by Alex Miller
‘You guessed!’ She was pleased. ‘No. It’s just me. Robert doesn’t paint any more. I do all the painting now. The subjects are still Robert’s. The ideas are still his, but the brushwork’s all mine these days.’ She laughed. ‘That was very good, Toni.’
‘Your technique’s fantastic,’ he said.
‘I love painting.’
‘You were always good, but you’re way ahead of where you were four years ago. It doesn’t look like a painting by someone who is unhappy.’
‘Oh, I’m not unhappy! For goodness sake, don’t think that. Please!’ She turned to him, reproaching him gently. ‘You don’t like it, do you?’
‘It’s brilliant.’
‘You don’t like it, Toni. Why don’t you say so? Or can’t we tell each other the truth anymore?’ She watched him. After a moment she asked, ‘Why did you never come to Sydney to see us in the early days? You promised solemnly that last night that you would come and visit us. It was almost a sacred vow. Do you remember?’
‘Of course I remember.’
‘You and Robert swore to remain friends forever.’
‘We’d all been drinking pretty solidly that night.’
‘That wasn’t all it was.’
Did she believe, he wondered, that the neglect of his old friendship with Robert had been deliberate? He was silent for some time, meditating on the injustice of such a view. ‘Once you’ve got a child,’ he said, ‘you can’t just drop everything and go whenever you feel like it.’
‘No, I suppose not. I’m sorry, I didn’t think of that. We’re such incredibly selfish creatures, aren’t we? We only see the complications in our own lives.’
‘I often thought of coming up. Teresa wouldn’t have minded. It wasn’t that.’ But in fact Teresa would have minded greatly if he’d ever suggested going to Sydney to stay with Robert and Marina.
Marina held up the poppies and said, ‘I’d better go and put these in water.’ She turned abruptly and walked out of the room, as if she were leaving him to consider what had been said.
He did not feel invited to follow her. Robert’s father gave his cough; the dry metallic comment of a sceptic. Toni turned and looked at him. There was something in the old man’s style that attracted him; his age and his nearness to his end, no doubt. There was an uncanny likeness of father to son in the shrunken frame of Theo Schwartz. It might almost have been Robert himself present in the room in the transfigured form of his dying father, Robert’s features locked in behind the mysterious mask of old age and sickness.
Marina called from the kitchen, ‘Come and see!’
As he went out the door he was unable to resist a backward glance at Theo. The old man was watching him.
There was a short passage. On the left side of the passage a closed door, on the right an open door. He might easily have walked past the open door and gone straight through to the kitchen and on to the studio, where Marina would be waiting for him. He paused and stood looking into the room. Framed in the mirror of the dressing-table was the reflection of the single bed in its old position, pushed against the wall behind the door. Toni’s room they had called it in the years before Nada, before Teresa, before the installations, when he was still living at the flat with his mother and father in Port Melbourne and tutoring part-time under Robert at the art school. He had been a painter of pictures in those days, before his father’s sudden death. Now, as he stood looking in at the room, he might have been a traveller from the future then, his presence unsuspected by the young man asleep on the bed; a young man without self-irony, trusting implicitly to the necessity of success and to the potency of his gift. Toni could almost taste on his palate the pungent memory of that young man who had been himself then, crashed on the bed in the grey dawn light after talking and drinking all night with Robert and his friends, his head reeling with the effects of alcohol and the delirium of ideas. Something of him was still here in this house, something of his own life persisting in their lives, a sense of something unfinished between them.
He turned and walked along the passage. Marina had never taken part in those nights of drinking, but had gone to bed early and let them get on with it. He had thought her then too self-effacing, too lacking in enthusiasm, too comfortably in the shadow of Robert’s vivid intelligence to be interesting. But perhaps she had merely been bored with the frantic adolescence of their ambitions and had preferred the company of a book in her own bed to the company of her husband’s admiring ensemble of young friends.
The passage opened into the kitchen.
