Scumbler

Scumbler
William Wharton

A joyous novel of art, love, and one man’s unquenchable thirst for life, from one of America’s best loved authors.Sixty-year-old American painter Scumbler (‘Scum’ to his friends) makes a living by creating rentable apartments out of the most unlikely Parisian spaces. He spends his days jaunting around the Left Bank in Paris, stopping regularly to paint, and revelling in the art of creation and the remarkable characters he meets along the way: students, prostitutes, and craftsmen, like him. At night he returns to his wife and children. He is an undeniable success. He should be happy.And yet, Scumbler is pestered by the unavoidable symptoms of his age: the grey hair, the aches, the increasing waistline. Scumbler knows he must face up to the fact of his mortality, but he is adamant about doing so in his own inimitable way.

WILLIAM WHARTON

Scumbler

Acquiescence, Wishes …

Dreams

Why? Why?

‘cause I’m

Gonna die.

That’s why.

SCUMBLING: to modify the effect of a painting by overlaying parts of it with a thin application of opaque or semi-opaque color.

– American College Dictionary

Table of Contents

Title Page (#ub6028dc8-e505-5241-b24c-8c75b2bccaa7)

Dedication (#ued8f5adf-ec71-5c97-8d13-6149c0cf2aab)

Epigraph (#ufab14879-cf34-5966-8abd-26109998121e)

1. The Rats’ Nester (#uf69897b8-f7ba-5c5d-965f-ec8bc5fe05cb)

2. Self-Portrait (#u3864f1ad-6dbc-52ef-81b5-2f80e484a40f)

3. Slum Landlord (#uf3d3497d-a344-5e74-891a-64f37512b326)

4. Riding Easy (#u2af8df8a-d40c-578e-973f-7ea62a3bd8f2)

5. The People’s Painter (#u1072c052-94de-530c-ac34-bdcec49fd93f)

6. Notes From the Underground (#u1e35ef61-9e77-5c1c-a72c-78e00756f84d)

7. Chicken (#u66e42df1-87dc-5f9a-a165-5c3b3f8f9b44)

8. Mouth-to-Mouth (#ucf91021b-908f-5471-9630-deaec663cd27)

9. Accident-Prone (#litres_trial_promo)

10. The New York Buyer (#litres_trial_promo)

11. Time Out of Mind (#litres_trial_promo)

12. Full of Shit (#litres_trial_promo)

13. Woman to Woman (#litres_trial_promo)

14. A Marriage (#litres_trial_promo)

15. Nature Nest (#litres_trial_promo)

16. Crs = ss (#litres_trial_promo)

17. Ugly Orgy (#litres_trial_promo)

18. Firemen’s Ball (#litres_trial_promo)

19. A Piercing Thought (#litres_trial_promo)

20. Miracle of the Bells (#litres_trial_promo)

21. Auto-da-fé (#litres_trial_promo)

22. 23 Skidoo (#litres_trial_promo)

23. The Ultimate Nest (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by William Wharton (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

1

The Rats’ Nester

Right now, here in Paris, we have seven different nests. That’s not counting our old water mill, two hundred miles from Paris. I spend half my time rousting out, fixing up, furnishing these nesting places.

Rats’ nesting’s what it all is; can’t seem to keep myself from burrowing, digging in; always stuffing bits and pieces into one corner or another.

Even before we snuck away from California, we had four nests and forty acres; not a single one of those places there you’d call a real home: a trailer dug into the side of a hill, a tent nestled against a cave, then the shack on top of a hill we called home before it burned down. There was also that place I built with rock and cement at the edge of a streambed in a gully up on the forty.

We furnished all those nests complete to knives and forks; every one a hideout, places we could run to if things got too bad; holes where we could go to ground, wait it out, hide from the crazy ones, learn to like radioactive eggs, a purple sun over green skies, a stinking stagnating dead world.

A family man’s got to think ahead these days, especially someone like me, living on the outside, ex-con, a man who had his first nest – wife, two little ones, house, everything – snatched out from under him. I’m always looking for someplace for us to hide.

In California I cadged stuff from the Salvation Army, junk shops. Here in Paris I haunt flea markets; sometimes I can fix up a whole hideout for less than fifty bucks.