The Artist

THE ARTIST
(SHORT STORY)

By S. KRISHNAMOORTHY

(Lecturer in English, S. R. R. & C. V. R. College, Vijayawada)

After six years of enforced banishment in a mofussil town, I was once again able to bein the city to welcome Ravi on his arrival from abroad and participate in the fete held by his brother-artists in honour of his arrival. Tied down to a dull and monotonous life in what was an apology for a town, and compelled to maintain a family on a mere pittance, I would often look with nostalgic regret on the pleasant days which now seemed so far away in retrospect, as if they had existed in some previous birth.

In those days I was a care-free youth, a typical college student more keen on wandering about the streets than on attending the classes. It was then that I contracted the acquaintance or artists. There was something enchanting about their Bohemian and devil-may-care attitude to life. Later when the responsibility of supporting a big family fell on me, I had many times felt an irresistible desire to escape into their free and unconventional world where freaks were the rule. My admiration for their wild freedom, an admiration not quite unmixed with envy, was that blend of wonder and awe which a child feels at the sight of an acrobat doing wonderful feats.

That was how Ravi became my bosom friend. He had earned a good name as an artist and had been sent by the Indian Government on an extensive study tour of Europe. We had not met for years and had a lot to talk about.

The gathering was typically Bohemian. The conversation was quite informal and easy.

“Do you remember Kavas Babu?” somebody inquired from across the table.

“Yes, yes. What about him? Why hasn’t he come?” Ravi asked eagerly.

“You may well ask that,” the former began pompously and declared, “Kailas Babu is no longer of our fraternity. He is now a school-teacher.”

“What !” Ravi and I exclaimed together. “Kailas Babu a school-teacher! Is’t true?”

“It’s true,” others nodded and one of them said, “Don’t ask us how it happened. We cannot explain. Better meet him yourself. You may call on him at the new school in the Harijan colony.”

I remember Kailas Babu. In that nondescript mass of artists of all varieties I was able to remember him, for he was a bit out of the common. Like his confreres he was also jovial and unconventional, and sported a happy-go-lucky attitude to life. But what distinguished him from the crowd was the seriousness of purpose which characterised his devotion to art. Accustomed to sudden changes of income and compelled to wade through months of poverty, with rare intervals of short-lived prosperity, artists are generally a spendthrift race. This kind of life makes them too generous with words which are not followed by deeds. It is common even for really gifted people to plan for years some grand work of art without actually attempting it. When pressed by some financial crisis, which is a normal occurrence in their life, they are apt to satisfy the needs of the moment with something second-rate, postponing the real ‘It’ for a more proper time, and very often their masterpieces remain mere dreams to the end of their lives.

Kailas Babu also would often talk about his masterpiece. But on such occasions I had noticed a wild gleam in his and had told myself that, in the midst of all those bragging artists, there was at least one genuine man who would one day realise his dream. I was sure that Kailas Babu’s work would one day cause a stir in the art-world and earn for him a high place among the Heroes of the Brush.

But that day then seemed far off. Kailas Babu had set before himself a high ideal of perfection and was constantly striving towards it. Unlike his brethren in the profession he had a clear view of his own limitations. He was not satisfied with an almost perfect work which might have satisfied a lesser artist. He wanted absolute perfection. This cannot be achieved so quickly, and when he found that a particular work was not up to his standard, he destroyed it unrelentingly and launched on a new venture. Repeated failures did not damp his ardour, which grew steadily with years. Kailas Babu’s intended masterpiece which was so long in coming had become a byword among his friends for something too high for this earth and hence unattainable.

No wonder therefore that my curiosity was roused at the information that Kailas Babu had become a school-teacher. “What a fall!” I was tempted to exclaim. I wanted to go to the bottom of the matter and learn what caused the change. I accompanied Ravi when he went to see Kailas Babu.

The thatched building which housed the school in the Harijan colony was small but clean. One part of it was set apart as the residence of the teacher. It took me some time to realise that the man who received us at the entrance was none other than Kailas Babu. Had it not been for that bright sparkle in the eyes, I could never have associated this prematurely aged man, with wrinkles on his forehead, dark rings round his eyes and an air of exhaustion about him, with the Kailas Babu I have known, the jovial artist who would talk for hours on the greatness of art.

