“All of which might not have mattered if the work had not been selected for judging. Inevitably the critics noticed them; they were — bad art, and they disfigured the final work. There was some doubt in their minds as to whether or not the creation was worth preserving. That is why I am here.”
He stopped, as if there were no more to say. Cynthia looked at him fearfully. “Are you…are you — ”
He smiled at her. “No, Cynthia, I am not the Creator of your world. You asked me my profession once.
“I am an art critic.”
Randall would like to have disbelieved. It was impossible for him to do so; the truth rang in his ears and would not be denied. Hoag continued, “I said to you that I would have to speak to you in terms you use. You must know that to judge a creation such as this, your world, is not like walking up to a painting and looking at it. This world is peopled with men; it must be looked at through the eyes of men. I am a man.”
Cynthia looked still more troubled. “I don’t understand. You act through the body of a man?”
“I am a man. Scattered around through the human race are the Critics — men. Each is the projection of a Critic, but each is a man — in every way a man, not knowing that he is also a Critic.”
Randall seized on the discrepancy as if his reason depended on it — which, perhaps, it did. “But you know — or say you do. It’s a contradiction.”
Hoag nodded, undisturbed. “Until today, when Cynthia’s questioning made it inconvenient to continue as I was — and for other reasons — this persona” — he tapped his chest — “had no idea of why he was here. He was a man, and no more. Even now, I have extended my present persona only as far as is necessary for my purpose. There are questions which I could not answer — as Jonathan Hoag.
“Jonathan Hoag came into being as a man, for the purpose of examining, savoring, certain of the artistic aspects of this world. In the course of that it became convenient to use him to smell out some of the activities of those discarded and painted-over creatures that call themselves the Sons of the Bird. You two happened to be drawn into the activity — innocent and unknowing, like the pigeons used by armies. But it so happened that I observed something else of artistic worth while in contact with you, which is why we are taking the trouble for these explanations.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let me speak first of the matters I observed as a critic. Your world has several pleasures. There is eating.” He reached out and pulled off from its bunch a muscat grape, fat and sugar-sweet, and ate it appreciatively. “An odd one, that. And very remarkable. No one ever before thought of making an art of the simple business of obtaining the necessary energy. Your Artist has very real talent.
“And there is sleeping. A strange reflexive business in which the Artist’s own creations are allowed to create more worlds of their own. You see now, don’t you,” he said, smiling, “why the critic must be a man in truth — else he could not dream as a man does?
“There is drinking — which mixes both eating and dreaming.
“There is the exquisite pleasure of conversing together, friend with friend, as we are doing. That is not new, but it goes to the credit of the Artist that He included it.
“And there is sex. Sex is ridiculous. As a critic I would have disregarded it entirely had not you, my friends, let me see something which had not come to the attention of Jonathan Hoag, something which, in my own artistic creations, I had never had the wit to invent. As I said, your Artist has talent.” He looked at them almost tenderly. “Tell me, Cynthia. what do you love in this world and what is it that you hate and fear?”
She made no attempt to answer him, but crept closer to her husband. Randall put a protecting arm around her. Hoag spoke then to Randall. “And you, Edward? Is there something in this world for which you’d surrender your life and your soul if need be? You need not answer — I saw in your face and in your heart, last night, as you bent over the bed. Good art, good art — both of you. I have found several sorts of good and original art in this world, enough to justify encouraging your Artist to try again. But there was so much that was bad, poorly drawn and amateurish, that I could not find it in me to approve the work as a whole until I encountered and savored this, the tragedy of human love.”