He called the painting
Where have we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
It is an allegory, primitive, deliberately devoid of perspective. At the lower right, a baby sleeps peacefully beside three
women in the shade of a tropical tree; at the lower left, an old woman sits, her head in her hands, resigned. Between them
there are other figures: a child eating fruit, a woman picking fruit, another woman listening intently to a goddess standing
on a stone pedestal. “The idol,” Gauguin wrote, “its two arms rhythmically and mysteriously raised, appears to indicate the
hereafter.”
The nude figures in the foreground stand out in bright orange. But the scene, oceanic and idyllic, is set beside a stream
with the sea and then the mountains of a neighboring island in the background. “Despite certain tonal passages, the general
aspect of the work from one end to the other is blue-green, like Veronese,” according to the creator of this strange, compelling
masterpiece.
Peopled as it is with the symbols of his Tahitian life, the painting confounded viewers in the civilized world, who stared
at it in disbelief. What is the meaning of the white bird, the blue idol, the purple she-goat? Why is the orange nude sitting
with her back turned, her hand arching over her head? Who are the two women in a leafy bower, cloaked in purple, and what
are they talking about?
At another moment in my life, I might have asked myself the same questions. Now I dismiss the symbols of Gauguin’s idyll as
the least-important aspect of his work. For me, the power of the painting lies not in what it signifies but in what it is.
The work bespeaks an inner harmony that belies the anguish of the painter’s life.
After he finished the work, he went into the mountains and swallowed arsenic, but the dosage was too small and he survived.
His final eight years in the South Seas were the most productive of his life: one hundred paintings, four hundred woodcuts,
twenty sculptures and wood carvings. He died in May 1903, a pauper, deeply in debt, never knowing how much the world owed
him.
I look about me; the shore, the dunes, the bluffs are transformed into planes of color, a seascape defined by delicate gradations
and subtle hues. Boundaries disappear; I am drawn into the painting, too. The pain-filled life of the artist Paul Gauguin
passes into myth, like the pagan gods of Mount Olympus, like Prometheus, Sisyphus, Icarus, like Odysseus and his fateful voyage
back to Ithaca and home.
I return to my beach house, a deep longing somewhere within me. I have been beachcombing for months, collecting bits of shell
and pieces of stone. Now I have a desire to go beyond the bounds of Miramar. I drive into the city, to the museum in Golden
Gate Park, and wander through the galleries, searching for Gauguin. I can’t find him anywhere, but in a corner of a quiet
room, I come upon an oil on canvas by Elihu Vedder, called
The Sphinx of the Seashore.
In the background, ruins appear: Roman arches, bleached bones, conch shells, the broken hull of a ship, a half-buried anchor
chain. The sky is low and ominous with a reddish glow from the sunset filtering through a cover of cumulus clouds.
In the foreground, the sphinx stretches across the sand, not a stone monument, but a living creature with a woman’s head and
breasts and a feline lower body and tail. Her long red hair falls in bangs over her forehead; she has an anguished expression
on her face. Part human, part cat, she sprawls on the beach, lips apart, eyes wide and filled with expectation, holding me
in her gaze.
As I stand staring, I remember the story of Oedipus’ journey. In search of his origins, he travels from Corinth to Thebes,
but when he reaches the gates of the ancient city, he finds his way blocked by the Sphinx, who holds the inhabitants hostage,
killing those who fail to answer her riddle:
What goes on four feet, on two feet, and three
But the more feet it goes on, the weaker it be?
Oedipus answers: Man—who as an infant crawls on all fours, as an adult walks on two feet, and in old age moves with the help
of a cane. The Sphinx, distraught that Oedipus has solved the riddle, kills herself, and Thebes is saved.
I leave the museum, the riddle still running through my mind. I lean against a parapet and look out at the city, at the red
glow reflecting off the surrounding hills as the sun goes down. The city is modern, as modern as any city can be, but I am
confronted with the same life-and-death sentence as a citizen of Thebes.
The riddle of the Sphinx is the riddle of man, and the question posed by the Sphinx comes from ourselves. It is the question
Gauguin asked when he painted his masterpiece; it is the question that underlies all questions, and if I ask it honestly,
the answer will come to me honestly, as in a prayer.
