CHAPTER
FOUR
The Thursday morning of
the following week brought James Kelly to the West End in order to discuss a
new project with his agent, and later that day, with business concluded more or
less to their mutual satisfaction, he decided to visit the nearby National
Gallery in Trafalgar Square - a thing he hadn't done for several years, largely
because, as an Irish citizen, he considered it irrelevant to his nationality.
Arriving at the gallery in an optimistic frame-of-mind, he
headed straight for Room 45, where the Impressionists were exhibited. In consequence of anti-Christian sentiments
he always preferred to start his tour of the rooms back-to-front and to follow
an anti-clockwise direction, thereby guaranteeing himself the maximum of
patience and concentration for the secular works, which he feared might not get
investigated at all were he to begin the other way around, as presumably most
visitors to the National did, and thus wade through medieval Christendom
first.... Not that he was entirely prejudiced against the religious paintings. For there were, among their considerable
number, some he still quite admired on account of the brilliance of their
colours and the precision of their details.
But, generally speaking, he was more drawn to the secular than to the
religious works, which was why he invariably began at the end.
On this occasion, however, with the exception of a brief glance
en
passant at Seurat's Bathers, Asnières, which he admired more for the degree of
perseverance required in the execution of its pointillist technique than for
its simple subject-matter, he ignored the Impressionists altogether and
proceeded straight to Room 35, in which a number of Canaletto's
Venetian scenes were hung. It struck him
as being singularly appropriate, as he stood respectfully in front of View
of the
On the other side of the room, the Regatta on the Grand
Canal, Venice presented a much more intricate spectacle to the
eye as, with mounting humility in the presence of such skill, Kelly took
especial note of the great crowds taking part in the regatta where, in the
foreground, every figure had been given a carefully defined costume and a
no-less carefully defined physiognomy.
There could be no question of any of the numerous participants being
confounded with insignificant blobs of paint, as in the case of much
twentieth-century art, where the conceptual took precedence over the perceptual
and emotional subjectivity accordingly prevailed. This was not decadent art, still less
anti-art, but painterly art-proper and, as such, the depiction of everything
had to be highly meticulous, in accordance with the more concretely objective
criteria of that age.
Passing on through the nearest rooms, it soon became apparent
to James Kelly that the National Gallery was playing host, as usual, to large
numbers of foreign nationals of mostly Continental origin who wandered from painting
to painting in small groups and talked between themselves in respectfully
subdued tones, occasionally halting to inquire of a uniformed attendant, as
best they could, where one could find a certain painting or gallery. It was indeed pleasing to behold all these
French, Italian, Spanish, and German tourists who were only really there, after
all, because of the large amount of art which their ancestors had produced and
which, by some quirk of historical fate, now reposed in England's foremost
gallery.
The Adoration
of the Golden Calf by Nicolas Poussin,
one of those ancestors who happened to be French, brought Kelly's wanderings to
a temporary halt in Room 32, which appeared to be the largest in the entire
building. Although the actual subject
held no great appeal for him, it served to remind him of the Poussins he had viewed in the Louvre,
a few years previously. He recalled that
virtually the entire length of a ground-floor gallery had been devoted to the
works of this singular genius, who obviously held a special position in the
hierarchy of French classical art. In
addition to the 'Golden Calf' motif, which could also be found in the Louvre, Kelly now unearthed some fragments of memory
associated with classical ruins - a subject which seemed to figure rather
prominently in Poussin's vast oeuvre. But he had to admit that the colour schemes
usually adopted by this master, with their ochreous
mixtures of brown, red, pink, and pale orange, usually depressed him after a
while, as did his rather down-to-earth choice of subject-matter, and this
occasion was to prove no exception!
On the other hand, The Preaching of St. John the Baptist by Van
Haalem (1562-1638) providentially provided him with
the antidote he required to disperse the depressing effects of Poussin, whose matt tones were now eclipsed by the
brilliant colours of this magnificent painting.
There was nothing of late-Christian austerity or melancholy about this
colourful outpouring of religious fervour, as the great prophet confidently
announced the glad tidings of Christ's Coming to a motley crowd standing in a
forest glade which, bathed in luminous light from the open spaces beyond, was
distinctly suggestive of the Supernatural, so ethereal was the overall
impression. For James Kelly, paintings
of this nature partly redeemed religious art in his eyes, made them appear
precious to an otherwise irreligious or secular temperament. Even if, from the vantage-point of
late-twentieth-century secularism, one despised traditional religion, with its
objective faith in miracles and superstitious clinging to outmoded beliefs, of
which the concept of a unitary Creator was the most fundamental in Kelly's
estimation, one was constrained to admit that it had inspired a wealth of
extremely beautiful art, and some of that art, no matter how irrelevant from a
contemporary standpoint, was deserving of due recognition.
