Actually, I’d never met the Director of Companies. My uncle Giotto, however, is one of his favorite artists, and he’d persuaded the Director to sign the letter, which, needless to say, Giotto had written himself.
“This letter wouldn’t do you much good in Ozar, of course,” my uncle had said to me as he handed it over. “Everybody here knows that wretched plutocrat hasn’t the faintest sense of art. But in Grotum it’ll stand you in good stead. Fawn all over Ozarine wealth, they do, the nobility of Grotum. A miserable, medieval place. But there’s no denying it’s the greatest source of the world’s art as well as most of its mischief.”
The truth of his words was attested to by Gerard’s very evident discomfort.
“Recommended by the Director of Companies himself! Um. A fine man. No—a great man! Been a mighty blessing to us here in poor and backward Goimr, he has. Um. No need to mention this recent unpleasantness to him, I should think?”
I nodded my head graciously, mentally rubbing my hands with glee. Get something over the bastards as soon as you can, my uncles had told me—artists and condottiere alike.
Gerard smiled feebly. Then he heaved a sigh.
“Unfortunately, sir, I’m afraid you’ve arrived at a bad time. Our blessed King has become unhinged—driven to insanity by the machinations of the villainous sorcerer Zulkeh. The realm is in an uproar. The King mad. The Heir Apparent a hopeless incompetent. All the heirs, indeed—well! No need to go into that here. But the point is, my good young man, that there’s simply no place at the moment in Goimr for a Royal Artist. Not likely to be for—for some time, I should think.”
I pleaded and remonstrated, but all to no avail. Truth to tell, now that Goimr was a reality rather than an illusion, I was none too sure myself that a promising young artist’s career would be much advanced by lingering in such a place.
I did, however, in the course of my ensuing discussion with the Chief Counselor, manage to achieve a modest victory in what my uncles call The Artist’s Quest.
I squeezed some money out of him.
Not much, I admit. But then, I found myself not disbelieving his claim that the treasury of Goimr was practically empty. But I got enough to enable me to survive, while I decided on my next course of action. I also obtained a brief letter with his signature which would, so he assured me, avoid any further complications with the police.
When I left the palace, it was sundown. My first task, clear enough, was to find lodgings for the night. I hired a small boat to transport me back across the river and began searching for a hotel.
Imagine, if you will, the tedium of looking for lodgings in Goimr. Even in the vicinity of the palace, the choices seem to vary from shabby to grim to hazardous. In the end, I settled on a run-down boardinghouse, whose proprietor seemed not quite as avaricious and slovenly as most I had encountered. Not saying much, that. Exhausted as I was by the day’s travails, I was up half the night confronting the most sullen and difficult batch of rodents it has ever been my displeasure to encounter.
The next morning—not much rested, I can tell you—I returned to the travel station and obtained my belongings from the locker. I then set out in search of other lodgings in a poorer part of town. My experiences of Goimr had so quickly lowered my threshold of fastidiousness that I was determined, at the least, to find lodgings which were not exorbitant in their price.
By early afternoon, I had wended my way into a truly disreputable part of the city. Truth to tell, I had long since forgotten about finding new lodgings. I had become absolutely fascinated by the baroque squalor which surrounded me. Ozar, of course, has its miserable tenements and ghettoes, like any great city. But nothing to compare to these slums!
The determination to capture this nonpareil wretchedness on canvas seized me. In part, this determination was prompted by my artist’s instinct. But, in the other part, it was prompted by my artist’s reason. For, as my uncle Giotto had told me many times, there are two subjects which—captured with paints—the rich will always pay through the nose to hang on the walls of their mansions: their own glorified features, and the misery of the poor. The misery of the poor, because it comforts them to ponder the tragedy of the human condition. Their own idealized portraits, because it comforts them to ponder their own worth in escaping that condition.