Bequest

Chapter 10

He feels something while he is washing his scalp with anti-dandruff 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner. It feels like a thick flap of skin in front of his left ear. Bothered, he cuts his shower short; using the silver bar Luke insisted he have installed to step out of the shower, he wraps a towel around himself, but it barely covers his stomach. Squeezing the bath mat between his toes, he skates to the mirror to inspect himself.

He has grown Van Gogh's ear. It is a copy of the one X tattooed on his left butt cheek. It's not quite a whole ear. It contains a small detail of Van Gogh's Starry Night, a swirling, whirling galaxy of yellow stars against a blue backdrop. Leonard studies his new ear in the mirror, admiring the colours close to his cheek, thinking perhaps he should have considered facial tattooing after all. His heart drums a new beat of excitement; pages from the first Van Gogh book he saw when he was just a teenager flick before his eyes in stop motion. Air beats against his face as he remembers that this is the master who pried open his eyes to art.

Van Gogh said 'Colour in a picture is like enthusiasm in life'. He'd wanted to have that tattooed across his lower back, but X wasn't keen. She thought Van Gogh was too mainstream. He'd had to twist her arm to even do the ear.

'Come on, he changed my life,' Leonard had said.

'Van Gogh changes everyone's life,' X had replied, rolling her eyes. 'But the myth of Van Gogh was more compelling than his art. Like Sylvia Plath. If she hadn't stuck her head in that oven, would anyone still care for her poetry? Do artists need to come to a tragic end to become everlasting legends? Shouldn't our art be enough?'

'Oh, come on. Can you just do his ear?'

'I'll do it on your ass. But no sayings, all right?'

'Fine.'

The pain was less intense than usual, buffered by fat. Still, the session lasted for over three hours. She didn't refer to any reference books, or make a preparatory sketch, she tattooed freehand from her mind, which was unusual for X. She was usually very meticulous about her planning and research. But when he finally got to see the tattoo in a mirror, he realised Starry Night was as deeply ingrained in her consciousness as in his, the same way you know exactly what a banana looks like.

'It's perfect,' Leonard had said.

'I'm simply an agent for your wishes,' X replied, pinching her shoulders back. 'It's your skin.'

'It's our skin,' he'd tried correcting her.

Leonard dresses slowly in his bedroom, keeping an eye on his new ear in the mirror. He checks in the freezer for what to have for dinner. From a recent shopping trip with Luke, there are still two Healthy Choice frozen meals, a bag of frozen chips, and a box of frozen fish. He decides to have the roast beef meal. These frozen meals never taste quite right, but he doesn't really care for food any longer. As long as it fills the spot.

But he realises he is out of liquor, and that is far more important than having the right food. He decides to walk down to the bottle shop around the corner. But he doesn't want his new ear freaking out the neighbours; they're quite conservative around here. He knows what to do, as he once saw a self-portrait of Van Gogh doing the exact same thing: he wraps a bandage around his head, over his ears and under his chin, and puts on a hat to keep the bandage in place.

He feels just like Van Gogh walking down his suburban street, full of Howard Arkley brick-veneer houses. He sees colour everywhere-the green of the meticulously mowed lawns, the red of the mid-century bricks, the blue of the sky behind the terracotta roof tiles-it shoots him in the face and splatters him in the eyes like a game of paint ball. Old Cassandra greets him while pruning roses in her garden.

'Lovely afternoon,' she says, happy as can be.

People like that don't need much to be fulfilled, Leonard thinks to himself, nodding back, just to show that he heard her.

The neighbours on the corner now have three driving-age sons. There are two cars in the driveway, one on the nature strip, and one parked on the street out the front. They'll all leave home one day, Leonard thinks, and you'll be lucky if they even visit. Then you'll know what loneliness is, without the tyre marks on your nature strip.

He buys a bottle of gin and some tonic at the bottle shop and then walks home slowly. Cassandra is still out there with those pruners, and she yells out to him as he passes by, 'Leonard, you okay? What's wrong with your head?'

She's so nosey. He stops in front of her low brick fence, detesting her orderly, pedestrian garden, lacking imagination, full of standard roses and camellias, anything that can be bought at Bunnings. He decides to shock her.

'I've grown Van Gogh's ear,' he says.

She takes off her pink garden gloves, her three chins wobbling. 'Van Gogh's ear?' she says.

'That's right.'

'That's impossible,' she says. 'Show me.'

'I can't. It will get infected.'

'Go on. Show me.' Her insistence makes Leonard wonder if perhaps Luke has spoken to her. Maybe he asked her to keep an eye on him, living two doors down and all. She used to give Luke piano lessons when he was a kid, and he still visits her sometimes. Leonard doesn't know why he bothers; there's nothing interesting about this old lady.

Leonard takes off his hat and places it on her fence. Then he unwraps his bandage, slowly, theatrically.

'But there's nothing there,' she says.

Leonard puts his hand up to his left ear. She's right. Van Gogh's ear is no longer there.

'It was there before you started nosing around,' he says, jabbing his finger at her. He collects his hat, saying, 'Your roses are miserable. They depress me.' And he strolls home, missing his special ear already.