Abandoning the small central area between the two main parts of
Room 28, Kelly immediately headed towards Room 22, wherein he wanted to gaze at
The
Toilet of Venus, the divine cynosure of which suggested a likeness, in his
imagination, to the supple body of Paloma Searle,
whom he had never seen nude but was inclined to suppose, from recent
experience, the possessor of a similarly shaped body herself. However, he had only just set foot in this
particular room when he caught sight of a young woman with long wavy-blonde
hair who was viewing the work in question.
Freezing in his tracks, he gazed with rapture upon the hair and shapely
calf-muscles of this fair person, whose physical appearance, seen from behind,
almost surrealistically connoted with the Adoration of the Golden Calf
he had viewed only a few minutes before. Dismissing the connotation as frivolous, he
discreetly approached the real-life woman, so that they were standing
side-by-side in front of the Velazquez, and endeavoured, with a slight turn of
his neck, to peer into her face, which at that moment was presented in
profile. However, this slight movement
was insufficient to distract her attention from that part of the painting in
which its subject's face is reflected in the small mirror held up to her by a
cherub positioned at the foot of the luxuriously draped bed upon which the
goddess of love reclines. But before he
could muster the courage to risk another glance at her, she had taken leave of
the painting and was heading towards the exit.
Panic-stricken at the prospect of losing sight of her, Kelly
automatically abandoned his intention of studying the Valazquez
and, slightly self-consciously, followed her at a discreet distance. Once more, he had time to note the seductive
contours of her pale-stockinged legs and the volatile
texture of her hair, before she came to a gentle halt in front of Rubens' Rape of the Sabines in Room 20.
Not wishing to follow her directly to that turbulent painting, which was
hung in the middle of the nearest wall between two other works by the same
artist, he brought himself to a halt beside The Triumph of Julius Caesar
and gave its vibrant colours, painted in the manner of Mantegna,
a cursory inspection. But although this
was one of the paintings he had particularly intended to view, his gaze soon
reverted to the unknown beauty, whose attention he so desperately wanted to
attract.
This time, however, he was more successful. For she turned a pair of inscrutable eyes
upon him just long enough to enable him to discern the extent of her facial
beauty. His heart leapt excitedly, as
his mind registered its full impact. But
he was unable to prevent a feeling of acute self-consciousness from marring an
otherwise objective appraisal, and quickly returned his attention to the Rubens
again. He suddenly felt the urge to
swallow hard, but was afraid he would only make a noise which would compromise
him and increase his embarrassment.
Ironically, the perfectly representational painting in front of him had
been transformed into a jumble of nondescript shapes and blurred colours, akin
to abstract expressionism, under pressure of his emotions, which threatened to
break out of the prison of skull containing them and explode in all directions
at once, bespattering both viewers and paintings alike with bits of his
brain. At that moment he needed to sit
down to recover his aplomb, but the few seats in the room were already
occupied. An elderly couple came from
nowhere and stood next to the woman who had ignited his emotions, tantalizingly
blocking his view of her.
Turning away from them, he strode across to a painting directly
opposite the one he had been trembling in front of and, with considerable
difficulty, managed to decipher its title.
Ordinarily he would have had no trouble distinguishing the broad
outlines of The
Judgement of Paris. But since the
thunderbolt of love struck him, he found it difficult to even recognize it as
one of Rubens' paintings, regardless of the fact that he had stood in front of
it on at least three previous occasions and noted the turbulence and, to his
mind, excessive flabbiness so characteristic of this master's buxom females. Today, however, he was conscious of only one
thing - namely, the desire to make the blonde his girlfriend that very day!
