Island of Demons Read Online Free PDF Page A

get rid of that moustache.” He meant mine not the Widow Traverso’s. “What do you say?”
    â€œHe’s delighted,” said my father, stepping forward to shake his hand and accept one of the poisonous cheroots. And so I became a professional artist, standing on my own feet, making my own decisions.
    ***
    My Italian pictures, it was quite generally agreed, were a commercial triumph. At first I thought I was unlucky with the weather, one of those misty evenings lit only by the gleam of rain-slicked cobblestones, whose chill discourages nocturnal outings. But that made the glow of the warm south, in which my pictures were steeped, irresistible to these pale northerners. The air was heavy with mothballs and compensating cologne, the smell of a middle-class crowd. Jacob Vorderman had combed his little black book to entice them out and here they were, good solid people with money in their pockets, the dentured classes, who might be interested in a picture of something they could recognise by an artist on the way up. There were a few expensive and elaborate oils to tempt the extravagant but these were heavily padded out with bargain-price pastels and gouaches that held out the hope of turning into a good investment.
    In one corner was the mayor, his eyes dancing round the crowd, identifying, annotating; in another, the doyenne of female society, Mrs van Damm – each surrounded by their court with Jacob firedancing back and forth. And already more than half the pictures were decorated with the red dot of success, signifying that they had been sold. It is always a shock for a painter to see his pictures, for the first time, mounted and framed, closed and complete. Hung on a wall, they now have to hold their own against all the other works in the world that could stand in their place. They are no longer a work in progress. They define you.
    My parents were there, glowing. The exhibition had somehow defined them too. Father was finally a successful businessman among his peers, talking money, banks and investments to those not too proud to listen. Mother was in something towering and black that set off her eyes, with matching gloves buttoned to the armpits. She was, above all, relieved by the bosoms – on the walls not in the room. Blatantly heterosexual, they swelled and throbbed from every corner, but always constrained and tightly bodiced, the obvious face of thwarted schoolboy lust. This was not, she was thinking quite rightly, the archive of a sated satyr. This was what Dr Freud was teaching us to call “repression”. Lust, yes, but still safely unslaked. I was glad to duck behind them like a rampart.
    Jacob led me over to be presented to Mrs van Damm. We still kissed hands in those days after the First World War. It took a second war to stop the handkissing. This one, presented with coyly bent wrist, was sallow, blue- veined and liver-spotted, the skin almost transparent beneath the rings.
    â€œSo young!” She cooed cupping my newly unmoustached face. “I want you to know I have bought one of your pictures – that adorable little one in pastiche over there.” She pointed.
    I frowned in incomprehension. Then the penny dropped. “Oh, I see. Not ‘pastiche’. You mean in pastel.” Her mouth set hard. Clearly, she was unused to contradiction.
    Jacob intervened. “I think you misunderstand,” he hissed, footcrackling. “Not the other one. Mrs Vorderman means that one in pastiche .”
    â€œOh right.”
    She resumed. “What I loved about it was that sweet little doggie in the shadows.”
    â€œOh that’s not a dog. That’s … oh I see. The dog … right. How clever of you to spot it.”
    â€œBut it has no title.” She looked piqued. “Every painting has to have a title.”
    â€œIt’s not strictly a painting. Oh, right. Well … it’s ‘Doggie in Pastiche’.” I glared at Vorderman who