The Sculptor

By Tony Gregory

Simon Maitland loved the feel of the clay between his fingers. He never learned to talk to other children, so this was the way he communicated. He was talented, more so than any of his teachers had ever seen, and he received the best education his wealthy parents could afford, becoming one of the leading sculptors in New York. But Simon had a secret, something inside that drove him to seek out subjects for his work – which was murder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Oct 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781649792983

Tony Gregory

Tony Gregory was born in California and raised there and in London, England. He is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, California, and holds a Master’s degree in History and Psychology. He is married, and had four children. He is currently a clinical psychologist living in Herzliya, Israel.

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About the Author

Tony Gregory was born in California and raised there and in London, England. He is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, California, and holds a Master’s degree in History and Psychology. He is married, and had four children. He is currently a clinical psychologist living in Herzliya, Israel.

Dedication

To Tova, de Mensch tract und Gott lacht

Copyright Information ©

Tony Gregory 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Gregory, Tony

The Sculptor

ISBN 9781649792976 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781649792983 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022913146

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street,33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005 USA

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Acknowledgment

I have worked as a clinical psychologist for more than forty years and have met great people on the way. I want to thank them all, because it is that work with them that made these pages possible.

Foreword

Genius comes at a price. People who are truly exceptional at what they do flirt with a fine line between creativity and insanity. What they create might not always conform with what is morally acceptable during the time they live. This is for them.

If there is anything that I have learned about art it is that resolution is highly over-rated. It is that lack of resolution that creates both great suffering and genius.

Spencer

He liked the feel of the clay between his fingers. He could feel each grain, how they coalesced, when the material was right to work with, and when it needed more water or less. He became excited when he could sense he was imposing his will on the stuff, like it was an extension of something he had inside, something he could not yet recognize or put into words, but it was there.

Sometimes he would shut his eyes and let his fingers do their work by feeling alone; confident that they would know how to take that formless mud and turn it into something, something that would surprise him. He preferred working in the middle of the night, when there was less around to distract him. The dark proved no barrier. It was so quiet that he could hear the sound of his hands on the clay, the soft, squishy sound it made when bubbles of air became trapped in his movements.

When he felt he had gone far enough, he would walk slowly over to the wall and turn on the light from the ceiling above. He had positioned the light on the ceiling so that it would throw no shadow on his work. He always stood for a few minutes, trying to understand what lay before him. He didn’t search for some explanation, because he wasn’t interested in explaining his work. What he wanted was a clarity of feeling; something that would shine a light and tell him how to proceed.

He never got angry, because there was nothing to blame here. They clay was his; it had no will of its own. He had worked long enough to know that what he saw was not the result of lack of skill; he had become adept long before. So, there was no blame, only an attempt to understand that nameless thing inside of him that guided him but sometimes kept its intentions hidden. Here, now, he could see it, and try to make sense, find some intentionality in the dialogue between his fingers and the clay.

Now he would work slowly and methodically, in the light, putting on the fine touches, molding the shape to something communicative, something that made sense to other people. For some reason, it was important to him that other people understand, or at least try to. His work would do the talking for him. Sometimes when one of his pieces was displayed, he would find a quiet corner and watch the people that passed by and tried to understand. It thrilled him when he saw the expressions fleet across their faces, the puzzlement, sometimes anger, and then the smoothing of the brow and the upturned lips when insight dawned.

This time, it was a hummingbird in flight, its talons extended as if it was about to alight on some branch after whirring about for an age. The expression on the face of the bird showed weariness, the need to set down, but the distrust of abandoning this air in which it was comfortable, for some perch, where it would be vulnerable. He worked for another hour, building power into the wings using a toothpick to distinguish the individual feathers. Then he stood back and looked at what he had done, wiping his hands on the towel that he kept under his belt, tilting his head this way and that to take it all in.

