Acceptable Losses Read Online Free PDF Page B

Gregor,” he said. “There’re still good plays.”
    “Narrow, narrow,” Gregor said morosely.
    “I’ll find a musical for you.”
    “Yes,” Gregor said. “Work year, two year, thousand sketches, hysteria, cost enough to feed all Cambodia for six months, close in one night. Après moi, le deluge. The guillotine next week. I am not man who can stand waste. I never throw anything away, not anything , not a piece of string, not a tube of paint that has one more dot of color in it.”
    “As usual, Gregor,” Damon said good-naturedly, “there’s no arguing with you.”
    Gregor beamed. “If only everybody was as wise as you, my friend. I will send you postcard from Florence. Meanwhile, if you can find artist who want nice big studio cheap for one year, send him to me. But he must be worse painter than me. I won’t enjoy Europe if I know man is using my place to produce masterpieces. But not one of those people my friend Jim Franklin shows in gallery—two lines on canvas eighty by eighty, background sprayed on acrylic. I can stand mediocrity here, but not desecration.” He glowered at Franklin.
    “Come now,” Franklin said, not offended. “I showed you , too.”
    “How many canvases sold?”
    “One.”
    “Hah!” Gregor snorted. “You have made them worship geometry. Roundness, passion, delight, admiration for the human face and figure— kaput. I am stray dog in your gallery.” This was obviously a sore point with Gregor and the good humor had gone out of his voice.
    “Gregor, please,” Ebba said. “Jim isn’t responsible for the last fifty years of modern art all by himself.”
    “He compounds felony,” Gregor said darkly. “Fifteen shows a year. Look at them with their buttons.”
    Franklin touched the button on his lapel self-consciously. “What’s wrong with being against nuclear war?” he asked defensively.
    “I do not complain your being against nuclear war,” Gregor said loudly. “But I’m against buttons. What do they announce? I am in a strict category, defined by somebody else, I listen, I do as I am told, the button says. I make myself fit, even if it means cutting out one-half of brain, that’s what they announce.” He was in full flight now, not joking anymore. “Marching down the avenues of America.”
    “I invite you to march with us the next time there’s a demonstration. See for yourself,” Franklin said, still calm, although Damon could see he was annoyed by the painter’s attack.
    “When you get equal number Russians, Czechs, Hungarians, East Germans, Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Cubans to march with same buttons,” Gregor said, almost out of breath by the effort of getting out the list of names, “I march with you. Meanwhile, in the Kremlin, they see pictures in papers of Americans, British, Frenchmen marching and they roar with laughter and send another hundred thousand troops to Afghanistan and they pick out best houses in America, Park Avenue, the Hamptons, Beverly Hills, on secret map, where the commissars will live when they get here.”
    “Gregor,” Ebba said sharply, “stop being so Hungarian. This isn’t Budapest.”
    “Nobody ever stops being Hungarian,” Gregor said. “And certainly not after seeing the Russian tanks on boulevards.”
    “So what?” Franklin said, nettled. “Do we start dropping bombs immediately?”
    Gregor put his hand up to his head, scowled thoughtfully. “I need drink before answer. Serious question.” He poured himself a full glass of wine, took a long swallow, put down his glass. “I am against nuclear war we are going to have, no matter who marches. I am resigned. One way or another, human race can’t wait for it to happen. I see one way out. Certain type nuclear weapon. Some time ago people make big fuss about it. Why, I don’t know. Neutron bomb. Thirty-five thousand, forty thousand nuclear warheads, end the world in thirty seconds, men, women, children, birds in the air, fish in the sea, no cities left, nothing