Tristan Foster is a writer from Sydney, Australia. His work has been published in print and online, and he contributes regularly to http://leadigloo.com. Oh, and he says he isn't writing a novel, but he is.

The Sculptor (January 20, 2010. Issue 13.)

“It’s amazing,” Bertha says, contradicting the expression on her face.

The feeling of failure begins to thicken my blood and constrict the beating of my heart. I rub my palm into my eye, trying to smother my exasperation. I don’t want to have to justify it, I shouldn’t have to, I think, as I kick the dusty studio floor.

“I’m not finished yet,” I lie in return.

“Is that so? Oh, OK,” she says, not even giving me time to regret my blatant cowardice. But her relief, too, is insincere. She knows what my words mean. She’s said them to me about her own work at times when it was clearly untrue. We have discussed not saying them.

“But it’s not far from completion. Why? What’s wrong with it?”

“No, it’s good. It is. I pictured it being different. That’s all.” She wants to say more but she restrains herself. She isn’t even looking at me when she speaks.

“I mean,” she continues, then pauses, as though really studying it, “it’s similar to the last one.”

Now I realise: she doesn’t understand. I can’t look at it, or her, anymore. I pretend to tidy up my work bench but all I do is turn the tools out of alignment, one by one, then straighten them back up again. If she touches it, feels it under the grain of her fingertips, she might know what I am trying to do.

“You can touch it,” I say.

“No,” Bertha looks at me and spreads her palm over her heart. “You spent so much time on it. I just couldn’t.”

She is an artist too. She knows what she can and cannot touch.

“Just touch it, Bertha, for Christ’s sake,” I say. My irritation has been betrayed. “Feel it. It’s alright,” I add with artificial calm.

“No, Adam, I’m not going to touch it. It’s taken you almost a year!”

“If you look at it properly you’ll understand why it took me that long. It’s alright, touch it!”

Arms folded, Bertha turns her back to my sculpture, her eyes wide and not leaving mine.

“No,” she says.

Then she goes, leaving me in solitude to wonder if failure equals time lost.

The light shines on my sculpture while I sit in the shadows of my studio, staring at it, willing it to flawlessness until I develop a headache. I can do nothing but envisage it smashed to dust. After last time, I tried so hard, so hard, to do better, to make it, to make something, perfect. It did not take me an entire year for nothing.

I think of Bertha’s reaction. I struggle to believe it.

I escape from my studio and all it contains, into the night. A biting breeze cuts through the darkness, soothing the pain in my head. I have a peculiar dislike of my studio anyway. Working in a studio is such an artificial way to be artistic. I should have shown the sculpture to her somewhere else, I think, on neutral ground, where she could have been honest and not pretend she was reluctant to hurt me.

**

Martin has been one of the first to see my work in all of my twelve years a sculptor, but this time I am showing him with reluctance. Whether they are required to reinforce the first, or to contradict it, second opinions are sought for comfort. I need comforting and had therefore already failed.

“So?” I ask.

He thinks for a moment, then licks his lips and says, “It’s quite good. It’s unique.” He takes an exaggerated step to its side, frowns and bounces his head from side to side, weighing something up. Then he adds, “As unique as your last one was.”

“My last one,” I mutter and walk away. “This is different to my last one.”

“How exactly?”

He looks at me, one eyebrow raised, and I wonder if he is mocking me. He is not, actually, but I wish he was. It would be easier to deal with.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing really. But you’ve been working on it for, what, 12 months? Frankly, I was expecting more. Due, in part, to our conversations.”

The blame is mine, then.

“Martin, come on now,” I plead over my shoulder. “I’m finding all this a bit hard to take. Are you being serious?”

I was sure this was going to be something, I want to add.

He half-nods, as though hearing my thoughts and sympathising. Then he pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose and motions toward my sculpture.

“May I?”

I gesture my approval. This is verging on madness.

“Adam, it is good,” he says, done inspecting it. “Honest. It’s just very different from your previous work. The style you’d developed, your techniques, the scale, the material – it was all working well for you. Very well. There was no need to change it all, not so drastically.”

He stops, wanting me to respond. I have nothing to say.

“This is not your best work,” he continues. “And I’m sorry – if you’re still of the belief that it is a masterpiece I suggest, for your own sake, that you convince yourself otherwise. And quickly.”

He lifts up his palm, as though about to give me something.

“I’m sorry,” he says, this time really apologising.

