On Beauty (46 page)

‘I'm sorry – I can't do this!'

‘It's very simple. Ah've saved all the images to your hard drive – and awl you gotta do is put them in the order that you're gonna need for the lecture, and you put any quotes or diagrams down, in order – just like a normal word-processing file. And then we've put it all in the right format. See this?' Smith J. Miller leaned over Howard's shoulder and touched his fingers to Howard's keyboard. He had baby breath: warm and odourless and fresh like steam. ‘Click and drag. Click and drag. And you can take stuff off the web too. Saved a good Rembrandt site for you, see? Now, that has high-definition images of all the paintings you'll need. 'Kay?'

Howard nodded mutely.

‘Now, ah'm going to lunch, but ah'll be back in the afternoon to pick this up off you and turn it into
pah
-point. 'Kay? This is the future.'

Howard looked dejectedly at the hardware before him.

‘Howard,' said Smith, putting a hand to his shoulder, ‘this is gonna be a
real good
lecture. It's a nice atmosphere, it's a nice little gallery, and everybody's on your side. A little wine, a little cheese, a little lecture, everybody goes home. It's gonna be slick, it's gonna be professional. Nothing to worry about. You've done this a million times. 'Cept this time you got a little help from Mr Bill Gates. Now, ah'll be back at about three to pick this up.'

Smith delivered one last squeeze to Howard's left shoulder and picked up his slim briefcase.

‘Wait –' said Howard. ‘Have we sent all the invitations?'

‘Did that in November.'

‘Burchfield, Fontaine, French –'

‘Howard, everybody who can make a difference for you here has been invited. It's all done. Nothing to worry about. Just need that
pah
-point finished and we're ready to roll.'

‘Did you invite my wife?'

Smith swapped his case to his other hand and looked perturbedly at his employer.

‘Kiki? Sorry, Howard . . . I mean, I just sent out professional invitations as usual – but if there's a list of friends and family y'all want me to –'

Howard waved the idea away.

‘OK, then.' Smith saluted Howard. ‘My work here is done. Three o'clock.'

Smith left. Howard clicked around the website left open for him. He found the list of paintings Smith had mentioned and opened
The Sampling Officials of the Drapers' Guild
; more popularly known as
The Staalmeesters
. In this painting, six Dutchmen, all about Howard's age, sit around a table, dressed in black. It was the Staalmeesters' job to monitor cloth production in seventeenth-century Amsterdam. They were appointed annually and chosen for their ability to judge whether cloth put before them was consistent in colour and quality. A Turkey rug covers the table at which they sit. Where the light falls upon this rug, Rembrandt reveals to us its rich, burgundy colour, the intricacy of its gold stitching. The men look out from the painting, each adopting a different pose. Four hundred years of speculation have spun an elaborate story around the image. It is supposedly a meeting of shareholders; the men are seated on a raised dais, as they might be in a modern panel discussion; an unseen audience sits below them, one member of which has just asked the Staalmeesters a difficult question. Rembrandt sits near, but not next to, this questioner; he catches the scene. In his rendering of each face the painter offers us a slightly different consideration of the problem at hand. This is the moment of cogitation as shown on six different human faces. This is what
judgement
looks like: considered, rational, benign judgement. Thus the traditional art history.

Iconoclastic Howard rejects all these fatuous assumptions. How can we know what goes on beyond the frame of the painting itself? What audience? Which questioner? What moment of judgement? Nonsense and sentimental tradition! To imagine that this painting depicts any one temporal moment is, Howard argues, an
anachronistic, photographic fallacy. It is all so much pseudohistorical storytelling, disturbingly religious in tone. We want to believe these Staalmeesters are sages, wisely judging this imaginary audience, implicitly judging us. But none of this is truly
in
the picture. All we really see there are six rich men sitting for their portrait, expecting –
demanding
– to be collectively portrayed as wealthy, successful and morally sound. Rembrandt – paid well for his services – has merely obliged them. The Staalmeesters are not looking at anyone; there is no one to look at. The painting is an exercise in the depiction of economic power – in Howard's opinion a particularly malign and oppressive depiction. So goes Howard's spiel. He's repeated it and written about it so many times over the years that he has now forgotten from which research he drew his original evidence. He will have to unearth some of this for the lecture. The thought makes him very tired. He slumps in his chair.

The portable heater in Howard's office is turned up so high he feels himself to be held in place by hot, thick air. Howard clicks his mouse, enlarging the image of the painting until it is as big as his computer screen. He looks at the men. Behind Howard, the icicles that have decorated his office window for two months melt and drip. In the quad the snow is retreating, and small oases of grass can be seen, although it is important not to derive hope from this: more snow is surely on its way. Howard regards the men. Outside there are bells ringing to mark the hour. There is the clunking sound of the tram linking with its overhead cables, there is the inane chatter of students. Howard looks at the men. History has retained a few of their names. Howard looks at Volckert Jansz, a Mennonite and collector of curiosities. He looks at Jacob van Loon, a Catholic cloth-maker, who lived on the corner of the Dam and the Kalverstraat. He looks at the face of Jochem van Neve: it is a sympathetic, spaniel face with kind eyes for which Howard feels some affection. How many times has Howard looked at these men? The first time he was fourteen, being shown a print of the painting in an art class. He had been alarmed and amazed by the way the Staalmeesters seemed to look directly at him, their eyes (as his
schoolmaster put it) ‘following you around the room', and yet, when Howard tried to stare back at the men, he was unable to meet any of their eyes directly. Howard looked at the men. The men looked at Howard. On that day, forty-three years ago, he was an uncultured, fiercely bright, dirty-kneed, enraged, beautiful, inspired, bloody-minded schoolboy who came from nowhere and nothing and yet was determined not to stay that way –
that
was the Howard Belsey whom the Staalmeesters saw and judged that day. But what was their judgement now? Howard looked at the men. The men looked at Howard. Howard looked at the men. The men looked at Howard.

