Mr. Bones Read Online Free PDF

the moist eyes of the art dealer on his entering the gallery, the subtle hints that a certain object might be worthy of his attention—not the best piece in the place, but always the most expensive.
    This afternoon the dealer was Tony Faris. He had an early Hopper. He called to his assistant, Mara, to prop the painting on an easel.
    Buyers and collectors said, “Can you make me a price?” or “What’s the best you can do?”
    Minor Watt smiled at Faris and said, “How much?”
    The price was named. He studied Faris’s mouth uttering the big number, the dry lips, the licking tongue, the jerking head.
    â€œI’ll write you a check,” he said. Then, because Faris had hesitated and Mara had glanced at her boss, he said, “How do you want me to pay for it?”
    He loved the way Faris said, “Cash is good.”
    â€œSend it to me. Pack it well.”
    He knew he was sending the piece to its doom. They all did. Collaborators!
    â€œI know you’ll be happy with it.”
    Happy, yes, because if it were not of such great quality, he would not have bought it, would not trouble himself to slash it, burn it, pour acid over it, melt it, batter it with a hammer.
    Mara brought the Hopper to him in a taxi. He invited her up to his apartment and led her through part of his collection, his usual challenge, daring her to identify this or that piece.
    â€œNaga,” she said, correctly, of a red-beaded necklace in a framed box. “Reverse-glass painting, Hanuman,” and “Mughal
khanjar,
real jewels in the hilt.” She seemed reverential, even moved by the objects. “And that is a
dah,
” she said of a silver dagger.
    â€œYou know what you’re looking at.”
    â€œMany of these things have a practical use.” She was glancing from the Marquesan club to the Dan mask to a Zulu headrest. “Not art objects, but useful tools,” she said. “To you they are emblems of power.”
    He lifted the Marquesan
u’u
and wondered if he should smash it.
    â€œThe language of things,” she said.
    He knew why the dealers were so willing to consign these artworks to oblivion. The money he paid was one incentive, but there was a larger issue: the scarcer the work, the rarer the masterpiece in any area, the greater the demand and the higher the price. A finite number of Hoppers existed. Minor Watt’s Hopper was an oil the painter had executed in Rockland, Maine, in the summer of 1926—moored fishing boats, a clutter of drooping telephone wires, the serene old culture, the ugly tilted crosstrees. Hopper had spent less than three months in Rockland. He’d done fewer than a dozen paintings. The destruction of this painting increased the value of all the rest of them, probably a better one that Faris had kept for himself.
    The Noland prices rose on the news that he’d wrecked two early targets. He pounded his Gandharan Maitreya figure, a “Buddha of the future,” into fragments and the market for these strangely Hellenic central Asian sculptures became buoyant.
    He had never collected coins, inros, netsukes, perfume bottles; apart from a few pieces he’d given Sonia, jewelry left him cold. And what sort of spectacle would they make on a bonfire or in a crucible—a sparklet, a fizz, a bad smell. Even melted, the heaviest earrings—West African or Indian—would amount to no more than a twisted nugget of gold. He craved a visible triumph, a blaze, a marble statue reduced to powder, to be sneezed into nothingness.
    The painter Tristram Cowley invited him to his studio, and Minor Watt sat while Cowley showed him his latest work. Minor Watt admired the detail, made comments. He knew what these painters wanted him to do—buy a picture, not the best one. They held back. Minor Watt was patient. He chatted, waiting until the better pictures were slid out and leaned against the wall. Cowley’s pieces were based on