“I’ve decided to go. That’s reason enough.”
Carpenter smiled pleasantly. “Go? Where could you go? Back to Earth?”
“No—but anywhere away from here.”
“You’ll find the other fifteen Families much the same,” the old man said. “Take my advice; stay here. We like you, Vilar. We don’t want to lose you so soon.”
Vilar was silent and motionless for a while. Then, without saying a word, he resumed packing.
Carpenter crossed the cabin quickly and put his hand on Vilar’s arm. The old man’s grip was surprisingly strong.
“Please,” he said urgently. “Don’t go.”
Vilar loosened the grip and stepped away. “I can’t stay here. I have to leave.”
“But why?”
“Because you’re driving me crazy!” Vilar shouted suddenly. It was the first time he had lost his temper in more than thirty years.
Quivering, he turned towards the older man. “You paint, you sing, you write, you compose. You do everything! And what of me? I’m a poet, nothing more. A mere poet. In this world that’s like being a man with only one arm—someone to be pitied.”
“But—”
“Let me finish,” Vilar said. “Let me pass this information along to you: you’re not artists, any one of you. You’re artists-manqué, would-be artists, not-quite artists.
“Art’s an ennobling thing—a gift, a talent. If everyone’s talented, no talent exists. When gold lines the street, it’s worth no more than dross. And so you people who are so proud of yourselves for many talents—why, you have none at all! Only skills.”
Carpenter seemed to ignore Vilar’s tirade. “Is that why you’re leaving?” he asked.
“I’m—I’m—” Vilar paused, confused. “I’m leaving because I want to leave. Because I’m a real artist, and I know I am. I don’t want to be polluted by the pretended art I see here. I have something real and wonderful, and I don’t want to lose it. And I will lose it here.”
“How wrong you are,” Carpenter said. “In just that last, I mean. You do have a gift—and we need it. We want you to stay. Will you?”
“But you said this morning that I couldn’t stay, not unless I brought something new to this place. And I haven’t. What good is one more poet in a town full of them? Even,” he added belligerently, “if that poet’s worth all the rest in one?”
“You misunderstand,” Carpenter said. “True, we need no more poets. But we need you. Vilar, we need an audience!”
Suddenly Emil Vilar understood. The joke was on him, after all. He had failed to see the real texture of life here, just as he had failed all these years to see his own role in human society. These people needed him, all right; what kind of army was it that had a thousand generals and no foot soldiers?
He started to laugh, slowly at first, then in violent upheaving gasps that brought tears to his eyes. After nearly a minute he grew silent again.
It was ideal, after all. So far as they were concerned, he had but a single talent: that of being an audience. Very well. They had no understanding of high art, and to them he was pitiful, useful only because of his limits. Good. Let them think that. Privately, he knew he was a poet, not an audience. But one had to pay a price in services rendered, in order to be a poet for one’s self alone.
“I see,” he said softly. “Very well, then. I’ll be your audience.”
He saw how the days to come would be. His value to them would be as a nonpainter, a noncomposer, an onlooker and critic. His private poetic endeavors would seem beneath contempt to them. Which was as he wanted it. The real artist was always alone, whether on Rigel Seven or in the midst of Earth’s most teeming city. The audience might find him, but he must not fret about finding the audience. On Earth he had found no audience at first, and that had been all right, really; only when he had acquired the wrong kind of audience, a falsely knowing one, had he decided it was time to flee. A mistake, for the solace he sought was not to be had anywhere. Now he had come to a place that would neither reject him as a person nor meddle in his art, and he saw the conclusion that had escaped him before. It was senseless to flee again. He would be misunderstood anywhere; he saw now that it had always been pointless to go on from place to place in quest of the true environment of art. That environment was a myth, unattainable, unreal. Or, rather, that environment was within him, wherever he was. The wise thing was to hold his ground, play some useful role in society, and privately practice his art.
Alone among these gifted but complicated people, he could work out his artistic destiny on this strange and familiar planet without fear of the watchers. The Carpenters, that closed family group, hungered for spectators, for the love and appreciation of outsiders who would admire them for their attainments. Vilar did not need that.
“By the way,” the old man said, smiling guiltily. “While you were in the park this morning, I took the liberty of borrowing this.” He reached inside his jacket and drew forth Vilar’s collected poems.
“Oh? What did you think of them?” Vilar asked.
The patriarch frowned, fidgeted, coughed. “Ah—”
“An honest opinion,” Vilar said. “As I gave this morning.”
“Well, to be frank—two of my sons looked at them with me. And none of us could see any meaning or value in the lot, Vilar. I don’t know where you got the idea you had any talent for poetry. You really don’t, you know.”
“I’ve often suspected that myself,” Vilar said happily. He took the book and fondled it with satisfaction. Already he was envisioning a second volume—a volume that would appear in an edition of one, for his eyes alone.