A second or two later he became freshly conscious of a slim
figure in a white vest and matching miniskirt passing closely behind him - oh,
so closely as to gently brush the arm of his sleeve! A faint aroma of sweet perfume lodged in his
nostrils as she turned the corner and disappeared from sight. Overcoming his timidity vis-à-vis the room's
attendant, who stared directly at him as he broke away from the Rubens, he
followed the young beauty, at a discreet distance, into Room 15, where she
subsequently came to a respectful halt in front of Correggio's
The
School of Love. Unable from shyness
to follow her directly to it, he took up a parallel position in front of that
same master's Ecce Homo, the other side of one of the room's exits. He was conscious, as he came to a halt in
front of this painting, that the young woman was perfectly aware of the fact he
had been following her. For she stared across the intervening space at him a moment, before
returning her attention to the canvas in front of her. As he in turn returned his attention to the Correggio, he noticed, out of the corner of his right eye,
something bright and, turning his head towards the wall which formed a
right-angle with the one in front of him, he beheld a portrait entitled A
Blonde Woman, whose long wavy-golden hair and impassive face, painted with
what appeared to be consummate skill by Palma Vecchio,
struck him as profoundly akin to the woman he had just followed into the
room. Admittedly, the eyes were brown
instead of blue, but in so many other respects the face bore a remarkable
resemblance to that of the real woman who stood no more than eight or nine
yards to his left. Perhaps this was a
lucky omen, an indication that he ought to make her acquaintance in this very
room and thereby achieve the initial part of his romantic objectives? He didn't really know what to think. But, correspondences aside, he realized that
he would have to act pretty soon if he didn't want to lose her and perhaps
spend the rest of the day regretting his indecision!
Glancing back over his shoulder, he noticed that the young
beauty in question had taken up a position in front of Bronzino's
alluring Venus,
Cupid, Folly, and Time, the far side of the room. This intriguing allegory, in which Venus is
being kissed and fondled by Cupid, while Time, in the guise of an old winged
greybeard, holds up the pale-blue drapery upon which the goddess poses and Folly
clasps his demented head in what appears to be jealous disapproval, was easily
the most erotic of all the nude paintings in the National Gallery, forming, for
most people, the undisputed cynosure of the room. It occurred to James Kelly that if he could
muster the courage or willpower to go across to the painting and make a show of
admiring it, he would have an excellent opportunity to attract her attention
with a smiling glance, and thus make it perfectly clear to her that he was
interested in doing something similar.
From then on, everything should follow like clockwork.
Calling upon every shred of willpower at his disposal, he
crossed the room and stationed himself beside the blonde. With a brief inspection of Venus' naked body
behind him, he stole a glance at her latter-day counterpart, whose lips had
formed into a gentle smile. Could it be that she was smiling from pride
at being admired by such a handsome young man as himself, or was there
something about the painting which amused her - say, its overly erotic
proceedings? Naturally, it wasn't a
question he cared to dwell on there and then.
What mattered was finding the courage to say something to her and
somehow get a conversation under way.
Already the words were on the tip of his tongue and, just as he
was about to open his mouth and allow them to tumble out, along came a
middle-aged man in expensive-looking clothes who stationed himself immediately
to her right! He swallowed hard to quell
the incipient tumble of admiring words and simultaneously stifle the anger and
frustration mounting inside him, as the incident brought a fresh rush of blood
to his face. It was as though he had
been caught red-handed in the act of doing something dishonourable. For even the painting, ordinarily one which would
have added some amusement to his aesthetic appreciation of its graceful outlines, now caused him to feel uncomfortable in light of
his seductive intent.
Confined for the nonce to the cage of his psychological
discomfiture, he kept his attention focused on the dove beneath Cupid's right
foot at the bottom left-hand corner of the painting, in an attempt to conceal
his embarrassment from the other viewers.
What he actually saw of it was little more than a blur, but at least
this stratagem provided him with something to cling-on to in the face of his
shameful predicament. But why oh why did
that idiot have to come between him and his intentions at the vital
moment! How could he possibly be
expected to commit himself to making the young beauty's acquaintance in front
of a middle-aged intruder whose respectful demeanour created the distinct
impression that such a thing wasn't done in galleries, least of all in
galleries of this magnitude, where classical and religious art ruled supreme? Admittedly, he had never attempted to pick
anyone up in a gallery of any description before, since a certain moral
misgiving about the whole idea of 'picking up' female strangers had often
installed itself into his consciousness at critical times, making him mindful
of the risks involved, and having more than a little to do with his
unwillingness, as a cultured person, to be seduced by appearances alone, which
would somehow have struck him as somehow cheap and superficial. Ideally, one waited for the right female to
come along, and one only got to know her by degrees, as the regular contacts
one had with her blossomed into an amorous relationship. In the meantime, one just had to be patient
and play the waiting game.
