The Crimson Portrait

by Jody Shields

“You’re too simple.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Anna squeezed a brush into a rag, leaving a thick V-shaped paint stain on the cloth. “A portrait is impressionistic as a landscape glimpsed from a train. It’s impossible to capture anyone’s true likeness. Perhaps I’m the only one who will believe Julian’s mask resembles his photograph.”

  “You speak nonsense.”

  Anna calmly reached for a pencil. “You can say whatever you like. Julian will live behind my mask.” The conversation was finished.

  ANNA ANNOUNCED THAT Julian’s photograph had been delivered to the studio, but he took his usual place on the modeling platform without asking to see it. He wouldn’t look back, dismissed the photograph as a memento of his former life. Anna’s drawings were a point of pain he only indirectly acknowledged. “Time enough to see my portrait when Anna has finished. My gift to the artist is patience. Now, explain the process of the mask to me.”

  “I will model your face in clay as closely identical to your photograph as my skill allows,” Anna said. “The clay face will be used to cast your mask in silver and copper. The metal mask won’t be heavy, but so thin your skin will warm it.”

  “A metal mask,” Julian repeated. He picked up a pencil, studied it intently, and carefully set it down as if this act took all his power. “How can you pretend as if it’s nothing to make a false face?”

  Anna granted him the dignity of looking away.

  FROM THE MOMENT Catherine handed Charles’s photograph back to Anna, she willed herself not to think of him. This would break the connection between them. She would become unstained, traceless, perfectly transparent, and her guilt wouldn’t be seen or sensed.

  Catherine was unable to sleep. She arrived at the studio before dawn and pulled her finger through the webs strung by spiders across the door, an impermanent silver barrier. She never looked directly at Charles’s photograph but was constantly aware of it, an icon, a malign presence, its surface flickering as she moved around the room, ready to trap her guilty image like a mirror.

  The studio had become combustible, alive as a bomb, and she worked as if possessed, scorched if she rested or slowed. Only motion brought relief. Catherine felt she would splinter and was astonished that Anna could bear the constant pressure. Words were forced from her lips. “How can you keep working? Looking at Julian’s face, at all their faces?”

  Anna didn’t soothe Catherine. “I muster the same courage as the doctors.”

  Her words struck like a slap, and Catherine resolved to be Anna’s equal. After the photograph had served its purpose and the mask was finished, she could easily steal it back.

  TO GUARD HERSELF from the photograph, Catherine strengthened the line around her memory of Charles, refused to even dream about him. Until Julian would carry her husband’s face, she imagined him as a blank too. But she tracked him relentlessly, traced the familiar scent of his body surrounding him plain and bold as sunlight. She listened to his voice, to his every movement, so if he should see the photograph of Charles and recognize the imposture, she was defended against his reaction, an accusation of deceit. She was prepared to fly.

  Julian could find her exactly as a finger held to a point on a map. Once when Anna had been distracted, his hand on Catherine’s neck was delicate, swift, and secret. Another time, their eyes met across the room and the clay in her hands suddenly grew supple and warm, as if it were Julian’s flesh that she held.

  Gradually, the photograph’s presence seeped from the studio. She became startled by the slightest shadow or unexpected movement, the wheeling shape of a bird overhead, the sinister dryness of leaves moved by wind, a paper blown across the path.

  But no obstacles deterred Catherine from shaping her gift to Julian, his safety. She considered that after the war ended, when everything in the world would change, a new identity was the best way to survive. Julian would wear a mask—Charles’s face—and they would live together in twilight. She had saved him after the surgeons had failed, and he would never leave.

  She’d done nothing terrible to accomplish this, merely exchanged one stone for another. The war was responsible for all destruction.

  CATHERINE KNEW THAT if she waited, Julian would eventually appear on the terrace. The afternoon had passed, the lake flushing from silver to leaden gray without losing its eerie quality of falseness against the green field. Julian appeared to have been summoned from the air so suddenly did his familiar figure appear. He hesitantly sat down next to her.

  “So I’ve found you,” she said, betraying her nervousness by an attempt at a joke.