He walked around the bird in a circle, to make sure that from every angle it was clearly in flight, suspended, but weary of the suspense. After a while, he turned off the light switch on the wall, because now it was morning, and he wanted to see how the natural light took part in his work. There was more to do, he could see; there was always more to do. But this was enough for now. He put the towel on the work table and left the room, walking into the kitchen.

He turned on the music before he made himself coffee. At this time in the morning, he preferred Beethoven, usually the 7th symphony. He never got tired of it, never ceased to be impressed by how a middle-aged man who was going deaf had managed to blend such exquisite sounds in a way that no one had been able to match, before or since. The music let him drift off into other things and would welcome him back on its own.

Sometimes he played the piece while he was working, but after a while, he found it overpowering, as if Beethoven was telling him, Here, do it this way! and he didn’t always want to listen. He had his own plan in mind, maybe not one that he could articulate or even understand, but something that seemed true, so he would turn the music off, or leave it for times like this, when he could sit and reflect over a cup of coffee.

He spoiled himself with the coffee. When he had first moved into the apartment here on Madison, he had bought an expensive espresso machine, but after some trips around town, he had come across something called a finjan, a metal flask with a long wooden handle, in which, he would brew the coffee that he bought at the Third Rail, on Sullivan Street near NYU. The finjan was simple and it heated the water to such a high temperature that the coffee was seduced to release everything it had. It struck him that the better the brew was the less he needed to drink. Good coffee stayed with you, worked on you for hours if you got it right—and he always tried to get it right.

He sat down at the weathered maple table he had bought in Soho to drink the brew while staring out the window in the kitchen, a floor to ceiling pane which covered half the wall on the east side of the building. Here, on the 23nd floor, he could see the East River and the conspicuous UN building, sticking up like a piece of toast on First Avenue. He could gaze across the river pass Roosevelt Island to the naval shipyard in Hunter’s point. The never-ending flow of traffic on FDR drive contrasted with the leisurely pace of tugs, barges and tourist boats that competed for space on the narrow waterway between Manhattan and Brooklyn.

He let his mind drift to the hummingbird in the other room, trying to bring out what more he needed to do with it. He remembered what Michelangelo had said about working in stone, The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there; I just have to chisel away the superfluous material. He understood completely that spirit and it had guided him now for more than twenty years.

***

The first ten years had been tough. Mary Bryant was 29 by the time she married David Maitland, an age that most of her generation considered late. Truthfully, she was unsure if she wanted to marry at all for Mary was one of the most promising architectural students to come out of Columbia University in years. She was, however, just that—she—and architecture in New York, maybe everywhere, was a profession dominated by men.

She was taken on by a good firm, but relegated to copying blueprints and drawing building plans for the ideas of others, all men, which she clearly saw were less talented than her. There was little chance that on her own, as talented as she was, she would progress very far. A year before her 30th birthday she had a sinking feeling in her stomach that she had gone as far as she could.

David Maitland was twenty-three years older than her, but he was a partner in one of the biggest law firms in the city, and it was a position that would open doors for her. He was wealthy, he wasn’t hard to look at, he was well-positioned, and the rest, well, the rest would come with time. That’s what she told herself.

David was clear about his need for an heir, and though Mary was unsure, it was part of the package. He proposed to her as if he was closing a deal, and let her know that the reason was not love but competence. Mary just knew how to get things done and David needed someone like that to run his life while he was at work.

She served her time, and when Simon was born, with difficulty, she thought for a moment that maybe her life was taking a turn for the better. She felt nothing for her husband; maybe she would feel something for her son. But Simon did not seem to be interested in his parents. He lay in the crib on his back looking at her but he did not smile, and after a few weeks, both parents began to feel there was something wrong.

David’s response was to take on more work and leave whatever had to be done with his new son to his wife. She was a woman, and they naturally knew about such things. Mary, however, was having none of it. She had done her job and now wanted to get on with her career. They never spoke about it, but the coldness surrounding Simon’s birth drove them inevitably apart. They had the means to do so, so they lived separate lives. There was no animosity. There was nothing at all.

