Pictures of Fidelman by Bernard Malamud

her puttana.
    “That’ll do from you,” said F, sternly.
    “Pay your rent instead of pissing away the money.”
    Her name, she told him as they were undressing in his studio, was Esmeralda.
    His was Arturo.
    The girl’s hair, when she tossed off her baggy hat, was brown and full. She had black eyes like plum pits, a small mouth on the sad side, Modigliani neck, strong though not exactly white teeth and a pimply brow. She wore long imitation-pearl earrings and kept them on. Esmeralda unzipped her clothes and they were at once in bed. It wasn’t bad though she apologized for her performance.
    As they lay smoking in bed—he had given her one of his six cigarettes—Esmeralda said, “The one I was looking for isn’t my cousin, he’s my pimp or at least he was. If he’s there waiting for me I hope it’s a blizzard and he freezes to death.”

    They had an espresso together. She said she liked the studio and offered to stay.
    He was momentarily panicked. “I wouldn’t want it to interfere with my painting. I mean I’m devoted to that. Besides, this is a small place.”
    “I’m a small girl, I’ll take care of your needs and won’t interfere with your work.”
    He finally agreed.
    Though he had qualms concerning her health, he let her stay yet felt reasonably contented.
     
    “Il Signor Ludovico Belvedere,” the landlord called up from the ground floor, “a gentleman on his way up the stairs to see you. If he buys one of your pictures, you won’t have any excuse for not paying last month’s rent, not to mention June or July.”
    If it was really a gentleman, F went in to wash his hands as the stranger slowly, stopping to breathe, wound his way up the stairs. The painter had hastily removed the canvas from the easel, hiding it in the kitchen alcove. He soaped his hands thickly, the smoke from the butt in his mouth drifting into a closed eye. F quickly dried himself with a dirty towel. It was, instead of a gentleman, Esmeralda’s seedy cugino, the pimp, a thin man past fifty, tall, with pouched small eyes and a pencil-line mustache. His hands and feet were small, he wore loose squeaky shoes with gray spats. His clothes though neatly pressed had seen better days. He carried a malacca cane and sported a pearl-gray
hat. There was about him, though he seemed to mask it, a quality of having experienced everything, if not more, that gave F the momentary shivers.
    Bowing courteously and speaking as though among friends, he was not, he explained, in the best of moods —to say nothing of his health—after a week of running around desperately trying to locate Esmeralda. He explained they had had a misunderstanding over a few lire through an unfortunate error, no more than a mistake in addition—carrying a one instead of a seven. “These things happen to the best of mathematicians, but what can you do with someone who won’t listen to reason? She slapped my face and ran off. Through a mutual acquaintance I made an appointment to explain the matter to her, with proof from my accounts, but though she gave her word she didn’t appear. It doesn’t speak well for her maturity.”
    He had learned later from a friend in the Santo Spirito quarter that she was at the moment living with the signore. Ludovico apologized for disturbing him, but F must understand he had come out of urgent necessity.
    “Per piacere, signore, I request your good will. A great deal is at stake for four people. She can continue to serve you from time to time if that’s what she wants; but I hear from your landlord that you’re not exactly prosperous, and on the other hand she has to support herself and a starving father in Fiesole. I don’t suppose she’s told you about him but if it weren’t for me personally,
he’d be lying in a common grave this minute growing flowers on his chest. She must come back to work under my guidance and protection not only because it’s mutually beneficial but because it’s a matter of communal responsibility;