The Art Of Living And Other Stories Part 8

Vlemk the box-painter whirled around, furious, intending to shout obscenities at the picture on the box, though of course he could shout nothing. His face became red as a brick and his eyes bulged, and his breathing was so violent that it seemed he would surely have a heart attack. But at once he changed his mind and put his hands over his face, for he'd seen again, staring at the picture, that the Princess was too beautiful for words.

"What is it?" asked the picture. "What is it that so upsets you?" She spoke with great kindness and what seemed to Vlemk sincere concern, so that he could only a.s.sume that she'd forgotten she'd put the curse on him. (In this he was mistaken.) He tried mouthing words at her, but the picture only stared at him as if in puzzlement, and at last Vlemk gave up in despair and turned sadly away. Tears began to brim up in his eyes and drip down his cheeks.

"It's nothing strange," thought Vlemk, clenching and unclenching his fists. "She fills me with sorrow for what I might have had but lost, this vision of extraordinary beauty I've painted on the box." He ground his teeth and wiped away the tears, but at once his eyes were filled again. "Vision," he thought woefully, and began to shake his head like a child. "Vision, yes, nothing but a vision-a romantic illusion!" Suddenly he bent over, sobbing.

"Poor Vlemk!" cried the box in its piping little voice. "Oh poor, poor Vlemk!" If he'd turned around to look, he might have seen to his astonishment that the box was crying too. But he did not turn. He sobbed for a long time, deaf to the peeping sobs behind him; then at last, with a great, broad shudder and a grinding of his teeth, he got hold of himself. What a fool he was being! There was no way on earth she could have forgotten that it was she who'd put the curse on him. She was a charmer, his pretty little picture, but mean as a snake! And if the picture had no heart, what of the Princess?

"I've been a dolt," he thought. "The murderer's quite right. I must rid myself of idiotic visions!"

With eyes like a maniac's he went over to the hook where his artist's frock hung, carefully took it down, and poked his arms in. He went back to the table where his brushes lay, uncapped a bottle of thinner, poured just a little into a dish, unb.u.t.toned and rolled up his sleeves, then, more meticulous than a surgeon over his knives, began the exceedingly delicate business of cleaning and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his brushes. Then he squeezed paint onto his palette and poured oil and glaze into their containers. When all this was ready, he chose a box-a beautiful one of rosewood-and began to paint.

The picture of the Princess watched with interest. "Another picture of me?" she asked after a time.

"Every painter," thought Vlemk, in lieu of giving answer, "has his own proper subject. Some are best at cliffs, some at trees and flowers, some at boats, some at cows crossing a stream, some at churches, some at babies. My proper subject-the subject which for some reason engages me heart and soul-is the Princess's face."

For several hours, Vlemk painted with such intensity that it seemed he might explode.

Suddenly the picture said, "I don't look like that!"

Vlemk turned, nodded with a mysterious dark smile at the picture on the box, then coolly turned away again, back to his work.

He was painting as he'd never before painted in his life, gazing, unflinching, into the abyss. Every hint his memory of her face provided him, or his increasingly sure knowledge of her perfect twin, the picture he'd earlier painted on the box-the face now watching him in dismay and indignation-he pursued relentlessly, as a surgeon edges into a cortex, following a cancer with the tip of his knife. He softened nothing, gave in nowhere, but set down the Princess's flaws in bold relief. Nothing escaped him: the fullness of the lower lip which only now, as it helplessly submitted to his brush, did he recognize for what it was, a latent sensualism that, if pushed as he pushed it now in paint, fulfilling its dark potential, might be the Princess's ruin; the infinitesimal weakness of one eyelid, its barely perceptible inclination to droop; the even less perceptible but nevertheless real inclination toward hairiness on her upper lip and chin, should her diet fall into disorder, her hormones lose balance. It was a terrible experience, painful and alarming, yet at the same time morbidly thrilling. Both about seeing and about finding new ways to give expression to what he saw, he was discovering more in a single night, it seemed to him, than he'd discovered up to now in all his life.

"That's stupid," said the picture on the box behind him, crossly. "You've missed the likeness. I'm not like that at all!"

"Well, you know, it's just Art," Vlemk answered inside his mind, ironically joking, playing fool in the ancient way of angry artists. Deny it as she might, he thought-and heaven knew she was stupid enough; it was visible in the eyes-she would perhaps not miss it entirely, but feel, at some animal level, rebuked. Behind and to the left of the lady he was painting, he fashioned a small monkey at a pulpit, reading a Bible and shaking his finger, a blazing arched window behind him, obscuring his outlines. Her case, the image was meant to say, was not quite hopeless. If she turned, she might yet receive instruction, if only from a monkey.