  Julian clasped her hands, and she welcomed the silence that surrounded them, since it smothered the memory of her deceit.

  A nurse with a tray hurried along the open terrace doors behind them. The unfortunate woman stumbled, and audible above the sound of breaking glass was the sterile, high-pitched click click click of hypodermic needles striking the floor.

  Julian’s hands trembled, and he violently pitched forward on the bench, shuddering against her. Catherine felt fear run under his skin, and he stared, not recognizing her. Her hands became comfort, but her caresses were considered and distant.

  She had made Julian an unwitting imposter, her changeling. Guilt was as internal as healing, building slowly as the freezing of water.

  BECAUSE OF THE HEAT, the red curtain had been pulled to one side, and the studio again became a large open space. Catherine sifted dry plaster of paris through a mesh screen so slowly that her hand and arm ached, but despite her care, powder escaped and churned furiously in the air, whitening her hair and clothing, forming a frail snowfall on the floor. She sensed that Julian was looking at her, and for the first time, guiltily refused to respond.

  “Catherine?” Anna called. “This is the second time I asked you to refill the jar.”

  “Yes. I’ll take care of it.”

  Anna’s voice was unusually sharp. Was she suspicious? The lines on Anna’s drawing seemed to deepen, writhe into a wild tangle, transforming Julian’s face into an angry crimson scribble. Then everything in the studio began to demand Catherine’s response: the blackness of charcoal, the redness of the curtain, the solid, unblinking white of paper. The powder dusted around the room seemed to have driven away the air, her breath. She pressed her fingers against her throat.

  She feared the pencils would balance themselves on point, would scrawl the truth—Catherine is a thief. She has stolen Julian’s face.

  IT RAINED STEADILY, creating grayed, indistinct shapes of the house and outlying buildings, the fountains, the statues of lead and carved Portland stone, proving how instantly the familiar was transformed.

  Catherine left her windows open, eliminating the barrier to noise so she would have warning when discovery of the false photograph rippled across the surface of the lawn and spiked upward, toppling stones and brick walls. She would witness this from her window as measured footsteps ascended the stairs to her room. Soldiers would come for her. Or Julian, betrayed.

  TINY SQUARE PAPER PACKETS lay in rows on a studio worktable, appearing so fragile that Catherine wonderingly asked if they were empty. In lieu of a spoken answer, Anna slowly broke the seal on a packet and tilted it to reveal the bright precious metal inside. The stuff trembled, registering the force of Anna’s heartbeat in her hand. “Gold leaf,” she whispered.

  Half a dozen packets were carefully opened and set on the table, their golden contents floating like flames above the drab wooden surface.

  Artis walked into the studio, and his confidence vanished at Anna’s scowling expression.

  “Both of you, stay where you are,” Anna hissed. “Even a breath of air will disturb the gold leaf. It’s fine as powder.”

  Artis obeyed, remaining immobilized near the door.

  Catherine was trapped. Would the boy recognize Charles’s photograph on the table? Would she draw his attention if she tried to conceal it?

  Artis glanced lazily around the room, then focused on the work
table where Charles’s photograph was angled against a canister. His eyes narrowed in puzzlement or calculation.

  Did he see Charles? In an agony of impatience Catherine stood still, waiting as Anna painstakingly refolded the packets of gold.

  With a dry rustle, a paper capriciously slipped free from the easel, stirring the air, scattering and tearing the feather-light patches of gold.

  Anna swore, Artis jumped forward to help, and in the otherworldly speed of a dream, Catherine unobtrusively placed Charles’s photograph facedown on the table. The ragged bits of gold leaf were slowly gathered, wafted onto papers, a maddeningly slow task, since the fragile material fluttered up with each clumsy movement of their hands.

  While they were occupied, Julian had entered and quietly removed his shirt behind the red curtain.

  “You should have seen what happened, sir. Gold was everywhere. It blew around like magic dust.” Artis’s excitement was always saved to share with the men.

  At Anna’s direction, Julian swung his legs up and stretched out full length on the table, allowing Artis to slide a block under his neck to keep his head level. “This seems very formal,” Julian solemnly observed.

