The Chalk Artist

by Allegra Goodman

  “Nina says you’re very good.”

  “Dad!” Nina exclaimed. Clearly he hadn’t even opened Collin’s portfolio.

  Viktor heard the reproach. Nina loved him, but she judged him. Even as a small girl, she’d studied him, until he’d had to look away.

  Once, when he was leaving for the airport, he’d knelt down to apologize. “I wish I could stay.”

  “Why are you going, then?” she had demanded.

  Recently, in the heat of argument, she had accused him of ignoring her. “You see,” he’d declared. “That proves it. You’re my conscience.” She had been his family before he had a family. (It did not occur to him to count her mother.) Once it had been the two of them—Viktor and his gray-eyed child, his smaller, better self.

  Now Nina drew herself up, as if to say, This is your big gesture? Agreeing to have dinner? And Viktor was sorry. For a moment he felt guilty, but the moment passed.

  “Where did you go to school?” he asked Collin.

  “MassArt. But I’m still there. I mean technically I’m—”

  “Enrolled?”

  “Well, not currently, but—”

  “The best ones leave,” Viktor said. His words were conciliatory, his tone half-mocking. “The best ones teach themselves.”

  They ate steaks and drank a dark Bordeaux, and Viktor watched Collin. “Did you study game design?”

  Slow down, Collin told himself, as he drank his second glass of wine. “Not exactly,” he told Viktor, “but I have a long-standing interest in EverWhen, so…” The more he drank, the more he found in the Bordeaux. Autumn and dusky stairwells, and dark old jewels and soft lead pencils sinking into blotting paper. He began to feel warm. Viktor was drinking too, but the wine didn’t change him; it was Collin who felt overheated, dangerously glib. Pace yourself, he thought, but he kept talking fast. “I was a gamer when I was younger, and I know the monsters. For example, I can draw every major dragon in EverWhen.”

  “But not the minor ones?” Viktor asked lightly.

  “I can draw them too,” said Collin. “And the serpents, basilisks, and hydras, Gnomes, Elves, mermaids, bears, wolves…” Nina was looking at him anxiously, but he didn’t stop. “Birds of prey, owls, phoenixes…”

  “In other words—” Viktor began.

  “Everything,” Collin cut him off boldly.

  “Excellent,” Viktor said, without a flicker of surprise. Some fans were like that. Everheads programmed their own game mods, copied screenshots, directed their own films. Arkadia kept online galleries of their art, thousands of drawings and paintings. Viktor appreciated these tributes, but they didn’t excite him. He studied optics, graphics, vision, the interplay of imagination and perception. He lived for innovation, not obsessive imitation. “I’ll tell you where to send your stuff.”

  Collin reminded Nina’s father, “I’ve already sent my stuff to you.”

  Nina, Viktor thought. What have you been promising this kid?

  She shot him a look that meant, Stop! You’re overbearing and dismissive.

  Viktor was hurt. He wasn’t dismissive; he saw through people quickly. He wasn’t overbearing; he was busy.

  “Can I get you some dessert?” the waiter asked.

  Viktor said, “No, thank you.”

  Collin glanced at Nina, who sat with hands clasped together on the table. So much for her sweet, arrogant idea. She knew her father, but Collin knew something about sending unsolicited portfolios. He might have reached across or smiled to reassure her. I don’t care; it doesn’t matter. The wine was good and I forgive you for the rest. But at that moment Collin cared greatly. He felt an intense desire to prove himself, as soon as he realized he didn’t stand a chance.

  “Coffee?” the waiter suggested.

  “Just the check,” said Viktor.

  But Collin told the waiter, “Just a pen.”

  When the check arrived, Nina’s heart stopped as Collin snatched it out of Viktor’s hands. Without even glancing at the numbers, he flipped the little paper over and began drawing on the back, working over the entire surface with the restaurant’s black ballpoint. The waiter returned long before he finished, and Viktor had to request another check. He said, “We’re having this one embellished.”

  Collin kept his head down, scribing the paper, so small and flimsy, cross-hatching his shadows, exhausting the pen’s ink supply. Viktor watched with mild interest. Nina held her breath.

  “Here.” Unsmiling, Collin handed Viktor his drawing.

  Viktor squinted at the drawing, holding it close and then farther away.

  Nina plucked Viktor’s reading glasses from his breast pocket. “Put these on.”

