"You – become an artist? But you create the greatest art of all, the free, hot lunch!" one of his friends said, turning to the rest of the artists for appreciative laughter, which they generously supplied.
"I'm serious," Mr. Perfect interrupted. "I want to learn what you do, what inspires you, what techniques you use, and why."
The paint-splattered jokester frowned. "I am not sure you have the soul, the calling."
But one dark girl among them suddenly stamped out her cigarette and laughed at the men. "Why don't you let him try? You talk about art more than you practice it, but here is a man who genuinely wants to try his hand. Maybe by teaching him you can remember a few things yourselves, other than how to drink absinthe and scoff and chew Wittgenstein."
And so they accepted him, but he made no artistic progress save to sleep with the girl and then find out she loved him or wanted him too much for his own comfort, and so he traveled alone around Europe for a long time, crossing paths with the Laughing Girl on occasion and then more often. He came to realize that here and there people knew of him, or at least of his slim theosophical book and of his book of essays and his money.
But as the years passed he came to realize that all of the relationships were hollow. He used them and they used him. He used them to hide himself in, and they used him to fund their junkets, their philosophies, their theories with a piece of art tacked on. And his relationships soured because at this vortex of confetti and distraction there was always himself and the idea that he wanted one thing dearly and he could have had it had he been strong enough at the right time.
After a while the intellectual cache from his slim book of essays had worn thin, and people who used to enjoy the parties at the hidden spots got to dreading the sight of each other, and they were all grateful for the arrival of the Spanish Civil War. It gave a new gravity to their miasma and annunciated a previously unrealized yearning to separate the aesthetes from the Marxists and rinse the bad aftertaste of the last revolution out of their throats and off of their vocabulary. Laughing Girl's husband seized the opportunity to raise funds for the Lincoln Brigade but got caught double-dealing both his clients. Laughing Girl refused to bail him out and Mr. Perfect was too tired to cross her, and the man was murdered in jail. This left Laughing Girl monied and free but Mr. Perfect did not want her. He was tired of her. He was tired of everything. He uttered a potentially inappropriate opinion on the defenders of Madrid one evening and he found himself ostracized and dropped back into the circle of theosophical dabblers. The members had changed, and he kept their company for years, and in time he helped them to sponsor an expedition.
1939
The exploration party had fallen into bickering almost as soon as the boat had set sail, and it continued all along the way. It was late in the season to be heading toward the coast of Egypt, and the passage was rough. The sky refused to change from slate grey. Mr. White was with Laughing Girl, who had off and on across the decade fallen into the role of his companion of convenience. White had begun drinking heavily almost as soon as they were out of sight of shore, and Laughing Girl found herself being kneaded like putty under the pressure of a new admirer's eyes, and she gave them her attention. The attention's source was a new man in the circle of their old theosophists, a tall young man with bright green eyes who was supposedly a sensitive, or medium, and spiritual advisor. He would let the group know when they were getting close to whatever it was they had set out seeking this time.
"Don't let him get to you," an older Englishman whispered leaning into Mr. White as they both stood in the corner of the deck, away from the others. "He's just trying to get a read from everyone, a benchmark of their emotions, so he will notice any changes later on, as we all become susceptible to higher powers."
"You mean he’s the boss’s snitch."
"Now my boy!"
"You don't look so well."
"Hah – doesn't take a sensitive to find that out, I see. Things have been better. Since my Agnes died I have not felt myself. I'm all knotted inside, or something worse, I'm starting to fear. But this trip might take my mind off things, with its promises and possibility of remarkable discoveries."
Mr. Perfect lit a cigarette and looked out over the waves. "Yes. Did he say 'discoveries' this time, or 'insights?' I've noticed he's taken to using 'insights' more these days, as the discoveries are so few."
