Starshipsofa stories vol.., p.7
StarShipSofa Stories: Volume 3, page 7
Five months later, Hare has assembled all his notes into a coherent volume and threaded throughout it his opinions on the unreliability of scripture.
He points out for instance that we have only Moses’ testimony of his communication with God – a report that has God slaying three thousand who were led astray but sparing Moses’ brother, who made the golden calf. Hare calls the Old Testament a “pernicious idol” that patronizes men of a chosen seed, though they are guilty of robbery, fraud and murder, and quotes St. Jerome’s preface to the gospels wherein the saint complained that no one copy resembled another, the translations were so poor.
His final act is to attach a preface including a letter from his spirit father that he receives only days before he turns in the manuscript. The spirit says: “Ask yourself how much happiness you have found in the contemplation of the fact which has been demonstrated, not only to your wishes but to your senses, that the thinking mind never dies… that it lives on, lives ever, and must throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity continue to unfold its power.”
With the book at the publishers, he offers to exhibit his spiritoscope to a convention of his own clergymen and is rebuffed. In November, invited again to New York, he gives a lecture on the evidence he has compiled. It’s well attended, if only by those already converted.
After the book comes out, there follows no upheaval, no slanderous assault, no clear enemy at which to take aim. He’s not vilified, he’s disavowed.
Not one to sit idle even then, he turns his attentions to other subjects. Spirits continue to warn him to prepare himself, and he continues secretly to await the attack, but it never comes.
In 1857, not long before his death, he exhibits at the Franklin Institute an apparatus for determining whether phenomena attending the attrition of pieces of quartz, when rubbed briskly together, have anything to do with the new substance described by Schönbein as “ozone.” His reception is cool. Some noise is made about the apparatus, but most of the dialogue is traded as if he were not in the room among them, or they cannot see him. Forlorn, he goes home.
Maple leaves blow in through the door before he can close it. He drops his cloak upon the Empire sofa in the entrance hall, and drifts to his study through the silent house. He stokes red embers in the hearth and adds new wood to the fire, then takes his seat before one of Pease’s Dials he has set upon his desk.
He opens his glass inkwell and places beside it a steel-nibbed pen, inadvertently bumping a large anomalous chestnut he uses as a paperweight – actually two grown together into a single mass – hard enough that it tumbles off the side of the desk and rolls beneath his feet, where he can’t reach it.
With a resigned sigh he lets it go and turns to the device. He adjusts the wheel so that he can see clearly anything spelled out there.
He presses his fingertips to the sprung plate that operates the machine and, thus poised, awaits his Anna.
VI. Epilogue: The Seybert Commission
In 1883, Henry Seybert, a descendent of the same Seybert who once urged a young Robert Hare to consider the afterlife, endows a chair of Philosophy upon the University of Pennsylvania, conditional on the university investigating the truth of modern spiritualism. A commission is assembled, including William Pepper, Provost of the University, and Joseph Leidy, the anatomist. Horace Howard Furness chairs the committee and writes up its findings. His wife died relatively young and he has good reason to want the continuance of the soul proved true.
Seybert himself dies before the commission can even begin its investigation, but the money is set aside and the work goes forward. The commission examines the subject for three years, inviting the most prominent mediums to conduct seances before it. Those who accept include one Mrs Margaret Fox Kane, who is truly celebrated within her ranks. Furness finds her small and genteel, and so unassertive that she immediately wins him over. Yet, as the evening progresses, he slides into doubt.
She communicates with spirits through raps on the table. The spirits, while appearing to have intimate acquaintance with family affairs of some of those present, send Furness’s brother a message from his spirit father. Except that his father is still alive. Later, the rapping is determined to be the product of Mrs Kane’s ankle striking the table while she seems to sit away from it, her hands in plain sight. She is, it would appear, usefully double-jointed.
The devices of Robert Hare are neither used nor mentioned, nor is his work cited. His work, in this arena, is forgotten.
The commission’s report, published in 1887, causes a great stir in that it finds not a single fact upon which to base any belief in spiritualism. In summing up, Furness reports that no truth could be established because the whole business is so clouded with trickery that no phenomenon can be trusted. Filled with regret, for now he can know nothing of his wife’s continuance, he confesses how desperately he wished to be converted by “these shabby charlatans.”
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Joe Haldeman
This game was easier before I was famous, or infamous, and before the damned process was so efficient. When I could still pretend it was my own art, or at least about my art. Nowadays, once you’re doped up and squeezed into the skinsuit, it’s hard to tell whose eye is measuring the model. Whose hand is holding the brush.
It was more satisfying back then, twenty years ago, even though it was physically painful, with actual electrodes and blood samplers to effect the transfer. Now I just take the buffer drug and let them roll the skinsuit over me after I fall asleep. When I wake up I’m in the customer’s body. The collaborator’s.
It works best when I can interview the collaborator beforehand and find out whether he or she has any artistic training or talent. Some of the most interesting work I produce in collaboration comes from the totally inexperienced, their unfamiliarity with the tools and techniques resulting in happy accidents, spontaneity. It’s best to know about that ahead of time, so I can use the meditative period before the drug kicks in, to prepare myself for a tighter or looser approach. But I can work cold if I have to; if the millionaire can’t spare the time for an interview before the session.
