfront restaurant-made his place a destination to which I was always happy to accompany the Doctor.

It was just the three of us-Miss Howard, the Doctor, and myself-what made the pilgrimage that night, as Cyrus (who admired Pinkie’s paintings but, like Mr. Moore, didn’t think much of his living habits) begged off to get a full night’s sleep. Pinkie’s building was just west of Eighth Avenue on Fifteenth Street, and was one of thousands like it in that neighborhood: a simple old brick row house that’d been converted into flats. We traveled by hansom, moving uptown with the thickening stream of traffic what was heading for the Tenderloin at that time of night and then branching off to find that a small kerosene lamp was burning in Pinkie’s front window.

“Ah, so he’s home,” Dr. Kreizler said. He paid off the cabbie, then took Miss Howard’s arm. “Now, Sara, I must prepare you-I know that you find courtly deference to your sex abominable, but in Ryder’s case you really must make an exception. It’s perfectly innocent, and perfectly genuine-he does not intend it as any veiled attempt to keep women fragile and weak, I assure you.”

Miss Howard nodded in a not-completely-convinced way as we climbed up the stoop of the building. “I’ll give anyone the benefit of a fair trial,” she said. “But if it becomes insulting…”

“Fair enough,” the Doctor said. “Stevie? Why don’t you run ahead, so that Ryder has some warning.”

I dashed inside the building and up the dark stairs to the door of Pinkie’s flat, then knocked on it hard and called out to him in a loud voice. I knew that he sometimes didn’t let even good friends in, if he was in a fever of creation, but I felt sure he’d respond to me. “Mr. Ryder?” I shouted. “It’s Stevie Taggert, sir, come with the Doctor!”

From inside I heard the kind of rustling that squirrels make when they get into a pile of autumn leaves, and then some heavy, slow footsteps moved toward the door. The footsteps stopped, and there was a long pause, accompanied by heavy breathing that I could hear even in the hall. Finally, a deep, rich voice what was at once slow but a bit skittish asked:

“Stevie?”

“Yes, sir,” I answered.

A lock was undone, and as the door was pulled away from me a large form moved in to fill the opening. I made out the beard first, then the high, glowing forehead, and finally the eyes, the color of which-light brown or blue-I could never quite figure.

I moved inside with a salute. “Hellooo, Pinkie!” I announced, marching past the piles of books, newspapers, and just plain trash in his front room toward the back of the flat, where his studio-and the kettle of stew-were located.

He smiled in his particular way, what Dr. Kreizler always called “enigmatically.”

“Hello, young Stevie,” he said, wiping his paint-covered hands on a rag. For all that he’d lived in New York for years, there was still much of the old-time New Englander in the way he spoke. “What brings you to these reaches at this hour?”

“The Doctor’s following me up,” I said, moving between walls covered with unframed canvases that, to the untrained eye, would have looked like finished pictures: beautiful golden landscapes, stormy dark seascapes (or what the art crowd called “marines”), as well as scenes from the poetry, drama, and myths what fascinated old Pinkie. He was quite a poet himself, and, like I say, his interpretations of “The Forest of Arden” or “The Tempest” would’ve looked to anybody else like they were ready for shipping. But it was near impossible for Pinkie to consider a painting done, ever, and he fussed and fidgeted with them, as Mr. Moore had said, for years before he’d release them to the usually exasperated patrons what had paid for them long ago.

Grabbing a wooden spoon, I helped myself to a nice scoop of Pinkie’s hearty lamb stew, which he’d sweetened with some fresh apples. Then I took a turn around the studio. “Quite a crop, Pinkie,” I called to him. “How many of them are sold?”

“Enough,” he answered from the front room. Then I heard the Doctor’s and Miss Howard’s voices and raced back out, so that I could witness the ritual that Pinkie went through anytime a woman came to his hideaway.

Making a deep bow, he said, “I’m deeply honored, miss,” with rumbling sincerity. Then he held out a hand. “Please…” Next he started to quickly clear a path through all the garbage in the room to the one easy chair he owned, a beat-up but comfortable old thing that sat by the front window. As he finished clearing the floor in front of the chair, he grabbed a small oriental throw rug and spread it out so that Miss Howard could rest her feet on it once she’d sat down, like a Bohemian queen on a throne. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have been a woman to go for such treatment; but coming from Pinkie, such things were just so sincere and so peculiar as to make anybody suspend their usual reactions.

“Well, Albert,” the Doctor said cheerfully, “you look well. A bit swollen, perhaps, in spots. How is the rheumatism?”

“Always lurking about,” Pinkie answered with a smile. “But I have my cures. May I offer you both something to eat? Or to drink? Beer? Water?”

“Yes, I’ll have a glass of beer, Albert,” the Doctor answered, looking to Miss Howard. “It’s a pleasant night, though not as cool as I’d expected.”

“Yes, beer would be lovely,” Miss Howard said.

Pinkie held up a long finger, indicating he’d only be a moment, then started for the back of the flat. As he went, I noticed that his feet were making little squishing sounds. I looked down to see that he was wearing oversized shoes filled with straw and what appeared for all the world to be cooked oatmeal.

