The Crimson Portrait

by Jody Shields

  Anna had willed herself not to react, but her eyes involuntarily closed against him for an instant, the infinite sadness of his expression already spreading in her memory like a slow stain, a diffusing cloud.

  Then she straightened her shoulders and studied him without flinching. Their mutual anguish was present but invisible, as an X-ray of the body reveals the bones but not the tension of the muscles that hold them in place.

  Her chalk hesitantly began to record his face, and soon the paper was filled with an angry hatch of lines.

  Chapter Fourteen

  AN ORDERLY BACKED the four-seat Vauxhall from the stable, then yelled until another aide grudgingly slammed the heavy wooden doors closed. With immense dignity, McCleary and Kazanjian climbed into the motorcar.

  It was dusk, and the lorries speeding in the opposite direction on the main road cast their lights—white spheres blurred into a moving garland—straight into the men’s eyes. The battering rhythm of these lights, the constant nervous motion of the vehicle, dizzied McCleary.

  When he opened his eyes again, Kazanjian had turned around in his seat, his face obscured by bulky goggles, and was shouting over the noise of the engine. He wanted McCleary to understand that the city had changed since his last visit. McCleary pantomimed yes, since the streams of dust from the road seemed to drag away his words.

  True to Kazanjian’s observation, the pedestrians were somber and monotonous, even the women wore drab-colored clothing. A fashionable matron carrying a hatbox, striped in vivid green and white, jarred the palette of the street. McCleary commented that the woman should be commended for her gaiety.

  The Third General Hospital was hosting a conference on new developments in surgery, and McCleary and Kazanjian slowly made their way to the director’s office, effusively greeting colleagues who had been out of contact since war had been declared.

  Kazanjian delivered one of the first lectures on the program. “This is a new apparatus,” he announced, holding up a curious device, springy with wires, that looked nothing like a medical instrument. “Vulcanite, plasticine, black copper cement, and modeling compound can also be recommended for support.” The audience murmured appreciation for his attempt at humor, more acceptable because of his accent.

  Kazanjian explained his novel method of intermaxillary wiring, then presented several prosthetic devices and their applications. “The greatest difficulty is preserving the bones, skin, and muscles in proper contour while healing occurs, which must be done in stages. I have devised a temporary bandage using the head as support for wounds of the midface, craniofacial dislocation, or destruction of the jaws.”

  Crinoline—the same fabric used for petticoats—was soaked in plaster and reinforced with glue. These strips were wound circularly around the patient’s shaved head and under the chin. Next, smaller strips of linen with rows of hooks at their edges were glued to the bandage wrapping the patient’s face. The hooks were threaded to one another with rubber bands or Angle’s wire and snugged tight, forcing the wound together. Old cut-up rubber gloves were installed as a lining to ease discomfort where the fabric touched the skin. The crinoline bandage immobilized the patient’s face and provided progressive pressure to help cicatrization of the tissues. It could also be easily removed for cleaning.

  For another patient, Kazanjian had fashioned a “face bow” using stiff wire suspended from the headband of an army helmet to secure a broken mandible, shattered molars, and a detached lip.

  The problem was a familiar one, but few of the doctors had worked out a solution. Kazanjian’s lecture was well received, and he fielded numerous questions, addressing issues concerning trismus and closed-bite splints. With considerable pride, McCleary watched Kazanjian’s face relax as he unfolded his case. He realized they were the mavericks at this gathering.

  Later, McCleary took his place at the lectern before his medical colleagues, opened a portfolio, and slipped out Anna’s drawings of Julian’s face. It was late and he was the last speaker, but as he held up one drawing after another, the nurses and doctors stiffened into attention. To those sitting at the back of the large paneled room, Julian’s face appeared to be an unrecognizable, abstract shape, reddish and pinkish.

  “We operate, we wait. We operate again,” McCleary explained.

  After a brief, respectful silence, someone asked at what point did Dr. McCleary know that everything had been done for a patient? That treatment had ended?

