by Bassoff, Jon
“Please,” I said. “Just calm down. I wasn’t clear on your tastes. I’ll paint you a portrait. It’ll be even better than the one you have.”
His face had become bright red, almost purple, and his lower lip was trembling.
“But what might help,” I continued, “is if I could take a peek at the portrait. Just to allow me to recall. You see my memory is not good and—”
But the old man only shook his head and spat. “Go away, Mr. Leider. Just go away. Keep the money. Keep your paintings. It’s a travesty, an absolute travesty. A one-hit wonder is all you are.”
Devastated, I grabbed all of the paintings and shoved them back in the cart. Without glancing back, I pushed the cart through the gallery and out the front door. But as I staggered outside, the cart caught on some asphalt and flipped forward, the paintings spilling to the ground.
Out of nowhere, the “drunken biddy” appeared, and now she was laughing, and it was a vile laugh. She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a pair of crumpled dollar bills, dropped them at my feet. “For the lot of them,” she said.
I bent down, picked up the bills, and stuffed them in my pocket.
“Take ’em,” I said.
And as I walked away, leaving Leider’s paintings behind, I heard her laugh again before rasping, “I see the woman. Sure I see her. Right there behind the curtain…”
PART THREE: THE PORTRAIT
CHAPTER 15
There were times when I stood at my window, hidden by the darkness of God’s own making, staring across the dirty old street, waiting for a glimpse of her shadow, feeling that if I could have even that much, my life would have glorious meaning, if only for that single moment. And when I did see a movement, when I did see her blurred silhouette, my heart shivered, my legs weakened, and I collapsed to the floor, nothing but a quivering mess. If only she knew the power she had over me; if only she knew the hours I spent waiting for her; if only she knew the nights I spent dreaming of her. Older and older I became, my skin creasing, my veins becoming varicose, my hair graying and receding, all the while I waited for her, waited for Claire.
Most of the time, however, her window was darkened, and I lived in a state of perpetual disappointment. To pass the time I continued painting, but after a while I could no longer even do that. Perhaps it was because of the rejection at the art gallery (although it is true that the old man was denouncing Leider’s paintings and not mine), or perhaps it was because I feared that, behind the yellow window, Claire Browning hid under beds and inside cupboards and within walls to prevent these lonesome eyes from regarding her for more than a single instant…
We each hold the key to somebody else’s happiness, and it’s such a shame that most of us dangle that key in front of our victim’s hands, yanking it away when he snatches for it, then hide it in the middle of the lonesome desert where he will spend the rest of his days searching, digging, until his skin blisters, his eyeballs burn, and his lungs shrivel into a pile of death.
I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my fists, and soon I felt hot tears running down my cheeks. I was trapped in my little world, and I needed to escape somehow…
And then this happened.
The phone rang, and I knew it was him before I even answered. I wiped the tears from my eye and picked up the receiver and placed it to my ear. His voice was harsh as if from disuse and I wondered if he spoke to anybody else…
“You see, I knew this would happen,” he said. “You are enamored, you are smitten, you are obsessed. This comes as no surprise. Because she represents immortality, and every man, from century to century, has longed to lay his head on her breast and taste the sweetness of her tongue. But we’re different, you and I, because we choose to appreciate beauty from afar, choose to create immortality on blank canvases. Remember the words from that long-ago sonnet:
“But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
“Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
“Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
“When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
“I tried, and perhaps I failed. But you will try and perhaps you will succeed.”
And as Leider spoke, I was afflicted with the same paralysis as before: although my lips moved in tune to his words, I couldn’t produce a single sound, as if God had placed me alongside Job and decided to thieve me of my voice to test my faith.
“But let me ask you this, because you know better than I. Are they looking for me? The authorities? On account of what I did to Anthony Flowers? They won’t find anything. I was careful. I hid the knife in a place where they will never find it, never. And, besides, who cares about a fellow like Anthony Flowers, a fellow with no standing and no money? The police and the detectives certainly don’t. They just want to get off work and slug their whiskey and screw their skanks. But if only Anthony’s death was the end of it! If only, if only, if only, if only, if only…”
His voice faded away, and for a moment I thought he’d hung up, but then I heard him rasping again, like some wounded animal.