The painting that could speak was saying nothing. She had closed her eyes and put on, to punish him, a bored look, or worse than bored: a bored person frozen alive. He felt a brief flash of anger and impatience, then suddenly a kind of joy, though dark and subterranean: she'd given him inspiration for another painting. This time, he decided, he would work more purely, in absolute isolation; that is, outside the influence of her judging eyes. Carefully, as if fondly, he lifted the box with the painting that could speak and carried it to the darkest corner of his studio, where he set it down on a chair and covered it with a black velvet cloth.

"What are you doing?" the picture protested. "Take me back where I was! I don't like it here!"

Vlemk, of course, said nothing but returned to his paints.

It was morning now. Light was streaming in, and chickens and dogs in the city below were calling from street to street like peddlers, their voices bouncing over the ice. Vlemk made coffee, thought briefly of getting a little rest, then settled down on his stool, at his slanted table-methodically, neatly, with controlled but white-hot concentration-to begin on his new work, "The Princess Looking Bored." The lines seemed almost to fall from his brush, the idea taking shape with the naturalness and ease of a flower's opening-though a terrible flower, needless to say: a bloom almost certainly poisonous. As with the painting he'd worked on through the night, he pursued the Princess's worst potential with the reckless abandon of a lover in a fury, a husband betrayed. It was an eye-opener. Who would have guessed (who did not know her as Vlemk knew her) what depths of deceit and self-deception she was capable of, how pitiful and self-destructive her stratagem, or the measure of panic and self-doubt behind the mask of disdain? No wonder she held out on him, refused to lift the curse! He could understand now the dream of the axe-murderer, standing in the midst of his butchery, and he at the same moment recognized with immense satisfaction that his art was as much above that of the murderer as was the murderer's above that of the man who carved b.e.s.t.i.a.l fantasies in pious stone. Vlemk painted quickly, fanatically, yet precisely, like a virtuoso violinist scattering notes like leaves in a wind. Not that he worked, like his friend the ex-violinist, to get even. Nothing could have been farther from the box-painter's mind. His work was absolutely pure; it had no object but knowledge-and Ah! thought Vlemk, what knowledge he was getting! "Princess, how well I know you," he said inside his mind; "you have no idea!" From the chair in the corner came occasional peeps of distress. He ignored them.

He painted all day, finished the second of his Reality boxes, as he jokingly called them, rested for an hour, then went down-his head full of new ideas-to the tavern. As in the days of his innocence (so he thought of them now), his unwinding was like a frenzy. Though he'd meant to remain fairly sober and eat some food, since his heart was full of plans and he was eager to get back to his studio, he'd forgotten his intentions by the second drink. He was painting, after all, as no other box-painter in the world could paint, making discoveries as rare as any scientist's. He was coming to such a grasp of life's darkest principles-and at the same time discovering, as he chased his intuitions, such a wealth of technical tricks and devices-that not a dozen fat books could contain what he had learned in one day. He was achieving, in a word, such mastery of his art, and he was filled with such pleasure in what fortune had granted him, that he could not possibly sit quietly for just one drink, then quietly trudge home. He held the barmaid on his lap and patted her knee, made scornful faces at the poet, whose poverty of wit he despised, mocked the ex-musician by pretending, voicelessly, to sing to him, even once recklessly shook his fist at the axe-murderer.

He awakened the following morning in a cellar-he had no idea how he'd gotten there-his trousers smelling powerfully of duck manure, as if he'd walked through some pond, his head pounding fiercely, his hands so shaky it would be hours, he knew, before he could steady his fingers sufficiently to pick up a paintbrush. Swearing at himself inside his mind, he got up, found his bearings-for he'd wandered to the squalid lower rim of the city-and went home.

"So you've decided to leave me here hidden under a cloth for the rest of my natural days? Is that your intention?" called the picture that could talk.

Grudgingly, Vlemk went over and lifted the cloth away.

"Good heavens!" cried the picture, eyes wide. "Are you all right?"

Vlemk scowled, pulled at his beard, and went to bed.

