The Art of Living

by John Gardner

  He learned, among other things, why the poet no longer wrote poetry and the ex-violinist had turned in disgust against music.

  “My audience,” said the poet, lips trembling, eyebrows twitching, “has, collectively, the brains of one pig.” He pursed his lips. “Perhaps that’s unfair,” he said. “Perhaps I underestimate pigs.” This the poet said in Vlemk’s studio, where no one could hear him but Vlemk and the painting of the Princess on the box, who said nothing. “What good is it,” the poet asked, pacing up and down, flaxen hair flying, “telling my audience things they can never understand?” He puffed at his pipe, sending up angry little clouds, and continued, jabbing with his pipestem and pacing again, “We know, you and I, the sad truth of the matter: to fools, nothing can be said; to the wise, nothing need be said. Take all the wisdom of Homer and Virgil. We knew it in our hearts when we were four, you and I—No, I’m serious, my friend!” He raised his hand as if Vlemk might find his voice and object. “Who learns anything—I say, anything—from poetry? Say I describe all the agony of love with magnificent precision, showing true and false, revealing the applications for the priesthood and men engaged in business. If I’m right, exactly and precisely right, what do you say—you, the reader? ‘that’s right,’ you say, if you’re wise and not a fool. What have I taught you, then? Nothing, of course! Nothing whatsoever! I have said, with a certain elegance, exactly what you know. And what does the fool say? Why, nothing, of course. ‘I never really cared much for poetry,’ says he. ‘I like a man to say what he means.’ Poetry’s a trinket, then, a luxury and amusement, a kind of secret handshake between equals. Nothing wrong with that, of course. It’s an occupation no worse than, say, being a cook”—his lips twisted to a sneer—“a cook, ha ha, a man whose art is consumed and goes sliding back to earth!” He heaved a deep sigh. “I have therefore abandoned that paltry mistress poesy.” He stood now angrily gazing down at the crooked little streets. “I have put my intelligence to more interesting uses,” he said quietly, glancing past his shoulder. “I steal people’s jewelry. I kidnap people’s children. That surprises you?”

  Vlemk shrugged.

  “I do not kill people,” said the poet; “that’s against my principles! I merely upset them a little—teach them values, like Goethe and Schiller.”

  Vlemk nodded. It crossed his mind that if his friend the ex-poet was really a jewel-thief and kidnapper of children he’d be a good deal better off than he was; but Vlemk let it go. Poetic license. It was true—Vlemk knew because he’d seen it—that the man picked pockets and stole eggs.

  The violinist said, not many nights later, sitting in the abandoned railroad car which was his temporary home, “I have only one real ambition in life: getting even.”

  Vlemk splashed his hands open and lifted his eyebrows.

  “ ‘With whom?’ you say,” said the ex-violinist, translating. His spectacles flashed, catching a little light from the candle on the crate between them. “Audiences, composers, conductors, violin makers … Everyone’s my enemy! Why should I make exceptions?” He passed Vlemk the crackers and Chianti, for in small things he was generous, and the Chianti had turned. The ex-violinist sat grinding his teeth, his fingertips trembling, then continued very softly, “You have to understand how it is for us performers. Some fool writes a piece and we interpret with all our hearts, but there’s nothing to interpret, just the noises a fool makes, or if there’s something there the conductor gets the tempo wrong, or the audience dislikes it because they’ve heard on good authority that all Slavs are sentimental. At best, a string on the violin breaks.” Loudly, he cracked his knuckles, all ten of them in rapid succession, so that a shudder ran down Vlemk’s back. Though the light in the railroad car was dim—too dim for Vlemk to make out what the creatures were, moving now and then in the corners—it seemed to Vlemk that as he spoke there were tears in the ex-musician’s eyes. “Thousands of dollars’ worth of music lessons, thousands of hours of arpeggios and scales—for that! Very well!” He sucked in breath. “There are other uses for dexterity like mine!”

  Vlemk raised his eyebrows and opened his hands.

  The musician leaned forward, confidential, trembling violently. “I steal valuables from purses in coatrooms,” he said. “There’s no real money in it, but the response of the crowd is tremendous.”