The Iceland poppies stood in a yellow and blue Picasso vase on the benchtop. Beside the flowers was a dish of antipasto covered with a membrane of cling-wrap.
Beyond the kitchen he emerged into a long room. The smell was intense; a mixture of Belgian linen, damar varnish, turps, paint extender and the faint essence of cedar. It was Duchamp’s olfactory art. His own craft that had fallen silent in him on the day of his father’s death. There were no windows. The panes of a lantern roof dispersed an even illumination from above: the controlled light of illusion with which to seduce the eye of the beholder. A timber easel and side table stood at an angle against the end wall. An oil painting in-progress was mounted on the easel, a coloured photograph from a newspaper pinned at eye-level to the right-hand upright of the easel. On the side table the paraphernalia of the craft. A hard-backed chair by the left-hand wall, and two prepared canvases. Behind the chair a white-painted cupboard. The chair faced the easel, as if it had been placed there for someone to observe the artist at work.
Marina was standing beside her painting.
She might have been testing her own presence in the composition, or posed with her work for a publicity photograph—see the artist, see her work. She did not step forward and stand beside him to view the painting with him but remained where she was.
A menacing young man confronted Toni from the centre foreground of the large canvas. Above his tight blue jeans the young man’s naked torso was soft and feminine. He gripped a stone in each clenched fist, a black bandanna masking the lower half of his face, the likeness of another man, but of calm expression, printed in white on the bandanna. The crazy eyes of the half-naked young man blazed above the calm face of the man on the bandanna. Behind him, flames lit up a disordered streetscape in which the indistinct forms of fighting men struggled in front of burning buildings. Red, yellow and green points of light struck suggestively through the smoke above the struggling figures. The painting lacked the detail and finish of the painting in the other room.
Marina watched for his reaction, as if it were she herself who was on display.
The image, he saw, was a greatly enlarged copy of the newspaper photograph. CHAOS RULES was written like a title or a headline across the top of the canvas in pale letters, a simulacrum of the graffiti in the photograph.
There was a movement of air and the distant sound of the front door slamming.
‘Robert’s home,’ Marina said. She walked across to stand beside Toni.
A moment later Robert came in. He was holding his father by the hand, his manner solicitous, respectful and deeply attentive towards the old man, who was having difficulty walking without his son’s assistance. Robert looked across at them, acknowledging them with a lift of his chin and a quick smile. When Robert’s father was seated on the chair facing the easel, Robert came over to them. He held out his hand. ‘Toni,’ he said. ‘It’s really good to see you. I’m so glad you could come.’
‘Welcome back,’ Toni said. ‘It’s going to be great having you two in town again.’
‘You’ve met Dad?’ Robert half-turned towards his father and said with mild astonishment, ‘He came home.’
They stood looking at Robert’s father, as if he were with them by some freakish twist of fate, an object of their peculiar and intense curiosity. Theo looked at the painting on the easel before him and might have been unaware of them.
‘My dad,’ Robert said, a tenderness and something of regr
et in his voice. He might almost have said, My son.
Robert was a lightly built man of fifty. He was youthful and alert. His thick greying hair was cropped close to the dome of his skull and he was wearing an expensive grey business suit with a black silk shirt and green silk tie. An ample handkerchief of the same material as the tie flopped from the breast pocket of his jacket.
‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘I’m sure Marina’s been looking after you.’ His tone and his manner were friendly and encouraging, but behind the lenses of his spectacles his pale eyes were hooded, tired and distracted. ‘Marina told me you’re working on a big new project. I knew you would be. That’s wonderful, Toni.’ Without waiting for a response to this he kissed Marina on the lips, then turned and faced Toni, his arm through Marina’s arm, holding her to his side much as his father had. ‘Has Marina told you?’
‘I haven’t said anything,’ she said.
‘You remember Oriel Liesker?’
‘Sure. Of course.’
