The Monk of the Bitter Cucumber

Abstract

That's why Mr. Weiss was a miUionaire. When he bought a building he knew it was sound. And that's why he was staring at the door next to the elevator. Because it was painted white he had almost missed it. He had opened the one upstairs in the lobby, an empty room, had expected at least a sink. Now he figured there was one of these rooms to each floor. But why? And as he stared the elevator door and the white door became matching scars in the patterned whiteness of the brick. That was it! The measurements of these rooms and those of the elevator shaft must be the same. Take out the ceilings and they'd form a second shaft. Certainly a building this size could use a second elevator. Why hadn't they put it in? Probably something to do with the Depression. He'd known lots of builders who'd run out of money. And Mr. Weiss got out his tape measure, knocked, didn't think anybody was inside but waited. Then he turned the old metal knob, was surprised to see a light, and he stuck his head into the crack made by his own weight. What the hell! he thought. If the door was a scar the tiny room was a wound, the walls red and blue and yellow but mostly red. It was really startling. Mr. Weiss pushed it open all the way. But he didn't go inside. If only they'd paint something real, he thought, something that could be understood. But he knew they made lots of money this way, wondered if these would make lots of money, didn't think so. Then his eyes settled on a canvas standing on the desk. Except for a few lines it was blank. Yet Mr. Weiss could tell it had something to do with the picture in the open book beneath it, an old Chinaman in a funny hat. The caption said his name was Tao-chi, and that he was sometimes called the Monk of the Bitter Cucumber, greatest of early Ch'ing landscape mas ters. Mr. Weiss liked him, thought his appearance refined, large staring eyes, a pale face, and yet determined, a noble expression befitting, as the caption said, the cousin of the last Ming Emperor. But Mr. Weiss didn't see that the face also showed defeat, not just the defeat of advanced age or the downfall of his family, but something much more immediate. It's doubtful that the Ming ouster at the hands of the Manchu had ever really defeated Tao-chi. In the Orient, under certain circumstances such as those prevailing at the outset of a foreign dynasty, retirement was not seen as defeat. Further resistance was useless, collaboration distasteful, disengagement the