The Matisse Stories - Antonia S. Byatt [30]
‘Not a potato. A fork. A pin. A coathanger. I see.’
‘And is in a very depressed state. There have been at least two suicide bids—to my knowledge.’
‘Serious bids?’
‘How do you define serious? Bids that would perhaps have been effective if they had not been well enough signalled—for rescue—’
‘I see. You do know that this does not alter the fact that she has no talent and doesn’t work, and can’t see—’
‘She might—if she were well—’
‘Do you think so?’
‘No. On the evidence I have, no.’
Perry Diss helps himself to a final small bowlful of rice. He says,
‘When I was in China, I learned to end a meal with pure rice, quite plain, and to taste every grain. It is one of the most beautiful tastes in the world, freshly-boiled rice. I don’t know if it would be if it was all you had every day, if you were starving. It would be differently delicious, differently haunting, don’t you think? You can’t describe this taste.’
Gerda Himmelblau helps herself, manoeuvres delicately with her chopsticks, contemplates pure rice, says, ‘I see.’
‘Why Matisse?’ Perry Diss bursts out again, leaning forward. ‘I can see she is ill, poor thing. You can smell it on her, that she is ill. That alone makes it unthinkable that anyone—that I—should touch her—’
‘As Dean of Women Students,’ says Gerda Himmelblau thoughtfully, ‘one comes to learn a great deal about anorexia. It appears to stem from self-hatred and inordinate self-absorption. Especially with the body, and with that image of our own body we all carry around with us. One of my colleagues who is a psychiatrist collaborated with one of your colleagues in Fine Art to produce a series of drawings—clinical drawings in a sense—which I have found most instructive. They show an anorexic person before a mirror, and what we see—staring ribs, hanging skin—and what she sees—grotesque bulges, huge buttocks, puffed cheeks. I have found these most helpful.’
‘Ah. We see coathangers and forks, and she sees potatoes and vegetable marrows. There is a painting in that. You could make an interesting painting out of that.’
‘Please—the experience is terrible to her.’
‘Don’t think I don’t know. I am not being flippant, Dr Himmelblau. I am, or was, a serious painter. It is not flippant to see a painting in a predicament. Especially a predicament which is essentially visual, as this is.’
‘I’m sorry. I am trying to think what to do. The poor child wishes to annihilate herself. Not to be’
‘So I understand. But why Matisse? If she is so obsessed with bodily horrors why does she not obtain employment as an emptier of bedpans or in a maternity ward or a hospice? And if she must take on Art, why does she not rework Giacometti into Maillol, or vice versa, or take on that old goat, Picasso, who did things to women’s bodies out of genuine malice? Why Matisse?’
‘Precisely for that reason, as you must know. Because he paints silent bliss. Luxe, calme et volupté. How can Peggi Nollett bear luxe, calme et volupté?’
‘When I was a young man,’ says Perry Diss, ‘going through my own Sturm und Drang, I was a bit bored by all that. I remember telling someone—my wife—it all was easy and flat. What a fool. And then, one day I saw it. I saw how hard it is to see, and how full of pure power, once seen. Not consolation, Dr Himmelblau, life and power! He leans back, stares into space, and quotes,
‘Mon enfant, ma soeur,
Songe â la douceur
D’aller la-bas vivre ensemble!
Aimer â loisir
Aimer et mourir
Au pays qui te ressemble!—
Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté
Luxe, calme et volupté.’
Dr Himmelblau, whose own life has contained only a modicum of luxe, calme et volupté, is half-moved, halfexasperated by the vatic enthusiasm with which Perry Diss intones these words. She says drily,
‘There has always been a resistance to these qualities in Matisse, of course. Feminist critics and artists don’t like him because of the way in which he expands male eroticism into whole placid panoramas of well-being.