Again that night he painted until dawn, made coffee, then worked on yet another box all through the day. Each box was more sinister than the last, more shamelessly debauched, more outrageously unfair in the opinion of the picture that could talk, which she now did rarely, too angry and too deeply hurt to give Vlemk the time of day. When his work was finished he again went to the tavern, where he again got so drunk he had no memory of what happened and staggered home as the milkmen were beginning their rounds.

For several weeks this frenzy of painting and drinking continued, and then one day in March-standing in his roomful of boxes with pictures of the Princess on them, each picture meaner and uglier than the last, some so deformed by the painter's rage to tell the truth unvarnished that you could make out no face-Vlemk abruptly stopped. Why he stopped he could hardly have said himself. Partly it was this: whether or not it was true that his work was magnificent, as he sometimes imagined, no one came to see it, and when he carried a box with him to the tavern, no one liked it, not even the axe-murderer.

"How can you not like it?" Vlemk asked angrily with his hands.

"Borrrring," said the axe-murderer, and turned his head away, staring through the wall.

"Ha," thought Vlemk, hardly hiding his scorn, "your work is interesting, my work is boring."

But Vlemk, being no fool, understood the implications. It was exactly as the half-wit ex-poet had said: we learn nothing from Art, merely recognize it as true when it happens to be true; no law requires that we be thrilled by it. Not that he would have said Science is any better. "What are the grandest proofs of Science," Vlemk thought, "but amus.e.m.e.nts, baubles, devices for pa.s.sing time, like the game of quoits? 'Science,' you may say, 'improves life, even when it makes it longer.' Yes, that's true. Let us be grateful to Scientists, then, for their valuable gifts to us, as we are grateful to cows for milk, or pigs for bacon. As the brain's two lobes work dissimilar problems, Science and Art in dissimilar ways try to work out the truth of the universe. This activity the Scientist or Artist finds comforting to his ego, and it provides him with Truths he can make as gifts to the world as a gentleman gives his lady a locket. And what if the Truth about the universe is that it's boring?"

So Vlemk gradually came to the conclusion that his joy in his work, like his earlier vision of extraordinary beauty, was delusion. It was not that he denied having enjoyed himself, learning the techniques by which he nailed down his, so to speak, vision-his perception, that is, of the fragility and ultimate rottenness of things. So one might enjoy learning the technique of the mandolin, but when one finished one was only a mandolin player. One might as well have studied the better and worse ways of sitting on a porch.

So Vlemk, with bitter little jokes to himself, stopped painting. The talking picture sulked as much as ever, and from time to time it crossed Vlemk's mind that perhaps if he looked he could find some tourist who might buy it of him; but for one reason or another, he did not sell it. He settled down now to a life of serious, uninterrupted dissolution, never washing his face or changing his clothes, never for a moment so sober that he remembered to feel regret. Days pa.s.sed, and weeks, and Vlemk became so changed that, for lack of heart, he gave up all his former rowdiness, and often not even regulars at the tavern seemed to know him as he groped his way past them, bent and glum as the Devil in his chains, on his way to the bathroom or to the alley. He forgot about the Princess, or remembered her only as one remembers certain moments from one's childhood. Sometimes if someone spoke of her-and if it was early in the evening, when Vlemk was still relatively sober-Vlemk would smile like a man who knows more than he's telling about something, and it would cross people's minds, especially the barmaid's, that Vlemk and the Princess were closer than one might think. But since he was a mute and declined to write notes, no one pressed him. Anyway, no one wanted to get close to him; he smelled like an old sick bear.

Things went from bad to worse for Vlemk the box-painter. He no longer spoke of life as "boxing him in," not only because the expression bored him but also, and mainly, because the box had become such an intransigeant given of his existence that he no longer noticed.

Then one May morning as he was lying in a gutter, squinting up bleary-eyed and exploring a newly broken tooth with his tongue, a carriage of black leather with golden studs drew up beside him and, at a command from the person inside, came to a stop.

"Driver," said a voice that seemed as near as Vlemk's heart, "who is that unfortunate creature in the gutter?"

Vlemk turned his head and tried to focus his eyes, but it was useless. The carriage was like a shadow in a fire too bright to look at, a gleam of sunlight on a brilliantly glazed, painted box-lid.

"I'm sorry, Princess," said the driver. "I have no idea."

When he heard it was the Princess, Vlemk thought briefly of raising one hand to hide his face, but his will remained inactive and he lay as he was.

"Throw the poor creature a coin," said the Princess. "And let us hope he's not past using it."