  “For God’s sake, let him be comfortable.” Catherine gently lifted Julian’s head and padded the block with muslin, then draped a soft cloth over his lower body. When Anna and Artis were busy in the cupboard, Catherine boldly caressed Julian’s naked neck and shoulder as he lay unmoving. Only his eye registered her touch.

  Anna returned and methodically placed supplies on the table. “Casting your face will be a simple process. Not painful, but you may be slightly uncomfortable.” She noticed the white smudges Catherine’s dusty fingers had left on Julian’s skin but said nothing, as if an object in a still life had shifted.

  Anna gently picked up a packet. “Watch.” She held it to her lips, and with a puff of her breath, gold flakes flew, spangling Julian’s bare shoulders and chest, like glinting confetti.

  “Are you mad?” cried Catherine.

  Anna shrugged. “I don’t need your assistance. You may go.”

  Julian shifted imperceptibly to watch Catherine pass, as if following the movement of sunlight. Dismay creased his face, lines radiated across his forehead, bold as arrows.

  “You must release the muscles of your face so I can remove your bandages,” Anna instructed. She deftly stripped off the gauze and handed the loose wrappings to Artis. “Now, sir. I will make you handsome as you were. Relax.”

  She dipped a fine brush in oil and painted Julian’s eyebrows, lashes, lips, the curve of his closed eye. Cotton wool padded out the depressions made by his wounds.

  Artis gingerly unwrapped three packets of gold leaf and put them within Anna’s reach. She smiled at his exaggerated pantomime of caution.

  “What will you do with the gold?” he asked.

  “Gold leaf prevents the plaster from sticking to Julian’s skin and the cotton wool. Please don’t move.” Her tweezers descended on a gold square, then suddenly stopped. “There is too much light here. I can’t see against the glare.”

  Artis hunted for paper to rig across the skylight.

  Julian gently sighed.

  “You may raise your arms if you’re stiff.”

  Julian stretched, releasing the tension in the room.

  Artis maneuvered a thick paper over Anna’s head to diffuse the light. They held their breath as her tweezers lifted an edge of a gold piece and floated it onto the cotton on Julian’s cheek. It was delicate work, but finally gold leaf completely covered the cotton padding. His brows, lips, and lashes were also dusted with gold powder, which adhered to the oil.

  “Finished.”

  The effect was startling. Julian was a motionless, blind figure, his face partially gilded. It appeared that liquid gold had flowed into the depressions on his face and been frozen into place.

  Anna leaned close, as Julian’s hearing was affected by the protective padding in his ears. “Keep your eyes closed,” she instructed. “I will plug your nostrils with cotton wool. You’ll breathe through a goose quill in your mouth. The plaster will be very cold until it hardens on your face. Everything will happen quickly.” She inserted the quill between his lips. “Lift your hand to signal if you’re distressed.” He made a guttural sound of acknowledgment.

  Artis furiously stirred dry plaster in a rubber bowl as drops of potassium sulfate and water were gradually added until it thickened. Instantly, Anna scooped up a glob of plaster with a spatula and spread it smoothly across Julian’s forehead. His hands clenched with the effort not to push her away as layer after layer of plaster obliterated his features, the erect quill marking his mouth.

  “The plaster will become warmer and warmer as it hardens.”

  Julian’s chest heaved as he struggled to breathe, and Anna curved her hand over his shoulder. After a moment, his breath locked back into a measured pattern.

  “It won’t be much longer.” She spoke loudly so Julian could hear.

  Artis reached under the cloth to briefly grasp Julian’s hand.

  Anna felt the plaster on his chin, gauging its hardness by touch and temperature. She gently hooked her fingers under one side of the thick plaster over Julian’s face, and Artis copied her maneuver on the other side.

  “Pull!”

  The plaster mass was ripped from Julian’s face. He sat bolt upright with an angry cry, his reddened skin streaked with plaster and fragments of gold, his arms shaking.

  Anna calmly began to clean his face with a cloth. “There. Every trace is gone now. Every trace. Nothing more to fear.” As she wrung the wet cloth into the bucket, the splash was echoed deep in the inner chamber, where the water in the basin flowed in complete darkness.

