The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque

by Jeffrey Ford

  When the waiter approached to refill my coffee cup, I told him I was a painter and asked if he knew who might rent me a space for a week or two to be used as a studio.

  “You might have some luck in Babylon,” said the man, “but nothing comes to mind immediately.”

  I thanked him for his advice and turned back to my meal. After he moved off to attend to other guests, an older gentleman wearing a clerical collar and black priestly garb approached my table and introduced himself as Father Loomis. He was a rather portly little man with round spectacles, a drinker’s nose, and a shock of white hair ever so lightly tinged with color as if it had been stained by weak tea. I had never had any great affection for the church, but I always tried to be polite. I gave him my name and held out my hand.

  “I could not help but overhear that you are looking for a place to paint,” he said.

  “Only for a few weeks at most,” I said. “I’m from New York but have a commission from a local patron.”

  “My church is about a half mile down the road from here. Right off the Montauk Highway. Calvary Church,” he said. “Out in the back field is an abandoned carriage house. A fireplace was put in a few years ago. Would you like to rent it?”

  “It sounds perfect, Father,” I said, “but it must meet one criterion. I need light. Are there windows that let in a good amount of light?”

  “The structure is like a large box. There is one good-size window on the east wall and another on the west. If you’re interested, I would charge you only a dollar a day, and that would include wood for the fireplace.”

  “It sounds as if we have a deal,” I said.

  “Also, a path behind the building winds down to the bay-side shore.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “I hope to be ready to paint by tomorrow morning, the day after at the latest. Where can I find you?”

  “I live in a small room behind the church sanctuary. The front doors are always unlocked.”

  “I will pay you a dollar and a half a day if you can promise me that you will tell no one that I am working there,” I said.

  He agreed to my further stipulation, and we shook hands on the deal.

  After breakfast I dressed warmly for a journey by water and arranged a ride to the ferry in Babylon. The day was bright and crisp, and the autumnal country scenes were as beautiful by sunlight as they had been by moonlight. I arrived at the ferry at approximately noon and waited with a small group of people, mostly sightseers from what I could gather.

  The boat finally came, and we boarded. There was a small cabin to keep passengers out of the weather, and my fellow passengers took advantage of this shelter. I stayed out on deck and took in the immensity of the Great South Bay, watched the boats in the distance, and felt for all the world like one of Melville’s sailors. That day, gliding over the choppy water, I felt a need to paint directly from Nature and promised myself that when I was finished with Mrs. Charbuque I would do just that. My pipe dream of seagoing adventure did not last all that long; the entire trip to the island took no more than forty-five minutes.

  I easily found Luciere’s summer residence, the lemon yellow house nestled amid tall sand dunes. One had to descend from the path to reach the walkway leading to the door. The front of the house faced toward the remainder of the bay, beyond which lay Fire Island and the Atlantic Ocean. It was much warmer standing there on the white stone walkway, the height of the surrounding dunes breaking the wind. Whereas most of the other dwellings I had passed closer to the dock were shacks and shanties used by fishermen and clammers, this was a real two-story house with a wide porch, a tile roof, a widow’s walk at the top, and intricate lacelike gingerbread bordering the eaves. A wind chime consisting of tin monkey figurines hung on the porch and jingled in the breeze. I took this as my cue to proceed.

  I had barely had a chance to knock before Watkin was opening the door.

  “Mr. Piambo,” he said. “Glad you are well.”

  “No thanks to Charbuque,” I said.

  “Why, did you run into him again?” the old man whispered.

  “He cracked me across the back of the head with a pistol a few nights ago.”

  Watkin shook his head and sighed. He quickly recovered from his concern and said, “This way, sir.”