When he is gone, I wonder if my approach has been too insular. Martin knows what he is talking about, and that is the most worrying thing.

**

I have given the project much thought, giving the most consideration to discarding the idea entirely. Sleeping is difficult. I cannot understand the reactions of my friends, or whatever they are, and they can’t comprehend mine. The only thing I find consolation in is reminding myself that their art is and never has been better than mediocre; her art is so determined, desperate even, to say something and be heard. His art is too inorganic. His work says it is made by man like an advertisement, like a lawnmower is made by man. Their art is shit, I tell myself.

But I have reached a decision: I will start again and this time it will be perfect.

I will start from the beginning.

At my studio I drop all my sketches, all my photos, all my notes and measurements of the previous sculptures into the bin and set them on fire. I watch, and feel in the fire’s warmth on my face, two years of work turn to swirling grey ash. Then I drive through the windy night to the water. I throw my sculpture into the thrashing waves and imagine it sinking to the invisible depths, where it belongs. Almost.

Driving home I feel both liberated as well as caged. At once, I have freed myself and erected the walls of a new prison, where I will spend another year of life. How can I do this to myself, for now the third time? The human mind is wonderful at denying reality, greedily refusing it like a bitter, jilted lover.

**

“Before I show you my work, I’d like to say a few words.”

Martin and Bertha brought some friends, so there are five of us in my studio for what is becoming an annual gathering. Further fortifying the ritual is the darkness of the room, but that is due to the heavy rain clouds outside.

I begin: “This is my third attempt at... well, at perfection, what in my mind is perfection. In my 13 years as a sculptor I’ve made a lot which has failed to meet my somewhat lofty expectations. Perhaps my sculptures were of high artistic merit, perhaps not, but to me, their creator, I still felt my best was yet to come. Then, as though from above, an idea was given to me, an idea for a sculpture that would be perfect.”

I smile at their faces, trying not to read them, nervous. I want to make an Immaculate Conception analogy but can’t think of how to word it and I want to stay away from gods and godliness. I have always spoken better with my hands.

“It’s my belief that anyone who takes their art seriously has the desire and operates with the intention of making something lasting; something which will define them. Making something lasting – I don’t think any earthly notion, upon being fulfilled, satisfies more.”

I pinch the velvet sheet that hides my work.

“Tonight, I present to you what I hope will define me.”

Yielding to my tug, the sheet slinks off my sculpture.

At first I think it is the swish of rain outside, the gurgle of water in an overflowing drain. Then I realise what I am hearing is a low chuckle. Martin is laughing. I immediately regret such a melodramatic introduction and feel my face prickle to a blush as I glare at him. Soon, the room is silent again.

“What is this?” he demands, as though I offended him personally. “It’s a prank isn’t it? Where is the real sculpture?”
“Adam? What’s going on?” Bertha says. The other two look at each other and frown.

Three years is over one thousand days. Why, why would I waste more than one thousand days and nights on a joke? I don’t know whether to be furious or mortified or to join them in laughing.

“What’s going on?” I spit. “I have no idea! I don’t know what game you idiots are playing. It’s quite obvious you people no longer have any notion of what art is and I’m wasting my time showing this to you. You’d all rather laugh and have your little jokes while I create history!”
This group of artists, artists manqué, have betrayed me.

“This cannot be the sculpture you’ve spent the year on. It’s no better than a maquette,” Martin exclaims.

Rising out of my fury are wonderings of where the idea for this sculpture came from. It has been so long I can’t remember. Maybe it came to me in a dream envisioned during a feverish sleep. It actually feels like I saw this sculpture elsewhere, not only on a podium in my imagination, but in a room, alone, surrounded by white walls. For reasons unknown to me, I am sure this is my masterpiece, I can feel it, and I am determined to prove it. I’m not so delusional to think this is perfection, yet be the furthest I have ever been from it. Why would I waste all this time?

When the others leave, Martin stays.

“So it’s really that bad,” I say. We are in virtual darkness. I don’t want the light on.

“Adam, it isn’t bad and it isn’t good. It’s nothing, and we’re talking three years of nothing. I just don’t know what you’re thinking.” The street light outside reflects off his glasses when he looks in my direction, two rectangular stars in a universe of black. “Is this your ivory maiden?”

“I’m not obsessed, no more than with everything else I’ve ever made,” I reply, not necessarily telling the truth. “The idea for this, however, is somewhat more prominent in my mind. It’s almost tangible.”

