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Volume 13 Number 112 April 2019 MY FRIEND PAUL I go comparison shopping for string by Gaby Kopelman beans up and down Madison Avenue!” Unfortunately, nothing in this portrait conveys Paul’s sharp intelligence, his bright, combative nature, or his immediate interest in anything new, whether in literature or art. Paul was the biggest fan Becket ever had and the most steadfast. One of the first paintings he ever owned was a Rauschenberg, bought from Leo Castelli for $400. When his interest switched to the Italian Baroque and he sold it back to Castelli for $1,000, Paul thought he’d made the deal of a lifetime. Paul’s central interest was Italian 17th- century painting, and around him he collected a small, devoted coterie of art historians and curators, “art- hystericals,” as he called us. I remember one afternoon in the early ’80s, just a A portrait of my friend Paul Ganz few days after Arthur Koestler and his that I painted in the ’70s hangs in my much younger wife had committed bedroom. His slight frame sunk into double suicide. We were sitting around the depth of my wing chair, he sits the table, as usual munching Paul’s there looking rather woebegone, a wife’s delicious baked goods, while he scraggly man in his sixties, dressed held forth: in a plaid flannel shirt undoubtedly his father’s, dead these forty years. “Koestler was right! Nothing wrong New clothes? “Gaby, you know me! with double suicide!” Paul’s voice was always surprisingly strong for one so woman was young!” “Not a comparable frail. With his pallor, his bald case!” cranium, and that scrawny neck sticking out of an oversized shirt, “Oh, age doesn’t matter,” Eulah says Paul looked like one of the several quietly, handing around the fruit tarts. St. Jeromes decorating the premises. I search her eyes. “Really, Eulah? “Oh, I agree,” his wife quavers from Honest?” the other end of the table. Eulah, now “Yes, really.” Eulah’s voice is mild as in her eighties, has aged as people do always, her slight Texas drawl gentling in the movies; a dense network of even the firmest statements. “If Paul wrinkles covers the face of a Garbo. goes, I’d just see no reason to go on.” “Why, I ask you?” Chin out, Paul I let it go. There are two grown looks from one to the other, ready for daughters, but their existence seems not a good, scrappy fight. “You tell to be pertinent to the discussion at hand. me—why the hell should she have From above, the saints look down. The lived on?” Ganzes are fervid fans of the Italian None of us is over fifty, and wild Baroque, and the walls of their protests erupt all around the table: cavernous apartment are covered by “Koestler’s wife was only fifty-six!” 17th-century paintings. The collection “Odious man, dragging her with him has long ago exceeded the wall space. just because he himself was old and In the dining room where we are sitting, sick!” “Egotist!” “Lousy writer, two Salvator Rosa landscapes board up anyway!” the windows. In the living room beyond, a large, horizontal Ciro Ferri “Well, you couldn’t be more wrong!” “Hagaar and Ishmael,” at least twelve Paul yells above the din. “Anyway, feet across, shuts out the view of Park now that I have my book from Avenue. There is not a clear window in England, I’m all set. All I dread is the the place. In the several bathrooms, walk to the medicine cabinet!” paintings fill the shower stalls. We all know of Paul’s efforts to After tea comes the obligatory tour of obtain literature from the Hemlock the collection. We troupe through the Society, banned in the U.S., that tells darkened rooms redolent with all about committing suicide mothballs, led by Paul carrying a successfully. He’s been very vocal spotlight from which trails a sixty-foot about this—thirteen years younger extension cord. The more obscure the than Eulah, Paul lives in terror of painter, the more agonizing the subject being left, as he sees it. But we matter, the longer and more lovingly the scream him down: “The Koestler spotlight lingers. Neither Eulah nor Paul 2 has ever been known to flinch at the met Eulah. Texas-born, Eulah was then sight of blood, whether dripping a woman over thirty. Looking like the from a crown of thorns or spurting young Greta Garbo and with an IQ from wounds from arrows, nails or probably near Einstein’s, Eulah was the knouts. As long as it’s all safely office manager of Prince Matchabelli, a contained within the picture plane, of perfume company owned