Memory and Dream n-5

by Charles de Lint

  After giving Rushkin a questioning glance, Bitterweed stood back from her. Isabelle rose under her own steam and let him guide her back out into the foul-smelling hallway. She stared down at her feet as he led her a half-dozen paces to another door.

  “In here,” Bitterweed said.

  She hesitated at the doorway, gaze taking in the easel and art supplies laid out upon a long wooden table. Brushes and palette knives. Tubes of paint and rags for cleaning up. Linseed oil and turpentine. A palette and beside it, a stack of primed canvases. A white cotton smock hung over the back of the room’s one wooden chair. The only windows were set high in the wall, casting a northern light down into that part of the room where the easel stood. There was already a canvas standing in the easel.

  Isabelle turned to her captor. “I told him I wouldn’t do it,” she said. Bitterweed shrugged. It was a familiar body gesture of John’s, but John never put the insolence into it that Rushkin’s creature did.

  Oh, John.

  “God, he named you well, didn’t he,” she said.

  “Rushkin didn’t name me,” Bitterweed replied. “I chose my own name.” Isabelle was intrigued despite herself “Why would you choose to give yourself a name in mockery of someone else’s?”

  “Bitterweed is my name.”

  “Just that. A surname. No given name.”

  “There has to be someone to give you a given name,” Bitterweed said. Isabelle sighed. “You know he doesn’t own you, don’t you? You don’t have to echo his evil.”

  Bitterweed smiled. “We’re not evil, Isabelle Copley. We’re no different from anyone else. We just want to survive.”

  “But at what cost?”

  “Don’t talk to me about cost. Look at you. You’re young and beautiful and why not, considering on how many of us you gorged yourself.”

  “I did not set that fire. I would never—”

  But Bitterweed wasn’t interested in continuing the conversation any longer. Before she could protest, he shoved her into the room and slammed the door behind her. It took her a moment to catch her balance. She heard a lock engage, then his receding footsteps. Then silence.

  She leaned against the table and bowed her head. Nobody knew where she was. Nobody knew Rushkin had returned. Nobody would even think to consider that he would have kidnapped her. She was utterly and entirely on her own—not the way she was on Wren Island, cloistered from the world, but helpless. Even on his deathbed, Rushkin had so easily returned their relationship to how it had been. Even now, he was in control.

  After a long moment, she sat down on the chair and stared at the blank canvas set up on the easel.

  She didn’t doubt that Rushkin’s creatures would track down the paintings of her existing numena. The two at the Foundation would take no great detective work at all. The creatures would acquire them and Rushkin would feed upon them and she’d still be trapped here. Nothing would be changed except that two more people, whose existence in this world were her responsibility, would be dead.

  Unless, she thought, staring at the canvas. Unless ..

  She rose abruptly from the chair and strode to the end of the table. Without giving herself the time to change her mind, she started picking up tubes of paint and squeezing their pigment out onto the palette.

  She didn’t bother to be careful. She didn’t put on the smock. She didn’t bother to put the tops back onto the tubes, but tossed them onto the table when she was done with them, one after the other. Once she had a half-dozen colors on the palette, she opened the can of turpentine and stuck the brush into its narrow mouth. She mixed a thin wash on the palette as she stood in front of the canvas and tried to clear her mind before she began work on a sketchy underpainting.

  She knew she had to work fast. There’d be no time to let the paint dry, no time for finesse or precision. But then she was used to working under adverse conditions. Not lately, not for years. But she hadn’t forgotten. Izzy was long gone from her life, but what Izzy had known, what she’d learned and how she’d made do when money and supplies were scarce and time ran against her—all of that was still inside Isabelle. Her memories were something that no one could take away.

  Memories.

  Standing in the garden and watching the farmhouse as it was engulfed in flames. Seeing the first frail body stumble out to fall charred at her feet. And then the others. All the others ...

  Tears blurred her vision, making it hard to see what she was doing, but she carried on all the same.