  As we made our way through the house, I recognized some of the furniture from the New York residence, but the place was far more sparsely appointed than the city mansion. I was led to another door, again at the back of the house. Watkin tapped on it and then opened it and ushered me in. I thanked him and stepped forward into a barren room. It was not quite as large as our old meeting place, the ceiling was not as high, but it was sizable. Here, the walls were bare of paper and the gray plank floors were un-polished. There were windows to either side, one looking out toward the bay and one onto the dunes I had just crossed. The screen stood in the center of the room as if waiting for me like an old friend, and I could not help but smile when I saw it. Also present was my chair. I sat down, taking up my familiar position.

  “Hello, Luciere,” I said.

  A floorboard popped, the chime on the porch tinkled, and the wind beyond the dunes whistled. Afternoon light poured in, casting a vague shadow on the screen.

  “Piambo,” she said, “I am so very pleased you have come. My apologies, but…” There were a few moments of silence, and then I heard a muffled sob.

  “No trouble,” I said. “I understand after having met your husband.”

  “You have met him?” she asked, her voice giving way to alarm.

  “Oh, yes, he seems a rather violent fellow. Very adamant about something, though I am not exactly sure what that is.”

  “People are dying because of his twisted obsession,” she said.

  I considered telling her about Shenz but did not want to add to her grief. “I told no one I was coming here,” I said. “Does he know of this place? It seems perfectly remote.”

  “I have always tried to keep it a secret. Even back when I was performing, I used it as an escape when the public became too curious about me.”

  “I am here to finish the portrait,” I said.

  “That makes my heart lighter,” she said. “Since there has been a disruption in our progress, I was wondering if you would want a few days’ compensation.”

  “I will deliver the painting to you in exactly one week’s time, no more. You will tell me how close or far off the mark I have hit, and then you will pay me appropriately. After that, Mrs. Charbuque, we will part company, and I will resume control of my life.”

  She laughed. “Very well,” she said. “Do you think you will succeed?”

  “At this point, just finishing the commission will be a great success.”

  “Do you have any more questions for me?” she asked.

  “Why so many portraits by so many artists?” I asked.

  “What are you alluding to, Piambo?”

  “I went to your house for our last scheduled appointment. No one answered when I knocked. The door was open. I entered and had a look around.”

  “You were in the attic,” she said.

  “I knew a good many of the artists,” I said. “Strange coincidence. Many of them came to a bad end.”

  “The artistic sensibility is a delicate one,” she said. “What I want to know is how the world sees me, even though I cannot be seen. Ostensibly, I was for a time each of the women those painters conceived—but only on their canvases. The reason the commission is so large—if the artist achieves an exact likeness—is to push the artist to think deeply about his subject, about me. More important, my belief is that if one were to match my secret looks to my personality, my intelligence, my experience, my words, then it would be time for me to shed the screen and emerge into the world.”

  “Why only then?” I asked.

  “In a world ruled by men, a woman’s looks are more important than her moral character. Women are to be seen and not heard. That is why my audience was always so enchanted and somewhat afraid of me
. I had attained great power as a woman simply because I was invisible yet possessed something men desire: knowledge of their fate, their destiny. I will not join the world until my outer form and inner being can be perceived at once, each equal to the other. So I wait, and test the waters now and then by hiring a man to show me what he sees.”

  She delivered this explanation in a voice full of heartfelt righteousness, but for the life of me I could not quite grasp what her point was. “Interesting. I see what you mean,” I lied.

  “Is there anything else?” she asked.

  “I can’t think of anything more, but since this will be our last session, tell me something just for the sake of it. Whatever you like,” I said.

  A few moments passed in near silence, the only sound the lonely tinkling of the tin wind chimes. Finally she said, “Very well. I will tell you one more story. This is not about me, but it is from a book of fairy tales I read and loved as a young girl, when I lived on top of a mountain, learning the language of snow.”

  THE BOON COMPANION

  I REMEMBER THE name of this tale as being ‘The Boon Companion,’ and I believe it was Austrian, but it could very well have been Turkish. Not even ‘Red Riding Hood’ or ‘Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp’ fascinated and pleased me as much as this story. It conveyed a sense of terrible loneliness, and for this reason it seemed to befriend me, and I read it again and again.