by Paul’s course. father. One day he asked Eulah to arrange a lunch, so that his son could Every painting has its story. meet some of the company officers and “Remember, Eulah, how that perhaps get a taste of the business. The Mafioso on the Via Babuino tried to lunch was arranged, and at the screw us on this one?” And just as appointed time, Eulah looked out at the inevitably, one painting calls to mind waiting-room, but the only one there another. “Sweetie, do you remember was this scrawny kid in a tee-shirt, where we saw that other early Palma obviously some sort of delivery boy. Giovane? That lovely decapitation?” Well, that was Paul. And Sweetie always remembers. Eulah later recalled that at lunch, when “Oh, yes. In ’58, in the church everyone ordered martinis, Paul asked outside of Vicenza, hanging kind of for a glass of milk. Obviously more high in the third chapel to the right must have taken place between that . near that sacristy with that sophisticated woman and that skinny Tintoretto Madonna—” twenty-year-old. But, as Paul told it, it was all very simple—that evening he “Oh, yeah, that Tintoretto that was waited till she was through with work sorta like a sketch that belonged to and took her home. Silently, they that Principessa, the one with the big walked into the lobby of her house, tits, who lived near that church with silently they waited for the elevator. the Padre Pozzo ceiling . .” And to Once arrived at Eulah’s front door, the delight of their guests, the Ganzes Eulah gestured for him to enter, and he are off and running down memory never left. lane. His family had been outraged, At the end of our visit, as the elevator especially his mother. “Marry her? That closed, we caught a last glimpse of adventuress? All she’s after is your them. Arm in arm, they stood money! You poor fool, don’t you see swaying in the doorway, waving that?” She’d pounded away at that, day good-bye. My friends were getting after day, while his father hid behind his older, and I remember being afraid. newspaper praying for peace. But Paul Like all happily marrieds, my friend had fought like a tiger, and after many Paul, loved to recall the day he first stormy years he’d prevailed. By that 3 time Eulah, thirteen years older than homeless man asleep in the building’s Paul, had been too old to have alley, woke to all the noise and shuffled children. So shortly after they’d out to exercise his droit de seigneur. married, they’d adopted two girls. Paul conceded his claim had merit. “It was his alley, for God’s sake. So what But Paul never did get a taste for the hell—we went halfies.” When Paul business. His father was barely cold got home that night, Eulah, the ever- in his grave when Paul sold his part patient, ever-loving—as always, of the family business to his brother waiting up for his return—had put the Victor. It was a great relief. As he put shirts through the washing machine, it, at least now he didn’t have to face right then and there. At this point in the the f***ing world until the turmoil of tale, Paul’s voice goes up two octaves, the day had died down and all the the eyes gleam in triumph: “By 4 a.m., I “normals,” as Paul liked to refer to had a new wardrobe!” his fellow citizens, were tucked in their beds. “What’s the use of those He and Eulah traveled every summer— games, anyway?” he’d ask, eyes Italy, Spain, Greece, any place warm blazing, hoping for an argument. and bright, and where, at least at a Didn’t they realize they were just casual glance, it seemed as though treading water? The absurdity of it! nobody gave a damn. On their first trip to Europe together, Paul had taken a Paul had always liked the night. And boy along as a sort of security blanket; he liked bargains. Trekking up and the boy had ended up sobbing in down New York’s deserted avenues, Eulah’s arms, and Paul had sent him wrapped in one of his late father’s home. Even long after they were overcoats (two sizes too large for him married, Paul could never believe that and redolent of mothballs), Paul someone as wonderful as Eulah was his always kept a sharp lookout for any forever. And old habits die hard—every usable rubbish left at the curb. He once in a while on those midnight loved to tell of the time that some outings, Paul would allow himself a shirts, accompanied by wild curses, brief dip into one of the bathhouses just came hurtling down through the to see who was doing what to whom night.

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