Howard pressed the ‘zoom' option on his screen. Zoom, zoom, zoom until he was involved only with the burgundy pixels of the Turkey rug.

‘Hey, Dad – what's up? Daydreaming?'

‘Christ! Don't you knock?'

Levi pulled the door to behind himself. ‘Not for family, no . . . can't say I do.' He perched on the end of Howard's desk and reached out a hand for his father's face. ‘You OK? You sweating, man. Your forehead's all wet. You feel OK?'

Howard batted Levi's hand away. ‘What do you want?' he asked.

Levi shook his head disapprovingly but laughed. ‘Oh, man . . . that's real cold. Just because I come to see you, you think I want something!'

‘Social call, is it?'

‘Well, yeah. I like to see you at work, see what's going on with you, you know how it is, being all
intellectual
in college land. You're like my role model and all that.'

‘Right. How much is it, then?'

Levi shrieked with laughter. ‘Oh, man . . . you're cold! I can't believe you!'

Howard looked at the little clock in the corner of his screen. ‘School? Shouldn't you be in school?'

‘Well . . .' said Levi, stroking his chin. ‘Technically, yeah. But see they got this rule – the city has a rule that you can't be in class if
the temperature in the room is below a certain, like, temperature – I don't know what it is, but that kid Eric Klear knows what it is – he brings this thermometer in? And if it drops below that specific temperature, then – well, basically, we all just go home. Not a thing they can do about it.'

‘Very enterprising,' said Howard. Then he laughed and looked at his son with fond wonder. What a period this was to live through! His children were old enough to make
him
laugh. They were real people who entertained and argued and existed entirely independently from him, although he had set the thing in motion. They had different thoughts and beliefs. They weren't even the same colour as him. They were a kind of miracle.

‘This isn't traditional filial behaviour, you know,' said Howard jovially, already reaching for his back pocket. ‘This is being mugged in your own office.'

Levi slipped off the desk and went to look out of the window. ‘Snow's melting. Won't last, though. Man,' he said, turning around. ‘As soon as I have my own greens and my own life, I'm moving somewhere so
hot
. I'm moving to, like,
Africa
. I don't even care if it's poor. Long as I'm warm, that's cool with me.'

‘Twenty . . .
six, seven, eight
– that's all I have,' said Howard holding up the contents of his wallet.

‘I really appreciate that, man. I'm dry and dusty right now.'

‘What about that
job
, for God's sake?'

Levi squirmed a little before confessing. Howard listened with his head on the table.

‘Levi, that was a
good
job.'

‘I got another one! But it's more . . . irregular. And I'm not doing it right now, 'cos I got other things cooking, but imma go back to it soon, 'cos it's like –'

‘Don't tell me,' insisted Howard, closing his eyes. ‘Just don't tell me. I don't want to know.'

Levi put the dollars in his back pocket. ‘Anyway, so in the meantime I got a bit of a cash flow
situation
. I pay you back, though.'

‘With other money I'll have given you.'

‘I got a job, I told you! Chill. OK? Will you chill? You gonna give yo'self a heart attack, man.
Chill
.'

Sighing, he kissed his father on his sweaty forehead and closed the door softly on his way out.

Levi did his funky limp through the department and out into the main lobby of the Humanities Faculty building. He stopped here to select a tune that would fit the experience of stepping out of this building and facing the freeze outside. Somebody called his name. He couldn't see at first who it was.

‘Yo –
Levi
. Over here! Hey, man! I ain't seen your ass in the
longest
time, man. Put it there.'

‘
Carl?
'

‘Yeah, Carl. Don't you even know me now?'

They touched fists, but with Levi frowning all the time.

‘What you doing here, man?'

‘Damn – didn't you know?' said Carl, smiling cheesily and popping his collar. ‘I be a
college
man now!'

Levi laughed. ‘No, seriously, bro – what you doing here?'

Carl stopped smiling. He tapped the knapsack on his back. ‘Didn't your sister tell you? I'm a college man now. I'm working here.'

‘
Here?
'

‘Black Studies Department. I just started – I'm an archivist.'

‘A
what
?' Levi transferred his weight to the opposite foot. ‘Man, you screwing with me?'

‘Nope.'

‘You
work
here. I don't get it – you cleaning?'

Levi didn't mean this the way it came out. It was just that he had met a lot of Wellington cleaners on the march yesterday, and it was the first thing that came to his mind. Carl was offended.

‘No, man, I manage the
archives
– I don't clean shit. It's a music library – I'm in control of the hip-hop and some R & B and modern urban black music. It's an amazing resource – you should come check it out.'

Levi shook his head, disbelieving. ‘Carl, bro, I'm tripping . . . you gotta run this past me again. You're working
here?
'

Carl looked up over Levi's head at the clock on the wall. He had an appointment to get to – he was meeting someone in the Modern Languages Department who was going to translate some French rap lyrics for him.

‘Yeah, man – it's not that complicated a concept. I'm working here.'

‘But . . . You
like
it here?'

‘Sure. Well . . . it's a little tight-assed sometimes, but the Black Studies Department is cool. You can get a lot done in a place like this – hey, I see your dad
all
the time. He works just down there.'

Levi, concentrating on the many strange facts being put before him, ignored this last. ‘So, wait: you ain't making music no more?'