  “I did not start that fire,” she whispered to the ghostly image taking shape on the canvas. “I did not.”

  Vignettes From Bohemia

  From the quiet stream

  I scooped the moon

  Into my hands

  To see

  Just how it tasted

  —Lorenzo Baca, from More Thoughts, Phrases and Lies

  I

  Newford, June 1975

  Although the snow was long gone and there was not a soul in sight, Izzy was still nervous the first time she walked down the lane off Stanton Street that led to Rushkin’s studio in the old coach house. She thought being here would re-awaken memories of the mugging, but the only piece of the past that arose in her mind was a more immediate memory from a few weeks ago when she’d finally gone down to the police station to look at their mug books. She’d dutifully scanned page after page of criminal faces, but none looked familiar. The whole exercise seemed pointless, especially after the detective told her how most such attacks never saw an arrest in the first place, little say were brought to trial.

  “It’s especially frustrating in a case of random violence such as your own,” the detective went on.

  “Nine out of ten times, the victim knows her assailants. Not necessarily well—it might be the guy who takes your change at the subway, or some neighborhood kid you upset through no fault of your own, but there’s usually a reason for this sort of an attack. Once we know it, we can work our way backwards from the motive. In your case, however, that line of inquiry takes us right up against a dead end. And since you weren’t robbed, we can’t even hope to trace your assailants through stolen goods—a distinctive piece of jewelry, that sort of thing.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Copley. I wish I had better news to give you than that. All I can tell you is that we’ll keep the file open. If anything new comes up, you can be sure that we’ll contact you.”

  But while her going to the precinct hadn’t made much of an impact on the lives of her attackers, it did have an effect upon her own. Now instead of seeing shadowy, unrecognizable features or, what was worse, Rushkin’s face on the youthful bodies of her attackers, she had a whole new vocabulary of faces to fuel her bad dreams.

  Izzy sighed, still hesitating at the mouth of the lane. It could have been worse. At least you woke up from a dream. But knowing that didn’t make the nightmares any easier to endure. She wondered how Rochelle had learned to deal with the aftereffects of her own attack. What kind of dreams did she have?

  She sighed again. She’d put off returning here for as long as she could. Having finally made it this far today, she knew she had to follow through.

  You’re not dreaming now, she told herself and set off down the lane.

  The coach house was overhung with a tangle of vines just coming into their summer growth. Yellow and violet irises ran along the sides of the building in bands of startling color, each pocket of flowers surrounded by an amazing array of ferns and the plants’ long, pointed leaves. She paused for a moment, looking for movement in one of the second-floor windows, but she could see nothing moving. The building had an uninhabited feeling about it—not quite abandoned, but not lived-in either.

  As she drew nearer, another memory rose up. This one was more painful. She looked past the coach house to where the lane continued on under a canopy of maple and oak boughs. That was where she’d first seen John—really seen him and his resemblance to The Spirit Is Strong instead of talking to him in the shadows of the library’s steps. Sh
e wished he could be there now, but that part of the lane was as empty as the length of it that she’d already walked down.

  Don’t think about him, she told herself. Easier said than done, but she had to make the effort.

  She went up the stairs and tried the door. Locked. Descending, she went to look under the clay flowerpot by the back door. The key was there, just where Rushkin had said it would be in his letter.

  So he really had gone away.

  At the top of the stairs once more, she used the key to open the door and walked into a curiously unfamiliar studio. It had the same layout as she remembered, but all of Rushkin’s art was gone, which made the room appear much larger than it ever had before. The only finished art was her own, which he’d obviously taken up from the storeroom below and put on one of the walls. The two easels remained, hers and his, as did the long wooden worktable that ran almost the length of the room. There she could see boxes of art supplies—paint tubes, brushes, turpentine, linseed oil and the like, all still in their manufacturers’ packaging. Under the table were stacks of blank canvas, frames, pads of sketching paper, cans of gesso and other materials. Her easel stood where it usually had, with her paints and brushes neatly arranged on the small table that stood beside it. A blank, primed canvas waited for her on the easel. Rushkin’s easel was empty, as was the top of the small table beside it.

