27. Fellow artists

For the next few weeks while I was up in the plantations I puzzled over the model tractor we had found. I showed it to a few of my friends but no-one was able to think of any plausible explanation of what it was. It is a pity that I didn’t think to show it to Bahla. He was the one person who might, perhaps, have been able to shed some light on it at that time. Instead, I decided to take it down to the hangar when I returned home to the Village to ask the Guardians there if they could offer an explanation. The Sergeant on duty was an old friend of my father’s. He greeted me warmly and offered me a drink of fruit juice.

“Have you been to see your dad?” He asked. “He misses you now that he is on his own. Spends far too much time down here when you are up in the hills.”
“I’m going up to see him this afternoon.” I answered quickly. “I only arrived back last night and I had to get some food in. It’s six weeks since I slept in my own bed and the whole place needs cleaning.”
“So what brings you in here instead of doing all that important stuff?”
I took out the pouch and showed him the little model.
“Where did you get that?” he asked.

When I had told him the story he shook his head. “Beats me. But the carving is beautifully executed. Look how he finely he has done the exhaust and the air intake. You wouldn’t think you could carve such thin rods out of that brittle wood. It really is a work of art. I think that Rega would find that fascinating.”

“Who is Rega?” I asked. “I don’t know him.”
“Not him; her. She is the artist who works with us in the hangar.”
“I didn’t know that the Guardians included an artist.”
“She has only started working here lately.” He replied. “Before that she used to help out from time to time. Let me call her over.”
He went into the next room and returned with a youngish woman, shorter than the average and light skinned with a round face, she looked at me carefully.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Rega. I believe that you have a mysterious artefact.”
I handed the model to her and she took it over to the window and examined it carefully.
“Yes, very well done.” She commented. “I wish I could get as good a likeness in my own pictures. Then we’d have no difficulty finding them.”
“What pictures do you do?” I asked.
“Missing persons, wanted criminals.” She answered. “Drawings that the Guardians can show to witnesses, that sort of thing.”

“Was it you that drew the pictures of Iliva? That was a pretty good likeness. How did you know her?”
“That was one of the drawings I did before I came to work here full time. But no, I had never met her. I worked with her husband and some of his friends who knew her well.”
“In that case, it was nearly a miracle. But I’m surprised you would work with a man like Manla Kulu and help him try to recapture a person who did not want to be with him.”

“That particular picture was relatively easy. The way I work, I sit with a number of people and I use chalk to draw a separate portrait based on what each of them tells me. I draw each feature and then the witness tells me what is wrong and I correct it.
I’ll draw the nose, for example, and they might say ‘It’s too long’ or ‘It has a kink’ or whatever, so I change it until they say I have that right and I go on, one feature at time, until I have a complete portrait from each witness.
Then I look at all the portraits and I combine them into one that is the best fit I can make from the different people’s perceptions. Iliva’s picture was easy because she had a strong face and the witnesses all agreed on what she looked like. Bringing all the different portraits to a single image was really easy.

As far as whether I should have helped her husband, I wouldn’t know. Drawing good pictures is hard enough without questioning every job that I am asked to do. I couldn’t take each commission and say to the Guardians ‘You shouldn’t be looking for this person!’ That would be silly. My job is to draw the pictures. The Guardians find the people. The Gardeners’ Courts decide whether they are guilty or not.
I can’t know on the basis of what people look like whether they have committed a crime. All I can do is just to draw as best I can.”

“And if the witnesses disagree about what someone looks like?” I looked at her. “What happens then?”
“That depends on the circumstances.” She replied “Sometimes there is a general agreement but with one that is so different that you just discard that input. Other times you find that one witness has noticed something – a scar perhaps, or a particular feature that the others have missed and it is enough just to add that feature in to the general portrait. Most of the time there is enough agreement to create a composite that people can recognise and it’s good enough for the purpose.