  Vlemk had long made a point of never being alone with the third of his unsavory friends, the axe-murderer, but one night in January, when he ducked into a doorway to avoid an icy rain, that too happened. The axe-murderer was a dour man with thick, hairy forearms, short, thick legs, and a neck as big around as a large man’s thigh. He had a mouth made unpleasant by small, open sores, and eyes that seemed never to fix on anything but to stare with fuming discontent in whatever direction his small, shiny head was turned. He rarely spoke, but tonight, pinned shoulder to shoulder beside Vlemk in the doorway, waiting for the rain to stop—the street full of shadows, the lamps not yet lit—the murderer abruptly, for no reason, broke his rule. “Vlemk,” he said, in a voice as low and gravelly as a frog’s, “the trouble with you is, you’re insensitive to the power of evil.”

  Vlemk nodded, shuddering, and made an effort to look thoughtful. He craned his head forward, thinking the rain was perhaps lighter than he’d imagined, but the shoulder of the murderer pinned him tightly against the doorjamb, and he soon realized that the pressure against him was intentional; he was meant to stay, hear the murderer out, listen attentively, as if his life depended on it, for indeed, conceivably, it did.

  “You have a strange point of view,” said the axe-murderer. “It seems to you quite normal, because the herd of humanity generally shares it; but believe me your view is in fact both strange and irrational.”

  Again Vlemk nodded.

  “You look for Beauty in the world,” said the axe-murderer. “You formulate impressions in the archaic vocabulary of Grace. This is a mistake. What the intelligent man looks for is interest. Look at our friends the ex-poet and the ex-musician. They started out as pursuers of Beauty, devotees of supernatural premises. What are they now?” He laughed so deep in his throat it might have come from a well. “They are retired, my friend. And even in retirement they have no more understanding of the truth than a pair of fat ducks.” He turned his sore-specked, expressionless face, allowing the eyes to bore coldly into Vlemk. “I, on the other hand,” he said, “am not retired. Actually, strictly speaking, I haven’t yet begun. Many people say I will never begin, but I spit in their eyes.” He glanced downward, indicating that Vlemk should do the same, and from under the skirt of his overcoat showed the blade of an axe.

  Vlemk swallowed and quickly nodded. The rain was beginning to let up now, but still the firm pressure of the murderer’s shoulder boxed him in.

  “You’re an idealist, Vlemk,” said the axe-murderer. “Reality, you think, is what might be, or what peeks from behind what is. What evidence have you for this shadow you prefer to the hard, smelly world we exist in? Look again!” Again they looked down, both of them, at the axe. “Reality is matter in all its magnificent complexity,” said the murderer, “the sludge of actuality in infinite mechanical aspiration. Break the machine and you begin to know its usefulness! Close off the view of the mountains with a curtain and you begin to see the glory of the view.” He pressed harder against Vlemk and asked with a sneer, “You imagine you search out Reality, painter of little boxes?” He laughed. “You’re an evader and avoider! I give you my assurance—experience is the test—chop off the heads of a family of seven, let the walls and the floors be splashed with their blood, let the dogs howl, the cats flee, the parakeets fly crazily in their filthy wicker cages, then ask yourself: is this or is this not Reality?—this carnage, this disruption of splendid promise? Take the blinders from your eyes! Death and Evil are the principles that define our achievements and in due time swallow them. Ugliness is our condition and the basis of our interest. Is it our business to set down lies, or are we here to tell the Truth, though the Truth may be un
speakably dreadful?”

  Vlemk nodded slowly and thoughtfully, and pursed his lips.

  The murderer’s face grew more unpleasant than usual, and when he spoke again his grumble was so low and disheartened that Vlemk could barely hear him. “Admittedly all this is as yet still a little theoretical. The police are everywhere, and how is one to get proper coverage? The newspapers suppress things, edit things. I’m like you, my friend Vlemk, if what I hear about the picture of the Princess is true: a genius who’s never reached his audience.” He chuckled, miserable as a snake. Suddenly the murderer drew in one sharp breath and became still all over, his hand clamped firm as a vise on the box-painter’s arm. “Perhaps this is it!” he whispered. A family of five was entering the old empty church across the street, ducking in out of the rain, perhaps. As soon as the door closed behind them, the murderer stepped softly from the doorway, tipping up his coat-collar and pulling down his hat, then hurried away through the rain to the farther curb. At once, before the murderer could change his mind, Vlemk set off, almost running, in the direction of the tavern. He need not have hurried. When he met the axe-murderer the following night he learned that, as usual, he’d done nothing. Nothing, as usual, had been quite as he required. For some arts, the difficulties are all but insurmountable.