  “There was a young man, Po, living in a foreign city, who dreamed of being a famous singer. Although he worked during the day as a salesman in a shop that sold mirrors, he spent his nights in the cafés, listening to his favorite vocalists. If truth be told, his voice was not very good, and he could not hold a tune. More than anything, what he wanted was to be up on the stage, garnering the admiration of a great crowd.

  “He would have grown old believing that he could have been a great singer if only he had been given a chance, but something unexpected happened that turned his life upside down. War broke out, and he and all the other young men were conscripted into the army. After harsh and rudimentary training, he was sent to the frontier to fight. Upon arriving in an inhospitable land of rocky hills and little water, he was attached to a company and issued his weapon. His government was hard-pressed by the war, so instead of a gun to take into battle, he was given nothing but a rusty old sword.

  “The first action Po’s company was involved in was to be, by all accounts, the deciding battle of the war. The two armies faced off across a wide plateau. Thousands of men on each side waited for the order to charge. Our hero understood when he was put in the first row with only his sword that he was meant to be nothing more than cannon fodder. There came a great shout from his own ranks and from those on the opposite side of the plateau, and then both armies charged at each other. Tears streamed down his face as he ran with his sword held out straight, for he did not know why he was fighting, and did not want to die.

  “Po had run forward no more than a hundred yards when a cannonball exploded nearby. Shrapnel flew everywhere, and a piece of it hit him on the head. He fell, and as he lost consciousness he believed he was dying. The battle raged on all day around him, but he did not die. The wound to his head was minor and had merely left him unconscious. He was so deeply asleep that he could not hear the din of the battle and the death cries of soldiers all around him.

  “The young man woke the next day to the sound of crows cawing. He was dizzy and his head pained him, but he was alive. When his eyes cleared, he looked around and saw the battlefield littered with dead bodies. As it happened, the warring sides had completely obliterated each other. Po was the only survivor. Or so he thought.

  “His first inclination was to flee. The sights surrounding him were horrifying—mutilated corpses being eaten by the carrion crows, smoldering fires giving off the stench of burning flesh, battle animals, elephants and horses, hacked to pieces or blown to shreds by artillery. He started picking his way across the plateau but soon found himself running, trampling on the remains of the battle’s victims.

  “As he neared the edge of the battlefield and could see a path that led down from the high plain, he heard someone call to him. At first he thought it was a ghost, so anguished was the cry. Then he saw a hand reaching up, fingers groping out of a tangle of bodies. He went hesitantly to it. It was an enemy soldier. The man was gravely wounded and begged for water. Our hero, feeling great empathy for the dying man, took out his canteen and held it to the enemy soldier’s lips. When the man had quenched his burning thirst, he then begged Po to kill him. ‘Finish me,’ he said. ‘Please. Do it quickly with your sword.’

  “The young man wanted to help the dying soldier and did not want him to suffer, but he did not think he could deal a killing blow. ‘If you sever my neck, I can promise you a great reward,’ said the enemy soldier. ‘What can you possibly give to me once you are dead?’ asked the youth. ‘My spirit will watch over you when I am gone and make sure you return to your home safely.’

  “Po wanted desperately to be on his way, but to leave the enemy soldier there to suffer would be the greatest cruelty. He finally lifted his rusty sword, and swinging it now as he had never done in battle, he brought it down on the dying man’s neck. The head rolled away, but no blood came forth. Instead, black smoke issued in a stream from the corpse’s neck. It rose up like the smoke from the smoldering fires but did not waft away on the wind. Instead it coalesced into a human form.

  “When Po saw what was happening, he was terrified. He dropped the old sword and ran from the battlefield. Once he gained the path that led from the plateau, he traveled at top speed and did not look back. All the time he fled, he wondered if his survival was a stroke of good fortune or a curse.

