Страница 90 из 130
“You have a sobering ma
“My art has the disadvantage that no one who sees it can trust the shape of it. I can lay hands on the beautiful marble flesh, and find the outlines.”
“But if you believe it’s flesh, you’ve been taken in.”
Waden gri
Herrin turned the mug in a circle, until the handle was facing his hand again, studying the amber and crystal patterns on the wooden table.
“Are you never lonely, Herrin? Even with Keye—are you never lonely?”
He looked into Waden’s. eyes.
“I am,” Waden said. “Loneliness on a scale you understand. Keye—has you. And me. Keye has two living minds greater than her own, two walls off which to reflect her thoughts. But our scope is more than hers. There are thoughts you think she can’t comprehend, co
Herrin found nothing to say, not readily.
“I think you have, Herrin. And how do you answer them?”
“By crowds. By crowds. Three or four pitted against me—can entertain.”
“But satisfy?”
“I have my art. You’re right, that I can lay hands on it, that it gives ... presence and substance. Yours, on the other hand, is far more solitary. Whoever sees it will not admire. They fear.”
“Unless there were one to complement me. One who could take my art and put it in breathing marble and bronze, who could make me monuments, Herrin, who could provide something that would not be feared, but treasured, who would make my works visible. Complementary, Artist. I provide you subject and you provide me substance. And we talkto each other. We communicate, as neither of us can communicate with others, in our own language.”
“How can there be trust?”
“That too, I leave you to discover. Solve my dilemmas, Artist. Lend me vision and I lend you power to spread that vision.”
“You don’t yet have that power.”
“But shall.”
“And is power shared?”
“Dionysus.” Waden chuckled and drank deeply of his beer. “And Apollo. You are Dionysian and I Apollonian, urge and logic, creativity and rationality, chaos and order. We function in complement. Adopt your protégés. I have my own. We are opposite faces of one object; a balance of forces. Beware me, Dionysus, as I am wary of you. But cooperate we can—and must. The alternative is sterile solitude. We shall beget ideas upon each other. We shall contend without contending, by being.”
“I reject your analogy. They’re old gods, and we are both of us half and half. Our contending is potentially more direct.”
“But the manifestation, the manifestation, Herrin, isn’t that the important thing, because there’s no way my Apollonian art can have dominance over your Dionysian one save by inspiration; and yours similarly with mine. Inspire me. I defy you to do more.”
“When I defy youto do more, I fear you can.”
“Then have you not, Herrin, met your master?”
“Then have you not met the thing you say you fear most?”
Waden stared at him a moment, then all his expression dissolved in humor and he poured more beer from the pitcher, poured for Herrin as well. “See, I’m your servant. I must be, because I have a need, and you are that need. Without Dionysus, I become stasis, and the world stops.”
“We are both Dionysian, and drunk.”
“Drunk, we are soberer than most will ever be. No, we are still in complement, because our opposite natures are on the expressive side, and our internal realities are therefore opposite. We are a doubled square of dark and light, complete pattern.”
“Then, my complement, give me Jenks Square.”
“That is your ambition.”
“That is a step toward it.”
“But I’m only a student.” Waden held outward his empty hands. “Who am I to give gifts?”
“Waden Jenks.”
“That I am.” His laugh at this was different, sober, conscious. “I shall give you the Square, Artist, and you will make me visible to all of time. Visible. You’re right that I live like the invisibles, and I don’t savor it. Give me substance. Whatever you need, that I’ll give.... Ah, Herrin, respect me.”
“Fear me, if I’m your outlet to the world; your substance flows through my hands.”
“I’ve told you what I fear. What do you fear, Artist?”
Herrin frowned, and looked him in the eyes and gri
“Marvelous. O Artist, I tell you I find no pleasure greater than this, to find a mind to answer mine, a recognition passing all other pleasures. I ask you no more questions. What you want—is possible. Indeed, you’ll find it’s possible. Begin your work in your mind; I’ll give you the stone.”
Herrin’s heart beat very fast. He was drunk, perhaps, but only half with the beer. It was Waden’s intoxication which infected him. He believed, and that night in his own bed, alone, for Keye had other business, he still believed, and began to build the plans he had already made—bigger, and finer, and more far-reaching.
He had his means. Waden Jenks frightened him, for he knew himself, how dangerous he was in his own power, and he believed that Waden Jenks was at least second to him, in a way that Keye could never be, for Keye was tu
And worked in different ways.
There was nowhere in the University or in the Residency that one was likely to discover the handiwork of Waden Jenks; Waden’s work was silence, was subtlety, the warping of a purpose; was kinetic and impossible to freeze. Herrin thought of capturing this in stone, and began to despair.
More and more it became his obsessive concern, the thought that this Man, this potentiality against which all Freedom was measured, had an essence which defied him.
VII
Master: What is matter?
Herrin: Appearance.
Master: What is the validity of appearances?
Herrin: Whatever value I set on them.
Master: Are you not also a manifestation of the material universe?
Herrin: The universe is irrelevant.
Master: Are you then relevant,
Herrin: I am the only certainty.
He went out into Jenks Square and considered the foursquare blankness paved in all directions, stood on the bronze circle which, marked the center of Kierkegaard and therefore of all civilization, and tried to envision Waden Jenks, turning on his heel to the bewilderment of those passersby who must recognize the somber Black of a Student, and therefore, a purpose which was higher than their own or a talent which exceeded theirs.
The conceit amused him. He laughed aloud, and spun, and finally in the spi