“Time to paint her portrait again? Are we already at this point in the story? I lose track, Mr. No Name, Mr. Charles Pierce.”
How badly I wanted to speak! But it was as if I was trapped in a terrible dream, river water filling my lungs. And his voice echoed in such a strange way, like he was shouting through a long and swerving tunnel. He was laughing and talking and whispering and banging his fist and stomping his foot all at the same time. I feared that he’d somehow changed form and was seeping from the phone into my ear canal.
“But you’re tired of drawing yellow windows, is that right? You need the real thing. Listen to me. I can help. Don’t you remember from our last phone call the things that I said? Where I left the photograph of Claire? Right there beneath the floorboard. X marks the spot, young man! But what else did I leave down there? What else? The weapon, right? Be careful. Don’t let them see you. That would be disastrous. The next portrait will be the most wonderful of all, don’t you think…don’t you think…don’t you think…don’t you think…”
Don’t you think?
* * *
He was gone and I scurried across the apartment on my hands and knees, searching for the offending floorboard. I covered every inch of the living room, including underneath the furniture, but I didn’t see anything unusual. The same for the kitchen and bathroom. And now the phone was ringing again, but I let it ring, and I made my way to the bedroom. In here, of course, in here. Nose literally only inches from the floor, I paid special attention to alterations in the woodwork, but still I couldn’t find anything, and still the phone rang. And then he spoke, even though I hadn’t answered the phone. “Right behind the self-portrait,” he said. “Can you see it?”
Sure enough, behind the easel, one of the floorboards was marked with a painted X so faint that I had to squint to see it. A couple of the nails were sticking out, and I tried removing them with my fingers, but they wouldn’t budge.
“The club hammer and chisel are on the top shelf of the closet,” Leider said, and so I rose to my feet and staggered to the closet. I reached up and felt around with my hand until I located the tools and then I returned to the self-portrait of Leider, and now he was grinning.
I inserted the chisel between two floorboards and used the club hammer to force the chisel into the crack. When I lifted up, the nails began popping. I worked from the left side to the right until, finally, the board was free. Breath heaving and perspiration dribbling into my eyes, I placed the board behind me. I removed another board and then another and then another.
And now I saw them, two black plastic gallon bags hidden beneath the scantlings, adhered to the brick and mortar. With anticipation changing to dread, I removed the bags and stared at them unblinking.
I rose to my feet and staggered across the floor to the bed where I sat for a long time, thinking about this world and the next. The phone kept ringing and Leider kept talking over the
ringing. “My precious artifacts. May you take good care of them, Mr. No Name, Mr. Charles Pierce, Mr. Max Leider.”
Both of the bags were wrapped with layers and layers of packing tape. I grabbed one of the nails that had come loose from the floorboards and began tearing through the tape, careful not to damage the items. Fingers fumbling, I finally managed to unseal the first bag, and as I stared at the cheap plastic-handled boning knife, the blade still stained with blood, I felt the bile rise in my throat, and I had to force it back down through my esophagus.
“Not much of a weapon, eh? Still, just a quick vertical slit, and the poor boy was gone…”
The knife fell from my hands and clattered to the floor. I stared straight ahead for a long time, trying to repress the memory of what would happen in the future.
And now I smoothed the other plastic bag with my hand, and then slowly began to open it (this one was only sealed with a single piece of tape). But inside the bag there was another bag and then another one and another one still. Eventually I came to the final bag, and by now my hands were barely working, and my left cheek was twitching uncontrollably.
And then, finally, I came across the tattered and creased photograph of Claire Browning, and she was beautiful. She was perfect.
I placed the photograph against my chest and closed my eyes and I could hear Max Leider’s laughter echoing in my ears.
