The Secret of Lions

by Scott Blade

  4

  After weeks of thinking about her mother, Barbara sat alone in her NYU dorm room. Her friends could barely get a word out of her. Her mind swung from one thought back to another like a pendulum inside her head. The blade was sharp, but it never quite connected with any one decision, at least not until her roommate crashed through the door one day with information that would stop the swing of the pendulum.

  “Barbara, a Professor Charles Blake is on the phone. He teaches in Great Britain. He says he’s calling from London,” her roommate said.

  Barbara looked up. She knew his name. Professor Blake was known to the art department at NYU, but he worked in London. At least, he was known to the seniors. They knew that he had been advertising a new Graduate Assistantship. Her entry into the contest had been a paper on WWII paintings that had survived the war. Charles Blake must have been impressed with it. Why else would he be calling her personally?

  She was a little shocked that he had reached out to her. Perhaps it was because he was new to King’s College. He had only been there for a semester. And even though he was already reputable, he still needed to fill the empty slots in a graduate program. So perhaps he chose her more out of desperation rather than on her merits. Either way, she did not care.

  Barbara read his scholastic publications. She knew that he specialized in investigating the mysteries of the art world. He had written published articles on Michelangelo and Monet. He was perhaps best known for an article he wrote about Da Vinci that suggested that Mona Lisa was in fact the artist himself in drag.

  Blake’s article surmised that Da Vinci actually painted Jesus Christ as the perfect specimen of a man, because of an insatiable sex addiction that Da Vinci had. In Blake’s opinion, much of Da Vinci’s obscure inventions were not to better mankind, but actually for sexual purposes.

  The only real thing that mattered about Charles Blake was that he was a respected scholar, and now he was on Barbara's house phone, calling to ask her to accept an assistantship under his tutelage. Of course Barbara would accept.

  5

  King’s College Summer of 1949

  Out of all the grand architectural designs, Barbara’s favorite was the Chapel. It stood tall and attracted most onlookers as the first thing they noticed about King’s College. The Chapel had four tall towers. The ceiling was high and majestic, even titanic.

  This is what a church should look like, Barbara thought.

  She walked along the lawn with her belongings. She didn’t have many possessions anymore. The traveling stipend the school provided left little money to pay for the trip to England. Which did not matter since she naturally travelled light. Although, she did have to sell most of her belongings as well as her mom’s apartment. Her mother had left her a small inheritance, but she spent much of it on the funeral and to pay off her mother’s hospital bills. The little that was left, she put into a bank account.

  Barbara carried one suitcase and one backpack. The pack was sand-colored with a buckle. She wore a black, cotton jacket, much like a thick windbreaker.

  Barbara’s youthful body and foreign look made people think that she was a freshman, even though she was in the graduate program. She held out a map of the campus, hoping to find her dorm room soon so she could unpack. She was tired and disoriented. She’d only stepped off a transatlantic ship hours before. All she wanted to do was unpack and lay her head on a cushy pillow, one that she would never feel like rising from.

  It was the end of the summer semester. The student body was trickling onto campus, moving into their future dorms, adjusting their minds away from the adventures of summer and back to a life buried in studies. Young freshmen scurried around searching for their dorm rooms. Occasionally, they stopped their gallivanting in order to try to make new friends or socialize with old ones.

  The boys walked around studying the girls, which they tremendously outnumbered. Barbara was one of the few female students. The girls walked around studying other girls to see who their competition was.

  While staring at the campus map, she was utterly confused about where she was on it. Barbara looked around and noticed that the one person who seemed as if he belonged leaned against the Liberal Arts building’s ivied exterior brick wall. She approached him. At first she thought that he was a student, but as she neared him, she noticed that he was holding a watering hose. Realizing that she had caught him lounging instead of working, he immediately returned to watering a charming garden that occupied the space between two footpaths.