  4

  So Vlemk’s life continued, day after day and week after week. Insofar as possible, he kept himself drunk. In due time, were it not for the picture, he might have forgotten his unhappiness and learned to be content.

  But the talking picture of the Princess would give him no rest. It complained and nagged until he was ready to throw it out the window; yet complaint and unpleasantness were by no means all that the picture was capable of. Sometimes when Vlemk was so sunk in gloom that it took him all his strength to raise his chin from his fists and his elbows from his knees, the picture would speak to him so kindly, with such gentle understanding, that he would burst into tears. At such moments it grieved him that he’d abandoned his profession, that all order had gone out of his life, all trace of dignity. He wrung his hands and ground his teeth and looked longingly at the brushes laid in shabby disarray on the table.

  “Well, why don’t you paint, then?” said the picture on the box, who had been watching him narrowly for some time. “It can make you no more miserable than you are!”

  “Ha!” Vlemk thought, “you know nothing!” He wished with all his heart that he could say it aloud, but owing to the curse he could speak not a single syllable, even to the box. “No one knows anything!” he wanted to say, for the opinions of his friends had persuaded him. “We artists are the loneliest, most miserable people in the world, misunderstood, underestimated, scorned and mocked, driven to self-betrayal and dishonesty and starvation! We’re masters of skills more subtle than the skills of a wizard or king, yet we’re valued less highly than the moron who carves out stone statues with no reference to anything, or sticks little pieces of colored glass together, or makes great brass bell-molds in endless array, the first one no different from the last one!”

  “Does it help,” asked the picture, “to stand there shaking your fists like that?”

  Vlemk the box-painter whirled around, furious, intending to shout obscenities at the picture on the box, though of course he could shout nothing. His face became red as a brick and his eyes bulged, and his breathing was so violent that it seemed he would surely have a heart attack. But at once he changed his mind and put his hands over his face, for he’d seen again, staring at the picture, that the Princess was too beautiful for words.

  “What is it?” asked the picture. “What is it that so upsets you?” She spoke with great kindness and what seemed to Vlemk sincere concern, so that he could only assume that she’d forgotten she’d put the curse on him. (In this he was mistaken.) He tried mouthing words at her, but the picture only stared at him as if in puzzlement, and at last Vlemk gave up in despair and turned sadly away. Tears began to brim up in his eyes and drip down his cheeks.

  “It’s nothing strange,” thought Vlemk, clenching and unclenching his fists. “She fills me with sorrow for what I might have had but lost, this vision of extraordinary beauty I’ve painted on the box.” He ground his teeth and wiped away the tears, but at once his eyes were filled again. “Vision,” he thought woefully, and began to shake his head like a child. “Vision, yes, nothing but a vision—a romantic illusion!” Suddenly he bent over, sobbing.

  “Poor Vlemk!” cried the box in its piping little voice. “Oh poor, poor Vlemk!” If he’d turned around to look, he might have seen to his astonishment that the box was crying too. But he did not turn. He sobbed for a long time, deaf to the peeping sobs behind him; then at last, with a great, broad shudder and a grinding of his teeth, he got hold of himself. What a fool he was being! There was no way on earth she could have forgotten that it was she who’d put the curse on him. She was a charmer, his pretty little picture, but mean as a snake! And if the picture had no heart, what of the Princess?

  “I’ve been a dolt,” he thought. “The murderer’s quite right. I must rid myself of idiotic visions!”

  With eyes like a maniac’s he went over to the hook where his artist’s frock hung, carefully took it down, and poked his arms in. He went back to the table where his brushes lay, uncapped a bottle of thinner, poured just a little into a dish, unbuttoned and rolled up his sleeves, then, more meticulous than a surgeon over his knives, began the exceedingly delicate business of cleaning and trimming his brushes. Then he squeezed paint onto his palette and poured oil and glaze into their containers. When all this was ready, he chose a box—a beautiful one of rosewood—and began to paint.

  The picture of the Princess watched with interest. “Another picture of me?” she asked after a time.

  “Every painter,” thought Vlemk, in lieu of giving answer, “has his own proper subject. Some are best at cliffs, some at trees and flowers, some at boats, some at cows crossing a stream, some at churches, some at babies. My proper subject—the subject which for some reason engages me heart and soul—is the Princess’s face.”