But there were times - and this was evidently one of them -
when one was literally overwhelmed by the stunning beauty of a delightful
stranger who happened to cross one's path and, no matter where it was, felt
literally compelled to 'pick her up'. At
such times, the power of beauty, the promise of real sexual fulfilment, seemed
to overrule any abstract ethical conceptions one might ordinarily have adhered
to, in consequence of which one found oneself committed to securing her
companionship on the grounds that such beauty precluded the likelihood of
psychological incompatibility and accordingly rendered preliminary associations
irrelevant.
It seemed an eternity to James Kelly as he stood in front of
the Bronzino and continued to stare at the white
dove, not knowing what to do next.
Although he had only been there little over a minute he felt that if he
didn't act immediately, either by wrenching himself away from the painting
altogether or, preferably, turning towards the 'Venus' beside him to unburden
his heart to her, the situation would become too conspicuously embarrassing and
people would become cynically suspicious of his motives for standing where he
was, in such close proximity to the young woman in question. Then they would follow him through the room
with disapproving eyes or whisper between themselves in sarcastic derision at
his lack of cultural reverence.
Confined to the cage of his personal subjectivity, Kelly could
only speculate along these rather paranoid lines. For in this unbalanced state-of-mind it
simply didn't occur to him that other people might not give a damn whether he
said anything to the female by his side or not; that they might even take them
for lovers anyway, and be more interested in viewing paintings than
listening-in to other people's conversations.
He was much too self-centred to think anything of the kind, so
preoccupied had he become with the struggle going on inside him between the
desire to avoid making a fool of himself and the much more positive desire to
obtain what he was after. And, not
surprisingly, it was the latter which was winning out, since he now resolved to
speak to the woman regardless of the consequences. The smartly-dressed bourgeois tourist had
been reduced, as this resolve took shape in a moment of supreme defiance, to an
insignificant foreigner whose opinions didn't matter and who, in any case,
stood about as much chance of 'picking up' the blonde at his expense as he
would stand if, as a balding English tourist with a burgeoning paunch, he was
attempting to 'pick up' some beautiful Italian woman at the expense of a
handsome young Italian in some Florentine or Rome gallery.
Clearing his throat for the benefit of the beautiful stranger,
he turned his neck to the right and ... but no! How could it possibly be? For he encountered the middle-aged tourist and
another, younger man whom he hadn't noticed before! His expression immediately changed to
horrified amazement at the sight of them and, tearing himself away from where
he stood, he hurried across to the centre of the room to get a better view of
his surroundings. Of the twelve or
thirteen other people there, not one of them was wearing a white vest or
displaying a beautiful pair of firm legs beneath the rim of a tight-fitting
miniskirt. He recalled that he had been
so embarrassed, on first sighting the middle-aged tourist,
that he had endeavoured to conceal it from the young woman by riveting
his attention on the furthermost corner of the painting from her. And, during that time, she had evidently
taken her leave of it and exited the room!
But in which direction? After all, there were three exits to choose
from here, which made it trebly difficult to come to the right decision. It was unlikely, anyway, that she had
returned through the one which had served them both as an entrance to the room,
so that left two. Since a poker-faced
attendant was standing by the exit in front of him at that moment, he decided
to try the one to his right.
Taking no interest in the paintings exhibited in the adjoining
rooms, he kept his eyes peeled for the woman whose beauty had so captivated him
earlier that afternoon. He passed
through at least four rooms in quick succession, but without visible
success. She was nowhere to be seen!
Too annoyed with himself for having lost track of her, yet too
intent on finding her again to be particularly disconcerted by his swift
passage through successive rooms, he gave the greater part of his attention to
scrutinizing the visitors encountered en route, ignoring, where possible, both
attendants and paintings alike. Only in
Rooms 9 and 10 did he allow his preoccupation with the elusive beauty to be
shelved awhile, as some of the paintings there captured his attention. In Room 9, for instance, The Family of
Darius before Alexander stopped him in his tracks for a moment as, with
slightly less than his customary attention to detail, he granted this huge
masterpiece by Paolo Veronese a sort of reverential
inspection. Nearby, Tintoretto's
St. George and the Dragon managed to arrest his attention in like
fashion, whilst, on another wall, the same master's Origin of the Milky Way
returned him to something approaching his usual self, as, forgetting the cause
of his recent tribulations, he permitted his gaze to wander over the entire
range of this highly imaginative canvas, noting, in particular, the golden
stars which spurted from the breasts of the naked mother of the Milky Way who,
raising herself on one hand from the luxuriously draped bed to the left of the
painting, receives the attentions of a suckling child held up to her left
breast by a father-figure, presumably God, whose nudity is wrapped in
salmon-pink drapery. In addition to four
cherubim, one beheld two pheasants to the lower right-hand side of the canvas
and an eagle, or other bird of prey, carrying in its talons what at first sight
looked like a crab but which, on closer inspection, transpired to being a sort
of bushy-tailed monster with pointed limbs and a sharply protruding tongue - in
short, the Devil. The entire scene, set
in the heavens, with clouds above and below the naked woman, was suggestive of
some strange surrealism peculiar to the sixteenth century. The colour combinations used in its
composition were still extremely impressive.