It was clear to everyone who saw him, and there were not many, that Simon was not like other children. He would lay almost motionless for hours at a time, his mother told him years later, just staring at the mobile with the stars and planets that whirled above his head playing ‘Old MacDonald’s Farm’ over and over again. She would come into the room to check up on him every now and then when she was home just to make sure he was alive, because he would make no sound, never cry, not even when his diaper was full.

From the first, he could remember he had been fascinated by shapes and color, see how they complemented each other, noticing how the juxtaposition of one to another would cause him to feel a certain way, and how these patterns seemed to be engrained, something he could not understand but of which he was acutely aware. He would experiment, mix and match, and lose himself doing so, going hours on end without losing attention.

They had taken him to a specialist when he was 18 months old to try and understand why he wasn’t yet speaking. He was already drawing with crayons and building structures with blocks, but he would rarely utter a sound other than a grunt of pleasure or surprise as he moved around the nursery, followed closely by Rosa, the nanny his mother had taken for him so she could return to her work in an architecture firm in midtown.

The specialist told them that their son was suffering from infantile autism, and explained that while he might be highly intelligent, he would have trouble developing social skills, skills that would help him interact with other people. He told them that there was no cure; it was something he would carry with him all his life—and they as well.

Simon never quite understood if this news came as a shock to his parents. His mother Mary, who told him the story, seemed to do so with equanimity, as if the news didn’t upset her in the least. David, his father, was rarely in the same room with him, so Simon never got a clear picture of his father’s understanding of his condition. David was a tort lawyer, and as much as his wife, who was an architect, was involved in planning buildings, he was immersed in preparing legal briefs and rarely came up for air. Simon’s condition was something he paid other people to take care of, as he did most things in his life.

The doctors recommended Risperidone to control his symptoms, but Mary looked it up and rejected the idea outright, pointing out that depression and constant fatigue was not a reasonable substitute for whatever it was that he had now. She embarked on an intensive search for behavior modification therapies, and a group of experts made their way to the Maitland penthouse on Park West, where they would encourage Simon to move about, to walk, to use his arms and legs, to increase his confidence in his own body.

As he got older, Simon tried to discern for what reason his parents had decided to make a child, because they seemed to find little joy in what he did, and they made it clear that they had no plans to provide him with a brother or sister. That bank had been closed. Mary tended to his treatment without rancor or self-pity, just as something that had to be done, much like she approached a problem with a flawed design. She took care of him, bought him the best of everything, made sure he was healthy and well-fed. That was it.

The rest of it, what might be called affection, was supplied by Rosa, who took it upon herself to teach him Spanish, which he had mastered by the age of two. When spoken to he would answer, and unlike other children who had been diagnosed with his condition, he did not become agitated when people didn’t give him what he wanted or did not understand what he meant. He simply stared patiently, and if others didn’t respond to him, he would turn his attention to something else.

School was another matter. He started at the age of three in one of Manhattan’s best pre-schools, designed for what was then called ‘gifted children.’ He hated it. The other children seemed unfocused, completely oblivious to the idea that there might be someone else in the room. They grabbed, they hit, and they made a great deal of noise. When Simon was first confronted with this kind of behavior, he did what came naturally to him—he used his fingers.

The first time he poked a forefinger up the nose of a boy about his age who was attempting to take away a block that Simon had decided was important to him. He pushed in his finger as far as it would go and refused to take it out, curious to see what would happen, even though the other boy was crying and writhing in obvious pain. It took the teacher and the security guard not a little effort to extract the offending digit and tend to the injured boy whose shirt was now covered with blood.

That was the end of Simon’s career in his first school, and after an extended time at home, he was placed in another school, this one with fewer children, and watched closely by a teacher who followed his every move after hearing the story of his earlier encounter. Simon learned with time that the best way to deal with other children was to keep his distance.

