Madonna of the Apes by Nicholas Kilmer Read Free Book Online

out-of-the-way corner of Boston that he had bought with some other veterans of this and that, which gradually, as they made it livable, he had come to control more or less, although the aim was to keep the use of it fairly democratic.
    Coming back to the States and slowly, with reluctance, setting up shop as he had, Fred had made a pact with himself that was almost as simple as the one they’d developed for the house in Charlestown. It included a vow of almost poverty, and the expectation of a life that, if it must be lived, would remain simple.
    The world he’d left had been filled with exotic turbulence, intrigue, betrayal, danger, opulence, frightful extended periods of mortal boredom, and agony, some prolonged, some mercifully quick; some experienced and some inflicted. He’d had enough of death but that didn’t make him wish to live. It was a dreadful quandary, he’d realized, waking one morning in front of the Cambridge Public Library, where he’d spread out his bedroll in the company of some gentlemen of no fixed abode. If you’ve had enough of death, but have no appreciable desire to live, it makes you accident-prone. And if you are accident-prone, you are not dependable.
    If you are not dependable, you are of no use to anyone and, being no use, have not much reason to be around.
    He, and these other folks, were better than that, he’d guessed, or inferred, then argued. And in a year or two the Charlestown place was up and running. Then, once he had a place, he had begun seeing women again. But he couldn’t get past the quandary that kept him from joining the civilization that surrounded him. He wanted nothing, not in a passive, but in an active way. If he could live naked on a crag, his food brought once a day in a bowl, by pilgrims, that might suit him, except that he would despise the pilgrims and get tired of watching the birds circling and waiting for the moment when his wary eyes would close.
    When he needed a jolt he would step into a shop that sold paintings or, if he was reasonably clean, into a museum, though in a museum he was obliged to suppress the knowledge that these places were prisons made for the protection of money, and for the capture of spirits that by their natures should be free. Free, that is, as a bird or fish should be. Hell, artists should get their wages, like anyone else.
    Free, not innocent. A work of art had no innocence, and nothing like it. It held within it as much coiled and potentially vicious energy as does a seed. Passion went into it, and passion resided in it. Or so Fred felt. But aside from the rubbish he’d handled occasionally in the low end antique stores he wandered into, whose proprietors tended to watch him warily, he’d never had his hands on a painting that sang, or shrieked.
    The door was always open at the Charlestown house. Someone was always awake at the desk in the vestibule. It was necessary to keep this sense of security. Some of the tenants were nervous, and of those, some had good reason to be. Fred took his turn at the desk, as the rest of the men did, if they were up to it. Though they did what they could to discourage people with substance problems that were beyond control, some were too far gone with demons of one kind or another to be trusted with access to the firearms that went with the post back of the desk. Eddie told him when he came in, “Floyd’s not doing so well. I guess he’s asleep, though.”
    Fred nodded. Floyd was in the room next to his, and it was easy to tell when he was not doing well. He had a tendency to hallucinate, and the hallucinations were seldom of the peaceable kingdom.
    “Did he look like he’d eaten?” Fred asked.
    “I had a sub saved for him,” Eddie said. When Fred came in he’d put down the comic he was reading. The cover suggested well-developed women exploring outer space, perhaps in search of the garments they had misplaced. He picked the comic up again saying, “I know he likes ham. I made him eat it