Ken Hada is a fourth generation Oklahoman, descendant of Danish and Hungarian immigrants: Gypsy poets, barn dance aficionados, art lovers, amateur philosophers, wheat farmers, preachers, teachers and common-sense craftsmen.

“These poems, acting as spare parts themselves, go into the making of one smooth-running, powerful engine.”

 - Diane Glancy

Author of Pushing the Bear

In Victoria’s Bath | by Larry Lefkowitz

We find Kunzman in Victoria's bath. Since he began working on her late husband’s book, he had "carte blanche" (in Victoria's words) to her apartment, subject to the condition that he always telephone prior to coming. She turned down his suggestion that she give him a duplicate key.

The pleasures of the bath caused Kunzman to feel himself Dua, the god of Daily Grooming, also Reviver of Mankind, also Patron of Perfume and the Sacred Bath, though this last duty should rightfully have devolved upon Victoria, who once told him, “I enjoy the bath since it is a pleasure to gaze at my naked body. Those who don’t have a beautiful body should take a shower and finish the business faster.” “Such as yours truly,” he had shot back, thinking the barb aimed at him. She laughed, declining to elaborate, dissembling by poking him with her square-toed prehensile toes. Kunzman’s  ablutionary musings were interrupted by Victoria's entering the room, angry about something to judge from the hard-set of her features; when hard-set, her usually impressive features looked like a mask out of Japanese kabuki theater or the mother-in-law in Yiddish theater. Kunzman felt a moment of ill ease, remembering the murder of Marat in the bath by Charlotte Corday as depicted by the painter Jacques-Louis David in his painting "Death of Marat." What rendered he picture successful, in Kunzman's opinion, was not only its dramatic subject (and the victim's helplessness), but the turban he wore, a towel apparently, wrapped around Marat's head, to protect his hair. The turban seemed an aspect or effect too refined, or oriental or, oddly enough, with respect to a revolutionary, effete. It was this non sequitor which 'capped' the picture.

  Kunzman and Victoria occasionally discussed paintings and the broader subject "What is art?" Sometimes these discussions took place with Victoria ensconced in her bath – with the loyal Kunzman sitting precariously on the edge of the tub, dressed. Kunzman remarked to Victoria that Matisse had observed that art was like an armchair. "What's that supposed to mean?" Victoria had asked. "I don't know," Kunzman replied, "but it's a comfortable definition." "Somebody said," he continued to try his hand, "that painting is many little lies that add up to a great truth." To this, Victoria replied, “Like a relationship -- or is it the opposite?” Her observation surprised and discomfited him. He tried to recover by taking a different tack toward art. He began telling her about a Japanese book called "The Pillow Book," which depicted a woman's inside view of court life in 10th century Japan, a period in which art appreciation and aesthetics had been raised to such a high and refined level that deviations could even lead to execution or being ordered to carry out supeiku. The book’s title always caused him to recall the Yiddish admonition, "Sleep fast-we need the pillow," a bagatelle with which he did not amuse Victoria lest she consider him a boor. Or perhaps he remembered her reaction to an art-connected story he had told her not long before. It was a science-fiction tale by William Tenn called "The discovery of Morniel Mathaway" in which a distinguished art historian (Kunzman debated with himself about changing his profession to gallery owner with Krim in mind, but decided against it) travels in a time machine from the twenty-fifth century to the present to visit and study the immortal Morniel Mathaway, a painter not appreciated in our time but later discovered to have been the greatest painter of the era. Alas, the art historian finds no trace of genius, just an imposter, a megalomaniac and a swindler (these qualities are what led Kunzman to think of substituting a gallery owner) who steals the art historian's time machine from him and escapes to the future, so that the poor shlamazel art historian stays tied to our time. He assumes the identity of the escaped Mathaway and paints under his name all the masterpieces that he remembers from the future – Nu, it is himself who is really the misrecognized genius he was looking for!

That my little tale had not gone over big with Victoria was evident when she began to yawn, an opinion confirmed with her asking, upon my completing it, "And just what is the point of this bobamayse?"

"The ephemeral and elusive nature of art – how the appreciation of it changes from period to period – admittedly, the story gives it an amusing twist."

She raised her right eyebrow (in a gesture she may have borrowed from Greta Garbo or Bette Davis), which meant "I am not amused," a gesture I had come to know the meaning of so well.

