On Beauty

by Zadie Smith

  Even given the extreme poverty of the arguments offered, the whole would of course be a great deal more compelling if Belsey knew to which painting I was referring. In his letter he directs his attack at the Self-Portrait of 1629 that hangs in Munich. Unfortunately for him, I make it more than clear in my article that the painting under discussion is the Self-Portrait with Lace Collar of the same year, which hangs in The Hague.

  These were Monty Kipps’s sentences. Three months on they clanged, they stung, and sometimes they even seemed to have an actual weight – the thought of them made Howard’s shoulders roll forward and down as if someone had snuck up behind and laden him with a backpack filled with stones. Howard got off the train at Baker Street and crossed the platform to the northbound Jubilee line, where the compensation of a waiting train greeted him. And of course, the thing was that in both of these self-portraits Rembrandt wears a white collar, for Christ’s sake; both faces emerge from murky, paranoid shadows with a timorous adolescent look about them – but no matter. Howard had failed to note the differing head position described in Monty’s article. He had been going through an extremely difficult time personally and had let his guard down. Monty saw his chance and took it. Howard would have done the same. To enact with one sudden tug (like a boy removing his friend’s shorts in front of the opposing team) a complete exposure, a cataclysmic embarrassment – this is one of the purest academic pleasures. One doesn’t have to deserve it; one has only to leave oneself open to it. But what a way to go! For fifteen years these two men had been moving in similar circles; passing through the same universities, contributing to the same journals, sometimes sharing a stage – but never an opinion – during panel discussions. Howard had always disliked Monty, as any sensible liberal would dislike a man who had dedicated his life to the perverse politics of right-wing iconoclasm, but he had never really hated him until he had heard the news, three years ago, that Kipps too was writing a book about Rembrandt. A book that, even before it was published, Howard sensed would be a hugely popular (and populist) brick designed to sit heavily atop the New York Times bestseller list for half a year, crushing every book beneath it. It was the thought of that book, and of its likely fate (compared to Howard’s own unfinished work, which, in the best of all possible worlds, could only ever end up in the bookshelves of a thousand art history students), that had pushed to him to write that terrible letter. In front of the entire academic community Howard had picked up some rope and hanged himself.

  Outside Kilburn Station Howard found a phone-box and called directory inquiries. He gave the Kippses’ full address and received in return a phone number. For a few minutes he hung about, examining the prostitutes’ cards. Strange that there should be so very many of these ladies-of-the-afternoon, tucked away behind the Victorian bay windows, reclining in post-war semis. He noticed how many were black – many more than in a Soho phone-box, surely – and how many, if the photos were to be believed (are they to be believed?), were exceptionally pretty. He picked up the handset again. He paused. In the past year he had grown shyer of Jerome. He feared the new adolescent religiosity, the moral seriousness and silences, always somehow implicitly critical. Howard took courage and dialled.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Yes, hello.’

  The voice – young-sounding and very London – threw Howard for a moment.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Sorry, who’s this?’

  ‘I’m . . . who’s that?’

  ‘This is the Kipps residence. Who’s that?’

  ‘Ah – the son, right.’

  ‘Pardon? Who is this?’

  ‘Er . . . look, I need to – this is awkward – I’m Jerome’s father and – ’

  ‘Oh, right, let me just call him –’

  ‘No – no – no, wait – one minute –’

  ‘ ’Sno trouble – he’s having dinner, but I can call him –’

  ‘No, don’t – I – look, I don’t want to . . . Thing is, I’ve just come from Boston . . . we only just heard, you see –’

  ‘OK,’ said the voice in an exploratory way that Howard couldn’t get a handle on.

  ‘Well,’ said Howard, swallowing hard, ‘I’d quite like to sound out someone in the family a little . . . before I speak properly to Jerome – he didn’t explain much – and obviously . . . I’m sure your father – ’

  ‘My father’s eating too. Do you want to –’

  ‘No . . . no, no, no, no, no, I mean, he won’t want to . . . no . . . no, no – I just . . . whole thing’s a bloody mess, of course, it’s just a matter of –’ began Howard, but then could not think what indeed it was a matter of.

  A cough came down the line. ‘Look, I don’t understand – do you want me to get Jerome?’

  ‘I’m right near you, actually –’ Howard blurted.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Yes . . . I’m calling from a phone-box . . . I don’t really know this bit of town and . . . no map, you see. You couldn’t . . . pick me up maybe? I’m rather – I’ll only get lost if I try to get to you – no sense of direction at all . . . I’m just at the station.’

  ‘Right. It’s really an easy walk, I could give you directions.’

  ‘If you could just pop up here, it would be very helpful – it’s getting dark already and I know I’ll take a wrong turn, and . . .’

  Howard cringed into the silence.

  ‘I’d just like to ask you a few things, you see – before I see Jerome.’

