Landscape with Figures 32 – Fraser · Verses Across
Literature · Science Fiction & Fantasy
Landscape with Figures 32Chapter 31
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Literature · Science Fiction & Fantasy
Landscape with Figures 32
Chapter 31
FraserEnglish
Lychnis, when she had given Ambrose an account of her doings, went swiftly in her short white dress under the heavy summer trees to the mooring-raft of red-painted bamboo, unfastened her coracle, and paddled through water lanes among lotuses to the island. She saw Hsiao in an arbour by the water’s edge, and waved in a friendly manner, but he was asleep. She brought her coracle to the marble quay, ascended the dragon-staircase, and sped along the ridge of the island, passing old Wang in meditation by a dung-heap. She climbed into the vermilion summer-house among the tree-tops, but Yuan was not there. She went out on to the verandah, and stood looking down over the scarlet rail into the Lake, where golden shapes of fish were passing like half-visible summer clouds. She saw the roof of Hsiao’s arbour and his two feet sticking out.
She went into the bare, sun-swept room again, and swung out an instrument from its cupboard. Not familiar with its use, but perceiving the principle of it and the method of adjustment by some scarcely conscious effort, she made the whole countryside disclose itself to her. First of all, there appeared in the field of view that dozen of queer philosophers on the rock over towards the mountains; next, through too wide an adjustment, a tract of country which she recognized—a little hill near the Floating Leaf, with a plum-tree, now in fruit, where she had talked with Ambrose, and Ruby had come back with her arms full of flowers. It was strange that she could hear the leaves rustling. She did not look for the ship. To see those three ladies knitting under the awning would have been to jolt the progress of a dream. She came back to the Peach-blossom Valley, and turned with a gesture of wrath from the spectacle of Sprot in altercation with her father. Then a few moments of growing impatience, until she found Yuan, waist-deep and busy in an enclosed pool at a distant point of the island. She heard the Lake rippling and the wash of water when he moved or plunged his hands in the pool. Breeding experiments, she thought. She had meant to go to him when she should have found him. It was so with her now that she demanded his presence constantly. But he was busy; he might prefer to be alone. She paused to inquire into her state of mind, realizing that she found it a necessity to be with him, and wondering what that might amount to.
Now that she had found him it did not seem right to watch him. She paced the open rooms and balconies of that airy summer-house, like a slim fly caught in a scarlet cage; going out to feast her heart on the Lake, now a garden of lilies, white, rose, and golden; returning to the instrument to see if Yuan was still at work. She opened a cabinet of drawers, found it full of paintings on silk, and idly inspected them. There was a portrait of a young boy. It was so perfect a work of art, a unity composed of an infinite number of rhythms, that its effect on the mind was hypnotic. The tone was a variety of rich browns touched with a lotus flush of almost unbelievable precision. The young boy was kneeling on a lotus daïs with his hands joined in prayer. The eyebrows were delicate as small painted moths. The tiny mouth was like a flower that will never open and wither, beautiful and small and calm. The eyes were purer than the deep and velvet pansy. Was it a boy, after all, or a girl? She saw in the face a certain severity of saintliness, the signs of a state of mind that she could remember, when she had been, as it were, both boy and girl, with a desire for heaven. But what was solemn and beautiful in the face was a shadow, a foreknowledge, of some predestined renunciation, of some experience circled round with burning flames, seen from afar off, before the thought of pain had meaning. Pondering thus, she realized with a shock that the features were the features of Yuan.
She looked at the image in the long-sight instrument, saw that Yuan was still at work, and returned to the portrait.
Could Hsiao have painted it? Could he have received that sublime inspiration in the stupor of wine? If he could paint a melon, when he was drunk, in a way to disclose cosmical secrets, why not the portrait of a saintly young boy? There was no signature. That was like Hsiao. For him not the painting, but the contemplation in which he conceived it. She understood that. The painting was a mere discharge, the symbol of an experience fully grasped.
The face was not so much Yuan’s as the face of some perfect being, predestined for the bliss of non-existence seen in the vision of an artist. Not so much Yuan’s face. With the portrait in her hand she returned to the instrument, and found after a little experimenting that it was possible to deal with the field of view so as to fill it with the image of a small object. She studied the image of Yuan with the shame of Psyche studying the revealed face of the god. There had been a change. The mild face of the boy had become severe, even fierce, from the discipline of contemplation; in the place of innocence was the calm, unvarying gaze of eyes that have rested on a reality that is neither pure nor impure. She was afraid, as she had been afraid before the mountains, and put the portrait away and swung the instrument back into its cabinet. But first, with a swift mounting of her fear, she saw that Yuan had left his pool, and was coming towards her with his eyes fixed on hers.
He was coming to her. He would be there in a few minutes. He had only been looking at the scarlet nest in the tree-tops, of course, and he could not have descried her figure, where she was. But he would know, and in a rush of passion she hated his insight and his domination; in her mind she saw his face again, serene and alien. Her flesh shuddered.
Soon he stood between the scarlet posts of the doorway, yellow-brown against a deep blue sky, attentive, impassive.
