Pictures at an Exhibition Read Online Free PDF Page A

young men seeking to enlist. The prospect of war seemed to offer a more exciting alternative to school, and the constant reminders of my own failures at home. I was aware, too, I am sure, that my father had never had the chance to serve.
    When I visited the draft board, the flatness of my feet was the cause of much attention. I noticed that my card was filed with a crease at its corner. I visited a doctor who recommended a series of painful exercises and sold me a pair of “reshaping shoes.” When I told my father, I could not tell if his laughter was out of relief or at the humor of the situation. He had his own preoccupations. Some clients who decided to buy had their paintings shipped directly to houses in the country. Lucie hid bags of sugar in the closet where I kept my tennis racket. To Mother, Father repeated, “Don't worry.” She replied, “I do.” I wondered if they remembered that they had had a son at all.
    The heat clanked at the same pace it had my entire life, and yet that month seemed to pass more slowly than others. Rose's presence was fleeting. On one occasion, I passed by Father's office as she sat at the typewriter, in a green sweater with a hole at its elbow. Notes in a looping hand were torn in two in the garbage. I found her in the hallway bathroom once, with a black tongue, as a pen had burst when she licked its nib. I handed her a white towel and said, “Ruin the cloth,” and she looked grateful and closed the door on me as I stood there, staring stupidly at her stained mouth. To the light in the courtyard, I sang along with my new American record, There's an oh-such-a-hungry yearning burning inside of me , and I felt every word in the marrow of my bones. Eventually, Auguste said, “I hate this Cole Porter,” so I only played the album at a low volume and closed the window when doing so.
    STILL, AS ABSURD AS THIS MAY SEEM IN RETROSPECT , I thought mostly of Rose. When my curiosity about her overwhelmed my common sense, I decided to investigate her living quarters. I would find her diary and learn the secrets of her heart. Anything important in the house not on a canvas was hidden in the kitchen. Searching in the spice cabinet, behind the teapot Lucie kept filled with whisky, I found a key attached to a paper disk on which was written Nurse's Room in my mother's hand. I planned my invasion for that afternoon, when Rose was at the Louvre, as she was most days when I returned from my medical classes.
    A few hours later, I crept down the three stairs that led to the hallway off of Rose's suite. I could not recall the last time I had been in the Nurse's Room. I imagined it had housed my own caretaker at some point, though I never recollected having anyone look after me aside from Lucie and Auguste. The hallway had two doors. I passed the first, which held a shuddering, rusting furnace. The second door opened, with a jangle of bells, into Rose's room.
    I had expected a jewelry box, and I stumbled into a riot. A stack of comics—Belphegor, Tintin, and Spirou and Fantasio—spilled to the floor and would not be coaxed into a pile. In the process, I knocked a pair of muddy roller skates off their pedestal (the Paris telephone directory) and into the dinner plate Rose had used as an ashtray. I cursed aloud.
    On her desk sat a typewriter with a single jammed key pointing accusingly. Beside the typewriter was the secret to her solitary meals: a portable burner and a can of beans with a punctured lid.
    I considered examining the contents of her dresser drawers (that haunting flash of white lace, once, at the waist of her skirt) but heard a tread in the hall and ran out, past the furnace and directly into Rose.
    “Snooping about?”
    “No,” I denied. “The hot water—Father said I—”
    She raised her eyebrows. “I should have left the door open for you. Saved you the trouble of picking that lock. I tried it myself once, just to make sure it could be done.”
    “I had a key,” I said.
    “Finger