  McCleary nodded to acknowledge the question. “I rely on the patient’s decision. He will tell us when enough is enough.”

  THE NEXT DAY, McCleary made excuses to Kazanjian and escaped for a solitary walk from Trafalgar Square down Whitehall, preparing for another business matter. His eye was continually drawn to the wounded soldiers, many of them encumbered by jackets awkwardly arranged over their slings or crutches; their irregular silhouettes and limping walk made them highly visible on the street.

  The secretary of state for war and the Army Council were headquartered in the War Office building between Whitehall Place and Horse Guards Avenue. McCleary was discomfited to find himself in the role of pilgrim where the machinery of war originated. Even the surrounding rooftops bristled with wireless telegraph installations. At the striking of eleven o’clock, there was a clamor nearby as two mounted troops of Life Guards changed in front of a massive building with a clock tower.

  So many uniformed men crowded around the doors to the War Office it appeared to be under siege. McCleary patiently waited in line and presented his letter of introduction to Lord Derby, the recruiting sergeant, but the guards refused him access. The doctor tolerated their curt dismissal with the reserved force of a person harboring a secret, as he had the wild thought of making the threat that weapons were concealed in his medical bag, creating a false crisis, and vaulting into Lord Derby’s office to plead Artis’s case.

  McCleary was some distance away, on Old Queen Street, before he became conscious that his face was slack, the corners of his upper lip were drawn outward and drooped, displaying his sadness, a physical reminder of his failure to aid the boy.

  That evening, McCleary invited Kazanjian to dine with him, and he directed the driver to Claridge’s. Sole was ordered from the card, and the waiter elaborately finished it at a side table with grated cheese, oysters, and croûte soaked in bouillon. It was a leisurely dinner and Kazanjian relished the flowers, the frock-coated waiter’s obsequious service, the keys glinting on the sommelier’s chain like silver fish.

  The wine calmed McCleary, and he noticed that the candlelight and the golden ceiling created a strange, almost holy luminosity in the dining room. The women in evening dress—dark-colored silks—were as exotic and disconcerting as nymphs at a shrine. McCleary was accustomed to the unadorned wardrobe of the nurses.

  Across from their table, a woman slowly rose from her chair, gently gathering her skirt at her hip, a jeweled bracelet visible as a dazzling line across her wrist. McCleary intercepted her glance at her dinner companion, and their intimacy struck him like the shock of vertigo. He quickly drained his wineglass, not daring to look at her again, and as he set down the glass, he noticed the irregular brown spots on his hand, the skin slack and slightly transparent. The evidence of age.

  I will probably never enjoy dinner with a beautiful woman again, he thought, marveling at this finality. He waited for a pang of loss to confirm this.

  They left Claridge’s to enjoy cigars and port at his club, the Marlborough on Pall Mall, and McCleary was relieved to find the backgammon tables and the elderly staff unchanged. He insisted Kazanjian take the chair nearest the windows and enjoy the view of the city before the blackout.

  “I don’t know how I will manage to sleep without interruption,” McCleary joked. “Perhaps there will be an air raid.”

  Kazanjian reminded him they would be leaving the city well before dawn, so there was little point in worrying about sleep.

  “We won’t be leaving for the estate a minute too soon. I might forge
t there’s a war on and linger here in blissful ignorance.”

  “I will gladly inherit your operating equipment and the remnants of the wine cellar.”

  “Fine. You can return without me. I will remain in this chair, enjoying a happy and ancient age, gradually forgetting everything I know about Thiersch grafts. Troubled no longer by broken bones and their solution. Or fevered patients.” McCleary sent a cloud of cigar smoke up to the coffered ceiling and ordered another round of port from the waiter. He explained the club’s generous custom. “They serve ten measures from a bottle of port and twenty from a bottle of whiskey.”

  The strong drink buoyed whatever troubled Kazanjian to the surface. “What do you believe creates the most powerful memory?”

