The Color of Light

by Helen Maryles Shankman

  27

  Tessa dreamed. She was flying, swooping up and down above the narrow twisting streets of lower Manhattan, above the fire escapes, the water towers, the chimney pots. Coming slowly back down to earth, she floated through the colonnaded portico of a townhouse on the corner of a pretty little square. Strong arms carried her up a flight of stairs. Ghostly figures passed back and forth, touching her and whispering. She had vague recollections of being undressed, a warm bath. A voice like a lullaby. The world’s softest bed, and then sinking down into deep, dreamless sleep.

  She woke up in a strange bedroom. She had no idea where she was; what time it was, what day of the week, or for that matter, whether it was night or day. The walls were painted a glossy brown, the moldings a contrasting creamy white. The room contained a desk, a lamp, a bed, a bureau, all Mission, all very good. There were blush-colored roses in a green Depression-era urn, set in front of an antique mirror oxidizing with age. A door that might lead to a bathroom. Floor length velvet curtains suggested a terrace. Pillar candles splashed the surfaces all around with yellow light.

  Raphael Sinclair was in the armchair next to the bed. He leaned forward, took her hand in both of his.

  “My sweet girl.”

  “Where am I?”

  “My home,” he said. “My bedroom, actually. Your friends found you on the floor of your studio Monday morning. You passed out. ”

  Oh, yes. Two C’s. Lost my scholarship. Kicked out of school. Lucian and April. Her whole body crumpled with the impact of the memory.

  “Listen,” he said quickly. “Yesterday, a new scholarship was endowed. The Sofia Wizotsky Memorial Scholarship, to be awarded annually to a gifted student. You are the first recipient. I should have done it years ago.” She opened her mouth to protest. He put up his hand to stop her; not yet. “Secondly. Levon will be your new adviser. Josephine is a wonderful painter, but it sounds like she has a bit much on her palette right now. Third. I’ve spoken with a friend of mine. You can start working at Anastasia as soon as you’re ready.”

  “What day is it?”

  “Wednesday,” he said. “Three in the afternoon.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “I’ve been asleep for three days? What happened?”

  “A virus, accompanied by high fever. A touch of whatever’s going around.” He leaned closer. “I’m so sorry,” he said earnestly. “Sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

  For three days she’d laid in his bed, small and white and vulnerable. Outside of a few hours spent making arrangements, he’d hovered over her, holding her hand, watching her breathe, reliving the moments of his life that had brought him to this point, this girl.

  He turned it over in his head a hundred different ways, but always, it came down to this: she has been returned to me. And also this. How could he. How dare he. And this. Run away. Run as fast as you can.

  Still…Tessa’s bare skin by the light of the moon. Tessa smiling down on him, a Pre-Raphaelite apparition. Her raspberry lips, her lithe, little, welcoming body. The informed innocence of her touch.

  The doctor had clocked her temperature at 104 degrees, then scribbled a prescription. Keep her cool, he said. Give her this, twice a day. Soup. Tea. Let her sleep. After he left, Rafe stood over her motionless body and thought. You can suck the life out of someone without ever touching a drop of their blood.

  During dreams where she panted like she was running from someone, where she whimpered and wept, he held onto her, fearing that in her delirium she would launch herself from the bed and injure herself coursing blindly through the unfamiliar house. At times he gathered her in his arms, wanting to feel the reassurance of her heart beating against his chest. Thinking about what he would tell her when she awoke. Wondering how he would live without her, for she would surely leave him after the tale he had to tell.

  There was a sick feeling at the pit of his stomach. He rested his forehead on the crisp white sheets. He felt her hand on the back of his neck, her fingers in his hair. She forgave him. Of course she did.

  “How?” he asked her, honestly bewildered. “How?”

  But she was almost asleep again, her breath returning to steady, rhythmic waves. He stood over her, regarding her. A small flutter of pleasure at the sight of her hair spread over his pillow. A small flutter of grief. After tomorrow, she would be gone.

  “Sleep, sweet girl,” he said, kissing her forehead. “I’ll take care of everything. Now sleep.”

