The Art of Living (19 page)

Vlemk was bitterly ashamed, for nothing was ever less deserved than that kiss, but he forced himself to smile, and he smiled on, grimly, as the barmaid ran from table to table with her gift, showing it to the regulars one after another, all of whom heartily praised it.

No one seemed to know except the ex-poet, the ex-violinist, and the axe-murderer that the painting on the box was a lie, a fraud, an outrage. He'd given the barmaid a childlike smile, though it was as foreign to her sullen, lumpy face as Egypt to an Eskimo. He'd given her the eyes of a twelve-year-old milk-maid, though her own eyes had nothing but the exact same brown of the irises in common. He'd reddened her chin and removed certain blemishes, turning others—for example the birthmark on her throat, which he paid close attention to only as he painted it—to beauty marks. He'd lifted her breasts a little, tightened her skin, raised a sagging eyebrow, increased the visibility of her dimple. In short, he'd made her beautiful, and he'd done it all so cunningly that no one but an artist could have told you where the truth left off and the falsehood began.

“Wine for the box-painter!” cried one of the regulars.

“Wine whenever he wants it!” cried the barmaid, and abruptly, as if changed into some other person, she smiled.

The troubles of Vlemk the box-painter were over—or at any rate Vlemk's most immediate trouble. From that night on when he went to the tavern he got all he asked for, wine, beer, and whiskey until only with the help of a friend could he find his way home, and sometimes not even then. As for the barmaid, a curious thing happened. She became increasingly similar to the fraudulent painting, smiling as she served her customers, looking at strangers with the eyes of an innocent, standing so erect, in her foolish pride, that her breasts were almost exactly where Vlemk had painted them. The success of her after-hours business increased, so much so that Vlemk began to worry that perhaps she would get married and leave the bar, which would throw him back on begging. Sometimes to his distress, he would catch her stealing a little look at the box, which she kept prominently displayed, and once—far worse for Vlemk's sense of honor—she gave him a look that made him think for an instant that she
knew
what he had done. Why not, of course. Wasn't she also a dabbler in visions, a creator and destroyer? She said nothing, however; for which Vlemk was profoundly grateful.

With other people, Vlemk was all too often less fortunate. Because he was a mute now, people began telling him things, all of them eager to share their troublesome and shameful secrets, yet concerned that their secrets remain unknown. Women, looking into his gray, all-seeing eyes, and assured that he was voiceless, as safe as a boulder, would reveal to him such horrors of frustration and betrayal, remorse, inexpressible indignation, and despair, that his sleep would be troubled for weeks by alarming dreams. Gentle old men told him stories of rape and arson, cruelty to animals, and heaven knows what else. Vlemk the box-painter became a walking cyclopedia of the sins and transgressions of humanity—more scapegoat than priest, alas, since he was powerless to forgive or condemn.

He learned, among other things, why the poet no longer wrote poetry and the ex-violinist had turned in disgust against music.

“My audience,” said the poet, lips trembling, eyebrows twitching, “has, collectively, the brains of one pig.” He pursed his lips. “Perhaps that's unfair,” he said. “Perhaps I underestimate pigs.” This the poet said in Vlemk's studio, where no one could hear him but Vlemk and the painting of the Princess on the box, who said nothing. “What good is it,” the poet asked, pacing up and down, flaxen hair flying, “telling my audience things they can never understand?” He puffed at his pipe, sending up angry little clouds, and continued, jabbing with his pipestem and pacing again, “
We
know, you and I, the sad truth of the matter: to fools, nothing
can
be said; to the wise, nothing
need
be said. Take all the wisdom of Homer and Virgil. We knew it in our hearts when we were four, you and I—No, I'm serious, my friend!” He raised his hand as if Vlemk might find his voice and object. “Who learns anything—I say,
anything
—from poetry? Say I describe all the agony of love with magnificent precision, showing true and false, revealing the applications for the priesthood and men engaged in business. If I'm right, exactly and precisely right, what do you say—you, the reader? ‘that's right,' you say, if you're wise and not a fool. What have I taught you, then? Nothing, of course! Nothing whatsoever! I have said, with a certain elegance, exactly what you know. And what does the fool say? Why, nothing, of course. ‘I never really cared much for poetry,' says he. ‘I like a man to say what he means.' Poetry's a trinket, then, a luxury and amusement, a kind of secret handshake between equals. Nothing wrong with that, of course. It's an occupation no worse than, say, being a cook”—his lips twisted to a sneer—“a cook, ha ha, a man whose art is consumed and goes sliding back to earth!” He heaved a deep sigh. “I have therefore abandoned that paltry mistress poesy.” He stood now angrily gazing down at the crooked little streets. “I have put my intelligence to more interesting uses,” he said quietly, glancing past his shoulder. “I steal people's jewelry. I kidnap people's children. That surprises you?”