After a moment something landed, plop, on Vlemk's belly, and the carriage drove away. Slowly, Vlemk moved one hand toward the cool place-his shirt had lost its b.u.t.tons, and the coin lay flat on his pale, grimy skin where at last his groping fingers found it and dragged it back down to the ground where it would be safe while he napped. Hours later he sat up abruptly and realized what had happened. He looked down at his hand. There lay the coin, real silver with a picture of the King on it.

"How strange!" thought Vlemk.

When he'd gotten to his feet and moved carefully to the street-corner, touching the walls of the buildings with the knuckles of one cupped hand, he found that he had no idea where he was, much less how he'd gotten there, and no idea which direction to take to reach his house. When he waved to hurrying pa.s.sers-by, looking at them helplessly and silently moving his loose, mute mouth, they ducked their heads, touching their hats, and hurried around him as they would if he were Death. He edged on alone, hunting for some landmark, but it was as if all the streets of the city had been moved to new locations. He shook his head, still moving his mouth like some mechanical thing, not a living man, wholly unaware that he was doing it. An old sick alleycat opened his mouth in a yawn, showing teeth like needles, then closed it again and lowered his head. In his right hand Vlemk clenched-so tightly that the rim of it bit into his flesh-the coin with the picture of the King on it.

5.

Three days later, having carefully considered from every point of view, having bathed away the filth and trimmed his beard and washed his old black suit in the sink in the studio, and having dried it on the railing of the balcony, Vlemk the box-painter started across the city and up the hill toward the royal palace. Tucked under his arm, he carried the box with the talking picture. In his pocket he had a carefully folded note which he'd meticulously lettered, intending to put it in the Princess's hand as he gave her the box. "Dear Princess," the note read, "Here is the gift I said I would try to make for you, a picture so real it can speak. I release you from your promise to talk with me, since misfortune has made me a mute, perhaps for my impertinence. I hope this finds you well. Respectfully, Vlemk the Box-Painter."

He arrived at the palace, as he had planned to do, just at the time when the Princess would be coming in from walking her dogs. The last of the sunset was fading from the clouds, exactly as last time; the moon was bright; here and there pockets of fog were taking shape, intruding on the smoothly mown slopes from ponds and woods. He approached exactly as he'd approached before, but to Vlemk's dismay, first one thing was different and then another, so that in the end the palace seemed changed entirely. The outer gates of iron had been thrown wide open and there were no guards in sight, and he wondered for a moment if the greyhounds, when they saw him, would not tear him to bits; but all around the front of the palace stood carriages and large outdoor lanterns, dozens and dozens of them, flickering merrily, as if vying with the stars, and near the arched front door he had once felt pity toward, aristocrats stood talking and laughing, drinking champagne in their splendid dress. It was unlikely, he thought, that they would stand there and watch the dogs kill him-though on the other hand Vlemk had learned enough from people's secrets to be aware that in these matters nothing is ever quite certain.

But the dogs, he thought the next instant, were the least of it. How could he walk in, in the middle of a party of lords and ladies, and give the Princess his present? How would he even find her? As he drew nearer, moving slowly now, he saw that the lords' and ladies' clothes were all of the finest material, with clasps and buckles, b.u.t.tons, epaulettes, and swordhilts of gold and silver. He looked down at his k.n.o.bby brown shoes, white worksocks, and baggy black trousers, then at his vest, riding like a saddle on his pot-belly. It had only three b.u.t.tons-two gray ones and a blue one. His coat had no b.u.t.tons at all. He stood staring, with the box clamped tightly under his elbow, thinking what a fool he'd been, seeing himself as the Princess and her highborn friends would see him: gray-streaked unmanageable hair to his shoulders, a number of veins in his face broken, the slope of his shoulders and the bend of his back the realized potential of a life of disorder and dissolution. "I had better go back home," he thought. "I'll catch her sometime when she's not busy."

From under the black velvet cloth the picture called, "What's the matter? Why are we stopping?"

Vlemk brought the box out from under his arm, held it in front of him, and, like a waiter unfolding a napkin with the back of his hand, tipped off one corner of the cloth so that the picture could see.

For a moment the face on the box only stared, abashed. At last, in a piping voice smaller than usual the picture said, "The Princess must be having a party."

If he'd been hoping the picture would resolve his dilemma, Vlemk was disappointed. He should hardly have been surprised. She might look like the Princess, might have the very same intelligence and emotional make-up, but all that those painted blue eyes had ever seen before this walk was the box-painter's studio.

