The Art of Living

by John Gardner

  Vlemk looked from one to another of them, wounded, then opened his hands as a sign that he failed to understand.

  “Ah,” said the ex-poet to the ex-violinist, “how we loves to mock, this ex-box-painter!” His cheek muscles twitched and a vein stood out in his temple. The ex-violinist laughed harshly and, from behind his spectacles, threw a wink at the axe-murderer.

  The ex-poet pointed one finger at Vlemk, the finger only inches from Vlemk’s nose. “You,” he said, “paint foolish pretty pictures, exactly what your idiot customers would paint for themselves, if they had wit enough. You’re right, of course. Why should men of genius go hungry while stupid little insects eat potatoes and gravy?” He winked at the ex-violinist, who winked at the murderer. The ex-poet pushed his flaxen-haired face close to Vlemk’s, as if daring him to scoff. “I write verses for a cardboard-container corporation: ‘Got troubles? Out-fox ’em! Box ’em!’ “

  “I write music,” said the ex-violinist. “I take themes from famous symphonies. Soon every time you hear the work of a famous composer, you’ll think ‘Cardboard boxes!’ ”

  Vlemk looked sadly at the murderer.

  The murderer smiled. “I chop up wooden boxes to make the phosphor sticks people buy in those little cardboard boxes. They’re getting to be all the rage, these phosphor sticks. They’re easier than a flint. Also, sometimes children burn down hotels with them. Ha ha!”

  Vlemk was so depressed at the thought of the murderer’s chopping up wooden boxes that when his wine came he could hardly raise his glass. It was as if an enormous weight of snow lay over him. “So this is what everything comes down to in the end,” he thought, staring at the dirt in the fingernails of the two fingers closed on his wineglass stem. “All our early promise, all our grand ideals!”

  Though he felt a little cross, or worse than cross, as if his heart had turned to ice—useless to deny it—it was no good berating his fellow artists. Hunger and poverty are powerful persuaders, and so was the policeman who’d taken to sitting in the tavern nights, smoking his pipe and occasionally glancing at the murderer. Nor could Vlemk deny that he himself had unwittingly contributed to their decline. In his cynical period, he had spoken with pleasure and excitement of his work on the “Reality boxes”—his evil pictures of the Queen. In his mellower period he’d had nothing to say. Indeed, he had nothing to say even now. It was just one more instance, he told himself, of spirit weighed down by matter until it no longer knows itself. He sighed.

  “Very well,” thought Vlemk, and leaned forward slowly, bidding his friends good-evening and putting the cork in the bottle, the bottle in his pocket, then walking up the street to his house and up the stairs to his studio, where he opened up his paints.

  “What are you doing?” cried the picture as she saw the brush approaching.

  He tried to say in gestures, “I’m hoping to make you even finer than you are,” but the picture on the box was in such a wild panic, her little bosom heaving, her eyes opened wide, that in the end he only smiled as reassuringly as possible, sucked in his lower lip between his teeth, and began to paint. He painted for a week without stopping, and when he finished, the painting looked—to Vlemk, at least—exactly like the Queen except with none of her faults. Nearly everyone who looked at it said it was the most beautiful, most angelic face in the world, so true to life—or at least to some barely imaginable possibility—that you could literally hear it breathing. But the picture no longer talked. Not everyone was persuaded, of course, about the picture’s perfection. When he showed it to his apprentices they frowned and looked evasive, and at last the fat one said, “It looks sort of the same as before.”

  Vlemk gestured wildly, as if to say, “I paint for a week—me! Vlemk!—and the painting looks the same as before?”

  The fat one ducked his head. “I just said sort of,” he explained.

  Little did they know, he thought sorrowfully. Though it watched him as if on a jury, the picture had become, like himself, as mute as a stone.

  13

  Cowardly or not, he could not bear to take the picture up himself—and no reason he should, he convinced himself; there was no reason the Queen should have anything to say to him. Nevertheless he was secretly puzzled when for a week after sending the repainted picture by the youngest of his apprentices, Vlemk had still heard nothing. Then a message arrived, brought to him in person by the driver with the top hat and the polished boots. It was a small white card on which the Queen had written, in a feeble hand, an urgent invitation to the palace.

