The Crimson Portrait

by Jody Shields

  After studying the roses’ bluish green leaves and hooked thorns, she identified them as Aimée Vibert, a highly fragrant Noisette. “Now I understand the gardener’s scheme. The blossoms drop from the fruit trees, succeeded by blooming roses. So the trees appear to flower twice.” She smiled with satisfaction at having deciphered the unknown gardener’s strategy.

  Kazanjian pinched off a rosebud and gallantly offered it to her.

  “Don’t pick the roses now. They’ll never bloom.” Kazanjian’s face colored, and she turned away, unwilling to witness his disappointment. The surest way to thwart desire was to anticipate it. “I apologize. Your gesture was kindly meant.”

  His hands were in his pockets, and he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  She willed the conversation to a neutral topic. “Last summer, roses grew over the skylight in my studio. I had them cut back.” Remembering the spiked branches laced together over the glass, she again felt the oppression of claustrophobia.

  “Did they block the light?”

  “The leaves were always moving in the wind. The shadows were distracting.”

  “I’m not a poet or an artist, but I appreciate quiet observation.”

  “Sometimes I believe my skills aren’t equal to my task. I cannot use light-colored chalks, the flesh tones, to draw Julian’s damaged skin. He requires a palette of impalpable colors. Harsh pinks, red. A crimson portrait.”

  “I also have a particular challenge. To observe a patient without immediately calculating what clever device I could create for this man. As if I’m more important.” He shyly looked at Anna to see if she would dismiss him.

  She was touched by his revealing self-criticism. She studied him, and it was as if another person had become uncoupled from Kazanjian’s sturdy figure in a rumpled jacket, and Anna feared she was unable to reject him. She leaned over and swiftly cut a rose, its stem brilliant white where it was open to the air in her palm.

  “You see, I haven’t lost my habit of pruning. I cannot help myself.” Her smile was forced and apologetic.

  They returned to the house with little conversation between them. Anna sensed that the side of Kazanjian’s body next to her was a walking outline of pressure and purpose.

  HELD UPSIDE DOWN, the bowl released its mass of damp clay onto a canvas-covered board. Catherine slapped and pressed the gray stuff into a ball, cut it on a taut wire, and slammed the two halves together, expressing air. The rhythmic smack and pound of the clay reverberated in the room, and she was gratified when Anna looked up, distracted by the noise.

  Catherine worked the clay until her hands ached and her wedding ring was webbed with pale dirt, the diamonds dulled. She plunged her grimy hands into a basin and stared into the clay-clouded water, imagining Julian’s face there, then blinked and suspended her dead husband’s face over his. Her fingers emerged from the water burning with cold, transformed into scarlet flesh.

  Anna’s voice interrupted. “Julian is finished for the day. Bring clean water so he can wash.”

  Catherine refilled the basin from a pitcher and, balancing it against her waist, slowly walked over to him. They stood face-to-face, the basin between them, as he rinsed his hands, then his dripping fingers briefly cupped her face. Water streamed down her neck.

  Startled, she moved, and the water spilled, wetting her skirt, forming a gray pool around their feet, as if they were isolated on a fragile island.

  The couple were oblivious to Anna, their intimacy surrounding them like the aura of gold leaf isolating holy figures in a medieval painting, the metal thinner than paper, protecting them with a curious impenetrability.

  Anna’s glance caught Catherine in its angle, and she watched as the younger woman’s lips rounded, filled with color, while her pupils expanded into a fathomless, endless circle that was simultaneously yielding and forbidden, the only black pigment on her body.

  When I’ve finished with the war or it has finished with me, this is what I will paint, Anna thought. Desire on this woman’s face.

  She gently lifted a corner of the paper on the easel, and a rainbow of powdered chalk became airborne, its separate colors blending into gray as it streamed to the floor.

  Catherine left the studio carrying tools in wooden buckets to the lake. She lacked the skill to use them, could only clean them. She crouched in the rough grass, skirt tucked between her legs, peering at her reflection in the greenish lake. Her face was indistinct, an oval that broke into glassy streaks as the tools plunged into the water, their sharp points glinting over dark weeds.

