The joy of life that exuded from that fresh painting so gripped me that I remained staring at it before moving on to the discus thrower, the wrestler and the dancers who played their eternal games along the walls. Several torches were burning in the chamber and a sweet fragrance emanated from the high-legged censer to dispel the smell of damp stone and the metallic odor of the paints. After he had granted me sufficient time for looking about, the artist swore again in Greek, thinking perhaps that I understood nothing else.
“Tolerable, perhaps, stranger,” he remarked. “Worse pictures have been painted in tombs, eh? But at the moment I am struggling with a horse which will not assume the shape that I wish. My inspiration is fading, my jug is empty and the dust of the paints is smarting unpleasantly in my throat.”
I looked at him and saw he was not an old man but approximately my own age. I seemed to recognize his glowing face, oval eyes and swollen mouth.
He looked eagerly at the clay bottle which I carried in its straw sheath, joyously raised his square hand with its blunt fingers and exclaimed, “The gods sent you to me at precisely the right moment, stranger. Fufluns has spoken. Now it is your turn to speak. My name is Aruns in honor of the house of Velthuru which is my patron.”
I kissed my hand respectfully and said with a laugh, “Let my capacious clay bottle speak first. Undoubtedly Fufluns sent me to you, although we Greeks call him Dionysus.”
He took the bottle before I even had time to remove the cord around my neck, and tossed the stopper in the corner as though to indicate that I would no longer need it. With incomparable skill he sprayed the red wine into the right place without wasting a drop, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and sighed in relief.
“Sit, stranger,” he urged me. “You see, the Velthurus were angry at me this morning and accused me of delaying my work. How could nobles understand an artist’s problems? And so they had water thrown over me and had me lifted into a cart with only a jar of Vekunian spring water as provisions. They even said sarcastically that it should provide sufficient inspiration for painting a horse since it had inspired the nymph to recite an eternal incantation for Tarquinia.”
I seated myself on one of the stone benches and he sat beside me with a sigh and wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. From my knapsack I took a thin silver goblet which I carried with me to prove if necessary that I was not a humble man, filled it, splashed a drop onto the floor, drank from it and offered it to him.
He burst into laughter, spat on the floor and said, “Don’t trouble to pretend. A man is known by his face and eyes, not by his clothes or his sacrificial habits. The rich flavor of your wine speaks more for you than the silver goblet. I myself am such a close friend of Fufluns that I would consider the sacrifice of a single drop to him sheer waste.
“So you are a Greek,” he went on without inquiring my name. “We have Greeks in Tarquinia and in Caere they make fairly attractive vases. But it’s best for them not to attempt sacred paintings. Sometimes we compare our designs with such enthusiasm that we break empty dishes over each other’s heads.”
He gestured to the youth who brought a wide roll. Aruns opened it and stared at the well-drawn and colored dancers and wrestlers, musicians and horses. He pretended to show me the traditional designs for the paintings but his eyes and wrinkled forehead betrayed his preoccupation with his unfinished work.
“These are of course helpful,” he said absently, groping for the silver goblet and emptying it without even realizing it. “One knows the right colors without guessing and the apprentice can scratch the outlines of the traditional pictures in advance. But a pattern is helpful only so long as it does not fetter but frees and eases the play of one’s own imagination.”
He thrust the roll of pictures into my lap without even troubling to wind it, rose and stepped to the opposite wall with a metallic graver in his hand. He had under way a picture of a youth holding a race horse by the neck. Most of it was completed, with only the horse’s head and neck and the youth’s hands still missing. When I carefully stepped closer I noticed that their outlines had already been scratched in the soft rock. The master, however, was not pleased with them. Suddenly he began scratching a new outline. The horse’s head rose more expressively, its neck arched more muscularly, it lived. The work took only a moment, then in a frenzy Aruns applied the color to the horse’s head without even following precisely the outline he had just made but improving on the position even as he painted.
Tiring a little, he mixed a light brown paint and effortlessly painted the youth’s hands around the horse’s neck without even troubling to etch the outline. Finally he outlined the arms with black so that the muscles fairly bulged to the blue border of the short-sleeved shirt.
“Well,” he said wearily, “This will have to do for the Velthurus for today. How could an ordinary person understand that I was born, I grew, learned, drew, mixed paints, raged and spent an entire life merely for these few moments? You, stranger, saw that it lasted but a few moments and probably thought, ‘He is very skilled, that Aruns.’ But it is not skill. There are enough and even too many with skill. My horse is eternal and no one has ever painted one precisely like it. Therein lies the difference which the Velthurus don’t understand. It is not merely color and skill but suffering and ecstasy almost to the verge of death that enables me to reveal life’s game and caprice in all its beauty.”
The youth said consolingly, “The Velthurus understand that. There is only one Aruns the painter. Nor are they angry at you. They are only thinking of what is best for you.”
But Aruns was not so easily appeased. “In the name of the veiled gods, take away this dreadful burden! I must swallow an ocean of gall before I can squeeze a drop of joy from it and for a few fleeting moments be content with my work.”
Hastily I filled the silver goblet and extended it to him. He began to laugh. “You are right. A few vatfuls of wine have of course gone down with the gall. But how else could I free myself? My work is not so easy as people believe. This sober youth will understand it when he has reached my age if he develops as I expect.”
He placed his hand on the youth’s shoulder. I suggested that we return to the city and eat together, but Aruns shook his head.
“No, I must remain here until sunset. Sometimes I remain even longer, for here in the bowels of the mountain there is neither night nor day. I have much to think about, stranger.”
He indicated the blank rear wall and I saw how the pictures alternately leaped alive and faded to a mist before his eyes. Forgetting my presence he mumbled to himself, “After all, I was at Volsinii when the new nail was struck into the pillar of the temple. The Lucumones permitted me to see that which an ordinary man does not see until the curtains fall. They believed in me and I must not betray their confidence.”
Once more he remembered me and my silver goblet. “Forgive me, stranger. Your face is still smooth although you are probably my age. I myself can see this swollen mouth, these tired eyes, the wrinkles on my forehead and the lines of discontent at the corners of my mouth. But I am discontented only with myself. Everything else goes well. I am gnawing at myself only to create that which has never before been created. May the gods be with me and with you also, stranger, for you brought me good luck and I was able to solve the problem of the horse to my own satisfaction.”