  ‘All right,’ said the voice at last, tetchy now. ‘Well – let me get my coat, yeah? Outside the station, right? Queen’s Park.’

  ‘Queens . . . ? No, I, er . . . Oh, Christ, I’m at Kilburn – is that wrong? I thought you were in Kilburn.’

  ‘Not really. We’re between the two, closer to Queen’s Park. Look, just . . . I’ll come and get you, don’t worry. Kilburn Jubilee line, right?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right – that’s very kind of you, thank you. Is it Michael?’

  ‘Yes. Mike. You’re . . . ?’

  ‘Belsey, Howard Belsey. Jerome’s –’

  ‘Yeah. Well, stay there, then, Professor. I’ll be seven minutes, maybe.’

  A rough white boy lurked outside the phone-box, with a doughy face and three well-spaced spots, one on his nose, one on his cheek and one on his chin. As Howard opened the door, doing the apologetic smile thing, the boy did the uninterested in outmoded social convention thing, saying ‘About fucking time’, and then made it as difficult as possible for Howard to get out and for the boy to get in. Howard’s face glowed. Why this flush of shame, when it is someone else who has been rude, pushing you roughly with their shoulder – why the shame? It was more than shame, though, it was also the physical capitulation – at twenty Howard might have sworn back at him or offered him out; at thirty, even at forty; but not at fifty-six, not now. Fearing an escalation (What you looking at?) Howard dug into his pocket and found the requisite three pounds for the nearby photo-booth. He bent his knees and parted the miniature orange curtain as if entering a tiny harem. He sat on the stool, a fist on each knee and his head low. When he looked up, he found himself reflected in the sheet of dirty perspex, his face enclosed by a big red circle. The first flash went off without any planning on Howard’s part: he had dropped his gloves and, upon looking down to find them, was then forced to spring back up as he heard the machine begin, his head just that moment raised, his hair obscuring his right eye. He looked cowed, beaten down. For the second flash he lifted his chin and tried to challenge the camera as that boy might – the result was something yet more insecure. There followed a completely unreal smile that Howard would never smile in the course of a normal day. Then the consequences of the unreal smile – sad, frank, abashed, almost confessional, as men often appear in their final years. Howard gave up. He stayed where he was, waiting to hear the boy leave the phone-box and walk away. Then he retrieved his gloves from the floor and left his own small box.

  Outside the bare trees lined up along the hig
h road, lopped branches thrust into the air. Howard stepped forward to lean against one of these, careful to avoid the dirty patch around the trunk. From here he could keep an eye on both ends of the street and the mouth of the station. A few minutes later he looked up and saw the man he assumed he was waiting for, rounding the corner of the next street. To Howard’s eye, which fancied itself attuned to these things, he looked African. He had that ochre highlight in his skin, most visible where the skin was in tension with bone – at the cheekbones and across the forehead. He wore leather gloves, a long grey topcoat and a dark blue cashmere scarf tied smartly. His glasses were thin-rimmed and gold. His shoes were an item of interest: very grubby trainers of the flat, cheap kind Howard felt sure Levi would never wear. As he came closer to the station, he slowed down and began to cast his eyes around the small gathering of people waiting for other people. Howard had thought himself as instantly recognizable as this Michael Kipps, but it was he who had to come forward and hold his hand out.

  ‘Michael – Howard. Hi. Thanks for coming to get me, I wasn’t –’

  ‘Find it OK?’ Michael cut in with extreme shortness, nodding at the station. Howard, who didn’t understand the point of this question, grinned stupidly back at him. Michael was quite a bit taller than Howard, which Howard was unused to and disliked. He was broad too; not that freshman muscle that Howard saw in his classes, the kind that begins at the top of the neck and makes young men trapezoid, no, this was more elegant than that. A birthright. He’s one of those people, thought Howard, who looks like one quality very much, and the quality in this case is ‘noble’. Howard didn’t much trust people like that, so full of one quality, like books with insistent covers.

  ‘This way, then,’ said Michael, and took a step forward, but Howard caught him by the shoulder.

  ‘Just going to get these – new passport,’ he said, as the photos were delivered to the chute, where an artificial breeze began to blow on them.

  Howard reached for his pictures, but now Michael’s hand stopped him.

  ‘Wait – let them dry – they smudge otherwise.’

  Howard straightened up, and they both stood still where they were, watching the photos twitch. Although perfectly content with silence, Howard suddenly heard himself saying ‘Soooo . . .’ for a long time, with no clear idea of what was to follow ‘so’. Michael turned to him, his face sourly expectant.

  ‘So,’ said Howard again, ‘what is it you do, Mike, Michael?’

  ‘I’m a risk analyst for an equities firm.’

  Like many academics, Howard was innocent of the world. He could identify thirty different ideological trends in the social sciences, but did not really know what a software engineer was.

  ‘Oh, I see . . . that’s very . . . Is that in the City, or –?’

