Mustafa smiles, his eyes hooding in modesty in the firelight. I was an immigrant once, helpless as you, off the boat from furthest Asia, and yet good people sheltered me as I see now that God has granted me the opportunity to do for you. Nearly fifty years ago. So warm your toes. My faith teaches that hospitality is a great honour and obligation, when one comes asking of it in such abject misery and desolation as you. I see myself and my salvation in your situation, for without giving freely how can we accept what is given freely unto us? Some huge hand above us writes up the tally of all our lives in his ledger, always moving and writing, and though his calculations spin far as stars beyond our mortal ken, this I know: that to receive happiness we must give happiness, and that this alchemy is the opportunity we are all put on earth to do.
Dark though the winter morning outside lurks, I weigh Mustafa’s recipe and calculate on balance that I buy it, indeed it probably works, I can’t deny it, should I ever try it. The man is no dewy-eyed fool, but has plans afoot already to help me find my feet, discreetly calculating my capabilities and options, my potential function with the utmost unction. Luncheon! He exclaims, I am to meet an artist this week, and with a lift of the phone I could make the date today and bring you with me anyway, to introduce, to start as his assistant, understudy and paint-mixer. He’s the real thing, an honest impoverished artist and no trickster. You get my drift? Move swift and true, work hard as I know an immigrant like you will do, and you will have access to paints and easels. Weasel yourself in there and you could soon have new work of your own, lurking in the studio recesses, of which I must confess I’d like regular perusal and first refusal.
Your kindness shames a knave such as I, who has so signally failed hitherto to try to apply himself to humanity’s everyday endeavours, shirking responsibility to the best of my abilities, quick to sever ties despite the sighs of those I leave behind to despise me. Size me up if you must, but do not trust the scallywag that lurks inside this raggle taggle gypsy. Tipsy, all too often. Soften not your heart, lest this scoundrel break it apart. I am a bad lot, sir, to summarise, a sight for sore sighs, from end to start. But there is more, I must confess without duress, in the presence of your kindness. I harbour hatred in my heart for my brother, who I pursue with ill-intent to do him in. Jealousy I dare say, for all the good fortune that has favoured him rather than me since we were both grasshopper knee-high, if a shin. A twin with which I have often tussled, and our muscles well-matched we have well-nigh seen the other off to hell more often than I dare tell and more often recently. Indecently sore and near to death’s door how I left him last. Aghast, bereft of him likely, one night soon.
Mustafa laughs aloud but sadly, seeing through me with old wisdom. You lack confidence like a child, traumatised by the wild life you’ve led. But banish and put behind you all the baggage of the years. You crossed this threshold with no past that I need or wish to hear. These paintings which I see are yours betray a soul more sensitive and astute than the one your description parodies for my ears. Besides, these dread turmoils which you describe are classic fodder with which the tortured artist can exploit his fears for fruitful seasons. These are reasons to paint, and not to be faint-hearted. Once you and your art are united, you’ll not be parted. Choose this chance and complete what you have started. In self-esteem through toil you can redeem your soul and thence spare your poor brother all your erstwhile ire. His only sin it seems is to have had god smile upon him, therefore the squabble you pick is with yourself. For god has smiled on you also, but you were too envious to see it. To be blessed in this world you must first know what a blessing is and how to accept it.
You are more like a priest or a mystic than a gallery owner. How comes such an oddity about? I am a lout, but amongst the crowd you are more a shepherd than a ticket tout.
Who knows what ways the winds of fate blow each of us about? Take this new hat and coat on loan. I will see you out, walk about our island until noon then meet me at the café by the harbour where I’ll introduce you to the artist I’ve described. After we a few glasses have imbibed I’m sure he’ll take you under his wing. It’s just the thing, such good luck this tide that to our island Ithir brings, to join the tribe of artists, the noblest minstrels to nature’s praises sing.
