Throwback Thursday: ‘Yellow Paint’ by FJ Bergmann

Some things really have to be experienced. So when I tell you that it was a small work on paper, a heavy oil impasto in fulvous shades of saffron with traces of gilding, executed with abandon and a triangular palette knife (judging from the pointy shapes of the dragon’s textured scales), you still know next to nothing about it. You may well wonder why such an object might have been pawned, and why it had accumulated such a cloudy layer of dust. The signature of the artist was clear, but written in an unfamiliar alphabet of loopy swirls and jagged lightning bolts — I submit that anyone who has lived in a largish metropolis would not have given the writing a second glance. 

Usually such shops deal in electronic appliances whose injudicious acquisition has overextended their purchasers’ budgets, obsolete kitchen or farm implements fondly believed by their ex-owners to be precious in one way or another, or pseudo-antique weapons — like the ersatz Excalibur that hung suspended over the cash register, with runic characters oddly like those in the painting’s signature running around the hilt and down the blade. Its edge was badly scraped and dinged, even melted here and there. 

After a desultory glance around the premises, I pointed at the painting, and the proprietor silently unhooked it from the wall and placed it on the countertop. Once he had brushed away most of the dust with a filthy rag, it was evident that the painting was damaged: a ragged slit had pierced through it, right in the centre of the dragon’s golden torso.

Pawnshop procedure is such that when (or if) a client returns, interest compensates for the storage and the monetary loan; if not redeemed punctually, an item can be sold. The layer of dust indicated that the redemption deadline had passed long ago. “How much is this little sketch?” I asked, idly flicking the edge of the dirty frame with a disdainful fingertip.

“Eight — no, nine — hundred dollars,” he said, casting an appraising eye over my calf-length leather coat.

I raised an eyebrow at his transparent predation. “And you’ll be throwing in your first-born son as a sweetener, I take it?”

He had the audacity to inform me that he’d include the sword for another thousand. “Came together,” he said. “Valuable ancient artifact,” he lied. “It’s inscribed with the same lettering.” 

The last, at least, was undeniable.