  ‘In the City, yeah. Round St Paul’s way.’

  ‘But you’re still living at home.’

  ‘Just come back weekends. Go to church, Sunday lunch. Family stuff.’

  ‘Live near by or –?’

  ‘Camden – just by the –’

  ‘Oh, I know Camden – once upon a century I used to knock about there a bit – well, do you know where the –’

  ‘Your photos are finished, I think,’ said Michael, picking them out of their cubbyhole. He shook them and blew on them.

  ‘You couldn’t use the first three; they’re not square on your face,’ said Michael brusquely. ‘They’re strict about that now. Use the last one, maybe.’

  He handed them to Howard, who pushed them into his pocket without looking. So he hates the idea of this marriage even more than I do, thought Howard. He can barely even be polite to me.

  Together they walked down the street from which Michael had just come. There was something fatally humourless even in the way the young man walked, a status-preserving precision to each step, as if proving to a policeman that he could walk along a straight white line. A minute and then two passed without either man speaking. They walked by houses and more houses, uninterrupted by any conveniences, neither shop nor cinema nor launderette. Everywhere cramped rows of Victorian terraces, the maiden aunts of English architecture, the culture museums of bourgeois Victoriana . . . This was an old rant of Howard’s. He grew up in one of these houses. Once free of his own family he had experimented with radical living spaces – communes and squats. And then the children came, the second family, and all of those spaces became impossible. He did not like to remember now exactly how much and for long he had coveted his mother-in-law’s house – we forget what we choose to forget. He saw himself instead as a man hustled by circumstance into spaces that he rejected politically, personally, aesthetically, as a concession to his family. One among many concessions.

  They turned into a new street, clearly bombed in the last war. Here were mid-century monstrosities with mock-Tudor fronts and crazy-paved driveways. Pampas grass, like the tails of huge suburban cats, drooped over the front walls.

  ‘It’s nice round here,’ said Howard, and wondered about this instinct of his to offer unsolicited exactly the opposite opinion to the one he held.

  ‘Yeah. You live in Boston.’

  ‘Just outside of Boston. Near a liberal arts place I teach at – Wellington. You probably haven’t heard of it over here,’ said Howard with false humility, for Wellington was by far the most respected institution he had ever worked in, as close to an Ivy League as he was ever going to get.

  ‘Jerome’s there, isn’t he?’

  ‘No, no – actually, his sister’s there – Zora. Jerome’s at Brown. Much healthier idea, probably,’ said Howard, although the truth was he had been hurt by the choice. ‘Breaking free, apron strings, etcetera.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘You don’t think?’

  ‘I was at the same uni as my dad at one point – I think that’s a good thing, when families are close-knit.’

  The pomposity of the young man seemed to Howard to be concentrated in his jaw, which he worked round and round as they walked, as if ruminating on the failures of others.

  ‘Oh, absolutely,’ said Howard, generously, he felt. ‘Jerome and I, we’re just not . . . well, we have different ideas about things and . . . you and your father must be closer than us – more able to . . . well, I don’t know.’

  ‘We’re very close.’

  ‘Well,’ said Howard, restraining himself, ‘you’re very lucky.’

  ‘It’s about trying,’ said Michael keenly – the topic seemed to animate him. ‘It’s like, if you put the effort in. And I spose my mum’s always been at home, which makes a lot of difference, I think. Having the mother figure and all that. Nurturing. It’s like a Caribbean ideal – a lot of people lose sight of it.’

  ‘Right,’ said Howard, and walked another two streets – past an ice-cream scoop of a Hindu temple and down an avenue of awful bungalows – imagining knocking this young man’s head against a tree.

  The lamps were lit on every street now. Howard began to be able to make out the Queen’s Park to which Michael had referred. It was nothing like the groomed royal parks in the centre of town. Just a small village green with a colourful spot-lit Victorian bandstand at its centre.

  ‘Michael – can I say something?’

  Michael said nothing.

  ‘Look, I don’t mean in any way to offend anyone in your family, and I can see we agree basically anyway – I can’t see the point in arguing over it. Really we need to put our heads together and just think of . . . well, I suppose, some way, some means of convincing both of them, you know – that this is a bloody insane idea – I mean, that’s the key thing, no?’

  ‘Look, man,’ said Michael tersely, quickening his step, ‘I’m not an intellectual, right? I’m not involved in whatever the argument is regarding my father. I’m a forgiving Christian, and as far as I’m concerned whatever is between you and him doesn’t change the way we feel about Jerome – he’s a good kid, man, and that’s the main thing – so there’s no argument.’


  ‘Yes – of course, of course, of course, no one’s saying there’s an argument – I’m just saying, and I’m hoping your father will appreciate this, that Jerome’s really too young – and he’s younger than he actually is – emotionally he’s much younger, completely inexperienced – much more so than you probably realize –’

  ‘Sorry – am I being stupid – what are you trying to say?’