River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh [169]
He paused to look around the room and then spat on the floor. ‘There’s not one amongst you doesn’t know that in comparison to all of you fine fucking gentlemen, I am an innocent – an honest man. And that, let me tell you, gentlemen, is the only reason why I might choose to leave Canton: it’s because there’s not one amongst you deserves to keep company with James Innes.’
*
December 12
I cannot believe, dearest Puggly, that this letter has been sitting helplessly on my desk for so many days. But so indeed it has, because I have not been able to find a boat to take it to Hong Kong. Thanks to Mr Innes, who has still to leave Canton, the Trade is at a complete standstill.
But the strange thing, Pugglie-chérie, is that this has been a marvellously happy time for me – so much so that I would not be in the least sorry if the Trade were to remain frozen for ever! For I have never found so much joy in painting as I have had in these last few days. Jacqua comes to sit for me whenever he can, and I confess that I do not always work as speedily as I might – not only because his company is pleasing but also because it is exceedingly instructive. You may be surprised to learn that he was not in the least offended to see himself being depicted with an unclothed torso. Indeed he was kind enough to rectify and even embellish my efforts – which is how I discovered that he, and many other young apprentices at the studio, have made a deep study of anatomical painting. This is at the insistence of Lamqua, who goes frequently to Dr Parker’s hospital, to paint patients who have undergone operations there. These paintings of Lamqua’s are quite extraordinary –I have never in my life seen anything like them. They are of people with amputated arms and legs, and also of some who are suffering from dreadful diseases – and the miracle of it is that they are not in the least ghoulish or prurient, even though they are painstakingly detailed and unrelentingly accurate. I am sure I myself would swoon dead away if I had to gaze upon such injuries and lesions for any length of time (but I am, as you know, just a little bit squeamish). Yet Lamqua’s pictures are so wonderfully sympathetic that I am inclined to think that to be painted by him is perhaps even a part of the patients’ cure. He paints the human body as if mutilation and imperfection were not the exception but the rule, proof of life itself. It is a way of looking at anatomy that could never be learnt in a morgue or through the dissection of corpses – for the flesh is never without life nor the other way around.
Jacqua too has imbibed something of this unflinching yet tender regard for the body, and when he corrects me I sometimes feel that he is reproving me – for he laughs and says that I paint human flesh as a tiger might, as though it were food. This has made me think anew about the del Sarto torso on my canvas: I see that its flaws lie exactly in the perfection of the flesh, which renders nothing of the spirit of the subject and seems indeed to be utterly at odds with it.
But it is all to the good, for I do not in the least mind being criticized by Jacqua: it gives me a reason to start all over again and sometimes Jacqua will even allow me to sketch from life – which is, I find, a great deal more rewarding than trying to remember a painting which I have never even seen, except in reproduction.
But that is not all, mia cara Pugglazón. I have also received my first commission! And from whom, you might ask? Well, it is none other than Mr King, my young Géricault! He came up to me in the Maidan some days ago and said that he is often unoccupied nowadays because of the stoppage in Trade, so would I like to do his portrait while he has the time to sit for it? Of course I said yes, and I have spent several afternoons in the American Factory, where he has his lodgings.
Although he has been kind to me,