Church bells ring as I step out onto the cobbles and hobble through the piled up snow. Strangely revived, heart beating, my blood heating me from inside, I regain my stride and perambulate this pretty town as would the usual tourist. Fine Hanseatic brick and pediments, all pointed lintels and dentils and finicky mimicking of maritime details: iron gibbets from gables and stables, lofts for merchant storage and portage. Delicate fretwork painted iron railings and balconies and external staircases cascading like the unfolding parasols of delectable ladies, falling like dropped hankies to the street below, deigning to dare you to pick up the rhythm, quick, quick slow. All picked out nicely in white ice highlights by the celestial artist in meteorological modus operandi, glissandi: this still-lightly falling mist of snow, steady as she goes, crystals as shifting sifting petticoats crackling, each microscopic particle spinning like a ballerina in full flow. I am spun as in a grand dance down an avenue of partners before I am given away and let go. The music of Mozart or Strauss orchestrates and delineates the shop displays and alleyways, the exuberant renaissance order, soberly on show.
Quaysides and boats and capstans and thick-ply ropes are never far away, and well-used; never far from frayed. The leaded glass windows in the Corn Exchange make light glimmer like candles, glimpsed shimmerings of winter silver. Fortunes rising and falling with the tide of history. Blackened gothic pinnacles and buttresses above, like those on the cathedral, dark accretions of carved craftsmanship, smoked, sailing, dangling, as the golden balls of the pawnshops, gold ships of the merchants’ domes and spires, the skyline vies for attention from the divine like a line of hawkers and talkers all pining and miming for our coins and our time. It is no crime, I assure myself, merely to wander and enjoy the clamour of haggle and bargain in passing, as a boat myself a-sail, meandering through myriad islands on which one has no interest in alighting, preferring the flighting, a snake of motion pursuing its own tail.
And thus happily, distractedly, do I pass my morning in preparation for the promised appointment, my newly-blistered feet (laid up for weeks) in urgent need of ointment. To the harbour then I wander lastly as the snow stops and the weak sun at its paltry zenith tears the gossamer grey cloud like winter woollens, and the thought of melting replaces pelting. This is Kenneth Astley Kettering… Mustafa introduces, loosing hither and thither the flaming arrows of his sparkling gaze, to spear at us both. And this is Ithir The Rhymer or so he calls himself these days. I anticipate you two artistic bohemians will have much to say to each other, like unto brothers of the painting, roving trade.
Then begins the tirade of Kettering’s outpourings, appetite-whetting whitterings, as Mustafa seats us in a shiveringly off-season café perched at the water’s edge, frozen condensation dripping from the window ledge:
Pleased to meet you, old man, Mustafa tells me you’d make a perfect apprentice, being a painter tentatively taking his early steps late in life, unburdened by a wife but rich in inspiration. Emancipation in the techniques of mixing paints and stretching canvases and even framing are the skills I’m naming in this jolly offer. Not that the wages shall be apt to line your coffers, being next to nothing but bed and board, still not to be ignored, sniffed, spat or scoffed at. All in all well worth the time of day to doff your hat at, wouldn’t you say that?
And pray, what would you say, dear reader, were you ever desperate and destitute as I? Wouldn’t you rather take a job without pay than languish in such freezing poverty as like to die? Say nay now and meet my eye. Not so? Thought so. We are not so different, you and I. Over hot broth, quaffed slow as a sloth, I doth quoth my troth to this harebrained serfdom for the promise of respectability, a tradesman, to the best of my meagre ability. But Mustafa smirks I surmise, knowing that Kette
ring will have a cuckoo crowing every sunrise, an artist greater than himself in the making, watching, learning, waiting from the wings, his stifled urge to sing not long abating.
Hands are shaken on it, then Kettering dons his jaunty bonnet, being very much the archetypal arty type, more apt to write a Shakespearian sonnet than waste time cogitating on it. And we follow him through the cobbled streets, huddled now against an icy north wind, to reach his creaking antiquated attic, up many stone steps worn by the boots of centuries. Do you know… he opines over his breezy shoulder from above us ascending, that these lodgings were once the abode of Pintorello? Holy smoke and liberate the ghetto! Robed angels from heaven bending down to pluck their harps of gold, I am enchanted as of old to hear this brag, backed-up by a plaque upon the brickwork, warmed by such knowledge against the fiercesome cold, as if a fire were lit inside me. Rattle of ancient keys in the iron lock, creaking nudging of ship hulls moored in the dock, we are inside soon and gathered round the hearth and mantelpiece eyed by a solitary clock to navigate the ages. And we three sages are arrived at the nascent rout of the complacent, the birth of an artist fit to recover the renaissance. I mean myself of course. Not lacking, despite the act, self-regard or the necessary patience.