“But why this? What does it represent?”

Do I have to explain myself? Again? I shake my head.

“If I can equal nature, if I can create artificially what happens by chance over eons, then my job as an artisan, the job of every artist, every person, and the job of nature, is done.”

Though I cannot see him, I know, etched onto his face, is a look of puzzlement and I want to tell him not to worry about it, to go home.

He confirms his misunderstanding by saying, “That’s what this is?”

“Yes and no. It’s what it has become.”

“You’re aware that in the time you’ve spent making these tiny sea shells you could have made close to ten other sculptures without once trying to split the fabric of the universe?”

“Please don’t poke fun.”

Just speaking is beginning to irritate me.

“Well, if you’re going to do this,” Martin says, “we may as well do it properly. I will help you.”

**

I decide I need a trip to the beach.

The day is cool and overcast, the air thick with the water’s smells. A pair of children play on the water’s edge, watched over by their mother. Only the odd swimmer and a school of surfers, sitting on their boards at the headland, punctuate the sea. I polish the sculpture on my thigh like it is an apple. I think the idea just came to me, whole and complete, as I was walking along the beach. I seem to recall it forming as the cool water enveloped my numb feet. It was delivered to me, without a need for alteration, conceptually absolute. It is only me, my humanness, which fails the instructions. How accurate the memory is I don’t know. It would have happened almost three years ago from this day if it true.

I am about to lob the sculpture high into the muddy sky like the sculpture before it, as far out into the water as my arm can throw, then I have an idea. The spade-wielding children are playing up ahead, flinging sloppy sand over their heads and digging a crater into the beach, giggling each time a wave reaches over to them and destroys their work. As I pass them I drop my sculpture into the wet sand, just when a wave sweeps the shore. I walk up to where the sand is dry and sit down.

My sculpture spins in the shallow swell, rolling as the sea throws net after net over it, trying to claim it. Then, one of the children spots it. He watches it emerge from the surf, then hops up and grabs it. He holds it up, peering at it like he is a travelled conchologist.

“Mum!” he shouts. “I found a shell.”

His mother is seated on a towel not far from me and reading a novel. He runs over to her, puts it in her hand and they study it together. The wind tugs at her voice, so I do not hear what is said, but I see her put it to her ear.

I am overjoyed.

She shrugs and nods at her son, placing my sculpture of a shell on the towel. The child runs back to his sister and his mother continues reading.

I now know what I have to do.

**

I considered the advice Martin had to give me but it was what I saw at the beach that I kept in mind as I once again took leave from the world. It is hard to know what it is anymore. When something is pondered on for so long, with such intensity, it begins to blur and melt. I suppose I should have left it. For a while. I should have focused my energies elsewhere and come back to it now and then, just so it couldn’t transform into the forgotten. But it’s okay because I’m done now. I have done what I set out to do four long years ago.

I love it and I hate it. I suppose that is the relationship you will inevitably have with your magnum opus. It defines you, it is you, you created it, almost by magic. So you love it. But you hate it because you cannot break free from it, ever. It follows you and nothing you do will better it. You will always be compared to it, as though you and it are separate, as though you are now a lesser being, as though it removed your humanness. But, in a way, that is what I want – what every artist wants.

Of course, one thing repudiates all that. All that only happens if you show it to someone. A masterpiece is not a masterpiece if it is a masterpiece only in your mind.

Again, I invite Martin and Bertha, that motley collective, to my studio. Last time I was nervous, just slightly, but anxiety’s tickle was indeed there. This time, however, I am not. This time there will be no speech, no performance, no explanation. I know what I have done.

They arrive on time. I open the door and smile, weary yet triumphant.

“Here it is,” I say, nodding in its direction. I almost add an invitation to touch it, to put it to their ears and listen to the sound of crashing waves emanating from its hollow, but I don’t. It is perfect and I do not need to say a word about it.

“Adam...” Martin exclaims. “My God.”

I chuckle to myself.

“What have you done?” he says, picking the shell up. He inspects it, even puts it to his ear, then passes it to Bertha. She barely wants to touch it.

“What about all we spoke about, all that we planned?”

“Unnecessary.”

“But this is the same sculpture,” he says. “Again.”

He puts his hand to his head and squeezes his temples. Bertha keeps her face down, hiding her expression out of the light.

Once perfection is reached, where do you go, I wonder?