His frown of confusion made her chuckle unexpectedly. She clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes wide.
“Why, my Muse?”
“Because you’re naked!” she hissed, trying to force the shirt and pants into his arms. He stared down at the clothing. “I don’t understand.”
“You’re naked,” she repeated.
“Surely a man knows what a naked man looks like,” Ossirian said reasonably.
“Beside the point,” she ground through her teeth, pressing the clothing into his hands.
“He has already seen me,” Ossirian pointed out. “What has been seen cannot be unseen.”
She closed her eyes and counted to ten in her mind. She said without opening her eyes, “Regardless. Would you please dress? For me?”
He immediately took his clothing. “For you, my Muse, anything,” he said, and slid into his trousers. She smiled at him and looked at the man.
“Er… I apologize,” she said hesitantly. He stared at her. He was elderly, sixty years or so. His head was bald as an egg, though the short fringe around his ears was gray. He had an iron-gray moustache, thick and full, and there were deep seams in the skin of his cheeks. “We didn’t realize where we were.”
She thought it sounded silly to her, but she could think of nothing else to say to a man who had just watched them making love on his lawn.
“Indeed,” the man said, sounding amused. “Where did you think you were?”
She fumbled for an answer, shrugged and said, “We weren’t thinking.”
The man nodded. “I quite understand. I came to ask if you might consider moving off. My wife is having some of her friends over, and it wouldn’t be seemly to have… well…” the old man coughed.
“I understand,” Carolyn said, blushing.
Ossirian’s head popped out of the neck of his rough cotton shirt, and he said, “May I ask about your house now?”
The older man stared at him. Carolyn spoke up. “I apologize, sir. This is my friend Christoph Ossirian. He’s a painter.”
“Oh?” the old man agreed. “Of what?”
“Life,” Ossirian said.
The old man accepted that without a qualm, and glanced at Carolyn. “And what do you do?”
“She is my Muse,” Ossirian told the old man gravely. “Can you not tell?”
For the first time, the old man seemed to smile and relax. He winked at Carolyn and said, “Of course she is. I married mine, too.”
Ossirian beamed and Carolyn stuttered, “N-no, we’re not-”
The old man held up a hand. “No matter.” He held the same hand out to Ossirian, who shook it.
“Diego,” the old man said. “Diego de la Luna.”
“Christoph Ossirian,” Ossirian told de La Luna seriously. “Please call me Ossirian. I am honored to meet you, sir.”
De la Luna offered his hand to Carolyn, and bent over hers when she gave it. He kissed the air a millimeter above her skin before straightening. “Diego de la Luna, Muse,” he murmured.
She colored and smiled, pleased. “Carolyn Delgado, please.”
“Of course, Ms. Delgado. A pleasure to meet you.” De La Luna turned to Ossirian. “You had questions about the house, sir?”
“Yes, sir. I wanted to know what the view from your windows must look like. What shape it might be. Can you tell me, who built it?” Ossirian asked, face earnestly open as his questions gushed.
“It is beautiful, the view. I picked it for the view. As for the architect, it was myself,” the gentleman said, bowing to them.
Ossirian’s eyes blazed with excitement. “Of course! It would naturally be so! You are an artist. This is why you recognized my Muse!”
“An artist recognizes a muse, of course,” De la Luna agreed, “especially when she works upon another. The mystery that an artist cannot see in his own life he often recognizes in others.”
Ossirian grinned and nodded. “Just so.” He pointed at the slopes of the roof of de la Luna’s house. “I can see the waves of the city below reflected in the crown of your house.”
De La Luna’s startled glance gave way to a careful reappraisal of Ossirian. “You are very sharp-eyed to have spotted this, young man. Few understand what I was attempting in my work.”
Ossirian shrugged. “It is something I would have done, if I worked with wood. The natural curve of the waves and the intended movement are obvious. As are the curve of a breast in the edges nearest the wood. One assumes they belong to your wife.”
De la Luna chuckled. “Young man, you must see the world filtered through the lens of your lust. It must be exhausting.”