Victoria possessed high fallutin notions of art – despite which she had hung a singularly amateurish painting in the hallway which she had received as a gift from a "good friend" (gender not disclosed nor did Kunzman press the matter) who, she said, "insisted I hang it as a precondition for receiving it." It portrayed what seemingly was an elderly lady (or young alien) all in black set against an urban background (Tel Aviv?) (The painter's or the giver's mother?) Kunzman did not trouble Victoria with the parenthesized questions, contenting himself with characterizing the thing as "mishigothic" (a definition borrowed from Billy Wilder) and titling it "Whistler's Mother – on a Bad Day", once to Victoria who became indignant; thereafter, to himself. On another occasion, exasperated by Victoria's putting on artistic airs, he informed her that an 18th century French chef injured in an explosion in his kitchen, became an amnesia victim for 30 years; in that period he composed 31 operas. At the age of 60 the collapse of a stage restored his memory and he again became a chef – unable to write another line of music, and Kunzman concluded his little tale by exclaiming, "So who can define 'What is art?' " Victoria berated Kunzman for bringing up such stories, maintaining that they didn't prove anything. Once he asked her what was her favorite painting title. She stared at him a long moment, for some reason not pleased with the question, then said, "Whistler's Mother" "Touche," he answered, then added, "Mine is Salvatore Dali's 'Partial Hallucination. Six Apparitions of Lenin on a Grand Piano.' "Oh, he's a pervert," Victoria dismissed Dali. "What? Just because he titled another painting 'Atmospheric Skull Sodomizing a Grand Piano' – seems he had an inclination towards the piano and not the harp." Victoria did not deign to honor this last with an answer.

  Kunzman then proceeded to give Victoria his answer to the question "What is art?" "Art is not an escape from life, but what is connected to life – and death, of course. And the incident I am about to describe to you relates to this question. A theatre critic for an Israeli newspaper was visiting in Paris just prior to the 1967 war, a time when the civilized world was worried about the possible destruction of Israel at the hands of its enemies. He passed a white-shirted man leaning against a lamppost weeping uncontrollably. Something about the man looked familiar. It was the playwright Eugene Enesco, worried about Israel's fate. For Enesco, the theater – art - was not an escape from life." And Kunzman remembered that when he expressed the view that Picasso  was the most moral of modern painters because of his painting ’Guernica’, Lieberman replied, “Your moral Picasso once dismissed cynically Max Jacob’s letter to him from a Vichy concentration camp pleading for his help to free him. Theodor Adorno had questioned whether art could exist after Auschwitz. Perhaps the only conceivable answer  was that supplied by I.B. Singer: "At its best, art can be nothing more than a means of forgetting the human disaster for a while."

But let us return and explain why Victoria was disturbed when she 'disturbed' Kunzman in  his bath. Because she was hungry. She told him to hurry up and finish so that they could "dine" together. Victoria was one for nourishing all her parts.  

After Victoria left Kunzman sitting in the bath with her urging of him to get dressed ringing in his ears, a strange, even vindictive, thought came to him, perhaps induced by the memory of Jacques-Louis David's painting, perhaps as the result of Victoria's anger. Kunzman pictured Lieberman murdered in the bath; it just popped into his mind. And who was the equivalent of Charlotte Cordot. You guessed right – Victoria. And though Charlotte Cordot's murder had had a political motive, this couldn't be said of Victoria. Victoria would only murder out of love, or jealousy over love. Lieberman probably never had an affair outside of his marriage (as Victoria may well have): the noble woman who captured Lieberman's heart, reflected Kunzman, was the Muse. Perhaps Victoria was jealous of her. To the point of murder? To the point of: if I can't murder my rival the Muse, I'll murder her lover? Nu, really.

On another occasion, it was Victoria in the bath, not Kunzman. He didn't know that she was going to be in the bath. What happened (as she explained to him afterward) was that she was in a particularly good mood, something to do with a "glowing harp review" (her words) of her performance published in some small musical review which apparently stimulated her libido because when Kunzman arrived on a visit (after phoning first, of course) in order to plow through some more of Lieberman's work product, he found a note on the door written in Victoria's cum Austro-Hungarian calligraphic script (truly beautiful when she chose to take pains to write it): "Catch me if you can", and under it the harp sketch which she sometimes drew as a logo. Kunzman remembered that Socrates, before his death, had said something to this effect, but obviously Victoria had something else in mind.

