So Much Fire and So Many Plans

by Aaron S Gallagher

  “That was… unexpected.”

  “For me as well.” She shook with adrenaline. “I didn’t think to… I just-”

  “Shhh,” Ossirian soothed. “It’s quite all right.”

  He cast a look over his shoulder at the speechless Toefler. “Good evening, Herr Toefler. I hope you sleep well.”

  Carolyn looked back and said diffidently, “You should lock your door tonight. I may not be finished explaining my displeasure. Good evening.”

  Toefler watched the two of them walk up the lawn, ascend the wide porch, and disappear into the house.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “You punched him.”

  “I did,” she said with satisfaction. “Very hard.”

  They were on the deck now, looking down over the city. The sunset had lit the whole of São Paulo in a blaze of reds and yellows and colors for which Brent had no words. The city appeared gilded to his eyes, dipped in gold and radiating colors like the fabled city of Cibola.

  He had become overwhelmed with sensation, examining the tableaus of the rooms within her house. Their house, his mind corrected, but he couldn’t make himself believe it. He was following tracks almost blown away by the wind, scenting the air, seeking in vain after the elusive figure of Christoph Ossirian, and no closer to seizing upon him than he had been before meeting Carolyn Delgado.

  He sipped at his trago de caña, the bite quickly becoming not a terrible side-effect but a welcome aspect of the experience. He raised his glass to her. “I’m beginning to see what you love about it.”

  She smiled warmly at him. “I’ll have some cases shipped to you. My distributor keeps fifty or so back from each year’s batch. I never go through that much.”

  “You don’t need to do that.”

  “I insist, dear boy. It’s a small gesture. Something I can do.”

  They watched the shadows grow long behind the house as the sun fell inexorably behind them.

  “I’m afraid I can’t seem to learn the lesson you’re trying to teach me.” He was beginning to enjoy the oppressive heat and humidity of the surrounding jungle. “I’ve been a poor sort of pupil in that respect.”

  She turned to him, face solemn. “You mustn’t think that. Ever. The things I’m trying to show you are… they defy reason. They cannot be encapsulated by words alone. You must feel them. And the way to truly feel them is the feel the way he did. You must understand how he felt then. He was lost. The driving purpose of his life had been ripped from him. Toefler took his whole world away in one careless comment. You must be as desperate as he was to truly understand.”

  Instead of giving her some inane response, he considered this, and tried. He imagined what would happen if he had his life’s work destroyed in one callous sentence. What would one do? How would you go on from having the one thing you knew and loved, the one thing you were good at, dashed to the floor to shatter like so much glass?

  A wave of desolation spilled over him. He looked at Carolyn Delgado, and a chill surfaced from the bowels of his belly to ride the length of his spine.

  What would it be like, having your whole world snuffed out in one single, stupid moment? Having your driving purpose, the one thing you love torn away? The one thing that made life worth living extinguished in a single moment of drunken stupidity?

  The hairs on his arms stood up. She gazed at him with impassive patience, and he feared she could read his mind. He couldn’t understand what Ossirian felt. But standing with this elegant, vibrant, wonderfully alive woman beside him, in the middle of a jungle, on the adventure of his professional life, he thought that the sound of having your purpose in life destroyed might sound an awful lot like a 1948 Tucker Torpedo slamming into a concrete abutment dividing a highway in Woodbridge, outside of New Haven, Connecticut.

  No, he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be Ossirian, but he understood that purposelessness when he was face-to-face with it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry he’s gone.”

  Her face showed no surprise at the turn of the conversation, and her eyes were dry and clear. “Thank you. As am I.”

  He tore his eyes away from her graceful beauty and stared again at the bowl of São Paulo. “The rooms. They’re religious fervor.”

  Her face lit with genuine pleasure, almost delight, at his pronouncement. “Just so!” she exclaimed, and put a hand on his arm. His skin tingled at her touch. “That it is! He was burning in the righteous fire of the born-again.”

  “But what was it? What changed? How did he get the spark back?”

