Yap! Yap! Yap! Clem chafed to himself.
"Are you the artist?" The question was asked by a friendly middle-aged man, neat, with sensitive square hands, and shellrimmed glasses.
"Yes."
"I like your paintings very much. Especially that one of Senator Lauter. It's remarkable how you got his physical condition."
"Physical condition?"
"I am a physician. Morris Baumstein. Your painting is a diagnosis. Dyspepsia. High blood pressure. Probably a heart condition. I too paint sometimes on Sundays. You are from Nebraska?"
"Yes."
"It must be quiet, restful there, judging by the normalcy in your work. There's no normalcy in cities, especially in New York which is abnormal. If you ever have time I wish you would come to dinner. My wife's a wonderful cook, and I'd like your opinion of my work. I'm only an amateur, but painting is my release. I'm late for the clinic now, or I'd stay longer. Here is my card. Thank you, and good luck."
Clem felt better, the guy was like home, and here at last was a friendly face.
Cynski, resplendent with a lump of red glass hanging from one ear, a cubistic red and purple print scarf knotted about his enormous head, had with him Mary Doyle, rattling with New Mexican silver and turquoise jewelry. After a cursory glance round, Cynski boomed, "You have the spirit of modern primitivism. You are the douanier Rousseau of Nebraska."
Vida, who had come in alone, could not help smiling at Cynski's reserving of universal primitivism for himself.
"Lucy and the Marqués will be here in a minute. We met him outside and they are talking but I wanted to get a good look before it gets crowded."
"Do that," Clem said, relieved at increasing signs of a turnout.
How was it, Vida asked herself, that for all Clem's speechifying of love for his native state the results became meticulously drawn, lifeless people, stark houses and varnish-yellow fields? Congress and its people were not so eroded by prairie winds. And the corn, apples, and pumpkins she had enjoyed so were not juiceless as on the white-clothed table in the foreground of his mother's kitchen. A design more than a painting. A mechanical perfection, which made one focus on that rather than on the subjects. It was as if he were say-
