The Crimson Portrait

by Jody Shields

  All to celebrate an imposture.

  EACH OF CHARLES’S jackets had required twelve separate fittings by his tailor at Poole’s, the linen lining measured, basted over padding, and steamed to mold his body into an approximation of the ideal masculine physique.

  Catherine unpacked Charles’s Inverness cape from the wardrobe and pressed her face into the folded fabric at the back of the neck, anticipating traces of Eau Impériale, the cologne he had always worn. Wool. Nothing but the smell of wool. Her fingers rubbed over the stitching on the collar as if it held a hidden code.

  She carried Charles’s clothing in a valise to Julian’s new quarters and stood in the doorway, surprised by the lack of light and the sparse furnishings. Not even a lock on the door, although servants had recently occupied the room. She draped several jackets over the lone wooden chair until it nearly tipped over. A tall hat from Truefitt balanced on the bedpost. Walking sticks, worn needlepoint slippers, and a pair of boots were arranged in a row under the small high window. Even if Julian suspected they were her husband’s clothes, he would never pose the question to her and would wear them to please her. A man could shift clothing with greater ease than a woman.

  When Catherine had finished, she proudly surveyed the display of her generosity, the jackets on hangers strung along the mantel, neat as wings, still bearing faint creases from another man’s body.

  ANNA RESENTED the space Kazanjian commanded and his lack of consideration, as a collection of his materials—colorless liquids, beakers and vessels like fragile toys—had been installed in her studio. She categorized these objects as offerings, lures he placed to entice her. A man’s baubles. In response, she moved her own supplies and worked from the opposite end of the table. This also served to eliminate her pleasure in watching him at work, for his hands were dexterous and graceful.

  For his part, Kazanjian observed her maneuvers, said nothing, was noticeably formal and self-conscious in her presence. Yet, anticipating her needs, he would stealthily slide a pencil, brush, or modeling tool forward on the table so she could find it at her fingertips. The first time this happened, Anna experienced an instant of not knowing what to do with her hands, and their eyes met, hers clouded with confusion.

  The clay model of Julian’s face had been cast again in plaster and coated with yellowish paraffin in preparation for its final electroplating. The layer of wax had thickened the sharp edges of the plaster face, smoothed it into a dull, honeyed surface, eerily similar to flesh.

  A fine camel’s hair brush trembled slightly in Anna’s hand as she dusted Julian’s plaster face with plumbago powder. Released from her brush, the weightless particles of powder soared into the air around her, transformed into wavering instability, as seaweed moves in water. The powder floated down, settling over her hands and arms like dark, fantastic lichen.

  She stood back to study the mask, its nose, cheekbones, and chin gleaming with bronze powder so it appeared solid, more permanent than the plaster it disguised.

  Grudgingly, Artis stepped aside as two orderlies shoved an unwieldy metal box and a battery into place on a bench, then connected it to a generator. The men roughly indicated that his observation wasn’t welcome, so he drifted over to Anna and Kazanjian.

  “Will you cast the mask in silver today?”

  Occupied at the cluttered worktable, they nodded briefly. As Artis showed signs of waiting for a more detailed answer, Kazanjian announced that the plaster model of Julian’s face would be immersed in the lead-lined crucible.

  “Crucible?” Artis carefully printed the word in a tiny notebook.

  “The alchemists made the sign of the cross over their vats, thus its name. Watch you don’t touch it. The liquid inside is sulfuric acid.”

  Kazanjian dramatically pulled on thick padded gloves, so it seemed a giant’s hands had been transplanted onto his wrists. Despite the cumbersome gloves, he expertly lowered the plaster face, suspended on wires, into the acid bath and secured it on a cathode hook. He made an elaborate ritual of this casting process, which Anna suspected was intended to impress her.

  Artis cautiously moved closer as Kazanjian called the boy’s attention to a pair of shimmering gold-red metal squares submerged near the plaster face in the crucible.

  “The two copperplates are wired to the anode. The single liquid battery generates an electric current which deposits copper on the mask. Each metal has an allegiancy.”