"What shall we do?" she asked.

As Vlemk stood irresolute, the answer was thrust upon them. The ground began to tremble and a sound like distant thunder began to rise from behind a dark clump of trees. A moment later six or seven horses came bounding over a hill into the light of the lanterns, on their backs young highborn men and women in capes and riding hats, returning, with the greyhounds at their heels, from a gallop over the grounds. Not far from where the others stood drinking their champagne, the riders reined in and the horses came trotting up, docile as sheepdogs; then, before the first of the horses had stopped, the greyhounds saw Vlemk and, barking like devils, came shooting out, bounding like deer, toward him. Instantly the hors.e.m.e.n wheeled after them, hurrying to the rescue-or so Vlemk prayed.

The greyhounds came flashing through the darkness like knives, with astonishing speed and clarity of purpose, but the hors.e.m.e.n were close behind, shouting stern orders at the dogs and hurried good advice to Vlemk, if only he could have heard what they were shouting. It was a horseman who reached him first; the dogs held back at the last minute. The rider was a tall young man with a moustache, his cape like midnight except for the gleaming pure white of the lining, thrown back jauntily past his shoulder like a wing. He shouted something which Vlemk could not make out, then shouted it again. Now the others came swerving and slanting up around him-one of them, he saw, the Princess. He was suddenly conscious of the late-June warmth and wetness in the air. She did not look at all as she'd looked before, but even with his heart pounding wildly in his throat from the scare they'd given him, Vlemk knew at once what the changes were-the make-up, the hair, the padded square shoulders, the startling spring paleness of skin and the hollowness of her cheeks. Fasting? he wondered. He tried to recall if some religious holiday was at hand. Two of her friends were on the ground now, quieting the dogs. The tall young man with the moustache bent down from the saddle. "Who are you?" he shouted to Vlemk. "What are you doing here?"

Vlemk threw a look at the Princess for help, but she kept back, remote and cautious, almost ghostly. Her horse pranced and turned, eager to be gone, and from time to time the Princess glanced back at the people who'd been drinking by the door, now all hurrying in a crowd to find out what was happening. Seeing that there was no other way, Vlemk reached into his pocket and drew out the note, unfolded it with badly shaking fingers, and handed it to the man. The man came close, apparently having difficulty reading it in the moonlight. He half smiled, then wheeled around and trotted his horse to the Princess. "It's for you," he said.

The Princess did not reach for it. "What does it say?"

"You think I read your mail?" he said, smiling like a lover, and held it nearer, insisting that she take it. Vlemk glanced down, full of gloom and a curious detachment, as if the Princess were an acquaintance from some other life and they had both changed completely. His gaze happened to fall on the box. The face was watching the Princess and the man in the moustache with sharp, almost virulent disapproval.

The Princess did take the note at last, giving the man a little smile, half cross, half playful. When she had finished reading she glanced sharply at Vlemk. "You are Vlemk the box-painter?" she asked, displeased. He nodded. She seemed to make out, now, the box under his arm. She looked around-the people with the champagne gla.s.ses were drawing near-and at last she said, "Bring him where it's light," and, without another glance, a.s.suming their obedience, she set off at a trot toward the lanterns. "I don't like her," said the picture on the box, emphatically. Vlemk covered the tiny painted mouth with his hand. Now the moustached man was bending down again, reaching to offer Vlemk a lift up and ride. Vlemk stared a moment before he saw what was intended, then shook his head in alarm and hurried on foot after the Princess. When she reached the lanterns she stopped again for a moment and looked back at him, then nodded, as if telling him to follow, and rode straight on to the enormous, arched front door. There she dismounted, gave the reins to a servant, and stood waiting for Vlemk to catch up with her. As soon as he did, panting from exertion and hastily covering the face with the cloth, the Princess said, "Won't you come inside?" Without waiting for an answer she started up the wide marble stairs.