There is so much I want to do, so much I want to achieve. I want to read the works of Dostoyevsky; I want to sail the fjords
of Puget Sound; I want to find a woman who brings me joy. This evening the sun sets at 7:43, tomorrow at 7:41.The days grow
shorter. There is so much living to do, and so little time.
Once I was an infant; now I am an adult; soon I will be an old man. Is that how my life goes, in giant leaps from one state
of existence to another, without awareness of what I am experiencing now? There was a period when I viewed my life as an inexorable
progression of days, but I realize that was a waste, a way of obliterating time.
My life is a speculation, like a work of art. I begin with a simple brush stroke, not knowing where it will lead. I follow
my guesses, my hunches, my instincts; little by little a portrait of myself appears. It takes a lifetime to complete the painting,
but I keep at it, arranging and rearranging the parts, filling in the forms, shapes, colors, a brush stroke at a time.
Gradually, if I go with courage and wisdom, I arrive at my destination, a place called paradise. It is not a land free of
struggle, a realm devoid of pain or grief. But it is the place where I feel at home, where I am supposed to be.
I drive back to my beach house in twilight. By the time I arrive, the sun has fallen below the horizon and the moon is climbing
the sky. I sit on my deck, watching its flight, the riddle of the Sphinx still occupying my mind. Oedipus gave his answer
and delivered Thebes; I give my answer and deliver only myself. But I am content, for I saved one man this day.
T
he women, the women, they are everywhere, stretched in the sun, sitting on the sand, wading in the sea. But nowhere do I
see the woman I am looking for.
I walk up a ramp that leads to the pier. I go into a dockside restaurant and order a bowl of red chowder and a glass of wine.
I leave the restaurant and stroll down the pier.
At the end of the pier a barefoot woman fishes. Her hair, black and plaited, hangs halfway down her back in a single braid.
She is wearing faded jeans and a gauzy powder blue blouse, which clings to her body from the wind and spray. The sleeves are
pushed up, revealing bronzed forearms. She casts over a railing and reels in slowly, shrewdly, as if she knows what lurks
on the ocean floor.
I look in the pail beside her, trying to count her catch. She sees me there, but she does not speak. After a while her rod
bends. She sets the hook, reels in a lingcod, and drops it in the pail.
“How many is that?” I ask.
“Eight,” she says. “Five rock fish, three cod.”
She goes back to casting with the same naturalness as before. I ask about her rod, her reel, her bait, her line. She answers
simply, telling me what I want to know.
“You’re good at this,” I say.
“I ought to be,” she replies. “I’ve been doing it since I was a girl.”
She begins to talk, not hesitatingly, as if we are strangers, but openly and easily, as if there are certain things about
her I ought to know. She tells me that her name is Anna, that she is Portuguese, that she has lived here, by the sea, all
her life. Her hoarse voice seems to rise from a secret place in her chest, and her words spill out with conviction and pride.
She fishes and talks at the same time, sometimes glancing back over her shoulder at me, sometimes over the water at her line.
When she finishes, I tell her about myself—who I am, where I live, why I have come to Miramar. Since my arrival, I have guarded
myself against the encroachment of others, but standing here on the pier, talking with a woman I never saw before, the barriers
fall away and the conversation flows.
After a while I realize that a long time has passed since she had a nibble.
“The fish seem to have gone somewhere else,” I say.
“Yes,” she replies. “The tide is ebbing now.”
I watch her remove hook and sinker and snap her leader to a guide. She picks up her pail, looks across the water one last
time, then turns to me.
“Do you know the Chamarita?”
“The Chamarita? No. What is it?”
“I will take you to the Chamarita,” she said. “Then you will understand.”
I stand on the pier, looking after her, the husky lilt of her voice rising through the empty space of my life long after she
disappears.
When I reach my beach house, I take a magazine from a top desk drawer. I have carried this magazine with me for years. I open
it to an earmarked page and look for perhaps the thousandth time at the photograph of a woman in a semisheer shirtwaist dress
fishing from a pier. She is standing barefoot, with a surf rod in her hands, casting into the sea. Although I never put her
picture on display, she is my pinup girl.