We find ourselves inside a tall attic roof criss-crossed by beams, much bigger than it seems, a veritable Noah’s ark in which to flee the winter’s dark, creaking in the wind as an ancient galleon beached upon these shores, an echo-chamber for Kettering’s snores, as I am treated to later on that night, as into the upper timbers I take flight and hang my hammock. But before that: we part with Mustafa on the steps outside, his eyes confiding that he sees me as the prize with which to buy his way to heaven. One so uncomplicatedly deserving of his alms in my palms without qualms being surprisingly hard to find, short of the lame and blind. I am honoured by his charity, or more precisely: his faith in me.
As through a tree, each night and morn now I descend and ascend through the spars and rafters of the trusses holding up this medieval roof. Forsooth, when my hours of mixing paints are done and I am spied by none, Kettering being gone out along the quays to take the sea breeze, I feed my wires into the old stone walls and rotate my dial as if to search for Radio Luxembourg. Radio Thanatos more like, a wavelength thronged with voices, and there I find old Pintorello himself sooner or later, son of a dyer, rebuked by academia, who chose instead the harder self-taught route. God loves a tryer. A town-crier, charged with desire, whose lit fire could not be extinguished by all the grey sea of envy that rippled around him daily like ruffled feathers. In every weather, he paced these streets, living and dressed but simply as a peasant, to draw and paint scenes dramatic and pleasant. Then portraits, of patrons by steps more influential by the year, boosting the credentials of this queer misfit resolutely non-compliant and self-reliant. A giant to history, and as such men often are: but an apparent dwarf in life to the apparent dwarves that surrounded him. A slim glimmer lights the way to genius. It is the task of those who would follow such a path to find the strength to wander unaccompanied through the long and thankless dark, the challenge stark. Hark, hark, the distant hunting horn of Apollo, the lyre of Orpheus. Pay no heed to idiocy, but follow your Eurydice.
Mustafa visits every second day then once a week. His demeanour kind, his manner meek. Encouraging me in my studies under Kettering to consolidate my mysterious abilities, seemingly unlearned or borrowed from some previous life. With a palette knife I learn to restrain my violent passions and harness them to more considered lashings of paint, and observe the industry and discipline with which Kettering approaches each work, taking time to catch each fragment of inspiration where it lurks and not rush the whole enterprise into compromise. Mustafa my friend, accompanies me on walks at each day’s end, and although his faith will not permit him a drop of alcohol we learn not to let this come between us at all, but go instead to visit all the island’s grand palaces and churches to stand and wonder, then at last to his mosque where he bids me kneel and pray with him each day. We dare to say that the God we each spin in awe of, lectures in architecture, our eyes lifted to each carved and singing detail, exalting the dead overhead, is the same deity inspiring piety and easing anxiety. It is in the everyday that we will find the way to Him, Mustafa preaches, in a thousand small steps towards the sacred reaches.
Then just when I begin to dare to believe my inner demons bested, ever-wary fate sets its snares to have me tested. Word reaches the artistic loft of Kettering and Ithir of a controversial exhibition opening soon to whose private view but a few local bohemians are invited. The press are to be slighted, it seems, for their ignominious role in hindering this artist’s plans to get himself knighted. His blighted career seeks to be re-ignited, his enemies indicted. You are right, dear reader, it is Dirze himself on which our narrative has once again alighted.