We were ushered into a small room. It was not exactly a room but a small space partitioned off by mud walls, with a small window letting in only a little light, so that there was in it the dimness of the darkening twilight while the sun was blazing hot outside.

Even before we had adjusted ourselves to the semi-darkness of the room, our attention was arrested by a full-size painting hung on the wall in a conspicuous place. We moved near to examine it. Though not an artist myself, years of acquaintance with artists had made me a connoisseur of art. It was too dark to see the details of the painting. But even at first viewitstruck me that here was work of which any artist could be justly proud. The picture depicted a sick-bed scene. It showed a woman. She was not even a woman, but a mere slip of a girl of about twenty, with a delicate, flower-like beauty which showed in her wasted features, lying on a bed about which were scattered medicine bottles and other paraphernalia of a sick-bed. I could not but admire the skill of Kailas Babu who had produced the suggestion of hopelessness and frustration with a few strokes of the brush. This was the masterpiece of Kailas Babu and nobody could excel it!

Kailas Babu had received us and taken us to this room without a word, and we also had not dared to put to him abruptly the question which was uppermost in our minds, “Why did he give up art?” At the sight of this picture we forgot our questionand just stood gaping at it.

Kailas Babu read the mute admiration in our eyes and murmured, as if in answer to our unuttered query, “Yes, this is my masterpiece.”

His words broke the spell of silence that had fallen on us, and I burst out with, “It’s marvellous, Kailas Babu! Why don’t you arrange for an exhibition of this work? It’s sure to bring you fame…...”

“Fame! I don’t want fame!” Kailas Babu interrupted me with a derisive laugh. It was evident that he was very much agitated. “What you call fame is my shame! I shall never agree to parade my cruelty and heartlessness by exhibiting it. It shall die with me.

He checked himself on observing the expression of bewilderment on our faces. “Pardon me,” he said, as if ashamed of his outburst. “I had forgotten that you don’t know anything of my story. I shall explain if you have time to spare for me.”

We had come just to hear his story and we prepared to listen.

The girl you see in the picture is Kamala, my wife. You could not have known her, for she came to the city while both of you were away. She came into my life quite unexpectedly and caused as much excitement as a new planet swimming into the view of an astronomer. She was an orphan and came to the city to earn her living as an artist’s model. You can yourself see she was eminently fit to be a model. Her delicately sensitive eyes could command the subtle nuances of a whole gamut of emotions. I was quick to perceive her possibilities and engaged her. My hopes were more than justified, for she did not remain a mere model but provided inspiration for me. Love of art was a link between us and identity of interests engendered love which culminated in marriage.

But my married happiness was fated to be short-lived. Kamala’s early struggles in poverty had their inevitable sequel, and, a few months after the marriage, she was attacked with T. B. I was stupefied by this unexpected stroke of fate, and made arrangements for her treatment according to my ability and resources. But the disease was in an advanced stage, and she was gradually wasting away.

It was at this time that I had a brain wave. I feel that the devil had prompted me, for no human being would have entertained such an inhuman thought. You know I have been intending for years to create a masterpiece. I worked strenuously, but the results were not completely satisfying. Undeterred, I continued my labour, determined to achieve perfection.

Now there’s something in the very nature of an artist’s work which stultifies its perfection. The system of modelling is responsible, I feel, for this failure. However perfect a model you have, you cannot get a perfect picture with it. The person acting as model cannot but be self-conscious and this self-consciousness defeats the sincerity and spontaneity that should characterise a living work. This difficulty can be overcome if you have nature for your model. But I was not interested in mere nature, except as a ground for humanity. I wanted to exploit the vast possibilities of the human face and figure and the pathos of human life. I was therefore in search of a human model who could remain natural without the least tinge of self-consciousness.