  “Excuse me,” Barbara said. Either he was ignoring her or he didn’t hear her over the sound of the spraying water. The fresh-looking garden bloomed as if it were the beginning of spring and not the nearing of autumn. Bright red roses, vibrant daisies, and colorful plants mixed into the luscious garden as if it were a kaleidoscope of plant life.

  “Pardon me,” Barbara repeated, loudly. This time she tapped on his shoulder.

  He spun around and looked straight into her eyes. For a moment, it was as if he was really seeing her and knowing her without saying a word. Barbara had never experienced a look like that before. American men did not have the same look. She wondered if it was something all European men did.

  The man standing before her was in his early twenties. He seemed quiet and withdrawn. He had piercing green eyes and long, fair hair that was pulled back. Then she noticed that he wore a pair of gardening gloves and a tattered brown vest with a pair of handheld shears poking out.

  He must work here, she thought.

  “Yes, sorry to bother you. I’m looking for my dorm. It’s right here on the map,” she said, pointing at the building on the map.

  Then she said, “Harrison Building.”

  He never looked down, never broke eye contact with her. His piercing, emerald eyes gazed into hers. Then she asked, “Harrison Building?” It was a brief question—two words.

  After a brief, but noticeable moment, he raised his gloved hand and pointed in the direction of the building that she sought.

  She looked at it. The building had a couple of construction workers standing on a scaffolding on the outside of the upper floors. There were a couple of others doing work on the bottom. She saw hammers, nails, and various other tools. It looked like they were renovating.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  The young man returned to watering the garden. In a brief moment, Barbara’s eyes glimpsed that his watering can was completely covered in stenciled sketches of animals. The work was faint, yet dark. Before she could get a deeper appreciation of the drawings, the man shifted in such a way that the sunlight flooded her vision. Instantly, she squinted and readjusted her stance so that she could see him.

  “Excuse me, again. I’m sorry,” she said. He looked back at her. She held out her hand as if to shake his. “My name is Barbara Howard. Are you a student as well as the gardener?”

  At first, the young gardener didn’t acknowledge her hand. Finally, he looked at it and then he rudely returned to watering the plants.

  “Okay,” she said. Confused, she lowered her hand. As she began to distance herself from him, she heard him clear his throat as if it had remained unused for ages, like a deep, boarded-up well that was only now being uncovered.

  “Evan,” he said. “I’m the groundskeeper.” That was all he said, his focus unaltered from watering the garden. His watering can remained steady.

  “Nice to meet you, Evan,” Barbara said.

  She smiled and returned to her quest to find her building. She grabbed her suitcase and headed in the direction that Evan had pointed out. As she got farther from him, she decided to take a look back and see if he was still watching her. She turned right before she entered her dorm building’s main foyer.

  Evan was no longer standing by the garden. He had vanished. She searched the clusters of girls moving into the dorms but found nothing. She turned her gaze to a crowd of students, all heading in different directions, but she couldn’t find him anywhere.

  Evan, sh
e thought. Hope I see you again. Normally, Barbara was not so aggressive, but it’d been a long time since she’d felt attracted to someone so much. She wondered if Evan would let her paint him. He was striking. The gaze from his eyes arrested her to the core. He was tall, with a lean and muscular body. Barbara was enamored.

  6

  Sitting on a bench in Chetwynd Court near a series of beautiful gardens, Barbara looked over her sketches. She should’ve been focusing on what her thesis was going to be about. So far, she had no idea. She knew that she had to start her thesis as soon as possible because her stipend depended on it. She had to announce her thesis topic to her academic committee by the end of her first semester. And the first semester was already moving along. It was the fourth week of school, and things were only accelerating. It seemed like there was no stopping the coursework; it continued to pile up.

  She had papers due on French Impressionists, on famous artists such as Monet, Da Vinci, and many others. Already she was stressed about her course load. She spent the entire night staring at the ceiling. She felt too overwhelmed to sleep.