  Julian was hidden from her like Charles, and she was unable to imagine an injury on Julian’s skin, to visualize the harm that had been done to him. To dwell on this was to court misfortune. But she was determined to correct the hand that fate had dealt Julian. He would look at her and forget his own face.

  That evening, she looked around her bedroom as if she had returned as a stranger. The candle remained in its silver socket on the bedside table. No tread on the carpet. Draperies in benevolent folds. The doors, windows, and walls were still sharp and secure. But the mirror was a bright and painful smoothness that held her image, momentarily unrecognizable.

  THE SUMMER LIGHT in the studio intensified each passing day, deepening the iridescent, honeyed pinks and corals of the shells on the walls into riper color as if they were fantastic fruit. In this place, Catherine felt surrounded by Julian’s vivid living presence, the color of his skin identical to the shells. She imagined if a shell were plucked from the wall, it would be threaded with tiny veins, delicate as a rosebud, bleeding from the spot where it had been removed.

  The studio was becoming more precious to Catherine than her house with its fine carving, gilding, paneling, inlaid wood, stone, unchanging view from the solidly framed windows.

  She brought certain objects to the studio as offerings to Julian. A porcelain vase for wildflowers. A lacquered Chinese tray. A carriage clock. Spoons of silver wrapped in thick flannel. A tea service banded with gold.

  “How foolish,” said Anna, holding one of the teacups to the light. “Fine things don’t belong here. Take them away.” Black charcoal from her fingers marred the cup.

  Catherine set down a dish with such deliberate force it seemed her intention was to grind it into the table.

  “But we have so little comfort here.” Julian balanced a cup in his hand. “I believe the lady wants to spoil a soldier.” He smiled at Catherine. “In the trenches, the most ordinary things were precious. A clean cup. Clean water.”

  Anna reluctantly agreed the tea service could stay but said she wouldn’t be responsible if anything was damaged. She returned to the easel, her anger unsettled, and as she drew Julian’s image, the charcoal made a thin, irritated scratching. She furiously rubbed out details of the sketch again and again, until the paper tore.

  A negative influence held her hand, paper, and palette. Catherine must have been directing ill wishes toward her, like the invisible pressure that surrounded a bomb as it fell. Anna’s knowledge of pigments, the composition of clay, the secret formulas of starch paste and pulverized pumice for paper, the scumble of paint over glaze of Venetian turpentine, thick oil, and resin was no protection against this woman. Or Kazanjian.

  To defend herself, Anna relentlessly observed Catherine’s face, the line of her body, her contrapposto, acknowledging that men regarded her as beautiful. She didn’t trouble to neutralize her gaze, a courtesy she always granted to those who sat for a portrait.

  At first, Anna directed only silent gestures at Catherine. She dumped a bucket of clay on the table, indicating with a contemptuous look that Catherine should prepare it again. The clay contained too much air. Another day, pencils had been scattered over the worktable as Catherine’s lesson for neglecting to sharpen them properly.

  Anna accused her of soaking a ream of watercolor paper for too long. Brushes were cleaned again and again until they passed Anna’s inspection.

  Catherine suffered this scrutiny and harsh treatment, u
nwilling to argue, fearing that Anna’s observing, infallible eye would decipher her heart. I won’t be found out. Catherine thinned her desire for Julian, made it fluid and subtle to escape notice. She must remain in the studio to be near him. She was the servant here.

  ONE AFTERNOON, CATHERINE was bewildered to find a thick crimson curtain, which had once served in one of the bedrooms, dividing the studio in half.

  “Today you will organize the chalks.” Anna spoke from behind the curtain.

  Sticks of chalk, broken nubs and crumbs of color, were strewn wildly over the table. Catherine stared blankly at the curtain, listening as Anna resumed her work. She rolled a chalk off the table, and it exploded into powder on the floor, a scarlet starburst at her feet.

  Anna jerked the curtain aside, releasing dust that added its transparent weight to the air. “You’re careless as a child.” She glared at Catherine. “Arrange the chalks from dark to light colors. Begin with black.”

