Patrick White - The Vivisector

Standing in the lower reaches, the archangel trumpeted up, but muted: ‘I think I’m beginning to see, Mr Duffield. It’s — it’s’—you weren’t sure, it could have been—‘beaut!’ A solemn vindication.

Oh but at the same time you were so much scrabbled garbage waiting to be tossed into the pit.

‘Will you help me down, Don? I’m tired.’

He was also the respected character whom age and illness had transformed into a national monument. Deputations arrived: by arrangement, it could have been. In any case, Miss Courtney the unfortunate sister had on her best dress to open the door. She conducted them to the plinth on which the tribute was laid.

Honeysett came, with Sir Kevin and three guilty Trustees, dressed anonymously in business black. Evidently Honeysett had been chosen to play the official interpreter: it was he who spoke, to their accompaniment of grunts, restless eyebrows and whimsical or frightened smiles.

A dark day outside and a roomful of listening furniture brought him quickly to the reason for their visit, ‘Sir Kevin — and the Trustees — feel you’ll be doing the gallery an honour by allowing us to hold a Retrospective of your work.’ The interpreter’s eyes had the glazed look of someone who may not have memorized the written word; so he laughed, and it deflated him. ‘I don’t expect you’ll object, Hurt.’

The grunts and murmurs of the others weren’t so sure.

At his most jolly-extrovert Honeysett began to stroke the dead knee across from him, but the shock of realizing what he was doing transferred him sharply to the live. His mistake made him laugh his heartiest; while Sir Kevin hung his nose, and the other Trustees were possibly trying to remember what they had heard about Art from their wives, in between being a barrister, a manufacturer of refrigerators and a former nightsoil contractor.

‘We’re planning for next year.’ Sir Kevin vibrated with seriousness.

‘Time to call in stuff from overseas.’ Honeysett was shouting as though you were deaf, when Rhoda was the deaf one.

What did they expect you to say? ‘Well, it’s an honour — yes — certainly.’ He heard himself: humble-mumble, mock surprised — nauseating. ‘It’s an honour for the paintings — independently. It’s so long ago — there doesn’t seem to be — much connection.’ That was a lie; but if they embalm you, they must expect a mummy.

They left him in his chair, in the sealed room used only as a waiting-room: or tomb.

In the hall they were making conversation with Miss Courtney. Somebody was a busybody.

‘Oh yes,’ she was telling. ‘He’s painting all the time. . No, I don’t know. But he’s very absorbed in it. It’s wonderful, isn’t it? Because painting has been his whole life. So you can’t say he isn’t very much alive — can you?’ She giggled: silly old Rhoda asking for reassurance.

He obliterated them after that, not by cultivated deafness, but with the swirling onrush of half-visualized images and raw ideas.

He continued painting, or agonizing. And exercising. They told him he was looking fine. In time he forgot to contradict.

When they began preparing for his exhibition Honeysett came to him at Flint Street. Rhoda had no right to let him upstairs, but she did. Because her brother hadn’t died after all, because she felt safe again, she indulged in her old spitefulness.

Honeysett’s invasion almost blasted you off the perch. ‘You must come in, Hurt — to the gallery — any time you like — discuss the hanging — let us have your views.’ Always a masculine man, he lost his voice on a high, tentative, feminine note. ‘So this is what you’re working on, eh? The new paintings!’

You were so indecently exposed on the scaffold you could imagine your own buttocks trembling white old into the intruder’s face hear the little pfft pfft of fright smell the smell of puffballs unearthed.

Turn round and/or fall.

‘Get out, Gil! Why do you persecute me? Why did Rhoda? She’s the devil’s!’ Always in moments of distress the words clotted round the root of his tongue.

‘Okay, Hurt. Don’t upset yourself. Okay. It was a mistake. We’ll let you know when everything’s ready.’

Honeysett began to retreat, his great sponges already on the stairs: a pneumatic bull threatening matchwood; while you continue gasping throbbing for what you had experienced for what you now understood of the indignity of rape.

Couldn’t paint any more but clamber down off the squeaking scaffold it mightn’t hold together long enough nothing would if the termites got to work.

On the other hand, there were mornings when the mere physical pains throbbed higher, to break into life, or live pain. He dabbed and scratched frantically. He reached out and drew his brush across the hard surface in a broad blaze of conviction and watched the few last drops of fulfilment spurt and trickle and set for ever. He was learning to paint; but as he tottered on the crude block groping for some more persuasive way in which to declare his beliefs, it seemed that he might never master the razor-edge where simplicity unites with subtlety.

In between perching — in the dressing-table glass he had once caught sight of what was half a vulture half an old buckled umbrella rustily clawing a trembling paintbrush — he practised at improving his physical condition. Nowadays he trailed only slightly, unless he happened to come across someone he hadn’t expected, or when the great buses began to topple screaming ballooning down on him. Then he recognized at once, in the eyes of strangers closest to him, his own fear disguised as pity. They were glad of this excuse to pity, because it made them feel virtuous again; and wouldn’t this demi-corpse, standing between themselves and death, act as proxy for them?

‘May we help you,’ asked their sweet smiles, ‘to cross the street?’

‘No, thank you,’ he answered severely, because his own half-buttoned smile might have frightened them. ‘There’s no need.’

Then he walked with what he hoped was hardly noticeable shuffle between the waters Jehovah was holding back. He must face not only the floods of time and traffic, but the Egyptian army of friends, critics, lovers, admirers, with which the Trustees of the State Gallery were threatening him. He must toughen himself.

They decided that, on the evening before the opening of Duffield’s Retrospective Exhibition, the painter himself should be invited to the gallery: “. . alone if you prefer it, Hurtle, though of course Miss Courtney also is welcome, and anyone else you care to bring along to a preview.’ Then, as though Gil Honeysett suspected it might be construed as considerateness, or even sensitivity on his part, he safeguarded himself by adding: ‘Make the most of it, old horse; it will be your last opportunity to look at the paintings before the mob hacks into them.’

‘You surely aren’t thinking of going out this evening! Oughtn’t you to save up your strength for the awful thing ahead of us tomorrow? Hurtle? Whatever can you want to do tonight?’ As though Rhoda didn’t know; probably she never went so far as to read his letter: she didn’t need to.

She had come out, wearing her apron, and was standing in the hall watching. Take Rhoda with him: like hell he would! Themselves alone together amongst the paintings: no gimlet would have bored so deeply. Was he afraid of the sawdust in him? Not all sawdust, but that is what Rhoda would have fetched out; she specialized also in moral flaws and sickness of spirit.

Hearing the flap of the letter-box as he tried not to slam the front door, he wondered if he had remembered to lock the doors which mattered. Too tired already, he couldn’t contemplate turning back, climbing stairs. In any case, what were locks to Rhoda?