Vlemk was by this time well aware that by bringing the box to the Princess he had made a mistake. There were social implications he hadn't bothered to think through, implications that now, too late, he recognized as painful to the Princess. Either she must curtly and crudely dismiss him, a poor harmless mute-which was not in her nature-or she must place herself in a position to be laughed at-not a pleasant prospect for a lady so concerned about appearances. Painted boxes were often, in those days, love-gifts, and from the first moment he'd seen her with her friends, Vlemk had known that, even if he had in some sense once loved her, he could not say he loved her now and could hardly imagine recapturing that emotion, though some things about her-the tilt of her head-recalled it, teasingly and faintly, heightening the shock of their mutual change. And so, clearly, he had no business here, certainly no business offering a gift that, given in front of others, had nuances of insult and entrapment, as if one were to offer a lady a dead infant in its coffin, declaring it her own. Even if, as a professional painter of pictures on boxes, he could carry it off-avoid the implications of sentiment that displeased her-there was the matter of the box itself, or, rather, the picture: she, the imitation of the Princess, would not be happy here, G.o.d knew. How much responsibility should one have, he wondered, for a feeling creature that was not, strictly speaking, a creature? Whatever the right answer, the fact remained that feel she did, and her pain and indignation were not easy matters to ignore. Even now as he walked up the marble stairway, followed the Princess and her gathering friends down the long, blue-carpeted, chandeliered hallway, and turned in, behind her, to a room filled with mirrors and figures wrought in gold-a room she had chosen, he recognized at once (knowing her as he did) for the irony it imparted, an irony that defused the effect of his coming and put limits of a kind on the scene she feared (he had forgotten, of course, that she was afraid of his art, afraid of the idea of a painting so perfect it could smile or cry or talk, though of course he had known it, had seen, while exploring her with his brush, that fear of what whimsy might lead to, her terror in the face of the unexpected)-even now, as he sat at the low gla.s.s table in the center of the room, obedient to her command, the m.u.f.fled voice under the cloth was complaining, berating him, insulting the Princess.

"I want to go home," the tiny voice wailed. "You've all gone crazy! I don't look like her at all!"

Vlemk raised his eyebrows, closed his eyes, and pressed one finger down gently to stop the painted mouth. He set the box on the table, still in its black velvet cloth, and waited for the guests to gather and the Princess to take her place. It was not strictly true, apparently, that the moustached young man had been too scrupulous to read Vlemk's note. On every side of him Vlemk could hear whispered speculations on whether or not the painted picture would talk. At last a servant pulled back the Princess's chair, his head bowed in the way people bow when they quickly and casually say grace, and the Princess seated herself, unsmilingly, opposite Vlemk. When the room had quieted, Vlemk, with infinite weariness, scorning himself for this obedience to mindless ritual but seeing no way out, boxed in by the illusory infinity of mirrors, bent forward and removed the black cloth. The Princess for an instant looked not at the box but at Vlemk the box-painter, as if a.s.suring herself that, like her, he meant harm. Then her gaze dropped to the box, and she seemed to pale. The room was faintly humming. After a moment she looked up at the man at her left, the old servant. "Do I actually look like that?" she asked quietly, her voice so sweet that Vlemk's heart wrenched. The servant seemed to muse, bending closer, two fingers on the corner of his spectacles-for all one could tell, he was sincere and honest. At last he said, "I'm not sure, Your Highness. I don't really see the resemblance."

Vlemk smiled.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," whispered the picture, making sure that no one heard but her maker.

Now the Princess was looking hard at Vlemk the box-painter. "You say it talks?" she said.

"She talks if she wishes to," he wanted to say, but being unable to speak, Vlemk simply nodded.

Then, to Vlemk's horror, the picture said crossly, with undisguised contempt, "So you're the famous beautiful Princess."

A gasp went through the room, and the Princess's face went blank. People began whispering; here and there someone laughed; others began shushing them for silence, hoping to hear more from the box.

When everything was still again, the picture said: "You find your image unflattering, Princess?" The painted face paused, waiting for full attention. "Perhaps you've been painted too often by people who 'respect' you." The picture smiled.

The Princess, to her credit, was as calm as stone. To Vlemk she said, "Is the picture always so insulting?"

Vlemk nodded, then in fairness shook his head, then shrugged. He rolled his eyes in the direction of the box and hoped that it would soon learn resignation and, if only for his sake, make peace.

At this moment there was a commotion, and, looking up, Vlemk saw-guided by the eyes of all the others-that on a balcony high on the wall behind him, a balcony he'd failed to notice before, a golden door was opening. After a moment a man in a wheelchair came carefully through the door, a.s.sisted beyond his need by eager servants. Vlemk knew the face at once, ravaged and sorrowful, infinitely patient yet capable of flying into rages over trifles, the face of a man of keen intelligence, plagued by some constant, nagging pain and bearing up as well as he's able. It was the King, whose picture was on the coin. He seemed at death's door. His eyes were slits, his body so wasted beneath the splendid clothes that a small child might have carried him in her arms like a doll. He tipped his head-he wore no crown-as if gazing down at the company, then feebly waved his bejewelled hand as a sign that the business of the evening, whatever it might be, should go on as before. The people bowed and bent their knees to him, some with tears in their eyes; he solomnly nodded back; and then, gradually, all eyes returned to the box.

