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Read Ebook: An Art Shop in Greenwich Village by Cummings Ray
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Ebook has 109 lines and 7813 words, and 3 pages
Produced by: Roger Frank and Sue Clark
AN ART SHOP IN GREENWICH VILLAGE
The little shop was dimly lighted--a lurid red glow at one side and a faint amber radiance from above. For a moment I stood looking around uncertainly--at the slovenly display-cases and tables, the unframed paintings on the walls, and the long shelves crowded with curios.
I glanced back into the black shadow that shrouded the farther end of the room, and then turned to meet the snakelike little eyes that were roving over my figure appraisingly.
I shook my head. "No," I said; "nothing in particular."
The little old man straightened his bent back with an effort, reaching a skinny hand toward the shelf above his head.
"No," I said, and moved away down the length of the table. "I lived in Spain a year. Your place interests me."
He laid aside the ivory figure and followed me down the room with feeble steps; I noticed then that one of his feet dragged as he walked. It was peculiarly unpleasant--indeed the whole personality of this decrepit little old man seemed unpleasant and repulsive. I stopped in the red glow of an iron lantern that hung from a bracket upon the wall.
"I lived in Spain a year," I repeated. "That is why, when I saw your sign, I stopped in to look around."
He stood beside me, looking up into my face, his head shaking with the palsy of old age, his eyes gleaming into mine.
"In Granada," I added briefly.
He put a shaking hand upon my arm; involuntarily I drew back from his touch.
"Yes," I said, "of course."
He picked up a little vase from the table before us. The fire of patriotism that for an instant had lighted his face was gone; cupidity marked it instead.
"No," I said. "The price does not matter."
On the wall, above the red glow of the lantern, hung an unframed canvas. In the amber light that shone on it from above I could see its great splashes of color--the glittering, gaudy parade of a bull-ring.
"That painting there," I asked--"what is that?"
Again he put his hand upon my arm, and I felt myself shiver in the close, warm air of the room.
"Perhaps," I said, and shook off his hold upon my arm.
"I have no money with me to-night," I said.
I glanced up again at the vivid, colorful bull-ring pictured upon the wall. His eyes followed mine.
"You mean that is an original Goya?" I exclaimed.
He waited, but I did not answer.
I stood for a moment looking up at the painting.
I shook my head, "A realist, this Goya," I said.
I had no idea that the painting before me was genuine--nor indeed did I much care. But this little, withered old man, and his musty, cobweb-laden shop, had about them something vaguely sinister that fascinated me--a subtle sense of mystery I could not escape.
"I have studied art," I said. "You interest me."
Again I met his glittering eyes, and it struck me then, I think for the first time, that there was in them a light that was not the light of reason.
For an instant I could see him hesitate, and then as though he had reached a sudden decision, he motioned me to a chair and seated himself, facing me in the red glow of the lantern overhead.
His eyes were fastened upon mine; the red beam from the lantern lighted his hollow cheeks with a weird, unearthly light. I took off my hat and laid it on the table at my side.
"That need not concern us," I said.
He pulled a watch from his pocket. "The hour is late. No one comes to buy." He rose to his feet and locked the door that led to the street.
I laid my overcoat on the table and sat again in the little wicker chair. The shadows of the room were close around us now. In the heavy red of the light I could see only a corner of the table and the shaking figure of the little old man as he sat facing me. Behind him the solid blackness had crept up like a wall.
I felt my pulse quicken a little; but I held my gaze firm to his.
I nodded.
"No," I said; "I have never heard of him."
He leaned forward in his chair again; his locked fingers in his lap writhed upon each other like little twisting snakes.
"Vasquez y Carbaj?l," I replied. "No, I never heard of him."
"Yes?" I prompted.
His head had sunk to his breast; he raised it with a start at my word. The fire came back to his eyes; he sat up rigid in his chair.
I pushed my chair backward violently, half starting to my feet.
He laughed again--an eery laugh that chilled my blood.
I stood beside him under the lantern.
"Very well," I said. "I will look at your painting."
In silence I followed him into the shadows of the back of the room.
He suddenly drew aside a curtain in the darkness, and we stepped into a dim hallway, with a narrow flight of stairs leading to the floor above.
The stairs were narrow and uncarpeted; they creaked a little under our tread. On the landing a window stood partly open, its shade flapping in the wind. The snow on the ledge outside had drifted in over the sill.
We stopped on the landing, and the old man closed the window softly.
At the top of the stairs we turned back and passed through a doorway into a room that evidently was immediately over the one we had just left.
It was a room perhaps thirty feet in length and half as broad. My first impression as I stepped over the threshold was that I had stepped across the world--in one brief instant transported from the bare, ramshackle, tumbledown Bohemianism of Greenwich Village, into the semibarbaric, Levantine splendor of some Musselman ruler. The room was carpeted with Oriental rugs; its walls were hung with tapestries; its windows shrouded with portieres. Moorish weapons--only symbols now of the Mohammedan reign over Spain--decorated the walls. Two couches were piled high with vividly colored pillows.
The rugs and all the hangings were somber in tone. The whole room bore an air of splendid, lavish luxury; and yet there was about it something oppressive--a brooding silence, perhaps, or the heavy scent of incense.
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