  Vlemk frowned and studied the face of the driver for some sign. Behind the driver’s head there were low, leaden clouds. The driver showed nothing, standing with his hands folded, gazing solemnly—almost tragically, Vlemk would have said—at the floor. In haste, the box-painter hung up his frock, put on his good black Sunday coat, gave instructions to his apprentices on the business of the day, and went to the carriage with the driver.

  At the top of the hill, the gates to the palace were open wide, and the dogs lay still beside the road as if someone had put a spell on them. The gatekeeper made no move to interfere with the entrance of the carriage but stood back, with his hat off, crying out as Vlemk peeked through the window, “God be with you, sir!” Vlemk frowned more deeply.

  At the high arched door the carriage stopped abruptly and the driver jumped down from his seat in front so quickly, for all his dignity, that the door was opened for Vlemk before the carriage had stopped swaying. The driver’s face, as he took Vlemk’s arm to help him down, was so abysmally solemn that Vlemk for an instant hesitated, narrowing his eyes and pushing his bearded face close to the driver’s for a better look; but the man’s expression told him nothing, and so, with an increasing sense of urgency, Vlemk went up the steps into the palace.

  Nothing was at all as it had been before. In fact, so transformed was the palace when he entered that he stopped in his tracks and snatched his hat off in order to think more clearly. First, all the walls had been washed till they shone like new-cut marble, and everywhere he looked there were new, fresh flowers—rising stalks and blooms, shimmering and blazing, ferns and white ribbons, climbing in such profusion toward the skylight overhead that one might have thought one had shrunk to the size of a ladybug and were standing at the bottom of a florist’s box. Second, and more ominous, the servants moved back and forth as quietly as swallows, or stood in doorways, no more talkative than owls. No one anywhere was smiling even slightly, not even the chief butler’s grandchildren over by the fountain. “This is bad,” thought Vlemk, standing with his shoulders hunched, rubbing his palms together, squinting and pursing his lips.

  Then suddenly the door to the Queen’s room opened, and, to Vlemk’s amazement, out rushed the Prince with the moustache.

  “You!” cried the Prince, with an expression so twisted and uncertain one couldn’t tell whether it was rage or the hope that, now that Vlemk was here, all might at last be well.

  Vlemk bowed and nodded, then tipped his head inquiringly.

  “Come quickly,” said the Prince, “she’s been asking for you since she wakened.” Even now his expression was neither one thing nor another but filled with contradictions. He seized Vlemk’s arm, but Vlemk stood rooted, still with his head to one side, his hands opened out like a beggar’s. At last the Prince understood. “You haven’t heard?” he asked. When Vlemk went on waiting, the Prince explained. “The Queen is ill! No one has the faintest idea what the trouble is. I came over from my neighboring kingdom as soon as I heard.” His face became more stern and his grip on the handle of his ornamented cane somewhat tightened. “I refuse to let it happen! Believe me, I’ll move heaven and earth, if I have to ….” Sweat had popped out on his forehead, and he took a swipe at it with his sleeve, then lowered his head and frowned like a goat.

  At the news that the Queen was seriously ill, Vlemk’s knees turned to rubber, and to keep himself from falling he had to cling to the Prince with both hands.

  “In my personal opi
nion, it’s the picture you did of her,” said the Prince, and his hand closed still more tightly on the cane. Anger lit his eyes, but then the next instant his expression was full of doubt, panicky. “Then again, perhaps everything’s just the opposite of what it seems,” he said, and quickly looked away. His gaze went running around the room. As if in hopes that Vlemk might resolve his confusion, he tugged abruptly and rather sternly at Vlemk’s arm, moving him in the direction of the door, and Vlemk, after a moment’s resistance, gave up and followed.