The Princess said, "Vlemk, my friend, whatever the personality of this toy you've created, there can be no denying that you're an amazing painter of boxes. We accept your gift with pleasure."

Vlemk sadly nodded, ignoring the look of wild outrage from the box, the tiny wail of "Toy indeed!" If he closed his eyes, he knew he would see his friend the Princess as she'd looked that day when she'd refused, out of kindness, to throw him a coin from the carriage. All that was a long time ago, and Vlemk (so he told himself) had no regrets. Nevertheless, he was careful to keep his eyes open, and pressing his hands on the arms of the chair, he prepared to get up and leave.

But the picture on the box was not so pleased with the way things were going, and spoke again: "If you find me unflattering, you should look at the pictures in his studio. He's painted you again and again, Princess. Perhaps in one of the others you'd find something to your taste."

The strength went out of Vlemk's arms, and he sat as he was.

"Is this true?" asked the Princess, both interested and uneasy.

Like images in a nightmare, Vlemk's dreadful pictures of the Princess rose up before his eyes. It was not that he believed them false, exactly-indeed, the drooping eyelid he had predicted was now an actuality, at least when the Princess was angry. Nevertheless, the pictures were not things he desperately wanted her to see. He tried to think whether to nod or shake his head, and at last he pretended he hadn't heard her.

"I must admit," said the Princess almost apologetically, as if admitting that the fault might indeed be her own, "though I'm naturally impressed by the picture you've brought me, I'm not quite sure I see the likeness."

A noise came from the balcony, and instantly everyone looked up. "It speaks," cried the King in a wheedling, childish voice, banging his tiny fist on the arm of the wheelchair. "Think about that, girl! It's real enough to speak!" Instantly a terrible coughing fit took him, blood fell from his nose, and his servants rushed him-shuddering and shaking and snapping his teeth-from the room.

6.

Though she hadn't admitted it the Princess was disturbed by the picture Vlemk had left her, and as the spring days pa.s.sed, her discomfort in its presence increased. She would have had it destroyed if she could bring herself to do so, but the thought nagged at her that facing the whole matter squarely might somehow be important. Moreover, the idea of destroying the picture, even when it attacked her with its vulgar little tongue, made her tremble with superst.i.tious alarm. If she threw it in the fire, might that not be a kind of murder, even though the substance of the creature she destroyed was just paint? And there was this, though she hardly dared think of it: as the flames leaped up around the picture, destroying it, might not she suddenly feel an onslaught of mysterious heat-might she not, in fact... She refused to let the thought complete itself.

Sometimes, if she was lucky, she was able to catch the picture in its sleep, and could gaze at the image thoughtfully for long periods, as she could never have gazed at her image in the mirror, for then the eyes were of course always open and every flicker of thought was reflected, so that nothing was to be trusted, she could never get inside herself. It had struck her as true of many people-the man with the moustache was only one-that what they saw as most interesting or charming in themselves was never in fact what was best in them: their finest expressions, their most beautiful aspects, were things unknown to them, because never shown in any mirror. She could see that the man with the moustache, for example-a prince who was considered by the kingdom's chief ministers to be an excellent match-had been persuaded by his mirror that his n.o.blest expression was the one in which he lifted an eyebrow in ironic amus.e.m.e.nt. Personally she found that supercilious look downright offensive. She could imagine how tiresome and stupid it would look when he was eighty. What drew the Princess's heart to the man-despite her displeasure at being treated as a brood mare, an ambush piece in a political chess game-was the look of childish perplexity that sometimes came over him, a look she was sure he'd never seen on himself and would have done almost anything to avoid.

Though at first she'd been convinced that the box-painter's image was nothing at all like her-a surprising lapse in the box-painter's art or a proof that his manner of living had done damage to his brain-she had gradually begun to revise her opinion, examining the image when the eyes were closed. She saw blue lights in the temples that vaguely frightened her: she was more mortal than she thought. She saw, in addition to the many things that pleased her, little troublesome hints of cruelty, vanity, and stinginess. She began to think the portrait was accurate, and she was filled with a feeling like moths fluttering in her chest.