  She seemed about to speak when he blurted, “Was it you?”

  Startled, Carolyn took half a step back. “Me?”

  “This kind of… renewal sometimes happens when you fall in… uh… love,” he trailed off.

  The look of startlement in her eyes faded. They became glassine, dull, remote. But to his astonishment, she nodded. “Yes. He fell in love. Or rather, he fell back in love.”

  She seemed to retreat from him, although she didn’t move.

  “I’m sorry.” It seemed inadequate even to his ears.

  “It is in the past.” Her shoulders straightened. “It cannot be changed. It is immaterial. We’re talking of Ossirian.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  “Weeks went by. Toefler tried everything to reach Ossirian. He and I… weren’t on speaking terms. In fact, I almost punched him again a week later, when he made a pass at me.”

  Brent raised an eyebrow. “Wow.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ve met Toefler. I was under the mistaken impression he was a genius. But maybe he got smarter.”

  Carolyn snorted laughter. “Perhaps. Anyhow, he and Ossirian had many conversations on the nature of art and painting. And I never let them out of my sight. In the early days I often had to separate them, but they eventually found a way to be cordial. And then one afternoon, Ossirian asked a question of Toefler, and Toefler answered it.”

  Brent gave her a skeptical glance. “One question?”

  “One.”

  “And that turned Ossirian into… Ossirian?”

  The smile she gave him almost broke his heart. Even after all this time, he could see what he meant to her. You bastard, he thought. I wish you had never met her.

  But he knew that, even if he could change it, she wouldn’t. That look. It said it all.

  She nodded. “We were on the beach. It was January, 1956. Ossirian, Toefler, and I were enjoying the change of the season. The beaches in this city are second to none for beauty. It was still early, eight or nine.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  They had made the forty-mile drive to Santos, crossed over to the peninsula of Guarujá and then on a Saturday morning, stopping for provisions, and arrived at the beach before 10 A.M. They had to walk for a while before finding a good spot. Even this early the arc of beach was clotted with thousands of people. The air shivered with the cries of small children, the calls of venders, and the buzz of conversations.

  They carried the accoutrements of leisure; a parasol, large towels, and a cooler full of cold cachaça, water, and some cheese. They spotted a promising place near a stand of tree and hurried over the secure the spot. Carolyn set about getting drinks while Ossirian and Toefler laid out the blanket and weighted the corners with rocks.

  They sipped, and eyed the water. Though the temperature was almost 32c, the water looked chilly yet. Ossirian stripped out of his shirt and kicked off his canvas shoes nonetheless. His plain white shorts were knee-length, and his skinny frame made him look like a child more than ever. His mass of black curls did nothing to assuage this image, but his eyes seemed older than he appeared. Toefler wore a similar pair of swimming shorts, but they were black. His coloration made it hard to tell if he had any body hair, and when he took off his shirt, he appeared as smooth as Ossirian, although the older man did have a modest patch of blond chest hair.

  She wore a bikini top and a wrap around her waist, and a bright red fl
ower tucked behind one ear. Unlike Toefler or the startlingly white Ossirian, her skin was a deep copper, which contrasted with the coal-black depths of her mane of long hair.

  She sipped at a bottle of cachaça, capped it, and put it back. None of them had valuables to lose; it was foolhardy to bring a purse or wallet to the beach. She closed the cooler and looked at the men flanking her. There were worse ways to spend the weekend, she thought with a smile, than surrounded by these men.

  And oddly, they were her men. She had even come to regard Toefler as, if not a friend, a pleasant acquaintance. He was handsome enough, true, but she discovered hidden depths to the would-be heir to the Toefler estates and fortunes. He was well-read, and they had been surprised to find that he played the violin quite well.

  They approached the water each in their own idiom; Carolyn hesitantly, Toefler with an eye on those around him, preening in the warm light of the sun, and Ossirian with a whoop and a sudden dash into the surf that culminated in a flat dive that took him several meters out before he surfaced, blowing water from his face and tossing his hair back with a grin. Carolyn decided to run after him, slipped, and stumbled into the surf. Toefler was beside her before she could lose her footing and caught her. He steadied her and she gave him a quick smile of thanks.

