he answers, and thatâs everything. But I have made my point. I perceive his faint mistrust, his disappointment. Folk of this same kind of feather donât love each other. They know the tricks and rigmarole of reactions too well. The situation for me is perfect! I am going to clean the gorge.
I suppose I could not keep the amusement out of my face for it is so clear that he thought I was some sort of woodland creature, innocent of poisonous knowledge, with whom he could disport. It is just too bad! Do you paint what you see, I ask him courteously, or your impression of what you see, or your apocalyptic vision of it?
He looks at me steadily and says inwardly: So youâre that kind of bitch! He looks away, expression fixed as any stoatâs, and says audibly and quietly: I paint what I see.
I make no comment.
I paint what I see with the utmost exactness, he says; I would measure it with an architectâs tools if I could; I would have it so like the thingâif I couldâthat you wouldnât know the difference. He says this quietly but with an extraordinary effect of repressed force, so challenging that any comment might cause an explosion. Needless to say, I offer none. He is looking narrowly at me. I assume a deep and polite interest directed towards the whirls in the pool.
You would have thought otherwise? he probes.
The mockery drives me to my mistake, for I answer: I would have thought that you would want to paint the ecstasy rather than the blackbird.
So thatâs whatâs sticking in your gullet! he cries high above the rumble of the waterfall. So you were hurt! Splendid! He is vastly amused, knows he has broken down something, emits his familiarity like an animal warmth, yet does not come too near. No, he goes on, I donât paint ecstasy: I keep that for my poetry!
But something is cleared, a danger point of explosion is passed. Then he regards me with real questioning in his eyes, as though to plumb my deeps, and asks piercingly: Do you understand? Do you understand that a point may come when external reality becomes an absolute necessity?
The effect upon me is that of an internal light. I could have cried to him I know! I know! Perhaps something does come through my face, for his eyes are on me, but not now with cunning, searching rather through threadsâas though I were seeing their darkness, their dark glisten of pain, behind a spiderâs web. This affects me with discomfort, but whether it is what I actually see, or some notion behind it of strangled integrity in him, I donât know. I know, however, that it is real.
I have the impression of a considerable pause. He shrugs, looking away. Odd, he says, that it should also have been a woman who drove me here; but she was over fifty. And then he told me the story.
I wish I could repeat it as he told it. But how can I? Just as I fancy that two or three of the words are not those which the crofter Ian MacGillivray used about the deer in the fallow field. Ianâs own words were immemorially right.
I had been working pretty hard, he began. One of those bouts. Then I had gone out and met everyone. Oh God, talk, talk, and drink. Christ, the awful sucking of your own intestines like macaroni. You see it when you come back to it, the ego-boosting, the desire to achieve in order to be talked of, the clawing scramble through the mirth. The dope we canât do without. Lord, how I love it, and wallow in it! Never mind. Thereâs anâ artist I know and his wife. He paints landscapes. Just landscapes. Isnât it divine? Cool perspectives, distance. You can walk through them. Right! I hit the trail and arrive. The house is quiet with order, cool with living, and there are chairs where you sit down. You can also walk from one room to another and look out of a window on a landscape. There is no impediment in that house. You hear the silence or Helenâs feet in the kitchen. No electric light, just lamps and candles.
I suppose I could not keep the amusement out of my face for it is so clear that he thought I was some sort of woodland creature, innocent of poisonous knowledge, with whom he could disport. It is just too bad! Do you paint what you see, I ask him courteously, or your impression of what you see, or your apocalyptic vision of it?
He looks at me steadily and says inwardly: So youâre that kind of bitch! He looks away, expression fixed as any stoatâs, and says audibly and quietly: I paint what I see.
I make no comment.
I paint what I see with the utmost exactness, he says; I would measure it with an architectâs tools if I could; I would have it so like the thingâif I couldâthat you wouldnât know the difference. He says this quietly but with an extraordinary effect of repressed force, so challenging that any comment might cause an explosion. Needless to say, I offer none. He is looking narrowly at me. I assume a deep and polite interest directed towards the whirls in the pool.
You would have thought otherwise? he probes.
The mockery drives me to my mistake, for I answer: I would have thought that you would want to paint the ecstasy rather than the blackbird.
So thatâs whatâs sticking in your gullet! he cries high above the rumble of the waterfall. So you were hurt! Splendid! He is vastly amused, knows he has broken down something, emits his familiarity like an animal warmth, yet does not come too near. No, he goes on, I donât paint ecstasy: I keep that for my poetry!
But something is cleared, a danger point of explosion is passed. Then he regards me with real questioning in his eyes, as though to plumb my deeps, and asks piercingly: Do you understand? Do you understand that a point may come when external reality becomes an absolute necessity?
The effect upon me is that of an internal light. I could have cried to him I know! I know! Perhaps something does come through my face, for his eyes are on me, but not now with cunning, searching rather through threadsâas though I were seeing their darkness, their dark glisten of pain, behind a spiderâs web. This affects me with discomfort, but whether it is what I actually see, or some notion behind it of strangled integrity in him, I donât know. I know, however, that it is real.
I have the impression of a considerable pause. He shrugs, looking away. Odd, he says, that it should also have been a woman who drove me here; but she was over fifty. And then he told me the story.
I wish I could repeat it as he told it. But how can I? Just as I fancy that two or three of the words are not those which the crofter Ian MacGillivray used about the deer in the fallow field. Ianâs own words were immemorially right.
I had been working pretty hard, he began. One of those bouts. Then I had gone out and met everyone. Oh God, talk, talk, and drink. Christ, the awful sucking of your own intestines like macaroni. You see it when you come back to it, the ego-boosting, the desire to achieve in order to be talked of, the clawing scramble through the mirth. The dope we canât do without. Lord, how I love it, and wallow in it! Never mind. Thereâs anâ artist I know and his wife. He paints landscapes. Just landscapes. Isnât it divine? Cool perspectives, distance. You can walk through them. Right! I hit the trail and arrive. The house is quiet with order, cool with living, and there are chairs where you sit down. You can also walk from one room to another and look out of a window on a landscape. There is no impediment in that house. You hear the silence or Helenâs feet in the kitchen. No electric light, just lamps and candles.
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