The White Elephant of Panschin

Malcolm at the show at the White Elephant

     Malcolm noted the sudden change in Neza Molony's manner when he told her his name although she concealed it well beneath a veneer of good manners. He thanked her and strode in through the open door into the atrium, wondering all the while over the expression he saw flash across her face.

     It wasn't disdain. He was familiar enough with that expression; he saw it all the time. It was .... Uneasiness? Fear? Certainly, the old woman was taken aback by his name.

     Then he looked up, stopped dead, and stared all around the atrium of the White Elephant, every thought of his hostess at the door shoved aside. The two-story entryway was sumptuous, the heart of the kind of mansion he had daydreamed of owning someday, with twin, curved staircases soaring gracefully to the second floor and the ceiling above that open to the dome, where the last of the afternoon sun poured down. The balustrades were gilded, the crown and floor moldings were deep and detailed, the parquet bamboo floors gleamed, and the ugliest art he had ever seen desecrated the rich cream walls.

     The painting in front of him was dreadful, smears of what looked like a wide variety of shit from a host of people – some of them with serious intestinal issues – slapped on the canvas. Malcolm tore his eyes away from the train-wreck in front of him to the other walls and the freestanding easels scattered about. Those paintings were all as bad. He had always believed he knew what fine art was. He had visited the Panschin Museum of Fine Art and nothing on their walls looked like this. This was art? No wonder the old lady was taking donations at the door. Nobody would pay for this kind of excrement. It wasn't even useful as fertilizer.

     Where were the landscapes? Vases of flowers? Cloudscapes? Portraits of famous people or beautiful women? Historic paintings showing the heroic founding of Mars or the building and settlement of Panschin? Religious paintings to instruct on morals and culture? Inspiring paintings showing the hoped-for devastation and destruction of Olde Earthe, those rapacious, bloodsucking bastards? He didn't expect to see paintings of kittens in baskets or big-eyed puppies; he was sophisticated enough to know they were suitable only as magazine illustrations for sentimental stories. But this! This was a waste of paint.

     Malcolm turned away, doing his best to hide his shock and revulsion, all the while knowing he was not succeeding. So, this was contemporary fine art. No wonder the city of Panschin needed to look for ambition and talent in the working classes; the upper classes had all gone soft in the head. He worked his way through the crowd of chattering onlookers towards the ballroom. He noticed the other visitors seemed more interested in swilling wine from a variety of stemmed glasses and talking about people who weren't present. They were ignoring the art uglifying the walls as if it didn't exist.

     An attractive young woman holding a tray of mismatched stemware stopped him. She was wearing a coverall that, while clean, looked like a coverall should. That is, the wear spots appeared to have been worn in through actual labor as opposed to being purely decorative nor did she load it up with ostentatious jewelry. She smiled brightly at him.

     "Glass of wine?"

     "Yes, thank you," Malcolm answered, and took a glass. The waitress didn't appear to magically know he was a tunnel rat turned scholarship boy and he felt himself relax. He took the chance to look more carefully at the glass in his hand. The beverage within was sparkling wine, and tasted fine. It was the glasses that were confusing. Was this the newest fad among the upper classes, to use what looked several dozen styles of wineglasses to show off how many patterns a household could afford? That didn't make sense but you never knew.

     He drifted into the ballroom, following the crowd in a quest to discover the real art that had to be hidden there, probably to contrast more strongly with the shocking images in the atrium. It was also a chance to listen discreetly to more conversations. He recognized no one and no one seemed to know or care who he was. His anonymity gave him the luxury to study the paintings without being bothered. He realized his error at once in thinking that the paintings in the ballroom would be more beautiful or understandable. They weren't. Only one, a painting tucked into a corner, had any color other than shades of dirt smeared upon it. It had streaks of light purple, a balm to the eye after mountains of tailings.