Chapter I

Halvorsen waited in the Chancery office while Monsignor Reedy disposed of three persons who had preceded him. He was a little dizzy with hunger and noticed only vaguely that the prelate’s secretary was beckoning to him. He started to his feet when the secretary pointedly opened the door to Monsignor Reedy’s inner office and stood waiting beside it.

The artist crossed the floor, forgetting that he had leaned his portfolio against his chair, remembered at the door and went back for it, flushing. The secretary looked patient.

“Thanks,” Halvorsen murmured to him as the door closed.

There was something wrong with the prelate’s manner.

“I’ve brought the designs for the Stations, Padre,” he said, opening the portfolio on the desk.

“Bad news, Roald,” said the monsignor. “I know how you’ve been looking forward to the commission--”

“Somebody else get it?” asked the artist faintly, leaning against the desk. “I thought his eminence definitely decided I had the--”

“It’s not that,” said the monsignor. “But the Sacred Congregation of Rites this week made a pronouncement on images of devotion. Stereopantograph is to be licit within a diocese at the discretion of the bishop. And his eminence--”

“S.P.G.--slimy imitations,” protested Halvorsen. “Real as a plastic eye. No texture. No guts. You know that, Padre!” he said accusingly.

“I’m sorry, Roald,” said the monsignor. “Your work is better than we’ll get from a stereopantograph--to my eyes, at least. But there are other considerations.”

“Money!” spat the artist.

“Yes, money,” the prelate admitted. “His eminence wants to see the St. Xavier U. building program through before he dies. Is that a mortal sin? And there are our schools, our charities, our Venus mission. S.P.G. will mean a considerable saving on procurement and maintenance of devotional images. Even if I could, I would not disagree with his eminence on adopting it as a matter of diocesan policy.”

The prelate’s eyes fell on the detailed drawings of the Stations of the Cross and lingered.

“Your St. Veronica,” he said abstractedly. “Very fine. It suggests one of Caravaggio’s care-worn saints to me. I would have liked to see her in the bronze.”

“So would I,” said Halvorsen hoarsely. “Keep the drawings, Padre.” He started for the door.

“But I can’t--”

“That’s all right.”

The artist walked past the secretary blindly and out of the Chancery into Fifth Avenue’s spring sunlight. He hoped Monsignor Reedy was enjoying the drawings and was ashamed of himself and sorry for Halvorsen. And he was glad he didn’t have to carry the heavy portfolio any more. Everything seemed so heavy lately--chisels, hammer, wooden palette. Maybe the padre would send him something and pretend it was for expenses or an advance, as he had in the past.

Halvorsen’s feet carried him up the Avenue. No, there wouldn’t be any advances any more. The last steady trickle of income had just been dried up, by an announcement in Osservatore Romano. Religious conservatism had carried the church as far as it would go in its ancient role of art patron.

When all Europe was writing on the wonderful new vellum, the church stuck to good old papyrus. When all Europe was writing on the wonderful new paper, the church stuck to good old vellum. When all architects and municipal monument committees and portrait bust clients were patronizing the stereopantograph, the church stuck to good old expensive sculpture. But not any more.

He was passing an S.P.G. salon now, where one of his Tuesday night pupils worked: one of the few men in the classes. Mostly they consisted of lazy, moody, irritable girls. Halvorsen, surprised at himself, entered the salon, walking between asthenic semi-nude stereos executed in transparent plastic that made the skin of his neck and shoulders prickle with gooseflesh.

Slime! he thought. How can they--

“May I help--oh, hello, Roald. What brings you here?”

He knew suddenly what had brought him there. “Could you make a little advance on next month’s tuition, Lewis? I’m strapped.” He took a nervous look around the chamber of horrors, avoiding the man’s condescending face.

“I guess so, Roald. Would ten dollars be any help? That’ll carry us through to the 25th, right?”

“Fine, right, sure,” he said, while he was being unwillingly towed around the place.

“I know you don’t think much of S.P.G., but it’s quiet now, so this is a good chance to see how we work. I don’t say it’s Art with a capital A, but you’ve got to admit it’s an art, something people like at a price they can afford to pay. Here’s where we sit them. Then you run out the feelers to the reference points on the face. You know what they are?”

He heard himself say dryly: “I know what they are. The Egyptian sculptors used them when they carved statues of the pharaohs.”

“Yes? I never knew that. There’s nothing new under the Sun, is there? But this is the heart of the S.P.G.” The youngster proudly swung open the door of an electronic device in the wall of the portrait booth. Tubes winked sullenly at Halvorsen.

“The esthetikon?” he asked indifferently. He did not feel indifferent, but it would be absurd to show anger, no matter how much he felt it, against a mindless aggregation of circuits that could calculate layouts, criticize and correct pictures for a desired effect--and that had put the artist of design out of a job.

“Yes. The lenses take sixteen profiles, you know, and we set the esthetikon for whatever we want--cute, rugged, sexy, spiritual, brainy, or a combination. It fairs curves from profile to profile to give us just what we want, distorts the profiles themselves within limits if it has to, and there’s your portrait stored in the memory tank waiting to be taped. You set your ratio for any enlargement or reduction you want and play it back. I wish we were reproducing today; it’s fascinating to watch. You just pour in your cold-set plastic, the nozzles ooze out a core and start crawling over to scan--a drop here, a worm there, and it begins to take shape.

“We mostly do portrait busts here, the Avenue trade, but Wilgus, the foreman, used to work in a monument shop in Brooklyn. He did that heroic-size war memorial on the East River Drive--hired Garda Bouchette, the TV girl, for the central figure. And what a figure! He told me he set the esthetikon plates for three-quarter sexy, one-quarter spiritual. Here’s something interesting--standing figurine of Orin Ryerson, the banker. He ordered twelve. Figurines are coming in. The girls like them because they can show their shapes. You’d be surprised at some of the poses they want to try--”