Patricia Highsmith: The Artist

At the time Jane got married, one would have thought there was nothing unusual about her. She was plump, pretty and practical: she could give artificial respiration at the drop of a hat or pull someone out of a faint or a nosebleed. She was a dentist’s assistant, and as cool as they come in the face of crisis or pain. But she had enthusiasm for the arts. What arts? All of them. She began, in the first year of her married life, with painting. This occupied all her Saturdays, or enough of Saturdays to prevent adequate shopping for the weekend, but her husband Bob did the shopping. He also paid for the framing of muddy, run—together odd portraits of their friends, and the sittings of the friends took up time on the weekends too. Jane at last faced the fact she could not stop her colours from running together, and decided to abandon painting for the dance.

The dance, in a black leotard, did not much improve her robust figure, only her appetite. Special shoes followed. She was studying ballet,. She had discovered an institution called The School of Arts. In this five—storey edifice they taught the piano, violin and other instruments, music composition, novel—writing, poetry, sculpture, the dance and painting.

‘You see, Bob, life can and should be made more beautiful,’ Jane said with her big smile. ‘And everyone wants to contribute, if he or she can, just a little bit to the beauty and poetry of the world.’

Bob happened to be there, because he was to have fetched Jane at 5 p.m. He had heard about the bomb rumour, but did not know whether to believe it or not. With some caution, however, or a premonition, he was waiting across the street instead of in the lobby.

One piano went through the roof, a bit separated from the student who was still seated on the stool, fingering nothing. A dancer at last made a few complete revolutions without her feet touching the ground because she was a quarter of a mile high, and her toes were even pointing skyward. An art student was flung through a wall, his brush poised, ready to make the master stroke as he floated horizontally towards a true oblivion. One instructor, who had taken refuge as often as possible in the toilets of The School of Arts, was blown up in proximity to some of the plumbing.

Then came Jane, flying through the air with a mallet in one hand, a chisel in the other, and her expression was rapt. Was she stunned. Still concentrating on her work, or even dead? Bob could not tell about Jane The flying particles subsided with a gentle, diminishing clatter, and a rise of grey dust. There were a few seconds of silence, during which Bob stood still. Then he turned and walked homeward. Other Schools of Art, he knew, would arise. Oddly, this thought crossed his mind before he realized that his wife was gone forever.