  “Helplessness. Distress. Fear. Whatever strong emotion is associated with an event. That’s the evidence from our wounded soldiers.”

  “I remember everything associated with a particular woman. I suffer from it.”

  “A woman?” McCleary looked at Kazanjian in astonishment, and his mind raced through the lineup of nurses, one rosy face after another. “Well. We certainly cannot select our memories. Or what to forget,” he murmured. “There is no choice.”

  That night in his hotel room, the knot of concern for Artis loosened, McCleary remembered the woman he had loved. Years ago, he had impatiently pushed through a crowd at the Royal Italian Opera to meet her. They were eager to be alone and quickly left the hall. She was radiant, flushed after performing, and expected this was the evening when he would speak about their future together.

  They lingered over supper for hours, and finally, the straw-colored wine still remaining in their glasses, the moment for him to propose marriage passed, floated away. This had not been his intention. A diamond ring from Garrard was hidden in his pocket.

  They looked at each other, not speaking. Without haste, as if giving him more time, she carefully folded her napkin and placed it on the table. Her diamond earrings trembled violently against her neck.

  She had married another man. McCleary had occasionally read her name in opera reviews in the newspapers, as she became associated with celebrated soprano roles.

  Years passed, but he had continued a dialogue with his beloved in his mind. I’ve changed for you.

  It had been calculated that the skin took over one month to heal. McCleary imagined this as a slow and tremendous process, just as carbon silently fused to create diamonds. Perhaps it took the heart longer to fuse into the transformation of love.

  He had once believed they didn’t marry because he feared disappointing her. Now he had identified a finer texture within their relationship. She sang to free herself from the body’s possessiveness, transcending the grip of muscles, the twine of nerves, the passing of time.

  He was fastened to the internal rapture of healing in the dark, elusive pump of the body, a mortal measure of time.

  ARTIS FOLLOWED the sweep of Julian’s arm as it encompassed the field, exuberant sweetbriar where it sloped down to the dim, almost invisible thread of the river. They’d hiked beyond sight of the house to the very edge of the estate.

  Julian began to unpack drawing supplies from his haversack. “We start the lesson. The school of musketry provided my supplies for surveying. The paper was printed with ten vertical and four horizontal lines. All the pencils were HB lead. No one knew why.”

  He thumbtacked a sheet of the graph paper to a thin board and handed it to Artis. “This string, precisely fifteen inches long, is threaded through a hole in the board. Like so. Now, before you commence drawing, hold the cord up to your face and tie a knot. This measurement will always ensure the eye is the same distance from the paper.”

  Artis squinted at the pencil in his outstretched hand.

  “Hold the pencil up at arm’s length against the horizon,” Julian instructed. “It will give an approximate measure and proportion of the land. Begin by drawing the skyline and always work toward yourself.”

  The boy scowled. Orders. “Were you a scout?”

  Julian shook his head. “I mapped the territory for the fighting engineers in advance of the soldiers, horses, and tanks. I stood alone on a road with paper and pencil, and little did I realize this was my last innocent look at the landscape. I drew the features that had military value, the fences, hills, and woods. A stone wall, tree, or ruin could hide a sniper’s nest. During the bombardment, everything I’d so carefully recorded was obliterated. My maps were nearly useless.”

  Julian responded to the boy’s stricken expression with a shrug. “The first rule is to ignore all detail. Draw only the outline of the horizon and the hills.”

  Artis didn’t understand the absence of detail.

  Julian told him to leave out everything but an outline. “For example, here’s my face.” He drew a circle, adding two dots for eyes, a curve for the nose, a straight line for the mouth. He held up his sketch. “No details, but you can recognize my face. Is it a good likeness?”

  Artis took the paper and confidently redrew Julian’s mouth, curved into a smile.

  “Just so. But you would have been a more accurate draftsman if you’d erased the left side of my face.”

  Artis looked at him, amazed.

  THERE HAD BEEN little sleep for McCleary. All night, the house and the lawn had reverberated with shouting and the slamming of ambulance doors, then this urgency was swept into the small confines of the operating theater.