It was worse, of course, when the picture on the box was awake. It would sit watching her, smug as a cat, or it would say things she never would have dreamed of saying; that is, things she would never have said to herself even in a dream. By the slightest twist of a phrase, the picture on the box could make her heart turn to ice. The most innocent remark-"You do have your little ways, don't you?"-spoken in her own unmistakable voice (unmistakable to her), with her own secret ironies ringing down and down, could emotionally disable the Princess for a week. Her anguish at such moments was so bewildering and complex she could hardly make out what it was that she felt; she could only go to bed and weep. What the box said to her was for one thing so infuriatingly stupid, which meant, she knew, that she, the Princess, was for all her fine airs stupid, tiresome, in fact worthless. Though she was outwardly young, the tedious cliches with which the box attacked her-her own cliches, her own forms of attack-revealed to her that nothing was any longer new about her, the prettily painted box might as well have been her casket. At the same time, what the box said was true, however monstrously unfair-undeniably true. The picture on the box hated her; that was the gist of it. She hated herself. She needed healing, needed the touch of some loving magician who would transform her, return her to her childhood innocence, but who could love her? And if anyone did-the Prince, for example-could an intelligent woman give her heart to such a fool? There were plenty all around her who were willing to give her praise, plenty to whom she could play the Good Princess like a skillful actress, hating herself all the more as she played the role. But there was no one who could silence the voice of the truth-telling box. Even when the picture on the box was quiet, like a watchful animal, a murderer biding his time, it seemed to the Princess that it could fill all the high, square room with its crackling contempt. The picture hated her; if that was all there was to it, she would have been ruined, and that would have been that.

But the picture on the box had another side to it. Sometimes it spoke its emotions without thinking, forgetting its hatred and simply responding to the warmth of the sunlight pouring through the window, the music of the songbirds, or the beauty of the wheatfields sloping away toward the river to the west of the palace. She, the Princess, would feel herself splaying anew to the warmth of the summer, or noticing again, as she hadn't in years, how lovely the wheatfields were, yellowing into season. That voice too, the voice that gave her unthinking and unstinting praise, was unmistakably her own, and the Princess was in those moments as pleased with herself-however briefly and unsurely-as a child who's been given some wonderful gift for no reason.

The feeling was not all sweetness. It inevitably heightened in the Princess's mind the disparity between what she felt to be her best self and knew to be her worst. One day, for instance, walking in the garden with the Prince who wore the moustache, pointing out to him the glow of a blooming tea-rose, she was suddenly overwhelmed by anxiety, wondering which was the truer feeling, the innocent delight which had sprung the remark or the manipulative instinct that had turned it to a ploy in their game of political-romantic approchement.

"As lovely as your eyes," said the Prince, idiotically.

"Are my eyes red, then?" asked the Princess, lowering her lashes and giving him a smile.

"I was really thinking of your cheeks," said the Prince, with that look of childish vexation and befuddlement she usually liked on him. Today she was only annoyed by it-annoyed partly, if she told herself the truth, by the virginal innocence it revealed in him, an innocence she could not match. "Is it not true," she asked herself angrily, "that the Prince's remark was stupid and manipulative?-aesthetically stupid, a floundering metaphor, and both politically and s.e.xually manipulative? Why should a woman's cheeks (or eyes) be celebrated for their redness, as would a child's, and not a man's?"-for her Prince would be insulted beyond words, she knew, if she should seek to flatter him by praise of his pretty, red cheeks. (They were red, in fact, and for a manic instant she thought of trying it.) Yet alas, both the stupidity and the attempt at manipulation came bubbling from the Prince in the moustache as innocently as water from a well, as unconsidered and open-hearted as grapes on a grapevine or pink and blue hollyhocks blooming beside a farmer's brick house.

"Are you all right?" asked the Prince with a look of alarm. Her face was flushed-as red as a rose, he might have said if he'd thought of it-and for no clear reason there were tears in her eyes.

"My dear, dear Princess," he said, in panic now, "is it something I said?"

"It's nothing," said the Princess, and put the tips of her fingers to her forehead.

"Perhaps we'd better go inside," said the Prince, and gave an irritable glance up past his shoulder, as if the heavens' over-brightness were at fault.

"Yes, perhaps we'd better," the Princess said.

At the door to her room they parted with a touch of hands, the Princess promising to be out again soon, as soon as she'd had a little rest. The minute the door was closed, she hurried to her bed and lay down with her head on the pillow, one hand draped limply across her forehead.