  The department had not given her a key or a carrel in the graduate studio yet. Of course, she was not sure that she was entitled to a key, not this soon. So she had to work out of her dorm room or outside on the college grounds. Since she’d found nothing worth painting cooped up in her dorm and no inspiration, she worked outside as much as possible.

  Besides, her roommate was constantly gibbering about a new boy she’d found. And even when she was asleep, she was loud, snoring throughout the night. So that didn’t help Barbara’s sleeping. The only real time that Barbara could get any rest was when her roommate, Lucy, was out committing torrid acts with one of her numerous boyfriends.

  “I’m going out to commit torrid and unspeakable acts tonight. Don’t wait up,” Lucy would say.

  “Okay, Lucy,” Barbara would answer as Lucy rushed out of the door.

  Trying to forget about Lucy and her coursework for the moment, Barbara blew a strand of dark hair away from her face. She looked around at the scene in front of her. She drew the gardens with the buildings as the backdrop. The details were missing, but she had a good blueprint, a sketch of the life in front of her. She tried to insert some of the students, but they scurried about too quickly. A small group of them stood near the far corner of the library. They played some obscure game that Barbara had no understanding of. It involved double hand-sized ball. She really did not understand the concept. They kicked it about without letting it touch the ground. It looked fun enough. They laughed every time someone dropped it.

  Suddenly, Barbara realized that someone was watching her from a distance. She turned for a moment and looked over to the garden behind her. Evan was watering the plants. He wore a hooded, blue jacket. The hood shrouded his face. His eyes were hidden beneath a thick shadow cast by the cowl. Barbara noticed that he wasn’t aiming the spout of his watering can. Water sprayed out all over the cobblestone sidewalk. Evan was staring at her, gazing in a boyish way.

  Slightly creepy, she thought. But still boyish.

  She felt their attraction as if they knew the moment they met there was something powerful between them. It was a rare moment in life, one that surpassed all other moments.

  Realizing that she’d caught him, Evan spun around and abandoned his stare. He returned to overlooking the garden. After a moment, he looked back at her, only briefly. She continued, unwavering in her gaze at him. Boldly, she waved. He stopped cold. Unsure of himself, he waved back.

  She smiled.

  7

  Barbara had only met Professor Charles Blake briefly during her orientation with a small group of graduate students. She was the only female.

  Her first impressions of him were that he was a man of strong build and very tall. He was in his mid-forties, but carried himself as if he were fifteen years younger. His face was handsome, yet plain. He had a British accent that seemed flawless. His hair was short and perfectly groomed. He had a quiet presence about him. He was new to the campus; he’d only been a professor at King’s College for a semester. Some of the other faculty often confused his name. Barbara guessed that he was still making friends with them.

  It was Monday. She sat in his class called “The Mysteries of Art,” a 600-level course. She was excited about this particular class; it sounded intriguing. The class focused on mysteries involving different works of art such as Mona Lisa’s smile or why the screamer is screaming in The Scream or why did Van Gogh cut off his ear?

  “Class, the next painting we are going to look at is one of my favorite mysteries,” Professor Blake said. He turned a knob on the side of a large, metal projector. Swiftly, the projector hummed and the slide on the blank, white wall changed. A painting appeared that would change Barbara’s life forever.

  “The Secret of Lions,” Professor Blake said. “This painting is hanging right now in our art gallery on the first floor, past the spiral staircase, near the back.”

  Barbara stared at it in amazement. It portrayed a majestic, black lion overlooking grand cliffs. It looked magnificent. She could not stop studying the design and style of this masterpiece. It captivated her unlike any other piece of art that she had ever seen before.

  “Notice how realistic The Secret looks. It is incredible. It depicts so much violence and turmoil. Can anyone tell me what the secret is?”

  “The secret is secret. That represents darkness,” Bill Jeffers said.

  “Not quite, Mr. Jeffers, but thanks for the depth of your answer,” Professor Blake said. Some of the class laughed. “Seriously, take a good look at the painting and think about it.”