  Anna imposed her knowledge over Kazanjian’s explanation. “The wax will melt out, and Julian’s mask will be cast in copper. It will be one thirty-second of an inch thick. Thin as an eggshell. The final layer of silver will add an almost weightless luster to the mask.”

  DAYS LATER, KAZANJIAN dissolved pure grain silver first in nitric acid and then in distilled water, two parts to twenty-eight parts. When cyanide was added to the Florentine flask of silver acid, it magically, silently boiled, becoming opaque. The copper-plated mask was resubmerged in this liquid.

  McCleary had been invited to observe the last step of the casting process, and the doctor slouched on a stool, his feet secure in its rungs. He noticed the tension between Anna and Kazanjian and that she addressed him abruptly.

  Kazanjian snagged the mask in the crucible on a hook and lifted the dripping face free as if salvaging the victim of a beheading. The mask was deposited on a slab of soapstone, acid puddling along its edges, a hard object, its shine obliterating all identifying features.

  “The object has a strange beauty,” Anna said quietly.

  McCleary found himself fidgeting to break the silence and was relieved when Kazanjian inspected the thing, as if his own curiosity had been put into effect by the other man. “Looks like it’s fashioned from silver bone. Seems close to your interest in structure, Dr. Kazanjian.” His arms tightened across his chest, and the muscles around his eyes subtly betrayed his concern. “How will Julian keep the mask on?”

  “I’ve calculated it is light enough that a pair of spectacles will hold it against his face. Or it can be secured with a thin ribbon tied around his head.”

  Anna peered closely at the silver mask, her face visible through the eyehole. “Why, under a hat, the mask will hardly be noticeable.”

  “The man who wears it will notice.”

  She swiftly stood up to defend their work. “Nevertheless, Dr. McCleary, it is the best that can be done.”

  “Of course. I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.” McCleary was accustomed to the temporary binding of cloth and bandages, and this bloodless, seamless, impenetrable mask didn’t fit his definition of heal or cure.

  Craving solitude, McCleary made excuses and slipped away, although he didn’t escape Kazanjian’s worried eye.

  BEFORE JULIAN’S MASK was cast, Anna had imagined that it would fit against his face as closely as a liquid egg was contained by its shell. The outer painted surface of the mask would be smooth as oil. Or painted porcelain, its delicate detail uncannily fine, lifelike.

  Julian would speak, say her name, the mask would magically become soft as tears on his face. The same salt warmth, the same familiarity. No. The mask would shield Julian’s bones, cover his muscles, keep its stiff, unmoving falseness. Only an enchantment could restore the movement of his face.

  As a young woman, Anna had studied in Rome, her footsteps echoing through the galleries, the stone floors cold even on a July afternoon. In one museum, she had circled a statue of Apollo and Daphne for a considerable time.

  The marble figure of Apollo reached out to seize Daphne, but she arched away from him, her bent fingers sprouting into twigs, hair thickening into leaves, and skin hardening into bark. By her transformation into a tree, Daphne escaped Apollo’s pursuit, his attempted rape. Anna had marveled at the sculptor’s skill. What audacity, to capture a fluid act of metamorphosis in unyielding stone, to depict Daphne at the instant her soft flesh roughened into bark. As she was and as she would be.

  Anna needed several sittings to find the exact color of Julian’s skin. To crea
te flesh tone—white red brown yellow—she calculated and combined them in her mind. The physical quality of paint, the sheen of its oil and varnish, mimicked the natural luster of skin.

  Anna painted squares of silver metal with a range of colors and held each one to Julian’s cheek until there was a match. A number was written on the back of this square, the key to the proportion of its colors.

  ANNA HAD BEEN fascinated when Kazanjian explained that gold could not be fused with gold. But gold melted with a trace amount of silver, zinc, or copper alloys increased its hardness and durability, its ability to bridge the bones of the jaw, circle a finger as a ring.

  The gold filling in a tooth or an eye made of glass would not be rejected by the body. Tinfoil could hold injured skin in place while it healed. Bones could be transplanted and fuse to one another. She missed Kazanjian’s curious knowledge. His unconventional expertise. Her sadness turned to anger, and it was in this mood that she criticized Catherine to Julian.

