XXXIV

P

recisely what my intentions were, following the concert, I was certain of. Lines had been rehearsed and even posture considered. I know though that no plan survives contact with the enemy. There was no point in arming myself with potential quips. I knew too that no amount of forethought could make my performance appear casual or unrehearsed. Every iteration of the upcoming scene that was played out in my mind made it less likely that the incident would pass by without catastrophe.

Being by nature a pessimist, each encounter ended with my being shamefaced. There were two particular scenarios that involved her husband lodging his shoe into my ribcage. All of his efforts to climb up Beatrice's pedestal had endowed him with powerful quadriceps.

I was one of the first to bring an end to the ovation and retreated to reclaim my uncomfortable seat. With fingers afidget upon the brim of my benched headpiece, I darted mine eyes left and right to spy the nave crowd. They spent long about their habits: gathering garments while passing idle chatter to and fro. As though I were some reef, the people broke waves about me while I restless remained. So parts of the sea rolled lazily toward the narthex while others pooled through the portal to the vestry and sacristy. I floated after the latter. We swam like so much sperm up the channel.

The contrast. in that narrow canal, between the ostentatious, inviting and voluminous heart of the church to the small, humble halls that allow it to function is telling but the message is less clear. Is it that we must hide our meagre, miserly selves while presenting a bold front? Perhaps we are to be indecorous in our lives while striding throughout the public world with an air of bravado and joy. These common, unadorned corridors do nothing to uplift the soul but instead confine it. Such, maybe, is the day-to-day life of priests when they are not upon the pulpit. Such, perhaps, is the common world of performers when they are not upon the stage.

To encounter these mortals, we descended. There was a small, low-ceiling room with stacked plastic chairs, wooden tables with legs unfolded, and quartered sandwiches on white paper plates. I waited withdrawn while the well wishing host dissipated to anoint praise upon their choice performers.

In the hallway was Beatrice and she stood alongside Phaedra to greet and chat and smile and welcome and laugh and blush and receive all earnest or artificed encouragement and praise.

I ebbed toward the fore and Phaedra met my gaze there. Quick, I looked away to Beatrice. She though had shared a whisper of sorority and in an instant was alert to me. My eyes averted to look unfocused upon my hat in hands. I shuttered myself then and in the dark moment felt my reason flee down the length of a limitless hall. Fear reassured me. It warmed and nurtured me. How long I thus hid, I could not say. Likely it was little more than a handful of hasty heartbeats but when I returned to the sensible world, the seas had parted and I stood square before Beatrice.

Her face, undecorated and imperfect, had near invisible eyebrows raised expectantly while I held myself in her regard. That woman's pale flesh was not contrasted by fairest red hair that was, as ever, lengthy straight and bound back by a single clip behind. The cellist's dress, less patterned than her faintly freckled face, was of dour, dark design that might, for all its simplicity, have been homemade. The shoes neatly matched while I wondered if my Beatrice's toes had ever been crushed into traditional feminine disfigurement. How might I ever know?

"Hi."

She said.

"Hi" I, unthinking, echoed but then recalled my intentions to say "Greetings" and I gave her my name. "You may know who I am…"

"I know" she interrupted. She smiled. Phaedra also smiled. Neither was patronizing. There seemed, to me, to be such honesty and she said to me again, "I know who you are".

My pause had been too long.

There was mirth in her olive eyes as she witnessed me wriggle. Whatever expression I was wearing was not reflected in her friendly gaze.

"I am here to ask forgiveness for everything that I ever did to you…"

Those eyes widened while she heard my unrushed words. Those pale pink lips parted but only breathed.

"I seek forgiveness for all the things that I have done that you know of, and those that you do not have knowledge of. I beg be forgiven even for those things that you believe that I did but that I know nothing of."

Suddenly I was aware that her husband was nowhere near. Was that not he that she had given that private smile to?

"For everything, and more, I apologize."

It is a testament to the character of Beatrice that she did not dismiss this absurdity. She did not laugh nor titter girlishly with her sister. She did not shrug. There was no smirk.

My fingers worried the brim of their hat, spinning the circle with agitation. The moment lingered in those Spartan, cloistered halls while we, in silence, shared the dissimilar memories of our disconnected twenty-one year relationship.

There is an arrogance to originators. Because I create a work of colour and form, I believe that somehow that enables me to claim some perspective of it as truth. The validity, the intentions of the artist, amount to nothing when it is given to the viewer.

No theme survives contact with the audience. It is because the audience has not lived our lives, inside our brains, alongside our families, and with our woes and weaknesses. We cannot know if cadmium red was the colour of the shirt worn by the rapist. We cannot know if the tale of Persephone is known and, if it is, is it as we know it. Surely, the broadest sentiments in a painting will generally be received similarly by a majority of the average viewers, but if that is the object then our craft would best be learned and practised on Madison Avenue. It ought be, by every artist, acknowledged that we send our children out into the world to make their own way. We cannot defend them. No excuses can be made.

Every critic is entirely correct while they speak for themselves. The endless sky is filled by clouds and framed by horizons that are allowed, at that instant and attitude, only for ourselves. Call what you see but it is understood by what others see. Embrace the idea that every word is misunderstood. Every act is ill perceived.

There is no common man and every critic is right.

None of us share complete axiomatic sets. Every thought that Beatrice had ever had of me was justified. Were it fear or loathing, it was valid. Whatever might Beatrice's answer to me may be, I would misinterpret it. I would, rather than have my beliefs cast down, translate it in a manner that my mind would find reasonable if she and I had somehow shared a world.

"You are entirely forgiven."

XXXV