  Viktor sensed his daughter’s eagerness, her tremendous hope as the drawing came into focus. “Look at that,” he said gently. “It’s the ouroboros.”

  Collin had drawn the dragon exactly as he appeared in EverWhen. Slinky, snarky, with evil needle-teeth. Somehow, even in ballpoint, the ouroboros took on a silvery sheen, scales delicately rendered, claws distinct, serpentine body curled around a treasure chest overflowing with gold coins. The dragon’s head was long and vicious, jaws bloodied, eyes rolling backward in ecstatic pain as it devoured its own tail. Collin had used every millimeter, puncturing the paper more than once.

  Now, as Viktor held the drawing between his thumb and forefinger, he saw Collin for the first time. Here was a young man who could dash off a perfect dragon in five minutes, drunk. This was a prodigious act of illustration—not only lively but anatomically correct. Did Collin have total recall of the dragon’s five claws? Had he studied the beast’s twenty-one spikes descending in size down his back? Viktor looked over the top of his reading glasses at Collin. “What other monsters did you say you draw?”

  “All of them.”

  Viktor considered his own empire and the myriad creatures in it. No one could remember all of them, let alone draw each one from memory.

  Even so, Collin boasted, “I can draw anything.”

  Viktor smiled as he studied the fierce dragon in his hands.

  Come on, Dad, thought Nina. Say it. He’s an artist.

  Viktor made her wait. He loved pleasing Nina. Pretending he cared about her friends was much less satisfying. Even so, he liked the dragon’s looping body—back arching, scales spiking. Collin had caught the monster’s self-destroying spirit. “It’s good,” he said, at last.

  Nina was almost too glad. “It would have been even better with a decent pen.”

  “I don’t like pen in general.” Collin’s face was flushed. “I like to work in chalk. Chalk is pretty much my forte, because you can do so much with dust.”

  “I can understand that,” Viktor said. “I do a lot of work with dust.”

  Collin nodded. “I like smudging colors, and layering.”

  “I want to show you something,” Viktor said.

  —

  They drove out to Waltham in Viktor’s little BMW, Nina and her father in the front, Collin folded queasily in back. The car was hardly meant for passengers. Hostages, maybe, with their legs trussed up around their ears.

  It was a wet February night, as they sped past glass hotels and low-slung office parks. Viktor was talking to Nina in a low voice and Collin couldn’t hear the conversation. He felt like cargo, until Nina turned around to look at him. She looked excited as a child.

  When they arrived, Collin saw that Arkadia had grown since he and Darius had visited as kids. Like a space colony, its polygonal buildings extended on and on into the night.

  There were the usual glass doors and guards. There was a guest book, and Collin got a sticky name tag printed VISITOR. There were desks and workstations. There was a glass atrium set up as a café. However, on examination, every ordinary feature seemed a little strange. Glass doors darkened as visitors passed through. A life-size sculpture of Toth, the mountain king, loomed over the salad bar, commanding attention with his bear’s head and great clawed paws.

  Viktor led the way through cluster
s of cubicles. Corporate enough, but as they walked, the cubicles grew larger, and their gray walls taller. It was like entering a forest. With each step, Arkadia grew darker. Programmers clustered at monitors like moths to flames. As his eyes adjusted, Collin saw bits of EverWhen on each monitor, fragments of the Trackless Wood, Elves battling tarry monsters.

  “Where’s Peter?” Viktor asked. Despite the late hour, Arkadia was full of people. It might have been the middle of the day. “Anyone seen Peter?”

  Employees looked up, startled by the sudden visit. They seemed almost afraid to answer. “I saw him heading over there,” one woman ventured.

  “Hello?” Viktor was standing before a self-contained room, a windowless cabin in the darkness. He opened the door to a cube insulated and baffled with wavy black foam, a music studio dominated by huge black speakers. There were multiple electric guitars, black piano keyboards, giant computer screens. A burly, bearded man was sitting there, reading a printed book to a little boy in pajamas, visible on his monitor.

  “That’s Nicholas,” Nina whispered to Collin. “He’s a sound engineer.”

  Nicholas spun around in his swivel chair to greet them. He wore a Jerry Garcia T-shirt and his voice was husky. He looked like a retired football player, and he sounded like a rocker before his first cup of coffee. “Bedtime story for my kid.”