  The moment the Prince and the box-painter entered, the servants and doctors who were gathered around the Queen’s four-poster bed drew back the curtains and slipped out of the way like shadows. In this room too there were flowers everywhere, especially around the bed. The Queen’s head lay as white on its pillow as a pearl in its crimson casque, her arms above the covers, and in her white, white hands she held the box with the picture Vlemk had altered. As if he didn’t mean to but couldn’t help himself, the Prince pushed past Vlemk and went up to her first, bent quickly, impulsively, to kiss her on the forehead, then turned away, blushing, signalling urgently for Vlemk to come and help. As soon as he thought Vlemk could not see him, the Prince covered his face with his hands like a man stifling a groan and turned his back.

  Somewhat timidly, Vlemk approached near enough to touch her pale cheek. Then he stood looking down at her, drawing his hand back to the other hand, with which he was holding his hat. After a moment, with a feeble flutter, the Queen opened her eyes.

  “Vlemk,” she said softly, with infinite sadness and more affection than she’d ever before shown him.

  Instantly, Vlemk’s eyes swam with tears. He nodded, sniffled, and bent forward a little to show that he’d heard.

  When she tried to speak again, it seemed that she was too feeble to bring a sound out; but after a moment she managed to say, “Thank you for coming. I was terrified that I might die without seeing you, to put your heart at rest.”

  Vlemk, hearing these words, opened his eyes wide to stare at her. “Nonsense,” he exclaimed, and then, seeing that she seemed not even to notice that he’d spoken—spoken with his voice—he seized her in both hands.

  Angrily, the Prince pushed in beside the painter. “You’re not going to die!” he cried, his eyes bright as glass. He turned to look with great fury at Vlemk. All Vlemk could make out was a blur of pinkish light. Turning to the Queen again, the Prince cried out, “You’re getting better, my dear girl!” To the Queen his guilty concern was touching and amusing, though she was careful to hide what she felt.

  “No no, dear Prince,” she said, and sighed, looking at the Prince’s trembling face. His teeth were grinding and tears were now streaming down his bright pink cheeks—tears of love for her, she knew, such innocent, open-hearted love—though also, she knew he was hiding something—that it seemed to her criminal that she should trouble him so, be so unworthy of his goodness. Not that she was any longer filled with self-hatred. What more atonement could anyone ask of her than the atonement she was making, death for her sins and crimes? Yet how they had stooped and clasped their hands like supplicants! She did like that, no use denying it! The feeling of queenliness it gave her tempted her for a moment to say no more to either of them, to spare them further pain; but then a kind of heaviness came over her—almost, she thought, like a feeling of old age, or at any rate righteousness—and she felt that, quite simply, she didn’t have it in her to die without leaving things straight and clear, clean and open as sunlight, let them handle it as they would. For die she must; her heart was set on it.

  Vlemk the box-painter stood pulling first at his left hand, then at his right, filled with alarm at the Queen’s words “put your heart at rest.” It was just as he feared, he saw. It was he who had brought her to this sorry pass; and she, knowing that sooner or later he must see what he had done, was eager, for his sake, to deny him any guilt, rise above all such pettiness to deathly, sweet wisdom. She was smiling like an old mother cat. Anxiously, Vlemk looked from the face of the Queen to the tear-stained, indignant red face of the Prince. But though he wracked his brains, Vlemk could think of no way of preventing her from doing what she intended. Her labor so far had greatly drained her, he saw. Her hands had fallen away from the box she’d been holding, leaving it resting on the covers on her waist.

  “Vlemk,” said the Queen, her voice growing feebler and feebler, “I was wrong when I told you the original picture on the box was not a good likeness. When I saw the new picture, after you’d made it perfect, I saw with terrible certainty how far I was from the person I imagined myself, how surely I was becoming, from moment to moment, more like those other things you painted.”

  “New picture?” said the Prince.