He played alone, building elaborate Lego castles and playing with the blocks to simulate things that he saw on television, like the exodus of the Jews from Egypt in the Ten Commandments. Certain blocks were designated as Pharaoh’s soldiers while other were animals to be herded out of Memphis and others still to represent the triumphant Hebrews following after Charlton Heston.

He understood early on that he was different from the other children he could see playing in the park, running around the swing sets and operating the teeter-totters. It didn’t make him sad or lonely, because he was having such a good time talking to himself. None of his contemporaries offered up every now and then as possible playmates were half as interesting as the internal dialogue he carried on, and they all had annoying habits, they all wanted something from him. He took care to keep his distance.

They took him to a child psychologist named Carol who specialized in pre-school autism. She worked with him three times a week, practicing teachable moments, role plays in specific places where he could learn the expected interactions. She found that Simon was bright, and while he might not speak much, his regressed language skills were impressive, and both his short- and long-term memory were acute. This made it easier for him to learn what was expected, which lowered his anxiety. He had no feelings about what he was doing, and it gave him no pleasure to interact with other people but it was a relief to understand that it was acceptable.

By the age of five, he had learned to hold his temper, and could even carry on a rudimentary conversation with other children, but he never made friends. He came home from school and after eating a meal that Rosa had prepared for him, he would retire to his room, where he would take out the plastic bags with the thousands of pieces of paper he had cut up with a pair of scissors he had secreted, each marked with an identifying number and letter that signified to what regiment they belonged. By the age of six, he was reading about the Civil War, which was enjoying a centennial celebration in all the major magazines and newspapers which Simon read avidly after his father was done with them.

He had mastered the field of battle for Antietam and Shiloh, and could now place his chips, as he called them, to accurately recreate the positions of the different units of the northern and southern armies competing for the peach orchard or the stone wall and modify them as the battle progressed and one side gained advantage over the other.

At this age, it didn’t matter to him why they were fighting or the justice in their motives. He was simply focused on recreating the scene and learning how one side had manipulated the situation to come out on top. He could see that very little of it had to do with chance, but rather with decisions that had been taken long before the day of the battle. It was a lesson he would remember.

He understood early on that there was some impulse in him that was difficult to control. He was never oblivious to it; it was with him perpetually, like someone looking over his shoulder, waiting for the chance to jump in and take over. He realized that it was a faithless companion, not interested in his welfare but only there to serve itself. It made him wary. Whenever he approached another person, he could feel his sphincter tightening, preparing to take the onslaught of his faithless companion who found these encounters so troubling and would begin complaining in his ear… He never gave it a name at that age, wanting to hold it at arm’s length, to communicate his distaste, and trying to disguise his fear.

He mastered techniques of controlling it, like multiplying the number two silently, or recounting the ascendency of the kings of England or presidents of the United States. This distracted his companion and held him hostage. By the time he was eight, David could just throw out a year, like 1873, and Simon would reel off who sat on the British throne at that time and who was in the White House. This entertained the friends of the family to no end.

Now he could discern if his companion was in the vicinity and more or less what he was doing. He could feel the attempts to gain control of him, and he understood that the companion had his own desires in mind, and he felt that whatever these were they would not be satisfied to his benefit. He took care to control the companion; not to put himself in situations where he would lose control.

When they began teaching subjects that required the children to sit still and listen to teachers, Simon had no problem. He did not fidget, he paid attention, and he never interrupted. Nonetheless when it came time for tests, the results were not good. The school authorities called Mary and David to a conference and were told that their son seemed to be retarded. In a rare show of emotion, David slammed his fist on the school principal’s desk, startling everyone in the room, including Mary. He insisted that this was not possible, that he knew that his son was exceptionally gifted.

The principal was so taken aback by this outburst that they decided they must look more closely into the problem, and, sure enough, a closer inspection of the situation revealed that Simon could