  “Go on, go on!” Viktor encouraged him.

  “Of course the Neverland had been make-believe in those days,” read Nicholas, “but it was real now…” He waved as his visitors backed out, shutting the heavy door behind them.

  Stranger and stranger, Arkadia glowed with Whennish light. Viktor led Collin and Nina into a misty corridor. Ethereal shapes appeared, insubstantial from a distance, overwhelming up close. Collin flinched as a dark leopard approached with golden eyes. A few steps farther, he nearly tripped over a bloody giant lying at his feet. Craggy mountains rose up in the distance. He could see an EXIT sign and then the outlines of a door embedded in the rock face, but the door itself was bursting into flame.

  “Nina,” Collin whispered. Dazzled, he was looking everywhere at once, but she looked at him alone.

  “There’s so much more,” Nina told him.

  Collin watched in awe as Nina walked through each illusion. She was the magician’s daughter, and mountains shattered, dragons shrank before her. Monsters turned to dust motes in her wake.

  They walked into another dark space, a labyrinth of tall black walls, each workstation a peephole, a glimpse of river, a dark cavern, or white bats. Curious, the nearest animators glanced up at Viktor. “These are our hellions,” Viktor said. “And this is Peter, their developer.”

  A tall man pushed his swivel chair away from his desk.

  Peter was ten years younger, his brother’s partner, but not quite his equal. Viktor’s technology drove the company and much of the marketplace as well. Peter’s role as developer, scheduler, manager, and coordinator of every team at UnderWorld was secondary. Nevertheless, Peter had powers of his own. Storyteller, Gorey winner, he was Arkadia’s chief geographer, historian, world-builder. The press called him the Dark Lord, while Viktor was simply CEO.

  Collin was amazed by Peter’s height, his leonine body, his long dark hair and glowing eyes, more gold than brown, like liquid amber. Collin couldn’t help staring, but Peter looked at his niece alone.

  Viktor said, “Here’s our artist, Nina’s friend.”

  “Any friend of Nina’s,” Peter said.

  Nervous, Nina tried to read her uncle’s face, and he gazed back, amused. He was mesmerizing, strange. He had performed card tricks for Nina when she was small. Coin tricks, sleight of hand. He had told stories of blood and magic, seven brothers sewing wings into their flesh as they turned into swans, princesses dismembering frogs. He had taught her the violence in fairy tales, and the cruelty of dragonflies. If he built a sand castle with Nina, he’d show her how to build a siege ramp too. And then there came a time when she rejected him. She had watched him enchant young artists and then throw their work away. She had seen him in the recording booth with Julianne. He had never touched her friend, but she’d caught his predatory gaze.

  “He’s not just any artist,” Nina said, and Peter heard the warning in her voice: Don’t hurt him. Don’t dismiss him.

  Peter turned to Collin. “What kind of artist are you?”

  “Any kind you want.”

  You’re cute, Peter thought. Eager, insubstantial. “What if I want Rembrandt?”

  His questions nettled Collin. They were insistent, but idle as well. Peter leaned back against the edge of a cubicle and his whole body seemed to say, I’m already bored with you. “I couldn’t be Rembrandt,” Collin said, “but I could draw a Rembrandt.”

  “So you’re not an artist. You’re a copyist.”

  “I’m both.” Asshole, Collin added silently.

  Peter led the way to a huge whiteboard. Covering half a wall, its surface was adorned with diagrams and flow charts, doodles and sketches.

  Collin frowned. He hated dry-erase markers, their scanty ink, their faded colors and anemic lines. He was up for anything—but how could he show Peter what he could do?

  Peter seemed to read his mind. He dipped his finger in the aluminum chalk tray at the bottom of the board, and the white surface, along with all its graffiti, disappeared, changing to pure glossy black. Then he handed Collin a pair of plastic styluses, one thick, one thin. “You’ve got your colors here.” Peter showed Collin the array of colored squares in the chalk tray. “Just dip the stylus.” Peter demonstrated with a quick sketch of the girl from EverSea. Collin recognized Nina immediately, ten, maybe eleven, with her hair falling over her shoulders.

  Nina had never told Collin that Peter could draw. The sketch was simple and unshaded, just a line drawing in silver, and yet it conveyed a kind of magic. Peter’s hand was so light, the expression on Nina’s face so tender.

  Peter cleared the board with a brush of his hand. “Okay, let’s see what you can do.”

