Patrick White - The Vivisector

It was drizzling very slightly: in the street the lamps were shedding long, oily blurs of light. He looked back, and Rhoda was standing, in actual flesh, at one of the lower windows. From street level it looked as though her pointed chin was piercing the sill. Her receded eyes reflected the same blur of night and rain in which he had been plunged. Or was it something less impersonal? He remembered her saying: I don’t believe artists know half the time what they’re creating. Oh yes, all the tralala, the technique — that’s another matter. But like ordinary people who get out of bed, wash their faces, comb their hair, cut the tops off their boiled eggs, they don’t act, they’re instruments which are played on, or vessels which are filled — in many cases only with longing. Was it this? Or had he dreamed or imagined, or heard it from another quarter?

He hurried off as fast as he had learnt, away from the house his sister had taken over and populated with his dwarfing thoughts.

The State Gallery, at which he arrived by secretly commissioned taxi, was an illuminated block of stone: no blurs here, or half-remembered night thoughts. Two or three of the attendants had been persuaded to stay behind for the unorthodox occasion; it was their turn to put on the hangdog look of sentimental subservience, while he straddled the entrance in what they must have recognized as show-all shorts. (Rhoda would have admired his legs!)

It was all the more irritating when Honeysett rushed forward: he couldn’t get there quickly enough, to take an arm, no matter which, as though dealing with an old, breakable man; and the old man himself noticed his good black suit was looking shiny, and his wide trousers were flapping as deviously as the grocer’s skirt.

‘Here’s the catalogue, Hurtle. Hope you like it.’

‘Thank you, Gil-bert.’ Out of politeness, he attempted the full name, but it split; all the words, like their gestures, were wooden.

He daren’t look at the catalogue except to notice the carved-out DUFFIELD. Oh God, there was no avoiding it now: he was going to be held responsible.

As they walked across the blaze of parquet, he heard himself start a rigmarole: couldn’t be blamed in the circumstances. ‘The lettering, Gil — whatever possessed you to let them print the name in red? Red’s too — too aggressive. It’s coming at you on a motor-bike. And the spacing makes the whole thing look out of proportion.’

‘Too late. It’s done now.’ The extrovert patience of it made the speaker sound too vulnerable.

‘It’s tragic nothing ever comes out perfect.’ Well, Gil had asked for it.

They had almost crossed the desert: the plodding director and the silly old babbling coot. At least that was how it could seem in the game of appearances, and rejecting half the evidence: all these paintings, along the walls, the windows to your actual, willed life, your every iridescent tremor and transparent thought.

As Gil Honeysett led from room to room it was some consolation to be able to touch the surfaces of paint and take refuge from the immodesty of words.

Only Honeysett, in his innocence, wouldn’t leave it at that. ‘Aren’t you pleased, Hurtle?’ Determined to draw you when you weren’t going to be drawn.

‘Yes. It’s splendid.’ It was too, as a concrete achievement. ‘Yes. I’m happy about it.’ When a flow of saliva started, and you had to swallow. ‘A bit of a give-away, though.’

He cackled, and hoped it sounded dry.

‘How a give-away?’

‘To see your life hung out — your whole life of dirty washing.’

‘How can you avoid it? Not if you’re an artist of any account. ’

‘Oh no, you can’t help it. Anyway, the important part isn’t here. Not what matters.’

They were both growing uneasy.

With deliberately ugly gestures, Gil had begun to ease his pants. ‘You mean those paintings you’re working on?’ Guilty over what he shouldn’t have seen.

‘Not what I’m working on. What I shall begin. When it has been worked out in me.’

Poor Gil was looking terribly embarrassed. Shouldn’t be surprised if he was wearing corsets under that suit too tight and too flash for his age.

They lingered awhile in the paradise gardens, watching the display of fireworks and listening to their own thoughts.

Then Honeysett kindly offered: ‘I’ll drive you home, Hurt, if you like. You ought to get some sleep, to face the fashionable rabble tomorrow.’

‘Yes, please.’

As they wound through the dark, corkscrew streets he remembered to remind: ‘Drop me before the corner, Gil. I’d rather finish it on foot. My sister’s very inquisitive, and would like nothing better than to find out where I’ve been.’

Honeysett laughed: he was one of those who would always sound a big boy.

The night of what she had referred to as the Awful Thing, there was no avoiding Rhoda. Mrs Volkov, who would be there, as familiar, or relative, had run up a dress for her in rose silk. Some of its seams had escaped its creator’s machine in places, but the colour of the silk assured a certain festive panache, and the folds seemed to breathe a scent of musky pot-pourried rose. Rhoda herself was burning with a fever of gaiety. She had tried to smother it under a blanket of white powder, but its hectic fire had broken out along the ridges of her cheeks.

In this context, her arthritic knuckles were more obtrusive than usually. ‘Are they painful?’ he asked, and just prevented himself from putting out his fingers to explore; they had the same quality as carved horn.

‘No.’ She composed her lips over her teeth. ‘Mrs Cutbush is thrilled. She always knew you were kind and thoughtful.’

‘After all, the bloody Cutbush couple picked me up off — off the pavement. And everybody has a Cutbush or two in their collection. ’

Tonight he and Rhoda, together, were slinging the dishes around in the sink. One of them broke one dish. He threw it in the bin.

Rhoda said: ‘Mrs Cutbush has read that “everybody” will be at the gallery for the opening of the Retrospective. She’s read they’re going to serve champagne.’

Although it was a mild winter, they put on their coats, Rhoda’s bald squirrel, and his old yellow tweed, for protection.

‘We should have bought you a new fur coat.’

‘At the end of our lives?’ She dropped the remark like a cannonball, when it should have sounded no more than air escaping from a balloon.

The Department had sent a long black car, which made it something like the occasion when she had brought him back from the hospital.

‘I told them I didn’t want it: not to be in their debt any more than is necessary.’

‘ I wanted it,’ Rhoda said.

So he was in her hands, as far as you can be in human ones. He rather enjoyed it. With his live hand he held the dead one against his stomach. The motion of the car made him feel almost randy. They might have been driving to a rorty party instead of to a slaughter.

‘With one thing and another, I’ve neglected my cats, Hurtle — but what can I do?’

Neglect or not, she smelt of horse-flesh, and he wondered what the company would think. Probably most would have had a snifter beforehand; he and Rhoda were both comfortably brandified.

Once or twice he risked burping in the obsequious departmental car. Hardly ever drunk, except on paint. And Pa, that bottle-o, drunk once on misery.

Rhoda said: ‘How happy Father and Maman would have been.’

‘You didn’t see my father.’

‘No.’

‘Or mother?’

‘Of course I did. Mrs Duffield. I remember her wedding ring. It was the broadest I had ever seen.’

‘Did you know my grandfather died of a stroke on the Parmatta Road?’