  The next time she awoke, it was evening. The curtains had been drawn open to reveal a view of the park. There was a smear of red in the western sky. She was alone. She pushed aside the duvet. She was wearing a clean white tank top and white silk shorts, not hers.

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed, and stood. A little shaky, yes, but manageable. She shuffled off to the bathroom, admired the white porcelain fixtures, the polished brass knobs, the subway tiles, a huge white magnolia blossom floating in a glass bowl.

  There was a painting hanging over the quarter-sawn oak headboard. A pair of lovers, tangled in a froth of white sheets. The man hoisted himself up over the woman, gazing down at her lovely face, her black hair tousled across the pillow, her arms around his neck. The lines were bold and confident, but the feeling was unmistakably tender. Klimt? Schiele? She couldn’t tell which.

  She moved to the bureau. There was a grooming set on a mirrored tray, silver and tortoiseshell, monogrammed with the initials RS. She picked up an oval hairbrush, stroked it delightedly against her curls.

  Next to the tray was a sketchbook. It was bound in smooth black calfskin, like the one he had given her. She opened it, flipped through it. The pages were good heavy paper, yellowing now around the edges, bristling with drawings in every medium, charcoal, pencil, pen and ink. There were quick studies of people at café tables, parks, restaurants. The way the light fell across this table, across that face. Mothers pushing baby carriages. Soldiers in uniforms. Still lifes, half-empty wine glasses, half-eaten baguettes. Unfinished love poems. Dates jotted down; times, places, mysterious meetings with long-ago comrades.

  The drawings were beautiful; there was a wistful stillness to them, a stark loneliness that reminded her of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks hanging on the wall of her apartment.

  A paper fell out, fluttered to the floor. She picked it up. Yellowed and cracked at the folds, it appeared to be a game of Exquisite Corpse. The head of a young man, the body of a Roman statue, the wings of an angel. With a start, she recognized Raphael Sinclair. She wondered who had drawn it, and when. Carefully, she folded it and slipped it back in the sketchbook, replaced it on the bureau. And turned around.

  Rafe was standing behind her, hands in his pockets.

  “Hello, Tessa.”

  “Hello, Mr. Sinclair.”

  “I see you’ve found my sketchbook.” As if he hadn’t left it out where she would find it.

  “You’re very good,” she said.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I like to think I was.” He smiled at her, a sad, rueful sort of smile, but a smile just the same. “You must be famished.”

  “Well. Maybe a little.”

  “Why don’t you come downstairs, and let’s see what we can find.”

  He bundled her into his robe, carried her downstairs, installed her in a corner of the Stickley couch, swathed her in a silk shawl from Kashmir. He unfolded a tray table that he found in a closet, then disappeared into the kitchen. Moments later, he returned with a toile tray, trimmed in gold, bearing a footed soup bowl in white porcelain, with lions’ heads for handles.

  Tessa picked up the spoon, then hesitated, poised over the bowl.

  “It’s from Bernstein’s,” he said. “Don’t worry, it’s kosher. Eat.” He pulled up a chair opposite the couch, watched her, inhaled the herbal bouquet of parsley, bay leaf and dill. When she was finished, he brought her another.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Better now.”

  She lay back on the couch, gazed around the Great Room,
at his furnishings, the woodwork, the red lacquered walls, the hanging lamps from Morocco, the masterpieces of art history.

  “Do you like it here?” he asked.

  “I love it here,” she replied, running her hand over the lustrous velvet nap of the couch cushions.

  “I’m so glad,” he said, meaning, I love you.

  He sat back in his chair, passed his hand across his forehead. “Forgive me,” he said quietly. “But this…this brings back the worst memories in the world.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, Tessa,” he said. “Don’t ever apologize to me.”

  Rafe took her hand in both of his, turned it over, tracing the lines in her palm with his fingers. “What did your grandfather—Yechezkel—tell you about her?” His voice tripped a little. “About Sofia.”

  Anguished. “He said she was trouble. There was some scandal.”

  “A shonda,” he said.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “It must have been serious. They were a well-to-do family, and they couldn’t find anyone in all of Poland who would marry her.”