  He was relieved to escape the house without meeting a soul, as every encounter brought a demand or a question. His pursuing Furies. The bane of his work. He carried nothing, hadn’t even allowed himself a clipboard or stethoscope, believing this would make the terrible news he was to deliver somehow magically less true. Or official.

  Outside, the lawn constricted ominously around McCleary, the unkempt grass acquiring a complex spiked pattern where it gripped the trees, brickwork walls, the marble curve of the fountain. The wrought iron bench had made itself nearly invisible under a horse chestnut tree, and he pushed aside the overhanging ribbed leaves to sit down.

  The worn, rounded weight of his pocket watch was a comfort, and the blaze of the engraving hidden inside the lid was as clear to him as if he’d opened it in sunlight: To M from D. Our Opera. His beloved had cupped the pocket watch in her white hands before she gave it to him, still warm from contact with her skin.

  “Dr. McCleary?”

  McCleary opened his eyes to find Julian studying him with concern.

  “Why, I believe I fell asleep.” He straightened his shoulders, mindful of his dignity.

  Julian stooped to sit next to him, awkwardly shifting to balance the left side of his body. His bandaged side. To stop his impulse to assist his patient, McCleary brushed the browning branchlets fallen from the horse chestnut off his own trousers.

  “As you are in the business of restoration . . .” Julian’s hand stopped McCleary’s protest. “You will appreciate my analysis of the landscape. It is entirely artificial, constructed a century and a half ago. The hills were carved from earth. The streams and lakes were redirected, serpentized into curves to beguile the eye. You may wonder why.”

  McCleary’s expression was thoughtful.

  “The landscape designer rejected symmetry. Because a straight line holds no mystery. There you have it, Doctor.” Julian grinned.

  “Ah, but the body itself is symmetrical.”

  “Some bodies.”

  “Yes, some bodies. My work is to restore symmetry.”

  “When you were a student, did you imagine that would be your pursuit?”

  McCleary shook his head. “It was so very long ago. I’ve lost the outline of that memory.”

  “My memory of my face has changed.” Julian spoke softly. “I’m blind to myself. Like a black surface. It makes no sense, but I look at other faces in hope they reflect mine. Give my image back to me.” Julian fidgeted with his necktie. “The nurses try not to react when they look at me. But they aren’t skilled liars.”

 
; McCleary sensed that Julian hadn’t finished his thought. Let me be a man of listening.

  “My face is more terrible than my memory of war, since it’s inescapable.” Julian’s good eye shone with tears, like water over marble, and he turned stiffly toward the doctor. “I can read your expression. There’s something you don’t wish to tell me.”

  McCleary struggled with the growing tightness in his chest. It was a moment before he could speak, and he started with an explanation. “It is the body’s perfect scheme that muscles begin and end at the bone. But the face is different. Some facial muscles connect only with each other. If damaged, these muscles can’t easily be reconnected. There is nothing to hold them.”

  “Why this anatomy lesson?”

  “Julian, I can do nothing more for your face. For now.”

  An infinitesimal pause, like silence after a cautious footstep.

  “So surgery is useless? The drawings are useless?”

  McCleary heard himself explaining that Anna would start new drawings of Julian’s face. They would be used to help make a temporary device. A covering for his face. A mask.

  “A mask?”

  “It will be very lightweight. The mask will be modeled from a photograph of your face.”

  “My former face.”

  The finality of his statement rushed toward them, sudden and violent, like a hissing arrow, wounding them both.

  McCleary had the image of Julian’s scars turning a deeper red, the color rising like mercury in a thermometer until the pars lacrimalis, Horner’s muscle, forced tears to the eye.

  Julian’s hands covered his face, as if this contact could mend him. “I should have been blown to bits.”

  “Surgery will improve. There will be new techniques, new treatments.” McCleary regretted the tone of authority in his voice. The doctor’s privilege.