Zelazny, Roger - SS - A Museum Piece.pdf
(
108 KB
)
Pobierz
667962719 UNPDF
A Museum Piece
Roger Zelazny
Forced to
admit
that
his
art was going unnoticed in a
frivolous
world, Jay Smith decided to get out
of
that
world.
The four
dollars
and
ninety-eight cents he spent for a mail
order
course entitled _Yoga--the
Path
to
Freedom_
did
not,
however
,
help to free him. Rather, it served to accentuate his
humanity
, in that it reduced his ability to
purchase
food
by
four
dollars and ninety-eight cents.
Seated in
a
padmasana
, Smith contemplated little but the
fact
that his navel drew slightly closer to his
backbone
with
each day
that
passed. While nirvana is a reasonably
esthetic
concept
, suicide assuredly is not, particularly if you
haven't
the
stomach for it. So he dismissed the fatalistic notion quite
reasonably
.
"
How simply
one
could
take
one's
own
life
in ideal
surroundings
!" he sighed, (tossing his golden locks which,
for
obvious reasons
, had achieved classically impressive lengths).
"The fat stoic in his bath, fanned by slave
girls and
sipping
his wine
,
as
a
faithful
Greek
leech opens his veins, eyes
downcast
! One delicate
Circassian
," he
sighed again
,
"_there_
perhaps
,
plucking
upon
a
lyre
as
he
dictates his funeral
oration
--the latter to be read by a faithful
countryman,
eyes
all
a-blink
. How easily
_he_
might
do
it! But the fallen
artist
--say! Born yesterday and scorned today he goes, like the
elephant
to his graveyard, alone and secret!"
He rose to his full height of six feet
, one
and
a
half
inches
,
and
swung
to
face
the
mirror. Regarding his skin,
pallid
as marble, and his straight nose,
broad
forehead,
and
wide-
spaced eyes
,
he
decided
that
if one could not live by
creating
art, then one might do worse that turn the
thing
the
other
way about, so to speak.
He flexed those
thews
which had earned him half-tuition as
a
halfback for the four years in which he had stoked the
stithy
of
his
soul
to
the
forging
out
of a movement all his own:
two-dimensional
painted sculpture.
"Viewed in
the round
,"
one
crabbed
critic
had
noted,
"
Mister Smith's
offerings are either frescoes without walls or
vertical
lines.
The Etruscans
excelled
in
the
former
form
because they
knew where it belonged; kindergartens inculcate a
Page 1
mastery
of the latter in all five-year-olds."
Cleverness! More cleverness! Bah!
He was
sick
of
those
Johnsons
who laid down the law at someone else's dinner table!
He noted
with
satisfaction
that his month-long ascetic
regime
had reduced his weight by thirty pounds to
a
mere
two
twenty-five
. He decided
that
he
could
pass
as
a
Beaten
Gladiator, post-Hellenic.
"It is settled," he pronounced. "I'll _be_ art."
Later that afternoon a lone figure entered theMuseumofArt , a
bundle
beneath his arm.
Spiritually haggard
(although
clean-shaven
to
the
armpits
),
Smith
loitered
about the Greek Period until it was
emptied
of all but himself and marble.
He selected a dark corner and unwrapped his
pedestal
.
He
secreted the
various personal things necessary for a showcase
existence
, including
most
of
his
clothing,
in
its
hollow
bottom
.
"Good-bye
, world
,"
he
renounced, "you should treat your
artists
better," and mounted the pedestal.
His food money had not
been completely
wasted,
for
the
techniques he
had mastered for four ninety-eight while on the
Path to Freedom, had
given him
a
muscular
control
such
as
allowed him
perfect,
motionless
statuity
whenever the wispy,
middle-aged
woman followed by
forty-four
children
under
age
nine
, left her chartered bus at the curb and passed through the
Greek Period
,
as
she
did every Tuesday and Thursday between
9:35and9:40in the morning.
Fortunately,
he had
selected
a
seated
posture.
Before the
week
passed he had also timed the watchman's
movements
to an alternate _tick_
of
the
huge
clock
in
the
adjacent gallery
(a delicate Eighteenth Century timepiece, all
of
gold leaf, enamel, and small angels who chased
one
another
around in
circles). He should have hated being reported stolen
during
the first week of his career, with nothing to face
then
but the
prospect of second-rate galleries or an uneasy role in
the
cheerless private
collections
of
cheerless
and
private
collectors
.
Therefore
, he
moved
judiciously
when
raiding
staples
from the stores
in
the
downstairs
lunch
room,
and
strove to
work out a sympathetic bond with the racing angels.
