Excerpt
“I’ll give it to you,” Ken said.
“No,” he said. “You have to learn about artwork. You don’t give it away.
If you do, it becomes worthless. Things that are given, such as works of
art, tend to sit on the shelf for a while and then they go into a bedroom
somewhere and before you know it they’re in the basement and they become
part of the flotsam and jetsam of people’s lives. But if you pay a
great sum of money for something it goes over the mantel and you hold
cocktail parties to boast about your acquisition. That is one side of the art
world you’re going to have to learn about. How do we attribute value to
something in a world that understands very little? Everything is quantified
in our world. Therefore, if it has a big number attached to it, it must
be of great value.”
Ken and Rui agreed on a sum of money that was not too great but that
seemed like a great deal to Ken. With great pride he told his father that he
had sold a drawing to Rui.
“Did you offer to give it to him?” His father asked.
“Yes, I did and he wouldn’t take it,” Ken said and repeated what Rui
had told him.
Ken Sr. smiled. “Yes, that’s probably quite wise,” he said.
One day, When Francisco and Ken came out of the shack to go fishing
they noticed a young woman walking on the beach. Ken had seen her
from time to time walking to or from the hospital where she worked, or
climbing down the cliffs to the ocean. On this day, as so often happened,
the beach was empty, save for themselves and the marine life that scurried
about the rocks. The young woman had not seen the old man and the boy
and thinking herself utterly alone, took off her clothes and walked into
the water. Ken was mesmerized; she was the most beautiful creature he
had ever seen. “Look at that,” he whispered to Francisco.
“Yes,” he said, as though reading his thoughts, “She is very beautiful.
She has a limp, you know.”
“What does a limp have to do with anything?”
“It’s a long and complicated story – and we should not be interfering
here. She thinks she’s alone so let’s let her be alone.”
From that day on she became Ken’s passion. He discovered that she
was a nursing student and that she had come from a village several miles
away. Her family were peasants but she had studied hard because she was
determined that she would not become a servant for rich people.
He also became friends with Dawn Coates, a girl who was being tutored
at the same small school he attended each day. Her parents were
divorced – her mother, American, and her father, English. She was one
of the first children he had ever admired. She was strong and direct and
seemed fearless.
Manolis Aligizakis 