“‘I would rather die of passion than boredom,’” Ossirian said off-handedly.
“Van Gogh,” De la Luna said.
Ossirian grinned. “I suspect he was talking of a woman when he said it.”
“You’re probably correct,” the older man said. He glanced at Carolyn and added, “And yes, I did craft those curves after my… my own muse.”
Carolyn hid a smile behind a hand.
“I would love to meet her,” Ossirian said. “She must be a woman of staggering beauty. I am a student of beauty.”
De la Luna studied Ossirian’s wide, happy smile and clear, feral eyes for a moment. Carolyn wondered if the old man heard the unabashed lust in Ossirian’s voice as a threat.
“To have discovered a painter upon my very lawn this night can be nothing except serendipity. We have some time until our guests arrive. Please,” de la Luna said with a sweeping gesture, “join us for a drink?”
Carolyn would have demurred; she was dressed but discombobulated. She would have preferred a quiet walk back through the woods to the town, but Ossirian’s eyes lit up and he grinned with manic, infectious energy. “Yes, please!”
Diego de la Luna gestured, and they walked. He paused and said, “Do you not need your equipment?”
Ossirian’s face was blank. Carolyn went to the abandoned sack of supplies and the still-damp canvas. She collected them. “He forgot they were there, but he would miss them if he needed them,” she said as she rejoined them. “Thank you.”
Ossirian was practically hopping up and down in his eagerness. De la Luna smiled at him and led them up the slope to the walkway that led to the front of the house, bypassing the wide deck. Ossirian trotted after the older man. Carolyn followed along behind, surreptitiously checking that she was at least somewhat decently-covered.
They followed the edge of the house until it became the front. It was a ranch-style building writ large, the wooden planks that made up the siding were hand-hewn from the wood of the forest surrounding them. The wide, sweeping circle of drive was lain with crushed stone from the quarries nearby. The slate upon the roof was from the other side of the mountain.
The wide double doors were hand-carved. Carolyn recognized the whorls and shapes carved into the massive eucalyptus slab doors as Terena, a local indigenous tribe. She had seen their art in the city and in museums. They were notoriously insular, and never took commissions.
“How did you get them to carve this?” she asked in wonder, as Ossirian traced the patterns with a fingertip, entranced.
De la Luna smiled. “I brought the wood with me and refused to leave until they acquiesced,” he said. “It took three days. On the fourth day they agreed, just to get rid of me. But when they asked me what to carve, I told them ‘this is your village. This is your skill. This is your wood. I want you to be moved.’ They carved this while getting me very drunk. I awoke next to it and they were gone. It was the last time I saw any of them. They were relocated.”
Carolyn frowned. “It is exquisite.”
“I enjoy it,” de la Luna told her, watching Ossirian’s hands follow the script.
“What does it mean?” Carolyn asked.
“I don’t know,” de la Luna confessed. “No one I’ve ever met aside from that one tribe speaks Terena. But there is beauty and that is enough. Meaning is our own imposition, I suppose.”
Ossirian whirled on th
e old man, eyes alight. “I was right,” he breathed. “You are an artist.”
De la Luna bowed his head. “Of a kind.”
“Of the…” Ossirian struggled with his Portuguese. He looked at Carolyn. “The… help me… the spirit? The inside. Not spirit, but…”
“Alma? Soul?” she supplied.
“Yes!” he crowed. “An artist of the soul!”
De la Luna appeared amused at this. “I’m an architect with some taste.”
“You are an artist.”
“As are you,” the older man said.
Ossirian shook his head with finality. “No. I am a painter. Someday, perhaps.”
De la Luna studied the younger man. “It is few artists who know they are,” he said in an introspective tone. “That’s what makes them artists.”
Ossirian shrugged. “Perhaps I will know when I’m an artist, perhaps not. I paint. But right now, I would love to see your home.”
“It would be my pleasure. My wife Miciela will be enchanted to meet you both.” De la Luna opened wide the doors. They swung in on silent hinges. Smells of a dozen dishes assailed them, wreathing them in a cacophony of flavors. Carolyn’s mouth watered as she inhaled. Diego swept in his arm. “Welcome to our home,” he said.