It gets more difficult when the subject is consciously trying to confuse you, of course. I had one case last year like that where there was a series of robberies that was obviously committed by the same person and I couldn’t get a good picture. The robber would wait until people had been paid, follow them home and, as they were about to go into the house, threaten them with a knife and take their wages.
The pattern was the same, week after week, but the description was different each time. Sometimes the criminal had long hair. Sometimes he had a beard. Sometimes his jaw was square and his face appeared round. Sometimes he seemed to have a long face.

By altering his hair style or holding objects in his cheeks, wearing tall shoes, changing the tint of his skin, he was varying his appearance so that he looked different each time. By making changes to half a dozen aspects of his appearance he could turn into someone you would not recognise. Some of the people he robbed were even convinced that he was a woman.
I kept drawing pictures of him. Each of the victims swore they were accurate, exactly what they had seen, and yet each picture that I drew added to the confusion as to what he really looked like.”
“Was he ever caught?”

“Yes, he was.” She smiled. “But not through the pictures. In the end, it was just luck. A couple of Guardians were coming off duty and walking home when they heard someone call out. They went to see what was happening and found the robbery in progress. The robber tried to run away but he tripped and twisted his ankle so that they were able to catch him without too much trouble and bring him down to the hangar.

The soles of his sandals were thickened to make him look taller so, in the end, actually, it was his disguise that brought him down. I spoke to him and showed him the pictures and he was quite proud of being able to change the way he looked. But that was exceptional. A lot of criminals would like to trick us but not many actually try and even the ones that do try are usually not very good at it.”

“That is an amazing story. Do you still have the pictures now? I’d be fascinated to see them.”
“Oh yes. I have a box full on my desk. It’s just down the corridor.”
I replaced the model in its pouch and followed her into her room. A blackboard was fixed to one wall, showing a series of sketches. Mostly faces, viewed from different angles, some obviously different attempts at the same person, some partly completed work in progress.
“Sit down please.” She sounded amused. “Normally this chair is for the witnesses.”
She selected a set of drawings and handed them to me.

“So you’re Tommu.” She looked at me directly. “I think I've heard people mention your name but aside from that and the fact that you have a very well carved model tractor, I know nothing about you. Tell me more.”
“The model tractor is a puzzle. It came from someone who tried to break into my room in the plantations. I've spent most of the last few years up there. As for myself, I'm a reader. I try to understand the world by interpreting what people have written about it.”
“That isn’t so very different from what I do. I try to draw a true picture by interpreting what people say.”
“You’re right, I suppose. In a way we both work second hand. Although I don’t think that my authors are consciously on the run and trying to escape from me.”
“Perhaps not.” She laughed again. “But it would surprise me if at least some of them weren’t pretending to be a bit more than they are. Either consciously or because they don’t really see themselves.”

“Yes. I have often thought that the books we have show as much about the person who wrote them as they show about the subject they try to deal with. While I was up in the plantations recently I read a book called ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’. The story is about a man who is always being tempted to do the wrong thing. But the author never has any doubts. The characters have names that tell you immediately whether they are good or bad. You can imagine that author would be happy to die for what he believes in. You have to envy that sort of certainty.
He writes about a place called Vanity Fair and his characters are tempted to stay there but the author always knows better. He knows that you shouldn’t waste your time on money and clothes and socialising. He knows that there is something beyond that. You can imagine him looking at us here, going to the football matches, people drinking and eating. You know that he wouldn’t like it.”
“Like Hama Batu?”
“Just like Hama Batu. I know that we have the Gardeners to tell us what Our Granny is thinking but you look at what they say and most of the time it’s something that makes the Gardeners better off. What I’d like to know is what Our Granny actually says. Not what the Gardeners say that she does.”
“I can sympathise with that, anyway.” Rega replied. “That is my main problem at the moment.”
“How so?”

“My current assignment is exactly in that area. I have to paint a portrait for the Head Gardener. Of Our Granny.”
“Well he could take you directly to see Her.”
“Not allowed. The portrait is to be a surprise. In any case, Our Granny has taken a decision, it would seem, that the only people she permits to see her are the Gardeners. I am to prepare a composite portrait of her based on interviews with people who have met her but I am not to see her myself.”