I’ll work in any painting or drawing medium the customer wants, within reason, but through most of my career people naturally chose my own specialty, transparent water colour. Since I became famous, though, with the Manhattan Monster thing, people want to trowel on thick acrylics in primary colours. Boring. But they take the painting home and hang it up and ask their friends Isn’t that just as scary as shit? Because of the stylistic association, usually, rather than the subject matter. Most people’s nightmares stay safely hidden when they pick up a brush. Good thing, too. After the Monster a lot of right-thinking citizens wanted to make my profession illegal, claiming it could bring out”the beast” hidden in Everyman. The fact that it had never happened before didn’t make a dent in their righteousness. The Supreme Court did.
All an art facilitator does is loan his or her mechanical skills and esthetic sensibilities to the customer. If the customer is a nut case, the collaboration may be truly disturbing – and perhaps revealing. A lot of us find employment in mental institutions. Some of us find residence in them. Occupational hazard.
At least I make enough per assignment now, thanks to notoriety from the Monster case, that I can take off half the year, to travel and paint for myself. This year I was leaving the first of February, start off the vacation sailing in the Caribbean. One week to go, I could already feel the sun, taste the rum. I’d sublet the apartment and studio and already had all my clothes and gear packed into two small bags. Watercolours don’t take up much space and you don’t need a lot of clothes where I was headed.
I was tempted to pre-empt my itinerary and go on to the islands early. It would have cost extra and confused my friends, who know me to be methodical and punctual. But I should have done it. God, I should have done it.
We had one of those fast hard snows that make Manhattan beautiful for a while. I walked to and from lunch the long way, through Central Park, willing to trade the slight extra danger for the beauty. Besides, my walking stick supposedly holds enough electricity to stun a horse.
The man waiting for me in the lobby didn’t look like trouble, though you never know. Short, balding, old-fashioned John Lennon-style spectacles.
He introduced himself while I was fumbling with overcoat and boots. Juan Carlos Segura, investment counsellor.
“Have you ever painted before?” I asked him.”Drawn or sculpted or anything?”
“No. My talents lie elsewhere.” I think I was supposed to be able to tell how wealthy he was by upper-class lodge signals – the cut of his conservative blue pin-stripe, the heavy gold mechanical watch – but my own talents lie elsewhere. So I asked him directly.”You understand how expensive my services are.”
“Exactly. One hundred thousand dollars a day.”
“And you know you must accept the work as produced. No money-back guarantee.”
“I understand.”
“We’re in business, then.” I buzzed my assistant Allison to start tea while we waited for the ancient elevator.
People who aren’t impressed by my studio, with its original Picasso, Monet, Dali, and Turner, are often fascinated by Allison. She is beautiful but very large, six foot three but perfectly proportioned, as if some magic device had enlarged her by twenty percent. Mr Segura didn’t blink at her; didn’t notice the paintings on the walls. He accepted his tea and thanked her politely.
I blew on my tea and studied him over the cup. He looked serious, studious, calm. So had the Manhattan Monster.
The direct approach sometimes costs me a commission.”There’s half a page of facilitators in the phone book,” I said.”Every single one of them charges less than I do.”
He nodded, studying me back.
“Some people want me just because I am the most expensive. Some few want me because they know my work, my own work, and it’s very good. Most want a painting by the man who released the Monster from Claude Avery.”
“Is it important for you to know?”
“The more I know about you, the better picture you’ll get.”
He nodded and paused.”Then accept this. Maybe fifty percent of my motivation is because you are the most costly. That is sometimes an index of value. Of your artistic abilities, or anybody else’s, I am totally ignorant.”
“So fifty percent is the Monster?”
“Not exactly. In the first place, I don’t care to pay that much for something that other people have. Two of my acquaintances own paintings they did with you in that disturbing mode.
“Looking at their paintings, it occurred to me that something more subtle was possible. You. Your own anger at being used in this way.”
“I’ve expressed that in my own paintings.”
“I am sure that you have. What I want, I suppose, is to express my own anger at my customers, through yours.”
That was a new wrinkle.”You’re angry at your customers?”
“Not all of them. Most. People give me large amounts of money to invest for them. Once each quarter, I extract a percentage of the profit.” He set down the cup and put his hands on his knees.”But most of them want some input. It is their money, after all.”
“And you would prefer to follow a single strategy,” I said.”The more capital you had behind your investment pattern, the less actual risk – since I assume that you don’t have to pay back a percentage, if an investment fails.”
“For an artist, you know a lot about money.”
I shrugged.”I’m a rich artist.”
“People are emotionally connected to their money, and they want to do things with it, other than make more money. My largest client last year was a bug about space exploitation.”
“Oh, no.”
“And when the lunar colony collapsed, so did his fortune. I got the blame.”
