Texts for Translation 2010:
  Michael Kerins

APPLESEED

Michael Kerins

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now forever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour<

Of splendour in the grass,

Of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind;

Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

William Wordsworth 1770 -1850

Years ago and far away from here there was an artist. Only he was more than just an artist, he was a great visionary who would change how the world saw beauty. Under the skin lies the real beauty of any person. This was his gift. A gift so fully given that he altered visual realisation for all time. Such men are few; Canaletto gave a real insight into perspective. Tintoretto’s observance of space and special lighting effects make him a precursor of baroque art. Enlightenment permits that an artist can see beauty everywhere. Dali, in recent times, did the same thing; he saw things differently and painted them accordingly.

Now it happened that there was a very spectacular artist. Instinctive in his style, he painted huge canvases. Careful in his creation, he worked with the skill of a great draughtsman. Endlessly seeking to create beauty of one woman in his life’s work.

Here is his story.

He lived in France and his creations would change not only the way the world saw beauty but also the way the world would think. His legacy of work would ask deep philosophical questions - where does beauty come from? Where does it lie and where, eventually does beauty go?

The artist was an ugly man. Physically he was deformed. He was a hunchback with a long leg and a short leg and his hands - even as a young man - were reminiscent of the knarled and broken joints that no-one would reasonably expect in a juvenile.

His house was a vast French chateau. He was sole heir to his father’s lands, which extended in all directions and the formal front gardens were homage to topiary. Small boxed-hedges in groups of four were divided into eight, sixteen, thirty-two and sixty-four. They seemed to go on forever, demonstrating a perfect mathematical formula that showed man’s dominance over the natural world. They ran the full length and breadth of the garden, all the way down to the river. The mansion house had thee hundred and sixty-five rooms.

His parents were devoted to the boy and they made sure his life was as comfortable as possible, for they had not only all the trappings of material wealth but they were spiritually rich, and he was provided for in his emotional and spiritual wellbeing.

Everyday as a young man, his favourite servant, and personal valet Kazerog, would take him to lunch in town. If he was able, they would walk. Sometimes he would be pushed in a chair and other times he would be carried. They always ate at The Waterbutt Restaurant – it was very old and had been in the town for around two hundred years. The same family had owned it for generations and it was as much a part of the landscape of that remote part of France as any classical religious or administrative building. He sat at the same seat at the same table, which was placed near the fire in winter. However in summer he was on the balcony, a rather cute rustic extension added about one hundred and fifty years ago and colloquially known as The Handle. He loved his daily visits to the Waterbutt Restaurant. He loved to sit outside on The Handle and watch the river.

One day just after his sixteenth birthday a most beautiful waitress served him. She was fully rich in her feminine shape, and had thick dark hair that flowed over her shoulders in waves. Her black eyes, bewitching eyes, beautiful eyes were almond shaped, and as deep as the ocean. Although she was only two years older than him she was fully developed as a woman. Those eyes sparkled with mystery and there was an extra glow, a twinkle, when she served the boy. He became very attached to this waitress and wanted to know more of her. But he was timid. Things would change because his father died just before his eighteenth birthday and the boy became a man. He was born noble and was now the Marquis – his family whose name rose above the vagaries of the recent revolution, were powerful and influential and now he was now longer the heir, he was the Marquis in his own rite. He thought constantly of the waitress and he became infatuated with her.

So he wrote a love letter. It was a beautiful letter and infused with such kind and pleasant words. He wanted to take her to dinner. He did not sign the letter and there was no clue to the author.

Furthermore he decided not to ask his beloved Kazerog to deliver the letter for as soon as she saw him she would instantly realise that his master was the author. So he asked a boy, one of the gardeners’ grandchildren who was aged around ten years old, to take the letter and to give no clue to the author. For his work, he gave the boy three brown coins, a fortune for this little urchin.

When the waitress read the letter she persistently asked who the boy’s master was. She nagged him. Instantly she changed her tactics and was very endearing to the little boy and begged him to release the secret. In his pocket he could feel the three brown coins and he hoped that this would be the first of many encounters where he could act as a go-between. For it was easy work to carry a little note – so he did not betray the author. The waitress knew that she was beaten and she told him that he would have to come back for the reply in around two or three hours. She was curious and looking for a wealthy admirer, she was also greedy. Her answer was filled with wonder and she said that she would be happy to meet with the author of such beautiful words. On one single condition, that the author was not the ugly cripple, the hunchback who sometimes must be carried like a baby. Her reply was hard, unpleasant and unnecessarily unfair. She used vile and horrible language to this unknown admirer. She said,

“Dear sir, if you can tell me who you are then we can arrange to meet, for I must be sure that you are to my taste. A great many customers come to The Waterbutt and I must make sure that you are not the ugly crippled Marquis who sometimes has to be carried like a baby. If you are then I have no interest in you”

So when the boy collected the letter he went straight home to his master with the reply. Instinctively he checked to make sure that he was not followed. The coast was clear and he went straight to his master. The young artist was working in his studio and the boy brought the letter there. When the artist read the horrible, nasty things that were written there he was filled with such self-loathing and great despair. In his hand there was an apple. He was eating this apple and in temper and rage he threw the apple straight out of the window, smashing the glass. The apple rolled on the perfectly manicured lawns and stopped two or three metres from the garden wall. His eyes were filled with tears. They flowed with all the might of the Ganges down his face and the little boy coughed and was embarrassed and the artist dismissed him. When he turned around and he saw his reflection in the mirror he took his palette and threw it hard at the mirror, smashing it into thousands of pieces.