  “She’s a selfish woman. Spoiled by money. It’s a wonder Catherine can pick up a spoon for herself. Even the clay on her hands is an imposition.”

  Julian’s face was directed up at the skylight. “I can’t judge Catherine,” he said simply. “I’m lucky to be alive. Luck has made me less critical.”

  Julian seemed so young. Anna lifted the paintbrush from his mask to listen.

  “I’ve done so little during my life. At university, it was considered a great adventure to sleep outdoors or to set out cross-country with only a compass. Once I walked alone to Myddleton Lodge to see the maze planted in the shape of a cross. I didn’t speak to another soul for two days. I was so daring.” He smiled ruefully. “And now I don’t feel safe in a field. Or anywhere else.”

  His blue eye fiercely demanded her attention. “I have no mirror. I don’t ask what I look like. The doctors see their own handiwork, not a face. But you study me every day. What do you see?”

  Her fingers stiffened, the brush became a useless stick of wood in her hand. “I don’t know what your life will be like. Isn’t that your actual question?”

  “I’m grateful you’ve never reassured me everything will be fine.”

  “When I draw or paint, each movement of my hand is a wish for your recovery.” She was filled with sadness, as lantern light is contained and released by its glass.

  The silence in the room was jagged; it pushed against the walls, escaped outside, where birdsong defeated it.

  CATHERINE RETURNED to the studio, certain it would be empty, unguarded, and found the worktables had been transformed in her absence, grimed with charcoal, chalk, and plaster dust. She couldn’t bear to touch anything, remembering once gathering flowers as a child and her fingers becoming blackened with coal dust from the distant silver factories that had settled over the fields.

  Catherine circled the room, careful nothing disturbed or jarred her, as if what she contained would spill if she moved too quickly. Her head was level on her neck, her footsteps were confident. She would wait until everything was ready, the clay dry, paper smooth, landscape cooled by shadow, hands of the clock aligned. No haste. Not yet. The moment to act would arrive.

  Charles’s photograph was propped up on Anna’s table, ringed by jars of paint. Catherine calmly laid it down, her hand knocked over a jar, and thick red paint slowly, inexorably spread over the photograph. She watched for a moment, then carefully wiped the paint off with a rag, smearing the emulsion on the photograph, erasing Charles’s features so he was barely recognizable.

  “It’s done,” she said loudly.

  There was no edge, no end to this swell of happiness. She glanced around the room, certain nothing could harm her. But then her eye fell on Julian’s half-painted mask, a curved shape with a black eye socket that drove its hollow into her chest, torqued all sensation around it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A MAHOGANY SIDEBOARD in the breakfast room had remained strangely overlooked, stranded while efficient metal cabinets and tables had been installed around it. McCleary treasured this magnificent piece of furniture as if it were his own property.

  He moved aside the containers cluttering the sideboard and delicately rolled back toweling to reveal its surface, inlaid with a scene of the nymph Syrinx as she was being transformed into a reed, escaping Pan’s amorous attentions. Her tormented figure was pieced together from pale pear and satinwood, Chloroxylon swietenia, surrounded by a garland of holly wood, stained brilliant green with oxide of copper. The fine detail of the inlay had been created by an intricate technique of burning with hot sand. Polished, the wood reflected light like a golden bowl; scraped with a knife, it released an aromatic scent.

  Over a period of months, McCleary had carefully examined the sideboard and speculated that it might have been made by Seddon or Adam. His sensitive fingers touched its surface, marveling at the absolute smoothness, the perfection of its joining, without unevenness or cracks. For a moment, the odor of disinfectant vanished, the rattle of the orderlies’ carts in the corridor was silenced, as he studied the image, secret and guarded as the private act of moths at a candle, fish caught in light passing through water.

  At a slight sound behind him, he dropped the toweling on the sideboard as the distraught matron burst into the room.

  “Come quickly,” she shrieked. “Oh God, she’s hurt.”

  McCleary called for Brownlow, and they raced upstairs followed by the plump matron, red faced from her efforts to keep up. The door to the room was ajar, and a young woman sat on the windowsill, moonlight striping one side of her body so she was gray and a deeper gray. When she turned, McCleary saw her arm was covered with black lines, and a deep stain spread on her skirt. She had cut herself again and again.