“Say, Pinkie,” I said, following him, “I guess you know you’ve got oatmeal in your shoes.”

“The best thing for rheumatism,” he answered, fetching a few bottles of beer and running a couple of suspicious-looking glasses under a cold tap. “My walks have become a bit painful lately. Straw and cold oatmeal-that’s the answer.” He started back for the front room.

“O-kaay,” I said with a shrug, still trailing him. “You oughtta know, ain’t nobody in New York walks as much as you do.”

Moving with little huffing sounds, Pinkie set the beer bottles and glasses down on a table made of an old wooden crate and then started to pour. “Here we are,” he said, handing the glasses to the Doctor and Miss Howard. “To you, Miss Howard,” he toasted, holding his glass up. “ ‘I look upon thy youth, fair maiden, I look upon thy youth and fancy laden, Would that I a fairy were, That with magic wand I could deter, All evil chance, and spare thy coming years, All unwrought by rain of tears, With a rainbow bright.’ ”

“Well said, Albert,” the Doctor replied, holding up his glass and drinking his beer. “Your own?” he asked, though I could tell that he knew it was.

Pinkie inclined his head humbly. “Poor, but my own. And fitting for your companion.”

Miss Howard seemed genuinely touched-and that was no easy trick, for a member of the male sex to move her. “Thank you, Mr. Ryder,” she said, holding up her glass and taking a sip. “That was lovely.”

“Say, Pinkie,” I tossed in, knowing that he was also a turf enthusiast, “how’d you make out in the Suburban today?”

A look of mingled disappointment and excitement came into his face. “I’m afraid I had no time to put a bet down,” he said. “But it’s odd that you should mention the races, Stevie…” He lifted the same long finger again and directed us to follow him to the studio, which we did. “A very strange coincidence, indeed! You see, I’ve been working on something. A picture with a story behind it, you might say. Some years ago, a waiter with whom I had a passing but convivial acquaintance wagered all of his life’s savings on a horse race-and lost. Despairing, he then shot himself.”

“How dreadful,” Miss Howard said; but her shock could not hide the fact that she was becoming what you might call enchanted by the paintings that began to close in around her.

“Yes,” Pinkie said. “It set my mind to work, I shall not tell you precisely how-but you must see the result, as I think it may have possibilities.”

He took us over to a large easel in one corner of the room, on which rested a canvas of about two feet by three, covered with a light, stained piece of cloth. Pinkie lit a nearby gas lamp, turned its flame up, and then stepped to the easel.

“Mind you, it’s nothing like finished,” he said, “but-well…”

He took the cloth away.

On the easel was one of the most eerie of all his pictures that I’d ever seen. It showed a scraggly oval track, surrounded by a similarly rough horse fence. On the muddy ground in front of the track was a large, nasty-looking snake; above it, in the distance, some barren hills and a sky so gloomy that it could’ve been either day or night; and on the track itself, a lone rider-Death, the Reaper himself-riding bareback in the wrong direction, holding his scythe high.

Now, most of Pinkie’s pictures were mysterious, but this thing was downright grim-scary, even. The Doctor and Miss Howard, however, were clearly impressed, for their eyes positively glowed with fascination as they studied it.

“Albert,” the Doctor said slowly, “it’s brilliant. Harrowing, but brilliant.”

Pinkie shuffled self-consciously in his oatmeal at that, and did so again when Miss Howard added, “Extraordinary. Really… entrancing in its way…”

“I’ve decided to call it simply ‘The Race Track,’ ” Pinkie said.

I looked from the Doctor and Miss Howard to Pinkie and finally back to the picture. “I don’t get it,” I said.

Pinkie smiled at me and stroked his beard. “Now, that’s what I like to hear. What don’t you get, young Stevie?”

“What’s with the snake?” I said, pointing at it.

“What does it mean to you?” he answered.

“Gotta be one fast snake, to keep up with that horse.” Pinkie seemed to find that very satisfying. “And speaking of the horse, Pinkie, he’s going the wrong direction-you oughtta know that.”

“Yes,” Pinkie answered, looking at the picture.

“And how about the sky?” I asked. “Is it supposed to be day or nighttime?”

“Do you know,” Pinkie answered, squinting those strangely colored eyes. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Hunh,” I said, giving the picture the once-over again. “Well, sorry, Pinkie, but it gives me the jitters. I’ll take that one up there.” I pointed to a nice, richly colored job that showed a pretty young girl with strawberry-blond hair: shadowy, yes, but comforting, not gloomy.

“Ah,” Pinkie said. “My ‘Little Maid of Acadie.’ Yes, I rather like her, too-and she’s almost finished. You’ve a good eye, young Stevie.” He covered the unsettling picture on the easel back up. “Now, then, Laszlo, have you come just to check on my health, or for some other reason? I suspect the latter, as you are a man who always has reasons.”