“But you didn’t advise him to –”
“No. I tried to talk him out of it, and did manage to convince him to diversify slightly, into related energy and defense issues. Of course, they were depressed too, or nosedived along with the space stocks. Naturally it was my fault for not choosing the right collateral investments. He had to sell two of his cars and his ivory collection.”
“Poor thing.”
“He is only the most obvious, the most amusing. Most of my clients are at least mildly resentful if I don’t make them a fortune every quarter. Even though I explain that it’s my business to protect their money first; increase it second. A conservative strategy takes real work. Anybody can gamble.”
“Interesting. And you see a connection with my work?”
“I saw it when I read the profile in Forbes a couple of years ago.”
“And you waited for my price to come down?”
“I waited until I could afford the luxury. Your price actually has come down nine percent, because of inflation, since the article. You’ll be raising it soon.”
“Good timing. I like round numbers, but I’m going up to one-twenty when I return from vacation in August.” I picked up a stylus and touchpad and began drawing close parallel lines. It helps me think.”The connection, the analogy, is good. I know that many of my clients must be dissatisfied with the abstract smearings that cost them six figures. But they get exactly what they paid for. I explain it to them beforehand, and if they choose not to hear me, that’s their problem.”
“You said as much in the article. But I don’t want abstract smearings. I want your customary medium, when you work seriously. Old-fashioned hyperrealism.”
“You want me to do a Boston School watercolour?”
“Exactly. I know the subject, the setting –”
“That’s three week’s work, minimum. More than two million dollars.”
“I can afford it.”
“Can you afford to leave your own work for three weeks?” I was drawing very fast lines. This would really screw up my vacation schedule. But it would be half a year’s income in three weeks.
“I’m not only going to leave for three weeks... I’m going exactly where you are. The Cayman Islands. George Town.”
I just looked at him.
“They say the beach is wonderful.”
I never asked him how he’d found out about my vacation plans. Through my credit card company, I supposed. That he would take the trouble before our initial interview was revealing. He was a man who left nothing to chance.
He wanted a photo-realist painting of a nude woman sitting in a conference room, alone, studying papers. Horn-rimmed glasses. The conference room elegant, old-fashioned.
The room would be no problem, given money, since George Town has as many banks and insurance buildings as bikinis. The model was another matter. Most of the models in George Town would be black, which would complicate the text of the painting, or would be gorgeous beach bums, with tan lines and silicone breasts. I told him I thought we wanted an ordinary woman, trim but severe-looking; someone whose posture would radiate dignity without clothing. (I showed him Maja Desnuda and some Delacroix, and a few of Wyeth’s Helgas that had that quality.) She also would have to be a damned good model, to do three weeks of sittings in the same position. I suggested we hire someone in New York and fly her down with us. He agreed.
Allison had been watching through the ceiling bug, part of her job. She came in and poured herself a cup of tea.”Nut case,” she said.
“Interesting nut case, though. Rich.”
“If you ever took on a charity nut case, I wasn’t watching.” She stirred a spoonful of marmalade into her tea, Russian style. She only does that to watch me cringe.”So I should get tickets to the Caymans for me and M&M?”
“Yeah, Friday.”
“First class?”
“What’s it worth to you?”
“I don’t know. You want a cup of tea in your lap?”
“First class.”
Finding the right model was difficult. I knew two or three women who would fill the bill in terms of physical appearance and sitting ability, but they were friends. That would interfere with the client’s wishes, since he obviously wanted a cold, clinical approach. I spent an afternoon going through agency files, and another afternoon interviewing people, until I found the right one. Rhonda Speck, thirty, slender enough to show ribs. I disliked her on sight and liked her even less when she took her clothes off, for the way she looked at me – her expression a prim gash of disapproval. Even if I were heterosexual I wouldn’t be ogling her unprofessionally. That edge of resentment might help the painting, I thought. I didn’t know half of it.
I told Rhonda the job involved a free trip to the Cayman Islands and she showed as much enthusiasm as if I had said Long Island. She did brighten a little when I described the setting. She was working on her law degree, and could study while she sat. That also helped to distance me from her, since I am not a great admirer of that profession. I dealt with a lot of lawyers during the years of litigation following the Manhattan Monster, and I liked perhaps one out of five. (One that I liked was a prosecutor, the only one who had the grace not to bring up my sexual orientation, which was irrelevant. I knew that Claude Avery was gay, and I knew he was troubled by it – a facilitator does almost literally get under his client’s skin – but there was no way I could tell that he was going to work out his problems by dismembering, or at least de-membering, male prostitutes.)
I called my banker in George Town and described the office I needed. She knew of a small law firm that was closing for a February vacation, and would inquire.
It had been a few years since I’d painted nudes, and had done only two photo-realist ones. I didn’t want to work with Rhonda any more than I had to, or pay her more than I had to, so I had a friend with a similar figure come over and sit. For two days I did sketches and photographs, experimenting with postures and lightings. I took them to Segura and we agreed on the pose, the woman looking up coldly from her papers, as if interrupted, strong light from the desk lamp putting half of her face in shadow. Making the desk lamp the only source of light also isolated the figure from the details of the office, which would be rendered in photorealist detail, but darkly, making for a sinister background.
