V-10: The Aesthete's Return

Act I

Sebastian Ashworth arrived at Waterloo Station on a Tuesday in October with a single leather trunk and a mind full of things that had no name in English. Fourteen years in India had done something to him. It had given him a taste for things the merchants of London could not comprehend. He had learned to see color the way a man learns to hear music. He had discovered that beauty was not a luxury but a necessity. And he had returned to a city that measured everything by its price.

His townhouse in Bloomsbury had been empty for six months. His father, Arthur Ashworth, had died in the spring, and Sebastian had been away on a journey through Rajasthan that had delayed his return by three months. He stood in the station with his trunk and he looked at the people who surrounded him. They were men in dark coats and women in dark dresses and they all carried their lives in valises and bundles and they all looked as though they were going to work.

He hired a carriage and he drove to Bloomsbury. The house was exactly as he had left it, which was to say exactly as he had not remembered it. The walls were a pale gray that had been painted in 1874 and not refreshed since. The windows were narrow and they let in as much light as a man might tolerate in a hospital. The rooms were empty. Sebastian stood in the front parlor and he imagined what it could become.

He began immediately. He ordered curtains of deep indigo from a dealer on King Street. He commissioned a set of Persian rugs from an agent in Bombay. He filled the house with objects he had brought back himself: a bronze statue of a dancer from Khajuraho, a set of ivory screens from Jaipur, a collection of miniature paintings from the Mughal court. He arranged them with the precision of a man who had spent fourteen years learning how to see.

The neighbors called to inquire. This was London. A man who lived alone and spent his days ordering furnishings was a man who required explanation. The first caller was Mrs. Pembroke, who lived across the hall and who had known Sebastian since he was a boy. She was a woman of sixty with a face like pressed paper and a voice that carried the weight of thirty years of unremarkable conversation.

You have changed, Sebastian, she said, standing in the indigo curtains and looking at the bronze dancer with visible discomfort.

Have I? Sebastian said. I hope for the better.

It is different, she said. Very different.

Different was not a criticism in Sebastian's mouth. Different was the only thing worth pursuing. He invited her to stay for tea. She declined. She had other calls to make. In Bloomsbury, a man's house was not his own. It was a public document.

Act II

Sebastian began to host gatherings on Friday evenings. He invited men and women he had met through letters and acquaintances that had accumulated over fourteen years. Some of them were artists. Some were writers. Some were people whose occupation he could not identify but whose presence added something to a room that he could not name but could immediately feel.

The first Friday was small. Six people came. They stood in the front parlor and they looked at the things Sebastian had collected and they spoke in careful, measured tones. He served tea in porcelain cups that had been painted in Delhi and eaten chocolate from a box he had brought back from Lahore.

You have done something remarkable here, said a man named Harrington, who wrote for a quarterly review and wore his hair long in the manner of men who wanted to be taken seriously.

It is not remarkable, Sebastian said. It is necessary.

Necessary? Harrington looked around the room as if searching for evidence of the necessity.

A room should be a thing of beauty, Sebastian said. It should be a place where the mind can rest. These things are not decorations. They are arguments.

What arguments?

That the world contains more than profit. That a man might live among beauty and not feel guilty about it. That there is value in looking at something simply because it is beautiful.

Harrington smiled in the way a man smiles at a child who has declared that the moon is made of cheese. He smiled and he did not disagree.

The Friday gatherings grew. By December, twelve people came regularly. By February, there was a list. People wrote to Sebastian asking if they might attend. He said yes to most of them. He liked the sound of a room full of voices discussing things that mattered. They spoke of art and philosophy and the nature of pleasure. They spoke of India and of the East and of the possibility that wisdom might be found in places that the British Empire had designated as colonies.

But the guests began to change. The artists and writers who had come in October were replaced by a different type. These were people who had heard of Sebastian's house and wanted to see it. They came to admire the objects. They did not come to discuss them. They asked the price of things. They asked where Sebastian had acquired them. They asked if they might purchase something for their own homes.

Sebastian noticed this change and he did not know how to address it. He began to feel the weight of his own house as a man might feel the weight of a body he has been carrying for a long time. The room that had been an argument became a display. The gathering that had been a conversation became an exhibition.

Act III

By the following spring, Sebastian had stopped inviting people. He continued to host on Friday evenings because the habit was established and because declining an invitation felt like a form of rudeness that he had not yet learned how to perform. But he found himself watching his guests with a growing sense of detachment.

