I shall be your Vasari

Abstract

I was in your club the other day, Guilliamo, for the Art League show. Staid brownstone, its somber rooms recalled to mind our short acquaintance. My career as doctor was just beginning, yours as artist coming to an unexpected end. Your brother had volunteered for Vietnam. He was furious with you, not fighting for your country. Malingerer he had called you, with your recurrent bouts of pain. But that was before we found the cancer. Now there was only time enough to wait. I thought of this through the year of your illness, as we sat in the Salmagundi, talking art and politics over dinner and as I watched you paint our protests, the crowds in gray and black tones, marching up the canvas to Bryant Park. Once again in Bellevue, your bowel obstructed, who jabbed you with needles, forced you to swallow long rubber tubes? It was I who had become more than your doctor. We both knew all help was transitory. You had entered that fierce land in which there was no cure. I could not be your Orpheus, but now as your Vasari, I shall tell of your short life. —January 2001