"Here now my boy, you mustn't talk like that! The Leader means well. Sometimes poetry rolls back more untruths than science, and mystical experience more than poetry. Why, if nothing else we'll have a richer vocabulary to describe what we feel, and to know more about the universe through our feelings. The dead machine of science showed clearly how we must return to the animistic truths if we're to find meaning in life. My son, in his last letters from Verdun, before the gas..."
"Yes, so you've told me before..."
"And it's true! Why, even now the Leader is helping me to realize that in some way, my Agnes might not really be gone."
Mr. Perfect looked at him. "What do you mean?"
"Why the rolling back of all those doubts in my head, the replayed memories like a pack of gramophonic disks to crowd out the silence. He's teaching me not to be afraid – to lift the needle off the phonograph and just listen."
"Listen to what?"
The man paused. "To be receptive, to hear what might be there. If I listen."
"Uhm hm."
"To not try so damned hard to fill the silences!" His eyes were growing bleary.
"And what have you heard?"
"Well so far, that is to say, now, well any day now..."
"Yes..?"
"My boy, I've been so lonely, so lonely!" His eyes grew red and hard. His face looked like a sloppy cake. "Oh, to find the Orphic locale the sensitive anticipates, to bridge the gap just once..!"
Mr. Perfect walked slowly back to his cabin. His girl did not come back to him that night, or any night thereafter on the trip, and he did not care.
The theosophical group had recently fallen under the sway of a new leader. The Leader was international and enigmatic and he had some secret for preserving an appearance of youthful energy yoked to the service of advancing middle age. He had wavy black hair and sharp eyes and a beard-dark jaw and a lean face like a hungry wolf. In all his talk of enlightenment he spoke his words like a wolf snapping at a rabbit's heels. This was his degree of vitality, his enthusiasm. It was, as he'd say, the unshrouded energy of a truly authentic life. He was a member of several pan-cultural neo-mystical movements. He was always off rubbing shoulders with Yeats or Cowley or conducting a séance or being interviewed for Time and Tide.
Now he was on board the ship bound for some Egyptian ruin, but as usual his time for the group members themselves was scarce. He had brought some new guest on board with him, and no one had managed to see who the guest was before the two of them disappeared into seclusion. And he had also brought along with him the usual herd of 'cattle' - neophyte monied spiritualist dabblers to be chatted, smiled, gripped, and relieved of cash for the cause. It was the other group members' job to make them welcome, to see to it that they had the spiritual experience they'd come along to seek, and if nothing else to hint that the guests had been eminently famous in past lives. Their instructions were as usual: no two women were to have been Cleopatra, and so on.
"It's not like him, even him, to duck out so soon after boarding? And who was that guest? Something's up this time."
"Shhh, here come some cattle."
"And that new sensitive – he's the boss's eyes and ears, I tell you! Seeing what we're saying while he's not around..."
"Shhh!"
Then the crowd of upper class dabblers came up.
Smiles all around. "We are blessed to be born in a gifted time! It speaks well of you that you perceive it…"
...But after the crowd moved on...
"It's something else this time, too. I'm getting tired of him..."
"Now look, if you're going to be all m
opey, maybe you should go off by yourself for a while. You may be rich, but we need the cattle's money if the rest of us are to avoid another winter in London..."
Mr. White went down to his berth and spent most of the next several days there, listening to muffled voices come and go outside. He lay on his bunk and unfolded a picture from his pocket. It was from a young female admirer who had sought out his acquaintance. Another theosophical lecture, another crop of eager hopeful minds and hearts like moths drawn to the light of bright words, not knowing the only brightness was what they themselves brought to the tired ideas he pretended.
He liked their warmth, their youth. It was real. He was ready to be young again – again. He had begun receiving her attentions already when he and Laughing Girl were growing apart.