  Izzy walked slowly around the studio, taking it all in. The room held such an eerie sensation of loss and emptiness. The feeling of disuse she’d sensed outside was so much stronger here. Even the air was different—a little close because of the closed windows, but lacking the smells of a working studio as well.

  Paints and turpentine.

  She found a note on the worktable that basically repeated what the letter he’d sent her had said. The only addition was an assurance that the rent and utilities would continue to be paid while he was gone.

  Gone where? she wanted to know.

  But that was Rushkin. He only explained things when he felt like it.

  At the bottom of the letter was a postscript that told her if she had any questions, or if any problems arose in his absence, she was to call Olson, Silva & Chizmar Associates. After the name of the law firm, he’d written in their phone number.

  Izzy stared thoughtfully at the name, then went downstairs to see if Rushkin had left the phone connected. When she got a dial tone, she called The Green Man Gallery.

  “Hello, Albina,” she said once the connection was made.

  “Izzy. It’s good to hear your voice. How are you feeling?”

  “Much better. I’m going to start painting today.”

  “Good for you.”

  “But I was just wondering something. You remember that offer that was made for The Spirit Is Strong at my show—can you tell me the name of the law firm that made it?”

  “Let me think. It was Silver, something or other. I’d know it if I heard it.”

  “Silva?” Izzy asked. “Olson, Silva & Chizmar Associates?”

  “Yes, that’s it. Why? I thought you couldn’t sell the painting.”

  “I still can’t. I just ran across that name and something made me think of the offer.”

  After a little more small talk, Izzy managed to get off the phone. She wandered around Rushkin’s apartment, but there was even less to be seen here than upstairs. The furniture remained and there were some canned goods and staples in the kitchen, but everything else was gone. All the paintings and sketches. All of his personal belongings. It was as though he’d never lived here at all.

  Returning to the studio, Izzy went through some of the boxes whose contents she couldn’t guess and found still more art supplies. Taking the items out, she soon had an array of soft and oil pastels, vine charcoal, pencils, cans of fixative and any number of other useful items laid out on the long worktable.

  It was like having her own art shop, Izzy thought, right here in her studio. Except it wasn’t her studio, was it? It was Rushkin’s, but Rushkin was gone, taking with him every trace of himself that the long room had held.

  She turned slowly around, studying what remained.

  Why had he gone? Why had he left her all of this material? Why did he have his lawyers make that offer on The Spirit Is Strong when he’d wanted her to destroy it herself? Surely he hadn’t meant to spend that kind of money just so that he could do the honors?

  But then she shook her head. No, he’d distinctly said that only she could send John back. She’d brought him over, so it would have been up to her to send him back.

  She drifted over to the window and sat down, staring down at the place where John had been sitting that autumn morning. None of it made sense. Not what Kathy had taken to calling her numena. Not Rushkin’s disappearance. Not how she had inadvertently sent John out of her life ....

  Although how inadvertent had that been? Perhaps it would be more fair to say that she’d been taking his measure and he’d been found wanting. Maybe he’d never lied to her, but what hope could there be for a relationship built upon vagaries and riddles? When one of them had no past. When one of them hadn’t even been born, but was called up by the other through magic.

  After a while she got one of the pads of paper and a stick of vine charcoal and returned to the window seat. She sat and drew what she could see of the lane while she let her thoughts go round and round in her head, giving them free rein until they began to run into one another. They became a kind of a mantra, the questions losing their need to be answered, eventually dissolving into a state of mind where all she did was draw.

  I’m not going to ask questions anymore, she decided. Not of people. I’ll only ask questions of my art.

  She put aside the pad and took the stump of charcoal over to her easel and began to block in a painting. By the time the sky began to darken outside the studio windows, she had an underpainting completed. Cleaning up, she locked the studio door behind her and pocketed the key. She ate out at the Dear Mouse Diner, and that night she went out to one of the many parties on Waterhouse Street, where she had far too much to drink. Instead of going home, she let some young poet, two years junior to her venerable twenty years of age, take her home to his bed.