  Catherine angrily gathered the chalks, her fingers immediately darkened to the knuckles by Charcoal Black, Slate Black, Sooty Black, Schwarz, Cinereous, Niger, as if dipped into an inky pool covering the worktable. Each chalk scraped and released a tiny puff of smoke-colored powder as it was pushed into a slot, and the repeated, rasping tattoo was certain to break Anna’s concentration, like a piece of gravel in a shoe.

  Julian stopped at the door and stared wonderingly at the curtain hanging across the studio, a deep red slash. “What’s this? A backdrop for my portrait?”

  “The curtain allows me to work in private.” Anna’s stern voice pierced the room.

  Catherine could have touched Julian as he passed, but his expression was resolute, like that of an actor who had already judged his own performance. Why didn’t he look at her? Why didn’t he demand the curtain be taken down?

  Anna’s disembodied face hovered alongside the curtain, and with a magician’s confident gesture, she swept it the length of the room, isolating Catherine on the other side.

  KAZANJIAN STOOD WITH Anna in the studio, having made a surprise visit. She had prepared for this contingency and waited in a knot of anxiety as he studied the drawings tacked on the wall. Would Kazanjian notice the photograph of her husband, a heavy, somber man in a white suit? Isolated from the rest of the drawings, she had intended it would draw his attention. It seemed correct, inevitable, a truthful unfolding, that he should be reminded she was a married woman. But next to it was a drawing she’d overlooked, a portrait of Kazanjian surreptitiously sketched as he leaned against a post at the base hospital. The two men’s portraits held his gaze momentarily, and the slightest flicker of acknowledgment altered his face.

  “My portrait is an excellent likeness. This is your husband?”

  “Yes. Photographed in our garden.”

  With a swift motion, he turned his head away from this evidence of her life and abruptly said, “Sometimes I am too careful, too deliberate.”

  “But it is a mark of your expertise. You have infinite patience.”

  “No. I am at fault, allowing my head to overrule my heart.”

  Anna let this pass. She rarely excused carelessness, yet she’d left the sketch of Kazanjian where he would see it by her husband’s photograph. He would misunderstand its significance, assume her sentimental attachment to his portrait. She had been betrayed by her own hand. It is useful to recognize this behavior, she thought. So it can be prevented.

  THE CURTAIN WAS a permeable barrier, and Anna began to suspect Catherine was sending a code to Julian from behind it. Every day there were messages in the pattern of Catherine’s footsteps, the scratching of her broom as she cleaned. The creak of the door and the cold rattle of pencils in a container were signals devised by her hand. The suck of clay as it was stirred. A sponge wrung out in water.

  Sometimes when the silence grew too lengthy, Anna would demand to know what task occupied Catherine.

  “I’m cleaning the badger-hair brushes and setting them on the table. Then the paper will be unrolled and cut.”

  Anger constricted Anna’s throat and tongue into silence.

  There was a crash behind the curtain. Julian flinched and shuddered, and his fearful eyes met Anna’s. After a moment, her gentle gesture indicated he should resume his pose. The sanctuary of routine, of his limbs fixed in a pose, would heal him.

  She continued sketching with difficulty, unable to concentrate. The reddish dust from the conté crayon thickened over the half-finished, poorly observed drawing.

  JULIAN WAITED ON the modeling platform as Anna organized her drawing tools on a cloth. The crimson curtain hung directly behind him, and because of an effect of the light or an optical trick, the intense color coarsened his skin, drained its delicate subtlety. Red drew all color into itself, just as pain commanded everything in a body.

  In Bronzino’s portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi, the deep brilliance of her crimson dress disclosed the faint green tint of her painted skin. Observing this, Anna had calculated that Bronzino underpainted his canvas with a greenish base, perhaps viridian. Later, she’d observed men suffering from fever affected in the same way; their bodies appeared waxen, drained by a condition under their flesh. Perhaps color rose through skin, as bubbles rose to the surface of water.

  “Please remove your clothing,” Anna said without looking at Julian.