CHAPTER 16
It was after I had wrapped Leider’s murder weapon back in the plastic and returned it temporarily to its place beneath the floorboards that I really began to study the photograph in depth. For nearly an hour I stared at the image, falling in love again and again and again. Leider must have had some sort of high-powered camera lens to take this particular photo. Because although it was clear that she was inside her apartment—the window frame could be seen at the edge of the photo—the shot was close enough to reveal tiny blemishes on her skin. Her body was angled away from the window, but her head was turned toward the street, toward the camera. Her dark hair was tied back in a sloppy ponytail, and her lips were slightly parted. She wore no makeup and had a faraway expression. There is something poignant about a woman being watched without knowing she’s being watched because true beauty and innocence cannot be posed. As soon as the woman becomes aware of eyes gazing upon her skin—whether that gaze is one of judgment or lust—her eyes blink too quickly and her smile comes too easily. A painter like Hopper knew this, and so all of his portraits came from a distance and showed loneliness and boredom and resignation. True beauty, I think, is discovered in those mundane moments, not in the climax of a scene. And so it was with Claire.
Another realization: the first time I entered her apartment building I had been misguided. There I was, skulking around the hallways like a madman, expecting her to open the door for me, a complete stranger. It was because I felt I knew her so well (through Leider’s paintings, of course), but I overlooked the fact that she didn’t know me at all. She had been right, then, to order me to leave, she had been right to threaten to call the authorities. Surrounded by the chaos of Anthony Flowers’s death, I had momentarily lost my senses. But I would never make the same mistake again. The next time I approached her I would not come across as a “deranged fan” but as a brilliant artist. I would have an exquisite portrait in my grasp, and the portrait would be of her. Would she once again reject me and send me into the cold mist? Simple inductive reasoning suggested no. From history: did the lovely barmaid from A Bar at the Folies-Bergere reject Manet when he presented her with his painting? Did Madame Ginoux curse Van Gogh when he revealed L’Arlésienne, L’Arlésienne? Did Vermeer’s daughter weep when he showed her his Girl with a Pearl Earring? Then why would Claire reject me? Once she saw the beauty that I had created (inspired by her ivory skin and topaz eyes and ebony hair), her lower lip would tremble, her slender hand would reach to calm her heart, and her eyes would flutter with gratitude.
And then, too, she would understand why Anthony Flowers had to die, why Max Leider had no choice. I would tell her the story of Laszlo Toth. How on that Pentecost Sunday he charged into St. Peter’s Basilica shouting, “I am Jesus Christ raised from the dead!” How armed with a geologist’s hammer, he attacked Michelangelo’s Pietà, severing Mary’s arm and disfiguring her face, the chunks of marble wounding onlookers. I would explain that while perhaps it is unfair to say that Anthony meant this same type of destruction, the truth is that every moment he spent with her he chipped away her beauty, and that had to stop. And so Max Leider stopped it.
I would tell her all of this.
But first I had to paint the portrait.
* * *
Just as with the yellow windows, my first several paintings were utter failures. Once again, I was being too literal with my brushwork, trying to capture a precise moment in time that never really existed in the first place. And so I spent hour upon hour upon hour attempting to recreate that faraway expression, but I could never get it right, and eventually I would throw down my brush and pick up a bottle of sad bourbon and drink and drink, but my drunkenness didn’t help, it only made me feel depressed and violent and mean. But at those moments when I was at my lowest, when I didn’t think I could go on, the phone would ring and I would place the receiver to my ear, and Leider would whisper encouragements, tell me not to give up hope, that painting Claire was my fate, was our fate, and so on and so on.
Sometimes I would take a break and would wander around the apartment building, hands clasped behind back, whispered mumblings trickling from my mouth. And as I walked, the tenants would peer from out of cracked doors, and they all had asylum eyes and monstrous mouths. The things they must have been saying about me!