  The Queen continued, ignoring him, “Seeing the disparity between what I am and what I wish to be, I have come to the only happiness possible for such a wretch as I am, the sad joy of the old philosophers who at least ‘knew themselves.’ ” She lowered her pale blue eyelids and tears slipped warmly from her eyes. “That,” she continued, when her voice was in control again, “that is why I can no longer go on living and have purposely declined to this pitiful state. I want you not to feel guilty when I am dead, just as I hope my dear friend the Prince—”

  Here the Queen was dramatically interrupted. Neither she nor Vlemk had noticed that at her mention of the talking picture on the box, the Prince had widened his eyes in horror, everything slowly coming clear to him, and in the first wild impulse of his recognition he had snatched the box from where it lay on the covers and had run to throw it into the fire in the fireplace. There he remained, looking sterner and more guilty than ever. Now it seemed to the Queen—and it was partly because of this that her sentence had broken off—that she was, she herself, on fire all over; and the same instant there came a wail of pain and terror from the fireplace—“Vlemk! Tell her it’s not my fault! Oh, Master, dear Master, save me!”

  At the cry of the painting, the curse was lifted—so they all perceived—and Vlemk, running toward the picture, cried out over his shoulder in a loud voice, “You’re mistaken, Queen! Spare the picture and spare yourself!” The words rang as loudly as thunder in the room. “She’s not an impossible ideal, she’s your own very self! Otherwise how could she speak?”

  The Prince heard none of this, for the instant the cry came from the fireplace he whirled around without thinking—Vlemk was still three or four paces away—to snatch out the box and sprinkle it with water and save the poor picture’s life.

  “Is it possible?” cried the Queen, flushing with pleasure and embarrassment, “is it possible that I have become exactly like the picture on the box?”

  “Vlemk,” cried the picture, coughing a little and blinking soot from her eyes, “I hope you don’t think—”

  Suddenly understanding, Vlemk hit his forehead with the palm of his hand, so hard he nearly knocked himself over. “Treachery!” he bellowed. “You could talk all the time!”

  “I could?” asked the picture in seeming amazement, and shot a glance at Vlemk and the Queen to see how much trouble she was in. “You won’t believe it,” the picture said, “but—”

  “No, we certainly won’t!” snapped the Queen. Though she’d been pale as a ghost just a moment ago, she was suddenly as healthy and lively as could be. “Shameless little vixen!” the Queen exclaimed, “you pretended you couldn’t talk, just to spite poor Vlemk, and you wouldn’t let him talk, miserable as he was, until your life depended on it! What a horrible, horrible little creature!”

  “Horrible?” cried the picture, bursting into tears. “We’re in this together, remember! If I can talk, it’s because I’m exactly like you! So who’s the horrible little creature?”

  The Queen blanched and drew her hand to her bosom. Her face went red with anger, then white. When the words had struck with full force, she was so shocked by the revelation that her eyes rolled up almost out of sight.

  The Prince was anxiously pulling at his moustache, wa
ving his cane with his left hand, trying to understand. “Now wait,” he said. “If I rightly follow this ridiculous business, you”—he pointed to Vlemk, squinting—“you changed the picture to get rid of the little imperfections, is that right?”

  “Exactly,” said Vlemk, then looked confused. “At least I thought I did.”

  The Prince’s look became thoughtful. “If it had worked, and if the Queen had failed to come up to the standard of the picture, you’d have been mute for the rest of your life!”

  The Queen and the picture looked at Vlemk, then away, embarrassed.

  “If it had worked, yes,” said Vlemk, frowning and scratching his head. “But somehow the picture was able to outwit me and hang on to her powers. It’s a mystery.”

  The picture looked pleased with herself, and privately, the Queen was smiling a little too.

  “Is it really such a mystery?” asked the Prince with a laugh. Suddenly he was enjoying himself, as if some burden had been miraculously lifted. There was no longer any trace of the mingled anxiety and anger. He was standing much taller, not gripping his cane like a weapon but playing with it, balancing it on the tip of one finger while he talked. “Surely,” he said, “surely, my dear Vlemk, you painted what you thought was a picture of perfection, but it came out exactly as it had been before you started!”

  “That must be it,” said Vlemk, eyes widening, and he nodded. He glanced at the Queen, then over at the box, and to his surprise saw that both of them were crying. “What’s this?” he said. “Did I say something wrong?”