He tried the door. It was unlocked. This surprised him because Victoria had an obsession with locked doors, even when Lieberman was alive. One night Lieberman forgot his key and she was asleep and he spent considerable time throwing stones at the closed wooden balcony shutter until she woke up, as he told us the following day at work. Kunzman once asked her about this over concern with locked doors. "My harp," she explained. "somebody might steal my harp." Picturing somebody struggling to make off with her harp caused him to chuckle. "Don't laugh," she had upbraided him. "It has been known to happen." There was more to it than that, of course, Kunzman reasoned. Maybe she didn't want to be caught in medias res with a suitor. The idea filled him with jealousy.

   Entering the apartment, Kunzman looked for her first of all in the salon (a new sofa, or perhaps a couch, whose opulent, filigreed upholstery, even taken in at a cursory glance, got on his nerves. Not so much Fen Shi as Late Darius. He could picture Nitza shaking her head at it – or laughing), then in the kitchen (not yet given Victoria’s ‘golden touch’; he winced at the prospect of imitation gold faucets, reminding him of the lion-mouthed spout, probably lead, of a fountain seen in Pompei), then in the bedroom (his imagination wasn’t up to it’s possible decor or maybe it was stifled by his fear of not finding her in it’s central furnishing alone). No Victoria. But draped on her bed was a shiny leather mouse-brown jacket; alongside it, a leather shoulder bag of eggplant purple. A pair of matching purple stilettoed-heeled shoes had seemingly been kicked off in haste; they lay on the floor next to the bed, one shoe on its side. This fetching set of accessories Kunzman had never seen before. Their last mode styling  and obvious expensiveness told him they did not stem from the Liebermanic era. Perhaps love-tokens of a suitor. Kunzman then noticed a vase of narcissuses, yellow and white and pink, on the table near her bed. Maybe the gift of the same (or worse, a different) suitor, Kunzman could not help but suspecting; however, he then remembered that Victoria liked narcissuses and perchance it was she who had purchased them. Ordinarily, Victoria’s premises lacked flowers of any kind, as if she didn’t have the time or patience for them.  Kunzman remembered that he once asked her about this. “They give off oxygen’” she explained. “That’s healthy,” he had replied. “So they say,” she said, without further explanation. He had then decided not to pursue the matter, her tone having increased in volume, a sure sign of her dissatisfaction with their little tete-a-tete. And this memory about flowers triggered off another: the time that Lieberman,  displeased at a review he , Kunzman, had written that failed to come up to his expectations, observed, “You should have been a greeting-card  writer, Kunzman, writing about flowers and butterflies, but your flowers would come out faded and your butterflies, moths. Write about bees, Kunzman – add a bit of sting.” ‘Stung’ by Lieberman’s going too far, he had answered him, “You take on the carnivores, Saul, I’ll stick with the herbivores.” Lieberman looked at Kunzman for a long moment, apparently unsure (for once) how to respond. “Fair enough,” he said finally, seemingly pleased by his response, or maybe the fact that he had responded at all. When Kunzman told Nitza about his ‘triumph’, she snorted,” the herbivores don’t stand a chance against the carnivores.” Some time afterward, following one of his losing battles with Victoria, Nitza’s words came back to him.

 The idea of the narcissuses left by a suitor continuing to nag at him, Kunzman attempted subtly to discover their source. Victoria was evasive, saying only that narcissuses are used in perfumes. Peeved at her dissembling, Kunzman countered that the bulbs are poisonous. I know, she said. Kunzman raised an eyebrow. I didn't realize you were an expert on poisons. Victoria said nothing.  He thought of the asphodels which according to Greek mythology Hades was paved with. But we are getting ahead of our story. Let us return to Victoria in her fetching mood. She must have heard him open the door or prowling around (she was blessed with good ears, equipment vital for a musician). "In here," he heard her exasperated voice say.

The voice came from the bathroom. That was where she wanted him to "catch" her? He thought of Actaeon who, according to the charming Greek myth, surprised the goddess Diana while she was bathing naked and who was turned into a stag in punishment and torn to pieces by his own dogs. (And they say the Jews have an angry God.) It was just as well that Victoria had got rid of Lieberman's dog following his death.

