Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [166]
“Thank you, Dad,” said Thaw and nearly smiled. He had not lied in saying he still had some grant money left, but it was only a few shillings.
A week later a group containing Mr. Smail and the minister entered. Mr. Smail said jovially, “Here’s a young lady who wants to speak to you, Duncan.”
Thaw came down from the ladder. The lady was dwarfed by a tall man with an expensive camera. The details of her person and dress were slightly sloppy, but she moved with such smiling confidence that this wasn’t seen at first. She held out her hand, saying, “Peggy Byres of the Evening News.”
Thaw laughed and said, “Are you going to make me famous?” He talked for six or seven minutes about the ceiling. She glanced at it, scribbled in a note pad and said, “Is your family very religious, Duncan?”
“Oh, no. I’ve never been christened.”
“Then why are you so religious?”
“I’m not. I never go to church services. Sunday is my day of rest.”
“Then what makes you paint a religious work without payment?”
“Ambition. The Old Testament has everything that can be painted in it: universal landscapes and characters and dreams and adventures and histories. The New Testament is more single-minded. I don’t enjoy it so much.”
“Look at these rabbits beside the pool, Miss Byres,” said Mr. Smail. “You can almost hear them nibbling.”
The reporter looked at the Eden wall and said, “Who’s that behind the bramble bush with a lizard at his feet?”
“God,” said Thaw, glancing uneasily at the minister and Mr. Smail. “The lizard is the serpent before his legs were removed. God has his back to us—you can hardly see his face.”
“But what we can see looks very … looks rather …”
“Enigmatic,” said Thaw. “He’s not just watching Adam and Eve make love, he can see the expulsion afterward and the river of bloody history down to the wars of the apocalypse. We’ve had a lot of these wars recently. He can even see past them to the just city predicted by St. John, Dante and Marx. I haven’t read Marx but—”
“These birds in the tree of life are miracles of delicacy, aren’t they, Miss Byres?” said Mr. Smail from a distance.
“But why is Adam a Negro?”
“He’s actually more red than black,” the minister murmured, “and the name ‘Adam’ derives from a Hebrew word meaning ‘red earth.’”
“But Eve is white!”
“Pearly pink,” said Thaw. “I’m told that for a few moments love makes different people feel like one. My outline shows the oneness, my colours emphasize the difference. It’s an old trick. Rubens used it.”
“Did you draw Eve from a model?”
“Yes.”
“A girlfriend?” asked the reporter, with an arch smile.
“No, a friend of a friend,” said Thaw, who had drawn Janet Weir. He added glumly, “Most girls will pose naked for an artist if he only wants to draw them.”
The reporter tapped her lip with the pencil, then said, “Do you find life a tragedy or really more of a joke?”
Thaw laughed and said, “That depends on the part of it I’m looking at.”
“And what will you do when you’ve finished here?”
“I hope to paint some commercial murals. I’ll need the money.”
“Do you like the mural, Miss Byres?” said Mr. Smail.
“I’m afraid I’m not an art critic. The Evening News doesn’t have a regular art critic. Duncan, would you go up your ladder and pretend to paint Adam and Eve for a minute? We’ll take a photograph, anyway.”
He bought the paper on Saturday and carried it eagerly into the pulpit. The article began:
ATHEIST PAINTS FACE OF GOD
Most people think artists are mad. The wild-bearded figure in the paint-stained dressing gown who haunts Cowlairs Parish Church will hardly reassure them on that point. And Duncan Thaw, a self-proclaimed atheist and Marxist, freely admits he is painting a large mural there with nothing in mind but the lust for fame.
His eyes clenched shut in horror. Eventually he opened them and skimmed quickly through the rest.
He has