Artists -- Fiction; Fathers and sons -- Fiction; Triangles (Interpersonal relations) -- Fiction
"Just a minute," said Garry, dazed. "Let's get down to brass tacks.
Who and what began it?"
They both told him.
"One at a time, please!" he begged. "I gather that you, Kenny, in need
of petty funds, went out to pawn Brian's shotgun. And you, Brian,
losing your temper, flung a brush across the studio and smashed a
valued statuette--"
Kenny chose indignantly to tell it all again and overshot the mark,
bringing Garry down upon him with a bark.
"Now, see here, Kenny," he interposed curtly, "that's enough. Brian's
usually sane and regular. It's by no means a criminal offense for him
to pick a row with you about his shotgun. And he didn't mean to smash
the statuette."
He waited for the voice of thunder in which Kenny, at a disadvantage,
would be sure to disinherit his son and, waiting, glanced a trifle
wryly at the littered studio. What Brian lost by chronic
disinheritance lay ever before the eye, particularly now when Kenny, in
one of his periods of insolvency, was posted downstairs for club debt
and Mrs. Haggerty's insular notions about credit had driven him to
certain frugal devices with the few handkerchiefs he owned, one of
which was spread upon the nearest window pane to dry.
Garry's disgusted inventory missed nothing: a prayer rug for which
Kenny had toured into the south of Persia and led an Arabian Nights'
existence with pursuing bandits whom, by some extraordinary twist of
genius, he had conciliated and painted; an illuminated manuscript in
Gaelic which he claimed had been used by a warrior to ransom a king;
chain armor, weapons of all kinds, climes and periods; an Alpine horn,
reminiscent of the summer Kenny had saved a young painter's life at the
risk of his own; some old masters, a cittern, a Chinese cheng with
tubes and reeds, an ancient psaltery with wires you struck with a
crooked stick that was always lost (Kenny when the mood was upon him
evolved weird music from them all), an Italian dulcimer, a Welsh crwth
that was unpronounceably interesting (some of the strings you twanged
with your thumb and some you played with a bow); Chinese, Japanese,
Indian vases, some alas! sufficiently small for utilitarian purposes,
Salviati glass, feather embroidery, carved chairs and a chest.
A prodigal display--Kenny in his shifting periods of affluence was
always prodigal--but there had never been cups enough with handles in
the littered closet, Garry recalled, until Brian inspired had bought
too many bouillon cups, figuring that one handle always would be left;
Kenny could not remember to buy a teapot when he could and made tea in
a chafing dish; and he had been known to serve highballs in vases.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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