  Tentatively, Collin touched the electronic chalk tray with the thin stylus and saw the tip turn green. He touched the board and left a dot. As he applied pressure his dot expanded into a green pool, a lake.

  He had never played with an electronic board like this. He drew one line and then another. He scribbled with the wireless chalk, and the board picked up his slightest gesture, responding to his every touch. He could dip into any of a hundred colors, and try a thousand shades. He met with no resistance, and no crumbling. With ordinary chalk he would layer, fuss, and wet his sticks to produce saturated color; here his tints were luminous each time.

  Lines came fast; color flowed endlessly. The trouble was the surface felt so slick. He was like a runner trying ice skates for the first time. He could not control his strokes. Every time he tried, his stylus glided out from under him. He had to erase, brushing away his blunders with his hand. “Shit. Sorry!” he murmured. “I’m not…” He tried again, and then again, and all the time he sensed Peter growing colder.

  Nina turned on her uncle. “Why can’t he have pen and paper?”

  “What are those?” Peter replied.

  “Take your time,” said Viktor, enjoying the sport.

  Collin knew he couldn’t take his time. He had to figure this out now. He had about half a minute before Peter lost interest altogether.

  Shut them out, he thought, as he glared at the glossy board. Viktor, Peter. Even Nina. He had to forget her hopes for him. Lighten your strokes. Limit yourself. Keep the stylus under you. Don’t overdraw.

  He began an easy dragon, an ordinary fire-eater with rolling eyes and iridescent wings. He drew the dragon big, working its undulating body across the length of the board. Then he drew a dragon’s nest. He didn’t try for every detail; he practiced with the thick stylus until he had the nest just right. Now he drew a dragon with its breath aflame. With his thin stylus he added scales and claws, jagged, sooty teeth.

  Building confidence, he drew faster. A ph
oenix swooping through the air. A silver falcon. Then, tiring of birds and flying monsters, he brushed them away with his arm, erasing with his shirtsleeve.

  “Oh.” Nina sighed. Collin’s drawings bloomed like fireworks, dazzling and brief.

  “Don’t worry,” Viktor said, because the board saved each image, captured every stroke.

  Collin drew Gnomes and Fire Elves, forest creatures, deer camouflaged in trees. He still slipped, but he corrected quickly. He understood the surface now. With each drawing, Collin grew bolder; his work grew more precise. The board changed into a shimmering landscape and the room began to change as well. He sensed hellions gathering to watch.

  Peter stood among them and he felt a rush of jealous pleasure—surprise at Collin’s skill, admiration of his line. When Peter glanced at Nina she met his eye as if to say, You see?

  Hellions stood in silence as Collin drew a riderless horse, a stallion tossing its long mane and tail. He didn’t know there was a horse in UnderWorld. He only knew he had an audience.

  He drew the horse huge, devouring the wall. He was working freely now with his whole arm. Galloping across the blackboard, Collin’s horse was fearsome, and also strangely beautiful. In silver lines alone, in two dimensions only, Collin animated the horse’s corded muscles, its powerful legs, and flying feet. Intent on his work, he couldn’t see Nina’s rapt expression or Viktor’s triumphant smile. He saw none of this, but he sensed Peter drawing closer. Now I have you, Collin thought.

  When Collin finished he stepped back amid a rustling, a whispering from the crowd. A mix of admiration and foreboding, because Collin’s horse was better than the one in UnderWorld. More powerful, more dynamic, and subtler too. The horse they had appeared cartoonish in comparison. The hellions knew, before Peter said a word. They saw fresh art coming, long days and sleepless nights ahead. They saw it all, even before Peter pointed to Collin’s stallion and said, “I want that.”

  When Collin started working at Arkadia, he collected enough company T-shirts, caps, ear warmers, and fleece vests to outfit everyone in Theater Without Walls. He got his own Arkadian backpack and water bottle and high-fidelity headphones for blasting music late at night. He had never seen so many gaming toys—not just electronics, but miniatures of every beast and warrior. He could have played for hours with the Elves, no bigger than toy soldiers, but far more beautiful, with their blue hair and meticulously painted clothes. Some carried longbows, some knelt to shoot atop computer monitors, some guarded keyboards, brandishing their needle swords. Once, at night, he stumbled upon an entire squadron lined up in formation on the floor.