Patrick White - The Vivisector

The car began to bound forward; thrown together in deeper conjugal conspiracy, the occupants laughed and called: ‘Good night, Mr Duffield!’

He was relieved to find himself alone with the indeterminate images time would form.

It was nearly three weeks after her party when he received a note from Olivia asking if she might bring her friend Hero to look at the paintings. Three weeks meant a busy life, extreme discretion — or indifference. He was surprised at himself too, for giving so little thought to the Greeks since their meeting, but matters of greater importance, germinated on the same occasion, had occupied his mind. He scarcely left the house for working. He would run out, usually at dusk, and walk hard round a block or two, when the faces he passed, if they didn’t ignore him, appeared to take fright. He would hurry back with food, anything that could be quickly and easily eaten, and after stuffing his mouth with handfuls of torn-out bread, ‘salmon’ straight from the tin, or chunks of marbled bully, he continued working. Sometimes he cut his hands on the tins and the blood worked in with the paint.

The day of the visit he felt neither inclined nor prepared for ladies of sensibility. Somewhere, he tried to remember, he had an opened tin of chocolate biscuits. He looked and found he had a couple of spoonfuls of tea-dust; to save time he had been drinking water, sometimes a swig of alcohol to cut the knots.

Finally, he put the visitors out of his head: till the sound of the doorbell and knocker in collaboration, brought them back.

After she had drawn a short breath, Olivia said: ‘I hope we haven’t disturbed you.’

‘Why? Isn’t this what we arranged?’ Though his coldness was natural, his surprise must have sounded exaggerated.

‘Oh yes,’ she hissed, ‘but other, more important things crop up.’

She was out to show she had understanding, but the attempt was too obvious. He continued looking coldly at them. They lowered their eyes.

Each had studied her appearance, no doubt in consultation, to make it look unstudied. Olivia was wearing an old, though well-cut coat and skirt, her hair, without a hat, slightly dishevelled. Hero was dressed, surprisingly and unfortunately, in brown, though fashion might have called it ‘cinnamon’: it made her look dowdy, livery, black. Her one affectation was a bunch of violets, which she stood holding like a little girl, and raised to her nose in moments of doubt or embarrassment. In the beginning her embarrassment was almost unbroken. He couldn’t leave off looking at the violets, which she kept permanently raised. He noticed the violet tones in her brown, livery skin.

Because there was nothing else he could do he led them upstairs. Once the front door was shut, their scents closed in on him, and his senses began to respond.

He laughed at one point on the stairs.

‘What is it?’ Olivia asked severely.

‘I remembered there was a Greek I met. In Paris. After the war. Her name was Calvacoressi, I think — Hélène Calvacoressi.’

He heard the toes of their shoes stabbing at the uncarpeted stairs.

‘Was she a cocotte?’ Hero asked in a prim tone he had detected at times on their first meeting.

‘I think she was only a woman,’ he answered mildly.

He couldn’t understand why he had allowed them to come, or why he had been prepared to expose himself by letting them look at his paintings. But they had reached the top: the loose boards on the landing were creaking; he could hear a sound of friction on one of the women, from subterranean silk, or hot rubber. He could hear one in particular, breathing as though submitting to fate; free will was an illusion formerly encouraged by free limbs.

Olivia coughed and said: ‘Hurtle — I’ve been telling Hero how I used to come to your parents’ house — to play — in the old days.’

He grunted. Which version, he wondered, had she painted?

They went into the front room, which was larger than the back studio-bedroom, thus more formal in a way; but it was cold too: the cold light of a cold day splintered through the araucaria.

‘If you’ll sit down I’ll show you some paintings.’

He hadn’t meant his voice to sound ironical, but it did: he had noticed some rat pellets on the boards. There were no chairs, only the grey waste of the bed he hadn’t had time to make. He had slept there the night before: the room still had the smell of sleep.

They sat down, Hero Pavloussi and Olivia Davenport, uneasily contiguous. Hero held the violets over her mouth and chin. Her eyes appeared luminously tragic, though possibly this was what Greek convention demanded.

He began, only dutifully, to turn some of the stacked canvases and boards. None of the paintings interested him now; in fact he wondered why he had painted some of them, and the presence of his two visitors drained them of any significance they had ever had. Yet each of the two subdued women seated on the bed had worked in him at moments in their relationship as compellingly as his original compulsion to paint the dead paintings he was showing.

Hero was mostly silent, relying on her bunch of violets to express subtleties of which she would have been incapable. When she was not brooding behind it, she sat forward, one arm resting on her crossed knees, wrist rather limp, the ball of violets gently moving back and forth. He followed it with his eyes: it might be a turning point.

Whereas Hero was careful to confine herself to monosyllables, Olivia made several practised remarks. She was a professional at the game of looking at paintings, and liked to exercise her skill even on her off days. This was one of the off days, just how far off she was only beginning to realize. She was bored. She was haggard. She was probably menstruating.

One canvas, he noticed, was so appallingly muddy he couldn’t believe it was his.

‘I’m afraid I have nothing to offer you but some stale chocolate biscuits,’ he heard himself announce.

Hero was innocent enough to play. ‘Why should you offer us anything else when you’re showing us the beautiful paintings?’

Olivia displayed her long white throat and a contrived smile. She began to hum. She was so at home she turned her back on the paintings; she started strolling about, looking at dust, at the corpses of flies, out the window, or more specifically, inward at her own thoughts. This left him in greater intimacy with Hero, which, after all, had been the real purpose in Olivia’s bringing her.

Finding herself unprotected, Hero looked for mercy. Instead of a congestion of uncertain, borrowed opinions, signs of a personal life again began to flicker in her.

‘I’m sorry if I appear so ignorant — which I am — Mr Duffield — but interested.’

Her awkward apology restored her beauty. Her heavy eyelids were particularly noticeable. Moreover, they looked sincere. A kind of tenderness was established between them, so innocent he wouldn’t have felt ashamed of it in the most cynical company.

‘Nothing I’ve shown you so far is very important,’ he clumsily mumbled. ‘Not today, at least. Perhaps it’s the light. Or one of the metabolic days.’ Hero’s presence made him feel ashamed of his pretentious word the moment he had used it.

Looking out of the window Olivia was saying: ‘You’ll have to cut down that tree, Hurtle: it’s too depressing. It soaks up the light, and will probably fall on the house if you get a gale from the right quarter.’

Her friend shivered, and looked more livery than before; but whatever influence Olivia had, she couldn’t quench Hero’s eyes: they had the curious fixed intensity of the eyes of saints painted on wood.

‘What’s that?’ She suddenly sounded passionate. ‘This painting you’re putting away? Why don’t you show it to me?’