Vlemk shrugged.

“I do not kill people,” said the poet; “that's against my principles! I merely upset them a little—teach them values, like Goethe and Schiller.”

Vlemk nodded. It crossed his mind that if his friend the ex-poet was really a jewel-thief and kidnapper of children he'd be a good deal better off than he was; but Vlemk let it go. Poetic license. It was true—Vlemk knew because he'd seen it—that the man picked pockets and stole eggs.

The violinist said, not many nights later, sitting in the abandoned railroad car which was his temporary home, “I have only one real ambition in life: getting even.”

Vlemk splashed his hands open and lifted his eyebrows.

“ ‘With whom?' you say,” said the ex-violinist, translating. His spectacles flashed, catching a little light from the candle on the crate between them. “Audiences, composers, conductors, violin makers … Everyone's my enemy! Why should I make exceptions?” He passed Vlemk the crackers and Chianti, for in small things he was generous, and the Chianti had turned. The ex-violinist sat grinding his teeth, his fingertips trembling, then continued very softly, “You have to understand how it is for us performers. Some fool writes a piece and we interpret with all our hearts, but there's nothing to interpret, just the noises a fool makes, or if there's something there the conductor gets the tempo wrong, or the audience dislikes it because they've heard on good authority that all Slavs are sentimental. At best, a string on the violin breaks.” Loudly, he cracked his knuckles, all ten of them in rapid succession, so that a shudder ran down Vlemk's back. Though the light in the railroad car was dim—too dim for Vlemk to make out what the creatures were, moving now and then in the corners—it seemed to Vlemk that as he spoke there were tears in the ex-musician's eyes. “Thousands of dollars' worth of music lessons, thousands of hours of arpeggios and scales—for that! Very well!” He sucked in breath. “There are other uses for dexterity like mine!”

Vlemk raised his eyebrows and opened his hands.

The musician leaned forward, confidential, trembling violently. “I steal valuables from purses in coatrooms,” he said. “There's no real money in it, but the response of the crowd is tremendous.”

Vlemk had long made a point of never being alone with the third of his unsavory friends, the axe-murderer, but one night in January, when he ducked into a doorway to avoid an icy rain, that too happened. The axe-murderer was a dour man with thick, hairy forearms, short, thick legs, and a neck as big around as a large man's thigh. He had a mouth made unpleasant by small, open sores, and eyes that seemed never to fix on anything but to stare with fuming discontent in whatever direction his small, shiny head was turned. He rarely spoke, but tonight, pinned shoulder to shoulder beside Vlemk in the doorway, waiting for the rain to stop—the street full of shadows, the lamps not yet lit—the murderer abruptly, for no reason, broke his rule. “Vlemk,” he said, in a voice as low and gravelly as a frog's, “the trouble with you is, you're insensitive to the power of evil.”

Vlemk nodded, shuddering, and made an effort to look thoughtful. He craned his head forward, thinking the rain was perhaps lighter than he'd imagined, but the shoulder of the murderer pinned him tightly against the doorjamb, and he soon realized that the pressure against him was intentional; he was meant to stay, hear the murderer out, listen attentively, as if his life depended on it, for indeed, conceivably, it did.

“You have a strange point of view,” said the axe-murderer. “It seems to you quite normal, because the herd of humanity generally shares it; but believe me your view is in fact both strange and irrational.”

Again Vlemk nodded.

“You look for Beauty in the world,” said the axe-murderer. “You formulate impressions in the archaic vocabulary of Grace. This is a mistake. What the intelligent man looks for is
interest
. Look at our friends the ex-poet and the ex-musician. They started out as pursuers of Beauty, devotees of supernatural premises. What are they now?” He laughed so deep in his throat it might have come from a well. “They are retired, my friend. And even in retirement they have no more understanding of the truth than a pair of fat ducks.” He turned his sore-specked, expressionless face, allowing the eyes to bore coldly into Vlemk. “I, on the other hand,” he said, “am not retired. Actually, strictly speaking, I haven't yet begun. Many people say I will never begin, but I spit in their eyes.” He glanced downward, indicating that Vlemk should do the same, and from under the skirt of his overcoat showed the blade of an axe.