Stationed there with hands in his jacket pockets, Kelly found
himself wondering why none of the nudes he had seen on canvas that day seemed
to possess any pubic hair, but generally presented an appearance of innocent sexlessness. The
erotic content had been narrowed down, in the vast majority of cases, to the
breasts and thighs, so that only a mild stimulus resulted. Obviously, it was necessary for the gallery
not to create a public scandal or give offence to various people by displaying
anything highly erotic. And it was
evidently just as necessary not to encourage the wrong sort of people into the
gallery for the wrong reasons, including a desire to masturbate in front of
something or someone. Somehow a golden
mean had to be established in the interests of both gallery and public
alike. But, even so, Kelly wasn't
completely satisfied by this conviction as to the real reason for the absence
of pubic hair from such nudes as presented their lower abdomen to public
scrutiny. Heading towards Room 10, he
convinced himself that it was simply not the done thing, in religious art of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to depict pubic hair on canvas.
However, the despondency which had earlier engulfed him at not
being able to find the young woman he had lost track of in Room 15, temporarily
palliated by the genius of Tintoretto, now returned
to him in full measure, and it was as much as he could do to adopt anything
approaching a receptive frame-of-mind as he stood in front of Mantegna's Agony in the Garden - a work
which, on previous occasions, had never failed to impress him. Of the two paintings by this title hung to
either side of the nearer of the two exits from the room, it was the Mantegna rather than the Bellini
which he had a special fondness for, even though the latter was unquestionably
a significant work. However, much as he
could still appreciate its brilliant colour-scheme, his disturbed state-of-mind
made him somewhat critical of the fact that the wonderful aesthetic effects
created by its highly engaging colours, reminiscent of the Van Haalem noted earlier, were at distinct loggerheads with the
theme the painting sought to convey.
Instead of being made conscious of Christ's agony, one's attention was
arrested by the beauty and technical mastery of the composition itself. And the same criticism could also be levelled
at Giovanni Bellini's version, though perhaps to a lesser extent, in view of
the sombre clouds which hovered ominously above the Saviour's head, like some
dark bird of prey, and the less-vibrant tones employed in its execution. He felt quite certain, at any rate, that had
a modern artist like, say, Francis Bacon or Eduard
Munch tackled this subject, the agony of Christ's suffering would have been
conveyed to the viewer in no uncertain terms!
Taking his leave of the manneristic
works in question, he reluctantly allowed himself to be seduced into admiring Mantegna's The Introduction of the Cult of Cybele at Rome.
There was something about the silver figures before his eyes which
mitigated the despondency he had been plunged into anew, in consequence of his
unappeased desire. Perhaps the fact of
their being pertinent to an engraving rather than to a painting had some
significance in this respect? He couldn't
tell, but he was grateful, all the same, that the work of this leading fifteenth-century
artist had an effect on him akin to a mild soporific. However, he hadn't entirely abandoned all
hope of finding the young woman and introducing himself to her. Admittedly, he wasn't as keen now as he had
been, a few minutes before, to hunt through successive rooms in search of his
sexual quarry with a near-philistine disregard for their time-hallowed
contents. He had virtually resigned
himself to having lost her. But there
were still a number of rooms to investigate and, for all he knew, she might
well be in one of them.
He had arrived at an area between rooms with a winding
staircase leading to the downstairs galleries.
Never having visited them in the past, he thought it worth his while to
check things out anyway, in the hope that, even if his quarry wasn't there, he
would encounter something he hadn't seen before. But despite his interest in a few of the
exhibits, he couldn't draw any real relief from this change of scenery. In gallery A, which was by far the largest,
he found himself walking between numerous rows of paintings hung on elongated
wooden supports, thereby enabling the gallery in question to exhibit hundreds
of works in the immense space between the walls, which, in any case, were
almost entirely hidden behind paintings.