  For several hours, Vlemk painted with such intensity that it seemed he might explode.

  Suddenly the picture said, “I don’t look like that!”

  Vlemk turned, nodded with a mysterious dark smile at the picture on the box, then coolly turned away again, back to his work.

  He was painting as he’d never before painted in his life, gazing, unflinching, into the abyss. Every hint his memory of her face provided him, or his increasingly sure knowledge of her perfect twin, the picture he’d earlier painted on the box—the face now watching him in dismay and indignation—he pursued relentlessly, as a surgeon edges into a cortex, following a cancer with the tip of his knife. He softened nothing, gave in nowhere, but set down the Princess’s flaws in bold relief. Nothing escaped him: the fullness of the lower lip which only now, as it helplessly submitted to his brush, did he recognize for what it was, a latent sensualism that, if pushed as he pushed it now in paint, fulfilling its dark potential, might be the Princess’s ruin; the infinitesimal weakness of one eyelid, its barely perceptible inclination to droop; the even less perceptible but nevertheless real inclination toward hairiness on her upper lip and chin, should her diet fall into disorder, her hormones lose balance. It was a terrible experience, painful and alarming, yet at the same time morbidly thrilling. Both about seeing and about finding new ways to give expression to what he saw, he was discovering more in a single night, it seemed to him, than he’d discovered up to now in all his life.

  “That’s stupid,” said the picture on the box behind him, crossly. “You’ve missed the likeness. I’m not like that at all!”

  “Well, you know, it’s just Art,” Vlemk answered inside his mind, ironically joking, playing fool in the ancient way of angry artists. Deny it as she might, he thought—and heaven knew she was stupid enough; it was visible in the eyes—she would perhaps not miss it entirely, but feel, at some animal level, rebuked. Behind and to t
he left of the lady he was painting, he fashioned a small monkey at a pulpit, reading a Bible and shaking his finger, a blazing arched window behind him, obscuring his outlines. Her case, the image was meant to say, was not quite hopeless. If she turned, she might yet receive instruction, if only from a monkey.

  The painting that could speak was saying nothing. She had closed her eyes and put on, to punish him, a bored look, or worse than bored: a bored person frozen alive. He felt a brief flash of anger and impatience, then suddenly a kind of joy, though dark and subterranean: she’d given him inspiration for another painting. This time, he decided, he would work more purely, in absolute isolation; that is, outside the influence of her judging eyes. Carefully, as if fondly, he lifted the box with the painting that could speak and carried it to the darkest corner of his studio, where he set it down on a chair and covered it with a black velvet cloth.

  “What are you doing?” the picture protested. “Take me back where I was! I don’t like it here!”

  Vlemk, of course, said nothing but returned to his paints.

  It was morning now. Light was streaming in, and chickens and dogs in the city below were calling from street to street like peddlers, their voices bouncing over the ice. Vlemk made coffee, thought briefly of getting a little rest, then settled down on his stool, at his slanted table—methodically, neatly, with controlled but white-hot concentration—to begin on his new work, “The Princess Looking Bored.” The lines seemed almost to fall from his brush, the idea taking shape with the naturalness and ease of a flower’s opening—though a terrible flower, needless to say: a bloom almost certainly poisonous. As with the painting he’d worked on through the night, he pursued the Princess’s worst potential with the reckless abandon of a lover in a fury, a husband betrayed. It was an eye-opener. Who would have guessed (who did not know her as Vlemk knew her) what depths of deceit and self-deception she was capable of, how pitiful and self-destructive her stratagem, or the measure of panic and self-doubt behind the mask of disdain? No wonder she held out on him, refused to lift the curse! He could understand now the dream of the axe-murderer, standing in the midst of his butchery, and he at the same moment recognized with immense satisfaction that his art was as much above that of the murderer as was the murderer’s above that of the man who carved bestial fantasies in pious stone. Vlemk painted quickly, fanatically, yet precisely, like a virtuoso violinist scattering notes like leaves in a wind. Not that he worked, like his friend the ex-violinist, to get even. Nothing could have been farther from the box-painter’s mind. His work was absolutely pure; it had no object but knowledge—and Ah! thought Vlemk, what knowledge he was getting! “Princess, how well I know you,” he said inside his mind; “you have no idea!” From the chair in the corner came occasional peeps of distress. He ignored them.