He lit a cigarette. How much time could this girl take him across? Five years? Three years? A month? Her blonde hair could be the border of a photograph to plunge into, to fold himself up and put himself back into his pocket and carry himself a little further. But as he looked at the photograph his eyes moved from the face to the black background behind it, and suddenly before him came a picture of the parties of his early days here, of the writer in his cups who had been the diamond to all their costume jewelry, the noble tragedy disappearing into his own vortex of despair, and he wanted none of it, none of the glory of protracted misery, none of the drowning in the eddies of the great vessels, the downward spiral in the expanding wake of the vessels of excess. He was tired and drew his breath. Enough with that. He put his cigarette to the picture and watched it curl and burn.
They arrived at the ruins in a sandstorm. The troupe was met by their native guides, mounted on camels, bundled beneath coarse robes, and led miserably through the stinging winds. Finally by night the storm had abated and they found themselves at the foot of a temple. They all walked into the shelter of the ruins and began to toss their robes to the floor. A small woman with clownishly smudged makeup cursed "finally!" and lit a cigarette. Others joined in a circle around her, sharing a light and complaining. The old Englishman moved off by himself, looking sad and absent. The cool, green-eyed Sensitive and Laughing Girl stood with a clutch of the cattle, looking remarkably fresh and vibrant, trying to rally their spirits with vague promises.
Mr. Perfect sat alone.
Two robed figures move quickly across the open space, paused to talk to no one, then disappeared into the shadows at the far side. Everyone looked, but then fell to conversing again, except for the Englishman, who moved to Mr. Perfect's side.
"The Leader, and his mysterious guest, I suppose?" Mr. Perfect said. "Got to get some fireworks set up in whatever room they plan to do their voodoo in."
The man just looked at him, and Mr. Perfect took a long, weary drag on his cigarette. "Well, aren't you going to scold me for impiety or something?"
But the man sat down heavily on a stone. "Why should I do that, my boy?" he sighed. "In this whole society dedicated to higher causes, why should I chide the one man who was willing to tell me the truth?"
Mr. Perfect's eyebrows raised. He sat down next to his friend. "Cigarette?"
The man demurred.
"Well, what has gotten into you?"
The man looked up. His eyes were still red and raw but there was some firmness to them. "My boy," he said, "My Agnes spoke to me last night – not in a dream, not in a séance, but in a memory, as crystal clear as I knew her myself. I was going down the hall to blubber like a baby, to cry to the seer about my missing her, my constant checking the pulse of my own loneliness, when a voice inside me from as deep as I know myself told me not to do that, that I had always been a better man than that, so I did not. Instead I sat on the edge of my bed, closed my eyes, and saw her. She told me something – or rather her face did, that face I had seen a thousand times in death and life, that face that glowed after she had delivered our son. It was a hard face – it was a face of Life. It told me that life was worth living just for it being life, and not to rush the end. She told me that she had not rushed hers, that our son had not rushed his, that life must unfold to its own purpose and we must trust it and live it."
"She told you ...?"
"Her face did – her memory did. Everything that was as real as she ever was, as what we lived together."
Mr. Perfect looked into his face.
"I will go home and busy myself, I suppose," the old man continued. "Where there is life there is purpose. I can find people to help take care of, families not so lucky as mine." He took a handkerchief Mr. Perfect had offered him. Then Mr. Perfect took a flask and had a small drink.
"And you?" the man asked him. "Surely after this trip you will do something different? Give up wasting your time with all this?"
"It's just the barest corner of my interests," Mr. Perfect began. "It's an amusement in its place, but yes, I have plans for casting my net wide again – the Far East, maybe, or the Mayans, or the aboriginal Australians..."
"Or whatever else it is you're always circling around."
"Circling?"
"Around some truth, some purpose. You're always filling time neglecting the obvious."
"I prefer the Vorticists," Mr. Perfect said, "defining the empty center by the collection of knick-knacks that swirls in around the drain. That's all we can ever know – the center's always inscrutable."
The old man nodded abstractly.
Just then a head popped around the corner. It was a young acolyte of the order. "Meeting down here in five minutes," he said, jerking his thumb down the hall behind him and disappearing again.