Kindly Kettering lends me a shirt, one unusually devoid of dirt or paint, and helps me trim my beard fit to make the ladies faint. Then before Mustafa can warn us off, dressed as a dandy and a toff we set out from our loft to walk the several blocks and canals to where the party’s planned. Kettering can’t understand my seeming reticence in praising his eminence Dirze, dismissing all the media slander as irrelevant to his genius, and apt to get on his gander. But I remind him that it is the man himself who first wedded his fortunes to the media circus, drowning content in pout and portent. Sleet is falling as we briskly go, to and fro between the ebb and flow of the rivers of people and water stirred at eventide, the Oceania citizens intent on retiring to where they each habitually reside. As Kettering talks, I watch their million eyes and long to confront them with my prize: my many paintings planned and underway to show them to themselves, unmasked and nakedly displayed.
We arrive at last at a suitably vast disused warehouse at the cobbled quayside, its dirty windows dirtied some more of late with diluted whitewash to defy the avid critic’s gaze. Our passes verified, we pass through a haze of chattering bodies, the old vernissage assemblage rife again, towards a small but welcome blaze held in an iron grate at the centre of the space, throwing an orange glow on each eager face which gravitates towards the warmth and nibbles on a plate. And yes, unfortunately, free glasses of the demon drink are also there displayed, in varieties and quantities profligate. The hubbub of conversation grows, as Kettering constantly darts around intercepting those he knows, and some kind fellows introduce themselves, fellow artists and a few gallery owners, my unaccustomed hand to shake, two types differentiable by their attire and demeanour, the first like Technicolor waifs, the second inflatable dirigibles tethered at the waist.
Music is provided, quietly in contrast to this cacophonic set, by four ladies of a string quartet performing Bach in mathematical precision with a certain frisson beside the disused gibbet of a packing hoist, the great black hook hovering over them like the deathly symbol in a parable of choice. Promising ascension to an exalted dimension. Attention! Into this demented noise a voice makes an unexpected incision. And then suddenly there is Dirze, received not yet with derision but still with an air of awe apt to make the acolyte paw, attended by a flock of black-dressed priestesses in glamorous dresses and coiffured tresses, fanning out like pickpockets to seep through the crowd and then; at his signal reach up and remove each shroud from off his surrounding canvases. Glasses are put down so that the masses can gasp and then applaud, gawping at the sudden visual onslaught encircling them like wagons. I reach for further flagons of ale, irked to think that Dirze has not yet failed, his much trailered descent into obscurity with all that it entails not yet arrived. My stomach jives, my entrails fester at the performance of this jester. His paintings, needless to say, all look like nothing new, the same re-hashes of his stale and steadily heady brew of garish hue and caricatured chiaroscuro. But what do I know?
But now for once my sick and addled mind fixates on something new. From amongst Dirze’s slick entourage I begin to notice a face I cannot place, and yet whose beauty holds a curious weight, her
lovely eyes and cheekbones resonate, as if I’ve nearly met her once before, but what occasion I cannot calculate. I fixate, cogitate, try to look away, but catching my gaze, to my astonishment she reciprocates. And over several minutes by way of circuitous social rounds and routes with intervening parties, we contrive to glide together without a sound and there by the burning grate to achieve a slight collision followed by apology, unction and introduction. Collusion, this illusion of two strangers met by chance, culmination of a balletic dance by flickering firelight. Pathetic affettuoso melody is struck up virtuoso at this moment by the feminine quartet as further fate. We talk, stuck fast as needles on a record to rotate about each other, sister and brother, bathed each in the light flowing from the other.
I tell her of my artistic aspirations and inspiration, and bit by bit she lowers her voice and whispers close to tears of the last dismal year she’s spent in the company of the dreaded Dirze, touching my wrist repeatedly to remind me that all this is in strictest confidence and imprudence, but that his impudence can no longer pass without remark and incident. He drinks heavily you know, more and more, before and after every show, consumed with terror as to how things will go. And his mounting debts mount higher than anyone can know. And as to my wages, well, I am ashamed to say I should have left his employment long ago, but hang around as do the other girls, in the hope that we’ll be paid late at last and taken up again in the swirl and froth and frills of an exciting life of exotic travel and popping pills. But what’s the use? Perhaps I envy you your basic existence of artistic persistence, free from the pestilence of wealth that threatens human health. I am an artist too you know, a student of drawing and painting once, but like a dunce I’ve let that man parade me for my looks alone and turn my sorry heart to stone.
The Rhymer Page 12