When she was finally able to interrupt the professor, she repeated her story about the young man having done a great kindness for her and her husband, a kindness for which they never adequately thanked him. She only wished to express to Mr. Drackman the gratitude that he so richly deserved.
The professor listened at first intently, then impatiently, and soon revealed his disbelief by launching once more into unqualified praise for his former student. The more adulatory his words became, the more emotional he became, as well—and increasingly incoherent. His face reddened, and spittle sparkled around each word launched from his lips. If his eyes had previously looked like those of some creature in need of caging, they now suggested that he might soon need to be shot down as rabid.
Mrs. Nozawa became convinced that Dr. MaceMaskil had been high on some illegal substance when first he’d heard about her inquiry at Alumni Affairs, that he had misinterpreted what he’d been told, and that between then and now he had ingested more of that drug or maybe also others with contraindications. Either her astonished expression or her hand reaching for the telephone on the counter alerted him to the fact that he was by then making little or no sense, for his eyes widened, and he clamped one hand over his mouth to silence himself.
Having heard enough to be no less astonished than his mistress, Toshiro Mifune abruptly stood with forepaws on the counter and raised his big head. He regarded Dr. MaceMaskil with limpid golden eyes, did not bark, did not growl, but expressed his opinion with a loud protracted snort.
The professor fled. No other word could adequately describe his sudden departure. Legs so long they seemed to have two knees each, arms flailing the air as if it must be more resistant than water, his rumpled and patched designer khaki ensemble rustling like a sack full of frantic rats, he careened to the left and then to the right as he sought escape. He made thin sounds of distress, as if he had wandered into the Little Dry-Cleaning Shop of Horrors and expected never to be allowed to leave. Meeting the glass door with his shoulder, he bulled through it, stumbled into sunshine, squinting as if it seared him, hurried west along the strip-mall sidewalk and out of sight, only to reappear a moment later, this time hell-bent toward the east.
Mrs. Nozawa came out from behind the counter and went to the door and stepped outside to watch the eminent educator make his way to his car. A gray Volvo. He seemed to have some difficulty figuring out how to start it. She imagined that he might be trying to insert the key into the cigarette lighter. Pulling out of his parking space, piloting the sedan toward an exit from the mall lot, Dr. MaceMaskil blew his horn at every motorist and pedestrian he encountered, as though to warn them unequivocally that they were driving or walking recklessly. Even after the Volvo reached the street and disappeared, Mrs. Nozawa waited, listening for what seemed to be the inevitable shattering crash of a high-speed collision.
Being a shrewd businesswoman who could read people accurately, Setsuko Nozawa thought the strangest thing about the encounter was how the man had reacted to her story about Lucas Drackman having done a great kindness for her and her husband some years earlier. Although he had no reason to doubt a word she’d said, he hadn’t believed her for a moment. In spite of the extravagant praise he had heaped upon his former student, perhaps Dr. MaceMaskil found it impossible to imagine that Lucas Drackman was capable of a kind act.
62
As Amalia and Malcolm and I moved on from Girl with the Red Hat, proceeding deeper into Kalomirakis Pinakotheke, I asked if she could not just tell me about the artist but if she could explain also what each painting meant, why its maker made it, what he wished to say.
Rapping my head with the rolled-up brochure each of us had been given when we paid at the entrance, Malcolm said, “That’s a pretty stupid thing for a prodigy to ask. Tell him why it’s stupid, Amalia.”
“If I recall correctly,” she said, “when I brought you here for the first time, you asked me the same thing.”
“That’s not the way I remember it,” Malcolm said.
“How do you remember it, dear brother?”
“You were in a stormy mood that day.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Stormy?”
“And you were drinking.”
“Oh? What was I drinking?”
“Just everything. Brandy, beer, vodka, wine.”
“Did you have to carry me over your shoulder?”
“Not at all. I said you were brain-damaged at birth, and they gave us a courtesy wheelchair.”
“You’re terrible.”
“I don’t believe you were drunk,” I told Amalia.
“Thank you, Jonah.”
To me, Malcolm said, “You are painfully na?ve, child. Anyway, as I wheeled her from painting to painting—she would point at each one and in an embarrassing drunken way, she’d demand to know what the picture meant. Sis, do you remember what I told you that day? Jonah needs to hear it.”
“Why don’t you tell him, Malcolm?”
“I’m not sure I remember it word for word.” To me, he added, “The dear girl will have committed it to memory. Even drunk, she hangs on my every utterance.”