Vlemk swallowed and quickly nodded. The rain was beginning to let up now, but still the firm pressure of the murderer's shoulder boxed him in.

“You're an idealist, Vlemk,” said the axe-murderer. “Reality, you think, is what might be, or what peeks from behind what is. What evidence have you for this shadow you prefer to the hard, smelly world we exist in? Look again!” Again they looked down, both of them, at the axe. “Reality is matter in all its magnificent complexity,” said the murderer, “the sludge of actuality in infinite mechanical aspiration. Break the machine and you begin to know its usefulness! Close off the view of the mountains with a curtain and you begin to see the glory of the view.” He pressed harder against Vlemk and asked with a sneer, “You imagine you search out Reality, painter of little boxes?” He laughed. “You're an evader and avoider! I give you my assurance—experience is the test—chop off the heads of a family of seven, let the walls and the floors be splashed with their blood, let the dogs howl, the cats flee, the parakeets fly crazily in their filthy wicker cages, then ask yourself:
is
this or
is this not
Reality?—this carnage, this disruption of splendid promise? Take the blinders from your eyes! Death and Evil are the principles that define our achievements and in due time swallow them. Ugliness is our condition and the basis of our interest. Is it our business to set down lies, or are we here to tell the Truth, though the Truth may be unspeakably dreadful?”

Vlemk nodded slowly and thoughtfully, and pursed his lips.

The murderer's face grew more unpleasant than usual, and when he spoke again his grumble was so low and disheartened that Vlemk could barely hear him. “Admittedly all this is as yet still a little theoretical. The police are everywhere, and how is one to get proper coverage? The newspapers suppress things, edit things. I'm like you, my friend Vlemk, if what I hear about the picture of the Princess is true: a genius who's never reached his audience.” He chuckled, miserable as a snake. Suddenly the murderer drew in one sharp breath and became still all over, his hand clamped firm as a vise on the box-painter's arm. “Perhaps this is it!” he whispered. A family of five was entering the old empty church across the street, ducking in out of the rain, perhaps. As soon as the door closed behind them, the murderer stepped softly from the doorway, tipping up his coat-collar and pulling down his hat, then hurried away through the rain to the farther curb. At once, before the murderer could change his mind, Vlemk set off, almost running, in the direction of the tavern. He need not have hurried. When he met the axe-murderer the following night he learned that, as usual, he'd done nothing. Nothing, as usual, had been quite as he required. For some arts, the difficulties are all but insurmountable.

4

So Vlemk's life continued, day after day and week after week. Insofar as possible, he kept himself drunk. In due time, were it not for the picture, he might have forgotten his unhappiness and learned to be content.

But the talking picture of the Princess would give him no rest. It complained and nagged until he was ready to throw it out the window; yet complaint and unpleasantness were by no means all that the picture was capable of. Sometimes when Vlemk was so sunk in gloom that it took him all his strength to raise his chin from his fists and his elbows from his knees, the picture would speak to him so kindly, with such gentle understanding, that he would burst into tears. At such moments it grieved him that he'd abandoned his profession, that all order had gone out of his life, all trace of dignity. He wrung his hands and ground his teeth and looked longingly at the brushes laid in shabby disarray on the table.

“Well, why don't you paint, then?” said the picture on the box, who had been watching him narrowly for some time. “It can make you no more miserable than you are!”

“Ha!” Vlemk thought, “you know nothing!” He wished with all his heart that he could say it aloud, but owing to the curse he could speak not a single syllable, even to the box. “
No
one knows anything!” he wanted to say, for the opinions of his friends had persuaded him. “We artists are the loneliest, most miserable people in the world, misunderstood, underestimated, scorned and mocked, driven to self-betrayal and dishonesty and starvation! We're masters of skills more subtle than the skills of a wizard or king, yet we're valued less highly than the moron who carves out stone statues with no reference to anything, or sticks little pieces of colored glass together, or makes great brass bell-molds in endless array, the first one no different from the last one!”