  She took a deep breath and dove, slicing into the water cleanly. She kicked hard, swam a few meters, and surfaced, the water shimmering on her body, glittering in the sun. She threw her head back, eyes closed, smile on her curving lips. Her hair arced over her head, the water sluicing away, a scythe of pure crystal. Ossirian stared. His hands twitched and clenched… and stilled. She turned to him, the joy on her face faded as she saw his mournful look. She went to him, the water almost to her chin. “What is it?”

  “It is nothing, my Muse. An adjustment to my new perspective. It can take time, to release everything you thought you knew.” He caressed her shoulder. The glitter of the late morning sun in the myriad droplets that clung to her smooth, copper skin reflected on his face.

  Toefler floated on his back a few feet away, toes peeking above the water, body mostly submerged, head half above.

  “You could still paint,” she told him. “Perhaps there is no harm in honing your skills until you have… inspiration once again.”

  “No. I would become distracted by the call of the hole in the canvas. I would fall into myself again, and never notice I am saying nothing. But my soul would know. I think that not painting is, however painful, more nourishing to my soul than talking while saying nothing. It would be a hollow pretense. Technically worthy, emotionally bankrupt. I would be like… like them.”

  He didn’t need to explain. He’d railed enough at the blank, fireless eyes of the purchasers of art he eschewed so violently. She gave him a nod, and because she wanted to, gave him a warm and loving kiss. She felt his lips curve against her mouth and she moved closer, let him put arms around her, one pressing against the swell of her buttocks, the other cupping the back of her head. She opened to him, a flower, and he reciprocated, a questing bee of a tongue darting in and retreating, seeking, tasting, exploring.

  When they broke the kiss, each with a sigh, her chest heaving with excitement, his eyes filmed and ferocious, they didn’t at first notice Toefler standing to one side, perhaps a foot away, staring in rapt awe.

  She saw him from the corner of her eye, and glanced at him. “What?”

  “I am sorry. I wasn’t… I mean…” Toefler took a deep breath, composed himself, and asked, “Have you studied the Masters, Ossirian?”

  Ossirian’s fading interest was apparent. His eyes became remote, impersonal. “Of course. I can tell you everything about them. Their styles, their brushes, their paints-”

  “What separates their work from ours?”

  “Genius.”

  Toefler snarled, “Incidental. Stupid. A happenstance of an answer, uttered without thinking. You are far better than that, Ossirian. What makes their work better?”

  “Technique,” Ossirian replied. He frowned to himself. “Wait.”

  Toefler’s eyes darted to Carolyn and back to Ossirian. Ossirian looked at the water, at the reflections of Carolyn and the sun. He slapped the water, and for the first time, seemed his age. His eyes filmed with tears.

  “I don’t know!” he snarled in English. He slapped his hand on the water, the flat clap sounded too sharp, and water droplets flew like shards of glass.

  Carolyn bit her lip. He looked ready to burst into the frustrated tears of a young boy whose patience is at its limit. But Toefler smiled at him, an almost-paternal smile of indulgence.

  “Of course you don’t,” he said, in a curiously gentle voice. “Of course you don’t, or I couldn’t have pointed it out to you. You had to understand that you didn’t know.”

  Ossirian glared at him, wanting to believe, daring Toefler to tell him he knew of a secret, something that seemed obvious and yet eluded the younger man. “I understand I don’t know something important. That isn’t the same as knowing what I need.”

  Toefler gave him a fond smile. “Remember your Socrates. ‘The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.’”

  The sour look this earned him from both Ossirian and Carolyn widened Toefler’s infuriating smile. “Have you studied Caravaggio?”

  Ossirian gave him a sour eye. “Which part? The paintings, or the fact that he was on the run for killing his mistress’s pimp?”