They stepped across the threshold, and Ossirian seized, galvanized, as though struck by lightning. He went rigid, and Carolyn bumped into him. Before she could ask, her eyes found the answer over his shoulder. Her lips parted and she stared, wide-eyed, at the inside of de la Luna’s house.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“What was it you saw?” Metierra asked in the semidarkness.
“I couldn’t explain it if I wanted to,” she said. “No one could. But see for yourself.”
With that, she flicked on the bank of switches.
As the lights flickered into life almost teasingly, first on the main floor and then above, in the alcoves. Along the far walls, the soft mood lights underlit the waterfall, and the gentle viewing lights over the paintings hung in alcoves brightened to full. Metierra’s eyes widened and Carolyn Delgado smiled with delight.
It was stunning. The rails of the upper walkways were natural wood, and had been coaxed into sloping curves and gentle ascents and descents. It contained space and presence the likes of which he had seen only in art museums or in freeform sculpture. It wasn’t anything he’d ever seen in a private dwelling, and he’d been in some fantastic houses. As an art critic, his taste was wide-ranging. He was a fan of Wright, Rohr, and Johnson, but he had never seen a house such as this. It seemed to open up and encapsulate the world. It had to be thirty feet high, with no support beams. One wide-open space of immense openness and grandeur.
He stared, mouth open, while Carolyn watched him. He turned to her in awe.
“You see?” she asked. “Do you see?”
He frowned. He turned back to the expanse of house before him. He realized the foyer was in essence a funnel, channeling one in from the door to the great wide veldt of a room beyond. It had high arches, bowed sides… and it looked familiar. It wasn’t an arch, per se, but it arched. It dipped toward the top, the wood seeming to flow and gather, become heavy, and fall inward. It’s dripping, he thought. It’s meant to look like water. Like it’s alive.
He regarded the side walls of the arch. They expanded outward toward the main body of the house, but they too were more organic, more fluid than solid. The wood he could not identify. It was too dark and rich, sanded to a gloss, and stained almost black enough to swallow all light. There were two sconces in the foyer, one to a side, and each was in an alcove carved to indicate that the wood wasn’t cut away but instead streaming around each, like water would flow around a pebble in a stream.
His delighted smile grew. The foyer… it was a waterfall. He looked at his feet. The waterfall of wood seemed to flow from the sides of the foyer and pool before them, as water would. He blinked, turned to speak to Carolyn and stopped, transfixed. He raised a hand. With a finger he traced the edges of the foyer, following them like drawing a line in the air.
“No…” he whispered. He stepped back, put his back to the immense double doors, and looked again. He moved to his left slightly, looked yet again.
Carolyn pressed herself into the corner of the foyer, a smile playing across her lips as she watched him come to the realization.
“It… it’s the same shape…” he muttered. He turned to her, his smile returning all at once, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. “It’s the shape of the frame for Hearts. He… he patterned the foyer on the frame of a painting?”
She shook her head. “No, dear boy. You’ve got it reversed. The frame of House of Many Hearts is based on this archway. This was once the main body of the house. This was all that existed when we first arrived, but Ossirian had wings built to house the bedrooms, library, kitchen, dining room, and other necessary things. He converted the main house he loved into a gallery. Not just a gallery, but- well… there is more. So much more. Come. See.”
She took his hand. He followed dazedly as she led him to the right, to the curving, winding spiral of wood and steel that was the stairway to the second floor. He ran a finger along the rail. It was glass-smooth, lacquered at least a hundred times, judging by the depth of the smoky finish to the wood itself.
The upper walkway, itself three feet wide, encircled the main space in an oval that had to be sixty feet across, if it was an inch. She led him around, and as he looked back, he realized his initial reaction had been correct. Over the alcove, like a torrent, the architect-
Artist, he thought disjointedly. This isn’t building. This is sculpture by an artist This is a masterpiece.