  “Oh, Yechezkel. You’re still such an asshole.” he muttered. “What else did he say?”

  She spoke in a muffled voice, barely audible. “She went wild in Paris, always hanging around with some shaygetz.”

  Rafe angled his head sharply away from her. Though his expression was lost in shadow, she saw him swallow hard, blink something away.

  “That’s so cruel,” he said in a low voice. “So cruel.”

  He got up, began to move restlessly around the room. His pace altered, lengthening, until it resembled the stride of a jungle cat stalking prey. He prowled through the floor, in and out of nooks and shadows, opening and shutting drawers until he found what he was looking for, a cigarette. He leaned against a table, lit it with a tortoiseshell lighter, blew out a stream of smoke.

  “I didn’t know you smoked.”

  “I don’t,” he said. “For years now.”

  It was a few minutes before he spoke again. “I have something to tell you,” he said.

  A shiver went up the back of her neck. His eyes. They were changing. The irises first, growing lighter and lighter until they were a shade of blue so pale it was almost white, until she could almost see through them, like pond ice. His pupils changed too, the smooth black borders rapidly contracting and expanding, almost to the edge of the iris. Simultaneously, the whites of his eyes flamed a fierce, bloody red.

  “Tell me you love me,” he said. “Tell me again, before I begin. Because, by the end of the night, you will want to run from me. And I want to hear you say it, just one more time.”

  She got to her feet. The robe fell to the floor. She stood over him, looked directly into the strange, wolfish eyes.

  “I love you, Raphael Sinclair.” she said.

  He stared back at her. And then his arms went around her, and he pulled her close, burying his face in the wilds of her hair, whispering something she couldn’t hear. Then he dressed her in his robe as if she were a little girl, settled her back on the couch again, spread the shawl over her knees.

  “I have a story for you, Tessa Moss.” he said. “A story of light and dark, of good and evil. Of love and art, of wrong and right. And the blurred lines in between.”

  Part Two

  I was born in Cambridge, England in 1909, the product of a May Fair fling that went too far. My father, a physics student at the university, and my mother, a local girl hoping to improve her station, knew straight off that it would be a mistake to marry, but marry they did, and seven months later, I was born.

  They split up when I was two. Since I was in the way of Mother’s compulsive partying, and Father went on to hook up with a proper social equal, they agreed to send me off to a dismal boarding school in East Anglia.

  I don’t remember much from the early years. Bad food. Cold rooms. Hateful teachers. Mean older boys. Holidays with my mother, who had married a pilot, drinking too much and asking tearfully if I forgave her for giving me away. Rare meetings with Father, who could barely bring himself to look at me. Only one thing saved me. I could draw. I copied the funny papers, the comics. I covered the pages of my schoolbooks with drawings of trains, fighter planes, automobiles. Caricatures of the masters, the boy sitting in front of me.

  When I was thirteen, my father asked me to come live with him in London. He had been knighted while I was away at school; he’d invented something in the tinning industry that helped feed our boys in Flanders, and now he was a Sir. He had a house in Bloomsbury near the British Museum, a stone-faced Georgian townhouse as cold and as gray as he was. I showed him my drawings. I thought they would make him proud of me. The kids at school used to ask me if they could keep them. He told me art was no profession for a man.

  When I came into my majority, I left for Paris. I attended the Academie Julian, where we painted from models in the morning and went off to copy old masters in the Louvre in the afternoon. I wanted to be the next Hopper, creating soulful landscapes of loneliness and alienation. In the evenings I would meet my friends at La Coupole or Café de Flore and try to talk the French women and American expatriates into bed. It was 1939, and I thought I was the luckiest man alive.

  I remember everything about that day. It was a Tuesday, a sunny January morning. The model was Lulu, a bored brunette with a nice behind. I may have slept with her once or twice. Sofia was late. She was wearing a pea-green dress, and she was a little flustered, which made it harder for her to remember her French conjunctives. She apologized to the master in very bad French, and he pointed to an empty spot a little ahead of me to the right. The light had changed, and the monitor went to roll up the shade a little more. Just as she took her seat, a single shaft of sun beamed in, cutting through the haze of cigarette smoke, bathing her in a brilliant white light. Like God’s flashlight. Everybody turned to stare. She looked like an angel.