  He wordlessly shrugged off his blue jacket, his gestures automatic, as he was accustomed to undressing before others, then removed his necktie, laid it with his shirt over the chair. He slowly unbuttoned his trousers.

  Naked, he pivoted on the platform. “Is it my profile you want?” His voice mocking, unnaturally loud.

  “Yes,” Anna answered. “Yes.” She was strong, an anvil; her breath hammered, repeating a noise that she slowly realized was the pencil between her fingers tapping on the table. The movement of her hand became a shiver.

  She drew with a whispery scratch, the charcoal diminishing into Julian’s image. A softer sound of her fingers rubbing the black powder into paper.

  On the other side of the curtain, Catherine envisioned Julian’s shirt slipping from his shoulders, the brush of cloth against his skin, his nude body a pale curve, a bent arrow that hooked her. She would become molten, turn to honey, perfume, or water, and flow under the curtain to reach him. Transform herself into smoke, pass through and pierce his bandage to soothe him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  WEATHER HAD FADED the bridge’s painted brightness, and the lake reduced the color of its wavering, angular reflection another degree to a faded, brownish rose. Traces of the bridge’s original color, hidden in its carved details, were secret proof of its scarlet past.

  Julian and Catherine leaned against the railing, watching the green water sluggishly moving its flecked veil of chrome yellow pollen. He checked the sky and suddenly took her arm.

  “Let’s leave.” He hurried her across, their footsteps hollow on the dry wood planks. “A bare bridge over water is too exposed.”

  His words flew against Catherine’s ears, softly insistent, and she shook her head, not wishing to be distracted from the sensation of his hand on her arm.

  When they stood on the bank, he released her. “I fear aeroplanes, ever since I watched them fly over the trenches. They were unnatural as lightning. Black crosses against the clouds.”

  “A black cross?” She shivered.

  “I felt like Gulliver. Unable to lift my hand or look away.”

  “I’ve seen a zeppelin. So enormous it didn’t seem to move at all but just hovered in the sky.” She remembered the blunt gray shape, the miracle of its weightless elevation, her anger as it filled the space above her.

  “We’re too insignificant to matter.”

  “That’s not true. You only act as if nothing matters. Nothing bothers you in the studio. You stand so still. How can you bear to have Anna stare at you? She seems so critical.”

  “Little suffering compared to . . .” His words trailed away. “I have experience with drawing myself.
Military officials once quaked at the pencil lines my hand made on their maps. I had some importance. They relied on my eyes and my judgment.”

  She noticed he pushed up his sleeves, a sign that he was uneasy.

  “But never mind. I have prepared a surprise for you. Please close your eyes,” Julian instructed.

  She held his hand and walked blindly forward, sensing she was being led under trees, as the ground was knobbed with the hard coil of roots.

  “Now you may sit down and open your eyes.”

  Tiny circles of bright color starred the grass around their seated figures, and after a moment she recognized the ragged petals of red, violet, and white. Dianthus.

  With a shy smile, he effortlessly plucked one of these flowers from the grass. “See? Nothing grows here. I created this for you.”

  Now she understood that he had picked the flowers and placed each one on the hillside. A false garden. Catherine felt as if she wept, but her eyes were dry. “How beautiful.”

  “It is the first bouquet I have ever given a woman.”

  She desired to enter him like an infection, a worm, a bullet nestled at the point of impact, find the hidden place where he was wounded, mend him, and never leave.

  A faint muffled noise reached them, then a second and third rolling wave of sound repeated the rhythm.

  She cried out, and he put his arm around her. “It’s a freak of the air. A bombardment. They’re fighting across the channel.”

  “Don’t speak of the war,” she pleaded.

  For an instant, he appeared cold, glacial, split by the white bandage, then his kiss had a strange foreign taste that filled her mouth.

  After a time, she gently stopped him. “Will you reveal yourself to me?”

  “No.”

  Julian didn’t soothe her anger but stretched out full length on his back. “This is the most vulnerable position. Unprotected. I never imagined it was a luxury.”