-had built a torrent of dark wood cascading down over the open door. The water looked alive, with swirls and eddies and current. The dark stain of the wood betrayed that was a carving. If it had been painted with realistic blue water and white foam, it would look completely real. From the walkway, he could see in even better detail how the ‘water’ met the floor of the house and pooled outward. It flowed forward from the door, spreading at the base until it disappeared at the edge of what looked like a simple white porcelain grate, an inch wide, running across the floor. He grinned, and almost laughed out loud at this cleverness.
Carolyn tugged at his hand. “Come. There is so much more to see.”
“But… the first floor-”
“I want you to see it in order.”
He followed her, bemused. “In order?”
She gave him a sly glance over her shoulder. “In order. To understand.”
She led him into a room, flicked on the lights, and stood aside for him to see. No furniture. All six surfaces had been painted. The room was the apotheosis of the Renaissance.
She pointed. “Left to right, the four modes of Italian Renaissance painting: Sfumato, the smoky, blurred-and-blended style popularized by Da Vinci. Chiaroscuro, the high-contrast light-and-dark of Caravaggio. Cangiante, the change in color to provide contrast, Michelangelo’s technique on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. And Unione, similar to Sfumato, but with high-contrast colors instead of smoky, muted ones. Known also for harmony and balance, as well as being Raphael’s contribution.”
Figures adorned the walls, interacting with one another. The floor had been cunningly painted to resemble marble, and the ceiling seemed to arch away in tighter spirals of fanatically detailed scrollwork, woodwork, and twists of smoke. The figures, standing, reclining, or even curled up asleep, were drawn from the work of geniuses. Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli, Donatello, Titian, Caravaggio, Giotto, van Eyck, Vasari, Tintoretto, Dürer. There were trees out of Bosch. Marble statues by Quercia, musical instruments by Veronese. Brent drank in the scale and scope, as well as the flawless artistry.
And on they walked.
The next room was regally decorated to be the court of the king of all kings. The Rococo style of the court, of the ladies, of the courtiers and servants, as well as the walls of the palace, reflected the best and also the
most obscure of that school. Amongst Fragonard’s hedonistic pleasure-seekers could be found Watteau’s brilliant colors, reams of Boucher’s fabrics, while in the back le Brun’s disaffected and disdainful commoners peered through the open archways. The servants were Chardin’s hardworking, open-faced cheerful country folk, the hangers-on and fops were of Nattier’s delicate hand. The paint seemed alive, and blazed with inner light and life.
A room of Romance, with figures of high society and low having portraits painted by artists out of Goya, models from Hayez, skies out of Cole, a distant shore of crashing waves that Aivazovsky would have envied, crowded streets of Gericault’s crush of bodies, and above, climbing from the walls to cling to the ceiling, damsel in hand, horrific face upturned and away from them, Blake’s Dragon. He shuddered as he stared at the figure, rendered in oil, but made to resemble the deceptive watercolor and tempura of Blake’s hand.
The next room held figures, both adult and child. Animals romped and played. Household objects, furniture, and all manner of knickknacks and figurines and playthings. At first, he understood nothing of what he was seeing, because it was all so detailed, so real. Realism, he thought. The explosion of the commonplace. The details were so rich and vivid the room, although empty, appeared full of life and three-dimensional things. He stared, transfixed, at Men of Courbet, angry, nervous, bewitched. Women of Manet, soft-edged, lush, plump and pink, the backgrounds and walls were of Millet’s exacting nature and meticulous focus, the eyes of the children were Hopper’s eyes, flat and deadly, the clothing they wore tailored by Bouguereau.
After a time, she gently took his hand, and they moved on.
It was like stepping into a water garden. The walls, ceiling, even the floor was covered in waterlilies and reeds and clouds, all startlingly close to Monet’s work. As he looked closer, it seemed that each individual plant, each lily, each wave had been painted by a different hand. Renoir. Degas. Cezanne. Cassatt. Gauguin. Sisley. Mondrian. Tarbell. Oller. Visconti. He gaped. He recognized the style in which each flower or plant or feature had been rendered. It was staggering. It was a room of Impressionism writ large.
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