Patrick White - The Vivisector

The new arrival dusted the bench with his newspaper. ‘Pretty smutty the seats get.’ He was smoking a well-matured, fuming pipe which erupted when he coughed. ‘Can’t be helped, I suppose. ’ The man laughed good-humouredly and proceeded to sit on his own half-charred tobacco crumbs.

His new companion was vaguely, disbelievingly soothed. It was the light, of course, and the smooth, glassy water as the ferry swam free of the wharf.

‘Just the morning for playing truant.’ Everything the smoker said was launched with a courtliness older than his years.

You couldn’t help looking at him: in his decent black suit and carefully dented hat, he was the kind that made you feel younger, and at the same time older, much older.

The man was unfolding his paper. ‘I’m a printer by trade,’ he explained, looking and not looking at the print he was holding. ‘A business of my own. But I’m lucky in employing a team of men I can trust under any circumstances.’ He straightened out the paper, to help him, it seemed, past a chokage possibly caused by emotion. ‘I won’t say it’s all truancy,’ he continued. ‘Duty, too. I make a point, every now and then, on a nice day, of visiting my young sister. She’s a polio victim — living at Manly — the air’s bracing. We’re very close, my sister and me,’ again he straightened the straight paper, ‘so it’s pleasure as well as duty, isn’t it?’ The man’s vulnerable, not quite educated voice broke abruptly off, and he turned to his companion as though appealing for approval.

You longed to give it, but didn’t know how to. If it had been possible to draw the printer’s attention to the elaborately careless design of gulls lashing and flashing in the ferry’s wake; but the man would have thought you crazy, or callous.

To bridge the unorthodox silence the printer asked: ‘Don’t you find at our age — I’d guess we’re roughly the same — a man grows closer to his family? Only natural. Provided there is a family, of course.’

‘A sister.’ Must have sounded too pinched, unnatural; then suddenly he wanted to add, and did: ‘My sister’s a cripple, too.’ He was almost panting.

‘Well, now,’ said the delighted printer, ‘isn’t that a coincidence? But not so bad she can’t get something out of life, I hope?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen her — not since before the war — the first one, that is. She’d left before I got back. Families can drift apart.’

His own contribution to banality made him feel elated, but the printer was obviously disturbed by the enormity in what he had been told. He had taken off his well-conditioned hat. He sat staring at the moving water.

‘War is a terrible thing,’ he said, paying his respects. ‘I was in it myself.’

He began to speak of Gallipoli, the blood and bowels of which were soon shimmering with the gentle radiance of a landscape for a rustic picnic; bodies cannoned off bodies in bursts of manly horseplay; the air vibrated with the strong tones of masculine friendship.

‘No, I wasn’t at Gallipoli,’ his companion had to admit.

France was mentioned, Flanders. The printer was entranced to exchange a few of the place-names which had crystallized in his memory. A single pearl of saliva had formed in one corner of his mouth.

‘I would like,’ he said, fumbling in his pocket, ‘to take the liberty — yes — of offering my card. Name’s Mothersole,’ he half-apologized. ‘Used to be ashamed of it as a boy.’

The recipient of the card stared at the name, and at the sound though unfashionable address. He stared longer than he might have, because he hadn’t a card to offer in exchange.

Mothersole, he could feel, was looking at him rather pointedly. ‘Because I’m inquisitive by nature,’ the printer laughed and admitted, ‘may I ask your name and line of business?’

Duffield said, ‘Duffield.’ His heart was beating like a drum; the voluptuousness of his forced confession was intensified by the flow of water around the ferry; he was almost intolerably happy to receive the trust and friendship of this rather boring, decent man.

‘“Duffield”,’ Mothersole repeated over sunken chin, ‘a good, solid, English name.’

At risk of ruining it all, Duffield confessed: ‘I’m a painter — an artist.’

The printer heaved round, shining with enthusiasm and his morning shave. ‘Well, now, if you’re an artist, I must try to interest you in a project I’ve had in mind. The idea,’ he lowered his voice for modesty’s sake, ‘is to print some little books for children — of unusual format — in the shape of animals, say — written by myself, and illustrated by some artist I haven’t discovered — till perhaps now!’

Duffield was glad of the printer’s card: he could continue staring at it.

‘Of course I don’t know — are you a successful artist?’ Mothersole asked.

‘I’m said to be.’

‘Then you won’t be interested. Forget about it.’ He turned to resettle himself, and at the same time half-changed the subject. ‘Any children? Are you married?’

‘No. No.’

Incredulity prevented the printer speaking for some time; then he said: ‘I’m a widower. My wife died at the end of the war — this second one. It was too much for her.’ He might have consoled himself watching the flow of water, but thought to ask: ‘Were you in the second war as well?’

Duffield laughed. ‘I wasn’t caught a second time; or rather, I took on some camouflage work. It didn’t last long. Because we didn’t see eye to eye, they decided I was mentally defective. Fortunately my lungs gave out. I developed pneumonia — twice in one year. You can imagine how thankful I was for those lungs — and my mental defects. The war years are too remote from art — from life, you might say — for any kind of artist. You have to get through them — intellectually, at least — the quickest way possible.’

He realized the effects his irreverence was having on his new friend Mothersole. As for himself, he was hurt because his words were not his own: they were forced out of him by some devilish ventriloquist, to help destroy what he should, in any case, never aspire to. Almost the only thing he and Mothersole could hope to share was the morning of radiant light and water.

‘I was in the second war,’ the printer murmured piously. ‘Not very actively, I must admit. I spent nearly three years sedentary, administering transit camps in the Middle East. I had to be in it — because of my boy.’

What if you had got a son, and the copy showed the same flaws as the original? Or worse still: if the copy had shown a flawless mediocrity? Mothersole at least was of a nature to forgive faults in the source of his fulfilment.

‘I lost my boy,’ he was telling. ‘But I have my grandson. That’s a consolation. It wasn’t enough for my wife, though. You might say she was another of the casualties of war.’

Now that they were crossing the Heads, the swell from the ocean was jostling the sturdy ferry: it had started rolling. Some of the passengers silently turned a greenish yellow; others tried to laugh their sickness off. Only the two incongruous friends or associates seated on a bench near the bows appeared unaware of any change in climate or course: except that the more disreputable figure leaned forward, as the ocean gale struck them, and was baring his teeth, still in a strangely unconscious way, as he spoke.

‘I wonder whether that’s really the reason she died. It’s difficult to know what people die of. For instance, I had a mistress. I took it for granted I’d killed her, because her husband wrote me a letter telling me straight out that I had.’

The printer looked startled at sound of a word he wouldn’t have dared, he had no need to, use. He might have re-lit his pipe, but continued clutching it by the bowl after a glance in the direction of the wind.