A Fading Dream
Artistic pretensions in one too old; the dream of a legacy fades.
The lone blossom tree blazed in the spring sun, a queen in pink standing gracefully in her courtyard. Around her was spread the bright green grass with its golden heads of dandelions. Further away were benches and tables lined around the inner walls of the courtyard, and beyond those walls were the offices of the Stockholm Tax Agency.
The Agency housed scores of tax agents ranking all the way from petty bureaucrat to middle manager, stored comfortably under fluorescent lights and kept well-sated with fika. The whole operation was steeped in Nordic bureaucratic efficiency and the gray concrete box of the office reflected that, being as practical as it was inoffensive. Only the courtyard stood out, where the dandelions grew as they pleased and the blossom tree posed audaciously for the sun.
It was noontime at the courtyard, and both petty bureaucrat and middle manager hurried to and fro across its sunlit space. Some were going to lunch, a few to squeeze in a bit of exercise. Only one sat quietly by himself in the busy space, diligently drawing in his small sketchbook.
He had chosen his spot very purposefully, for opposite to him the courtyard opened up to the street. At this time of day, the sun shone through that opening and straight into the courtyard, lighting the pink blossoms and casting crisp shadows from the trunk and branches. It gave the little man a wide range of hues and values to work with.
He was not a particularly tall fellow, middle-aged and balding, with the back pain and the pudginess that comes with two decades of office work. He was more petty bureaucrat than middle manager, but he knew his tax law well and had worked at the Agency for most of his adult life. That had earned him some acknowledgment, though little in the way of advancement. They said he lacked drive.
The truth was that he lacked focus. Where others sat with their eyes glued to their worksheets, the little man found that his eyes drifted to the window instead. There he could see the colors of the rising sun on a crisp winter morning. There were architectural flourishes on the buildings that lined the streets. There, too, he could see boxes and cylinders trailing away in three-point perspective.
These were the dreams that occupied the mind of the little man. They had done so for the past decade of his life.
***
He had just put down the final touches when the end of his lunch break drew near. A flat and stiff little tree had sprouted on his page, with squiggly leaves in pink and branches of black ink. It had a trunk filled with little short lines that tried to look like bark but looked more like fur, and it cast a thick blob of shadow from no obvious light source. Behind it was a background of squiggles that added nothing to the piece.
This was what the little man had drawn. When he compared his piece with the tree in front of him his heart sank. This was the third year in a row he had tried to draw the blossom trees and he still made the same mistakes he had made the first time. His figures were stiff, his proportions were off, his shadows made no sense and his textures were just plain wrong. His efforts, dreamt of in lieu of his career, were amateurish and mediocre.
The tree, on the other hand, seemed even more impudent than before. Its blossoms flowed down its branches like a cascade of pink. Its movements were supple and graceful, long branches gently caressing the wind. The sunlight sang from the highest leaves while the shadows whispered from the deepest boughs. It danced free in the spring heat, blissful and oblivious, wasting no care on the balding man and his feeble little doodles.
***
With dejected steps the little man returned to his desk in the gray concrete box. As he passed the fluorescent lights and the banal corporate furniture, doubts and memories came unbidden to him. Why did he torture himself like this, struggling alone in his empty apartment for the few hours of spare time he had, drawing boxes and fruit and junk? Why did it pain him so, this stupid little hobby?
All through his youth he had never cared for art, preferring instead the dry certainty of numbers and law. But as he grew older he began to feel a strange yearning. He had found what he yearned for in the museum, among landscape paintings and their sylvan woods, dramatic skies, violent seas and moonlit ruins. They spirited him away from his dry world of numbers and law. For years that had been enough.
But the yearning had come back a few years ago, and he felt that it was no longer enough to just look and dream. He wanted to make. Since he had begun making, he had felt the cruel weight of time more keenly than ever before.
His desk was on the upper floor, right by the window to the courtyard. The desk next to his belonged to a woman his age. Decorating it were pictures of children and the little drawings they had made. His own desk was empty of anything personal, not even a houseplant, and certainly no drawings.
Maybe that’s why I do it, he thought as he saw the smiling children. If I can make something beautiful, maybe they’ll put me in the museum too. Maybe I won’t be forgotten.
He sighed and looked at his failed creation. It was not beautiful and it would soon be forgotten. He threw it into the bin under his desk, careful to turn it face down so no one would see.
Outside the window he could see the blossom tree. A sudden wind rustled the flowers and took with it a veil of petals. They tumbled along with the gale and fell to rest on the grass.