The Bellini Card

23

Popi Eletro stood in his studio with his back to the light, gripping his lapels with his stubby fingers, his head cocked to one side.

It was amazing, he thought, what human beings could endure.

He bent closer to the canvas.

Good. Very, very good. Even without the varnish-a triumph.

His expression didn’t change. “The other one,” he said gruffly.

The Croat tenderly lifted the canvas from the easel and set it down against the wall. He picked up another and removed its blue paper wrapper. Popi saw him hesitate for a moment before he set it on the easel.

Popi gave a grim little smile and started to look for the flaw. It was only a matter of scrutiny. Ever since he had found the Croat silent and imbecile in a little church on the Dalmatian coast, he had perfectly understood the Croat’s cravings.

Soon after he had learned to recognize his pathetic evasions, too.

It had been five years since Popi had learned that a sojourn on the Istrian islands would be good for his health. The diagnosis was not made by a doctor, but so it had proved. One day, crazed with boredom, he had walked the long mile to the hilltop church and found the Croat drawing pictures with a stick of charcoal on the marble steps.

He had been astonished. Popi Eletro had not, until that moment, given much consideration to art, but it was a Venetian consideration. He watched shapes and figures flow from the man’s hand like water. So when the Croat proudly led him to the parish priest, and the priest showed him what the Croat could draw and paint on paper, Popi had discovered an interest in the full commercial sense of the term.

Art, Popi reasoned, could make him money.

“It is a gift from God,” the priest would say. “The only one he has-but a gift to make him happy!”

Now Popi bent close to the picture. A perfect Canaletto-with a flaw.

In the end it had been so easy. One night he led the Croat to a bar in town and got him drunk, and by morning they were miles from the wretched little church and its pious priest. The Croat was dubious but also excited: Popi gave him paper and pencils, and he sketched his way easily to Venice.

Popi took the room in the Ghetto. They had lived there together for six months.

Popi had learned then what made the Croat tick. His simple pleasures.

And the seagulls cried in just the same way.