  She’ll have scars, thought McCleary, an odd consideration, but he’d suddenly remembered the young nurse’s red hair and transparent skin. He gestured at Brownlow to stay back.

  “Hello, Margaret. You must be unhappy about something.” McCleary’s voice spread a tide of calm into the room as he slowly moved forward, almost seeming to float in his white uniform.

  Margaret silently watched him until a board creaked under his foot, then a silver instrument flashed in her hand, and she held it against her wrist.

  The men froze.

  “Don’t come closer. He’s gone. I know it. He’s gone.” Her voice was dull with resignation.

  “Who is gone? Talk to me.”

  “My fiancé.”

  “Tell me what happened, Maggie.” McCleary extended his hands, palms out, demonstrating his vulnerability. He leaned slightly toward her, then took a step, lowering his hands so as not to alarm her with this intrusion.

  “Give me the scalpel.” Brownlow’s commanding voice broke in.

  “No!” She quickly touched the scalpel to her arm, and a black line expanded with blood.

  McCleary shoved over the washstand with a crash, creating a wedge of distraction so they could seize her bloody arms. Brownlow pinched her neck, her head wobbled, and she collapsed into his arms like a stupefied lover.

  The injured nurse was sedated, bandaged, and put to bed. Afterward, McCleary motioned Matron from the room into the corridor for a whispered exchange.

  “Tell me, do you have any idea what happened to this young woman?” he asked.

  “Margaret visited her wounded fiancé in a city hospital. He had told Maggie that his wound was trifling, but she’s a nurse. She examined him and found a green stain on the bandage around his ribs, smelled it, and knew he had gangrene. There was no hope for him. He would die. Maggie pretended everything was fine and kissed him farewell.” She struggled to keep her voice even. “She returned here, and that’s when she cut herself. Maggie said she wanted to die and join her fiancé. But she didn’t want him to see her upset.” The matron struggled not to weep, and regained her customary sternness.

  McCleary strode into his office, secured the door, and gazed wildly around the room, seeking sanctuary. The nurse had been willing to die for her
lover. He mourned the dryness of his own life. No intimacy, no one touched him for pleasure. But his hands gave comfort from pain or death to those under his care.

  There was an ancient tradition of consolatio advocated by Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch. Troubling passions and distress were remedied by reasoning, consolatory counsel, philosophical treatises.

  His internal vision telescoped and he saw his own body stripped, the exposed nerves visible, a robe of pulsing threads. Like the wounded, he too had need of consolationes.

  IT WAS UNUSUAL to find Brownlow in the staff dining quarters, as he seldom socialized with his colleagues. Brownlow would grab a sandwich or a mug of soup from the cook’s helper and eat alone on the terrace or outside the pantry, as if time away from monitoring the flutter of an unconscious man’s breath was frivolous. This afternoon, he sat down for luncheon with several bored orderlies and began to lecture them in an intense, hushed voice.

  “One hundred years ago, Chauliac soaked sponges in lettuce juice as sleeping drafts for surgery. The juice of the morel and hemlock also caused insensibility. Tinctures of black henbane, hyoscyamus; ivy; and mandrake were known to witches. Soporific and anodyne.” His voice rose. “And yet, some argued against pain relief for women during childbirth. It was the female’s lot to suffer, they claimed. Queen Victoria consented to chloroform during delivery of Prince Leopold, and that settled the matter.”

  Brownlow’s audience grew restless, but they continued eating, as leftover food on a plate was a punishable offense.

  “What genius to celebrate Morpheus. Now, I ask you, why?” he hissed, glaring at the group, not waiting for an answer. “Because Morpheus doesn’t recognize the conditions of happiness or sadness. Only sleep.” Exhausted by his rant, Brownlow fell back in his chair as the orderlies filed out.

  A DAY LATER, KAZANJIAN found Brownlow and Artis slumped blank-faced against the wall in the ruined Chinese temple. Wads of cotton wool littered the weathered floor around them, and a bottle transparently gleamed where it had rolled, released by Brownlow’s open hand. A bitter odor invisibly thickened the air, and traces of small charred pellets remained on an iron plate over a small brazier.