Read Spirit of Progress for Free Online Page B

family album or the type of woman he has read about in historical accounts: like Eliza Fraser and other similar women, photographs of whom can only ever be found in history books or in blurred or faded shots of life as it once was. But this old woman, who lives in a tent only eight or nine miles from where he is (a small studio in a dark lane, like all the lanes of the city), was photographed that very day. While he was painting that morning, this old woman was telling the photographer and the journalist to get off her property. And she would, at this very moment, while he is sitting at a small kitchen table reading the paper, be inside the tent pictured in the photograph. She is, he reasons, both History and alive, myth and fact. A gift. Not a two-dimensional image. But solid. Inhabiting the same world that he does, but calling from another time.
    Outside, the light has thickened and soon it will be dark. His studio, an old cottage, is left over from the gold rush days. It is small but all he needs. And, for the moment, he is happy enough to live alone. Besides, like all the others, he is biding his time before he can leave and enter the great world and be rid of this cooped-up, stifling city. Biding his time, and better off alone. For ayear ago this winter, the same cold time of year it is now, he fell in love with a married woman named Tess (Teresa, Tessa, even La Contessa to some when the mood takes them as it often does in this moody town). And the married woman (who runs a gallery, not far from where he is and where she now sits) fell in love with him. They were happy and they were sad: her guilt making her sad in the midst of their happiness, and her sadness as much his as her happiness. She, from a rich family and at ease in rich circles, was everything he wasn’t. Sky-blue eyes to his earth-brown. A perfect match that never fitted. They were content and they were continually restless. They were going to live forever, two hearts on a wall, and they never had a chance. And when he proposed that they run away together, she let his hand go and shook her head. She was married, she had a family (a young daughter) and she could never run away from all that because it would always follow her, haunt her, and they would become an unhappy haunted couple. No, she said, he wanted the impossible. Better to stay as they were. And, in saying this, she also acknowledged that she too wanted the impossible, albeit, a different kind: the impossibility of things staying the same. In the end they were faced with two choices: the impossible and the impossible. And that was that. End of story. But, of course, that is never that. And stories never end neatly. Especially in such a small, crammed city where you are always bumping into your past. Which is, Sam muses, another reason for leaving. For all of them, all the painters and writers andartists in this pressure cooker of a city, will leave the place, as soon as they can. As soon as the first boats are available. They will all be off. And a good thing too.
    He rolls a cigarette and looks at the photograph in the newspaper. He has little time left to produce a painting for an exhibition that opens in two days. He has promised this woman, with whom he was both the happiest and saddest he has ever been, a painting. He was not so much asked as implored. The exhibition will not, she said, be complete without him. For Sam is an artist of great expectations. Everybody says so. Sam will, they say, be a success. If not famous. And it’s not just because Sam has talent. They’ve all got talent, these painters, more or less. No, for a young man, Sam has unusual dedication. He doesn’t just talk about paintings, he does them. Lots of them. And quickly. And they’re all good. This is the bit extra that Sam has. It’s called discipline. That, and something else. Something you can’t put your finger on. For Sam has what the others can only call a look about him. An air. One of those who look famous