Once the albino darted out from behind an open door, startling me. “A misunderstanding!” he said. “Mother is not well. Rent from you is not due until the twenty-third. I have tried to make things clear for her, but her memory is not good. Still, it is hard to say how she mistook you for the previous tenant, the artist. As I say, she is not well. The doctors give her nine months, but it could come much quicker. It will be better then. She has suffered too much. We are still working out the details of the estate. My brother, Ralph, is trying to manipulate her into granting the entire inheritance to him. She doesn’t think straight, and he’s feeding off her vulnerability. If that happens, God forgive me, I will strangle the little bastard, gift his body to the river.”
“It’s understandable,” I said, “that she should mistake me for Leider. After all, I have taken to wearing his jacket. I have taken to wearing his clothes. I have taken on his dreams and fears. So perhaps my face is a bit gaunter. So perhaps my hair is a bit thinner. So perhaps my skin is a bit paler. I have seen his self-portrait and the resemblance is clear. I don’t blame the old woman at all. I have even taken up painting. Maybe one day I will show you my paintings. Would you like that? I’m hopeful to get them into an art gallery. Have you seen the Pretty Pictures gallery in Chinatown? I know the owner. He believes in me. That’s all it takes. Belief and a little persistence.”
The albino rubbed his hands together and blinked rapidly. “Oh, believe me, I won’t think twice about it, even if we are blood. It would give me great pleasure to see his eyes bulge from his skull, and the blood drain from his face.”
Oh, but give me a long enough time and I will become what I pretend to be.
* * *
And still I watched her window. She appeared behind the glass a few times and I ducked out of the way and watched her from the unseen corner of the room. She still wore the black dress and veil, and beneath the veil I knew that tears stained her face. And whenever I caught a glimpse of that veiled face, even if only for a moment, even if only in my imagination, I was suddenly infused with inspiration and I returned to my composition. My shirt and hands and face became splattered with paint, my hair and beard unruly. But it wasn’t until the thirteenth attempt (fourteenth if you include an abbreviated effort made when my brain was soaked in mescal) that I finally began making
some headway. The terrible anxiety was dissipating, and her beauty became revealed organically instead of through forced purpose.
As if from some biblical story, I painted for forty hours straight. No sleep. No food. A few times the phone rang, a few times there was knocking on the door, but I ignored it all, so enraptured was I with my creation.
And then, just like that, at a precise moment in time, I finished. The paintbrush fell from my hand, and I collapsed to the floor. From my knees I stared at the painting, mouth ajar, eyes wild. My hands were trembling and my temples were throbbing. There she was. Created from oils. Claire Browning. And she was perfect.
* * *
The extended strain of creativity, the hours upon hours of intense focus, sapped me of energy, and so I slept. It was a long and eventful sleep, and in my dreams I was with Claire and we were high in the mountains and the air was cool with nostalgia and the sky was yellow-purple and the ground was shimmering glass. We kissed and her eyes rolled back into her head, and I carried her like a child to a small cottage where we would spend the rest of our days together, amidst the fallen leaves and the wounded moon and the stilled creek.
Was I dreaming still when the phone rang and Leider whispered in my ear? “It’s breathtaking,” he said. “You’ve captured her magnificent beauty that she once had…once had…once had. Such sadness in life! But, oh, Mr. No Name, you’ve forgotten to sign the painting! Please. Before you fall back into your slumber. Sign the canvas. Show your ownership. Wake up! Wake up!”
And then Claire and I were in the desert, and the sky had turned bloodred speckled with silver stars. The wind blew hard and the dust swirled, causing my eyes to skitter beneath my lids. I grabbed Claire’s hand and we ran across the mesquite floor, the wind pushing so hard that I felt my body lifting in the air. All around us I could hear people shouting, but the words were shredded by the wind and vanished in the air. Claire was laughing and singing a little girl’s song, and she tried pulling her hair out of her face, but it wrapped around her slender fingers. The sand choked my throat, and now there was no sound other than the roar of the wind, and I gripped Claire’s hand tightly, but I knew I couldn’t hold on forever. She said, “Goodbye for now” and was swept away in the wind, vanishing in an instant, just an instant…