"Theosophy and finger sandwiches," Mr. Perfect said, dragging himself to his feet. He helped the old man up. "Come on," he said. "Hope your appetite is back."
They went down a low dark hall and emerged in a second chamber. It was low-ceilinged with sides that melted away into the shadows and purple smoke. The room was fuller that Mr. Perfect had expected. A second group must have already been waiting.
There was a small dais up front. Tall gold torches flickered on either side. Mr. Perfect looked around the room and caught sight of some of the faces in the firelight. He was surprised at who he saw – important faces. Not the usual art crowd, this. Here and there were politicians, some of important name, some aspiring to be. A military man here and there. A famous educator, several men and women of peerage, many former clerics.
Two shadowed figures moved up through the crowd from its left and as they came into the firelight Mr. Perfect recognized the Leader but now saw the second man with him – Pale Poet! Or at least the man who as a young man had been Pale Poet. Now though, like the leader his face was gold and hard and vigorous and bright-eyed. He had a magnetic gaze that laughed and challenged and comforted. He smiled and approved and scolded and all of it was welcome. He stood beside the leader and Mr. Perfect immediately realized that what he was witnessing was the joining of two leaders and, in the body of the crowd, two forces. The flock of big-wigs was Pale Poet's crew, apparently.
"Gathered believers," the Pale Poet began, "We have asked you here to inaugurate and celebrate a momentous occasion – the joining of our two organizations – the joining of the select few with the Higher Purpose! The yoking of knowledge and talent, of effort and design. A new age of material possibility is upon us. The paint and the hand and the artist now join before the canvas of the world with a science of desire, a post-ideological economy of being ...."
"The ideal of a perfectable material world..."
"...be ready no matter who wins in the coming conflict..."
"...they killed Christ for less than this..."
Mr. Perfect yawned then reached for his cigarettes. He had heard it all before. A few new words tossed in for testing. As he tapped the silver cigarette case he suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder and he turned to see a strong man in uniform looking him in the eye.
"Bushy Brows!"
The man just stared at him. He had the same coal-black eyes from years before but now their fire looked tempere
d. "Nobody's called me that for years and I'd thank you not to start."
"But Bushy..."
"No smoking during ceremonial meetings. It detracts from the grandeur of the candles. If you're going to smoke, take it outside."
Mr. Perfect made one last look to spark recognition in his old comrade's eyes but roused none. So he turned and left the room. He walked down the corridor but noticed a hall opening to the side. He ducked under a velvet rope, and on an impulse, proceeded down it. It was dim and narrow and went on further than he had expected. At its end it took a turn into a passage that was truly ancient. He walked down toward a blush of violet light at the end. The walls were narrow and dusty and the ceiling was low, and he felt as if he were walking back in time. At the end it opened into a firelit room with a sarcophagus in the middle, its heavy slab lid leaning against one side.
He peered in the room and began to walk in. A voice stopped him.
"You can go in, but put this on. Out of respect, you must put this on."
The inflection of the man's voice caught Mr. White by surprise. Mr. Perfect looked to see a tall dark-skinned man inside the doorway. He was not one of their party, or, he thought, of the other. His bearing and clothing were native. His face had the ageless sternness of an alien system of authority.
"Put this on."
He held out a loose hooded robe of plain grey for Mr. White. White pulled it on over his clothes and then the man stood to one side out of his way. Mr. White walked into the vacant room.
The area was ancient but not dusty. Mr. White walked over to and looked into the sarcophagus. It was empty.
Suddenly he felt a great weariness in him. He stepped into the sarcophagus, sat down, and rested his elbows on its sides. He felt his head and body relax. He leaned back and closed his eyes and felt his whole life breath out of him with a sudden sigh. "Oh God!" he thought. "Good God – I’m so sorry."
His mind was instantly pushed by something dim and waiting and predatory. A giant as big as the tide moved in his mind like a shadow. It fascinated and collapsed him. He exhaled, sat up again, and opened his eyes. He fumbled for his cigarettes.