The directors had never seen fit to secure the
refrigerator or
pantry from
depredations
by
the
exhibits, and he applauded
their lack
of
imagination
. He nibbled
at
boiled
ham
and
pumpernickel (
light), and munched ice cream bars by the dozen.
After a month he was forced to take
calisthenics
(heavy) in the
Bronze Age.
"Oh, lost!" he reflected amidst
the Neos
,
surveying
the
kingdom he
had
once
staked out as his own. He wept over the
statue
of Achilles Fallen as though it were his own. It was.
As in a mirror, he regarded himself in a handy
collage of
bolts
and nutshells. "If you had not sold out," he accused, "if
_you
_ had
hung on a little longer--like these, the simplest of
Page 2
Art's creatures...But no! It could not be!
"Could it?" he addressed a particularly symmetrical mobile
overhead
.
"_Could_ it?"
"Perhaps," came an answer
from nowhere
,
which
sent
him
flying
back to his pedestal.
But little came of it. The watchman had been taking guilty
delight
in a buxom Rubens on the other side of the building and
had
not
overheard
the
colloquy. Smith decided that the reply
signified
his accidental nearing of
Dharana
. He returned to the
Path
, redoubling
his
efforts
toward
negation
and
looking
Beaten.
In the days that followed he heard occasional chuckling and
whispering
, which he at first dismissed as the chortlings of the
children of Mara and Maya, intent upon his distractions
.
Later, he
was
less certain, but by then he had decided upon a classical attitude
of
passive inquisitiveness.
And one spring day, as green and golden as a poem by Dylan
Thomas
, a
girl
entered
the
Greek
Period and looked about,
furtively
. He found
it
difficult
to
maintain
his
marbly
placidity
, for lo!
she
began to disrobe!
And a
square parcel on the floor, in a plain wrapper. It
could
only mean...
Competition!
He coughed politely, softly, classically...
She jerked to an amazing attention
, reminding
him
of
a
women's underwear
ad
having to do with Thermopylae. Her hair
was
the correct
color
for the undertaking--that palest shade of
Parian manageable
--and
her
gray
eyes
glittered
with
the
icy-orbed
intentness of
Athene
.
She surveyed the room minutely, guiltily, attractively...
"Surely stone is not susceptible to virus infections," she
decided
.
"
' Tis but
my
guilty
conscience
that
cleared its
throat
. Conscience, thus do I cast thee off!"
And she proceeded to become
Hecuba Lamenting
,
diagonally
across
from the Beaten Gladiator and fortunately, not facing in
his
direction
.
She handled it pretty well, too, he grudgingly
admitted
. Soon she achieved an
esthetic
immobility
. After a
period
of appraisal he decided that Athens was indeed mother of
all
the
arts;
she
simply
could
not
have
carried
it
as
Renaissance
nor Romanesque. This made him feel rather good.
When the great doors finally swung shut and the alarms had
been
set she heaved a sigh and sprang to the floor.
"Not yet," he cautioned, "the watchman
will pass
through
in
ninety-three seconds."
She had
presence of mind sufficient to stifle her scream,
a
delicate hand with which to do it, and
eighty-seven
seconds
in which
to
become
Hecuba
Lamenting once more. This she did,
and
he admired her delicate hand and her presence of
mind
for
the
next eighty-seven seconds.
The watch man came, was nigh, was gone, flashlight and beard bobbing
in
musty will o' the-
wispfulness
through the gloom.
Page 3
"Goodness!
" she
expelled her breath. "I had thought I was
alone
!"
"And correctly so," he replied. "'Naked and alone
we come
into exile
...Among
bright
stars
on this most weary
unbright
cinder
, lost...Oh, lost--'"
"Thomas Wolfe," she stated.
"Yes," he sulked. "Let's go have supper."
"Supper?" she inquired, arching her
eyebrows
.
"Where
?
I
had brought
some
K-Rations,
which
I
purchased
at an Army
Surplus Store--"
"Obviously,
" he
retorted,
"you
have
a
short-timer's
attitude
. I believe
that
chicken figured prominently on the
menu
for today. Follow me!"
They made their
way through
the
Tang
Dynasty,
to
the
stairs
.
"
Others might
find
it
chilly
in here after hours," he
began
,
"but
I
daresay
you
have
thoroughly
mastered
the
techniques
of breath control?"
"Indeed,
" she
replied,
"my
fiancee
was
no
mere
Zen
faddist
. He followed the more rugged path
of
Lhasa. Once he
wrote a
modern
version
of
the
Ramayana,
full
of topical
allusions
and advice to modern society."
"And what did modern society think of it?"