  Around four in the morning she woke up with the feeling that they were being watched. She sat up and looked around the unfamiliar room, then went to look out the window. The bedroom was on the third floor and there were no trees outside, no fire escape that someone could have climbed up, not even any vines or gutters.

  Instead of returning to the bed, she got dressed and went to the bathroom. It took her a few minutes to track down a bottle of aspirin. She took three with a glass of water, then left the poet’s apartment and walked the two and a half blocks back to her own on Waterhouse Street.

  She didn’t return to the poet’s bed, but two nights later she slept with his best friend.

  II

  November 1975

  Izzy had seventeen pieces hanging in her second solo show at The Green Man Gallery. By the end of the first week of the show, every one of them had sold.

  “Obviously we priced them too low,” Albina said the night that she, Kathy, Alan and Izzy went out to celebrate.

  They had a corner table in The Rusty Lion with a view of Lee Street. The shops were all closed, but the street, even on this brisk November evening, was bustling with people, an even mix of bohemian types and commuters, tourists and area residents, on their way home, on their way out for a night on the town, or just on their way from one indefinable point to another. In the midst of the crowd, Izzy spotted a tall woman with a lion’s mane of red-gold hair. She walked with a pantherish grace, oblivious of the chill, her light cotton jacket hanging open. Men turned to look at her as she went by, noting her obvious charms rather than the way her ears tapered into narrow points from which sprouted small bobcat-like tufts of hair. But it was dark, Izzy thought, and the red-gold spill of the woman’s mane hid them from sight.

  Izzy had finished the painting that brought this num
ena over two days before hanging her show. She hadn’t named the piece yet, but seeing the woman in the flesh, admiring the fluid movement of her musculature as she glided by, she decided to call it simply Grace. She wished she’d thought to set the main figure off against a crowd the way she appeared here on Lee Street, rather than having her leaning against the base of one of the Newford Public Library’s stone lions as she was in the painting.

  “I’m truly sorry,” Albina said.

  It took Izzy a moment to realize that Albina was speaking to her. Alan smiled.

  “She’s become far too successful now to talk with plebes like us,” he said. “Haven’t you, Izzy?”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “The next time,” Albina went on, “we’ll definitely ask for more.”

  “Yes,” Kathy declared loftily. “We must ask two or three times the current price for subsequent shows. We have here the makings of a true artiste to whom all the world will one day bow in homage.”

  “Oh, please,” Izzy said, aiming a kick at Kathy’s leg under the table, but she blushed with pleasure.

  Kathy moved her leg and all Izzy succeeded in doing was stubbing her toe on the rung of Kathy’s chair.

  “Now, now,” Alan told her. “You don’t see Van Gogh carrying on like this.”

  “That’s because Van Gogh’s bloody dead,” Kathy said. “Don’t you keep up on current events?”

  Alan’s features took on a look of exaggerated shock. “You’re telling me he’s passe?”

  “Or at least passed on,” Kathy said. “Unlike our own belle Izzy, whose star is definitely on the rise.”

  While Izzy knew that they were only teasing her, she still couldn’t stop feeling somewhat awkward at how well the show had done. The paintings all selling. The reviews all so wonderful. Other painters she only knew from their work or their reputations coming up to congratulate her. The success was more than a little frightening, especially when she knew that what had ended up in the show hadn’t been her best work. She hadn’t put one of the pieces that called up the numena in the show, and they were all far better than the cityscapes and real-life portraits that had sold. It wasn’t that she had invested more of herself in the paintings that called up numena; they just seemed to draw the best up from her, to push her artistic limits in a way that the other paintings didn’t. Or couldn’t. The ones she’d sold had been technically challenging. The paintings of her numena challenged something deep inside her to which she couldn’t attach a definition.