And perhaps the Greek myth summoned up in Kunzman's mind the incident where Proclus the philosopher had asked Rabbi Gamliel, who was in Acre bathing in the bathhouse of Aphrodite, "Why do you bathe in Aphrodite's bathhouse?" He replied, "I did not enter into her domain, she entered into mine." The bath is not Aphrodite's domain which Rabbi Gamliel invaded; it is Rabbi Gamliel's domain which Aphrodite invaded. Aphrodite is an adornment to the bath and not vice versa.  

Entering the bathroom, he found his naiaid in her bubbled bath, naked as Venus emerging from the foamy waves in Bottecelli's painting. Victoria was lying, her upper body above the water, her arms crossed in front of her chest in the style of Egyptian pharaohs depicted in temple paintings. Victoria constituted, without doubt, an adornment to the bath.

Kunzman stared at her blankly. She raised her hands and shook them like a belly dancer (or maybe Salome in her famous dance). "Queen of the Bathtub," she announced in good spirits.

He didn't know what was expected of him.  

She told him. "Come join me," she said in a voluptuous whisper, extending her arms toward him in invitation. She wore her cat-that-stole-the-cream smile. Her eyes bore into him with Kama Sutra seductiveness.

"Get undressed?" he inquired of her.

She lowered her arms in exasperation (he strove not to stare at her breasts) "People usually do before they enter the bath."

It dawned on him that she wasn't interested in his cleanliness.

"It's not my style," he informed her. It wasn't.

She glowered at him. "You and Nitza never . . .?"

Nu, and her and Lieberman in the bath tub. Kunzman shut his mind to the thought.

Her invasion of his privacy rankled. Kunzman said nothing. His saying nothing in turn rankled her. "How about on the threshing house floor?" she taunted. He felt like the Golem of Prague confronted by Abishag or Jezabel.   

Kunzman decided retreat the prudent course given Victoria’s mood. He would go work on the book. As he left the bathroom, pursued by his inamorata's heaped honorifics: "zeide, schlemiel, schlimazel" followed by “Ikh hob dikh in bod” (To hell with you) -- once again, the diva-dame in one of her groyser kundes (big stick) moods; Diotoma, Socrates' love-instructress, had become Xanthippe, Socrates' shrewish wife, Yiddish curses having replaced Greek ones. He feared being struck by an object from her Venetian glass collection, perhaps the kitsch (in his eyes) dolphin which lay on a glass shelf in arm’s reach of the bathtub. Why, Kunzman reflected, couldn’t I have a mistress like that of Herzog in Bellow’s (eponymous) novel who is kind and beautiful and has a religion of sex which she believes can cure Herzog’s ailments? Yet he knew by now that such a mistress’s cure, however kind and well-intended, might only add to his own ailments. He retreated from the wrath of the caladarium to the inner sanctum of the  scriptorium, having considered but immediately rejected taking a parting shot at Victoria, like the Parthians who fired arrows over their shoulder while retreating from battle. He recalled that Victoria said to him once, “You always seem as if you are looking for an escape route.” This remark had struck him as uncharacteristically astute. It, or his present predicament, conjured up before his eyes Cigoli’s painting “Jospeh and Potiphar’s Wife’ together with the biblical inspiration for it: And she caught him by his robe saying, “lie with me” and he left his garment in her hand, and fled . . . Safely in his work-room, he began turning over one by one the items of Lieberman's corpus, so insulted and incensed that he paid no attention to what was written on them. The imagined picture of Victoria and Lieberman naked in the bath pursued him.

After some minutes, he heard her voce di gola voice, softer, calling him. The softness decided him; Kunzman had always been a patsy for softness, for heindelach. He put aside his being miffed, his being the klutz, his hors de combat status and, returning to the bath room, entered.

She was still in the bath tub, looking like nothing so much as a pouting seal whose ball had fallen from its nose during a performance. "Come on, Kunzman, let go of your poor-little-boy mood. I only wanted to surprise you,”  she purred honey-voiced. "Give me a hug."

Kunzman redux. He complied, despite thoroughly soaking his shirt and pants in the process; as he did so, he wondered if he wasn’t but a trampist on the consciousness of others.