Conscious of the many attendants on duty there, Kelly feigned interest,
as best he could, in the exhibits, turning his gaze to left and right as he
went up one row and down another, so to speak, and briefly stopping in front of
one of them every so often. On the end
of a row to the left of the gallery, a work entitled The Worship of the
Egyptian Bull-God, Apis genuinely intrigued
him. But, although he would have ideally
preferred to give the gallery as a whole more attention than he actually was
doing, this Fillippino Lippi
notwithstanding, the recollection of his real motive for being there spurred
him on to taking his leave of it. Yet
the golden-haired woman was nowhere to be found in any of the adjoining
galleries either, and, of all the colourful paintings being exhibited, he could
only bring himself to halt briefly in front of two - the first, in gallery B,
entitled Cognoscenti in a Room hung with Pictures, which was attributed
to the Flemish School Ca. 1620, and the second, in gallery F, entitled The Toilet
of Venus, from the studio of Guido Reni
(1575-1642), which, though manifestly inferior to the one upstairs,
nevertheless intrigued him on account of the fact that he hadn't realized there
existed another version of this theme, but had been content, for some curious
reason, to regard the Velazquez as the only one of its kind! And neither had he been aware that, in
addition to Nicolas Poussin, there was also a Charles
Poussin, an engaging example of whose work had been
put on show in one of the downstairs galleries.
But he couldn't permit himself to linger any longer in this particular
department of the National Gallery since, at that moment, the sensual desire to
set eyes on the real-life 'Venus' again was much stronger than the aesthetic
desire to contemplate any number of representational paintings, for which, in
any case, he had much less enthusiasm, these days, than formerly.
Once upstairs, however, he felt his heart sink at the immensity
of the task before him, of the vast number of rooms he would still have to
traverse in his endeavour to find her!
He had already walked backwards and forwards from room to room and
gallery to gallery with no success and, not altogether surprisingly, his legs
were less fresh now than at the beginning.
By the time he got to Room 8, he had resigned all hope of achieving his
objective and, with a sigh of defeat, he slumped
resignedly onto one of its soft-leather seats.
In front of him, da Vinci's The Virgin of the Rocks
appeared more melancholy than on any previous occasion he could
recall - in fact so melancholy, that he could hardly bear to look at it! He felt doubly cheated for having lost the
woman who had, wittingly or unwittingly, seduced him into following her in the
first place and, through his obsession with her, deprived him of a studious
appreciation of a number of paintings which, despite their manifest antiquity,
weren't entirely without some contemporary relevance. It seemed to him, as he sat with bowed head,
that the afternoon had been thoroughly misspent; that he should never have
elected to visit the National Gallery in the first place. In consequence of which, the only sensible
thing to do now, not to prolong the agony, was to apply the coup de grâce to himself and leave the
place without further ado!
Forcing himself up from the seat with this in mind, he ambled
towards the exit, scarcely bothering to pay any attention to those around
him. To the left and several yards ahead
of him, in one of the smaller rooms, a middle-aged woman was being informed by
a stern-faced attendant that it was illegal to step over the rope to take a
closer look at the paintings. Undaunted,
the woman then blandly informed the attendant that she had absolutely no
intention of touching or damaging anything.
But the attendant, trained to do a specific job, still requested her to
step back over the rope. Not taking any
notice of him, the woman continued to inspect the small painting before her
eyes, and the attendant, growing sterner by the second, persisted in requesting
her to step back over the rope and thus abide by the rules. As Kelly passed by the room he heard the
attendant call for the supervisor, and felt a bitter anger growing inside him
at the stupidity and unreasonableness of the offending viewer. It didn't occur to him that she might be
short-sighted, but it certainly occurred to him, as he took a passing glance at
her, that it was just the sort of futile scene to mark the climax of an
altogether futile afternoon.
When he arrived in the commercial area, however, his glum
state-of-mind suddenly took a turn for the better, and he decided to buy a
postcard of The
Toilet of Venus to commemorate the occasion of his first setting eyes on the
young woman who happened to be staring at that painting at the time. In addition, he bought a few other postcards,
including Van Huijsum's Fruit and Flowers,
which circumstances had prevented him from viewing in the flesh, as it were, of
the actual work. Then he headed for the
exit and, pushing his way through its swing-doors, came to an abrupt standstill
just outside. For the person who caught
his attention at that very moment was none other than the woman for whom he had
been frantically searching all afternoon!
And she was not staring-out over
As though at a command from her eyes he was beside her and
mumbling an invitation to a meal somewhere.
She smiled her acceptance and, within a couple of minutes, they were
walking down the steps together and proceeding in the general direction of