  Toefler waved this aside. “Use your mind, Ossirian. Picture The Decapitation of Saint John the Baptist.”

  Ossirian gave the other man a suspicious look, but his eyes went far away, and he said, almost absently, “I am.”

  “The colors,” Toefler said. “The light. The nearest woman bringing a bowl for the blood. The horror upon the old woman’s face. The studied indifference of the jailer looking on, directing the bowl. The three keys upon his belt. The glance away by his executioner. See them.”

  “I see them,” Ossirian said.

  “Tell me…” Toefler drew out the question, until Ossirian’s eyes focused and found Toefler’s face, and he finished, “what do the men to the right think of this occurrence?”

  Ossirian’s eyes widened. Carolyn pictured the painting, the two men, skeletal, aghast, staring. Ossirian frowned. “They are-”

  “What do they think?” Toefler snapped.

  Silence all around them, but for the breeze over the water, the lapping of the gentle waves upon their bodies. Carolyn could almost see the darting furtive movements of Ossirian’s mind’s eye roaming over their faces.

  Carolyn didn’t think he would answer. She knew the painting, of course, knew the scene well. But her training as an art historian had focused her on the reason and meaning to be read from a painting, not the technique and skill that went into making it. She could read a painting like a book but never reproduce what she could see. Ossirian could replicate the paintings, she felt certain, but did not speak the academic language to be found there.

  “They’re concerned.” Ossirian frowned harder.

  “But what do they think?” Toefler’s voice was silky, almost subtle.

  “They… they’re contemplative.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re… they’re just men,” Ossirian said. “They’re mere men imprisoned, and this is the man who baptized Christ. If he could come to such an end, what of they?”

  “Is that all?”

  “I’m not certain what you mean.”

  “They are contemplative, but unconcerned. They are not agitated.”

  “No,” Ossirian said, a studious pupil attempting to get a tricky lesson right.

  “What if they’re not Christian?”

  Ossirian blinked. Carolyn gave him a longer look of introspective study. There were depths here. Naturally she’d studied Caravaggio, and despised him. She had always been of the opinion the cad had painted this piece to influence the Pope into pardoning him for murdering the pimp. But his interpretation gave her pause. It was subtl
e.

  “If that were so… their unconcern becomes a lack of compassion.”

  “And if they are?”

  Ossirian chewed his lip. “Then… their unconcern is…” His eyebrows rose, and a smile came to his lips like the sun from behind a cloud. “Their unconcern is because they know his soul is eternal. That heaven awaits. It is John’s body they defile. They cannot touch his soul.”

  Toefler’s studied countenance was stern. “And what of the signature?”

  “He signed his first name rather than his last,” Ossirian said. “And an ‘F’. To signify, I believe, that he was a member of the Knights of Malta. ‘F. Michelangelo’ in the space under the pool of blood.”

  “Not just under,” Toefler chided. “Is it?”

  Ossirian cocked his head. “No. It… it’s directly against the spreading pool. And it’s in the same paint as the blood is…”

  Carolyn tried not to grin. It was a mystery scholars had been arguing about since the 1700s. Why would Caravaggio signify he was a Knight of Malta? Why sign his first name but not his last, and in so prominent a place? At the time, most painters, when they did sign, did so at the edges or worked their signatures into the scrollwork or cloth, almost unnoticed.

  Ossirian murmured, “It’s blurred. Thick and smeared. As if-”

  Toefler rolled a hand in the air; keep going.

  “It’s written as if Caravaggio drew his finger into the blood and signed with it,” Ossirian whispered.

  “Which might tell us what?”

  “That Caravaggio believed the blood to be on his hands?” Ossirian suggested.

  “Possibly. Or?”

  Ossirian bit his lip. “Well… the blood from the wound is almost obscuring the first few letters.”

  “And you take from that what?”

  “They could obscure the first name.”

  Toefler sighed happily. “Yes. One more question for you. What is it called when liquid is used in a religious ceremony, such as to cleanse of sin?”

  Ossirian whispered, his face becoming pale, “Baptism.”