The Doctor looked away a little self-consciously. “Unkind, Albert,” he said with a smile. “But true. I told you, Sara, that Albert could have been a psychologist if he’d wished.” Pinkie shut the gas lamp off, and we started back for the front room. “The fact of the matter is, Albert, that we’ve come for a reference.”

“A reference?”

“We need a portraitist,” the Doctor said, as Miss Howard got back onto her flea-bitten throne. “One capable of doing a portrait not from life but from a detailed description.”

Pinkie looked intrigued. “An unusual request, Laszlo.”

“It’s my request, actually, Mr. Ryder,” Miss Howard said-and very wisely, too, for while Pinkie might’ve smelled something in the wind if the suggestion had come from a man, he’d take it as gospel coming from a woman-especially a handsome young woman. “It is-or rather was-a distant member of my family. She died rather suddenly. At sea. We’ve found that we have no painting, not even a photograph, to remember her by. My cousin and I-she lives in Spain, as did our dead relation-were discussing how much we wished we had some kind of an image for a keepsake, and the Doctor said it might be possible to do one from memories and descriptions.” She took a very fetching little sip of her beer. “Do you think it might? I have only the greatest admiration for your work, and would count your opinion as definitive.”

Well, sir, Pinkie walked right into it: he grabbed hold of the lapels of his worn wool jacket, got most of the usual stoop out of his stance, and started to walk the floor as if his shoes were the best patent leather, instead of filled with straw and oatmeal. “I see,” he said thoughtfully. “An interesting idea, Miss Howard. Your relative was a woman, you say?”

“Yes,” Miss Howard answered.

“There are many excellent portraitists in New York. Ordinarily, Chase would be the first choice-do you know him, Kreizler?”

“William Merritt Chase?” the Doctor asked. “We’ve only met briefly, but I know his work. And you’re right, Albert, he’s a superb choice-”

“Actually,” Pinkie cut in, “I don’t think so. If your subject is a woman… and if you’re working from memories alone… I think you ought to have a woman do the job.”

That brought a smile what was in no way an act to Miss Howard’s face. “What an excellent idea, Mr. Ryder!” She glanced up pointedly at the Doctor. “And how refreshing…” The Doctor simply rolled his eyes and turned away. “Do you happen to know one?”

“I’m often taunted by my colleagues for seeing the work of as many artists as I can,” Pinkie answered, “whatever their background. Or sex. I believe there is merit in almost any serious picture, no matter who the painter may be. Yes, I believe I know the very person for you. Her name is Cecilia Beaux.” Miss Howard’s head cocked a bit, as if in recognition. “Do you know of her, Miss Howard?” Pinkie said, ready to be impressed.

“I seem to know the name,” Miss Howard answered, wrestling with it. “Does she teach, by any chance?”

“Yes, indeed. At the Pennsylvania Academy. She has a bright future there.”

Miss Howard frowned. “No. That’s not it…”

“But she also conducts a private class,” Pinkie went on. “Twice a week, in New York. That is what made me think of her.”

“Where is the class held?” the Doctor asked.

“At the home of Mrs. Cady Stanton.”

“Of course!” Miss Howard said, brightening. “Mrs. Cady Stanton and I are old friends. I’ve heard her speak of Miss Beaux-and in very admiring terms.”

“As well she should,” Pinkie judged. “There is a quality in this woman’s work-well, Laszlo, I can’t do better than to say that she sees through to the very essence of the personality. She has been well appreciated in Europe, and will be here, in time. Remarkable portraits, really-particularly those of women and children. Yes, the more I think of it, Cecilia Beaux is the person for you.”

“And I can reach her through Mrs. Cady Stanton,” Miss Howard said, looking at the Doctor. “First thing in the morning.”

“Well, then”-the Doctor lifted his beer again-“our problem is solved. I knew we were right to come to you, Albert-you are a living compendium.” Pinkie flushed and smiled, then grew more serious as the Doctor said, “Now, Albert-about ‘The Race Track’-is it sold?”

The two men fell to discussing the fate of the picture and drinking more beer. Pinkie hadn’t yet sold his unsettling work, but he insisted to the Doctor that he wouldn’t even consider doing so for a long time, as it was far from finished. (It wouldn’t be finished, by the way, until 1913.) It was the same story he told about all his canvases, and the Doctor displayed the same frustration what most collectors did on trying to bring Pinkie into the cold world of practicalities. Finally Dr. Kreizler dropped the subject and they all fell to talking of art in general, leaving me to wander into the studio again and have a little more of the delicious stew. As I ate, I looked up at the “Little Maid of Acadie” for a while longer, realizing for the first time that, in the vague sort of way what was our host’s style, it was the image of Kat.

We stayed at Pinkie’s for another hour or so, everyone having a very pleasant time amidst those piles of relics, trash, and waste. A funny kind of life, that-the old boy lived just for his pictures, and was quite happy to have that much. Give him a little good, humble food, a room to work in, and the ability to take his long walks, and he was fine. Simple, you might say; to which I’d answer, yeah-so simple that only one in a million can manage it.