religion which was a marvel of scholarship while ducking any real conclusions (Mike had brought it to Jubal for literary criticism, Jubal had added some weasel words himself through conditioned reflex), the award of the 'earned' doctorate coinciding with an endowment (anonymous) to this very hungry school, the second doctorate (honorary) right on top of it for 'contributions to interplanetary knowledge' from a distinguished university that should have known better, when Mike let it be known that such was his price for showing up as the drawing card at a conference on solar system studies. The one and only Man from Mars had turned down everybody from CalTech to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in the past; Harvard University could hardly be blamed for swallowing the bait.
Well, they were probably as crimson as their banner now, Jubal thought cynically. Mike had then put in a few weeks as assistant chaplain at his church-mouse alma mater - then had broken with the sect in a schism and founded his own church. Completely kosher, legally airtight, as venerable in precedent as Martin Luther? and as nauseating as last week's garbage.
Jubal was called out of his sour daydream by Miriam. 'Boss! Company!'
Jubal looked up to see a car about to land and ruminated that he had not realized what a blessing that S.S. patrol cap had been until it was withdrawn.
'Larry, fetch my shotgun - I promised myself that I would shoot the next dolt who landed on the rose bushes.'
'He's landing on the grass, Boss.'
'Well, tell him to try again. We'll get him on the next pass.'
'Looks like Ben Caxton.'
'So it is. We'll let him live - this time. Hi, Ben! What'll you drink?'
'Nothing, this early in the day, you professional bad influence. Need to talk to you, Jubal.'
'You're doing it. Dorcas, fetch Ben a glass of warm milk; he's sick.'
'Without too much soda,' amended Ben, 'and milk the bottle with the three dimples in it. Private talk, Jubal.'
'All right, up to my study - although if you think you can keep anything from the kids around here, let me in on your method.' After Ben finished greeting properly (and somewhat unsanitarily, in three cases) the members of the family, they moseyed upstairs.
Ben said, 'What the deuce? Am I lost?'
'Oh. You haven't seen the alterations, have you? A new wing on the north, which gives us two more bedrooms and another bath downstairs - and up here, my gallery.'
'Enough statues to fill a graveyard!'
'Please, Ben. 'Statues' are dead politicians at boulevard intersections. What you see is 'sculpture.' And please speak in a low, reverent tone lest I become violent? for here we have exact replicas of some of the greatest sculpture this naughty globe has produced.'
'Well, that hideous thing I've seen before? but when did you acquire the rest of this ballast?'
Jubal ignored him and spoke quietly to the replica of La Belle Heaulmire. 'Do not listen to him, ma petite chre - he is a barbarian and knows no better.' He put his hand to her beautiful ravaged cheek, then gently touched one empty, shrunken dug. 'I know just how you feel but it can't be very much longer. Patience, my lovely.'
He turned back to Caxton and said briskly, 'Ben, I don't know what you have on your mind but it will have to wait while I give you a lesson in how to look at sculpture - though it's probably as useless as trying to teach a dog to appreciate the violin. But you've just been rude to a lady and I don't tolerate that.'
'Huh? Don't be silly, Jubal; you're rude to ladies - live ones - a dozen times a day. And you know which ones I mean.'
Jubal shouted, 'Anne! Upstairs! Wear your cloak!'
'You know I wouldn't be rude to the old woman who posed for that. Never. What I can't understand is a so- called artist having the gall to pose somebody's great grandmother in her skin? and you having the bad taste to want it around.'
Anne came in, cloaked, said nothing. Jubal said to her, 'Anne have I ever been rude to you? Or to any of the girls?'
'That calls for an opinion.'
'That's what I'm asking for. Your opinion. You're not in court-'
'You have never at any time been rude to any of us, Jubal.'
'Have you ever known me to be rude to a lady?'
'I have seen you be intentionally rude to a woman. I have never seen you be rude to a lady.'
'That's all. No, one more opinion. What do you think of this bronze?'
Anne looked carefully at Rodin's masterpiece, then said slowly, 'When I first saw it, I thought it was horrible. But I have come to the conclusion that it may be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.'
'Thanks. That's all.' She left. 'Do you want to argue it, Ben?'
'Huh? When I argue with Anne, that's the day I turn in my suit.' Ben looked at it. 'But I don't get it.'
'All right, Ben. Attend me. Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist - a master - and that is what Auguste Rodin was - can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is? and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be? and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart? no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired - but it does to them. Look at her!'
Ben looked at her. Presently Jubal said gruffly, 'All right, blow your nose and wipe your eyes - she accepts your apology. Come on and sit down. That's enough for one lesson.'
'No,' Caxton answered, 'I want to know about these others. How about this one? It doesn't bother me as much? I can see it's a young girl, right off. But why tie her up like a pretzel?'
Jubal looked at the replica 'Caryatid Who has Fallen under the Weight of her Stone' and smiled. 'Call it a tour de force in empathy, Ben. I won't expect you to appreciate the shapes and masses which make that figure much more than a 'pretzel' - but you can appreciate what Rodin was saying. Ben, what do people get out of looking at a crucifix?'
'You know how much I go to church.'
''How little' you mean. Still, you must know that, as craftsmanship, paintings and sculpture of the Crucifixion are usually atrocious - and the painted, realistic ones often used in churches are the worst of all? the blood looks like catsup and that ex-carpenter is usually portrayed as if he were a pansy? which He certainly was not if there is any truth in the four Gospels at all. He was a hearty man, probably muscular and of rugged health. But despite the almost uniformly poor portrayal in representations of the Crucifixion, a poor one is about as effective as a good one for most people. They don't see the defects; what they see is a symbol which inspires their deepest emotions; it recalls to them the Agony and Sacrifice of God.'
'Jubal, I thought you weren't a Christian?'
'What's that got to do with it? Does that make me blind and deaf to fundamental human emotion? I was saying that the crummiest painted plaster crucifix or the cheapest cardboard Christmas Crche can be sufficient symbol to evoke emotions in the human heart so strong that many have died for them and many more live for them. So the craftsmanship and artistic judgment with which such a symbol is wrought are largely irrelevant. Now here we have another emotional symbol - wrought with exquisite craftsmanship, but we won't go into that, yet. Ben, for almost three thousand years or longer, architects have designed buildings with columns shaped as female figures - it got to be such a habit that they did it as casually as a small boy steps on an ant. After all those centuries it took Rodin to see that this was work too heavy for a girl. But he didn't simply say, 'Look, you jerks, if you must design this way, make it a brawny male figure.' No, he showed it? and generalized the symbol. Here is this poor little caryatid who has tried - and failed, fallen under the load. She's a good girl - look at her face. Serious, unhappy at her failure, but not blaming anyone else, not even the gods? and still trying to shoulder her load, after she's crumpled under it.
'But she's more than good art denouncing some very bad art; she's a symbol for every woman who has ever tried to shoulder a load that was too heavy for her - over half the female population of this planet, living and dead, I
