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.”“Maybe we’d better try that.Don’t get up.”Fidelman’s head fell back on the pillow.Scarpio opened a thick book to its first chapter.“The thing to do is associate freely.”“If I don’t get out of this whorehouse soon I’ll surely die,” said Fidelman.“Do you have any memories of your mother?” Scarpio asked.“For instance, did you ever see her naked?”“She died at my birth,” Fidelman answered, on the verge of tears.“I was raised by my sister Bessie.”“Go on, I’m listening,” said Scarpio.“I can’t.My mind goes blank.”Scarpio turned to the next chapter, flipped through several pages, then rose with a sigh.“It might be a medical matter.Take a physic tonight.”“I already have.”The major domo shrugged.“Life is complicated.Anyway, keep track of your dreams.Write them down as soon as you have them.”Fidelman puffed his butt.That night he dreamed of Bessie about to bathe.He was peeking at her through the bathroom keyhole as she was preparing her bath.Openmouthed he watched her remove her robe and step into the tub.Her hefty well-proportioned body then was young and full in the right places; and in the dream Fidelman, then fourteen, looked at her with longing that amounted to anguish.The older Fidelman, the dreamer, considered doing a “La Baigneuse” right then and there, but when Bessie began to soap herself with Ivory soap, the boy slipped away into her room, opened her poor purse, filched fifty cents for the movies, and went on tiptoes down the stairs.He was shutting the vestibule door with great relief when Arthur Fidelman woke with a headache.As he was scribbling down this dream he suddenly remembered what Angelo had said: “Everybody steals.We’re all human.”A stupendous thought occurred to him: Suppose he personally were to steal the picture?A marvelous idea all around.Fidelman heartily ate that morning’s breakfast.To steal the picture he had to paint one.Within another day the copyist successfully sketched Titian’s painting and then began to work in oils on an old piece of Flemish linen that Angelo had hastily supplied him with after seeing the successful drawing.Fidelman underpainted the canvas and after it was dry began the figure of Venus as the conspirators looked on sucking their breaths.“Stay relaxed,” begged Angelo, sweating.“Don’t spoil it now.Remember you’re painting the appearance of a picture.The original has already been painted.Give us a decent copy and we’ll do the rest with chemistry.”“I’m worried about the brush strokes.”“Nobody will notice them.Just keep in your mind that Tiziano painted resolutely with few strokes, his brush loaded with color.In the end he would paint with his fingers.Don’t worry about that.We don’t ask for perfection, just a good copy.”He rubbed his fat hands nervously.But Fidelman painted as though he were painting the original.He worked alone late at night, when the conspirators were snoring, and he painted with what was left of his heart.He had caught the figure of the Venus but when it came to her flesh, her thighs and breasts, he never thought he would make it.As he painted he seemed to remember every nude that had ever been done, Fidelman satyr, with Silenus beard and goatlegs dancing among them, piping and peeking at backside, frontside, or both, at the “Rokeby Venus,” “Bathsheba,” “Suzanna,” “Venus Anadyomene,” “Olympia,” at picnickers in dress or undress, bathers ditto, Vanitas or Truth, Niobe or Leda, in chase or embrace, hausfrau or whore, amorous ladies modest or brazen, single or in the crowds at the Turkish bath, in every conceivable shape or position, while he sported or disported until a trio of maenads pulled his curly beard and he galloped after them through the dusky woods.He was at the same time choked by remembered lust for all the women he had ever desired, from Bessie to Annamaria Oliovino, and for their garters, underpants, slips or half slips, brassieres and stockings.Although thus tormented, Fidelman felt himself falling in love with the one he painted, every inch of her, including the ring on her pinky, bracelet on arm, the flowers she touched with her fingers, and the bright green earring that dangled from her eatable ear.He would have prayed her alive if he weren’t certain she would fall in love, not with her famished creator, but surely the first Apollo Belvedere she laid eyes on.Is there, Fidelman asked himself, a world where love endures and is always satisfying? He answered in the negative.Still she was his as he painted, so he went on painting, planning never to finish, to be happy as he was in loving her, thus forever happyBut he finished the picture on Saturday night, Angelo’s gun pressed to his head.Then the Venus was taken from him and Scarpio and Angelo baked, smoked, stippled and varnished, stretched and framed Fidelman’s masterwork as the artist lay on his bed in his room in a state of collapse.“The Venus of Urbino, c’est moi.”3.“What about my three hundred and fifty?” Fidelman asked Angelo during a card game in the padrone’s stuffy office several days later.After completing the painting the copyist was again back on janitorial duty.“You’ll collect when we’ve got the Tiziano.”“I did my part.”“Don’t question decisions.”“What about my passport?”“Give it to him, Scarpio.”Scarpio handed him the passport.Fidelman flipped through the booklet and saw all the pages were intact.“If you skidoo now,” Angelo warned him, “You’ll get spit.”“Who’s skidooing?”“So the plan is this: You and Scarpio will row out to the castello after midnight.The caretaker is an old man and half deaf.You hang our picture and breeze off with the other.”“If you wish,” Fidelman suggested, “I’ll gladly do the job myself.Alone, that is.”“Why alone?” said Scarpio suspiciously.“Don’t be foolish,” Angelo said.“With the frame it weighs half a ton.Now listen to directions and don’t give any.One reason I detest Americans is they never know their place.”Fidelman apologized.“I’ll follow in the putt-putt and wait for you halfway between Isola Bella and Stresa in case we need a little extra speed at the last minute.”“Do you expect trouble?”“Not a bit.If there’s any trouble it’ll be your fault.In that case watch out.”“Off with his head,” said Scarpio.He played a deuce and took the pot.Fidelman laughed politely.The next night, Scarpio rowed a huge weatherbeaten rowboat, both oars muffled.It was a moonless night with touches of Alpine lightning in the distant sky.Fidelman sat on the stern, holding with both hands and balancing against his knees the large framed painting, heavily wrapped in monk’s cloth and cellophane, and tied around with rope.At the island the major domo docked the boat and secured it.Fidelman, peering around in the dark, tried to memorize where they were.They carried the picture up two hundred steps, both puffing when they got to the formal gardens on top.The castello was black except for a square of yellow light from the caretaker’s turret window high above.As Scarpio snapped the lock of an embossed heavy wooden door with a strip of celluloid, the yellow window slowly opened and an old man peered down.They froze against the wall until the window was drawn shut.“Fast,” Scarpio hissed.“If anyone sees us they’ll wake the whole island
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