They came and they walked through the rooms and they touched the surfaces of things with hands that did not understand what they were touching. They spoke of the objects as a man speaks of livestock. They assessed their value. They speculated on their cost. They compared them to similar objects they had seen in shop windows.

Sebastian stood in the corner of the room and he listened to them and he thought of India. He thought of the quiet mornings in Varanasi when the river was gray and the bells were ringing and the air smelled of incense and the world was full of a beauty that had no price because it had no owner. He thought of the temple in Madurai that had existed for a thousand years and would exist for a thousand more, and that no man could claim to have built or to have owned.

One Friday in May, a man named Lord Blackwood came to the house. Blackwood was a nobleman who had money and a taste for things that were rare. He walked through Sebastian's rooms with the slow, deliberate pace of a man who believed he was appraising property.

This is impressive, Ashworth, he said. Truly impressive. Where did you acquire the bronze dancer?

From a dealer in Agra, Sebastian said.

How much?

Sebastian looked at him. The question was not asked with malice. It was asked the way a man asks for the time. It was a question that assumed the answer had a number.

I do not remember, Sebastian said.

Blackwood smiled. Of course not. But you must have paid something for it. Everything costs something.

Everything has a price, Sebastian said. That is not the same as everything having value.

Blackwood laughed. He laughed in the way a man laughs when he believes he is being clever. He moved to the next room and he picked up a miniature painting and he examined it with the eye of a man examining a cut of meat.

What are you doing here, Ashworth? he asked suddenly. The words came out of nowhere and they landed in the room like a stone dropped into water.

I am living, Sebastian said.

You are collecting. There is a difference. You are a collector. And collectors are men who fill spaces with things because they have nothing to put in the spaces themselves.

Sebastian felt something move inside him. It was not anger. It was something colder and more precise. It was the feeling of a door closing.

You are mistaken, he said.

Am I? Blackwood set the painting down. You have turned your house into a museum of things that most of your guests cannot understand. You host these Friday gatherings and you watch your guests admire your property and you feel superior to them because they ask about prices and you do not. But you are not superior, Ashworth. You are simply a man who has surrounded himself with beautiful objects and convinced yourself that the objects are the point.

He left. Sebastian stood in the room for a long time. The other guests continued to talk. They were discussing a painting in the next room. They were debating its quality. They were using words like composition and technique and market value.

Sebastian walked to the window and he looked out at the street. A woman was pushing a cart. A man was walking a dog. The ordinary life of London was moving past his window and he could not see it. He had spent fourteen years learning how to look at the world and he had returned to a house that had become a wall between him and everything he had ever known.

Act IV

It is the following autumn and Sebastian sits alone in the front parlor on a Friday evening. The room is exactly as it was in October. The indigo curtains hang exactly as they hung. The bronze dancer stands in exactly the same corner. The Persian rug covers exactly the same floor.

The guests will not come tonight. He sent the invitations. He wrote to each of them individually and he asked if they might join him for tea. Three responded. He is waiting for them. They are late. They may not come at all.

Sebastian pours himself a cup of tea and he holds it in his hands and he looks at the porcelain. It was painted in Delhi by a man whose name he does not know. The man painted the flowers because he loved flowers. He did not paint them because they had value. He painted them because they were beautiful and that was enough.

Sebastian understands this now. He understands it with a clarity that is almost painful. His house is a museum. His Friday gatherings are exhibitions. His fourteen years in India were not a education but an escape. He had left London because he did not know how to live in it and he has returned because he does not know how to leave it.

Beauty has become his prison. The things he collected to liberate himself have become the bars of a cell that he built with his own hands.

The doorbell rings. Sebastian sets down his cup and he walks to the front door and he opens it. No one is there. The street is empty. The woman with the cart is gone. The man with the dog is gone. The city has moved on.

Sebastian closes the door and he walks back through the rooms. He passes the bronze dancer and the ivory screens and the miniature paintings. He passes the objects that were arguments and have become displays. He stops in the front parlor and he looks at the indigo curtains and he sees them for the first time not as a statement but as a curtain. A curtain that separates a room from the street. A curtain that separates a man from the world.

He sits in his chair and he waits. It is Friday evening. He is alone. He has always been alone. He had just not known it.

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