  That morning, I drew very badly. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of the new girl. I finally gave up on trying to draw the model and satisfied myself with drawing Sofia’s lovely profile. In my head, I practiced what I was going to say to her. Bonjour, je m’appelle Raphael Sinclair. Guten Tag, something something Raphael Sinclair. You haven’t seen Paris till you’ve seen it with an Englishman with a limited command of French. Hey, my dad’s a knight! Please allow me to introduce myself, Raphael Sinclair, I think I love you.

  Finally, the monitor dismissed the model. I put my drawing board under my arm, screwed up my courage, leaned over and said, “Excusez-moi,” to her shoulder.

  She turned around, looked up at me from under a velvety fringe of thick black lashes, and said, “Yes?” in heavily-accented English.

  I stared down into the wild tragic depths of her eyes, and whatever clever thing I was going to say was lost forever.

  Just then, a big blond American fellow slid over to her, and said breezily, “Care to join me for lunch? Just heading over to Brasserie Lipp.”

  Without turning her gaze from mine, she said, “No, thank you.”

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized with a winning smile, extending his hand. “I’m Sawyer Ballard. Of Boston, Massachusetts and Newport, Rhode Island. I know we haven’t been introduced, but we’re all pretty informal here. I promise I won’t bite. Unless you’re a croque monsieur. Come on, it’ll be fun. I’m meeting some other artists there. You too, Sinclair, you can bring your girl.”

  There was someone I saw sometimes, and she was not my girlfriend, but Sofia didn’t know that, and I saw her face fall; only for a moment, but there was no mistaking it.

  “All right,” she agreed, and began to gather up her things. Sawyer caught my eye, gave me a sly smile, shrugged. All’s fair, he was saying.

  Already, I had lost. Any man with an ounce of self-respect would have picked up his marbles and gone home. Me, I followed them to Brasserie Lipp.

  A clutch of artists I knew from Beaux-Arts and Academie Julian were already at a table inside. They rose when we a
pproached, waved, made room, called for more chairs. Sawyer introduced Sofia around the table. She smiled bashfully, making every manly heart beat faster.

  We were an artistic League of Nations. There was Mlotek, a Romanian Communist who only painted religious tableaux. Max Erlichmann, a German newspaper photographer, and his Czech journalist girlfriend, Beata Grunzweig. Colby, a fellow Brit, wondrous at watercolor, and the closest thing I had to a best friend.

  He pulled out a chair for her next to someone I knew only peripherally, Leo Lubitsch. Yes, that Leo Lubitsch, the one who publishes all the fashion magazines. At the time, he was working as the graphic designer for Vous, an arty little magazine we all admired. He knew everybody. I was always seeing him with someone famous; Picasso, Kandinsky, Gary Cooper, Jean-Paul Sartre. Hemingway, once. Today he was there with Margaux DuBois, which was rather scandalous, considering that she was already married to somebody else.

  He nodded pleasantly to me, smiled at Sofia like she was the first day of spring. We all took our seats. Sofia and I were separated by Sawyer’s large frame. I took out my sketchbook and a pen as I always did.

  “Your girl meeting you here, Sinclair?” said Sawyer, carelessly running his hand through his thin hair and adjusting his little round glasses. If I were a dog, I would have growled. Rumor had it that he kept a woman in an apartment somewhere. “Smoke?” He took out a silver cigarette case, offered it to Sofia. Gingerly, she took one, placed it between her pillowy red lips. He bent close to her face to light it, winning the envy of every man at the table. The match flared, glinting off his wire-rimmed glasses and casting a golden glow over her features.

  It was obvious that she had never smoked before. She inhaled deeply, coughed, tried to cover it up, and her eyes went watery.

  A waiter bent over Sawyer, whispering. He threw down his napkin and pushed away from the table. “I have a call. Be right back.”