‘Oriel’s partly our reason for coming back to Melbourne just now.’
Marina said quickly, ‘Not the whole reason.’
‘No, not the whole reason.’ Robert frowned. ‘But I don’t think we’d have actually come back, would we, darling, if Oriel hadn’t been so persuasive?’ He turned back to Toni. ‘Oriel’s been working on us for a while. We’ve finally been seduced. She’s curating the new Bream Island sculpture park and art space.’ He allowed a moment for effect. ‘She’s offered us the inaugural show.’ He paused again. ‘It’s going to create a lot of interest. Sydney’s jealous.’ He looked at Marina, as if he asked for her confirmation of this improbable claim.
‘No wonder you came back then,’ Toni said. ‘Congratulations!’ He shook hands with them both. ‘I’ve heard a lot about the space. It should be brilliant.’ Robert insisting on a purely professional reason for their return, their move back to be viewed as a considered opportunity in the advancement of their careers, rather than merely satisfying Marina’s vague need to feel at home.
‘So you’ve been out to the island?’
‘No, I’ve just read about it.’
Robert waited for the space of two heartbeats. ‘Marina and I would like you to join us. We’d like it to be a group show. The three of us. Our paintings and your installation.’ They watched him, like parents who have given a favourite child a present. The collaborative team of Schwartz and Golding, seduced back from the main game to lead this minor advance in the artistic life of their mother city. They might almost have not been away, Robert’s manner implied, their absence from Melbourne an unsettling dislocation, this the steadying reality. It seemed that Robert would rejoin the fractured ends of the disjointed narrative of their friendship, as if nothing, after all, was to be irrecoverable.
‘That’s incredibly generous of you,’ Toni said. He was perplexed by the offer. He had not expected anything like it. He should tell them now that he was in fact without ideas and his work at a standstill. He did not want to relinquish the attraction of the situation, however—at least not just yet. ‘But is Oriel okay with it? She doesn’t know my work.’
Robert said firmly, ‘Oriel’s fine with it.’ He stepped away from Marina. ‘Let’s go in and have a drink. The opening’s in two months. You can have something of your new installation ready by then, can’t you? A section? An aspect? We’re putting in three paintings. These two you’ve seen and another one.’ There was something just a little bullying in Robert’s brisk tone now, something of the dean of the faculty demanding his own way, insisting his plan be adopted by his subordinates without modification.
Toni wondered if he had been Robert’s first choice of a partner for the show. ‘I’m flattered, Robert. Really. Thanks.
It’s wonderful of you.’
Robert smiled slowly. ‘Good!’ He was the concerned teacher once again, their old leader at art school pursuing the project of his vision, ever proposing to his students and his staff the sense behind what happens. A man of high certainty and composure, the person whom they were glad to have in charge in a crisis. Against all the prejudices and fashions of the day, it had been Robert who had opened out a moment in their lives when it had been possible for them to believe in something they might have called authority, something, in an earlier age, which they might have been content to refer to as his school. But that was in the past now and would not be recovered, Toni was suddenly sure of it, though it seemed Robert had not noticed, or would not notice. And yet, almost against his will, Toni wanted to believe in the idea. The Bream Island Inaugural Show—Schwartz, Golding & Powlett. It was seductive.
Robert said, ‘It’s a great opportunity for all of us.’ He held both hands out palms up, considering two weighty objects. ‘The space needs a three-dimensional installation, or a sculpture, to bring it up. Our paintings would be lost there on their own.’
Over Robert’s shoulder Toni could see the old man, his hands gripping his knees, his head craned forward, his jaw slack, his body jumping and jiggling, his attention anchored to the floor.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t make it to your show. Truly sorry,’ Robert said. ‘It was just impossible for me to get there.’
‘I wasn’t expecting either of you to get to it.’
‘Marina told me I missed something important. I believe no one reviewed it? If things hadn’t been so chaotic, I might have written a piece for Art & Text. Have you got photos or studies? Perhaps I could still do something.’