I think of Anna at the moment I saw her, standing at the end of the dock in her powder blue blouse, casting her baited line.
Was she all she appeared to be, or merely a product of my imagination conjured up out of my longing and need?
I will take you to the Chamarita. Then you will understand.
The air is crystalline as Anna and I head down the beach toward the heart of town. She is wearing a white shirt and a purple
skirt that billows softly in the morning breeze. Overhead the gulls are fluttering through the sky. Anna chants, “
Chama Rita! Chama Rosa! Qué bonita! Qué formosa!
”
She tells me the Chamarita is the traditional song and folk dance of the Portuguese. Today the Chamarita and the Festival
of the Holy Ghost are joined. “This is our Thanksgiving,” she says, “our way of expressing our thanks for the blessing the
people of the Azores received five hundred years ago.”
She tells me that in the fifteenth century a volcano erupted on the islands, causing famine and drought. The people came together
and prayed, asking the Holy Ghost for help. On the morning of Pentecost there was a great rising sun, and in the sunrise the
people of the Azores saw a ship laden with food coming into port.
When Queen Isabel heard of this providence, she ordered a solemn procession in honor of the Holy Ghost. Accompanied by her
maids, she carried her crown through the streets of Lisbon to a cathedral, where she left it on the altar as an offering of
thanks. The people of the Azores vowed that they, their children, and their children’s children would celebrate Pentecost
by expressing their thanks to Queen Isabel for the sacrifice she made.
Anna and I enter the town. The streets have been closed to traffic. The people are already present in large numbers, sitting
on the curbs, standing on the corners, the children spilling into the streets. Everyone knows Anna, and Anna knows everyone:
the mechanic and his children, the waitress and her fiancé, the beautician and her husband, the bank teller and his wife.
She finds a place to watch, an opening in the crowd across from Our Lady of the Pillar, where the parade will end.
The procession moves slowly, fraught with symbols, filled with surprise, totally unformed. A fife and drum corps files past
playing the song “Tradition” from
Fiddler on the Roof
, the musical about Jewish life in czarist Russia. The players are wearing red jackets, white pants, and broad-brimmed military
hats with red and white plumes.
There are bands from Miramar, Pescadero, San Gregorio, Santa Cruz, and San Jose, girls in white capes, mothers in flowered
dresses, old men in suits of gray. A boatload of bread goes by, flanked by boys in white shirts and red scarfs. Another boy
holding a diaphanous parasol escorts a little girl in a white gown. The girl supports a pillow in front of her on her arms,
and on the pillow sits a dove.
Three teenage girls appear, walking slowly along the route of the parade. The one in the middle, framed by a rectangular garland
of flowers, carries a silver crown. She wears a white dress and a dark blue cape that trails behind her along the macadam
road. When she reaches the church, the procession dissolves. Anna takes my arm. We mingle with the swirling throng. All about
me, people are speaking Portuguese. The men are upright, the women direct.
We enter the church together to witness the blessing of the crown. A priest reads from the Gospel According to John. I am
drawn to the stained-glass portraits in the windows, illuminated by shafts of light: Santa Barbara, San Fernando, San Antonio,
Santa Ines, San Diego, San Buenaventura, San Luis Rey. The worshipers, of many faiths, sing “Come Holy Ghost” and “Amazing
Grace.”
As we leave the church, a small girl runs up to Anna, throws her arms around her neck, gives her a hug, and runs off again.
“That is my niece,”Anna says. “One day she will be the queen and carry the crown.”
“Were you ever the queen?” I ask.
“Yes, I was the queen.”
I will take you to the Chamarita. Then you will understand.
She belongs to this place; she is part of it and it is part of her. But she is herself, her distinct self, too. She has her
own way of listening, her own way of speaking, her own way of blending her present with her past. She is at one with herself,
at peace with all the aspects of her life.
The crowd disbands; the traffic starts to flow again. We wander through the streets of the town. Anna touches my hand and
points to the coastal range, lush from spring rains; it rises to the north and east, sloping upward at the end of every avenue.
It is a wordless gesture, eloquent for its simplicity, but I know at once what she means to say and how she feels, because
I feel that way, too.