  CATHERINE HAD WAITED until the studio was unoccupied to enter. She found what she sought on a worktable, a white roughly surfaced oval, cool and heavy to the touch. She turned the object over, hands trembling, and inside it was hollow, with Julian’s face cast in reverse like carved hieroglyphics. Her finger traced the starfish of lines etched from the edge of his eye, the marks of suffering at his mouth, the deep triangle of his nose.

  Holding the cast as reverently as a bowl, she lowered her face into it, her breath stirring the brilliant metallic flakes flecking its interior. She closed her eyes, imagining that this plaster mold—Julian’s face—was a door she entered, surrounded by gold confetti that would mark her skin as it had marked his.

  A SANDSTONE BRIDGE, squat and thick, spanned a stream that led into the smallest of the lakes, and Julian sprawled asleep on the grassy banks, a pose of complete abandon, one arm bent, shielding half of his face.

  Without haste or caution, Catherine studied Julian as if he posed for her pleasure. She had no sense of trespassing, since Anna and the doctors had long since stripped away his privacy. The thin bandages were a sterile white contrast against Julian’s face, heightening the color of his skin, so he appeared to bloom with a feverish ripeness.

  Julian woke and sleepily gazed up at her, his good eye faultless blue. He took her hand and turned it over as if it were a rare shell he’d discovered. Catherine closed her eyes. His touch became more intricate, his fingers wove and slipped knots, enmeshing her.

  She had successfully hidden the truth of the photograph from him, neat as the fold in a paper. But now guilt became a vibration that rattled her breath, dissolved her eyes into water, hardened her hand into a false caress.

  Suddenly he angrily pushed her away. “Don’t touch me that way.”

  “What have I done?”

  “You touched me with pity, like a nurse.”

  Catherine was angry to be corrected and pulled away from him. “You’re imagining things,” she said coldly.

  Chapter Sixteen

  CONSCIOUS OF HIS rising panic, McCleary hurried through the medical-supply room and second- and third-floor corridors, turning away questions from a pair of concerned nurses and an orderly. On the board in his office he found the afternoon schedule, and his
finger jerked down the listings until he found a familiar name.

  McCleary opened the door to the Blue Drawing Room, startling Kazanjian as he sketched. A pencil rolled off the table, and the quick motion of Kazanjian’s hand catching it in midair blurred between the reflections of the chairs on the polished floor.

  “Excellent test. My reflexes are still in working order.”

  “I’m no longer so certain of my skill,” said McCleary.

  Kazanjian tactfully wondered how this was possible.

  His kindly concern intensified McCleary’s despair, and before it could overwhelm him, he vaguely mentioned difficulty with the matron. Just as Kazanjian was poised to ask another question, he declared, “My emotions have betrayed me. I have begun to pity the patients. It is deadly for a doctor.” He waited, wrung by vulnerability, for the other man’s response.

  “You are too harsh.”

  “No. Too honest. I wanted to—assumed that I would—retire from medicine confident of my abilities as a doctor. But I haven’t been granted this conceit.”

  “Every day in this place is a trial. Every hour.” Kazanjian observed him more closely. “Ah. Something has happened.”

  “Julian attempted to hurt himself. I’m to blame.”

  “Just see that Julian is more carefully monitored.”

  McCleary leaned against the table as if to flatten his feeling of sorrow. “But that’s not the worst of it. What’s most distressing is that I sympathize with Julian’s decision.”

  “It is possible that a patient will slip away. Fixing a man’s nose doesn’t fix his mind. But there’s no cure. Don’t make it your portion.”

  I’m losing control, McCleary thought. A warm color, a crimson wetness, lined his eyelids. He was well aware that Kazanjian wouldn’t be deceived by the neutral expression he struggled to maintain on his own face. Gradually, a soothing silence shimmered between them. “It’s very late.”

  “Good night, my friend.”

  At brilliant dawn, McCleary walked aimlessly through damp grass, the cuffs of his trousers soaked, his jacket no protection against the chill or the eyes of the matron, who watched him from a distance with secret concern.