Chapter One Hundred and Twelve
Today in the art class, Maestra Bergamaschi asked her students to paint from imagination. “This is a whole other enterprise,” she explained. “We have in each of us an eyeglass to another world. Once, in our ignorance, we assumed that each eyeglass opened onto the same world—a heaven obtainable by all. But now, now that our race is more mature, we can see, clearly, that each of our worlds is a separate, different thing. Hence, the majesty of art. Show us, now, your world, and don’t for a moment regret if it looks nothing like this one, or like anybody else’s.”
Arthur chatted amiably with Seamus while they painted.
“What do you think so far?” Arthur asked.
Seamus leant over and took a gander. “I’m trying to interpret what you’re saying.”
“I’m not saying anything. It’s, you know—a vision from my other world.”
“It looks like a bunch of happy families.”
“That’s right.”
“Being destroyed.”
“That’s right.”
“By fire.”
“And that’s brimstone, there. See?”
“I thought that was that lady’s hat.”
“It’s her hat, but it’s been engulfed by brimstone.”
“Ah. I like it. It’s got a sort of. . .killing-families motif running throughout.”
“Really? That’s fine! That’s exactly what I was going for.”
“Well, what do you think of mine?”
Arthur leant over to peer through Seamus’s inner eyeglass.
“That’s on a rather different theme to mine.”
“Mm.”
“What’s it called?”
“Naked Men Kissing.”
“I see.”
“I wanted to avoid any ambiguity.”
“Yes, that’s—that’s unambiguous, all right.”
Despite Genevra’s injunction, Enid’s and Rosella’s paintings turned out to be, without either having looked at the other’s, remarkably similar, with the qualification that Rosella’s paint had been far more expertly applied: floral, near-abstract designs floating over an unearthly, unrecognisable landscape.
The duchess’s renderings were unmistakeably phallic, but only quasi-identifiable with known objects on Earth. The only obvious resemblance was of the tiaraed princess in the centre, bearing a remarkable likeness to her highness herself, gaping at the flotilla of encroaching phalli, as if she were a harbour offering refuge and succour to the whole sea-weary fleet.
Petunia and Annette were the newest members of the group. Annette did her best to depict, in clumpy and haphazard strokes, a series of men being whipped, castrated and otherwise tortured. Petunia, taking a different tack, expressed a semisolid blend of two kissing faces fused at the mouth. All the while she painted, Petunia, though she wore a thin gingham dress, felt, through the memory of her skin, Annette’s caresses upon her. When she closed her eyes, and listened to the scraping of brushes against canvas, the squeaking of shoe soles on the floor, the murmur of casual conversation, and the humble coughs of the students in recognition of the divergence between their mental intent and its physical translation via paint, Annette’s palms still ran up her thighs and over her backside, her lips still closed upon her clavicle, her thigh still pressed between her legs.
Voot and Mifkin joked back and forth, here and there remembering their purpose in the class, so adding a dab or two to their respective tours de force, then resuming their laughter. Voot began by painting a peaceful farm—totally Terran, with nothing the slightest bit otherworldly about it—while Mifkin portrayed some sort of magical castle that had crumbled into beautiful ruins. But each grew bored with that, and so decided between themselves to paint synchronised portraits of each other, each generously depicted.
“I’d always wanted to be an artist,” Voot confided in his number two (i.e., deputy manager; not excrement). “Only the vicissitudes of life, and my manifest lack of talent, got in the way.”
“I’d always wanted to manage this hotel,” Mifkin admitted, absent resentment. “But not anymore. I’ve discovered so many, many more important things.”
“It’s as if you’ve read my mind,” Voot smiled.
And the class carried on, to the pleasure of all.