"Alas! Modern society never saw it. My parents
bought him
a one
-way
ticket
to
Rome,
first-class, and several hundred
dollars worth of
Travelers
'
Checks
. He has
been
gone
ever
since
. That is why I have retired from the world."
"I take it your parents do not approve of Art?"
"No, and I believe they must have threatened him also."
He nodded.
"
Such is
the
way
of society with genius. I, too, in my
small
way, have worked for
its
betterment
and
received
but
scorn
for my
labors
."
"Really?"
"Yes. If we stop in the Modern Period on the way back, you
can
see my Achilles Fallen."
A very dry chuckle halted them.
"Who is there?" he inquired, cautiously.
No
reply
.
They stood in the Glory of Rome, and the stone
senators
were still.
"_Someone_ laughed," she observed.
"We are not alone," he stated, shrugging
.
"
There've been
other indications
of
such,
but whoever they are, they're as
talkative
as
Trappists
--which is good.
Remember, though art but stone," he called gaily, and they
continued
on to the cafeteria.
One night they sat together at dinner in the Modern Period.
"Had you a name, in life?" he asked.
"Gloria," she whispered. "And yours?"
"Smith, Jay."
"What prompted you to become a statue, Smith--if it is
not
Page 4
too
bold of me to ask?"
"Not at all," he smiled,
invisibly
.
"
Some are
born
to
obscurity
and others only achieve it through diligent effort. I
am one
of the latter. Being an artistic failure, and broke, I
decided to become my own
monument
. It's warm
in
here,
and
there's
food
below
. The environment
is congenial, and I'll
never
be found out
because
no
one
ever
looks
at
anything
standing
around museums."
"No one?"
"
Not a
soul, as you must have noticed. Children come here
against
their wills,
young
people
come
to
flirt
with
one
another
,
and
when one develops sufficient sensibility to look
at
anything," he lectured bitterly, "he
is
either
myopic
or
subject
to
hallucinations
. In the
former case he would not
notice
, in the latter he would not talk. The parade passes."
"Then what good are museums?"
"My dear girl!
That the former affianced of a
true artist
should speak
in such a manner indicates that your relationship
was
but brief--"
"Really!
"
she
interrupted
.
"The
proper
word
is
'
companionship
'."
"
Very well
,"
he
amended,
"'companionship'. But museums
mirror
the past,
which
is
dead,
the
present,
which
never
notices
,
and
transmit
the
race's
cultural
heritage to the
future
, which is not yet born. In this, they are near
to being
temples
of religion."
"
I never
thought
of
it that way," she mused. "Rather a
beautiful
thought, too. You should really be a teacher."
"It doesn't pay well enough, but the thought
consoles me
.
Come,
let us raid the icebox again."
They nibbled
their
final
ice
cream bars and discussed
Achilles Fallen
,
seated
beneath
the
great
mobile
which
resembled
a
starved
octopus
.
He told her of his other great
projects
and of the nasty reviewers, crabbed and bloodless, who
lurked
in Sunday editions and hated life. She
, in
turn,
told
him
of
her
parents,
who
knew
Art
and
also
knew why she
shouldn't
like him, and of her parents' vast fortunes,
equally
distributed
in timber, real estate, and petroleum. He, in turn,
patted her
arm
and
she, in turn, blinked heavily and smiled
Hellenically.
"You know," he said, finally, "as I sat upon
my pedestal
,
day
after
day,
I
often
thought to myself: Perhaps I should
return
and make one more effort to pierce the cataract
in
the
eye of
the public--perhaps if I were as secure and at ease in
all
things
material--perhaps
if
I
could
find
the
proper
woman
--but nay! There is no such a one!"
"Continue
!
Pray continue!" cried she. "I, too, have, over
the
past days, thought
that,
perhaps,
another
artist
could
remove
the
sting
. Perhaps the
poison of loneliness could be
drawn
by a creator of beauty--If we--"
At this point a small and ugly man in a toga cleared his throat.
Page 5
Plik z chomika:
chomikbob7
Inne pliki z tego folderu:
Zelazny, Roger - Wizard World 01 - Changeling.pdf
(371 KB)
Zelazny, Roger - Wizard World 02 - Madwand.pdf
(391 KB)
Zelazny, Roger - A Night In The Lonesome October.pdf
(286 KB)
Zelazny, Roger - Damnation Alley.pdf
(201 KB)
Zelazny, Roger - Dilvish, The Damned.pdf
(400 KB)
Inne foldery tego chomika:
Arthur C. Clarke
BooksEN
ebook english
ebooki po angielsku
Gene Wolfe
Zgłoś jeśli
naruszono regulamin