Free On a Balcony by David Stacton Page A

was empty, forTutmose did not like his own works. There was only a chair on a dais and a work-table.
    “Sit down,” said Tutmose, and began to mix something in a tub. Rather unexpectedly the prince sat and even sent away his guards. For clearly he felt quite safe here. The room was flooded with light.
    “What shall I do?” he asked. To pose still made him self-conscious, particularly after having seen the best of which Bek was capable.
    “Do nothing. After all, you are ,” said Tutmose, and began to slap wet plaster on an armature. He had prepared for this for weeks. He had made head after head and smashed them all. He had studied these features until he knew how these features wished to look, and until he could reconcile the way they wished to look with the way they did. For in these matters the prince was no fool. No matter how uncertain his taste, still, obviously, he had taste. Therefore the thing must be done just so, and it had to be done quickly. Well, it would be.
    Besides, the subject was interesting. There was some vigour in that boyish voice. All he needed was something to believe in, and then, even if it were an error, he would be worth sculpting indeed.
    The model grew. It only took three-quarters of an hour. Tutmose revolved its stand. The light came down through a hole in the ceiling. It played and leaped and altered the surface of everything, as Tutmose gently rotated the stand. And there, out of the still wet plaster, shimmered the prince’s very heart and voice, changeable , young, quick, eager, never for an instant the same, and always self-renewing. Tutmose had only to watch, to know that he had succeeded.
    “Yes,” said the prince. “That is truth.”
    For that was what Tutmose knew about the truth: the truth is always changing and always the same. And besides, it is pleasant to thrill the sitter sometimes. Andthe sitter is so easily flattered. All he wants to see is his own conception of himself. Tutmose was rewarded on the spot. It remained only for him to flatter Nefertiti, and about that he had no doubts. It would merely be necessary to make her beautiful. Women were like that.
    And so the pattern fell into place. First Meryra, and then Tutmose, the man who showed them the truth, flickering, changing, but always the same, and always beautiful, and always what they wanted to see. He would be personal portraitest to all of them.
    And what was the secret of that sudden rise, and of that no less sudden truth? Wet plaster, and a trick of modelling porous surfaces, so that they should always catch the light and so always seem to change.
    It was ridiculously easy. Yet it was not so easy as all that, for Tutmose, too, had his concept of the truth. Once the prince had gone he set his face aside and did another one, one on which he spent a lot of time and thought, and which utterly held his attention. The first had been a piece of sleight of hand. But this was a little more than that. It was a study of the prince a few months from now, when he was at last at the mercy of what he was really thinking; when his own fears, so badly nourished by other men’s ambition, had at last hardened into a system of belief. For after all, we are all other men’s means, even Tutmose, who more than any of them, hoped to save something out.
    He had this hope, because he knew what he was up to.
    Of course there were times, in the middle of the night, when he wondered if he was any good at all. But, since he also knew that it was only people who were good who had such doubts, these night thoughts, though profoundly disturbing, were also reassuring, for he knew that that very quality of badness which one perceives in oneself is nothing more than the sum of one’s merits, for only excellence shows us how we have failed. All theworld’s most admired works are nothing more than a rubbing of the artist’s original idea, an uneven replica of something that at the time was quite clear. And, of course, such is the creative