He stayed in his studio the whole day and he finished in seven hours of straight work a massive canvas. The subject was the waitress and his use of light and his pallet knife technique made her almost alive. He never showed anyone the painting. This masterpiece and all his futures works would be hidden from his staff. Next morning he was in his studio at five a.m. He saw the gardener going to move the apple from the perfectly manicured lawn. He opened the French doors from his studio and called to the gardener. He commanded him to leave it well alone. That apple must never be moved, he said, and then to himself he said let it rot and die like my love and my desire for that beautiful waitress. In time, as the apple rotted, a little seed germinated and grew into the soil and within a year or two there was a strong sapling. The total uniformity of the garden was thrown askew by the intrusive presence of the skinny little tree. Within five years the tree was taller and bold. Now fully settled with role as lord of the manor he conducted the affairs of his people and workers with skill and dexterity that they soon grew to love and admire him. Every afternoon he painted and he painted and he painted and everything he painted was the same.

His subject matter was the buxom waitress with black beguiling eyes. He painted the waitress, naked in the bath, riding a horse, sitting at small table sewing repairing her clothes. He painted her in the kitchen. He painted her fast asleep. He painted her fully clothed, partly naked and totally naked and he painted her and he painted her and he painted her. He never went back to the restaurant. Not even to attend the funeral meal of the owner. Within six months of the death of the owner the restaurant had changed hands and was sold to another family who sacked the haughty waitress. They needed to cut costs and employed family to do her work. She took to selling flowers – then to selling vegetables and eventually she took to selling herself. The Marquis never saw her in life again but when he closed his eyes she was there and alive and complete and whole. She would never be his for he was no fool. Every mirror in the house was covered with black cloth. And he threw himself into his duties as Marquis and his life as an artist. He was a great landowner and also a compassionate, wonderful, loving artist. As the years passed the tree grew strong.

There was now no uniformity in the garden although everything still was maintained. This wrong tree in the wrong place changed the whole format and layout of the beautiful place with its wonderful gardens. In the spring his servant would take him there and he would sit under the branches of the robust hybrid tree. By now the branches stretched over the wall and the garden and the spring apple-blossom was quite unique. The tiny flowers were magnolia in colour and they were rimmed with soft deep pink. They lasted only two weeks and when the blossom was over. They fell like perfumed snow and kissed his skin. Since his mother died no one ever kissed him. He longed to be touched, to be loved, to be one with a woman. On the other side of the wall the waitress would sit there and the flowers fell on her but she was so vain and so haughty that she did not understand the beauty of nature. The kiss of new life, sense of seasons and time.

In the summer when the garden was hot and baking the artist would sit there benefiting from the shade. Her fullness had gone. She was still round but now not delightful and inspiring her roundness was flabbiness and she was fat. Her hair had lost its sense of movement and rhythm and she had no work. The waitress then had to do what she could to make ends meet. Many men found her cheap and easy and her virtue could be had for just a glass of wine. In the autumn when the apples came they were shiny and rich and inside these apples were the seeds that would provide future generations of new life and all the time The Marquis painted and painted and painted. One deep hard winter he died childless and unmarried and left his whole estate to his beautiful and beloved France.

The French authorities turned the house into a museum and art gallery and it was an instant success. People came from all over the world for as a rich young man he never had a need to sell his painting so the collection remained intact. His life’s work packed into thee hundred and sixty-five rooms and the haughty waitress was now an old beggar woman who sat under the tree branches, near the wall. The visitors from all over the world came to the gallery and pondered at the great question - who was this beautiful woman - was she real? Was she a figment of the artist’s imagination and is such beauty really possible in nature and. if it is, where is it now? Experts on his work spoke of the perfect craftsmanship of his work and made the link between the symmetry of the garden with the out of place apple-tree – and the burning raw natural passion of the nature of female beauty. The visitors continued asking these questions after they left the gallery, they walked through the gardens past the rogue apple tree, out of the gates, and there, sitting under the branches was the beggar, the subject of the painting. She was old and broken and wizened. Her eyes dull and sad her breasts long and sagging her figure long gone. Her hand outstretched begging for any little coins that these travellers may deign to give her and she could hear them saying “where does such beauty come from?” and another would ask “where does such beauty go?” She never saw the paintings. She never knew of their existence.

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