‘No. I just put it together. I knew what I wanted. I didn’t do any studies.’ Toni found that he did not want to talk about his last installation with Robert.
Marina said, ‘I couldn’t decide whether you meant them to be a crowd of victims in need of help or a sinister mob.’
There was a silence.
Robert said, ‘You’ll have to see the island space before you can finally decide whether you’ll do the show. Marina can take you one day next week, if that suits. What do you think, darling? There’s that business of getting the keys from the park ranger. Can you organise it?’
Toni realised that his viewing of the island was to be purely a formality for Robert.
They turned at the clatter of Theo Schwartz’s spectacles hitting the floor.
They watched Robert hurry across the studio and lean to pick them up, one hand on the old man’s shoulder.
Marina said, ‘Why don’t we go in? He won’t be a minute.’
In the room where the table was set for lunch she moved from place to place, adjusting the position of a knife, a glass, brushing at the cloth with her fingers. A sleek silver-haired cat emerged from the passage and pressed itself against her legs. She bent and picked it up, cradling it in her arms like a baby. ‘You’ve abandoned me, haven’t you, darling?’ She set the cat on the floor again. ‘Misty’s fallen in love with Theo.’
They watched the cat patrol the room.
He considered asking her if their plan was to return to Sydney after the island show, but she no longer seemed accessible. She spoke softly to the cat, coaxing, lightly teasing, accusing it of betraying her, as if she and the cat were alone in the room. The cat responded to her voice with a low sound in its throat, as if it reassured her of its continuing fidelity, as if indeed fidelity were a delicate game they played.
Robert came in from the kitchen. He had taken off his jacket and tie and carried a bottle of white wine and a corkscrew. ‘Dad’s having a lie down. He’s too unwell to join us.’ He drew the cork from the bottle. ‘Wine, Toni?’
‘Thanks. You finished a new book while you were in Sydney?’
Marina set her glass on the table and went out to the kitchen.
‘I can’t stay long,’ Toni said. ‘I have to pick Nada up at two-thirty. Kinder finishes early on Wednesday.’
Robert looked at him. ‘I’d very much like to meet her.’ He was silent a moment. ‘I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be a father.’ He gestured at the chairs. ‘Why don’t we sit down? So it’s
still portraits with you then? These costumed racks that Marina is so enthusiastic about?’
Toni shrugged. ‘It’s always been people with me.’
‘You’ve dispensed with likeness, is that it?’ Robert reached for an olive and chewed it, moisture glistening on his lips, his desire to understand, to be informed. ‘Can we have a true portrait without likeness? Without personality? Without the individual?’
‘What’s a true portrait?’ Toni asked.
They laughed at the unanswerable question, a spark there suddenly of the old attraction, the competing visions of master and pupil.
‘It’s always been the interesting question for me, how we depict ourselves,’ Toni said. He had no theories about his work. He supposed that the faceless presences of his installations had represented for him something like his own unofficial history, a kinship history of displacement. A story of losers, not winners, of those who had drifted into the dark without a trace, his fascination not with personality but with the impersonal. It had been something like that. He was not clear. He did not want to be clear. Clarity about such things offended his sense of their authenticity. His abandonment of paint and canvas and the switch to installations on the death of his father had been as much a surprise to him as it had been to everyone who knew him. He had not planned it. Indeed he had attempted to keep on painting after his father’s death, but had not been able to. He lost his confidence and the paintings he did were empty. Painting didn’t work for him anymore. So, reluctantly, for he loved it, he gave it up. He had never been able to share his deepest feelings about his work with anyone but his father. He looked at Robert. ‘I’m not actually working on anything. I haven’t been able to work for weeks. I’ve done nothing since the last installation.’
Robert examined the olives. ‘You’re saying you don’t have anything on the go at the moment?’
‘That’s right. Sorry. You’ll have to get someone else to do this show with you.’