The wretch that I am, I began to look upon Kamala’s diseased condition as a godsend for me. Her wasting body seemed a fitting model for my masterpiece in which I could bring out the terrible futility of the struggling human soul. I set up my easel in the next room and began working.

The work on my picture progressed steadily in proportion as Kamala’s condition deteriorated. But my absorption with it grew so great that I came to look upon her, not as a human being who had come to share her life with me, but as a mere model for my masterpiece. I engaged a nurse to look after her and spent most of my time with the picture. I visited her only once or twice a day, and that too to catch the atmosphere of the room or some detail about Kamala. The fact that she was sinking fast did not escape me, but that realisation, far from exciting my sympathy, only made me do my work in frantic haste lest she should die before my picture was completed.

I can never live down the memory of my guilt in having betrayed a poor, innocent girl who had so trustfully confided her life to my keeping. I was foolish enough to believe that she would not know what I was doing, and what she did not know would not hurt her. But her eyes were too keen not to observe my long absences from her bed-side, and rare and short visits to her. I learnt after her death from the nurse that Kamala guessed the nature of the work I was engaged in, but she pretended not to know, out of consideration for my feelings, as if I had any feelings left in me!

That last, fateful day in her all-too-brief life lives green in my memory. Since daybreak I had been feeling that she would die in a matter of hours. I watched her vital spirits ebbing out gradually. Her soul was giving up the futile struggle to cling to earth and her life seemed to be hanging by a simple, flimsy thread.

The scene impressed me as never before. I had never seen any person dying, and the artist in me was stirred to the utmost effort. Without the slightest consideration for the suffering girl, I rushed to my room and set to work furiously to transfer to the canvas my vivid impressions of what I saw.

I don’t know how long I was engaged on that work. It was the long-drawn wail of the nurse that disturbed my concentration and made me rush to Kamala’s room. She was lying dead and the nurse was weeping over her body.

I approached Kamala with a blank mind and looked at her face. I suddenly stood still and my hair stood on end; for in her usually serene face there was an expression of ineffable contempt–a contempt so profound that it thrilled me with a feeling of infinite terror!

On questioning the nurse I learnt that Kamala had called me in her last moments. But I was too absorbed in my work to hear her. The nurse had offered to fetch me but she had signed to her not to do so. Her extremely sensitive nature was wounded on finding herself neglected even in her last moments by the only person whom she loved above everything else in the world. She had curled her lips in contempt at the thought of my heartlessness, and the last words she uttered were, “Oh, that picture!”……

I stood petrified beside the dead Kamala, looking at her face brimming over with contempt. Too late in life, and at a great cost, I learnt a lesson. I realised my crime in valuing a piece of canvas above a human life. I then learnt to look upon the much glorified art in its true perspective. Art is all right as a pastime but it has no right to usurp the place of life. Where it dares to do that, it is no art but a heartless monster. When an artist is wholly infatuated with art, he forgets that his fellow-beings are human and tends to treat them as so much material for his art and nothing more. While pretending to find and bring out what is hidden in the heart of things, he is blind to what is evident even to a superficial observer. This is the tragedy of Art.

I decided never to dabble any more in art. That is the only atonement left to me for my inhuman neglect of Kamala. But we are weak-willed and the desire for fame is pretty strong. I was afraid that my aversion for art may die away in course of time. Determined to prevent such a contingency, I brought the painting to the room and, rubbing off a part of the picture, depicted on it that contempt on Kamala’s face which was otherwise expressionless….

Whenever somebody recalls my past glory as an artist and tempts me to take to art once again, I have only to come here and look at this picture to recapture my hatred for art. When I look at this, I re-live that day of her death and decide to continue as a school-teacher….

It had become dark. Kailas Babu rose with a sigh and lighted a lamp. He brought it near the picture. We examined it with interest. It was with difficulty that we could suppress an exclamation of horror! Yes, it was contempt all right! Supreme, inexpressible contempt was oozing out of Kamala’s curled lips! It froze us to the marrow. It was no doubt Kailas Babu’s masterpiece! But what a disastrous masterpiece!

It’s years since I met Kailas Babu. But the living contempt in those dying lips haunts me still!