  “That night Po found a cave in which he managed to light a small fire. He had run nearly all day and was exhausted. Leaning back against a rock, he sat shivering, trying to decide which direction he should take in the morning in order to reach the city.

  “Just as he was about to doze off he noticed something moving near the cave wall. What he saw there paralyzed him, for it was a shadow creeping closer and closer to his own shadow cast by the fire. The worst part was, the shadow that approached did not belong to anyone or anything. He wanted to run but found he couldn’t move. The intruding shadow wrapped its dark hands around the neck of his own shadow. The young man could feel an icy coldness filling his body. His breathing grew labored. When he thought the strange apparition was actually going to kill him and he hovered between life and death, he heard a voice whispering in his ear, ‘You don’t need this old shadow. Its ignorance allows it only to mimic you like a monkey. I, Shathu, will serve you as your new shadow.’

  “Immediately the young man was able to breathe again, and he gasped for air. As his breathing returned to normal, he heard a sweet song coming from all around him. The beautiful tune instilled in him a deep sense of peace. He fell sound asleep and rested in tranquillity for the remainder of the night.

  “When he woke the next morning, Po shrugged off the bizarre visit of the alien shadow as a bad dream. He felt otherwise refreshed and resumed his homeward journey. It was only after he had been walking for a few hours that he noticed that, although the sun was to his back, his shadow moved alongside him, not in front of him where it should have. He stopped in his tracks and turned to regard the dark patch on the ground. It flew to him, and he heard in his ear, ‘Do not worry, for I am with you.’

  “As they traveled many miles on the road together, Po and his new shadow, Shathu, became fast friends. Whenever he needed money for food, our hero would go to a tavern and bet the men drinking there that he could make his shadow do unusual things. No one could pass up the opportunity to win such an easy bet, and many people were coaxed into putting their money down against the seemingly impossible. Then Po’s shadow would remain standing while he lay down, or it would turn in profile while he faced forward. Even when the young man’s predictions came true, the crowd of onlookers could not believe it. Many a time Po had
to run for his life from a village, chased by an angry mob that cursed him for being possessed by the Devil.

  “After long hardship and much perseverance, the young man reached the city of his birth to find that the war was now over and had been won by his government. He decided to return to the mirror shop to seek a position, and that is when Shathu whispered to him that they should turn their tavern trickery into a performance.

  “They named their act The Boon Companion. With a strong light projecting its beam upon him and casting his silhouette onto a white screen, Po would address the audience and explain to them that his shadow often became impatient with him and had recently decided to do whatever it liked. The first few things the young man did were closely mimicked by the shadow, and then slowly it would start to change its direction and movements slightly. Eventually the two were performing wildly divergent acts. The crowds loved the show. Adults as well as children were enchanted by the idea of a shadow with a mind of its own.

  “Our hero’s reputation grew far and wide, and he and his boon companion performed constantly and became enormously popular and exceedingly wealthy. Po had finally achieved his goal in life—to have throngs of people admire and respect him. Still, deep inside himself he felt a very small kernel of uneasiness about his situation. He was never alone because as long as there was light, Shathu was with him, and yet he was also very lonely because the shadow was somewhat jealous and did not like the young man getting close to another real person. If Po met someone he liked and wanted to strike up a friendship, the shadow would spy on that person until he discovered some immorality or misdeed. Shathu delighted in divulging the secret, hurtful knowledge to Po, ruining his chance for human friendship.

  “One night after a show, a young woman named Ami approached Po and asked him to sign her program. He signed it and struck up a conversation. They went out for dinner together and found they had much in common. She was not strikingly attractive, but Po instantly fell in love with her innocence and charm. As he walked her home through the dark city, where Shathu could only join them beneath the street lamps, she sang a song. Hers was truly a beautiful voice. Po asked her if she would like to sing before his act on the following night. Ami was shy, but Po did everything in his power to convince her, and she finally accepted his invitation.