  Barbara raised her hand.

  “Miss Howard, go ahead.” Professor Blake noticed Barbara’s beauty more than he was actually waiting for an answer.

  “It’s because it’s a black lion. Black lions don’t exist, but this one does and he looks ferocious. However, usually dangerous animals are normally more fearful than they are tough,” Barbara said.

  “Good. Good answer. Except that black lions do exist. They are a rarity, but they are possible,” Professor Blake said, clearing his throat.

  “They can be fully colored black like that, Professor?” another student asked.

  “Usually, the black lion refers to a lion with a black mane, but yes there are stories of lions that are black, like a white panther or tiger. I believe that the only one ever to exist in captivity was in Germany some years ago,” Professor Blake said.

  “I have another question, Professor Blake,” Barbara said.

  “You are persistent, Miss Howard.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry,” she said.

  “Especially for this early in the semester,” he said.

  “I was wondering what the name means. Is there a larger secret somewhere in the painting?”

  “Good question, Miss Howard. I suppose you have really never seen this painting then. Most students who come here are already familiar with this work—as are the faculty. You see, this painting is perhaps the biggest mystery that we will talk about all semester. It is our opus, our great mystery.”

  Professor Blake moved closer to the projection of the painting. He was now standing between the projector and the image on the wall. His glasses reflected the light from the projector as he turned back to the class. The painting was blurred behind the muscular outline of his body.

  “Several months ago this painting surfaced. It just appeared in the art gallery here on campus. Are you familiar with Adolf Hitler? Miss Howard?”

  “Of course,” Barbara answered.

  “What did Hitler have the Nazis do to most art pieces that were in their possession? You know, the ones that were not pro-Reich?”

  “They were destroyed. Burned in public fires along with books,” Barbara said.

  “Take a look at the next slide,” Professor Blake said. With one turn of the knob, the image on the wall quickly shifted to one of Adolf Hitler standing in front of a fireplace. Behind him, draped f
rom the mantle of the fireplace, hung two cloths with Nazi swastikas waving freely. “Look above the fireplace, Miss Howard.”

  Behind Hitler, above the fireplace, rested the painting—The Secret of Lions.

  “This picture is taken from Hitler’s private study from one of his homes. It is said that it was his most prized piece of art,” Professor Blake said. “Although, it was thought to have been lost. Not that long ago, it was anonymously donated to the university. And no one knows by whom. One day it was just lost and the next it was here.

  “Amazing. Isn’t it? A painting in the possession of Hitler, lost, and now in our possession.”

  “What a flit!” a student from the back retorted. Giggling broke out among the class, everyone except for Barbara. She was still mesmerized by the beauty of the painting.

  “That’s enough, class. In fact, that is all for today. See all of you Wednesday morning,” Professor Blake said.

  After class, Barbara approached Professor Blake. She hounded him about the painting without realizing it.

  “So no one is sure who the artist is?” she asked.

  “No one knows who painted it or why,” said Professor Blake.

  Barbara was astonished to hear this.

  “No one knows?” she repeated.

  “Miss Howard, scholars have investigated––prominent scholars. Modern artists came from all over the world to look at the painting. Many of them even claimed it as one of their own. No one knows who really painted it. The painting is a mystery in the true sense. There is a set of initials on the bottom, but no one knows to whom they belong. The initials are U.S. which could be anyone. Could mean that the artist is an American, as in they stand for the United States. Could mean that his first name is Ulysses. We really don’t know,” Professor Blake said.

  “So the secret is the identity of the artist?” Barbara asked. The professor seemed openly annoyed at her inquisition. That is when Barbara noticed that he was staring at a foreign-looking man standing in the doorway. The man looked as though he were expecting Professor Blake.

  “What is the secret, Miss Howard?” Professor Blake asked. He gathered up the rest of his belongings and headed toward the door, hoping to avoid further conversation.