withdraw her complaint you will both be required to put your cases to the Senate of the University. And the University will be required—by a rule made in the days when university senates had authority and power and money—to retain QCs to represent both of you, should you so wish. And in the present climate I am very much afraid that whatever the truth of the matter, you will lose your job, and whether you do or don’t lose it there will be disagreeable protests and demonstrations against you, your work, your continued presence in the University. And the Vice-Chancellor will fear the effect of the publicity on the funding of the College—and the course, which is the only Joint Honours Course of its kind in London—may have to close. It is not seen by our profit-oriented masters as an essential part of our new—“Thrust”, I think they call it. Our students do not contribute to the export drive—’‘I don’t see why not. They can’t all be Peggi Nolletts. I was about to say—have another spoonful of bamboo-shoots and beansprouts—I was about to say, very well, I’ll resign on the spot and save you any further bother. But I don’t think I can do that. Because I won’t give in to lies and blackmail. And because that woman isn’t an artist, and doesn’t work, and can’t see, and should not have a degree. And because of Matisse.’‘Thank you,’ says Gerda Himmelblau, accepting the vegetables. And, Oh dear yes,’ in response to the declaration of intent. They eat in silence for a moment or two. The Cantonese voice asserts that it is a beautiful miming. Dr Himmelblau says,‘Peggi Nollett is not well. She is neither physically nor mentally well. She suffers from anorexia. Those clothes are designed to obscure the fact that she has starved herself, apparently, almost to a skeleton.’‘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 volupte. How can Peggi Nollett bear luxe, calme et volupte?’‘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 a la douceur
D’aller la-bas vivre ensemble!
Aimer a loisir
Aimer et mourir
Au pays qui te ressemble!—
La, tout n’est qu’ordre et beaute
Luxe, calme et volupte.’Dr Himmelblau, whose own life has contained only a modicum of luxe, calme et volupte, 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. Marxists don’t like him because he himself said he wanted to paint to please businessmen.’‘Businessmen and intellectuals,’ says Perry Diss.‘Intellectuals don’t make it any more acceptable to Marxists.’‘Look,’ says Perry Diss. ‘Your Miss Nollett wants to shock. She shocks with simple daubings. Matisse was cunning and complex and violent and controlled and he knew he had to know exactly what he was doing. He knew the most shocking thing he could tell people about the purpose of his art was that it was designed to please and to be comfortable. That sentence of his about the armchair is one of the most wickedly provocative things that has ever been said about painting. You can daub the whole of the Centre Pompidou with manure from top to bottom and you will never shock as many people as Matisse did by saying art was like an armchair. People remember that with horror who know nothing about the context—’‘Remind me,’ says Gerda Himmelblau.‘ “What I dream of, is an art of balance, of purity, of quietness, without any disturbing subjects, without worry, which may be, for everyone who works with the mind, for the businessman as much as for the literary artist, something soothing, something to calm the brain, something analogous to a good armchair which relaxes him from his bodily weariness …”‘‘It would be perfectly honourable to argue that that was a very limited view—’ says Gerda Himmelblau.‘Honourable but impercipient. Who is it that understands pleasure, Dr Himmelblau? Old men like me, who can only just remember their bones not hurting, who remember walking up a hill with a spring in their step like the red of the Red Studio. Blind men who have had their sight restored and get giddy with the colours of trees and plastic mugs and the terrible blue of the sky. Pleasure is life, Dr Himmelblau, and most of us don’t have it, or not much, or mess it up, and when we see it in those blues, those roses, those oranges, that vermilion, we should fall down and worship—for it is the thing itself. Who knows a good armchair? A man who has bone-cancer, or a man who has been tortured, he can recognise a good armchair‘And poor Peggi Nolle,’ says Dr Himmelblau. ‘How can she see that, when she mostly wants to die?’‘Someone intent on bringing an action for rape, or whatever she calls it, can’t be all that keen on death. She will want to savour her triumph over her doddering male victim.’‘She is confused, Professor Diss. She puts out messages of all kinds, cries for help, threats …’‘Disgusting art-works—’‘It is truly not beyond her capacities to—to take an overdose and leave a letter accusing you—or me—of horrors, of insensitivity, of persecution—’‘Vengefulness can be seen for what it is. Spite and malice can be seen for what they are.’‘You have a robust confidence in human nature. And you simplify. The despair is as real as the spite. They are part of each other.’‘They are failures of imagination.’‘Of course,’ says Gerda Himmelblau. Of course they are. Anyone who could imagine the terror—the pain—of those who survive a suicide—against whom a suicide is committed—could not carry it through.’Her voice has changed. She knows it has. Perry Diss does not speak but looks at her, frowning slightly. Gerda Himmelblau, driven by some pact she made long ago with accuracy, with truthfulness, says,‘Of course, when one is at that point, imagining others becomes unimaginable. Everything seems clear, and simple, and single; there is only one possible thing to be done—’Perry Diss says,‘That is true. You look around you and everything is bleached, and clear, as you say. You are in a white box, a white room, with no doors or windows. You are looking through clear water with no movement—perhaps it is more like being inside ice, inside the white room. There is only one thing possible. It is all perfectly clear and simple and plain. As you say.’They look at each other. The flood of red has subsided under Perry Diss’s skin. He is thinking. He is quiet.
Any two people may be talking to each other, at any moment, in a civilised way about something trivial, or something, even, complex and delicate. And inside each of the two there runs a kind of dark river of unconnected thought, of secret fear, or violence, or bliss, hoped-for or lost, which keeps
